Down the Shore (8 page)

“Watch him,” Casey said. “Tell me when he's off.”

“Who is this guy?” Mike asked.

“He's crashing with us for a while,” I said.

“That's cool,” Mike said. “Was it awkward the first time you guys had sex?”

I pegged an empty water bottle at him, unsure how else to react. How many people had looked at the two of us and had that thought?

“You know his dad,” Casey said to Mike. “You know of him, anyway. Michael Savage?”

“The guy with all the clubs in Philly?”

“Never mind,” Casey said. “Don't you watch the news? I know you can't read.”

“Hey, Casey. Fuck yourself. Who is he?”

“The guy who made those peoples' money disappear.”

“No shit,” Mike said. “That's him? I thought that guy was in his fifties.”

Casey shook his head.

“He's sweet,” Melissa said. “Be nice to him.”

“Could you not say anything about it when he's here?” I asked.

“Don't worry, buddy,” Mike said, wrapping his arms around my neck and grating his knuckles against my scalp. “I'm not gonna embarrass your friend. What the fuck could I say, anyway? ‘Ha ha, your dad's a criminal?' The only one of us without a record is Melissa.”

Clare waved to us to say that he was ready.

“Watch him,” Casey said. “Here we go.”

I felt a rush of pride when Clare got up on one knee, but he stayed there, listing back and forth as the board sliced left and right beneath him. He hit a wake, knifed sideways, and disappeared.

“He's off,” I called.

Casey swung the boat around and planted the towrope in front of Clare with a tight turn.

“Just push down and stand up,” I said as we passed.

Clare nodded without looking at me.

He was up on his knees and down again in less time.

“Drive for a minute,” Casey said to me, lighting a cigarette. “Come up nice and slow. He's ready.”

I pointed the boat toward Shelter Harbor, and we were almost up to speed when Casey told me Clare was down again. I realized I had never seen Clare fail at anything. I was nervous to have him back onboard, unsure how he would react.

“Watch him,” Casey said to Mike. “He doesn't trust it.”

Mike nodded. “He thinks it won't set unless he holds it there.”

“OK, coach,” Melissa said.

They occupied the back bench while I drove, Melissa with her back against her cousin's shoulder and her feet in Casey's lap. I felt the weight of the entire life that I had left behind here when I saw them like that—still, silent, propping one another up.

“He's ready,” Casey said to me without turning around.

“He's down,” Casey said, not half a minute later.

Clare raised a hand for me to stop as I swung the boat around again.

“You're good?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Is this your first time here?” Melissa asked him when he sat down next to her.

“Yeah,” Clare said. “First time.”

•   •   •

We a
te at the Sailfish that night. It's a big, loud restaurant anchored by an oval bar in the middle of the action, a place where people come to overspend on seafood in the last throes of vacation. No one brought us menus, and the first round of appetizers hit the table before I had a napkin in my lap—coconut shrimp, artichoke dip, crawfish cakes covered in Jersey corn. For the main course, two waiters carried out a six-pound lobster that had been on prominent display at the raw bar. Mike split the shell with his hands, exposing the glistening white meat and the sea-green mess of the organs. He snapped off a claw and offered it to Clare. Mike and Casey had warmed to him after seeing him humbled on the water.

“That guy's watching us,” Clare said, and I looked up from my scallops when I heard the worry in his voice.

“It's his place,” Mike told Clare. “He's watching all this food coming to our table and counting all the money he's not making.”

I turned to see Rob Mancuso, the owner of the Sailfish and the boat we had been scurfing with. He was standing at the bar, shorter than some of his seated customers, his bald head gleaming under the lights. Clare was wrong—he was watching me, not us. I nodded to him when our eyes met, and he nodded back.

“He has a bunch of restaurants,” Mike went on, “and spends his whole life driving from one to another in his SL55, breaking balls, and making sure no one has a good time while they work. He has more money than Jesus Christ. He fuckin' hates me. He loves Casey like a son.”

“You ever cater for him?” Casey asked Mike. “He's out there hauling trash with the Mexicans on every job. Works harder than anyone alive. Maybe you should have charged people for drinks once in a while and not served sixteen-year-old girls. Your shifts were like a fucking ad for statutory rape awareness.”

Clare laughed so hard that his Arnold Palmer gushed out his nose.

“You mean the jaywalking of sex crimes,” Mike said. “Anyway, he hated me before that. He's only got love for you, big guy.”

“I'm sick of people talking about him like he walks on water,” Melissa said. “He's lucky he's not locked up.”

Clare wasn't laughing now.

“Rob's been on LBI since you were a gleam in your daddy's eye,” Mike explained to Clare. “He ran this crew back in the eighties, moving tons of weight, making fuck off money, and this,”—he waved a lobster claw at the space around us—“is what he did with all that cash. This and a bunch of other places like it. Not bad, right?”

“Mike, shut up,” Melissa said.

“What, Rob reads lips now?”

“He's coming over,” Casey said. “He's going to tell you to get the fuck out of his restaurant because you're a loudmouth idiot.”

There were hands on my shoulders.

“How's the food?” Rob asked.

“Hey, Mr. Mancuso,” I said, turning around in my chair. “It's great, everything's great.”

“Yeah, they do a nice job. Tommy, can I talk to you a second?”

Casey's expression gave me no sign that he had seen this coming. I dropped my napkin on the table and followed Rob to the bar with blood pounding in my ears over the din of the packed dining room and the Bon Jovi on the stereo.

“What's your poison?” Rob asked.

“Vodka tonic.”

“Try again.”

“Ginger ale.”

“Ginger ale,” he called down the bar. “And a club soda. Lots of ice, lots of lime. How you been?”

“Good,” I said.

“Good to be back? Hey, Maurice, send a split of champagne to twenty-three, OK? What the fuck is taking so long over there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Always good to be back.”

“How's your mom? I hear she's doing good up there.”

“She's good. She's busy.”

“School's good? You're done, right?”

I nodded, wondering how long it would take for him to get it out.

“Good for you. That's a pretty good school, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I learned a lot.”

“I got this nephew who's thinking he might want to go there. Real smart kid. Not much of an athlete, but basically a genius. You liked it, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“I was thinking you could meet my nephew sometime, talk to him about the place. Give him some pointers, maybe look over his application.”

Right, I thought. Of course.

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever I can do.”

“Would it help to have you talk to people there, or is that not a good idea after what happened?”

“You heard about that?”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “I heard. I figured you were smarter than that, but what do I know. I hope you learned your lesson.”

“I think I did.”

“You think? Don't think.”

“I did.”

Rob nodded and smacked my shoulder.

“You boys paddle out today?”

“No, it was all blown out.”

“I was out this morning,” Rob said. “Couple nice sets came through. Don't be so picky. You're here for what, two days? Take what you can get. Most important thing you'll ever learn.”

I laughed.

“They don't teach you that at Lawrenceville?”

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

“Can't be that good of a school, then,” Rob said.

•   •   •

Cops were gathering in the street outside the restaurant, anticipating the crush of a summer night, the inevitable fights.

“Sure you brought enough guys?” Mike called to them, as we headed for the car.

“Come over here and say that to my face,” one of them said, flipping his baton into the air and catching it above his head. He and Mike went way back.

“Take your cousin to Disco's,” Casey said to Melissa. “And Clare too. Me and Tom are going to Rommel's for something to drink.”

Clare had been sticking close to me, but Casey was a good manager because he made directions sound like prophecy.

“Pick up smokes for me,” Mike said.

“No,” Casey said. “This is the third time this week.”

“That's how I know you love me.”

“You drive,” Casey said, tossing me his keys as we walked to the car. The sun was down, the traffic on the boulevard transformed into one long stripe of red and white light. I eased out of the space and threw the GTI into gear.

“You should come visit me at school,” I said. “Take some time off once I get settled.”

“I should,” Casey said, arching his back and digging in his pocket for his phone.

“Yeah,” he said. “I called you five hours ago. Tuesday's fine. As long as Tuesday means Tuesday. No, we'll take my car. Four a.m. Yes, I'm serious. Hey, you got any more of those books-on-tape? OK. We'll come by later.”

“Who was that?” I asked as he hung up. It seemed like he was extra careful not to discuss business with me or around me after my arrest, although that might have been my own paranoia.

“Disco. The guy with the bar in his garage.”

“You guys going someplace?”

“Hey,” Casey said, pointing at the road.

The car in front of us had stopped to make a left. I slammed on the brakes and something slid out from under the seat and smashed into my heel as we skidded to a stop.

“You should find a better place for that,” I said, nudging the gun back where it had been.

“You should learn how to drive,” Casey said.

At Rommel's Liquor Store, Casey grabbed a bottle of Patrón and a Diet Dr. Pepper for Melissa. He pointed to a corkboard on the wall behind the counter as we waited in line. A hand-lettered sign above the board read
BUSTED PUNKS
and every inch of cork was covered in confiscated fake IDs.

“We're still up there,” he said. “Hall of Fame.”

And there we were, side by side, our faces rounder and smoother, the cheap ink on the fake Maryland state seals faded by the sun. Our invented dates of birth would put us in our late twenties by now. Years ago, we had swaggered in with freshly minted licenses, and put cheap vodka on the counter. I looked up at the board after we'd handed the cards over and saw a row of identical IDs, printed by the same tattoo parlor in Wildwood. The clerk pulled an electronic scanner out from underneath the counter, and told us we could put the vodka back or spend the night in jail. As we left the store I watched him pierce the plastic cards with thumbtacks and stick them to the board like butterfly specimens, the holograms glinting under the fluorescent lights like iridescent dust on fragile wings. Casey didn't need ID here anymore.

“Babies,” Casey said. “Remember that?”

“What's that?” the clerk asked.

“Nothing. Let me get a pack of Newports too.”

•   •   •

We killed two hours in a garage speakeasy called Disco's, run by a kid called Disco who had long white-blond hair and a tattoo of a horseshoe on the inside of his bicep that stood right side up for luck when his left arm was at his side. Casey took him into a corner to talk as soon as we walked in. The garage looked like a yard sale: sun-scorched surfboards, stolen beer signs, driftwood, movie posters, and threadbare furniture that people down in Harvey Cedars left by the curb at the end of every season. A lifeguard turned nineteen that night, and we all stepped up for birthday punches until the boy's shoulder was red and badly swollen under his dark tan. Clare, I was surprised to learn, could hit. The lifeguard barely braced himself, not expecting much, but Mike whistled through his teeth as Clare's punch sent the boy sprawling into a tangle of rusted beach cruisers. Clare apologized and tried to help him up, but the boy waved him off, laughing.

“I feel like a man!” he yelled.

•   •   •

Our next stop was a poker game held on a yacht tied up at the Shelter Harbor Yacht Club. It's where the bartenders on the island take their tips and play until someone takes the pot. The owner of the boat is a fantastically fat orthodontic surgeon from Philadelphia who doesn't play cards, but loves the game for the party it creates and the girls it brings around. He was sitting in a recliner with a massive rocks glass in one hand and a female lifeguard perched on each arm of the chair. There was a constant sway from people coming aboard and going ashore, and most of the crowd was gathered around the spot-lit table in the galley, where the game was underway. Mike had long since been banned, and a bartender from the Sailfish was up $3,000 when I slipped through the sliding door onto the deck without anybody noticing. Clare had disappeared into the bathroom with two cokehead girls who worked at the boardwalk candy store, and I figured he'd be busy for a while. I jumped the gap between the boat and the dock, headed for the parking lot. Casey's keys were still in my pocket from the drive. I unlocked the car, shut myself inside, and reached under the seat.

It was a beautiful piece. I turned it over in the glow of the streetlights, a bright, heavy .357 Magnum in stainless steel. The grips on the revolver's handle were polished cocobolo wood—veined, translucent, smooth to the touch. I thought back to Casey's love of woodshop, of wooden Alaia surfboards, of the wooden-wall Jeeps we'd grown up with. The gun was not something he had picked up on the fly. I broke the cylinder open and spun it with a slap of my hand. The six rounds blurred into a brass ring, and became distinct again as they slowed. I closed the cylinder and held the gun below the dash in both my hands. I thumbed the safety off.