Trolls in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  “You’ll keep working on the new story?”

  I was not sure how wise that was, just in case my pen actually was mightier than some sworn magical oath. I saw no reason to ruin Don’s day, too, so I assured him I’d be working. “What else do I have to do while dog sitting?”

  “Good. Send me chapters and a sketch so we can start on the cover. I thought a troll coming out of a waterfall. Very graphic, colorful.”

  Very likely, knowing Fafhrd. Only I’d draw him going back into the place behind the water, leaving, just in case I did have any influence over his motions. I couldn’t recall any waterfalls around the Hamptons; the land was too flat. But I thought there was one at Splish-Splash, the big water park in Riverhead. The panic he could cause appearing at the top of a plume ride or a wave pool would get a lot of people, kids, especially, trampled or drowned. Nope, not a waterfall. Which meant, damn it, I was buying into the DUE theory after all. I tried to convince myself I was just taking precautions, playing the what-if card, without believing the woo-woo stuff. On the other hand, I would not dare go to Atlantis, the aquarium that was also in Riverhead. Fafhrd and all those huge glass tanks? Sharks getting loose? No thanks.

  “How about him in a lonely salt marsh,” I suggested, “with the moon rising behind?” I know tons of isolated places where no one goes except for clamming during the day. “I’ll be right there at the shore to get it right. Big yellow moon, big reddish creature, nice reflections in the still water.”

  “Eh.” That was New York for “I like my idea better, but I’ll look at yours.”

  “I’ll do a couple of sketches for you to see. I don’t know if Mom’s got a scanner, and mine’s too big to schlepp, but I’m bringing my camera so I can email a picture for you to look at.”

  “Good, good. Oh, and I hope your father’s okay, Willy. And the rest of your family.”

  “Thanks. You have a good time while I’m gone. Don’t work too hard. You don’t want to end up with a heart attack like my father.”

  “What, playing golf all day, playing with the ladies all night? That doesn’t sound half bad to me.”

  “You’d die of boredom. And your wife would get mad.”

  “Maybe. Call me in a couple of days, all right, so I know how you’re doing?”

  “Sure. Thanks for caring.”

  “You bet I care. The Willy Tate name sells more books than half the hacks I have on staff.”

  Next I got Dad on the phone before his surgery. He sounded tired, or tranquilized. If I were going to have people messing with my heart, I’d need a lot of meds, too. He told me not to worry, he’d be fine. But I was to watch out for all kinds of danger. My father always saw threats everywhere, and I usually ignored his worries. But now I wasn’t so sure. He’d been to Royce, too, where he’d met my mother. His family came from Paumanok Harbor originally, breeding grounds for espers, according to Grant, although Dad was born and raised in Manhattan. If I could animate a troll, maybe my father had some trace of psychic talent. Maybe he was clairvoyant.

  And maybe he’d been warning me away from those phantom kidnappers. I should have paid more attention.

  “What kind of danger, Dad?”

  “Mmm, everywhere. Everybody.” He yawned. “My head’s kind of foggy. Just be careful, baby girl. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Dad. Don’t let Mom aggravate you.”

  “Maybe she’s out of practice.”

  “Don’t count on it. I’ll come right down if you need me.”

  “I know you will, whippoorwill. I’ll come visit as soon as I feel better. I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too, Dad.” And now I felt guilty I hadn’t visited since Thanksgiving. Damn, what if he didn’t get better? What if—

  I ate the emergency chocolate while Susan was saying good-bye to Toby, in my old bedroom.

  Next was Mrs. Abbottini, though I needn’t have bothered. My mother had already called her.

  As soon as we left, my old neighbor was on her way to church to light a candle for my father, Susan’s father, and Cousin Lily’s pregnant daughter. She’d been lighting one every day for Susan, and it had worked, hadn’t it?

  Who was I to argue?

  Of course, she said, she’d get my mail. And read it, too, I supposed. And water my plants. She overwatered two African violets to death when I went to Florida in the fall, but I had no idea how long I’d be gone this time, so I had no choice.

  “Oh, and if anyone comes asking for me, could you say you don’t know where I am, or when I’ll be back?”

  “Heaven knows I have no idea when you’ll come home. Your mother couldn’t say. But I know exactly where you’ll be. Rose gave me the number for that fancy mansion.”

  “Yes, but I’d prefer not to have unexpected guests or too many phone calls. I’ll be, ah, working whenever I’m not out with the dogs. Thinking about my next book, you know, so I don’t lose my train of thought while I’m away.”

  Her dark eyes narrowed. “You’re not getting up to any hanky-panky your mother won’t like, are you? In someone else’s house?”

  I jumped on that. “Not at all. I don’t want my friends dropping in there, once they find out I’m house-sitting at a place overlooking the beach. It’s got a pool and a sauna and a tennis court. You know how people push themselves for an invitation to summer houses.”

  She ought to. She’d been coming out to my mother’s place for a week every summer since my parents split up.

  “What about that nice man you had to dinner?”

  I wanted to ask which nice man, but I just said, “He knows where I’ll be.”

  “Maybe he plays tennis?” she hinted.

  “I don’t.” And I wouldn’t play with him anyway. Tennis or hanky-panky.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE HAMPTON JITNEY IS TO a Manhattan crosstown bus what Maidstone Beach in East Hampton is to Coney Island in Queens: another world. The big city weekend wanderer’s transport of choice has a bathroom, a hostess, free water or juice, The New York Times. They even take reservations. There are fancier ways of getting to the Hamptons: helicopter, private car, limo, or the pricier Luxury Liner bus that has reclining bucket seats. There are less comfortable rides, too, like the Long Island Rail Road, which leaves from chaotic Penn Station, involves a change of trains, and often has standing room only, broken air conditioning, and erratic schedules.

  People with their own cars, of course, choose to drive, making the already inadequate Long Island Expressway the La Brea Tar Pits of the East coast, and that’s without the horrifying length of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Tunnels being only slightly less scary than bridges, and Manhattan being an island accessible via one or the other, I do not own a car. I could not afford to garage it, or afford the time to find alternate side of the street parking every day.

  Best of all, the Jitney’s last pickup is just a few blocks from my apartment. Susan and I got to Fortieth Street early, despite our reservations, and hoped the bus wasn’t filled when it arrived from uptown so we could sit together. Not that it was going to matter; Susan hadn’t taken her iPod out of her ears, so I guess she was still mad at me.

  I was still mad, too. Mad enough to resent the six other people at the corner before us.

  In the true summer season, especially late afternoons after work, the Jitney had to put on extra buses and divide up the routes, which caused scrambling around on the sidewalk, and a lot of grumbling. Today was early June, and a Tuesday, so we had no trouble getting on. Susan went ahead of me, while I handed my bags to the driver to stow under the bus. She picked two seats together near the back, which was not my favorite place because you could smell the bus exhaust from there.

  Susan didn’t seem to care. She pulled out her ticket and tucked it in the slot in front of our seats without a word. The Jitney gave free rides to needy medical passengers, showing there was still some heart left in the East End. Susan had claimed the window seat, without asking me, so she could lean her head against the glass, cushioned
by her sweater. She shut her eyes, ignoring me, the people trying to stuff their carry-ons in the overhead racks, and the couple in the seat across the aisle who were eating something that reeked of sausage and peppers.

  I guess she needed the rest after her night with Toby. I was exhausted, too, but I could never sleep on the bus, especially not until we were through the tunnel, which might cave in if I wasn’t watching. After that, the first part of the Long Island Expressway was too stop-and-go for a nap, with construction here, a fender-bender there, too many cars and trucks everywhere.

  I tried to sketch, but the ride wasn’t smooth enough. The beach grass I penciled in the salt flats looked like lightning, which was too eerie for the story I wanted to write. I wondered if Fafhrd liked rain.

  Once we cleared most of the city traffic, I leaned back and shut my eyes and tried to shut my mind down, too, with the steady engine noise and motion. I’d just about nodded off when the hostess came to collect tickets and money. So much for my rest.

  Past Mineola, the highway was half empty and the bus seemed to be flying. I flipped the page on my sketch-book and drew my troll with his hands out, standing in a downpour, looking up and smiling. The scene wasn’t dramatic enough for the cover, but not bad for a first pencil drawing. And not dangerous to anyone else.

  Then we came to a sudden stop and my pad went flying. I looked ahead and saw nothing but red brake lights in front of us. Our driver was on the phone with his home base or other drivers, I supposed, getting information on the snarl, and what exit to take to avoid it. Then he got on the intercom and announced that an accident had just occurred, right before the next exit, so we had nowhere to go until the road opened again. All eastbound lanes were shut down. We could see police cars with sirens and lights passing in the HOV lane or on the shoulder. Fire engines and ambulances, too, which looked bad for the accident victims.

  We sat for what seemed like an hour, with the exhaust fumes feeding through the bus, and the couple across the way eating the second halves of their sausage and peppers, which ought to be banned from buses.

  I was beginning to feel nauseated. So I had a Mallomar and called my mother. A big sign in the front of the bus asked passengers to limit cell phone use to one call per trip, of short duration, to be considerate of others. Nice, but no one followed the rules. Everyone I could see was on the phone, loudly warning their friends and family that they’d be late, or conducting business that couldn’t wait the extra time the trip would take.

  I left a message for my mother, who’d said she’d pick us up. She must be out with the dogs, I figured, so I tried her cell. I left a message there, too, even though she never had figured out how to retrieve her missed calls. She did not text, either, but that was the best I could do. If she was smart, she’d call the Jitney office and ask if we’d be on time or late. Knowing my mother, she’d have tea with Grandma Eve, who’d tell her when it was time to go.

  After another twenty minutes—I worried we’d run out of gas, idling so long, but was happy for the airconditioning—we moved a couple of inches. One lane must have opened.

  Police set up cones directing the three lanes to merge over to the HOV lane on the far left, keeping the highway and the shoulder open for emergency vehicles. Some drivers had pulled off to the grass verge, so they had to push their way into line, too, which made for slower going. And everyone wanted to see the accident, ghouls that we were.

  We traveled in lurches and bus-length leaps, which did nothing to settle my insides. I had another Mallomar. Susan slept on, somehow.

  I couldn’t see ahead, not from so far back in the bus, but when we got close, I craned my neck like everyone else. The driver was cursing over the forgotten intercom. The hostess shook her head.

  I shoved Susan awake and indicated she should unplug her earpieces. “What?”

  “There’s an accident in the right lane. What do you see?”

  She put her face against the glass, blocking my view even more. “Oh, boy, it’s a mess. There’s a red fire truck on the grass, on its side. It must have been a water tanker, because the road is flooded. Other fire trucks are hosing it down in case the fuel tank was damaged, I guess. There’s water everywhere.”

  “What did it hit? Can you tell?”

  “A trooper, I think.”

  “An Isuzu?”

  The man from across the aisle was leaning over my shoulder, breathing garlic in my face. “No, it looks like a State trooper. Or maybe that’s just a first responder. It’s hard to say with so much equipment around. What do you see?”

  I saw a troll, hands out, under the streams of water, just like in my sketch, right down to the smile.

  He couldn’t see me. He’d certainly never hear me, and I doubted if he ever understood me. Grant said the language of the alternate world was half thought transference, so I tried to let my mind speak. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated. Go home, I repeated over and over, half demand, half prayer. Go home, Fafhrd.

  He never looked at our bus. I’m no telepath, no em-path. Maybe a sociopath, but hey, I was the Visualizer. I grabbed my pad and pencil again and wrote, “Go home” on it.

  Could Fafhrd read? Did he know English? Damn, he was a troll, a species not known in folklore for its mental prowess. He did not know his own strength, much less the alphabet. The Visualizer had to do better. Sure.

  How the hell do you depict “go home” in a sketch? I flipped back to the picture of Fafhrd in the rain, then started to erase it as fast as I could with the little eraser on the back of my pencil.

  When I looked up, he clapped his hands and disappeared under the fountains of water. We crept past the accident scene. The man with garlic breath sat down; Susan popped her earphones back in and shut her eyes.

  I stashed my sketch pad and pencil back in my tote, but my hands were shaking so hard I dropped a Mallomar. I bent down to get it and bumped my head on the seat in front when the bus picked up speed.

  The driver spoke on the intercom again: “Sorry about the delay, folks, but I’m happy to report that no one was hurt. The ambulances and rescue equipment are all returning to their stations.”

  A few of the passengers applauded, whether for the good news or the fact we were finally on our way at highway speed, halfway to our destination. I felt too limp to cheer. And I had a lump on my forehead. I asked the hostess for something cold to put on it, which dripped, so now my shirt was damp and the air-conditioning chilled me.

  No, the idea that Agent Grant was right chilled me. I was starting to believe the unbelievable. How else could I explain Fafhrd’s appearance, just like my sketch, or his disappearance once I erased him? The snake was also right that Fafhrd would follow me to Paumanok Harbor, getting into trouble along the way. I vowed to do another sketch as soon as we got to the Harbor, showing Fafhrd leaning against a tree—No, he’d topple it over; if the blasted tree was one of Grandma Eve’s, I’d never hear the end of it. I’d have him sitting on the beach—by himself—with a book in his hand. He’d be learning to read English, damn him, so we could communicate. Then I’d tell him to get the hell out of my life.

  I suppose I should call Grant. What for, to tell him he was right? He was still wrong to bug my apartment, wrong to make me think he cared about me. He was wrong for me. Besides, if he was so smart, he’d already know Fafhrd was with me. Let him figure out the rest.

  The Jitney stopped at Manorville, but no one got off. We switched from the Expressway to Sunrise Highway and made good time to the Omni on the Southampton bypass, the base for the Jitney. The hostess got off, the driver changed, and half the passengers left, some for a different bus to take them toward Sag Harbor. We got onto Montauk Highway, an absurd relic from the days of the Model T, if not horses and wagons. It was one lane in either direction, with a turning lane here and there, bumper-to-bumper with landscapers and pool trucks and pickups with surfboards hanging out the back. The road was perfect for the sleepy summer resort the South Fork used to be, not what it was today, a pl
ayground for the rich and famous and wanna-bes.

  The bus stopped at Watermill, a pretty little village with the worst traffic jams on the East End. Bridgehampton was next, another main street filled with antique shops and small stores and restaurants. It would have been quaint, except for the Kmart shopping center two blocks before it.

  A couple of people got off at Wainscott, a between-village place that had its own post office, a gravel pit, and a commercial strip.

  East Hampton was next, and you could feel the difference. Towering elms arched over the road, elegant swans floated on the town pond, gardens appeared to be painted, rather than grown. Nothing was out of place except maybe a dented old Nissan with Jersey plates.

  We passed Guild Hall, the library that used to make residents of the other villages pay—even when they had no libraries of their own, and we all belonged to East Hampton Town. But this was East Hampton Village, an incorporated community with its own government.

  Past the restored farm and schoolhouse came Main Street, which was trying to be Worth Avenue or Rodeo Drive, with Tiffany’s, Ralph Lauren, Cashmere this, Star-bucks that, and real estate offices. You couldn’t buy thread or a loaf of bread.

  The only reason I could see to visit the place was the movie theater in the center of the street, but with no parking except blocks away, that was a pain in the neck, too. This was everything I disliked about the Hamptons, the conspicuous consumption of stuff no one needed, at prices no one could afford but the haves and the have-mores. Even on Tuesday, Main Street and Newtown Lane were filled with tourists carrying shopping bags and trophy dogs, buying Coach pocketbooks like they were donuts. This was the beach. Why the hell did anyone need three hundred dollar sandals? Of course East Hampton had its own beaches requiring its own parking stickers, lest the plebeians from Montauk or Springs trespass on their hallowed sand. Why, the bookstore in town didn’t even have a romance paperback section, although everywhere else romances sold twice as many as all the other paperbacks combined. And they did not carry my books.