Floating Staircase(17)

A fellow behind him—Dick Copeland, an attorney—patted the breast pocket of his Oxford shirt for what I assumed was a pen.

“I see Adam’s still trying to weasel his fifteen percent by promoting my work,” I said, gathering up the copy of Water View and opening it to the title page. The pages were pristine and the spine had no creases; I could tell the book had been recently purchased and not read. Dick’s pen finally materialized, and he handed it over to me with the excited impatience of a ten-year-old displaying an honor roll report card. I signed the book and thrust it in the general vicinity of Mitchell, Dick, and their horde of cronies.

By ten o’clock, most of the guests had left. I shook hands and grinned while committing to dinners at houses hosted by people I did not know. Only a few stragglers remained. The women still occupied the den, now talking quietly and in that secretive, whispering way only women have. The few remaining men lingered in the kitchen, picking at the leftover dip and finishing off the hard liquor.

I had drunk way too much; sometime during the night I’d become overwhelmed by the threat of senselessness that accompanied excessive drinking. But it made the more intrusive of the remaining guests more tolerable, and conversation flowed freely toward the end of the night.

I went over to the buffet table to scrounge around at the last of the food, balancing a plate in one hand and a Fordham beer in the other.

A man hovered over the buffet table beside me. He had small, angular features and dark oil-spot eyes swimming behind the lenses of thick, rimless glasses. His eyebrows were like nests of steel wire, and his face was networked with vibrant red blood vessels that betrayed the man’s affinity for drink. I pegged him to be in his midfifties.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” I said, setting my beer down on the buffet table and extending my hand. Even in my simmering state of inebriation, I felt sobriety rush up to greet me. “I’m Travis Glasgow.”

He shook my hand—a slight, effeminate grasp followed by a quick release. A man who did not like to shake hands. “I’m Ira Stein. You and your wife are the newcomers—is that right?”

“Yes. We’ve been here a full week. We were living over in London before Adam told us about the Dentmans’ house coming on the market.”

“Nancy and I are your next-door neighbors. You can just barely see our house without the leaves on the trees.”

“So you guys are the log cabin overlooking the lake,” I said. I recalled the way the smoke from the chimney climbed into the gray sky that day I’d walked north along the edge of the lake. “It’s an amazing view.”

Ira nodded once almost robotically. “It’s very nice, yes.”

“I’m still shocked we got our place so cheap.”

“Well, we’re glad you and your wife . . . ?”

“Jodie.”

“We’re glad you and Jodie moved in. The Dentmans were a peculiar family, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Not to speak ill of those poor people and what happened to them, of course. Nonetheless, they were peculiar.”

“What do you mean? What happened to them?”

“I’m talking about the tragedy. What happened to the boy.”

I shook my head. Fueled by an overconsumption of alcohol, I felt a wry grin break out across my face. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The Dentman boy?” He raised a peppery eyebrow.

“What about him?”

“Oh.” Ira stared at his plate, which was empty except for a few olive pits and a plastic toothpick in the shape of a fencing sword. Then he looked across the room at a frail, amphetamine-thin woman I assumed was his wife, Nancy. She was leaning against the wall and peering into the sunken den where the other women were talking. Ostracized from the group, she could have been a lamp, a decorative statue on an end table.

Nancy turned her head and returned our stare. I thought she would smile but she didn’t.

“What happened to the Dentmans?” I said again.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, waving one hand. “Really. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No,” I said. “What—”

“Really, really,” Ira said and actually stuck out his hand for me to shake.

Perplexed, I didn’t take it right away.

“It was careless. Never mind. It wasn’t my place and I apologize. Travis, it’s good—it’s good to meet you.”

I watched him join his wife against the wall. They talked with their faces very close together, the uniform arcs of their backs and bends of their necks forming, as is occasionally depicted between lovers in cartoons, a crude heart between them.

Jodie bustled by me, burdened with a tray of desserts. “Some shindig,” she crooned without stopping.

I hardly heard her; I was still staring at Ira Stein from across the room.



After everyone had left, Adam and I smoked cigars on the back porch. Surrounded by darkness and the deep sigh of wind through the pines, I never felt farther away from London, from D.C., from all the places I’d always pictured myself living and growing old.

“What happened to the Dentmans?” I asked.

Adam looked sidelong at me, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if he was going to smile or scowl. In the end, he did neither. Adam had always been tough. Somehow, perhaps through some cosmic interference, he had always known what to do, what to say. Now I felt I was getting a firsthand view of a different side of my older brother—the Adam who was just as lost and vulnerable as every other human being who had ever walked the Earth.