Read Dead In The Hamptons for Free Online Page B

said. “Rigorous honesty. Making amends. ‘When we were wrong, promptly admitted it’.”
    “Yeah, yeah. Easier said than done.”
    “Bruce has got a point, Jimmy,” Barbara said.
    Jimmy put his arm around her. She gave a little wriggle and snuggled up to him. I readjusted my butt into the extra inch or two of space that left on her other side. We sat in silence for a while as the sky faded to muted colors, antique rose and ochre and mauve.
    Barbara shivered.
    “Let’s go back.”
    She swung herself up off the seat and shinnied down the stilt-like struts of the lifeguard chair. Jimmy followed more cautiously, inching toward the edge, hooking his heels in as far down as he could, and then dropping to a crouch on the mounded sand.
    “You guys go ahead,” I said. “Take a little alone time.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah, I need a smoke.” I twisted around, swung my foot over the side of the seat like a cowboy dismounting, and clambered down backwards to the ground, my bare toes clutching at footholds along the way.
    Jimmy took Barbara’s hand. I watched as they plodded toward the hump of the wooden steps, almost covered by sand, between the bay beach and the pitted road that dead ended there. Barbara looked back over her shoulder.
    “Dinner’s at eight-thirty,” she called.
    I raised an arm in a half-wave, half-salute. As they disappeared over the dune, I wheeled and started down toward the shore. The bay beach was a lot narrower than the ocean beach. Someone at the house had said they dredged most of the sand out of the channel that led from the open bay to the inlet that gave some of our neighbors waterfront property. In its natural state, the beach was mostly pebbles and small shells. I found out the hard way that many of the pebbles had sharp edges and many of the shells were broken. I limped back to the base of the lifeguard chair, where I had dropped my sneakers when we climbed up for the balcony view. I stood on one foot, then the other, to put them on. I let the laces dangle. Barbara had been at me to get a pair of those rubber-soled mesh shoes you could wear right into the water. Maybe I would.
    My toes and soles safe from impact, I scuffed my way down toward the water, lighting up and drawing deep as I went. A couple of kids with a dog pranced around on the big rock jetty at the far end of the beach. A boat or two, lights bobbing, putt-putted their way toward the inlet, trying to make dock before dark. But I was basically alone.
    I’d been a champion liar in my drinking days. Of course I never called it that. Stretching the truth. Little sins of omission. Taking the path of least resistance. I’d never held myself accountable. But about eighteen months ago, I’d butted up against a choice between living and dying. In a weird way, it had still been about the path of least resistance. The door to living stood open, and I’d wandered through. Clueless. Not drinking is just the tip of the iceberg, they’d told me. Yeah, yeah, I’d said.
    I still trusted hardly anybody except Jimmy, who’d been my best friend forever, and Barbara, who had worked her way into the glue between us and stuck through everything. I worked hard to keep it honest with my sponsor, a lawyer named Glenn with a radar for bullshit. But now I had a secret and a dilemma. Did I tell Jimmy and Barbara? Did I try to blow it off? If I did, would it go away? If I told them, would their endless tolerance for my screw-ups and stupidities finally crack?
    I had met Clea before.
    The truth sounded so implausible. Who would believe I’d had dinner with the woman, discussed her looks with Barbara and Jimmy, and kept a vigil over her body without recognizing her as a girl I’d almost, but not quite, had sex with at the age of fifteen? Although Jimmy and I were inseparable at that age, he hadn’t met her. She’d cut me out of the herd at a party. We’d necked on the stairs for a couple of hours while Jimmy talked medieval history with a rare