Her son bolted up and ran out the door to jump on his sixty-nine-dollar Huffy bike. Mother and son steered their new bikes out the driveway and onto a street they didn’t recognize at all.
Interlude: August Sneak Peek
The bay constable cast his light across the wake once again to be sure. The waves lapped the nearby shore in a gentle rocking motion that belied the chaotic search for the man.
Irregular sand bars, a few feet in depth, lightened patches of the bay during the day, but now hid themselves in the monotone inky water. Several officers walked the length of the jetty with searchlights swinging back and forth, illuminating the sharp and shiny rocks for an instant on either side. A Zodiac police raft sped by in the distance.
Members of the country club last saw the man on the docks late that afternoon. They told police he had had an “animated” discussion with the water sports instructors. Something about renting a Jet Ski with a child, even though the rules about sixteen and under riding on a Jet Ski had been made clear. He wanted a lesson to navigate the channels, the jutting boulders, and the quick changes in depth of the sandy bottom. His caution and foresight made sense, according to the members who had grown up with him. They described a thoughtful man, someone apparently drawn to the order of rules.
Moments later, the constable radioed back at the two other boats in the water. “An object forty degrees north from the clubhouse,” he said, his walkie-talkie crackling. “Not a buoy for sure. But something’s in the water. I’m going to get a look.”
He pushed the boat gear into forward and idled closer, a cloud of gasoline fumes stagnant in the humid August night surrounding him.
Indeed, the underbelly of a Jet Ski now appeared amidst the small waves. And nearby, swaying back and forth, another upturned object: the sole of a soaking wet Gucci loafer.
Chapter Ten
Downtime in Town
On that same Memorial Day, Kona, Luke, and their fellow instructor Kenny demolished their one weekly indulgence, overpriced scoops of blood orange and mint chip gelatos from the fancy Italian café. Today, it served to help calm their collective nerves.
“Such bullshit, the town board isn’t even open. I don’t get how Bucky could even file the complaint on a holiday,” said Kenny, tightening his eyes with brain freeze from the cold. “I’m sorry guys, I didn’t know he was watching. Mrs. Saltzman just literally threw the cash at me on the beach. I can’t believe he saw . . . I thought he was yelling at you.”
“He even cited her in the complaint, the nicest camp parent we got. She was just rushing and doesn’t know the rules,” lamented Luke.
All three men silently scraped the bottom of the gelato cups with their wooden spoons, many more times than the remnants of gelato required, calculating how they could pay rent, mobile phone, and car payments this summer if Bucky succeeded in closing down their camp.
“I’m going to sweet-talk the clerk,” Luke told them. He played with his cleft chin, pushing the skin together with his index finger and thumb, a nervous habit of his. “Plus, when’s the last time any of us got C.P.R. training? We checked that box on the town forms, but we gotta sign up for a real class, get some certificate . . . wait, whoa, look at that . . .”
Three faces and three pairs of eyes slowly moved in unison from left to right, following the woman and her son on the sidewalk across the street, as if they were watching a slow lob in a tennis match.
“Who is that?” Luke asked, flying his hands in the air. It was the first time he’d allowed himself any tumescent stirring since Simone’s demolition of every fiber in his soul. Something about this woman’s gait, her delicate femininity, the way she’d just knelt and brushed her son’s face made his stomach ache with a need to know her. “Very, very pretty.”
The town was mostly empty at this hour. The last of the urban throngs had left in a long line of vehicles snaking west up the main Route 27 out of the Hamptons. For those unfortunate city folks not owning a personal aircraft, all conversations centered on the quality of the beach day and the best time to beat the traffic on the Long Island Expressway back to Manhattan.
Of course, one notch better than not having to panic about when to pile into one’s plush sedan was not having to leave the beach at all. At treasured times like this, the lucky ones who lived full-time in the Hamptons all collectively took one big, deep sigh like Cheshire cats.
The guys were sitting outside the Sun Spot Surf Shop in town, smack in the center of Main Street, where their usual bench tended to be command central of a large crew of locals who shared a kinship born in the ocean. Behind them, young men and women, teens to late thirties, talked in small groups outside the shop, many of them employed by Kona and Luke at some point during the summer. The older guys grabbed private-lesson clients after work, many holding regular jobs as carpenters or landscapers, but were often able to convince their bosses to give them leeway in summer to seek other income. People around here had the same mutual understanding that the rushing waterfall of summer cash was something to grab at while they could, and when they could.