Page 40 of Stony Point Summer
They hoist up the couch and slowly pass one end to Neil, waiting at the liftgate. He takes that end, and between the three of them, they maneuver their positions and get the couch lowered to the sidewalk. Their voices call out,Watch the curb, andDon’t trip, andEasy does it.
“This davenport ain’t half bad, Barlow,” Kyle says, getting the sofa out of the way of passing pedestrians on the city block. “Isn’t this your parents’?”
“Yeah, they’re changing up the cottage look.” Jason grunts while swinging the couch around. “So I’m doing them a favor, taking this off their hands.”
“Jeez, better than my duct-taped tag-sale finds. I’ll be crashing here pretty regularly. Just so you know,” Kyle warns him. “Lord knows I’m done crashing at my brother’s in Maine.”
“Maybe just give things some time. Shit’ll blow over,” Neil tells Kyle then, still clearly disturbed by Kyle’s wrecked face. Every chance he gets, he takes another look at it. They set the couch beside a shade tree planted in a sidewalk cutout. A square iron grate surrounds the tree. “Sit down, Bradford, and rest up. Don’t worry, you’ll eventually work it out with Shane.”
“Oh, we worked it out all right. Shane’s dead to me now.” Kyle sits heavily on the couch. He dabs the loose fabric of his tee on his face, wincing when he touches the darkly bruised area around his puffy eye. “Asshole stole everything, I’m telling you. My dad’s life. The whole damn estate.”
“Simmer down, guy.” Jason climbs back into the truck bed and shoves a few cartons to the liftgate, then opens a small cooler. “And what are you talking about, your brother took the estate?”
“Shane says there’s nothing left.” Again Kyle presses his tee fabric onto his swollen eye. “Goddamn bastard must’ve blew it all, the drunk sailor. Or paid off his effin’ harbor house. Screwed me over, right when I could’ve used that dough.” Kyle stands then and grabs a cold beer Jason hands him from the truck. He holds the ice-cold can to his swollen face. “All I got left in the world now is Lauren.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, “until she sees that mug of yours. Shit.” Jason jumps off the truck and sits beside Kyle on the shaded couch. “Maybe you should go to the clinic.”
“Bullshit.” Kyle chugs half his beer, sets the can on the sidewalk and tells Neil to hold the apartment door open. Walking to the end of the couch, he bends his knees and grabs hold of it. When Neil slaps his back as he heads to the door, Kyle glances over at him, saying, “You two are like the only real brothers I ever had.”
Jason stands and walks to the other end of the couch. “Let’s get this done, then,” he says, taking hold of the heavy sofa.
“Hey,” Kyle interrupts. “By the way. Nice place you got here, Barlow. Real Ivy League, you know? Historic brownstone, scrolled pediment and all this cast-iron shit—railings, and fences. Suits you, being an architect and all.”
“Thanks, man. And for the muscle power today, too.”
“Anytime, Yalie.” Kyle shoves Jason’s shoulder.
“Once we’re done moving in this stuff, dinner’s on me,” Jason says. “My treat. You up to going out with that nasty shiner of yours?”
Kyle squints through his bruised eye at Jason. “Hell, yeah. Gives me street cred here in the Elm City.”
Neil bends and hooks his hands under the sofa edge. “Sweet. Pizza, maybe?” he asks.
“Nah. We should hit up Louis’ Lunch. Passed it a few blocks thataway. It’s a little brick building with big red shutters.” Kyle gets into position at the far end of the sofa. “Birthplace of the hamburger, they say.”
“That right, Bradford?” Neil asks.
“Yep. Legend has it Louis made that very first sandwich in 1900.”
“In that case, let’s get a move on,” Jason tells them.
And they do, carefully lifting the sofa. “Watch the corner,” one says. “Turn it this way,” another orders. “Easy now, easy,” a low voice warns as they heft that couch into the old brownstone apartment.
fifteen
— Now —
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE—WHETHER you’re on land or at sea.
At a beach cottage or on a lobster boat.
One of which is the salt. It gets everywhere: on the boat’s wheelhouse windows, and on the cottage windows. Sea salt coats the glass with an opaque white film, making it hard to see through. Shane notices it when he and Celia return from the grocery store to his closed-up, stuffy beach bungalow. After setting the food bags on the counter, he turns to open the kitchen windows facing the back porch. With the porch light switched on, it’s apparent. Just like on the lobster boat, the wind and waves here carry the salt of nearby Long Island Sound right to the windows’ glass panes.Foggyglass panes. And hejustpolished them a few weeks ago.
Something else that never changes—on land or sea—is the way that cool air lifting off the water is such a salve on humid, late-summer days. So often, the sea breeze cools the soul,andhis body.
But not today.
Today, that sea air is still as can be, with not a damn whisper of movement drifting through those kitchen windows.
