“Down, boy,” said Kona, patting Luke’s head. “I see you finally got some blood flow back to the tip of that little penis of yours. You over your post traumatic stress of Simone leaving you?” He hit Luke’s head this time, and Luke stopped short of shooting him a nasty look. He didn’t like being teased about something too real. “Anything, jump on a whale, if it gets Simone out of your brain . . .” Kona couldn’t help himself. He added, “Of course, you’re never going to grip an ass like that again.”
“Enough with Simone,” Kenny ordered. Kenny had grown up on the rough side of the tracks in nearby Flanders, and was known as one of the most able fishermen and strongest surfers on Long Island. He had inherited his family’s landscaping company, which was a glorified way of saying that he owned four John Deere lawn mowers with chronic mechanical issues, and worked part-time for the camp when he could. He added, “Simone’s a whore. A mean one. Move the fuck on, Luke. Go for that woman in yellow shorts with the kid you haven’t stopped watching. I like her flow. She seems, I don’t know, not advertising that she’s hot, but still game.”
Kenny’s protective love for this crew on the bench was the real reason he strayed from his John Deere lawn mowers on the sprawling lawns; he was hell-bent on making sure no shithead rich kid died on his friends’ watch. And, besides, what the hell, he could skip out on work for private surf lessons or camp when he wanted: his clients only spoke to him or his illegal day laborers to say, “Keep the noise down out there, guys!”
“She looks game, but not as game as Julia Chase,” said Kona. “This is the summer I’m gonna do it. Take notes, boys.”
“Never gonna happen. Julia is playing you to make her husband jealous,” said Kenny. “Stay away.”
“She was here earlier; she sat here. Said she wanted a wakeboard lesson, something about firming up her thighs, which she then massaged. On the inside. I’m telling you, she wants the dick.”
The men turned their attention from Kona’s delusions to the woman strolling down the street just in front of them, a brunette in her late twenties or early thirties, with a round beautiful face, pale skin, bright red lips, and clear green eyes.
“I’m going to talk to her,” answered Luke. “Or, at least try . . .”
“I’d move on that,” Kenny advised. “She looks like Snow White in the flesh. Jesus, closer up, she is really pretty.”
The woman wore tight, straight-legged, yellow shorts that were tattered at the ends and hit her mid-thigh. On her feet were flat white Top-Sider sneakers, now gray with age, and a Portland Trailblazer’s T-shirt on her slender frame. Her thick brown hair fell in a bob just above her shoulders. The child with her, a young boy of about eight or so, had a blond bowl cut, chubby cheeks and thighs, and was stomping his new sneakers to make tiny red lights on the soles go on and off. She was hunched over, guiding his bike by the little handlebars.
Luke felt a gentle pat on his shoulder. He looked up and saw his stepfather, Frank. “You making so much from camp you can afford that fancy Italian gelatin?” Frank asked, never a fan of extravagance. He was the owner of the small-sized, but consistently successful, Forrester Plumbing.
“It’s gelato, Dad.” It had been a long weekend handling a bunch of bratty kids on a boat that tanked out every fifteen minutes.
“Excuse me? You need a ten-dollar cup of gelatin?”
“Never mind, it’s just, I don’t know, a little treat after a big day.” It was hard for Luke to yell at Frank, a man who’d married Luke’s young mother when he was two, replacing a father who’d left the moment she got pregnant. Fifteen years after her death in the ocean during Luke’s teen years, Frank was still hell-bent on guiding the boy he’d raised.
“You don’t need that. Why don’t you come home? I got plenty of vanilla in the fridge—we can watch the game?”
“All good, Dad, another time,” Luke answered, as he continued to follow the woman.
Luke hated thinking about Frank alone at nights, but what could he do? His mother had been gone for more than a decade now, and Frank still hadn’t found anyone to fall in love with.
Luke had been with Kona at a skateboard park in Riverhead in Luke’s tenth grade year when Frank had yanked them off the ramps and physically thrown them into his pickup. Driving eighty miles an hour back to the boat docks, Frank delivered the news that Luke’s mom had gone missing in the currents. She and the girls took a boat out that seemingly clear Saturday in September before the storm came in. Frank and Kona spent seven days and nights searching the waters for her. Luke stayed with an aunt at home, too terrified to leave his room. They kept looking, not even giving up when the local Coast Guard turned the search from “search and rescue” to the dreaded “search and recovery” mission for bodies. When Kona, crestfallen, relented to Frank’s wishes and gave up the search after ten days, he also vowed to spend his life watching Luke’s back.