Beach Wedding(8)

PART ONE

PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999




9

July 4, 1999, fell on a Sunday, and like every Sunday that summer, I was outside in my driveway drenched in sweat.

It was a little after two thirty in the afternoon as I dribbled the basketball in front of my garage on Donellan Street. The ball was a faded orange Wilson with rib lines all but worn away, and the smashing ring of it off the asphalt only ceased when I turned and leapt up to make it whisper through the rim with a perfect shot.

I was on a roll that muggy afternoon. I drained everything, hook shots from the baseline, impossible three-pointers from the corner.

Sundays in the summer were my one day off from my lifeguarding job at the Beach Point Country Club in Amagansett, and I was still out there in the heat when I heard some music. As it got louder, I turned and then had to fly off to my left into the rhododendrons to avoid the car swinging hard into our driveway.

The car—or boat, as we called it—was a 1979 Cadillac Cabriolet Deville, black with a bloodred interior. Behind its wheel, listening to some vintage Guns N’ Roses, was my brother Tom’s best friend and my sister Erin’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Nick Murray.

Nick, like Tom, was a bit of a town legend. Always the first to throw a party or a punch, he was a tall and lively and athletic townie who always had some sort of moneymaking scheme going on, restoring cars, painting houses, playing poker. He’d gone for a year on a basketball scholarship to Seton Hall but had come home after he’d punched out one of the assistant coaches.

We’d gotten along pretty well when we were younger, but I still hadn’t forgiven him for not so helpfully lifting me up at a high school dance in freshman year in front of a tall girl I was talking to so that, as Nick very unhelpfully put it, “we could talk eye to eye.”

So, when he rolled in, I casually dribbled the ball between my legs, doing my best to pretend I didn’t notice how amazingly badass he looked in his long black car.

“Hey, where the hell is your damn brother?” Nick said as Slash tore into a solo.

“What’s that?” I said and dribbled again, studiously ignoring the obvious urgency on Nick’s face. We both watched as the ball hit off my heel and disappeared into the rhododendrons.

“Smooth,” Nick said as I retrieved the ball.

I suddenly noticed what Nick was wearing. He was in a white shirt and black pants complete with a black tie. Since Nick’s wardrobe usually consisted of AC/DC and Metallica and Slayer concert T-shirts that showed off his extremely jacked arms, the getup was definitely a switch for him.

“You feeling okay, idiot? Hello? Wake up. Your brother. Where is he?” Nick said as he jumped out of the music-blasting ragtop without opening the door.

“Oh, Tom? Yeah, I heard he went down to the Jersey Shore last night with some girl he met at the Boardy Barn. Something like that. That’s what Mickey said.”

Nick threw up his hands.

“The Jersey Shore! That jackass. He promised me! I’m going to be so screwed.”

“What’s up?” I said.



10

“What’s up is Tom said he would help me out with something,” Nick said with his hands now clapped to his head. “I promised Denny I would come through for him and now what? He’s going to kick my ass.”

Denny was Denny Milton, a shady guy who was probably the biggest crook in the Hampton Bays. Even I knew he was a bookie. One who owned several delis and three liquor stores and a rowdy bayside bar. Some people said Denny was a loan shark and coke dealer, too, which sounded very believable.

“Where’s Finn or Mickey?” Nick asked.

“Gone, too, dude. They went fishing with Dad and Uncle Jack early this morning. Blues are biting.”

“Things are biting all right,” Nick said.

I actually felt a little sorry for him. No way anyone wanted to be on the bad side of Denny Milton, who stood about six foot three or four and easily weighed three hundred pounds.

“Everybody, and I mean everybody, is gone. What am I going to do?” he said to himself, shaking his head.

Then he finally looked at me with a quizzical look on his face.

“Hey, wait. How old are you now?” he said.

“Gonna be eighteen. Next week,” I said.

My birthday was actually in five months, but who was counting.

“Seventeen,” he said, peering at me.

He finally began to nod.

“No choice. Screw it,” he said. “Okay, punk. How would you like to make, oh, four or five hundred bucks?”

“What?” I said, smiling, suddenly forgetting to act tough. Five hundred bucks was what I made in two weeks. Then I frowned when I thought of Denny Milton.

“What do I have to do?” I said.

“Everything I tell you. I have a very intense catering gig, and I need somebody with arms and legs to bar back for me.”

Bar backing! I’d actually done it once at an Italian place in Southampton Village where I used to wash dishes. It was fun as hell. Bars meant sneaking beers and, even better, tipsy hot older chicks everywhere.

Nick looked at his watch.

“You have exactly five minutes to shower and get your ass back out here in black pants, black shoes, and a white dress shirt.”

I ran for the door.

“And grab Tom’s black tie!” Nick yelled. “I bought him one last time, and he still hasn’t paid me back, the son of a—”