by Lynda Curnyn
“Um, thanks,” I said, taking the onion from the kid with a grateful smile, though what I had to be grateful for at the moment was beyond me.
“Where’re you going?” he said, making me realize that this kid was not some eager do-gooder but none other than an employee of the Fire Island Ferry Company. At least that’s what his T-shirt said.
“Kismet. Roundtrip.” I hadn’t even arrived yet and I couldn’t wait to get home. He handed me a ticket and I forked over the $12.50 fare. That was another thing I hadn’t remembered when I’d signed on for this share. Between the train, the ferry and the taxi between the two, the commute alone cost nearly thirty bucks. After I handed over my cash and watched the boy amble over to the few remaining passengers, I knew why I didn’t remember how much this trip cost. Myles had paid that first time we’d come out.
I would despise Myles for walking away from me after I had suffered through law school with him if I didn’t understand why he felt it necessary to walk away. He had recently turned thirty. His father had just died. I knew these were the kind of mind-altering events that might make a person do irrational things. I should know. My father hadn’t died, but he’d left when I was ten and was as good as dead to me, because I hadn’t seen him since. And I had rounded the corner on thirty a full two months before Myles did. Yes, I’d felt the chill of age coming on, the clutch of anxiety that comes from not having lived up to my own expectations. Not that I felt a need to dump him.
Okay, so now I was angry. And even more nauseous as the ferry jumped over a wave that would have surely sent a spray on my face if I had been sitting on the top of the ferry in the setting sun like I had that time with Myles. But there was no sun—not even a star—and there was, of course, no Myles. I wasn’t even sure there would be Sage, since my cell phone battery died on the train and I couldn’t let her know I was on my way. Sage, who acted as if her whole happiness this weekend was dependent on my arrival, if those messages she’d left were any indication. Sage, who had likely hooked up with the bartender, or the guy she’d been flirting with who worked the docks, or any one of the other myriad men she had at her fingertips, and forgotten all about me. Sage, whose biggest worry in life was whether or not there was fresh lime for her tequila.
“Kismet,” the scrawny fare collector bellowed, practically in my ear, now that he was done collecting fares from the few other idiots braving this late night ferry ride. “The first stop on this ferry will be Kismet!” I looked out the window, trying to figure out just how far from the dock we were, but all I could see was the darkness and what seemed liked endless water.
Yeah, Kismet.
Everyone gets what they deserve, I guess.
Including me.
* * *
Chapter Two
Sage
Beach Blanket Boomerang
“It’s not that I don’t want to…“
I paused as I pulled on my jeans, giving Chad’s hard-on a meaningful look. “Well, that’s clear at least.”
“C’mon, Sage, you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” I replied, bending to search the floor for the tank I had tossed off in a frenzy of passion. Passion? That was a laugh. This kid wouldn’t know real passion if it bit him in the ass. Maybe that was the problem, I thought, locating my tank top and yanking it over my head. He was a kid. Twenty-two, I think he said. I turned to the bed again, my eye roaming over his sulking yet adorable face, his well-muscled chest and perfect abs.
Had twenty-two looked that good when I was twenty-two? Clearly, I hadn’t appreciated it enough back then.
It was a damn shame. I wasn’t sure what was more of a shame— that he was so hot or that I had spent the past two weekends at the beach trying to seduce him only to get nowhere. At least I hadn’t had to spring for dinner tonight—which was usually what happened when you went out with these young guys. Chad had gotten off work at seven, but the minute I saw him waiting for me at the dock, I was hungry for something else. So we had a couple of drinks at The Inn, a local bar, then headed back to the beach house he shared with his friends. His friends had conveniently not been around when we came through the door, practically tumbling over one another to get to the bedroom. And I was just three minutes away from getting that gorgeous piece of equipment of his inside me when suddenly he brings up the girlfriend. The girlfriend. He might have mentioned the girlfriend before he had me naked and panting on his bed.
“At least you had an orgasm,” he offered.
I stared at him. This was obviously some strange side effect of living your formative years during the Clinton presidency. Apparently his little girlfriend wasn’t an issue when he had his head between my legs. But the minute I maneuvered for more than oral sex, suddenly it’s, “I can’t. I have a girlfriend.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Sliding my feet into my flip-flops, I said, “Sorry, Chad, but I’m more of a penetration kind of girl.”
And because I didn’t want to hear another word about it, or because the sight of that beautiful body was starting to make me feel wistful, I left.
Once I was outside, blanketed by the heat, I felt better, though I couldn’t remember a hotter June night in my short history of Fire Island summers. Not that I was complaining. At least we were getting the most out of this summer share. Or I was anyway. I was betting that Zoe hadn’t made the last ferry out tonight and was forfeiting yet another weekend at the beach in the name of work. I wondered why I had even bothered browbeating her into a share. Or Nick, for that matter. I guess I had some stupid idea that a summer out at the beach with my two best friends would be fun, though I was starting to think Zoe and Nick were like my little friend Chad. They didn’t know a good thing when they had it. Zoe was probably still filming poodles, and Nick…if I knew Nick, he was probably down at The Inn or The Out, the only two bars in town, chatting up anyone who would listen about his latest get-rich-and-maintain-his-integrity scheme, a record label he was developing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he found investors here. Nick could be pretty charming. In high school he had convinced the football coach he could create software that might predict the most successful plays based on the stats of the players. Of course, he got caught smoking pot in the woods behind the school a week later, losing any support he had gained for the project. But that was classic Nick. He was brilliant enough to be the next Bill Gates, except he tended to use that B.S. in Business Administration of his for b.s. more than anything else.
It was starting to get on my nerves.
But then, I was on my last nerve tonight, even more so when I saw the lights of our beach house twinkling in the distance. God, it was a beautiful house. An oceanfront, sprawling three-bedroom ranch hovering high above the beach.
“Maggie’s Dream.” My boss, Tom, had named it for his wife. Though now that I thought about it, Maggie’s Dream would have been a lot better sans Maggie.
There was a price to pay for an ocean view. And my price, I had discovered, was Maggie.
I had met them both at the beginning of last summer, at the beach, of course. Maggie seemed fine then—from a distance anyway. She was simply the smiling, semi-Stepford wife of Tom Landon. I adored Tom immediately. Maybe because we had so much in common—we both worked in the garment industry, though I was in retail at the time. Our acquaintance turned quickly into a business relationship when I bought some products from Tom’s ladies’ wear line, Luxe, to put in the store I managed. But The Bomb Boutique was a bit too downtown hip for me to carry more than a few well-styled pieces from Tom’s line, and then it was mostly accessories—handbags and the odd belt. We became friends, though, so much so that I used to tease him about how he needed to add a little hipness to his line if he hoped to win over customers like The Bomb. As it turned out, I won Tom over. By the end of the summer, he approached me about a new venture he was working on, an urban leather outerwear line. And with the promise of a fat salary as the head sales rep for Edge, he lured me on board. It was the best decision I
’d ever made. I loved my job. In fact, I lived for my job. Even had dreams of managing Edge myself some day.
Those dreams ended when Maggie came to work for Edge. Suddenly Ms. Stay-At-Home Wife wanted a career, and Tom— sweet, generous Tom—handed her mine on a silver platter.
Now I had to share a beach house with her. For sixteen weekends. Actually, counting this weekend it was only twelve now, since I’d already managed to survive four. Barely.
I started to walk again, feeling my irritation with Maggie rear its head once more, remembering the row she’d started with me tonight for blowing off the big dinner she was planning. As if just because I was sharing a house with her this summer, I had to be her fucking buddy. Like I really felt like sitting around the table praising her lamb chops when I had a piece of prime booty waiting for me at the dock. She even went as far as saying that I wasn’t a team player, implying that I was somehow threatening my job by ditching out on her dinner party.
Fucking prima donna.
If I’d only known she would be like this when I took this share, I might not have taken it. But I had put the money down back in February—a full month before Maggie had taken over the management of Edge and made my life a misery.
I shuddered as I reached the wooden walkway to the house, wondering if Maggie was still reigning like a queen over her stupid dinner party. The house did seem kind of quiet.
Fuck it. I wasn’t going in there. Wasn’t going to tolerate the satisfied smile on her face when I walked in after the all-too-brief date I had shrugged off her little party for. After all, it couldn’t be any later than nine-thirty.
I headed for the beach, figuring a moonlit walk might do me good.
It was the weekend after all.
And I didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Not tonight.
And if I had things my way…
Never again.
* * *
Chapter Three
Nick
Women.You can’t live with them and you can’t…
I’m having a few beers, for chrissakes, Bern. What’s the big deal?“ I said into my cell phone, wishing my reception, which was usually nonexistent at The Inn, would give out at this point. This conversation had already gone on way too long. As in six months too long. But this was what Bernadine and I had come to.
“So you’re trying to tell me you’re just sitting in a bar on a Saturday night all by yourself,” she said, for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“It’s Kismet, Bern. There’s nothing else to do.” I almost pointed out that she might have been here with me, if she hadn’t up and moved to San Francisco six months earlier. But I really didn’t want to start that argument again. This long-distance relationship stuff sucked big-time, especially when the woman in question got jealous if I so much as sneezed in the vicinity of another woman.
“And there’s no one there with you?” she asked now.
I looked around at the crowd lining the bar and surrounding the pool table. “Well, there are lots of people here, Bern. But even if I was with someone, don’t you think I might have blown my chances with her, considering that I’ve been on this phone arguing with you for the past fifteen minutes?”
“Fuck you, Nick.”
Click.
Shit. That sure wasn’t my reception going out.
“Another beer, dude?” asked the bartender as I put my cell phone down on the bar once more.
I picked up my beer bottle, which was down to the last quarter. The last quarter of my fourth beer and she still wasn’t here. Okay, so I hadn’t been completely honest with Bern. I was waiting for someone, and, yes, someone female, but it wasn’t like that. At least, not on my end anyway. This was strictly business, but from the way things were going so far, it looked like 1 might have to fuck Maggie, if only to get the upper hand in this deal we were working on. Though at the moment, I had no hand to play. It was almost nine-thirty already. I’d been waiting for her nearly two hours. Actually, I’d moved on from waiting to just simply drinking. Maybe Maggie had gotten that spice or whatever she was missing for her meal and decided to stay home and cook after all. Which didn’t make sense, seeing as Sage had already taken off and Tom had given up and gone over to a friend’s house. He was pissed and I couldn’t blame him. Surely she could have figured out something else to do with all those lamp chops besides whatever the hell was called for in that recipe she was making. But I could see Maggie was like a dog with a bone when it came to her dinner parties. She was pretty upset when she realized her dinner plan was not happening tonight. I thought I had managed to talk her out of cooking, even offered to buy her a burger at The Inn. She told me she just needed to clean up the aborted dinner she’d started.“I’ll meet you at The Inn in half an hour,” she’d said. Yeah, right. Time is money, babe. And since it was her money we were talking about, you’d think she’d be a little more punctual.
“Another beer, dude?”
“I’m thinking, man,” I replied.
“Don’t think too hard,” the bartender said with a chuckle before he ambled away.
Yeah, yeah, buddy. Why don’t you go blow a few more brain cells at the other end of the bar?
I looked at my near-empty beer. I shouldn’t have another. And not just because I was outta cash. It was the principle of the thing, really. I’m not sure what principle exactly—but all I know is that I shouldn’t be paying five bucks a pop for beer when I got a six-pack I paid nine bucks for at the house. Not that I felt like going back there. It was the kind of thing four beers on an empty stomach could do to a guy. I suddenly had the urge to party all night. Come to think of it, there were some pretty hot chicks over there by the pool table.
See what you’ve done now, Bern? You’re driving me to other women.
Yeah, as if one woman wasn’t enough trouble. I had the feeling that getting involved with Maggie—even on a business level—was going to be trouble, too, which was why I was hoping to talk to her tonight. But since she was the first person to show a real interest in my company—even suggested she was going to put her money where her mouth was—I had to treat the matter…delicately.
Still, I was grateful for Maggie’s interest in my latest venture. In fact, when she first said she wanted to invest in the music label I’m starting up, I was pretty fucking pumped. Capital was the only thing I was lacking. I had a business plan, even had a band lined up for the launch, which was going to be huge with all the PR I was planning. Even Sage was excited about my ideas, and Sage didn’t get excited about anything I did ever since I lost all that money in that pyramid scheme. The only thing she seemed to get excited about lately was this damn beach house. Had some grand idea that getting me and Zoe out here for the summer would be like high school all over again. Sage loved high school. Why wouldn’t she? She was like the fucking mayor of Babylon High. She knew everyone. And since me and Zoe were her best friends, everyone knew us, too.
Fire Island was more like high school than I even imagined it would be. Sage also knew everyone on Fire Island, but then she had been coming out here three summers already. Tonight I’d had another little taste of high school when Sage ditched me to hang out with that dock boy. No one could get between Sage and her booty.
I didn’t mind. What Sage didn’t know was that my little investment in this share was paying off big, in ways I hadn’t expected.
Yeah, I had hoped to find investors when I came out here. I’m not stupid. I knew there were not a few people out here that might have money to sink into a solid business investment such as Revelation Records. I just hadn’t expected one of those people to be Maggie Landon. I didn’t even know her, which is probably why our first weekend out here I started telling her about the label I was planning. Just making conversation, you know? Tom was out fishing, Zoe was taking a jog, Sage was down by the beach, working on that dock boy she was probably sleeping with right about now, and I was stuck in the house with Maggie, mostly because the sun was making me nauseous and I was hun
gry. I also knew that if Maggie wasn’t on the beach, she was in the house cooking. She was like some kind of Martha Stewart on speed, the way she was always whipping something together. When Maggie cooked, she was usually looking for someone to sample the goods. And since it was lunchtime, and since I thought a nice beer in the cool house might be a good idea, I went inside.
Two beers later, I was chowing down on leftover filet mignon that Maggie had made sandwiches with on some crusty bread. I was feeling pretty good—so good in fact, I started telling her about my label, in case she had the idea that I was just some sandwich-mooching shareholder. I guess I didn’t expect her to get so excited about it. At first, I thought she just wanted to fuck me. She had that greedy look women get sometimes when they’ve had too much wine, and she’d had three glasses of white to my two beers and it was only 3:00 p.m. Then she said she had a little money set aside she’d wanted to do something with, which wasn’t hard to believe, considering she and Tom not only own the oceanfront spread we’re staying in this summer, but a triplex on the Upper East Side. She started asking details, like what my promotional plans were and whatnot. So I told her, and she was getting more and more excited. Could have been that she’d cracked a second bottle of wine, but the next thing you know, she’s talking dollars. As in the dollars she thought I might need to get started. Her dollars. It was almost too much to believe, but as it turned out, Maggie Landon had been a bona fide rock-and-roller at one time in her life. Over glass of wine number four, she told me that she’d followed the Dead around as a teenager. Not that I’m a Dead fan, but I wasn’t about to argue her taste in music at that point. I guess I should have figured she had some interest in good old-fashioned rock and roll, considering she named her dog Janis Joplin. Not that I’m a fan of Janis either, but I’m capable of showing a little respect for talent—especially when Maggie seemed ready to open her prissy little pocketbook.
