by J. J. Murray
“I’m so sorry. Last I heard, you were still separated. How, uh, recent is your divorce?”
I had waited and wasted five years for Edie to sign those damn papers. “The ink’s probably still drying in Pittsburgh.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I’m not. “Don’t be.”
“This is all so strange. You’re now a divorced writer of romance. We can’t let P. Rudolph Underhill go on the cover now. That would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it?”
Oh, no, we wouldn’t want hypocrisy in the publishing industry. So Desiree Holland, writer of sassy interracial African-American romantic comedies, is now a middle-aged, graying, divorced white man with no way of letting the world know he is a writer and no place to call home.
“Look,” I say as I feel the lint in my pockets, “I know this will be a lot to ask, Henry, but after the lawyers and all…”
Henry blinks at me. “A little tight on money?”
A boa constrictor couldn’t squeeze a nickel out of me. “Yeah, I’m strapped. I had to sell my Mustang to pay my lawyer and buy the plane ticket here.”
Henry still blinks. “Ouch.”
“So, would it be possible, you know, if—”
Henry stops blinking. “Say no more, Pete. I’ll see what I can do about a pre-advance advance.”
I’ve never heard of such a thing. “A what?”
“I’ll get you something to tide you over for a while.”
Which means that I’ll get some chump change until I produce.
He stands. This means that the meeting is almost over. “You have any working titles for Desiree’s next book?”
Desiree’s next book. I have plenty of title ideas for my next book, but I don’t share them with Henry. He’s promised to see about some money—which I might be able to keep one hundred percent of this time—and I don’t want to ruin that chance. I will simply write two books, one for Henry and one for me, and I’ll give them both to Henry. Or…I’ll give Henry his Desiree Holland book and go out on my own into the publishing world with my own name.
And that scares the living lint out of me.
“You have thought up some titles, haven’t you?”
“I don’t usually start with a title, Henry.” Besides, the marketing department or an editor usually titles everything anyway. “Uh, how about…A Whiter Shade of Pale?”
Henry smiles. “Funny, and very sixties. With a song tie-in to boot. Any others?”
“What about…Devil’s Dance?”
He nods. “Plays off The Devil to Pay. But your first novel didn’t have the word ‘devil’ in the title. Hard to market that unless we change Ashy to Ashy Devil. That can be arranged, you know. Might give that novel another boost, too, maybe get it a movie of the week or something. I hear BET’s doing its own movies these days. Give me a third title possibility.”
Henry’s rule of three is still in effect. Almost all the romance novels he edits have three parts whether the author intends to have them or not: beginning (back story), middle (rising action with lots of sex), and end (climax with lots of nasty sex). Once I begin writing my novel, I’ll have to send him chapters in batches of three, the first three loaded with back story, triple-spaced.
“Um, how about…Holding My Breath?”
He closes his eyes. “Kind of has a Waiting to Exhale feel about it.” His eyes pop open. “And we both know what happened to that novel. Great soundtrack and a wonderful movie.”
Having a book turned into a movie is Olympus Publishing’s dream. That way the movie will sell the book, and the marketing department can rest its weary minds and concentrate more on the margaritas or whatever it actually concentrates on.
“I’ll run these titles by marketing, see what they think.” He opens the door. “Where are you staying?”
“On the Argo.”
“The Argo?”
“It’s my sailboat.”
It is the only thing that my father, “the Captain,” left me that Edie let me keep. Dad had left me the house in Huntington in his will, but I had sold it to help pay for “Edie’s Dollhouse,” a 5,000-square-foot contemporary glass and metal monstrosity nestled in the woods back in Sewickley where it stuck out like a sore landfill. So now the money from my father’s death gives Edie a house I have no right to live in. I almost wish I had burned the Captain’s body on a funeral pyre on his boat—the old Viking way—to keep him from rolling over in his cremation box.
“It’s moored in Huntington Harbor.”
“I didn’t know you had a sailboat.”
The Argo is one of the few things I own outright besides my laptop and a carry-on full of clothes. “It was my father’s.”
“Was?”
“Yeah. He died a while ago.” In 1990. Where has the time gone?
Henry tugs on his ponytail. “And he named his boat after the ship from Jason and the Argonauts?”
I nod, though I know the Captain didn’t name the Argo. That was simply the name of the boat when he bought the thirty-two-foot Thistle back in the early 1960s. He didn’t change the name because “it’s bad luck to change the name of a boat that’s still afloat.” That made the Captain “Jason,” I was his only Argonaut, and we had a few adventures together. We never found the Golden Fleece, though we did fight a few squalls and bluefish together on the Long Island Sound.
“And you’re going to write a hot, steamy, romantic comedy on a sailboat in Huntington Harbor…in October.”
I shrug. “Why not? I’ll have few distractions.” Even if I will be writing in a ghost ship, at least it will be a rent-free ghost ship. I think. The Captain was always good about paying his yacht club dues.
Henry fishes in his pocket and pulls out a key ring. “You can stay inside where it’s warm at my summer place on Fire Island.” He slips off two keys.
“It won’t be that cold on the boat.” Except for the memories. Those will be cold.
“I won’t have it, Pete. You know where Cherry Grove is?”
I blink. Of all the places…“Yeah, I do, but I’d rather—”
“I’ve had a place there on Green Walk for years. It’s a one-bedroom, and you’ll just love it. We’ve even nicknamed the apartment complex ‘Elysium,’ you know, the resting place for the gods.” He hands me the keys. “It’s fully stocked with food, spotless, and it’s very secluded. And you’ll just love your neighbors, especially Coleman Muse. He’s quite a gifted poet. You have enough money for the ferry?”
This is going way too fast. “Uh, yeah.” I stuff the keys into my pocket. “Um, does all this mean that I have a chance for a contract?”
“Uh, no, not yet. You’re on spec until I see the first three chapters.”
On spec. Wonderful. Two fairly successful novels, and I’m writing on speculation. I’m almost back to the dark days when I was sending out unsolicited manuscripts to agents and praying for a miracle.
“When will you need the chapters, Henry?”
“Oh, as soon as you can get them to me.”
Great. “Okay. Uh, thanks for everything.”
“Don’t mention it.”
As the elevator plunges to the parking garage, I close my eyes. Here I am, a published author reduced to writing on spec, about to write an African-American romantic comedy in Cherry Grove, the oldest gay community in the United States.
Good writing, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.
I just don’t know if I can hold my breath that long anymore.
2
I drift along with the tide of cars escaping New York City, Walt Whitman’s “city of spires and masts,” letting the convoy of tattered flags and red, white, and blue bumper stickers carry me through the wasteland of Long Island, the supposed recreation area for the people of New York City, home to several million commuters and the infamous Long Island Rail Road. I float east with flocks of other idle dreamers and screamers clinging to steering wheels on the Northern State Parkway around lunchtime. From Mass
epequa to Montauk, where the Amistad landed only to be escorted to Connecticut, Long Island is the melting pot cooked down to the dregs.
Suffolk County: nothing but potato farms, ducks, and Grumman.
I hesitate when I see a sign to Huntington. I don’t want to go there yet. One ghost story at a time.
I waver again when I see an advertisement for Levittown, one of the places the Captain used to live before Levittown became marginally integrated. I don’t ever want to go there. I like homogenized milk; I don’t like homogenized neighborhoods. Maybe the melting pot went to Levittown to die. And all during junior high, Levittown was the only Long Island town listed on the big Cram map on the wall in geography class, the rest of Long Island obliterated by the letters of New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stamford, Connecticut.
Heading south to Plainedge, then east, I read signs announcing so many towns, so many names like Wyandanch, West Babylon, and Bohemia. Native American names coexist with biblical names east of Hedonism on this thin sliver of the American dream jutting out into the Atlantic. What the Dutch took from the natives then shared with the English is now one large faceless neighborhood divided by malls, restaurants, convenience stores, and the empty shadows of industrial parks.
Huntington’s main mall is the Walt Whitman Mall. What would Walt say as he walked around inside his own mall? Would he say, “I am large, I contain multitudes”? Could he bloom at Bloomingdale’s or contemplate leaves of grass at Garden Botanika? Would he echo the sufferings of men like me who don’t like to shop and say, “I am the man, I suffered, I was there” or “I stop somewhere waiting for you”? Would Walt “invite his soul” to observe the indoor sidewalk sales? Would Walt feel connected to all the atoms in the houses in planned neighborhoods on Long Island that look the same, two cars in every garage, a single tree in every yard? A couplet takes shape as I drive:
Welcome to a dark, suburban Hades,
where houses run into the 180’s…
I slip through the redundant Islips (West Islip, Islip proper, and East Islip), past Great River to Sayville, heading to River Road and the Charon Ferry Service for the trip across Great South Bay to Cherry Grove. That’s one of the many nice things about Fire Island: no cars allowed, only your own two feet or a bicycle to get you around. I park the Nova, grab my carry-on and laptop, and stroll to the docks, the scent of diesel fuel and salt air tingling my nose. Great South Bay, while not exactly a quagmire of whirlpools, has been known to belch sand onto the rest of Long Island.
Because the next ferry to Fire Island won’t leave until 2 P.M., I have half an hour to waste counting rows of red Radio Flyer wagons and analyzing the other passengers in a poem on the back of the car rental receipt:
A young man, hacking into a handkerchief,
leans against an older man who winces at every cough.
Another, dressed in black, sits by himself on the dock,
his feet splayed over the rainbow-colored water
while a man in red holds on to a piling for dear life.
Two crew-cut blond women work an old snack machine,
yanking and cursing at each knob,
while an older woman wrapped in a blue coat nods off on a bench,
her breathing as exhausted as her makeup.
An old song creeps into my head,
something about not paying the ferryman,
and I find myself humming “Come Sail Away,”
an even older song by Styx.
The other people waiting seem like fallen leaves in the chilly air,
like birds that flock to land, stretching arms out toward the bay.
We are all helpless souls of the unburied,
fluttering around these docks,
so many bones in New York not yet laid to rest.
God, my poetry is as depressed as I am.
After buying a honey bun that I know has been aging gracelessly in the machine since August, I read the ferry regulations, the print looking fresh on a wall covered with old nautical charts and faded boating notices:
In order to comply with United States Coast Guard regulations, the following baggage and freight procedures must be followed:
Two (2) pieces of hand luggage is allowed, no charge. A Tariff will be imposed on all additional items. Shopping Carts & Luggage carriers—Min. charge $3.00. Luggage only is allowed in passenger areas. Loaded wagons (e.g., Radio Flyers) will not be accepted. Absolutely no bungee cords can be used. Freight must be handled on and off the ferry by crew.
Due to quantity, size and weight of freight, limited space on board, weather conditions, loading and unloading time, and the safety and convenience of the passengers, the crew at times will limit the amount of freight carried on a trip.
I don’t have much baggage (visible anyway), and I look at the few others waiting around me. A couple of briefcases and a few handbags. Our own thoughts will echo on this ferry. The last item—Smoking is not allowed on the docks or the ferry—makes me laugh, because as the ferry approaches, I see the captain in the fly bridge of the approaching ferry puffing a big cigar.
After the crew tethers the burnt-orange ferry to the dock, the captain walks down the gangplank followed by a small group of people. Those waiting around me fade away like autumn shade, and I’m the only one left to take the next ferry.
“I got a lot of freight to load,” the captain says to me, “so you might wanna reconsider what you’re bringing cuz we may have to shoehorn you in or find you a smaller boat to get across the marsh.”
I look again at the laptop and carry-on. “I only have these.”
He taps the laptop bag. “No bombs, knives, or box cutters in there, right?”
“None.”
The captain, a strong, detestably smelling old man with bloodred eyes and sweat-stained clothing, bellows orders to his crew as they herd crates and boxes into the boat. His hairy ears, bushy eyebrows, and thick gray goatee make him look every bit like a demon. I almost wish I had a penny to give him for the half thoughts in his jowly head. Better to keep my penny and my own thoughts under my tongue.
Half an hour of stuffing and cramming later, a crew member searches my bag while I stand still. “Nine bucks,” he says.
Waterway robbery, I think, but I pay him and drag my feet up the gangplank, mainly because I don’t really want to go to Cherry Grove, where I’m sure to stick out like a sore heterosexual.
The captain tells me how lucky I am. “Normally I wouldn’t let you on, as full as we are,” he tells me. “Got just enough room for you. Otherwise you’d have to wait for my next run.”
I walk into the passenger area and take my seat in front of plexiglas windows filmed with salt. I guess if I had tipped the crew member an extra five I might have actually gotten a clear view of the bay. Upon inspection, the windows seem to have a mazelike pattern on them, like a labyrinth leading to a blackened glob of bird droppings.
Story of my life.
The trip is uneventful, the stagnant, shadowy water of Great South Bay no more than ten to twelve feet deep, the boat groaning with its heavy load. It’s not exactly an ancient Greek adventure, and I hardly feel like an ancient hero anyway, a stale honey bun my only sustenance, a void in my head where a romantic comedy is supposed to be.
And there’s really nothing funny about Great South Bay, the scene of one of the worst hurricanes of the twentieth century. It was so bad back in 1938 that they didn’t even have time to name the hurricane. The Captain was only thirteen and living in Montauk at the time.
“There wasn’t any warning,” he told me once while we were caulking the longest seam in the wooden hull of the Argo. He called the entire awful job “paying the devil,” because we had to squat in the bilges for hours. Hence the title of my second book.
“Nothing on the radio, Captain?” I was the only kid I’ve ever known who was not allowed to call his own father “Dad.” But it wasn’t so bad, and it seemed fitting on the Argo, where the Captain’s word was law.
“Nope. I remem
ber it was a Wednesday. Your grandpa was out with the other bay men dredging, while I was paying the devil on Old Man Mudge’s dredge. I’d come up for air every now and then because we used hot tar on the devil back then, and I saw the gulls acting funny on the shore.”
“Funny?”
“Like they were in a hot pan about to be cooked, jumping around like popcorn frying.”
To this day, I check out birds when a storm is forecast. If they start “popping” off the ground, I find shelter in a hurry.
“We had just had two weeks of rain, so the ground was soft. Gray skies as usual, seas not as heavy as the day before, wind from the north at first, then about noon it shifted to the east, and it started to rain to beat the band.”
“Like a nor’easter.”
“Yep. Only this nor’easter was tearing off roofs and popping power and phone lines left and right. I left that dredge in a hurry once it started rocking and rolling, and I immediately lost my way the rain was so thick, the wind whipping up to seventy knots.”
“What did you do, Captain?”
“At times I could see through that wall of rain, and what I saw…The sea was completely white, the air filled with sea foam, waves fifty feet and higher, fallen trees, dredges up on land, rolls of waves tearing past docks on their way in, sweeping those docks away on their way out. I headed up to the town to higher ground and rode that storm out for five hours in a hardware store. Lots of metal to dodge in a hardware store, let me tell you.
“The storm ended by six, skies were completely clear by ten, but since we didn’t have any power, we didn’t know how bad it was till the next day.” He had paused and closed his eyes.
“It was bad, huh.”
“Worse. Most of the houses were damaged almost beyond repair, and your grandpa’s house ended up with five other houses in the pond. Must have been a hundred boats destroyed, some thirty of them blown a hundred yards inland. Dragnets, fish traps—gone. Your grandpa’s two boats—gone. The oysters and clams—gone. The sea just up and covered them with a million tons of sand. Wiped your grandpa and the other bay men completely out…”
