Right now, she yawned at him from his chair and stretched a languid paw out toward him, which was her way of saying good morning.
Mitch was otherwise alone this morning. Des had taken to spending three or four nights a week with him, the rest at her own place overlooking Uncas Lake. Bella Tillis, her good friend and fellow rescuer, had moved in with her on a trial basis, which meant Des could stay over with him and not fret over her own furry charges.
While Quirt hungrily munched kibble Mitch squeezed himself a tall glass of grapefruit juice. As he drank it down he stood before his living room windows that overlooked the water in three different directions, savoring the quiet of early morning on his island in theSound. A fisherman was chugging his way out for the day. Otherwise, all was tranquil. Mitch dressed in a faded gray T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts. Shoved four blue tin coffee mugs in his knapsack, along with an eight-ounce plastic water bottle filled with that see-through low-fat milk Des had him drinking-he himself vastly preferred whole milk of the chocolate variety. But Des was absolutely determined that Mitch take off some excess poundage this summer. And a determined Des was no one to trifle with. Ever since she’d turned his kitchen into a No Fry Zone he’d gone down two whole waist sizes.
He started out the door, binoculars around his neck, and headed down the footpath lined with wild beach roses and bayberry toward the causeway that connected Big Sister with Peck’s Point. The island had been in the Peck family since the 1600s. It was forty square acres of blue-blooded paradise at the mouth of the Connecticut River just off Dorset, the historic New England village. There were five houses on the island, a decommissioned lighthouse that was the second tallest in New England, a private beach, dock, tennis court. Mitch had been only too happy to rent the converted caretaker’s cottage, and to eventually buy it. During the cold months he’d had the whole island to himself. Right now one other house was in use-Bitsy Peck, his garden guru, was living in the big Victorian summer cottage with her daughter, Becca.
Not a day went by when Mitch didn’t tell himself how extraordinarily lucky he was to be here. He’d been a total wreck after he lost his beloved wife, Maisie, a Harvard-trained landscape architect, to ovarian cancer when she was barely thirty. He had needed somewhere to go and heal. And it turned out that somewhere was this place. Slowly, he was healing. Certainly, Des Mitry’s arrival in his life was a huge reason why. So was his determination to plunge himself headlong into new experiences-for Mitch Berger, a socially challenged screening room rat, walking in the sunshine every morning with three men who he’d only recently met qualified as a huge leap into the unknown.
He could see them waiting for him there at the gate as he crossedthe narrow quarter-mile wooden causeway-a trio of middle-aged Dorseteers in sizes small, medium, and large. Will Durslag, who towered over the other two, was the fellow who’d brought him into the group. Will and his hyperkinetic wife, Donna, ran The Works and Mitch was a huge fan of their chocolate goodies, or at least he had been until Des put him on his diet. Standing there in his tank top and baggy surf shorts, knapsack thrown carelessly over one broad shoulder, thirty-four-year-old Will looked more like a professional beach volleyball player or Nordic god than he did a jolly chef. He was a tanned, muscular six foot four with long sun-bleached blond hair that he wore in a ponytail. Early one morning, Mitch had encountered him on the bluff hiking with Dodge Crockett and Jeff Wachtell. Introductions had been made, a casual invitation extended. Next thing Mitch knew he was not only joining their little group every morning but looking forward to it.
It was a loose group. If you were there at seven, fine. If you couldn’t make it, that was fine, too. No explanations required. There was only one rule: you could not take yourself too seriously. Any subject was a legitimate topic of conversation. The group had no name, though Mitch was partial to the Mesmer Club in tribute to The Woman In Green, one of his favorite Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films. Not that he had bothered to mention this to any of them-they would not understand what he was talking about. They had not, for example, grasped the origin of the Rocky Dies Yellow tattoo on his bicep.
“Good morning, men,” he called out to them.
“Another beautiful day in paradise,” said Dodge, his face breaking into a smile.
“Ab-so-tootly,” piped up Jeff, an impish refugee from a major New York publishing house. Jeff ran the Book Schnook, Dorset’s bookstore.
They set out, walking single file down the narrow footpath that edged the bluffs. Beach pea grew wild alongside of them. Cormorants and gulls flew overhead. Dodge set the brisk pace, his arms swinging loosely at his sides, his shoulders back, head up. Mitch fellin behind him, puffing a bit but keeping up. When he’d first joined the group, Mitch could barely cut it. He was definitely making progress, although his T-shirt was already sticking to him.
Dodge was far and away the oldest of the group. Also the wealthiest. He came from old Dorset money, had been a second-team All American lacrosse player at Princeton, and remained, at fifty-four, remarkably vigorous and fit. Dodge was also the single most rigidly disciplined person Mitch had ever met in his life. So disciplined that he never needed to wear a watch. Thanks to his strict, self-imposed regimen of daily activities Dodge always knew within two minutes what time it was. What made this especially amazing was that Dodge had never held a real job in his life. Didn’t need to. And yet he was never idle. Each day he awoke at six, walked at seven, lifted weights at eight, read The New York Times and Wall Street Journal at nine, attended to personal finances at ten and practiced classical piano at eleven. After lunch, the remainder of his day was given over to meetings. Dodge was president of the local chapter of the Nature Conservancy as well as commissioner of Dorset’s historic district. He served on the Wetlands Commission, the executive board of the Dorset library, and the Youth Services Bureau. Some years back, he had also put in two terms as a state senator up in Hartford. A few of the old-timers around John’s barbershop still called him Senator.
And yet, Dodge was no tight-assed prig. Mitch had heard him do some pretty amazing things with “Great Balls of Fire” on that Stein-way of his. Mitch enjoyed being around the man every morning. He was good company, a good listener, and somehow, he made Mitch feel as if walking with him was the highlight of his day. Dodge also possessed a childlike excitement for life that Mitch truly envied. Hell, the man’s whole life was enviable. He had health, wealth, a beautiful renovated farmhouse on ten acres overlooking the Connecticut River. He had Martine, his long-legged, blond wife of twenty-six years who, as far as Mitch was concerned, was merely Grace Kelly in blue jeans. Between them Dodge and Martine had produced Esme, who happened to be one of the hottest and most talented young actresses in Hollywood.
And the reason why Mitch needed to speak to Dodge this morning. Because this was by no means a typical July for Dorset. Not since Esme Crockett and her actor husband, combustible blue-eyed Latino heartthrob Tito Molina, had rented a $3 million beachfront mansion for the summer. Tito and Esme, each of them twenty-three years old, were the biggest thing happening that summer as far the tabloids were concerned. She was a breathtakingly gorgeous Academy Award winner. He was People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, not to mention a man given to uncontrollable bouts of drinking, drugs, and rage. Just within the past year Tito had served two stints in drug rehab, thirty days in a Los Angeles County jail for criminal drug possession, and been sued twice by tabloid photographers for his violent behavior toward them in the street outside of the couple’s Malibu home. Their arrival in Dorset had sparked debate all over the village. Esme was one of Dorset’s own and the locals were justifiably proud of her. This was a girl, after all, who’d gotten her start on stage in the Dorset High production of Fiddler on the Roof. From there she’d starred in a summer revival of Neil Simon’s I Ought to Be in Pictures at the Ivoryton Playhouse, where she was spotted by a top New York casting director. He was searching for a young actress to play an underaged Roaring Twenties gun moll in the next Martin Scorsese
crime epic. Esme won not only the part but an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Now she was one of Hollywood’s top draws.
But Dorset also cherished its decidedly un-Hampton low profile, and Esme and Tito had brought a media army with them, along with stargazers, gawkers, and more gawkers. The village was positively overrun by outsiders, many of them rude and loud-although none ruder or louder than Chrissie Huberman, the high-profile celebrity publicist who the golden couple had imported from New York to run interference for them.
“Oystercatchers at three o’clock, Mitch!” Dodge called out, pausing to aim his binoculars at the rocks down below. Dodge had a bristly gray crewcut, tufty black eyebrows, and a round face that frequently lit up with glee. He was no more than five feet nine but powerfully built, with a thick neck, heavy shoulders, and immense handsand feet. He wore a polo shirt, khaki shorts and size-15 hiking boots. “Two of them, see? They almost always travel in pairs.”
Mitch focused his own glasses on one of them. It was a big, thickset bird with a dark back, white belly, and the longest, flattest orange bill Mitch had ever seen. “Wow, a cartoon shorebird. What a hoot.”
“Not to mention a dead ringer for my uncle Heshie,” said Jeff as they resumed walking. “I wonder if he cheats at cards, too.” Jeff was an odd little puppy of a guy in his late thirties who had a habit of sucking in his cheeks like a fish whenever he was upset, which was pretty much all of the time lately-he was in the middle of a rather ugly divorce. Jeff had moppety red hair, crooked, geeky black-framed glasses, and freckly, undeniably weblike hands. He also happened to walk like a duck. Jeff possessed even less fashion sense than Mitch. Right now he had on a short-sleeved dress shirt of yellow polyester, madras shorts, and Teva sandals with dark brown socks.
“Raccoon poop at nine o’clock,” Dodge warned them so they wouldn’t step in the fresh, seed-speckled clump on the edge of the path.
The path cut down through the bluffs toward the beach now, and they started plowing their way out to the end of the Point’s narrow, mile-long ribbon of sand. It was a very special ribbon of sand. At its farthest tip was one of the few sanctuaries in all of New England where the endangered piping plovers came to lay their eggs every summer. There were two chicks this season. The Nature Conservancy had erected a wire cage to protect them from predators. Also a warning fence to keep walkers and their dogs out. One of the walking group’s assignments every morning was to make sure that the fence hadn’t been messed with in the night. Kids liked to have beer parties and bonfires out there and sometimes got rowdy.
“You know what I was thinking about this morning?” Dodge said, waving to an early morning kayaker who was working his way along close to shore. “I’ve traveled all over the world, and yet I would never want to live anywhere but here. Why is that?”
“Open up your eyes, Dodger,” Jeff said. No one else in the groupcalled him Dodger-so far as Mitch knew, no one else in the world did. “It’s awful damned pretty here.”
“If you ask me,” said Will, “it’s Sheffield Wiggins.”
“Old Sheff Wiggins? My God, I haven’t thought of him in ages.” To Mitch and Jeff, Dodge said, “He used to live in that big saltbox across from the Congregational church.”
“You mean the cream-colored one?” asked Jeff.
“That’s not called cream, my friend. That’s called Dorset yellow.”
“I’ve seen that same color all over New England. What do they call it if you’re in, say, Brattleboro?”
“They call it Dorset yellow.”
“Okay, I think we’re drifting off of the subject,” Will said.
“You mean this wasn’t a story about paint?” Mitch said.
“Yes, what about Sheff? He’s been dead for an honest twenty years.”
A faint smile crossed Will’s lean face. He was a good-looking guy with a strong jaw and clear, wide-set blue eyes. Yet he seemed totally unaware of his looks. He was very modest and soft-spoken. “Sheff’s sister, Harriet, called my mom about a week after he died. This was in January and the ground was frozen, so they had to wait until spring before they could bury him. My dad used to dig the graves over at the cemetery, see.” Will was a full-blooded swamp Yankee whose late father had done a variety of jobs around Dorset, including serving as Dodge’s gardener and handyman. Will was only a kid when he died. Dodge gave Will odd jobs after that and became like a second father to him. The two remained very close. “Anyway, Harriet called my mom to tell her that Rudy, Sheff’s parakeet, had died-”
“Honest to God, Will,” Jeff interjected. “I can’t imagine where this story is going.”
“She wanted to know if my mom would keep Rudy in our freezer until the spring so that he and Sheff could be buried together.”
“You mean in the same casket?” asked Mitch, his eyes widening.
“I do.”
“And did your mom?…”
“She did. And, yes, they are. Buried together, that is.”
“How old were you, Will?” Jeff asked.
“Ten, maybe.”
Jeff shuddered. “God, having that parakeet in my freezer all winter would have given me nightmares. What color was it? Wait, don’t even tell me.”
“My point,” Will said, “is that Harriet Wiggins thought nothing of calling up my mom to ask her. And my mom didn’t bat an eyelash. That’s Dorset.”
“In other words, everyone in town is totally crazy?” asked Jeff.
“I like to think of it as totally sane,” said Dodge as they trudged their way out to the point, the sun getting higher, the air warmer. The tide was going out. Dozens of semipalmated plovers were feeding at the water’s edge on spindly little legs. “Martine was talking about you last night, Mitch.”
“She was?”
“They desperately need tutors over at the Youth Services Bureau. All sorts of subjects-history, English, math.”
For weeks, Dodge had been trying to convince Mitch to join up with some local organization or another. Already, Mitch had turned down a chance to become recording secretary of the Shellfish Commission. Not the sort of thing he could see himself doing. It seemed so Ozzie Nelson. But Mitch was coming to understand that getting involved was part of the deal when you lived in a small town. Will Durslag served on the volunteer fire department. Jeff was a literacy volunteer.
“We have a bunch of really talented kids in this town, but they’re just not motivated. Would lighting a fire under one of them be your kind of deal?”
“Maybe. I mean, sure.”
“Great. I’ll get you an application.”
This man was relentless. Still, Mitch greatly admired his commitment. Mitch could hear a helicopter zooming its way toward them now across the Sound, moving low and fast. A news chopper from New York. All part of the Esme-Tito circus. Another day, anotherbreathless new inquiry. Here was yesterday’s: Did she or didn’t she just have a boob job? Inquiring, very small minds wanted to know.
Mitch sped up so as to pull alongside of Dodge, the other two falling in behind them. “I wanted to give you a head’s-up,” he told him, puffing. “My review of Tito’s new movie is in this morning’s paper. I panned it. I hope that won’t be awkward for you.”
“Don’t worry about Tito. He’s much more levelheaded than people give him credit for. Besides, I’m sure you were your usual tactful self.”
“Tactful is not exactly the word I’d use.”
Tito’s movie, Dark Star, was in fact Hollywood’s hugest, loudest clunker of the summer, an ill-conceived $200 million outer-space epic that the studio had held back from its Fourth of July weekend opening because preview audiences were laughing out loud in all the wrong places. It was so disastrously awful that Mitch had called it “The most unintentionally hilarious major studio bomb since Exorcist II: The Heretic.” He went on to say, “Tito Molina has such a pained expression on his face throughout the film that it’s hard to tell whether he wants to shoot the aliens or himself.”
“I really like this kid,” Dodge said. �
��I didn’t expect to, not after everything I’d read about him. But I do. And I don’t just say this because he’s my son-in-law. He has a broken wing is all. Can’t fly straight to save his life. That doesn’t make him a bad person. You’d like him, Mitch. I sure wish you’d reconsider my invitation.”
Dodge wanted him to join them for dinner one evening. Mitch didn’t think that socializing with performers was a good idea for someone in his position. “I’d love to, Dodge, but it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Sure, I understand. I just think you’d enjoy his company. He’s one of the most intuitively brilliant young men I’ve ever met.”
This in spite of Tito’s famously troubled childhood in Bakersfield, California. Tito’s father, a Mexican migrant worker, was killed in a bar fight when Tito was seven. His Anglo mother, a schizophrenic, was in and out of state mental hospitals until she committed suicide when he was thirteen. He took to living on his own after that, oftenin abandoned cars, and survived by dealing drugs. His big break came when a Britney Spears video was being shot at the Bakersfield high school that he’d recently dropped out of. A girl he was dating auditioned for a bit role. He tagged along with her. The video’s director was looking for a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks to play the bare-chested object of Britney’s sweaty affections. One look at Tito’s intense, smoldering good looks and he got the part. The video was such a hit on MTV that Tito shot straight to teen dream stardom, acting in a succession of edgy teen angst dramas-most notably the highly successful remake of the greatest teen angst drama of them all, Rebel Without a Cause, in which he stepped into James Dean’s almost mythic shoes and, somehow, made them his own. It was Esme who was cast in the Natalie Wood role. They fell in love on the set, fueling the picture’s on-screen heat, and married shortly thereafter.
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