The End of the Pier (18 page)

The party boat, its prow retreating in the mist, could have been a phantom boat, the trailing wisps of fog like a tattered flag, a skeleton crew, the passage of the Damned . . .

•  •  •

Oh, for god's sake, she said to herself. The lake people were anything but damned. They were all probably from New York, Boston, or places in the Poconos marked by stone walls and weathered shingles. Maud saw them all as too wealthy and too savvy to work on an image. The men never bought
Travel and Leisure
in Cooper's Drugs; they just plucked it from the rack and stood there and read it until Bobby Cooper marched up to them and pointed to the hand-lettered sign. They'd just shrug and pay for the
Times
and saunter out.

They had left behind them the days of “summering” in some “quaint” little place they had “discovered” in the Dolomites or spending an entire season in Iceland. They were too smart for that, Maud thought. They had found La Porte by accident, pure and simple, saw it had an enormous lake and a snow machine, and slapped their sides with glee. It was
not
a place you would ever say you “summered in,” but only “went to.” Rock-hard self-confidence lined with a few diamond mines would probably be the qualification for summer people in La Porte, too far north and too deep inland to even suck up to the fringes of trendiness, much less set a new trend. Maud based her conclusions on rather foggy premises, but she still argued with Shirl, who thought they were a bunch of cheap phonies, that the lakers were simply extremely rich, rich enough they could try and weasel a third refill of coffee without paying the extra thirty cents.

“So they're
rich
phonies, so what?” Shirl would say as she removed a big tray of chocolate fudge cake from the shelf behind her, stared at it, and then returned it to the case. It was a mystery to her why this cake didn't go walking out the door like her lemon chiffon pies and her double-glazed doughnuts. It was another recipe she'd “borrowed” from Jen Graham, who was famous for her chocolate fudge cake; anyone who ate Jen's cake was hooked for life. Anyone who ate Shirl's never ate it again. (“Can't understand it,” Shirl had said. “It's even got her secret ingredient.” The “secret ingredient” turned out to be a handful of cold coffee grounds that Jen had written into the recipe. Religiously, Shirl tossed in the coffee grounds.) Then she'd slide out one of the trays of her double-glazed doughnuts from the glass case by the cash register and wham it into the glass-fronted shelves behind her. After the lake people in their white togs and designer sunglasses had strewn the Sunday
Times
all over the tabletops and shoveled down their breakfasts and then started buying bags of take-away doughnuts, Shirl's magic moment would come. With the whole tray of unbought doughnuts resting
succulently behind her, she could tell them she was “out”; she could lean one elbow on the cash register and the other on her hip and wait for the inevitable nod toward the held-back tray. “Them doughnuts is for charity, for the poor people.” “The Poor of La Porte” was always the Sunday banner for Shirl, who, flying investigative-reporter colors, would route the libertine misuses of the township's money and its huge budget deficits right to the door of the summer rich, who, in vaguely biblical language, were those who brought and took away. The Cote du Jours, she called them. And no, they couldn't take home the last green-apple pie, either.

Maud would stand behind the counter dipping glasses in scalding water and listen and shake her head. La Porte had its poor people, yes; but Shirl couldn't have picked one out of a lineup even if he'd been stuffed between Lee Iacocca and Elizabeth Taylor. (“That little squirt? So she's got
eyes
—big deal. I got eyes, you got eyes, even Joey's got eyes.”)

Yet they were big tippers, and Shirl hauled in money on Sunday. They thought the place was “quaint,” probably because of the scarred wooden booths and the marble-topped soda counter and the rough-hewn, gum-chewing, chain-smoking owner. The men loved the fact that they couldn't bribe her or charm her out of that tray of doughnuts. Shirl seemed to strike them as the Last Gnarled Frontier of Free Enterprise or something, when all she was was plain damned mean.

Maud always asked to work the counter on Sundays (which was fine with Charlene, who got the big tips) because she didn't want to have to see them all up too close. Blurs of white tennis sweaters or caps and (thank heavens) so many designer sunglasses it looked like a spaceship convention were all Maud had to see. She was afraid that she would no longer be able to imagine them in black ties and swishing gowns; and she was especially afraid she might discover Raoul and Evita, might sense who they were, mark the Latin skin, hear the slight accent . . .

Maud shook her head to clear it. Sam had made the names up, she reminded herself. Their names were probably “Kelly” and “Craig” and they lived in the Trump and carried little dogs around. Still . . .

She could hear the party boat disgorge the newcomers, squeals and yaps just like those little dogs.

Her head was lolling a bit, but it came up when the patio door over there suddenly must have opened, perhaps from the thrust of the music itself.

“Brazil.”

It was an omen.

So Maud forgot the Trump Tower, but she couldn't put New York out of her mind. There was Rosie.

The party boat had pulled away from the dock and moored amongst the other little boats. And to the music of “Brazil,” several of the dots of color had beaded together into what was, yes it was, a line. A conga line. They were snaking all the way to the patio door.

Here Sam had all along had a niece who lived in New York and he'd never told her. Maud looked across the lake now with narrowed eyes.

Unless he'd lied.

S
he was a perfect stranger. Why were they lying here in this handsomely draped four-poster bed, among the coats?

Two drunken dances out by the pool, each of them holding a tall drink of bullet-proof rum with an exotic flower spearing it, not dancing really, just leaning against each other.

Bethanne had dropped her French-cut panties the moment they walked into the bedroom, as if she were a guest removing her shoes in deference to Oriental custom. The rest of their clothes were still on their backs.

Voices of more than a hundred guests ebbed and flowed downstairs in the Bonds' double living room on one side and double library—no, it must have been a game room and library. Enough people to make you think half of them were mirror images of the other half. He'd never seen such clothes. They should have had a runway. Teeny-tiny sequined skirts; long, loungy velvet trousers. High-cheekboned faces, enameled lips and eyes.

One of them was here. She could have been twenty, his age; she could have been sixteen—it was impossible to tell about women anymore. He didn't know her last name.

“You don't want to do a line, you don't want to free-base, you don't want to smoke, and you don't want to fuck. Why the hell am I here?” she said.

“You wanted me to pour you into the bathroom next door. You're pretty liquid.”

The bathroom's proximity to his room was probably why all of the coats were here. God knows, the Bonds had servants and closets enough to collect them downstairs, but the rich apparently
just run up to pee in the marble bathroom and then fling their coats through the nearest available door.

He raised his head slightly to see what covered his stockinged foot. He'd removed his shoes in deference to Ralph Lauren. Silvery fur. Fox fur, maybe. The closest he'd ever got to this stuff was Velda's Russian mink. Was that sable flung over the deep armchair? He didn't want to know what that glimmering white one was. This Labor Day weekend was on the warm side, and these women were still dragging around in their weighty furs.

The girl rolled over, elbow on the pillow, caramel-tanned pointy chin on her palm. She made him think of the crême bruleé on the sideboard of desserts downstairs. Her hair was sun-scorched, long, tendrilly, her dress a metallic sheath of gold that turned russet when the silk moved across her hips.

She fingered his watch; the Rolex impressed her. She walked the fingers of her sinewy, tennis-playing little hands across his shirt front, asking in her breathless voice, “So what
do
you want?”

He'd had three of the rum drinks when he was used to beer and maybe a little grass. She'd taken out her stash of coke, a mirror, and a razor blade as soon as she'd hit the bed, right after she'd discarded the panties. It seemed to be done in one fluid movement, as if the whole thing went together. He told her to put it back, he didn't want to see the stuff. Oddly enough, she obeyed. Then she extracted a miniature solid-silver flask and took a pull on its contents before she offered it to him as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

He smiled at the gesture; it was somehow endearing. Answering her question, he said, “A thousand dollars.” Chad stared up at the softly glowing ceiling. How'd the Bonds get that lighting effect? Dragged down a few stars, probably.

“What?”
Her tickling fingers stopped.

“A thousand. A bank error.”

“So call the fucking bank. Now . . .” Tendrils of hair webbed his face.

He blew them away. “They made a mistake. It was a check for a hundred my mom paid into my account. The bank got the decimal in the wrong place.”

A sealskin coat slipped from the bed as she suddenly sat up, crossing her legs. “My god, are we going to talk about
money
?” “Money” sounded as if it were a bad taste in her mouth. She rolled away from him, held back her gorgeous hair, and took another drink from the flask.

“Unfortunately, it's spent.”

“Like your dick,” she said, recapping the flask. Then she snatched something else out of the metal purse, leaned forward over her crossed legs, and started writing.

He wouldn't have thought there was any room in that purse. It must have had a false bottom, a magical gold cube from which she, a magical girl from another world who'd infiltrated the party guests, could call forth all manner of things, balms and anodynes, unicorns and genii.

But here she was, solid and sexy, writing in a checkbook. “If you're so fucking indigent, where'd you get that Rolex you're sporting?”

She pronounced it “in-
di
-gent.” Chad smiled over at her where she sat laboriously writing, the tip of her tongue caught between her pearly little teeth. There was something so vulnerable about her that he wanted to pat her shoulder. “Hong Kong.” That was a lie; his father had given him the Rolex.

“You people without money are
so bor
-er-ing.” She wrenched three syllables from the word.

She had to be kidding. She wasn't.
Zip.
She chucked the check towards him, tossed the checkbook on the floor, rolled over, and started unbuttoning his shirt. He held the check up and squinted at it in that starry light coming from its hidden source around the ceiling moldings. His other hand trailed after hers, rebuttoning the shirt.

“We don't even know each other,” he said. “This is for one thousand dollars.”

Her hand went to unzip his fly. “Jesus, your pants have little
buttons.”

“I think they're French. Maybe Italian. Borrowed.”

Bethanne got her face right down, squinting, fascinated. Then she started trying to fiddle with the little buttons.

He kept staring at the check. Not even her narrow fingers trying to wrench him free made him hard. He was limp, staring at the check. “Why are you writing me a check for a thousand dollars?”

Her hand stopped fiddling, started squeezing. “Because you said you owed it or something. You been doing drugs? My
god,
what's wrong with you? You want me to strip? You want something special?” Now she was trying to wiggle out of what there was of a dress. “You want to unzip?” She turned her back.

He didn't move; he lay there thinking of the thousand he'd have to pay back to the bank before his mom found out.

It had been nearly three months before the bank had recognized its error and one of the assistant managers called Chad. Mr. Frobish had been very understanding when Chad went in to see him. People were generally understanding of Chad. He might have thrown a switch inside, the way he could turn up the charm voltage.

Yes, Mr. Frobish understood that Chad had simply assumed his father had paid the money into Chad's account. Yes, he could allow Chad a certain period of time to see that the bank got it back. Mr. Frobish knew Ned Chadwick was loaded. Yes, two months seemed reasonable enough.

•  •  •

The Bethannes of this world didn't have bank problems. Bethanne's mother was a stockbroker. The way she'd said it made Wall Street sound like a regular meeting place for mothers.

“What's yours do?” she'd asked, out on the terrace, with no particular interest.

He'd been silent, his chin against her forehead. “She's in the restaurant business.”

“Hmm. Be nice to own one. It's always so shitty trying to get a decent table.”

“She doesn't own it.”

She hadn't cared and he hadn't commented.

Her pretense of truculence right now didn't convince him; she was too stoned to bring it off. Unfortunately she was a talker, and she rambled on, ever more sleepily, about how he'd dragged her up here to his room and then—
whish
(the palms of her hands missed each other)—nothin'. “What's wrong with you, Chaddie?”

Chaddie. My god, it was worse than Murray.

•  •  •

Murray was the sort of name he might have expected his father to pick. Murray: not a family name, not a friend's name, not some old blowhard up in New Hampshire (his father's home state) who'd sat around in the general store playing checkers and sucking his teeth. Murray was a name you couldn't do anything with. Murr—what the hell kind of nickname was that? The kids in second and third grade had certainly seen the name's possibilities. With the appropriate swishes and vocal flutings, they'd called him “Mary.”