I felt a little nervous about calling him, but then I thought: I’ve got to give it a shot. It being a glorious, sunny Saturday afternoon, Germy could actually be a couple of miles away.
He might be spending the day practicing a cruel Clint East-wood imitation or banging the lighting designer or (I smiled to myself as I pulled into his driveway) sitting cross-legged on his bed the way he used to, working neat’s-foot oil into his mitt.
A minute later, there he was at his front door, his hands braced against the frame, as if he were defending his house from some intruder who might push him aside and ransack his living room, or demand to know what Chevy Chase was really like. “Yes?” Chilly, about to cross the border into absolute iciness.
“You don’t recognize me, Germy?”
Then he did the Oh-my-God! I-don’t-believe-it! bit, followed by our mutual finger-squishing handshake.
MAGIC HOUR / 85
It was for real. We were both pretty touched at seeing each other, although not comfortable enough to follow our natural inclination, which was to give each other one of those acceptable, non-homo, World Series hugs. “Steve! Come in!”
I followed him through the front hall, toward the living room. It was like stepping back into 1959: the blue-and-white umbrella stand filled with tennis rackets, the dark, scratched-up old mirror in a carved wood frame. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “It looks exactly the same. Any minute your little sister’s going to come running in and spit at me.”
“That’s right!” Germy said in his slow honk. “I’d forgotten.
She spent a whole summer spitting at you. She was madly in love.”
The Cottman house still had the we’ve-been-rich-forever shabbiness it had when we were kids: faded flower print cushions, threadbare rugs with flowers that skidded across wood floors, old wicker chairs. Out on the back terrace, there were flowers blooming in his mother’s mossy clay pots, and the old, white-painted wrought-iron chairs, chipped in the same places.
Like the house, Germy hadn’t changed much. He was tall, about my height, but he hadn’t outgrown his round-chinned baby face, with its button nose and wide-open eyes. Sure, his forehead was a little lined, his brown hair had a little gray, but in his horn-rimmed glasses and white tennis sweater, he looked more like a tall kid in a daddy costume than a full-fledged adult. He made a take-a-seat gesture. “Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee?” Then he remembered.
“A beer?” I shook my head. “Steve! God! Tell me about yourself. Where are you living? What do you do?”
Germy had much too much class to ask: What do you want? although it must have been in the back of 86 / SUSAN ISAACS
his mind that maybe I was there for a handout, or with some obnoxious request: Can you get me an autographed picture of Goldie Hawn?
“I’m here, in Bridgehampton, north of Scuttle Hole—”
“Married, single, div—” He interrupted both me and himself with his own enthusiasm. “I got married again last year!”
He paused as if to give me time to prepare myself for something wonderful. “To Faith Armstead!”
I nodded respectfully, as in: Oh, of course, I’m always dazzled by Faith Armstead’s lighting. “Congratulations.”
“She’s stuck in a theater all day today. Can you believe it?” His second marriage was working; I could hear the pleasure as Germy pronounced his wife’s name. And he seemed proud, almost awed by her dedication; she could have been the first wife since the dawn of history to work on a Saturday. “Now, what about you?” he demanded.
“I never got married. I was pretty screwed up when I got back from Vietnam.”
“Vietnam,” Germy echoed.
“And then I got used to being single, being free. But I finally met a great girl. We’re getting married Thanksgiving weekend.”
“You were in Vietnam,” he said softly. The new quietly-moved reaction. After all those years of being Asian-baby butchers, we had somehow turned into national treasures.
“Did you see action?”
“No, you jerk-off. They needed a shortstop on the Saigon intermural team, so I spent the whole war on the ball field.
Listen, I really want to catch up, but I’m actually here on business….” I saw his face fall a little, his round kid-cheeks flatten. “Eat it, Je-re-my. You think I’m going to give you a life insurance pitch?”
MAGIC HOUR / 87
“Well…” His embarrassment evaporated. “No.” He became his real self, his caustic TV self. “You look more like redwood decks, actually.”
“I’m a detective with Suffolk County Homicide.”
“You? ”
“Yeah. Never thought I’d wind up on this side of the law, did you?”
“Homicide!” he said. “Steve, that’s exciting. Glamorous!”
“Yeah, well, the violence is fantastic, and I’ve always been crazy about decomposition.”
“Seriously, do you like what you do?”
“It stimulates my intellectual processes.”
“I said seriously.”
“Yeah, I like it. A lot. Now, do you know why I’m here?”
It took him less than a tenth of a second. “Sy Spencer.”
“I need background, foreground, whatever you’ve got. Did you know him?”
He turned his chair so he was facing me; his back was to the bay. “Slightly.”
“You didn’t hang out with him?”
“No. He ran on that middle-aged fast track: a little old money, a lot of new money, and writers, restaurant owners, fashion designers. All those emaciated, face-lifted women and their beefy men.”
“Sy wasn’t beefy. Five six, a hundred thirty-two pounds.”
“He was an exception.” Germy
