Page 36 of Stony Point Summer
As Matt says it, he veers left down the rocks. Before he casts his fishing line, he just stands there in his part-time security guard uniform and looks out at Long Island Sound. A lighthouse beam sweeps over the water while low-tide waves lap at the rocks, over and over—the splashes rhythmic and calming. Moonlight falls on the distant swim raft, empty at this hour. And behind their fishing spot on the rock jetty, a dark patch of woods rises in the mist.
The guys shift their positions. Jason leans against a boulder even further out. His fishing line whistles over the water and makes the slightest splash where it drops in. Neil heads close to a tide pool and stands there on the smaller rocks. He casts his line to where the water’s shallow. To where the blues feed on trapped minnows. Kyle stays put, though. He opens another can of beer, raises it and toasts the moon, as if it plays some part in their summer fate all these years, the way it always looks down on them. Tonight that moonlight only makes the shadows darker, so that they’re all just silhouettes on the jetty.
“This is all right.” Jason looks over to the others—Kyle sipping his beer; Neil toying with something nibbling on his line; Matt standing idle. “It’s not bad here,” Jason calls to them. “Fishing at night.” A wave sloshes down below then. “On the rocks.”
“Yeah,” Neil agrees. He slowly reels in his slack line, the hissing sound of his reel a part of the misty night itself. “Chill way to end the week. Unwind.”
Kyle picks up the old fishing pole he’d found in his father’s garage. With a good sidearm motion, he casts his line and watches the baited hook settle in the calm sea beneath that moonlight.
“Friday night fishing,” Kyle vaguely says to them all. “We oughta do this every week.”
thirteen
— Now —
AFTER HIS DINNER WITH ELSA, and after the dishes are washed and dried, Cliff shuts off the a/c and opens the trailer’s double back doors. It’s the closest he can come to a patio. With his two café-style chairs moved to the airy doorway, they sit there with their wine and look out onto the night.
Okay, and onto the Stony Point Beach Association supply shed. Setting some atmosphere beyond it, cottage lights flicker from the next block.
But that shed … It’s stuffed with orange safety cones and buckets and shovels and leaf blowers and his small lawn mower. Extra sawhorse speed barriers are in there—which reminds Cliff. He’ll have to set those out for the increased Labor Day traffic. Then there are Lauren and Kyle’s vow renewal pointer signs made from old boardwalk planks. They were intended to point guests in the right direction down the beach on that fateful night. Oh, and there’s a silver bucket jammed full with flip-flops, so their guests could dance on the sand after the ceremony that never happened.
“What a shame,” Cliff says under his breath.
“What?” Elsa asks beside him as she swirls her wine. “Did you say something?”
“No, no. Just thinking out loud.”
“Thinking?” Elsa turns on her chair to face him. “Thinking of what?”
“Of what?” Cliff brings his wineglass to the kitchenette counter, then heads past his four-panel room divider to the chest of drawers beside his futon. He picks up the duffel on the floor beside the chest, sets the duffel on the futon and unzips it. “Thinking of packing,” he calls back to Elsa.
In no time, Elsa is standing beside the room divider. She sips her wine, then asks, “Are you going somewhere?”
“I am. To your place.” After dropping folded pajamas, tees and a button-down shirt into the duffel, he looks up at her. “I’m not letting you be alone tonight, Elsa. One year ago, you lost your son. I wouldn’t let you be alone then—and I never will on this day.”
“That’s really thoughtful, Clifton. But it’s not necessary.”
“Yes, it is.” Cliff adds a pair of pants to his duffel, then tucks in his ready-packed nylon-mesh toiletry kit. “I’ll be out at dawn, before you’re even awake,” he says. “There’s an emergency Board of Governors meeting called first thing in the morning.”
“Tomorrow? On the Friday of a holiday weekend?”
Cliff nods while tucking a pair of socks into the duffel. “They’ve been dithering on this confounded topic for months now, and it’s reached a boiling point.”
Elsa sits on the edge of his brown-suede futon and watches him pack. “And what topic might this be?”
“The blasted fence ordinance. Let me assure you, it’s dividing the whole community. And here’s why. A perfectly fine wood-panel or vinyl fence is forbidden.”
“Oh, you’re telling me,” Elsa says with a raised eyebrow. “I’ve been down that road with you, mister. Last year. Onlylivingfences are permitted in Stony Point.”
“Correct, that is the rule. No nicely stained and tended stockade fences allowed. But mile-high shrubs that haven’t seen a trim in decades, and wildly overgrown brushareallowed, because they’re classified aslivingfences. Which are also home to extended mouse families in their tangled mess. Disease-carrying vermin that getinsidecottages. And that’s okay?” Cliff whips his duffel zipper closed. “Yep. Not to mention towering, tottering, never-pruned pine trees ready to topple in a puff of wind onto neighbors’ cottages, and onto power lines? Fine and dandy—with no regard to human life or property. Because those unruly trees arelivingfences!”
“But don’t you support the fence ordinance?” Elsa asks on the way back to her patio-door seat. “You’re the commissioner, after all,” she calls to him.
Cliff opens and slams shut a chest drawer. “I’m thenewcommissioner. And new commissioners make changes,” he says on his way to his tanker desk in the trailer’s reception area. After brushing through papers and finding the meeting’s full agenda, he heads to his duffel. “I’ll have to read this at your place,” he tells Elsa while giving the paper a shake.
Elsa looks over her shoulder at him. “You’re getting awfully fired up. Maybe you should just stay home and … and calm down!”
“Dagnabbit, this job is going to drive me to drink, I tell you.” With that, Cliff retrieves his wineglass and throws back the last few drops. Then he stuffs the folded agenda into the duffel.
