Life Guards in the Hamptons (31 page)

Julio looked at Little Red, then at Buddy. “One word about what?”

Right.

Susan finally tiptoed through the debris to get a big black garbage bag. For me, not the garbage. I’d have to
put down the pillow I’d grabbed from the floor and Little Red, who wasn’t an effective fig leaf anyway. I glared at Matt until he found the dogs’ blanket behind the dead sofa and wrapped it around me. Then I snagged his pillowcase when I ran past, for laughing at me.

Susan whistled, Julio dropped the pots and fled. “I didn’t see none of that, either.” And Matt lifted the golden retriever.

He called up the stairs: “You want me to stay and help clean up or you want me to go away so you can hide under your bed for the next thirty days?”

“I want you to put me out of my misery like you’d do for a sick cat. Or get out your tranquilizer gun and shoot my cousin.”

“Maybe you should lock the door,” she yelled up.

“What good would that do? You have a key.” By now I’d found sweatpants and a T-shirt. I went back to help Matt find his clothes. Red must have hidden one of his socks because we never saw it.

Matt and Susan were filling the black bag, righting the furniture, and grinning like idiots, which did not improve my temper.

“C’mon, speedy, what’s the big deal?” Matt asked while he held up the sofa so Susan could stack dog-training books under the broken leg. “I’ve seen you naked, Susan doesn’t care, and you made Julio’s day. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about anyway, not with that gorgeous body.”

I felt better, until Susan dropped a book. “Speedy?”

“Get out! Get out, both of you! I never want to see either of you again as long as I live.”

“I’ll call tomorrow after my company comes. I don’t know Gina’s schedule, but maybe we can all get dinner. What’s the special for Sunday night at the Breakaway, Susan?”

“Shortbread, two-minute eggs, instant pudding.”

“Which is all you’ll have time to make,” I said, “’cause you’ll be too busy packing. And we didn’t need more pots.”

“Sure, paper plates in the microwave and tinfoil in the
toaster oven work for you. Some of us are kitchen artists. We need better tools to create better dishes for the fall menu.”

“Well, if you’re aiming high, I bet Julia Child would have seen about getting the refrigerator door fixed.”

“Well, if you hadn’t brought us another catastrophe, maybe Ike, the repairman, wouldn’t have been too busy driving the ambulance.”

So that’s who came to help Professor Harmon. Instead of fixing my fridge. I put the throw pillows back on the sofa. “For your information, I did not bring the wave down on that boat. Professor Harmon says so.”

“Professor Harmon also goes off in trances.”

I spent the rest of the night cleaning up, by myself. I found my missing sunglasses, a five dollar bill, and Matt’s sock, though how it got in the fireplace I’ll never know. I threw it in the trash bag. Laugh at me, will you?

I had to laugh, too. That’s how mature I am these days, more than fifteen years after that first flashing. I didn’t even blush. Maybe I did, but I was too mad and mortified to notice.

I smiled every time I remembered the look on Susan’s face when she realized she’d laughed so hard she’d wet herself. That was one person who wouldn’t be spreading news of my latest embarrassment. Not when I could post sketches of her in a puddle on my website. Matt wouldn’t say anything. He was too much of a gentleman. And he wanted to be invited back to my house and my bed. Besides, I had the sketch in my head of him trying to hold a big shaggy dog and his dignity.

Then there was Julio, most likely regaling all his friends with the story right now. I laughed at Matt’s threats—they wouldn’t fool a child—and got a head start on the town’s merriment at my expense.

At least the professor wasn’t chuckling when I went over to my grandmother’s for Sunday brunch. We had nothing edible left after the dogs’ party at my house; ketchup and mayo and an old tin of sardines didn’t count. Susan was
still sleeping, or still avoiding me. Grandma Eve had cut-up fruit and waffles. My kitchen couldn’t match that, not even on a good day.

I thought Lou looked amused while he read the
Times
, which I never found the least humorous. Maybe he got lucky last night, too. With my grandmother. I lost my appetite.

I had a lot of errands to do this morning. Matt had to wait for his new company, and see off his old company and her dogs, so I asked Dr. Harmon if he wished to come along, to see some of the town where he’d be living.

Lou decided he’d drive. He didn’t ask if I wanted him along or if I’d mind being seen in his
look at me, I’m rich
car. He’d set himself up as bodyguard to both the professor and me and seemed relieved to have us together. I wondered if he truly thought we were in danger, and if he’d call in backup if we separated. And if I’d know it. DUE kept its cards close to its chest, and Lou didn’t share much.

The professor didn’t see much. So much for showing him the town. Our first business had to be finding an optometrist who could fit him for proper spectacles, as the old man called them. One in East Hampton agreed to open specially on a Sunday afternoon, for a survivor. And for the couple hundred dollar incentive Lou offered. We decided to take care of my errand in the Harbor before the glasses place opened.

I directed Lou to Shearwater Street. “You can both stay in the car.”

Dr. Harmon wanted to come. Lou said he’d make some phone calls while he waited. Hah! The big guy from the scary agency didn’t want anything to do with the House. Neither did I, but a promise was a promise.

I had the radio in one hand, the professor’s hand in my other to guide him up the walk until he got new glasses. Neither of us believed that.

The junk mail was gone.

“It throws things,” I warned the professor. He peered around, ready to run. I clasped his elbow. The man truly
was as chickenshit as me. As I, I corrected, since he used to teach writing.

I started talking before we got to the front door. “Hello. It is I, Willow Tate. And Dr. James Everett Harmon, from the Royce Institute. You helped us find him, and we wanted to thank you.”

The House rumbled. I couldn’t tell if it were going to shoot shingles at us, or if it meant hello. We stepped back, in case. When nothing else happened, I went up to the door. “I brought a gift to show our appreciation.”

I fit the little radio through the mail slot, hoping there was a doormat beneath it, or a pile of catalogs to break its fall. I didn’t hear a crash, and nothing came flying back at us. “It’s got batteries and an electric plug, for whichever works best for you. I can stop back to check if you need new batteries.”

I’d send Matt.

“And it gets a lot of stations. I tested it near my house. Classical, rap, country, stations that play show tunes and ones that play old rock and roll songs. There are political talk shows, too.” Sometimes those opinionated bigots made me so mad I could spit. Heaven knew how the House would react. “Maybe you should stick to the music.”

The cement stoop beneath our feet felt warmer, but the House did not talk to me. I felt silly, wondering if the professor thought I’d made the whole thing up.

“We’ll be going now. I know how you like your privacy.” I slipped one of my mother’s cards through the slot. I’d written my cell number on the back. “But you can call me if you need anything.”

“Or me,” Dr. Harmon added, speaking up now that we’d survived intact. “Although I am presently without a telephone. Heaven knows how long I would have waited for the dear girl if you hadn’t directed her.”

We started to leave, relieved but disappointed, too. Then the house sang to us about a bad moon rising.

“What is that?”

“Creedence Clearwater Revival. I think the House is warning us of trouble ahead.”

“Thank you, sir or madam. Can you be more specific?”

Nothing.

“Well, if you do think of anything, please call. I fear we shall need all the help we can get.”

“All you need is love.”

“Very true. Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

We hurried to the car and Lou. Neither of us mentioned what the House said. Why bother? Everyone knew doom lurked on the horizon.

Next, our visitor needed clothes, not Lou’s hand-me-ups.

Ralph Lauren had a store in East Hampton. In fact he had Polo this and Ralph Kids that and even his daughter had the candy shop near the movies. Dr. Harmon loved the flannel shirts, the corduroy pants with lots of pockets, and the exotic jelly beans. He insisted on ties to go with the shirts and Starbucks coffee to go with the jelly beans. The five hundred dollars the cruise company gave to each survivor did not go far. Lou used his credit card.

I checked out the bookstore on Main Street. No romance novels, no chick lit. None of the professor’s books. And none of mine. When I asked why, the clerk talked at his computer, not to my face. “Temporarily out of stock, is all.”

Yeah, they were out last time I checked, too, the snobby bastards. I didn’t buy anything. They were always yipping about people supporting the local stores. What about them supporting their local authors? When the professor said he liked mysteries, I told him he’d love Mrs. Terwilliger at the library. For free.

We had lunch at a mostly vegetarian place on Newtown Lane that was mobbed, despite the exorbitant prices. For some reason the wait staff wore their pajamas. And they thought Paumanok Harbor was weird?

I thought I spotted someone who looked like Axel Vanderman, but he left the restaurant in a hurry. On purpose?

My phone rang before I could mention it to Lou. I checked the caller ID.

“House?” Dr. Harmon asked.

“Nope, it’s just my father. I’ll call him back when you’re at the optometrist.”

“What if he’s got a warning for you?” Lou asked this time.

If he knew about my father’s auguries, he knew time didn’t matter much. Still, I stayed on at the restaurant, to the snarky waitress’ disapproval, with another cup of coffee and my phone.

“Hi, Dad. What’s up?”

“I wanted to warn you about Desi, sweetheart. It’s real dangerous.”

First Stu, then my nose and skunks, now Desi? “Come on, Dad, you’ve got to be more specific. I know a dream is just a dream, but you’ve got to stop scaring me with stuff I can’t figure out. I don’t know anyone named Desi, and I’ve got a real mess on my hands here without adding him to my list of worries.”

“Yeah, I heard about yesterday.”

Uh-oh. “What did you hear? And do you know a guy named Julio?”

“Julio? No, I don’t think so. But I heard the House sang to you and you found Harmon.”

The House wasn’t all that sang, but I felt better. A person does not want her father metaphorically waiting at the doorstep for her to come home after a date, no matter her age.

“The House is okay. What about Desi?”

“Don’t you listen to the radio, baby girl?”

“No, I gave one to the House, though.”

“Well, put on the TV or something. Desi’s no dream of mine. It’s a hurricane that might barrel up the East Coast, the worst in decades, they say. They’re starting to evacuate the Keys, and the thing is days away.”

“Desi is a hurricane?”

“That’s what I’m trying to warn you about. It’s as big as the one that wiped out Paumanok Harbor and Montauk in thirty-eight.”

Just what we needed, a hurricane to add its strength to the water dragon. I’d take one of my father’s predications any day.

Lou knew all about the storm. We had three or four days, he figured, before they had a projected track with any high degree of probability. He also checked: the Paumanok Harbor meteorologists couldn’t do much to change the odds. They couldn’t budge a storm of that size. A category one or two, maybe. Category four? If it came, we’d get it.

“Maybe it will go out to sea.” The professor held out hope.

“Maybe. If it’s left on its own.” I felt the hope slip away from all three of us, and we had not mentioned the sea serpent out loud. Add the two together, you got category kiss your ass good-bye.

D
R. HARMON’S GLASSES WOULDN’T BE ready for three days, but the optometrist, for another ransom amount, provided better stand-ins. So we moved on to the shopping center in Bridgehampton where I’d taken Peg. I kept an eye out for Vanderman, with no luck. While the men shopped for underwear and other essentials like shoes and belts and a warmer jacket for nighttime and a raincoat and boots for Desi, I shopped at Victoria’s Secret, for Matt. My plain white cotton bikinis and oversized T-shirts were not appropriate attire for a woman having mind-numbing sex, which I fully intended to repeat. Or for tweaking a certain veterinarian’s interest, which I also intended to repeat as soon as he was free of the dolphin expert and before Desi.

I tried to think of Matt and sex instead of the hurricane. It didn’t work. Even the anorexic saleswomen talked about where they’d go to ride out the storm.

Hurricanes said a lot more about people’s personalities than any Rorschach test. Some fools welcomed them as a great adventure, holding hurricane parties and printing “I survived” whatever its name was. Surfers came from miles away to ride the waves, until the towns shut the beaches as too dangerous. Newscasters would be coming back to the east end of Long Island to whip up the frenzy and the angst about storm surges and beach erosion and loss of business. Other people took the danger more seriously, more personally. They boarded up
their windows at the first hint of eighty mph winds. They hauled their boats out of the water and bought gas for their generators and their cars. They had dry ice, emergency bags packed and waiting near the door, crank-handle radios, rolls of duct tape, and enough cash on hand to tempt the Hamptons Gang.