You

31

IT’S a long, cold drive to Little Compton. The heat in Mooney’s Buick is still broken. My wool hat is gone so I’m wearing Benji’s Figawi hat—or rather, the hat Benji stole from Spencer Hewitt—but it’s canvas, not wool. At times like this, it would be nice to be rich, to have a new wool hat and a brand-new SUV and I wonder what I was thinking, leaving the key card to Benji’s stolen goods in the locker. All that bounty is going to rot until some scavenger buys the locker on a reality show. My tendency is always to sink and this is why I need music, but I forgot my music because I have other things on my mind like the fact that I might be fucking blind in one eye over someone as commonplace as Curtis. I’d sooner have my left nut chopped off in honor of Exclamation Point Ethan.

I’m stuck with the radio and there’s nothing but Taylor Swift on every fucking station. She’s like a famous version of you, Beck (dates too much, falls too hard, fucks too fast, flees too hard), and I keep switching stations but apparently Taylor Swift owns a mansion not far from LC (nowhere is far from anywhere in a state this small), and she may as well be the queen and the mayor and the princess of Rhode Island because they play her on the rock stations (Ya know, I’d like to see the Foo Fighters cover some of Miss Swift’s early stuff, or maybe Arcade Fire!), and they play it on the country stations (Let’s check out the latest single from Rhode Island’s newest treasure, y’all know who that is, right?), and they play it on the pop stations (We’re never too old to feel twenty-two, Rhode Island!). Well, fuck you, Taylor Swift, because I never felt further away from twenty-two in my entire adult life and why haven’t they invented a solvent to stop highways from freezing? I’m skidding all over the fucking place.

I stop for gas and check your Twitter. You just tweeted from Mystic, Connecticut. Because you’re a girl, you included a photo of Mystic Pizza.

Limo ride to Mystic for Mystic Pizza on the way to Little C. for winter cottage retreat? #doneanddone #pepperoni #betterthansex #beachhouse

My associations with Mystic, Connecticut, have nothing to do with the fucking Julia Roberts movie. Mystic is a bad place for me. I went there once, with my fourth-grade class, on a field trip. At the time, I had a crush on a gruff, odd misfit named Maureen Grady, “Mo” for short. Most kids are assholes, just like most adults, so yes, a lot of people called her “Ho Mo.” We were with our class touring the deck of a tall ship and it was boring, so Mo and I ditched the tour and broke into the off-limits hull.

In the dark, Mo told me she was going to steal my virginity. I tried to run and she pinned me down. I punched her, escaped, and told the teachers. Mo told a story too, and she was good at crying. Who do you think got sent to the fucking psychologist, to the dean’s office, to the “counselor” with the fucking show-me-who-touched-you-where doll? Not Mo Grady! But I don’t dwell on the past. Mo’s the fuckup now (a twice-divorced paralegal with a profile on OkCupid and a Pomeranian named Gosling—obviously, she’ll be alone forever). I prefer to live in the moment, which is why I erase all thoughts of Mo and log on to Benji’s Twitter and tweet:

There’s nothing sweeter than townie —y. #WinterinNantucket

You officially unfollow Benji. And you send him a direct message:

You are dead to me. Dead.

I smile. I pat myself on the back because Benji’s off in heaven now and I’m dealing with a busted defroster and wet, icy snow. Living is harder than dying, Beck, and I’d give anything to eat pizza with you. I wash my hands in the bathroom at the gas station and my face is hard to look at right now. Fucking Curtis and his goons marked me. There is a large, Halloween-ish gash on my forehead and another one on my cheek. I splash cold water and I go on, just like Celine Dion’s heart did back in Bridgeport.

I make relatively good time to Little Compton considering the snow and my face. My vision is blurry and I try to watch the road with my left eye. The snow is still going when I reach the outskirts of town. I’m nervous. I don’t do well in seaside havens with ice cream parlors and boat people and I have to slow down. These bald tires can’t handle the snow and the Buick sounds like Sloth from The Goonies.

The road is stronger than the Buick and the shops are all closed and the lights are out for the season. It’s as if the entire population of Little Compton is holed up in Tay-Tay’s mansion. But the animals are still on the loose. And by the time I notice the deer that’s bolting across the road and slam on the brakes, it’s too late. The Buick moans and rams the deer and we are one now, flesh and steel, a tornado car wreck spiraling across the road, into the trees and through the trees. I lose time. I lose my equilibrium and close my eyes and the smell of burnt rubber and flesh overtakes me. Everything. And then.

Nothing.

WHEN I wake up, there is only silence. The pain, then branches in my lap, blocking my view. But, miracles abound in the Buick: I am alive. My Figawi hat is on my head. And my phone is intact. I was only out for twenty minutes.

“Wow,” I say because it has to be said.

All I see are glass chips and bark and leaves. It’s as if a tree ate the Buick and for a second, I fear there is no escape. I bleed into my warm clothes but that is nothing new. I am blessed, again, because nothing in this car is electronic. I can unlock the dented door and fight my way out of this gloriously analog American-made beast. I fall into the red snow. Deer blood. My blood. Yet I am alive.

I check my e-mail; you haven’t tried me yet, but you will. I go to Google Maps and we really are destined, Beck. I am destined to be with you because my phone confirms that I am 234 feet due west of Peach Salinger’s home at 43 Plover’s Way.

But it’s a hard climb back up to the street. Something bad happened to every part of my body when I hit that deer. I lift my right foot and my left leg hums. I shift my weight to my right foot but then my right rib cage bites. I fall into the snow and I just let the coolness into my clothing. “Patience, Joe,” I say. “Patience.”

I crawl forward a few feet and notice two signs, partially obscured. One is a simple stop sign, universally understood. The other is prissier, on a white board:

HUCKIN’S NECK BEACH CLUB INC. NO TRESPASSING. MEMBERS ONLY. KEEP OFF ROCKS. NO JUMPING OR DIVING. NO LIFEGUARDS ON DUTY. SWIM AT OWN RISK.

Nature is on my side because these rules don’t apply in winter. A tiny security booth adjacent to the sign is very clearly closed for winter.

“All right,” I say and I go on, stronger than Celine Dion’s heart.

Like a soldier easing out of a foxhole, I stay low to the ground. My arms are not as fucked up as my legs and my midsection. I am fully sweating with teeth chattering and my right eye is a useless blob but my left eye is unscathed, functioning. But I must be there and I recalculate the distance on my phone: I am 224 feet away.

“Are you kidding me?” I say out loud. “I’ve only gone ten fucking feet?”

My mouth is dry and I stuff it with snow. At this rate, I will get to you next summer. I close my eyes. I can do anything. I can do anything, and you miss me and the hardest part will be this walk and you could call at any moment, you could. I dig my hands into the snowy dirt and I get some traction. I have to do a cheater’s push-up from my knees and I wince and I sting but I do it, Beck. I’m up. And I find a limp that works for me, a zombie sidestep, like I’m missing a conjoined twin. I check my phone and the blue dot is on top of the red dot.

I.

Am.

Here.

Three more steps and I’ve reached the driveway and wow. This isn’t a cottage, Beck. This is a mansion from a storybook about an evil seaside queen who takes all the township’s money and builds an unnecessarily long driveway, ensconced in shrubbery and emptying like a river into a fuck-you-world four-car garage. The house is two stories, three if you count the widow’s walk. The front yard is a clean sparkling carpet of new white snow and the lights flicker from inside while stars hover above, hoping to get inside. If Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light crossed brushstrokes with Edward Hopper, it would look a lot like this.

And the quiet! I expected to hear the sea, but the ocean sleeps too, and I can hear snowflakes melting, branches tweaking. Am I always this loud? My breathing is too raspy and what if you can hear inside that cottage? I step backward, instinctively. I hear a drop of my blood plop into the weak new snow. I can’t leave tracks; Peach will think her stalker is back and call in the National Guard. I don’t want to scare you, so I head east to case the house next door. We’re in luck, Beck. The neighbors don’t share the Salinger family’s passion for landscaping. This property is lush, overgrown with trees and the snow isn’t a clean sheet for me to disturb. This is a quiet most people will die never knowing.

And then a shriek, Peach yells, “Beck!”

I duck. But I can tell by her screaming that you are heeding the call, running to the west wing of the cottage. This is my chance and I bolt to the east-facing wall and allow myself a look inside the great room. (That’s what rich people call living rooms.) It’s huge. A giant nautical-blue sectional winds like a fat, loving snake. The coffee table is repurposed lobster traps welded together and topped with glass. And it’s aglow thanks to the flames crackling in the fireplace.

When I hear you laugh, I am, at last, sure that I’m not dead. Smoke sails out of the chimney and no wonder Taylor Swift bought a house here. I can hear the Elton John—Peach really is on vacation, replacing her morose, vaguely suicidal running ballad with the slightly cheekier, self-indulgence of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Oh, and I can smell the marijuana. I crouch as you breeze into the room.

The seaside suits you and God do I miss you. You stand before the fireplace with your legs apart as if you’re about to be patted down—you are lit as the fire, alive—in black leggings and that gray sweater you wore to work the day we had sex. When you bend slightly to warm your hands over the fire, I have an uncontrollable urge to jump through the window and enter you.

But Peach plods into the room and ruins the scene and offers you a glass of wine—typical—and you sip it and she goes back to the kitchen. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a roofie in there.

You miss me. And I miss you. It hurts, seeing you at that fire, giving your hands to the heat, the way I gave my hand to fire, only different. I imagine pushing you into the red abyss and jumping in after you, with you, so we can burn together, forever, a tree of life, light, sex.

And, of course, Peach plods into the room again and tells you dinner will be ready in an hour. She wants to play gin rummy—is she eighty-five years old?—and you obey your hostess and join her on the giant sectional sofa.

My hands are numb and yet aching and it’s too cold to stay here; I’m not an animal, and what is my plan? I realized that I drove here with dreams, not plans. My dream: You text me. I pretend I’m in New York and wait three hours. Then I drive down Peach’s driveway. You run outside before I even have the car in park. You bounce—joy!—you offer me dinner—steaks and potatoes—and then we go at it all night in one of the unrenovated bedrooms.

I don’t have a plan or a backup plan and I didn’t think things through. You’re a good friend, polite and loving. Of course you need your time with Peach. And I’m a serious mess, pained and bleeding. My car is in the trees and I’m not strong enough to walk back to town and break into a B and B. I crouch and make my way back to the neighboring property.

The front door is locked (go figure), and the world is lit by moonlight on snow (God bless), so I make it around back without falling and causing a ruckus. There is a boathouse—go figure—and the door is unlocked—God bless. I sneak inside and wrap myself up in a tarp. My wounds come back to life in the warmth, as if there are invisible dogs biting me, gnashing. I hurt. But rise. You miss me and that thought lifts me above my pain. I settle into the far left corner where the wind can’t nip me with such force.

A cop shines a flashlight in my face. I see his gun and I don’t need a mirror to know that I look like and smell like a zombie. The cop is jacked with a thundering baritone. “State your name.”

I cough up blood before I get my last name out. The cop pockets his piece. Progress. I sit up. Progress. He’s the most American man that America ever made, dark skinned in a white town with white snow. He scans my Figawi hat that he holds in his hands as if there’s a barcode in the Mount Gay Rum logo. It must have fallen off while I was sleeping. He smiles. “You raced in Figawi, Spencer?”

“A couple of times,” I answer and now I know why Stephen King can’t stop writing about New England. I’m bleeding. A deer is dead. I’m squatting. My car is steaming in the woods. And this motherfucker wants to talk about sailing.

He hands me my hat. “Are you a friend of the Salingers? I noticed some activity there. Did you get lost?”

I will die if he says the name Salinger again and I shake my head. “No. I’m lost.”

“Where are you trying to go?”

The questions unnerve me and the stress intensifies my pain. Everything is wrong and my ribs twinge. I wince. The cop is concerned (yes) and he offers a hand (thank you, RIPD). I take it and I hold on. “Officer, in all honesty, I don’t even know where I am. My GPS crapped out a while back. I got lost. I’m a wreck.”

“So that is your Buick in the woods.”

“Yeah,” I say. Fuck.

“Spencer, did you have anything to drink tonight?”

I’m about to ask why he’s calling me Spencer but I remember the name sewn into the hat: Spencer Hewitt. Relief. “No, sir.”

“Did you have anything to smoke?”

“No,” I say. “But you might want to ask the deer that rammed me out of nowhere.”

He smiles and I wince. He radios the station about ER wait times and we have to get out of here now. You are close, mere footsteps away. For all I know, you’re already awake, rubbing sleep out of your eyes, soothing paranoid Peach. What if she saw the cop car? What if the cop used his lights? What if he called for backup? What if you are out there right now giving a statement to the police? I vomit all over the tarp.

“Let it out, Spence.” He has a comforting way. “We’ll get you an ambulance soon.”

But ambulances are bright and loud. I have to be strong for your sake and I manage to get up. “Not necessary, Officer.”

“Fine,” he says. “But I’m taking you to the hospital.”

I’ll go anywhere to get away from you and he helps me hobble outside and toward the car. The trees obscure the view of Peach’s house, so even if you were standing at the great room window, you couldn’t see me. Officer Nico—cool name—didn’t leave his lights on—cool dude—and his cop car is a hybrid—only in LC—and we are driving, relief.

Nico is a good man, friendly, distracting me with tales of his football days at URI. He loves it out here. He’s from Hartford and he comes to life regaling me with stories about nut jobs who come up this way hoping to get a look at Taylor Swift. “As if she’s gonna go out with some stalker, right?”

“Right,” I say.

“Try and get a little shut-eye,” he says. “We got a bit of a drive.”

I admit that it’s nice to have someone take care of me, someone who wants me to get enough sleep. I can relax in here, the doors locked, the heat on, the partition solid. Soon, I am out, cold, dreaming of you in an old, billowy Dickensian dress, you.

CHARLTON Memorial Hospital is in Fall River, Massachusetts, only twenty miles away. But twenty miles may as well be twenty light-years because this place is depraved, loud and smelly, the anti-LC. When Nico opens the car door, a wall of cigarette smoke consumes me. A dozen degenerate junkies hang around trying to score Oxy. I’m tempted to ask Officer Nico why he didn’t take me to the hospital where the summer people go, but what’s the point? We’re here. The guy ahead of us has a bloody knife protruding from his back pocket and he’s trying to tell the nurse he had an accident with a car door. A fourth grader would know that he was lying, yet he begs, “Just one Oxy’ll do, Sue.”

But Sue is tough. “Get a coffee, go to a meeting, and fuck off.”

I’m no junkie lowlife and Nico has pull so we’re ushered into a room right away. It turns out Nico used to work in this town, but he left because it’s been “chewed up, swallowed, and spit out” by heroin and Oxycodone. He shakes his head and I must be glaring at the desperados in the waiting room because Sue grins at me. “Whatsa matta, kid?” she sneers. “Too much glamma fah yah?”

She cackles and her accent is so thick that I feel bad for the words coming out of her mouth. Nico chuckles. “The kid’s not from around here.”

Sue doesn’t laugh anymore. “No, shit, Sherlock. You got a license I can give to the gals up front?”

“No,” I lie. “I got mugged.”

“In the paahking lawt?”

“In Manhattan,” I answer in my most Whit Stillmanesque voice.

Sue rolls her eyes and I’m relieved when the doctor pulls the curtain across, then back again. Exit Sue, and my physician extends a hand. “I’m Dr. Kazikarnaski,” he says. “You can call me Dr. K.”

I nod, bobbing my head like a guy who sailed in Figawi would do. “Excellent,” I reply. “I’m Spencer.”

Dr. K prods my wounds and asks me who did this to me.

“Well,” I begin. “It’s been a wild twenty-four hours. I got jumped in Manhattan. I was leaving Lincoln Center and walking and the next thing you know, bam.”

I’d forgotten Nico was here and then he speaks. “Who was playing at Lincoln Center?”

I shrug. “We were just passing through,” I say and I wince to remind everyone that I am the patient. “Anyhow, then, I left the city and hit that storm. I had an accident. A deer. And, well, here we are.”

“That’s one old Buick you got,” says Nico. “What year is it?”

I wince and signal that I need a minute to recover. Fortunately, Nico and Dr. K fall into conversation about old cars, about the warm front moving in—gonna be like Indian summa according to Sue, who’s in and out—and they do all this instead of asking what an uppity sailor like me is doing in an ancient brown beast. Dr. K tears off his gloves and tosses them in the trash. He says my ribs aren’t cracked and my body wounds will heal. But my face is another story.

“Have you ever had stitches?” he wants to know.

I shake my head no.

A pregnant nurse with heavy eye makeup shuffles in with two coffees and two Danishes. I can’t believe my good fortune. I’m starving.

“Helen, you didn’t have to do that,” says Officer Nico as he takes the loot.

“Please,” she says. “I know you don’t got someone at home cooking for you. A man your size needs to eat.”

So do I but Nico chews and swallows my Danish and the doctor holds a syringe and tells me to close my eyes. “This will hurt,” he says and when Jude Law said that to Natalie Portman in Closer he wasn’t kidding, and you aren’t here to hold my hand.

The shot in my forehead doesn’t just hurt, it kills. Nico pats me on the back. “Breathe, Spence, you got this.”

The doctor jabs me again, this time on my cheek. I am told to stay put and wait for the anesthetic to kick in. The pregnant nurse dillydallies, hot for Nico. “So, Nico, how you doing over in Snotty Town?”

“Good enough.” He laughs. “You?”

“Better if I had a nice tall, strapping cup of hot chocolate to keep me warm at night, right, Nico?”

Nico is amused and the pregnant nurse shakes her ass as she leaves. “Say the word, hot stuff.”

Suddenly, I like it here, the way people are so blunt about what they want—Oxy, Nico’s dick, coffee—and I want to be a part of things, so I whisper to Nico, “You think they got any more Danishes hanging around?”

Instead of answering me, he pulls the curtain out, creating privacy. He takes out a notepad and I wish the medicine could numb my brain. I don’t like that notepad or that pen and it begins. “I know you don’t have your ID, but you wanna give me your address?”

I make something up and hope we’re done but we’re just getting started. Nico wants to know about me. He saw the car; he saw my blood on the street; that’s how he found me and I pray the snow is melting. I pray that you and Peach stay inside. I don’t want you to see my blood.

“And what you were looking for?” Nico asks. “Did you think those people were home?”

“I was so out of it, I don’t know.”

“You made a beeline for that house, Spencer. Why didn’t you try the gas station up the street?”

“I didn’t see it,” I say and why is he attacking me?

“But did you really think somebody would be home?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t want to do this. I want a Danish.

“Do you know anyone in LC, Spencer?”

“I didn’t even know I was in LC,” I say and it’s time to up my game. I know how to work a cop; I’m gonna say what I said when I got pinned for stealing candy when I was a little punk. I swallow and my lower lip trembles. I can act. And I stammer, “L-look, I don’t want to get into it, and it’s got nothing to do with anything, but my mom died. She just died.”

He pops his pen and closes his notepad. “Spencer, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

It’s easy to cry because I miss you and I still don’t know how to get back to you and you still haven’t called me to tell me you miss me. Nico gets me a Danish and I swallow it. When the doctor comes back and sews me up, I don’t feel a thing.

THIRTY minutes later, Nico and I are back in the lot and he wants to drive me to the train station. The scene out here has escalated. There’s a full-on tailgating party for junkies talking about which emergency facilities are loose with their Oxy. A guy in a tattered North Face jacket tries to break into a Mazda with a crowbar. Nico bellows, “Hey, Teddy. A little respect!”

Teddy salutes Officer Nico and I accept my fate. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“No,” he says. “But wait. How are you gonna pay for the train?”

Good question, Officer. I pat my lower leg. “Emergency credit card stashed.”

“That’s good thinking, Spence. Always be prepared.”

I bob my head. “Always.”

Nico assures me that “Leroy” will tow my Buick and get her back up and running. “And he won’t up-charge you, either.”

“You’re the best, Officer Nico,” and I shake his hand, firm.

He drops me off at the train station, which is almost as bad as the hospital. He helps me out of his ride and the loitering junkies scatter like roaches. I go into the station and sit. When he’s gone, I walk outside. I unzip my interior jacket pocket and pull out my wallet. I can’t believe they all believed my bullshit about my wallet being stolen. But then, I take another look at the poor doomed souls. Of course they believed me; look what they’re up against. I walk outside and hail a cab. “LC, please.”

The driver huffs and sneers at my Figawi hat. “You mean Little Compton?”

New England: All of the Bitterness, Most of the Boating, None of the Bullshit.