Eye Candy

  I know I sound like Lindy, the travel guide. But you have to understand, I’ve been coming out to the Hamptons all my life. Usually to visit friends, because my parents could never afford a place out here.

  Sometimes when I was little, we’d wake up at dawn and drive out just for the day. Mom would pack a big cooler of sandwiches and canned sodas for lunch. We’d change our clothes out of the back of our old station wagon and spend the whole day on one of the ocean beaches, Hotdog Beach in Hampton Bays, or Cooper Beach in Southampton on those rare occasions when my parents wanted to spread their beach blanket near the rich and beautiful.

  Sunburned and yawning, we’d have dinner at a dinky little drive-in called Slo-Jim’s on Montauk Highway that Dad said had “the best clam rolls on Long Island.” Then we’d make the long drive back to the city and arrive home after ten o’clock, exhausted, sandy, and happy.

  Those sunny days in the Hamptons formed some of my happiest family memories. And I couldn’t help remembering them in great, slow detail as Lou drove my two roommates and me to the summer house Luisa had found for us on Westhampton Beach.

  This was supposed to be an escape for me, for all of us. But of course I couldn’t leave my problems behind.

  What a shame I couldn’t summon up the joy and expectation I had felt when I was a kid. Now, I had to fight back my feelings of dread, my thoughts about the killer I had attracted on the Internet.

  Ann-Marie sat in the front passenger seat of the SUV, complaining most of the way about Lou’s driving. He was one of those guys who thought it was a sport to dart from lane to lane, cutting off other cars, then speeding up to tailgate the next car, forcing it to change lanes and make room for him.

  I slumped low in the backseat beside Luisa and wished Lou wouldn’t turn driving into some kind of macho test. Once in a while, I could see his face in the rearview mirror. I could see his eyes on me and the biggest leering grin. I hoped I was imagining things.

  “Lou, give us a break,” Ann-Marie pleaded, as he cut sharply to the right in front of an enormous Shell oil truck.

  He slid his right arm around her shoulders and held the wheel with his left. “Hey, you’ve been on my case the whole trip. I thought you were crazy about me.”

  “I never drove with you before. You’re starting to lose your appeal.”

  She was serious, but it made him laugh for some reason. Ann-Marie hadn’t said a kind word to him the whole trip. In fact, she’d seemed angry from the time he picked us up, which I thought kind of strange. Lou was doing us a favor, after all. Driving us two-and-a-half hours out to our beach house.

  I tried to change the subject. I turned to Luisa. She wore black tights and an oversized black T-shirt with a white spiderweb down the front. She had a blue and gold Florida Marlins cap pulled down over her straight black hair.

  “Where’d you get that hat?” I asked. “You’re not a Marlins fan.”

  She pulled off the cap and examined it. “Someone left it in the bar. I thought it was kind of kitschy.”

  “It’s so awesome that your cousin found us a place right on the beach,” I said. “A house we can actually afford.”

  “See? It’s all who you know,” Lou chimed in.

  “Actually, I had to be very very nice to him,” Luisa said with a sly grin. “If you know what I mean.”

  Ann-Marie gasped. Lou and I laughed. “You said he was your cousin,” Ann-Marie said.

  “A distant cousin,” Luisa replied, spinning the cap on her finger.

  “You’ve been watching too many reruns of Sex and the City,” I said. “People don’t really act like that.”

  Luisa rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  “I can’t wait to see Goth Girl with a suntan,” Ann-Marie said.

  “Neither can I,” Lou said. “And in a thong bikini!”

  Ann-Marie punched him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”

  Luisa leaned forward, wrapping her hands around Lou’s throat. “Lou, how funny are you? Not!”

  “Hey—let me drive!” he protested.

  Somehow we made it to Westhampton, and found the little red clapboard house on the bay side of Dune Road. We loved it immediately.

  A short gravel driveway led past a white picket fence to the side of the house. Two flower beds bursting with bright red and purple impatiens framed the front walk.

  The house was small and hot and damp inside. I hurried to open windows and let some fresh air in. Then I glanced around, trying to take it all in. One large, high-ceilinged room downstairs, kitchen, diningroom, livingroom all in one, a lot of knotty pine paneling, lots of wicker furniture, a square dinette table at the back window looking out to the bay, an enormous silvery blue swordfish mounted over the mantel.

  Lou plopped down on the only armchair, an ugly brown thing with a recliner head and footrest. “This is a great make-out chair. Who wants to sit on my lap?”

  Ann-Marie shook her head. “I’m warning you, Lou . . .”

  Ann-Marie pulled Luisa and me away to explore the rest of the house. “Come on. He’s being a total pig for some reason.”

  A short hall, also knotty pine with framed sepia-toned photos of the lighthouse at Montauk Point lining the walls, led to a downstairs bedroom. Very nice. Walls painted a creamy off-white, filmy, white curtains at the sides of a large window with a cushioned window seat to gaze out at the sunset over the sparkling bay.

  Sliding glass doors led to a private flagstone terrace. Painted wrought-iron table and chairs . . . a small-sized Weber barbecue grill, rust forming on one side of the lid . . .

  “We need a pool back here,” Ann-Marie told Luisa, shielding her eyes from the lowering, red sun. “Why don’t you talk to your cousin about it?”

  “Too close to the bay,” I said. “I don’t think a pool is allowed.”

  “Look.” Luisa pointed. “What is that?”

  I followed her gaze. A hummingbird buzzed over a clump of tall grass. “Haven’t you ever seen a hummingbird before?”

  Luisa shook her head. The three of us stared at the tiny creature as it hovered over some wildflowers at the edge of the terrace, bumping the blossoms gently, its wings a blur.

  “Wow, that’s so cool,” Luisa said. “Aren’t humming-birds supposed to be good luck?”

  My cell phone rang. My breath caught in my throat. “I hope so,” I said.

  34

  Jack Smith called and said he’d really like to see me when I got back to the city. I wanted to tell him I was never coming back, that I’d decided to move to Westhampton and become a clam digger.

  Would he believe that?

  I don’t think so.

  I had no desire to see Jack. I wanted to say, “Jack, buy one of those plastic, inflatable girls. She’ll think you’re fascinating.” But even after my dip in the river, Tommy Foster insisted I keep saying yes. So I said, “Yes, of course. Let’s get together,” in my sweetest voice. And I told him to call me Monday after work.

  Honest truth: I was afraid of Jack, too. He was just too ordinary, too uninteresting. Sometimes I was sure it had to be an act. Like he was controlling himself. Like he was keeping his real self deep inside, afraid to let it come out.

  Because he knew he was evil.

  Two weeks had passed since my terrifying plunge into the Hudson River with Brad looking on. I had nightmares about it every night. In two of them, I drowned.

  Ann-Marie said if you die in your dreams, you’re supposed to die in real life. She said she learned that in a psych class.

  How helpful was that?

  Ann-Marie hadn’t forgiven me for accusing Lou that night. It was such a mistake. What was I thinking? It put such a dent in our friendship. I wondered if we could ever patch it up and be really close again.

  Since Ann-Marie seemed so distant, I started confiding more in Shelly. We had dinner two or three times at Good Enough To Eat, a comfortable, down-home restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue in my neighborhood, where they serve up enormous portions of meatloaf and fried chicken
with old-fashioned mashed potatoes and gravy.

  Shelly insisted we finish off our dinners with big slices of coconut cake, and I told Shelly the main result of all the horror I was going through was that I was going to put on twenty pounds.

  “Lindy, you’d still look hot if you put on fifty pounds,” he said.

  Sweet.

  Then, of course, Shelly jumped up from the table, puffed out his stomach, and did an imitation of me walking around with an extra fifty pounds. He had everyone in the restaurant laughing, even though they didn’t know why.

  Shelly loved to perform. Sometimes I found it hard to get him to stop, to be silent, to sit still and stay in one place, to stop his mind from jumping from topic to topic.

  But once I did, he was a terrific listener. He stared at me, giving me all of his attention. He held my hand. He was kind and sympathetic and tried to assure me that the whole thing would soon be over.

  A real friend.

  I tried to be a friend to him, too. I begged him to let me see some of his writing, but he always said no, he wasn’t ready to share it. I begged him to at least tell me what it was about. He said he was trying to work out a murder mystery, but he was having trouble with it. The plot wasn’t coming along.

  “Why a murder mystery?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Why not?” The only time he really clammed up was when I asked about his writing.

  He often held my hand and, once in a taxi, he slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. He’d come hang out at my apartment sometimes after our dinners. But he never invited me to his apartment. We kissed but it never led to anything more.

  Shelly never made a move.

  I puzzled over that. Was he gay? I didn’t think so. Was he really shy? Was he being considerate, knowing all the trouble I was in, waiting for me to make the first move?

  A real mystery. And actually, I was relieved. I really did want Shelly as a friend. I’d realized I wasn’t attracted to him in a sexual way.

  And now it was Saturday night, escape night for me, and here I was in the glamorous Hamptons. A hundred miles away from the city.

  Ann-Marie and Lou had driven into town and come back with an enormous picnic basket filled with clams and mussels and shrimp and lobster salad and corn bread and coleslaw, bottles of white wine, and a key lime pie for dessert.

  It was a warm night, balmy for June, with warm breezes off the ocean, and a fat, full moon to light the beach. We spread a blanket on the sand, dropped down around it, and had our fabulous picnic dinner, the first of the season.

  “It doesn’t get any better than this!” Ann-Marie declared. And we all raised a glass to that and agreed with cheers and laughter.

  But I glimpsed the scars on Ann-Marie’s arm as she raised her glass, and I felt a chill that kept me from laughing and joining in.

  Here I was in this beautiful setting with my friends a hundred miles from New York City. I loved the silver moonlight splashing over the waves. The feel of the evening-cool sand beneath my legs. The fresh, fishy smell of the air off the ocean.

  But those scars on her arm . . .

  I couldn’t escape by running away.

  “Check out that house.” Lou pointed to a beach house behind us near Dune Road. “It’s all glass. You can see everyone inside it!”

  The house was a basic A-frame, on low stilts, but the side facing us—facing the ocean—was nearly all glass. Several of the rooms, upstairs and down, were brightly lit. Squinting hard, I could see people sitting around a table in the kitchen, having dinner. A man and a woman, both in swimsuits, lingered in one of the bedrooms.

  “Wow. You know what they say about people in glass houses,” Luisa said. “They should buy curtains.”

  “Think if we stay late, we can see them fucking?” Lou asked.

  “Why don’t you wait here and see,” Ann-Marie said, still on his case.

  Three guys came wandering out from another beach house, and Luisa invited them to join us for pie and wine. Then a couple sat down on the sand near us. The woman was tall and pretty with straight black hair down her back. I thought I recognized her from Stuyvesant High, but maybe I was wrong.

  Some twelve-packs of Budweiser magically appeared. Someone had a boom box cranked up high. More people joined the circle. Two big dogs wrestled onto our blanket. Ann-Marie and I struggled to pick up the remaining food before it got crunched.

  And suddenly it was a regular beach party.

  I started talking with the woman with the sleek, black hair—and she was the one from Stuyvesant. Jeri Waldberg. She was in the class after mine. I remembered her because she’d been a tremendous actress. She starred in all the school plays, and there were rumors that Hal Prince was her uncle and was going to put her in a big musical.

  I guess the rumors weren’t true. She told me she was marketing assistant at a small boutique ad agency in SoHo. When I told her I worked at FurryBear Press, she said it sounded like real fun. She should only know.

  A small campfire blazed, sending tall flames licking up against the purple night sky. The music grew louder, and a few couples began to dance. In the flickering firelight, I saw Luisa dancing with a bare-chested guy in baggy cargo shorts, his hair down to his shoulders, his arms covered with tattoos. They both carried cans of beer as they danced. Her head was tossed back as if frozen in laughter.

  I was wearing a pale pink midriff top and low-riding jean shorts, and I began to feel the chill of the night air off the ocean. I shouted to Ann-Marie that I was going to run back to the house to get a sweatshirt. Standing with a group of people near the fire, she waved, but I’m not sure she heard me.

  I pulled on my plastic flip-flops and ran to the road, hugging my bare shoulders. A Westhampton police cruiser was stopped at the edge of the sand. The two cops inside had their windows rolled down and were watching the party. I could hear the beeps and static from their police radio.

  I gave them a wave as I crossed Dune Road in front of them. They both waved back. “How’s it going?” one of them called, but I kept running.

  I unlatched the gate on the picket fence and started up the walk to the front door. The flowers along the walk swayed in the gusting wind. The full moon had faded behind a thin veil of low clouds. The porch light glowed brightly. Lights were on inside the house. Curtains fluttered in the open front window.

  I reached for the front door—and it opened. I gasped in surprise. “Lou—”

  “Hey, Lindy. How’s it going?” I smelled beer on his breath. His skin looked yellow under the porch light. He smiled. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  I faked a laugh and tried to slide past him. “Just getting a sweatshirt.”

  He blocked my way. “You look totally great,” he said. His eyes moved up and down me. “No offense, but I like it when you show some skin.”

  I groaned. “Give me a break, Lou.”

  He grabbed my wrist. “Why don’t you give me a break, Lindy? You know how I feel about you.”

  “No. Come on.” I tried to snap my hand free, but he held on tightly and forced me closer to him.

  “Jus’ lissen to me.” He was slurring his words. “That’s all. Jus’ lissen, okay?”

  “Let go of me. Now.”

  He released my wrist. He lowered his face to mine. His eyes grew wide and sad. “You know I’m crazy about you. You know I’m tired of Ann-Marie. I can’t stop thinking about you, Lindy.”

  “Stop it,” I insisted, keeping my voice low and steady. I tried to hide my fear. But he was so much bigger than me; if he decided to make a move, it would be hard to fight him off. “Isn’t this a rerun?” I asked. “Didn’t we already have this conversation?”

  “You’re totally beautiful,” he said. He ran his fingers through my hair.

  “Stop it, Lou. I’ll call the police. Really. See that cop car out there?” I turned. The cruiser was gone.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I just want to touch your hair.
Your face.” He ran his fingers down my cheek. I started to tremble.

  Should I kick him in the balls and run?

  What about Ann-Marie? If I told her this happened again, would she believe me?

  “Lissen to me. Jus’ lissen. When I’m with Ann-Marie, I always think of you. Really. I always picture you.”

  “Stop it!” I screamed. “I don’t want to hear that. Ann-Marie is my friend. Do you understand that? You can’t tell me things like that. Don’t you understand—”

  “Every time I’m with her,” he repeated, nodding his head. “I see you there. I pretend it’s you. But I don’t want to pretend. Get it? I stay with Ann-Marie so I can be close to you. But I don’t want—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up. You know what I’ve been going through. Don’t you care that someone attacked Ann-Marie? That someone tried to kill me? Don’t you care at all?”

  No reply. He grabbed me by the shoulders. He spun me around and backed me against the front door. He was breathing hard, his chest rising up and down beneath his muscle shirt. His eyes locked on mine. I could see he was trying to decide what to do next.

  “Lou, please,” I whispered.

  He held me by the shoulders. His hands were sweaty. His fingers dug into my skin.

  “Lou, listen to me. Let go—now.”

  He slid one hand down over my breast. “Nice,” he whispered.

  “Lou—?”

  I’m going to knee him, I decided. I’m not going to stand here and let him rape me. I’m going to knee him in the balls, then run. And I’m going to tell Ann-Marie the truth—no matter what the consequences.

  “Lindy . . .” he whispered, his hand still caressing my breast. “Lindy . . .”

  I took a deep breath. Clenched my muscles.

  “Hey, guys! What’s up?”