Swell Read online

  It’s already after eight, past time to get going. This Tim knows from the thin streak of horizon glow, all that’s left of the light.

  But still no Peg.

  Tim shakes Billy’s hand, knocks his legs off the cooler. He’s jonesing for that whoosh of cold air. If he can’t drink, there’s still this, like Christmas, the many cheerful green bottles nestled in their bed of snow. But all it takes is for one person (Patty) to complain about the ice melting, and the happy box morphs into a coffin, the bagpipes start up in Tim’s head. He slams down the lid without even retrieving his Fresca.

  “New York collects more trash than any city in the world,” brags Billy, the lone sanitation worker in a huge family of firefighters. Clearly, he feels inferior to his dead-hero brother. “In the world,” he repeats.

  Bean considers. “That’s a lot of garbage. But the thing is, you guys just pick it up, right? You pick it up and put it somewhere else. You don’t get rid of it.” To illustrate, he three-points his empty bottle into a bucket of sinkers on Tim’s porch.

  They all howl at this, even Chowder’s bro, though he pulls his Mets cap way down over his eyes first. Tim asks a question about recycling to buoy Billy, but the answer is so long-winded, he ends up interrupting it himself, asking, “Who wants Chinese? For after?”

  Of course, everyone wants Chinese. What Tim’s really asking is, “Who’s going to chip in for Chinese?” He knows these tightwads. Chowhounds, all. Never a big eater himself, Tim was routinely burned on their on-duty trips to Waldbaum’s, where the cost was split equally because…it just was. Tim despised every last thing about those outings—clomping down the aisles in their big boots, listening to birdbrain arguments about oatmeal, and, most of all, having to face the public. Respect for the uniform was the norm, but invariably some jerk would come marching up to gripe, “That’s where my taxpayer dollars are going? Chervil?” or some shit like that. Rose was in the mold of those self-appointed scolds, the ones who’d yell after them when they’d strand their carts to answer a call: “Not so fast, boys! You go put that milk back!”

  Patty snatches the cap off Billy’s head and begins collecting money in it. “Don’t forget the General Tso’s,” she reminds Tim. “Chowder’s fave.”

  Tim slinks back inside, ashamed. How could he complain, even silently, about shopping or money when he was supposed to be paying his respects to his dead buddy? True to his name, Chowder had been by far the best cook among them. This, coupled with the dwindling of post-9/11 casseroles, and, Tim guesses, the guys at work are eating a whole lot of Wok ’n’ Roll lately. Reaching for the cordless to order the food, Tim vows that next time he’ll get off his ass and barbecue. It’s the least he can do for them, his friends. “Fuck Mark Heartless No Name,” he tells confused Rose. “They are friends. They are my friends.”

  * * *

  Across the hedge, Sue fingers her iPod. It’s a samba kind of evening, or “Scarborough Fair”—balmy wind, steamy air. Over at Tim’s party in the yard, there’s no music at all. But Sue’s vowed not to plug in until she sees the three stars in the sky that signify the end of Shabbat. Sy insisted they’d be on the conversion quiz.

  Dan flaps a Hefty bag at her. “What’s a conversion quiz?” He’s cleaning up the debris from the broken door. Distractedly. More energy is spent trying to act like he’s not in some default competition with those surf dudes next door. Sue can see by his puffed-up chest the lengths he’d go to hang out with these “heroes.” Were they to beckon Dan over, he’d easily abandon her to go assume the Posture—beer in hand, face to the sea, eschewing all but the most crucial eye contact. They remind her of toddlers in parallel play or middle-aged Lost Boys. She even spots their outer-borough Wendy—a frosted blonde in skintight designer jeans and pumps. She stalks around with a wine bottle (for herself), offering chips, ruffling what hair remains, picking bottle caps out of Tim’s flower beds.

  Sue would like to blame Estelle and all her coddling for Dan’s interest. Pretending she liked to clean his fish was the least of it. That woman deseeded his grapes; she peeled his celery, and always served him, her only child, first no matter who else was at the table. But if Estelle’s at fault then so is Sue, or she will be when June joins the cult or the gang, the NRA or the FDNY. At least Estelle raised a gentleman. No small feat, that. Dan would not only thank Wendy for the chips, he’d whip up some tasy guacamole.

  “Suzy,” Dan says, cupping her shoulders with his big hands and turning her toward him. “Don’t stare at the neighbors.”

  “You’re the one—forget it.” Sue had been thinking about her own friends. The older ones (ex-bandmates) off in far-flung, less expensive cities—Portland, Austin. The newer ones (Tribeca moms) now living full-time in their “safer” weekend houses—the Hamptons, the Berkshires, the Hudson Valley. She liked them all. A couple of them she even loved. But not one would Sue be glad to see sitting in her yard every single day.

  Dan catches her off guard with his best blue wink. “You do understand there is no conversion quiz.”

  “I do?”

  “C’mon.” Dan reaches down under her dress. “After all these years, you can’t tell when Sy’s pulling your leg?” Dan gently pulls Sue’s leg. She wants to stay angry with him on principle, but in practice, it’s just too exhausting. So it is in a long marriage. Sometimes the need for comfort has to override the pride of being right. Sue lets Dan’s arms surround her. They maneuver for his height and her swell and kiss. The garbage bag still in his hand grazes the back of her neck.

  “I’m thinking we should go to Gettysburg,” she tells him. “After the baby’s born.”

  Dan nods, clearly perplexed. “Definitely Gettysburg or…Maui?”

  “I’m thinking an E name, for your mother.”

  “Ed?”

  “Edie?”

  “The first star!” blinks on. “At three o’clock!”—above the latest beach fire. Sue’s surprised by her own speedy joy. That light took years to get here! And: “Look, over there, number two! Unless those are planes or planets, asteroids or UFOs.”

  “Stars,” Dan assures her, returning to his cleanup. “Stars are fixed and they twinkle.” His certainty is sexy. Not that Sue has the energy. Still, there’s pleasure in how his large agile body moves around in the dark.

  “Should I board this hole up?” Dan asks when he’s done. “Or should we live dangerously?”

  “You mean until Tim gets to it?”

  Dan takes the excuse to gaze back next door and wonder aloud whether Tim has wood. He could go over there and ask. Sue thinks of June this afternoon, pining for the neighbor in the same (and different) way. They think he’s so protective. But Sue knows the truth. Tim and his ilk are the people with the targets on them.

  “Leave the hole,” Sue says, putting her hand in Dan’s back pocket, wanting to keep him now. “Who’d rob a haunted house anyway?”

  “Bob Baum?”

  Someone begins to strum a guitar, fast and raucously, out of tune. Still, it works in its way, accompanied by the steady inhale/exhale of the sea, the percussive crunch of cooler ice, the occasional unwitting lyric—“That your beer?” “Where is Peg?” Wendy stretches her arms up and dances like a wind sock. A chained-up Doberman tastes some moonflowers that twine around the porch rail and glow. “Choooowder!” wails a silhouette crouched on his surfboard. “Chooowderhead!” A lonely, ecstatic song. Others join him, one by one throwing down their boards to ride the grass. “Chooowder!” “Where are youuu?” “You owe me forty dollars, man.” “We love you, Chowder.” “Adios!”

  * * *

  Tim has Wok ’n’ Roll on speed-dial so the order’s placed in no time. Meanwhile he eyes his friends outside, hoping they won’t wreck his lawn. As for Rose, for some reason, she is trying to pour her glass of Sambuca back into its miniature bottle.

  “You’re making a mess. Aren’t you going to have any?”

  Rose wags her finger. “Not on an empty stomach, Timmy. You should know that. Drink with fo
od, all is fine.”

  “Not for me it isn’t.”

  Rose rubs her eyes as if awakening. “Yes, even for you. Even a drunk like you can do it…go on. Give it a try.”

  It’s a trick, Tim thinks, to weaken me. Still, he can’t help wondering, Could I manage? Just one beer with my eggroll? (Tim’s also got Mark No Name on speed-dial.) “Well, I ordered Chinese, so you can lush it up then, Rose. You love Chinese, don’t you? You and your Chinese friend?”

  “Li was a Christian!” Rose hisses, as if that in any way applies. Then she quickly crosses herself, like she does, like a tic.

  “Looks to me like God bailed on him, then.”

  “God doesn’t pick who’s born in China or Rockaway. It’s Li’s luck that went badly.”

  “Bad. His luck went bad.”

  The correction seems to confuse Rose. She blinks, first slowly, then faster and faster, spastically, like she did yesterday in the Glassmans’ yard. “Didn’t expect a grammar lesson from a high-school dropout, didja?” Tim asks. And while he’s at it: “What about your son? Were things supposed to go so badly with him?”

  Tim can easily jack himself up with rage thinking back to that dirtbag Gary: Pushed his own cat out to sea on a boogie board. (Tim rescued her.) Cuffed his own mother just because she asked if his shirt might be too tight. (Tim hid.) Gary’s shirts were always too tight and his hog face clenched like his fist, like Rose’s.

  Thing is, the old lady never let you pity her. As far back as Tim could remember, Rose regularly accused Tim’s mousy mom of sleeping with her own player husband, ridiculed her comparatively deficient garden, and encouraged Vin to “have a word” with Tim when his flag-football game flowed onto Impoliteri property. (“If you micks keep this up,” Vin would threaten, pointing his lit cigar real close to Tim’s eye, “I have a gun and I’m not afraid to use it.”) Tim’s mother talked the Christian-compassion talk, but she planted that hedge early on. And the night Rose torched the leaves of her table, Mom did eventually stop laughing long enough to call the cops.

  “Ever wonder why I never called the cops?” Tim asks Rose now. If he can’t figure it out himself, maybe she can. “The night of the Golden Venture?”

  “You hate them?”

  “Just one.” Mike Sloane. And it’s not really hate so much as fear. Tim can hear the guy right now through the screen belittling Chowder’s brother Billy (“Babble on, garbageman”) for boasting that sanitation workers have twice the fatalities of police. “Yo, and seven times as many as firefighters.”

  “Babble, babble. Still, you’ll have to face it. You’ll never match your little bro. He’s Saint fucking Chowder now.”

  As usual, Sloane has an audience for all the worst reasons. Even Rose listens, murmuring, “That loud one I know. How do I know him?”

  “He’s the guy I didn’t call to arrest you,” Tim snipes. “Hey, there’s an idea.” On this frustrated impulse, he goes and beckons the officer in.

  “One sec,” Sloane says, holding up two fingers. He’s midway down the row of Adirondack chairs, head bent to allow each and every guest the chance to pet his new buzz cut.

  Tim flicks on his Malibu garden lights and lets the oohs and aahs console him.

  * * *

  No wet wood, says this bossy girl Becky with a neck brace. That’ll only make the beach fire smoky. She’s appointed herself fuel supervisor. Any offering of paper or wood that won’t smell toxic is acceptable so long as she gives the okay. The dearth of local trees coupled with the surges in séances (death) has forced the kids off the beach, into garbage cans and garages. This explains the Monopoly board in flames, the stacks of papers to shred, the pair of shutters on deck. While she officiates, Becky (or Necky, as June’s silently tagged her) sits real, real close to Kenny. On his other side is June, poking paper into a flaming tent of driftwood and cardboard. She’s not jealous of the girl. Why should she be? It’s June for whom Kenny organized this séance. It’s June’s house that needs un-haunting, for the relief of June and June’s family. Once Gary Impoliteri is summoned and set free, Kenny promised, the ghost of the murdered guy will move on.

  Problem is, aside from the brace, which turns Becky/Necky’s movements robotic, the girl is completely stunning. Oddly, everyone at the gathering is—stunning and female. This includes a set of eighth-grade identical twins with identical glittery eyelids and a tan, leggy brunette still in her lifeguard orange. Where gawky June fits into this beauty pageant is a mystery. Feigning amusement, June tells Kenny she’s on to him. “The supernatural as chick bait! It is novel, I’ll give you that.”

  Kenny responds with a thumbs-up. “Don’t discount the morning glory water.”

  After the burnt offerings are approved by Necky, the girls visit Kenny for their dose-in-a-baby-bottle, choice of pink or blue. The way they sit around and chew on the nipples long after the containers are empty makes June sorry she consumed any of the drug drink, even from a martini glass. Her stomach feels motorized, her inner thighs, achy. She peers down at the papers she’s burning—Tufts, Brown, U. of Mich. She’s setting fire to a whole pile of rejection letters!

  “Torch ’em.” Necky, their apparent owner, applauds. She doesn’t need college. She’s already designed a line of disaster-proof clothing and sold it to ten stores on Long Island. June wonders if this is related in some way to her brace, but she will not give the interloper the satisfaction of asking.

  It’s surprising how glad June feels when Regina finally shows up. “Late, I know, sorry.” There’s a broken banjo wedged in her armpit. It looks like a cartoon banjo after it’s been smashed over someone’s head, birds circling around it, chirping.

  “Hold up.” Necky blocks the newcomer. “Bring that instrument here.”

  Regina hands the banjo to Necky but she sure isn’t waiting for the girl’s permission. She reaches into Kenny’s insulated bag, chooses a blue bottle of Safe-n-Sound, unscrews the cap, downs the contents in one go, winces, and falls onto the sand next to June. “Whoa, hey. You already tripping?”

  “I don’t think so. Just my stomach.” June imagines a living creature moving around in there. So surreal. How does her mother stand it?

  “All in attendance now,” Kenny says, growing serious.

  Regina grabs June’s hand. “Don’t worry. When the ghost of Jake appears, I’ll be right here.”

  “Jake?” Necky asks. “Who’s that? It’s Gary Imp we’re calling.”

  “Oh, really?” Regina’s bummed. “I just assumed it was Jake. I mean, isn’t he more deserving?” For those unfamiliar with “June’s tragedy,” Regina now tells the “devastating” tale, chock-full of twists that keep everyone, even June, enthralled. How she and Jake were “the power couple” at Stuy. How Jake saved up all his money working at the skating rink to buy her a special bracelet, “twenty-four-karat gold.” And all about their last phone call, on the morning of 9/11…

  The twins have tears running down their high cheekbones by the time Regina’s through. It’s mortifying. June busies herself ripping up a New York Post.

  “Well,” Kenny says. “It’s June’s call. If she’d rather we try and contact Jake—”

  But Necky pouts. She didn’t miss American Idol to chat with some random ghost boyfriend. She’s had personal experiences with the Impoliteri house. Two Halloweens in a row, the phantom Gary felt up her costume and shoved her back down the stoop.

  “Maybe you’re just a klutz,” Regina says. “Or too old to be trick-or-treating.”

  The girls glower at each other. June just goes on ripping up newspaper.

  Becky Necky is “truly sorry” for June’s loss but urges her to “be realistic. The main conduit to the deceased is through his or her possessions and—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” June knows all about it. She points to her backpack with her foot. Inside is the “authentic object belonging to Gary” that Kenny tasked her with bringing. “Though I don’t really get it. Isn’t that the beauty of being dead? Not having to carry your crap ar
ound?” She thinks about the burden of the egg in there too.

  “Let’s use June’s bracelet to call Jake,” Regina suggests. The girl is obsessed with it. “It had to have meant a lot to the guy.”

  June unclasps the gold bangle, hands it to Regina. She’d gladly give it to her but June’s too trapped in her fiction. As the bracelet is passed around, the girls deem it “dreamy” and “perf.” Necky has no choice but to give in.

  “June?” Regina asks for the go-ahead. How can she deny her? How far her little lie has traveled.

  Kenny takes the bracelet, then instructs them to put down their bottles, hold hands, and “listen hard, harder than you have ever listened before.” The eighth-graders giggle at his deep voice—half put on, but mesmerizing. “Jacob Leibowitz, we are calling you. Are you there, Jacob Leibowitz? Jacob? Jacob?”

  “He prefers Jake,” Regina says.

  * * *

  Mike Sloane had always had it in for Tim. Maybe he’d just been bored during the four consecutive summers they’d spent side by side on a lifeguard chair or jealous of his pretty girlfriend or actually steamed that Tim didn’t share his worldview. (In brief: Don’t trust anyone but your dog.) Whatever the reason, Sloane loved inventing creative tortures for his partner, replacing Tim’s sunscreen with sour cream, leaving dead fish in his locker. Ha-ha. Once, Mike even pretended he’d seen a swimmer go under, reveling in Tim’s anguished search. Of course, Sloane was also the guy in a crisis—Hercules-strong, coolheaded, super-skilled at CPR, super-charming to the lost kid or pet. Tim hated him almost as much as he hated Gary Impoliteri.

  And here he was, a New York City cop, bouncing through Tim’s sliding door, shiny badge held high.

  “Him!” Rose points excitedly. “I know him!”

  “Officer Mike Sloane, ma’am.” He grabs the accusatory finger, brings it to his lips. “You Tim’s grandma?”

  Rose’s hand jerks back. “No!”

  “This is Rose,” Tim says.

  “Rose Camille Joan Russo Impoliteri.”