Page 48 of On Fire Island

An ominous cloud hovered over the island, and it felt very much like a warning. Of what, I had no idea, until an hour later when Ben’s agent, the infamous Elizabeth Barnes, was standing on our porch rapping her knuckles on the door with the strength of someone ten times her size. She was wearing lipstick and a colorful shirt. I had never seen her in makeup or in anything but muted earth tones. I found it unnerving.

“I wish you had told me you were coming.”

That was Ben’s actual greeting.

“Why, so you could tell me not to?” she said, with a hint of warmth.

Ben noticed the change in her tone and her apparel and agreed with my assessment. Unnerving.

“No, because if I knew you were coming, I would have asked you to bring condoms.”

He didn’t even bother to explain his odd request. She thought it a joke and snickered.

“OK, then. How about I freshen up and then you take me to town for lunch?” she suggested.

“Do you ride a bike?”

“Not since I was twelve. Can’t we walk?”

“I guess.”

Walking to town, unless you lived near the border, was just not done. Walking on the beach—great—but the sidewalks of Bay Harbor were made for riding. Personally, I find the trek by foot to be quite tedious, with bikers alarmingly ringing their bells on their approach until you move aside, or the stress-inducing vroom of the random golf cart following too close behind you. The latteralways made me feel like Cary Grant being chased by that crop duster inNorth by Northwest.

For Ben to walk to town with Elizabeth would mean filling fifteen minutes or more with small talk. At least at lunch there would be the distraction of the ordering and the chewing, and he could down a stiff drink—or three. His new favorite pastime.

“She’s not at all like you described her,” Shep noted.

Ben had described her as a real battle-ax—a term that Shep would immediately understand and that Ben enjoyed using. He loved throwing dated idioms into his writing, and I spent a lot of time suggesting he edit them out. I often saw him jotting down Shep’s random jargon like it was literary gold. I was always trying to get him to use more youthful words likedopeorbasicwhile he lit up when Shep said “How are things in Glocca Morra?” instead of hello.

Ben and I didn’t usually argue about work, and made great efforts not to do “business” after hours, but once we had such a big fight over his insistence that a modern-day character sayanyhooinstead ofanyhowthat I slept on the couch. He was born in the wrong era—which I have to admit was a great part of his success. Mine too, actually. I think I subconsciously gravitated to young authors to mix things up and ended up discovering some fabulous, career-making debuts.

“She seems to really care about you,” Shep stated, while she was still out of earshot.

“She only cares about fifteen percent of me.”

“She came all the way here, that’s very—motherly,” he said, for lack of a better word.

“She came all the way here because of my imminent deadline. And she is most definitely not motherly. She’s tough, tough as the day is long—and the day is fucking long.”

Shep laughed and agreed, “The dayisfucking long.”

As much as this day was turning out to be an eventful one, the entire summer was like the antithesis of the saying “time flies when you’re having fun.” Seriously, July, that I used to say lasted all of four minutes, had lasted four hundred thousand million. On some days, when there was no ball game to break things up, I could swear the clock was going backward. Those days were the worst. Sometimes, even with Matty and Shep nudging him to get outside, Ben just laid in the dark for hours.

It was quite the opposite of his schedule in summers past, when his morning paddleboard ride ran into the ball game, which ran into lunch and the beach and happy hour and an outdoor shower and dinner, and the two of us dancing around the living room to dance tunes from artists like Flo Rida and Deee-Lite, until it began all over again the next morning. Ben hadn’t belted “Groove Is in the Heart,” let alone touched his paddleboard since he got here. I wasn’t unhappy about the latter. Paddleboarding in the ocean definitely required a will to live that, for now, seemed to have escaped him. I was very worried about his writing though, or more aptly, his lack thereof.

Time, as with most else lately, was not on his side.

Elizabeth returned from the bathroom with the additions of a sun hat and more lipstick. Shep was suddenly very interested in her—and it wasn’t because of this new look she was sporting.

“Shep Silver,” he announced, reaching his hand out to shake hers. “You shouldn’t walk to town; it’s really not done,” he added in a strangely enthusiastic tone. “Take my trike. It’s easy to ride!”

Ben jumped in—to save himself.

“I was going to put Elizabeth on the four o’clock ferry. I can’t ride my bike back and the trike.”

Ben could ride two regular bikes, FYI, sitting on one andsteering the other along next to him. It was a skill I had only seen demonstrated on Fire Island, and even then, only by a coordinated few. It was really hot.

Shep piped in. “I was counting on that. Leave it in town somewhere—anywhere.”

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