the road from here, and in the summer the nautical gentry will visit places like The Rusty Hawsehole after a day of sailing. When one is safely back at one's country club, one will casually mention the visit, thus suggesting that one is a real man. But here I was in off-season, sipping suds and eating prole food, watching the blue haze of cigarette smoke float past the bar lights. I ordered another beer and six of those beef jerky sticks for dessert. Just when it seemed that no one was interested in me or offended by my presence, one of the leather gentlemen at the bend in the bar inquired, 'You live around here?' You have to understand that even in jeans and sweatshirt, unshaven, and with a Bronco outside, John Whitman Sutter was not going to pass for one of the boys, especially after I opened my preppie mouth. You understand, too, that there was deeper meaning in that question. I replied, 'Lattingtown.' 'La-di-da,' he responded musically.
I'm honestly glad there is no class animosity in this country, for if there were, the leather gentleman would have been rude. He asked, 'You lost or what?' 'I must be if I'm in this place.'
Everyone thought that was funny. Humour goes a long way in bridging the gap between men of culture and cretins.
Leather said, 'Your old lady kick you out or what?'
'No, actually she's in St Francis Hospital in a coma. Hit-and-run. Doesn't look good. The kids are with my aunt.'
'Oh, hey, sorry.' Leather ordered me a beer.
I smiled sadly at him and went back to my beef jerky sticks. They're actually not bad, and if you chew them with a mouthful of bar nuts, it forms this pasty mass that absorbs beer. You swallow the whole wad. I learned that in New Haven. That's the way we say Yale. New Haven. It doesn't sound so snooty. I was due at Aunt Cornelia's for cocktails at three, as the note said. It was sort of a family reunion that we do every Easter at Aunt Cornelia's home, which is in Locust Valley, about a fifteen-minute drive from here. It was now a few minutes to two. Aunt Cornelia is my mother's sister, and she is the aunt, you may recall, who has some theories regarding red hair. Wait until she sees her favourite nephew, I thought, staggering in without tie or jacket, unshaved, and smelling of beer and bar nuts.
Susan, to be fair, is good with my family. Not close, just good. Her family are few in number, not close to one another, and scattered far and wide. Perfect in-laws.
Anyway, as I was contemplating another hour in this hole, a woman took the empty stool beside me. She must have come from the dark recesses, because the front door hadn't opened. I glanced at her and she gave me a big smile. I looked in the bar mirror, and our eyes met. She smiled again. Friendly sort. She was about thirty but could have passed for forty. She was divorced and was currently living with a man who beat her. She worked as a waitress somewhere, and her mother took care of her kids. She had a few health problems, should have hated men, but didn't, played the Lotto, and refused to accept the fact that life was not going to get any better. She didn't say any of this, she didn't say anything, in fact. But the sort of people you find in The Rusty Hawsehole are like those fill-in-the-adjective games. You wonder sometimes how a fabulously wealthy nation can create a white underclass. Or maybe it's just that some people are born losers, and in the year 3000 in a colony on Mars, there will be a Rusty Hawsehole whose clientele will have bad teeth, tattoos, and leather space suits, and they will tell each other their life stories and complain about bad breaks and people screwing them. I heard two shoes hit the floor. 'My feet are killing me.'
'Why is that?' I asked.
'Oh, jeez, I worked all morning. Never even got to Mass.'
'Where do you work?'
'Stardust Diner in Glen Cove. You know the place?'
'Sure do.'
'I never saw you there.'
And you never will. 'Buy you a drink?'
'Sure. Mimosa. Hate to drink before six. But I need one.' I motioned to the bartender. 'Mimosa.' I turned to my companion. 'You want a beef jerky?'
'No, thanks.'
'My name's John.'
'Sally.'
'Not Sally Grace?'
'No, Sally Ann.'
'Pleased to meet you,' I said.
Her mimosa came and we touched glasses. We chatted for a few minutes before she asked, 'What are you doing in a place like this?'
'I think that's my line.'
She laughed. 'No, really.'
I suppose I was flattered by the question, my ego stroked by the knowledge that no one in that bar thought I belonged there even before they caught the accent. Conversely, I suppose, if any of these people were in The Creek, even in tweeds, I'd ask the same question of them. I replied to Sally, 'I'm divorced, lonely, and looking for love in all the wrong places.'
She giggled. 'You're crazy.'
'And my clubs are closed today, my yacht is in dry dock, and my ex-wife took the kids to Acapulco. I have my choice of going to a Mafia don's party, my aunt Cornelia's house, or here.'
'So you came here?'
'Wouldn't you?'
'No. I'd go to the Mafia don's party.'
'That's interesting.' I asked, 'Are you by any chance a Roosevelt?' Roozvelt.
She laughed again. 'Sure. Are you an Astor?'
'No. I'm a Whitman. You know Walt Whitman, the poet?'
'Sure. Leaves of Grass. I read it in school.'
'God bless America.'
'He wrote that, too?'
'Possibly.'
'You're related to Walt Whitman?'
'Sort of.'
'Are you a poet?'
'I try.'
'Are you rich?'
'I was. Lost it all on Lotto tickets.'
'God, how many did you buy?'
'All of them.'
She laughed yet again. I was on. I swung my stool toward Sally. You could tell she had been attractive once, but the years, as they say, had not been kind. Still, she had a nice smile and a good laugh, all her teeth, and I'm sure a big heart. I could see she liked me and with a little encouragement would have loved me. A lot of my schoolmates were into fucking the poor, but I never did. Actually, I take that back. Around here, the local custom is that Wednesday night is maid's night out, and all the young bars on the Gold Coast were, and still are, I guess, filled with delicious Irish and Scottish girls over here on work visas. But that's another story. The point is, it's been a long time since I've been tete-a-tete with a working girl in a bar, and I wasn't quite sure how to act with Sally Ann. But I believe I should always be myself. Some people like twits. And besides, I was doing better with Sally Ann than with Sally Grace. And now, as of sunrise, I had the power. We chatted awhile longer, and she was giggling into her third mimosa, and the leather crew were starting to get suspicious about the wife-in-the-coma story.
I caught a glimpse of the bar clock, which informed me that it was Miller time and three P.M. Given the choice between taking Sally Ann back to her place or going to Aunt Cornelia's, I'd rather do neither. 'Well, I should go.' 'Oh… you in a hurry?'
'I'm afraid I am. I have to pick up the Earl of Sussex at the train station and get over to Aunt Cornelia's.'
'Seriously…'
