Page 12 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

“I don’t know any Parfait Bob,” Joe said, confused.

Howie sat on the alpaca bedspread and sighed. “You know how it is: tell-a-gay, tel-e-phone. I suspect your friend Ronnie must’ve lovingly bragged to someone who told somebody who told Parfait Bob. Don’t worry. We aren’t stalkers, and we certainly can’t read minds.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lenny muttered.

“What Lenny means is, on this island the hagiographies of handsome men spread faster than chlamydia. But I will say, my instincts say you will make a fantastic doctor.”

“Damn right,” Lenny added. “You’ll look swell in green scrubs with all that chest hair and swarthy coloring—a gay Doctor Kildare.”

Joe smiled, though he still felt out of sorts with the idea of strangers talking about him.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “The doctor thing is just a pipe dream. I got drunk one night and told Ronnie about it. Now he’s decided I just need to ‘positive think’ my way into med school. He even recites daily affirmations for both of us. It’s a little woo-woo nuts.”

“It’s not the worst approach.” Lenny was back to fiddling with the daisies. “Though the efficacy rate is low, it’s not zero.”

“Anyway…” Howie stood up. “We should let you unpack before your interview.”

“Yeah, I probably should.” Joe dropped his duffel on the bureau. Looking around, he noticed there were several prominent discolored blank spots on the wall where photos had been removed—including the Anne Boleyn decapitation photo. “Why did you take those old photos down?” he asked. “They were pretty boss.”

“Oh, right,” Howie said. “We wanted to make space for you to put up your own photos.”

The only photo Joe had with him was one of him and Elliot together on the beach at Ocean City. It was, in fact, the only clear photo he had of Elliot at all. All the others had been smudged or destroyed in the basement flood. In the snapshot, Elliot wears his favorite white-and-yellow rugby shirt and is playing the guitar—the slash of the dimple, the jut of his lower lip—while Joe lies on his side, facing him, his back to the camera. It was taken shortly after they first fell in love, before Elliot got sick, before everything.

“I don’t have any photos,” Joe lied.

“Then you must take some this summer!” Howie said. “Trust an old queen, Joe. Wearewhat we remember. You’ll understand one day. Anyway, we’re off to go clean a house on Bay Walk. But first I have something for you.” He handed Joe a tiny, handsewn, saffron-colored pouch. “It’s a little good luck charm I whipped up—a mix of protective and relaxing herbs. It might be useful. You never know.”

“Thanks.” Joe sniffed the little packet, which smelled mostly of lavender and jasmine, but with darker undertones—mold and camphor. “Smells interesting.”

“Come on,” Lenny whined. “We got crap to do!”

Joe shoved the charm into his back pocket and listened for the screen door slamming, followed by the rattle of their cleaning cart rolling down the walk. As he unpacked, his eyes kept wandering to the empty spaces on the walls and the locked crawl space.

They were definitely hiding something.

7.The Interview

“You will know the Great Balance has arrived when all fighting ceases, when love, sex, and joy reign supreme.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #8

At 4:17PMJoe went into the bathroom to tame his wavy thicket of black hair with some of Howie’s emerald-green Dippity-do. It was always a balancing act between trying to look more like Richard Gere and less like Elvis. He shaved the stubbly connecting patch of what would have been a pronounced unibrow. (While Elliot had loved Joe’s unibrow, Ronnie had declared it a definite no-go.) Looking at himself in the mirror, he imitated Ronnie’s seductive swagger: “Time to seduce Dory the Boozehound.”

As directed by Howie, the bar was just a short hop down Picketty Ruff and up a flight of stairs over one of the two clothing boutiques that sold mostly Speedos, go-go shorts, and mesh tank tops. When Joe arrived at the door of Asylum Harbor, his heart sank. It was a one-story, gray clapboard structure with two darkened portico windows and a deck outside—more like a large storage shed than a proper bar. Its only exterior decoration was a white, circular life preserver placed next to the door with “Asylum Harbor” sloppily painted around the ring.

After taking a deep breath, he walked in. At first he could barely make out anything in the dim bar except for the silhouettes of two women, one short, the other tall, sitting at opposite ends of the long wooden counter.

“Mrs. Lieberman-Delagrange?” he said.

“Yes, Joe, come in!” The older woman’s voice was warm and friendly, as if Joe had just offered her a piece of coffee cake. “But please call me Dory.”

When Joe’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could see that Dory, a Black woman, looked far younger than Howie had said, more sixty-something than eighty. She was elegantly dressed in a white skirt and a navy-and-white-striped blouse. Her short lavender-gray Afro was topped with a jaunty little sailor’s cap. She definitely didn’t resemble anyone nicknamed “the Boozehound.” In fact, her twinkling dark eyes made Joe instantly feel calmer. The younger woman sitting at the end of the bar wore an oversized sweatshirt that said “Click Models.” Rather than greeting Joe, she just sat there, sipping her can of Tab and reading a paperback version ofAnna Kareninaheld in the light of a small red lamp. Despite her disheveled appearance and no makeup, she was strikingly beautiful, with flawless caramel skin and golden-brown curls.

“Come, Joe! Please sit!” Dory gestured to a barstool next to her. “That lovely though taciturn young woman at the end of the bar is my granddaughter, Elena. So, dear, you’ve bartended before?”

“Um … a little,” Joe said. “Like at parties at my parents’ house. Oh, right—I was also kind of a busboy at a restaurant during college, and … well … Iwatchedthe bartendersa lot… and … um …” Joe’s face grew red at how lame he sounded.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dory said. “The vast majority of our customers drink beer or simple stuff like vodka cranberries. Maybe a martini once in a while. My drink is gin and tonic. Two slices of lime. Very clean. My father was a bootlegger on the island. Kept his still out where the Meat Rack is.

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