

THE JYNX

Kenneth C. Crowe

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 Kenneth C. Crowe

For my love

Rae Lord Crowe

CHAPTER ONE

Sweeney waited on the beach just after daybreak, tail wagging, occasionally barking, watching Billy row his dinghy through the mist of this extraordinarily warm January morning to the mooring. After tying onto his 18-foot wooden sharpie, Billy swung the heavy gas tank onto the deck and stepped aboard. Next, he turned to the task of linking the gas tank to the motor, which was in the down position in the water. He stepped into the pilot cabin on the starboard side of the boat. As he pushed in the key switch to choke the engine, he squeezed the gas-line bulb, repeating the process three times before turning the key. The motor started right up.

Leaving the dingy clinging to the mooring, Billy steered the sharpie back to the beach for his dog and gear; other clammers were arriving on Shore Road in their pickups or already were in their boats setting out for Huntington Bay. They shouted 'hey' or waved to Billy. He nudged the prow of the sharpie onto the sand just far enough so he could jump onto dry land.

"Let's go Sweeney boy," Billy said to the Yellow Lab.

The dog stepped to the edge of the water and leapt easily over the low railing into the boat. He went right to the bow stationing himself, as usual, to watch the way ahead. Billy put the water-proof bag holding his sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, and some bones for Sweeney, into the boat along with a half gallon of water and a new clam rake. Climbing back onto the sharpie, he went to the cabin, and threw the engine into reverse to back off the beach.

They set out down the length of Huntington Harbor, past a winter shoreline of barren trees and empty beaches. On the rises overlooking the harbor were houses with wide porches and stairways leading down to private docks. From late spring until early fall, the harbor and the bay were filled with pleasure craft, sailboats and cruisers, captained by weekend sailors. From the end of October to the first soft days of May, the lobstermen and clammers were left to ply their trades undisturbed by these annoying outsiders.

Billy turned north near the town beach to move past the breakwater for the short jump across the bay to Culligan's Harbor, sheltered on the north, south and east by wooded hills. The wind this morning was from the west. Five knots at the most. Ideal for digging clams in the narrow harbor that reached eastward like a crooked finger from Huntington Bay. Wind and tide were major factors in deciding where Billy worked.

This was his first day back on the water after a week in bed with the flu or something very much like it. Another two days had been lost to solving a problem with the engine. "We need 1,100 necks today, Sweeney," Billy yelled to the dog. Today he felt an immense pressure to make enough money to pay the rent—or else he would have to ask his landlord, Bernie Koch, to let him ride late for another day or more. Bernie had carried him for as long as a week many times over the years. His largesse came with avuncular suggestions that Billy should find himself a new career. Last month, Bernie had said, "Time's flying Billy. When are you going to wake up? What are you going to do when you get old like me?" Billy's face burned with embarrassment and suppressed anger as he listened in silence to these lectures while the ethereal voice, he called Harvey, invariably whispered in his ear, "Fuck him."

Yesterday, Billy had gone to Eileen, his sister, to ask for another loan, the $1,000 for his rent. She had given him $850, all she had, with the warning that Jason, her husband who was a UPS driver, would be furious if he found out. Jason was openly puzzled by Billy's attachment to the water where he labored so hard in the worst of winter wind and summer sun without a guaranteed paycheck or a pension or health insurance, the perks that went with being a package delivery driver working under a Teamsters' contract. He told Billy at every family gathering or whenever he ate dinner at Eileen's house that a college graduate like him should be doing something better with his life or at least have a steady job. "He'd love to live your life," Harvey would whisper.

With the $850 in the kitty, 1,100 clams would give him enough for his rent plus a few bucks for gas. He planned to keep a dozen clams for himself, the makings of a passable dinner with the olive oil and pasta he had in the cupboard and the roll he had in the freezer. If he got lucky and made a little extra, he could buy some parmesan cheese and beer too. But clamming was an uncertain calling subject to the whims of nature. The clams might be there, or not. Billy had been on the water for 30 years. He had started clamming when he was 14 discovering that he enjoyed the hard physical work surrounded by the beauty of the Long Island shoreline, the ever-changing sky, the bird-filled air, seals in winter, fish leaping from the water. And, he was doing something real: harvesting food.

In the early days, the clams had been plentiful and the prices paid were fairly decent. Not any more. In the past year, like a waterspout suddenly rising from the surface toward an ominously dark cloud, a concern gripped Billy that one day the clams would be gone, destroyed by pollution, or he might hurt his back too seriously to work through the pain. Then what would he do? When he graduated from college with a BA in English, Billy decided he didn't want to be part of corporate America or a bureaucrat or any sort of money grubber. He could never work in an office, 9 to 5, or be a salesman or run from door to door with packages like his brother-in-law. The water was in his blood.

Billy killed the motor. The diving ducks were plentiful this morning, and he could hear what sounded like a loon. He linked two 10-foot aluminum poles to a six foot section and clamped a clam rake, a metal basket with a row of two-inch teeth to the end. An orange float was tied to the basket to make it easy to recover if it came loose or the poles slipped from his hands. He dropped the rake over the portside into eight feet of green water, so clear that he could see the bottom.

The teeth of the rake sank a little more than an inch into the sand and mud raising a cloud of detritus as the drift of the boat and the pull of Billy's work-hardened arms, back and thighs scraped up clams, crabs, rocks and debris. Subtle vibrations of clams being collected into the basket flickered through the 26 feet of pole across the tee-handle into his hands. He tried to keep his mind blank to avoid jinxing himself with visions of this first pass bringing a mountain of clams. He lifted the aluminum poling hand over hand, twisting the basket 180 degrees to keep the catch intact. As it cleared the water, he glimpsed what looked like a solid shining bracelet hooked onto a rake tooth. "Sweeney boy, pray it's real gold," he said to the dog who was curled on the deck by the cabin out of the wind and in the sun. Billy picked the bracelet off the tooth of the rake, slipping it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He dipped the basket back into the water twice, bouncing it on the gunnel to wash the grit and mud away. He had pulled in only a half dozen clams. He tried to shake off the feeling that this promised to be a long, sparse day.

"Heyyy saylaaah!" He looked up. Two women, one hefty with long blonde hair the other slender and brunette, in matching turtle neck sweaters were leaning on the weathered wooden railing of The Guest House. The brunette held up a camera with a telephoto lens in her left hand. The blonde shouted, "Look up here saylaaah. We want a face shottt."

He paused, not to pose for her, but in annoyance at being interrupted by her upper-class, groaning drawl of an accent tinged with a smirk that drew out the word sailor into saylaaah and shot into shottt. Turning his back to them, Billy reached into his top pocket for the shiny bracelet. Every clammer's dream was to pull up a diamond ring or a wallet thick with $100 bills. Over the years, Billy's rake had come up with a useless old rifle, dozens and dozens of whiskey, wine, beer, milk and soda bottles, some from the nineteenth century, and once a New York City cop's shield. Billy examined the metal loop he had scooped up with the clams. Brass not gold. Too small to be a bracelet. "The story of my life, Sweeney boy." Carved distinctly into the inner rim were the words 'Un tour libre.' He dug into his memory, his college French, for a translation. "That means a free ride, Sweeney boy." He laughed. "Must be a brass ring from a French merry-go-round."

With the brass ring in his pant's pocket, he went back to work. He slid the rake over the side into the bottom. He felt a symphony in his hands, a clattering from below, a big mound of clams. He hoisted the heavy rake, twisting it as it rose from the sand and mud, shook it out, and dumped it into the cull box. He was looking at 200 clams. He hooked the rake on the gunnel while he quickly sorted the clams into buckets for Little Necks, Top Neck, cherries and chowders. The rake went over the side again. Another haul of 100 to 125 clams. He seemed to float tirelessly through the process that went on for hours with only a quick break for coffee and the sandwiches and to give Sweeney his bones and water. Rake in the water. Another heavy load. Fifty to 200 more clams, most Little and Top Necks very few of the large and less prized chowders and cherries, in the cull box. He was torn from this phenomenon of toil turned into reverie by the realization that the sun was low, touching the tops of the tall oaks on the west side of Culligan's Harbor. The law required clammers to be off the water before nightfall.

He whistled as he bagged and tagged the clams. Four-thousand Little Necks and Top Necks. A record for him. He usually brought in a thousand to fifteen hundred on a good day. There were another 500 chowders and cherries. No reason now to hold out a dozen Little Necks for dinner. He would be eating out tonight. "We have had one hell of a day Sweeney boy. Let's go home."

Turning on the motor, Billy ran the sharpie a little faster than usual out of Culligan's Harbor into Huntington Bay past the lighthouse and breakwater into Huntington Harbor. He was anxious to get his catch unloaded in exchange for the money he needed so badly. As he approached his mooring, he could see his buyer on Shore Road chatting with clammers who had landed ahead of him.

CHAPTER TWO

The buyer counted $736 into Billy's hand. A couple of other clammers, standing nearby talking, watched the transaction with their heads bowed in artificial disinterest. Their eyes peered at the money. Hauls like Billy's were rare, especially in the winter. He could feel their hunger to ask where he had worked today. Neither man was a close enough friend to put such a question to him. Billy figured they would be down to the water early tomorrow to follow him to his treasure trove of clams.

He and Sweeney stopped by the Bay View Deli to buy a meatball hero and a half pound of potato salad. The counterwoman cut the hero into thirds. One third went to Sweeney who gobbled it down before they got back in the truck; Billy sat behind the wheel to eat the other two pieces and the potato salad. Next they went to King Kullen. Sweeney waited in the truck while Billy went inside to buy butter, a package of bacon, a pound of Boar's Head Virginia ham, a pound of white American cheese, a dozen eggs, a quart of milk, a box of Cheerios, onions, a bag of dry dog food, a six pack of Brooklyn Beer, coffee, a box of Irish Breakfast tea bags, a package of Thomas' English muffins, oatmeal raisin cookies, a pound cake, and a loaf of whole wheat bread.

At the house, Billy filled Sweeney's two big aluminum bowls with fresh water and dry dog food. He emptied his pockets setting his wallet, keys, and the brass ring atop his dresser. Most of the cash went into a middle drawer under his clean underwear. He stripped off his work clothes, throwing his underpants and shirt into a hamper outside the bathroom door. Stepping into the bathtub, pulled the curtain closed and turned on the shower. The warm water flowing across his body drew him into singing 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,' tears welling in his eyes as he washed away the sweat and salt of the work day and thought of Patsy, his ex-wife. They would have gone to Sugar's for dinner to celebrate a day like this. He would have given her the brass ring with a gold chain, a reminder of him around her neck.

He dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sport shirt; he put the wallet and keys into his pants pocket. Looping the brass ring on the first digit of his right forefinger, he twirled it round and round. This shiny piece of metal with its French inscription defined the before and after of the harvest today. After he found it, he had had a day of clamming like never before. Now he understood why baseball players didn't shave while on a winning streak. A change could attract the attention of a malicious spirit who might interrupt the positive flow of energy out of sheer nastiness. 'My talisman?' he asked himself. "You are so superstitious," Harvey said. Billy didn't respond. He put the brass ring in his pocket.

After having a cup of tea and reading Newsday, he drove to Bernie Koch's house to pay the rent. Mrs. Koch, a short woman with thin gray hair, a double chin and a round body, led Billy from the front door to the family room. Bernie never took his eyes off the CNN newscast while stuffing the ten $100 bills from Billy into the breast pocket of his shirt. "Sit down," he said to Billy. "That son of a bitch," he said to the TV set. "Three more American kids killed today. For big oil and Halliburton. Fucking Bush. The cause is so noble, why doesn't he send his daughters over there to get blown up?" Billy sat through ten minutes of Bernie venting his rage at the TV until he was rescued by Mrs. Koch, who called him into the kitchen. "I wanted to ask you. Next time you stop by could you bring some clams." Billy asked, "A couple of hundred or a couple of dozen?" Mrs. Koch laughed. "Say a couple of dozen. I want to make clams casino." "Okay. I got to run, Mrs. Koch. Say goodbye to Bernie for me." He went out the back door and down the driveway to his truck, parked in front of the house.

\---

He left the truck in the town lot behind Sugar's, the bar where the clammers and lobstermen had hung out for three generations. Walking through the alley he went past the bar to the jewelry store on the corner of Main Street. He showed the brass ring to the clerk, a woman in a dress that clung nicely to her slender body; a red rose that emphasized her dark eyes and hair decorated the dress that seemed more appropriate for a cocktail party or a first date at a classy restaurant. Maybe she thought she was lending style to the store. He looked at her left hand. A wedding ring. Maybe she was a housewife overdressed to bring more importance to the job.

"I found this brass ring and I wanted to wear it for good luck."

She examined him in a glance, assessing him as a customer. "You could pierce your ear or your nose. Or some other part of your anatomy if you're into that sort of thing." She smiled.

Maybe she was a hungry housewife. He could use one. He hadn't had a woman in a year and a half or so. The last one was an executive for a mail order cosmetics company in Hauppauge who had bounced into Sugar's with three girlfriends to celebrate her divorce. Billy was sitting at the bar with Tommy Ledge; she sent a drink over to him. He sent a drink back. She sent him another. Soon they were sitting side by side. He went home with her that night. For the next three months, they got together for sex at least once a week after a movie or a restaurant dinner. She usually picked up the check when they ate out. In breaking up, she told him that she liked to be with him, he was terrific in bed, but his disinterest in making a decent living disqualified him as a candidate for marriage. She had to be practical. "Thanks for helping me through this trying time. I'll never forget you. I'll always love you," she said and kissed him goodbye.

Billy looked into the saleswoman's eyes. He smiled. "I'd like to wear it on a chain around my neck."

"I think gold would be nice."

"I'd like one that fits over my head."

"We're almost home." Her voice was suggestive. "Gold. I'd say 30 inches to get over that head. All we need now is a price range."

"What have you got?"

"I have a beautiful Italian diamond rope on sale for $1,400. Or what they call a lobster design for $250."

"Whoa," he said.

She laughed and turned to a cabinet behind her, bending down, offering Billy a view of a voluptuous backside curving to a narrow waist. "I think I have just the thing for you," she said turning back to him. She held out a sturdy, spiral rope gold chain. "Thirty-eight dollars."

He slipped the chain through the ring and over his head. He let it hang outside his shirt high on his chest. "Thanks, that's more my speed, I'll take it. No need to wrap it. I'll wear it." He took two twenties from his wallet.

She took the bills, touching the tips of his fingers sending a charge of excitement through him. "Oops. You're a little short. We've got to pay the taxman. It's $41.23 with the sales tax."

He gave her two dollars more. As she rang up the sale, he asked, "What time do you get off?"

"We close at 9."

"Are you doing anything tonight?"

"Yes. My husband and I are having dinner together." She dropped the change in his hand. "Wear it with grace," she said.

He pulled his shirt forward to drop the brass ring and chain onto his chest out of sight. 'No free ride here,' Billy thought. He waved goodbye.

Billy walked into Sugar's about 7:30. Ledge was at the bar with three other clammers. Billy Joel's "She's Always A Woman To Me.' was coming out of the jukebox. Two women in jeans laughing too loud, one tall and skinny, the other about five-four and fleshy, occupied the shuffleboard table. Monnie Dwyer, granddaughter of the original Sugar, was behind the bar staring from her angry face at the two giddy women. The regulars had called Monnie's mother Sugar Too when she ran the bar, but Monnie was too sour ordinarily and too frightening when she was in a rage to be called anything with Sugar attached to it. She was a widow but her disposition couldn't be attributed to horniness; Ledge had been boffing her for years.

The original Sugar, Monnie's grandmother, was the widow of a clammer, whose sharpie was rammed at the entrance to Huntington Harbor by a drunken millionaire at the wheel of a sea-going yacht. The settlement from the court case enabled the original Sugar to open her bar and decorate it with the accoutrements of Huntington's baymen, both clammers and lobstermen. The walls were lined with photos of the original Sugar, her late husband Howie, their little girl, Roslyn, and baymen renowned for their achievements of bringing in huge lobsters or surviving fierce winter storms or grinning over pitchers of beer at the annual clamfest or on their boats with rakes in hand. Clam rakes and lobster pots were suspended from the pressed tin ceiling.

High on the wall to the left of the wide entranceway to the dining room was a huge television screen running a silent game show. In Sugar's, Monnie had the power and volume controls behind the bar. If there were a big baseball, football or basketball game on, Monnie killed the sound from the jukebox. Or vice versa. She loved Billy Joel so naturally the TV was on mute. To the right of the dining room entrance was Sugar's Field of Darts, the space dedicated to the sport at which Billy and Ledge excelled. Theirs was an ongoing contest, played only between the two of them, for the honor of being the Darts Champion of Sugar's.

"Hey. The heavy hitter has arrived," Ledge shouted. The other clammers grinned. Billy nodded his head toward the dining room. Ledge slid off his stool. "I am the chosen one selected to share the sea's bounty," Ledge announced.

"Hit 'em again," Billy said to Monnie pointing to the drinks in front the other clammers.

"Hey. It burns a hole in his pocket," Ledge said putting his arm around Billy.

They seated themselves at one of the empty tables. Junie, the waitress, came over with menus. "You need these, fellas?" she asked. They didn't. Both ordered Sugar's House Steak with oven-fried potatoes, salad, and Jameson's on the rocks. Ledge said that when he heard about Billy's big score, he called the wife and told her he would be home late. He knew Billy would appear at Sugar's to treat him to dinner. What good was a joyful event without a celebration? They touched glasses when the whiskey arrived. "A million clams," they said in unison.

"How much would that be?" Ledge asked.

"At today's prices, $160,000. But if you landed with a million clams, they would probably cut the price to a penny a clam."

Hey. That's why St. Sisyphus is the patron saint of clammers," Ledge said, raising his empty glass and two fingers indicating another round to Junie.

CHAPTER THREE

Tommy Ledge and Billy moved back to the barroom after they finished eating. The place was alive with laughter and the jukebox and the two boisterous women in jeans playing shuffleboard for beers with a couple of regulars. Monnie served them another round of Jameson's. Her lips were clamped tight, the fury lines of her forehead and around her mouth seemed deeper. She looked down at the whiskey she poured onto the ice in their glasses and turned away without meeting their eyes, putting the bottle on the shelf and stepping along the bar towards another customer.

"Monnie having her period?" Billy asked sotto voce.

"Hey, she can be a bitch but that's her problem." Ledge spun around on the red ersatz leather bar stool. "Hey, ask for the darts. I don't think she'd give 'em to me tonight."

"Ms. Dwyer!" Billy shouted.

Monnie paused in tapping a pint. She pushed the lever closed to turn her attention to Billy. She was wearing a loose Irish cardigan over a green t-shirt emblazoned with a reproduction of a painting of the first Sugar with a laughing face and long red hair. Monnie had inherited neither from her grandmother. She was a hairdresser blonde, square-bodied in her mid-50s with big boobs and a thick belly. She stared at Billy waiting for him to continue.

"Monnie could we get the championship set."

She finished filling the pint of Harp's. Seeming to move in slow motion, she placed the two pints before an elderly couple. The man used to be a sports writer at the Daily News. Monnie turned to face Billy again. He didn't dare speak. As much as Monnie liked him, primarily because he was Ledge's sidekick, he wouldn't risk provoking the volcano seething in her. She went to the cabinet near the end of the bar, bending over to show off a wide rear end.

'Big enough to block the sun,' Billy thought contrasting it with the lovely haunches the clerk in the jewelry store had displayed. Ledge called Monnie his ladylove. He enjoyed saying 'I have a wonderful wife and a fantastic ladylove.' She came back with the mahogany case containing two sets of darts that she had given Ledge on Christmas Eve in 1996. That day stood out in Ledge's memory and her memory and even in Billy's, because that was the day she declared that Ledge would have to choose between her and his wife, Robin. While Ledge was squirming over her ultimatum his gall bladder flared and he ended up in the hospital for a major operation underwritten by the generous health insurance policy that went with Robin's job as a public school teacher. After months at home recuperating, Ledge returned to Sugar's and his weekly trysts with Monnie. Nothing more was said.

"One game of 301," Ledge said. He was the current Darts Champion of Sugar's so he got to choose the game, which invariably was 301. He started off with a bulls-eye, a triple 20 and a 25.

The two women turned away from the shuffleboard to watch the darts game. They were sipping beer from pint glasses with the Sugar's logo on them.

Billy stepped to the line scoring a bulls-eye on his first throw.

"Not a bad shot at all Saylaaah," said the blonde with the loud laugh.

Billy looked at her. She had narrow shoulders and nice tits, but was a little too wide and chunky for his taste. Saylaaah. Her pronunciation of Sailor rang in his ears. "Did I see you when I was clamming in Culligan's Harbor this morning?"

She extended her hand. "That was me, Erin Prendergast. And this is Linda Gold. She got a great shot of you."

Her accent grated on him. She sounded like William Buckley or the New York Times columnist he heard interviewed on NPR, Maureen Dowd. Billy shook her hand. Warmth flowed through him. "I'm Billy Plunkett and this is Tommy Ledge. You're watching a championship game here," he said.

"I can see you're both very good. What championship is it?"

Ledge jumped in. "The royal champion of Sugar's. One of those unending contests that will go on for as long as we live."

"Can I play the winner?"

"Not for the championship. That honor is limited to the exclusive field of Billy and me."

Billy glanced at the bar. Monnie was staring at them, her face fierce with anger. "We've got a game to play," he said to Ledge, rolling his eyes to indicate that Monnie was watching. He turned his attention to the dartboard, concentrated, and threw a triple 20 with his right hand and whipped the third dart from his left hand into the double lane of the 20.

The two women squealed and applauded. "Can we play a doubles match?" Erin asked.

"Ask the barmaid," Tommy Ledge said. He grinned mischievously.

Erin picked up on the unspoken message on his face. "Does she own the place?" the blonde asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Ledge said.

"Does she own you too?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Ledge said.

"So obviously she is going to say no, she's going to say the dart board is reserved for the exclusive use of the select few."

"You've got Monnie down tight," Ledge said laughing. Still shaking from amusement, he tossed a dart into the 13 pie. "Goddammit," he shouted. He concentrated on his next two throws scoring a triple 9 and a bulls-eye.

The women quieted. They drank their beer and watched.

On Billy's third round with 11 points to go, Ledge stood behind him, a grim expression on his weathered face; he hated losing. "What wins?" Erin asked. "He needs to take down 11," Ledge said.

"That should be easy," she said.

"Exactly 11. Can't go over, can't go under. Not as easy as eating..." Ledge said with a pause before saying. "pie." He winked at her.

"You dirty old man," she said, punching him on the shoulder.

"Don't get too familiar with him or at the very least Monnie will throw you out on your ass," Billy said softly.

"Do you belong to someone too?" Erin asked.

He paused. He looked at Linda, a willowy brunette with a narrow waist and inviting hips. She fitted the profile of the women he preferred. "I've been known to be available," he said in Linda's direction. Erin's face reddened a bit. Embarrassment gripped him. He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. He turned his eyes to Erin and repeated: "I've been known to be available."

Erin smiled. "Does that mean you're available to whoever's available to you?" She looked at Linda, and both laughed.

Billy turned his attention back to the dart board. He stood with his eyes locked on the target, the dart in his hand at his side. Waiting until their laughter subsided, he snapped his right hand level with his ear and threw: a six. Then a four and a one.

"Goddamit," Ledge said.

"Ladies, you are looking at the new darts champion of Sugar's," Billy said.

"Bullshit," Ledge said. He went to the bar to buy two more Irish whiskeys and two beers for the women. Monnie was slow in filling the order.

Erin told Billy that she was staying at the little house above Culligan's Harbor for a couple of weeks. He told her that the official name was The Guest Cottage. When Ledge finally returned with the whiskeys and the schooners of beer, Billy wondered to himself whether Monnie spit in the beers. The four of them touched glasses in a toast to the new champion. Erin and Linda were called back to the shuffleboard for their next game. Ledge, his voice grown fuzzier from his seventh Irish whiskey of the night, looked after the two women's swinging behinds and murmured, "Hey I wish I was free like you. I could take the skinny one and you could have the fat blonde." He looked over at Monnie, who was watching from behind the bar. "I got a nice thing going with my ladylove, but I'm a prisoner of her love. She'd hit me over the head with a bottle if I walked out the door with one of them."
CHAPTER FOUR

Tommy Ledge was so staggering drunk that Billy enticed him into coming home with him on the promise he would show him a piece of wood sculpture that would startle him. Throughout the eight block walk to the house, Ledge chuckled in anticipation of some wild pornographic feast for the eyes. Despite the midnight hour, Billy had called Robin Ledge to assure her that her husband was spending the night with him. She didn't thank him for the call, for keeping her husband from crashing into a tree or a lamp pole, which he had done several times over the years always escaping serious injury, and drunk driving charges because he knew all the cops and they liked him. Robin didn't trust Ledge. Billy figured she either knew or suspected that Monnie and Ledge were having an affair. She probably didn't trust him either because of his friendship with Ledge.

Opening the front door, Billy heard the thump of Sweeney jumping off the living room couch where he usually slept. The old Lab came to the front door, mouth open, tail wagging.

"Stick with the dog. He takes you as you are," Ledge said. He roughed Sweeney's head with his two hands. "Hey, this is one great animal." He flopped down on the couch. "Life's a bitch," he said. Billy thought Ledge was going to cry.

Ledge asked Billy if he had noticed how big Monnie's belly had gotten a few months ago. He did. He had wondered if she were experiencing one of those late-in-life pregnancies that the newspapers wrote about periodically. That would have caused an earthquake in the Ledge household. He shrugged his shoulders, indicating he hadn't been aware of Monnie's belly. Not too swift a notion to have studied another man's ladylove too closely. Ledge petted and roughed Sweeney while he continued speaking, looking straight ahead, detached from the dog and man in the room with him. He said that Monnie was terrified. She thought she had uterine cancer; her mother had died of breast cancer. In the hospital just before they wheeled her into the operating room, she squeezed his hand, hard, and told him that this was a time when she really needed him, not for fucking, but for support, to be there when she left and when she came back with whatever the news was, good or bad, and to be at the house with her while she recovered, to hold her close whenever she needed to be squeezed or maybe whenever he wanted to hold her in his arms to prove he loved her. But no, he had to go home to that woman. That's what she always called Robin, that woman.

Monnie had a tumor, that's what made her belly bloat, but it turned out to be benign. Instead of celebrating the good news, she got angry. She told him it was now or never. He had to choose between her and Robin. No more being his ladylove. She wanted to be the wife or nothing. She had been threatening to call Robin, to have it out with her if Ledge didn't have the guts to tell her.

"Where's the big surprise?" Ledge said, his mind coming back into the room, looking at Billy.

"Come on into the bedroom."

"Hey that sounds very interesting, but I'm not that way, even when I'm drunk." He chuckled.

"Come on," Billy said pulling him to his feet.

The bed was unmade, but Ledge who normally would have made some stinging, witty remark didn't notice. He gasped. His portrait in wood stood on the dresser with an expression as forlorn as he felt. He stepped closer. The wooden sculpture was wearing a Yankees baseball cap, like the one he had on his head at this moment. His cap was blue, a sweat line ridging the rim. The wood sculpture's cap was reddish like the wood, but the rim was worked to give the impression of sweat staining. The lower half of Y and the left stem of N on the sculpture were gone just as they were from the worn blue cap on his head. But the face was what got him. Billy had carved into a piece of wood the anguish that was burning his soul.

"It's me. And that's how you see me. You caught me. That's just how I feel; that this life is worthless. I can't sleep. My wife tortures me. My ladylove tortures me. She can't let things ride. She wants it all. I can't do that to Robin. She's the mother of my children. She's a wonderful woman. She was a wonderful mother. I don't know how I got involved with Monnie, but I did. I almost hoped that I could tell Robin and she would understand, then I could go out with Monnie and come home to Robin. The family on one side, Monnie on the other. Why can't we do things like that? But I'm caught between the two of them. My life isn't worth living. Monnie says it's her turn. I've got to go with her, that I haven't any choice."

A rush of pleasure filled Billy. Ledge was the first person to see his sculpture. He had done dozens of birds and fish. Good pieces, but his portrait of Ledge and the full figure of Patsy, his ex-wife, standing on the table in the corner of the bedroom, were works of art. Ledge's stunned reaction told him how good the sculpture was. The work was as alive to him as to Billy. He wanted Ledge to examine the statue of Patsy without him urging him on. He wanted his friend to turn to her figure to say, Billy I never imagined you were so good. Maybe so great an artist.

Ledge lurched to the dresser. He wrapped his arms around the sculpture, bowed his head over it, and wept.

Billy felt uncomfortable and awkward. Men like Ledge didn't cry; in the worst of circumstances they swallowed their tears. He hesitantly put his hand on Ledge's shoulder. "You'll be alright. You had a little too much to drink."

Ledge looked at him. He moaned, "Billy," but couldn't speak further.

Sweeney who had been watching the drama with as much interest as a Yellow Lab could muster suddenly snapped into action. He rushed the front door barking. Billy took the sculpture from Ledge. He put it back on the dresser and went out to see what excited Sweeney. He opened the door to Robin Ledge. "Okay Sweeney boy. You know Robin." He pushed the dog back away from the door.

"Is he here?"

"Come on in Robin."

"Is he here?" she said again, her voice betraying the fury she felt.

"I'll get him." She stepped into the living room as he went the short distance to the bedroom. She could see Ledge through the open bedroom door sitting on the bed, holding his head in his hands.

Billy put a comforting hand on Ledge's shoulder.

"Don't let her see it," Ledge said to him.

They went into the living room, where Robin looked with hatred at her husband. She hadn't found him out this time, but she had no doubt there would be a next time and the floozy from Sugar's would be with him.

\---

Billy's mind was churning much too much to sleep. Ledge was the first person to whom he had shown Introspection. That's what Billy entitled the piece. The name was on the bottom, but Ledge was so bowled over by his portrait whose expression showed his dissatisfaction with his life that he hadn't turned the sculpture over where he would seen the word Introspection carved in the base. Until he did the sculpture, Billy had considered Ledge a happy-go-lucky fellow, quick to spout amusing quips. It was as though his hands knew more than he did. He found Ledge's unhappiness in the wood. He had had the same experience with the nude figure of Patsy, his ex-wife. He called her sculpture Distance. He had set out to create Patsy as he remembered her early in their marriage when she said she loved him and acted as though she really did. He worked from photos and sketches and recall. Once again his hands uncovered the truth in the wood. His hands cut a distant expression into her eyes as though she were looking past him. He realized that this was her face on the day she left him. He didn't understand how deeply he loved her until she was gone and he experienced a hole in his being as though a tunnel had been drilled through his body.

He filled the kettle, put it on the stove to boil, and lit the kindling in the small fireplace in the living room. He turned on the CD player listening to Joshua Bell's haunting violin on the sound track of "Ladies in Lavender." His sister, Eileen, had given the CD for Christmas. When the water boiled, he brewed a four-minute cup of Irish Breakfast tea in a mug embossed with a colorful picture of the Philadelphia Museum of Art that he acquired when he traveled there to see the Rodin collection. He sliced two slabs from the pound cake. He had a passion for pound cake; usually he made his own.

Billy sat in his worn easy chair, a remnant of his marriage, listening to the music, watching the flames, feeling the warmth of the fire, sipping his tea, and eating the cake.

After the CD played out, he went to bed. While waiting for sleep, he mulled the subject of what would be his third human sculpture. The final piece of his trio cut from three logs of the same giant cherry tree. He had seriously considered a full figure of himself in the nude. The naked body represented natural beauty and the stripping away of the camouflages that hid the essence of the person. He had been hesitant about doing a self portrait for fear of what his hands might uncover in the wood. His reluctance to begin the work was reinforced by the hiatus in his life created by his bout with the flu; he had been unable to clam or sculpt. Perhaps that was a sign he should search further for the appropriate subject.

CHAPTER FIVE

After a morning of hesitation, lying in the warmth of his covers listening to National Public Radio longer than usual, having coffee at home and again at the Bay View Deli, fiddling with his motor and his aluminum poles, Billy and Sweeney motored slowly away from his mooring in Huntington Harbor, picking up speed as he moved into the bay. It was 10 o'clock, the breeze soft and the sun sending down a pleasant warmth, as he crossed into Culligan's Harbor.

Yesterday's vast haul and a whiskey headache made clamming seem like a mountain too high to climb. He decided to vary his routine by digging oysters. And, by going ashore, just below The Guest Cottage, he would increase the chance of running into Erin and Linda again. He had been unaware of when they slipped out of Sugar's last night. He preferred the brunette, but the blonde would do in this time of need.

Billy knew from past forays there were concentrations of cocktail oysters along the beach. They would bring 50 cents apiece. With luck, he could make a good day's pay without too much effort. He steered the sharpie onto the sand just below the Culligan Estate's Guest Cottage. He hauled the boat onto land, tying a long line around a boulder as an extra precaution. Sweeney sniffed the sand, the bushes with their red winter berries, and several tree trunks before running off along the shoreline. Billy took one of his sorting buckets out of the sharpie to collect the oysters.

He had been bending and picking for about an hour when her voice startled him: "Is that your dog, Sailor? He's a beauty."

He turned. He smiled. "We meet again, Erin." She was alone.

"You just let him take off like that?"

"He loves to run after he's been cooped up in the boat," he said, thinking, 'You should try it.' ('Don't be nasty,' Harvey said.)

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Digging oysters."

"Hey those are my oysters. This is private property. I'll call the police if you don't leave right now." She sounded so dumb to herself. Logically, there was no reason for her to climb down from the cottage. She couldn't explain why, but she wanted to connect with him.

He looked at the woman in her expensive cashmere sweater and tight jeans that emphasized the soft fat larding her belly and backside. He wondered if she were purposely putting on the drawl or whether it was rooted in her family or acquired from an Ivy League education. The tone of her voice was a light-hearted tease. She was trying to be funny, but she irritated him. Billy said, "You don't know what you're talking about. Below the high water mark, this is town land open to anybody with a shellfish license." (Harvey, with a sneer in his voice, said: 'Don't be such a hardass boob.')

"Maybe I should call my lawyer. Ask his opinion. Maybe get a restraining order."

('Be nice; she's trying to be amusing,' Harvey said.)

"Where's your girlfriend?" Billy asked.

"My twin? Linda? She had a ton of work to do this morning. That's why we left early last night. She's banging away at her computer up in the cottage right now." She could see he was mulling the memory of two women with mismatched hair and radically different bodies. Twins? She was short, broad-shouldered, fatter than she should be, and haughty. Linda was tall and slender, not beautiful, her teeth were a bit too big, but she had bright eyes and a contagious grin that was compelling as though she really was enjoying to whomever she was speaking.

"Which one of you is married?"

His response amused her. She held up her left hand. The only bare finger was the ring finger. She wore rings of different-colored gems on her pinky, middle and index fingers. "I'm one of those free and restless career women."

So the desirable one was married. "I've got work to do," he said going back to picking the oysters from the sand and dropping them into the bucket.

"Are they good?"

"Very," he said.

"Could I try a couple?"

He stood up, holding an oyster in his hand. "Picking oysters for me is the same as picking up half dollars. If you want me to pick up two for you, the price is a dollar. If you want to pick up your own, they're free."

"Don't I need a license?  
"I won't tell anyone. I'm not a squealer."

"Now that I know who you're not, tell me who you are."

"I'm a bayman. This is what I do for a living. Mostly, I dig clams, but once in a while I come ashore for oysters. Not very often." He went back to picking the oysters.

She stepped in front of him. "I wasn't asking for a monologue on your occupation. I know you're a clammer and an oysterer, if that's the right word, I've seen you in action. I wanted to know your name. You told me last night, but I forgot it." She knew his name, but she was gaming him.

He stood straight. "Billy Plunkett" And bent over to continue oystering.

"Billy, not Bill, not William." He nodded. She held out her hand. "I'm Erin Prendergast, Billy. Let me say it again so I don't forget. Billy. Billy. Billy. That's a well-worn technique for burning a name into the brain."

He smirked, but he took her hand in his. There was a warmth that flowed from her soft skin through his calloused fingers and palm spreading up his arm and through his body like a rolling fog bank that immersed his being in a soothing pleasure. They stood there linked for a time too long to be socially acceptable. He said, "Nice to meet you again, Erin. As I said, I'm Billy Plunkett."

"Wow. You have a nice handshake Billy." She felt his touch to the core of her body, just like last night in Sugar's.

He nodded again. He wanted to tell her how surprisingly good her flesh felt, but that would have been inappropriate. "Cup your hands," he said. He reached into the bucket to fetch a dozen oysters. He piled them onto her two hands. "Compliments of the house. Be careful opening them."

"Thank you Billy Plunkett. I love oysters. I'm a very experienced woman. You might say I'm a master shucker. But I've never had them as fresh as this. I'll bet they're wonderful."

"Right." He turned back to the chore of picking oysters from the sand. He felt a strange ache across the front of his chest, from shoulder to shoulder, a longing to experience the touch of her hand again.

"I would invite you up to the cottage for a cup of coffee, but Linda made me swear that I would be gone for an hour. That was 10 minutes ago. She's in one of those creative funks where she's up against a wall and facing a deadline. She would tear our heads off if we disturbed her. That's the nice thing about a simple job like yours. You spend your time in the fresh air picking up the fruits of nature."

"Or digging them out of the water."

"Or digging them out of the water. No one disturbs you. You work alone. You're a free spirit. Are there many regulations restricting what you do?"

"Tons. As you might say. We got bay constables watching us, cops, the Coast Guard, State Conservation."

"I hate regulations and regulators. There's always some hack passing laws to restrict our freedoms."

"How did we get on this subject?"

"Because I'm trying to impress you Billy. I wanted you to be aware of my

significance. I'm a woman with a mission out to shake the world."

He grinned. "And all I'm trying to do is make a living."

"That's fine. I have a passion for expanding freedom, Billy, on the micro level to make sure that in the United States people like you can make your living without the ridiculous restrictions some people are always trying to impose. And more broadly to spread democracy across the globe. So everyone in the whole world can be as free and prosperous as we are." Why did she make that pompous speech? Why was she trying to impress this guy? she asked herself.

"Nice talking to you Erin. Nice seeing you again. Now I'm going to get back to the nitty gritty of my mission in life."

She sat on a rock, wrapping her arms around herself to watch him raking the sand and picking up oysters. 'What an absolutely tedious, boring life,' she thought.

CHAPTER SIX

The oysters, opened and succulent, were arranged in semi-circles, six on each of the two green floral plates Erin placed on the coffee table in front of the fireplace.

Linda was lying back on the couch, her long legs extending onto the coffee table. "Mmmmh. Sooo that's the surprise."

"More to come Twinnie." She went back into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of iced Dom Perignon, two fluted glasses, and a red kitchen towel. Pointing the bottle, draped under the towel, at the ceiling , she twisted off the cork with a loud pop. The foaming wine was poured into the glasses. "Is 1990 a good year?"

"Jiminy Crickets, I haven't got a clue, but I do know this will be a total waste of an aphrodisiactic feast. One of us should be a man."

She opened her mouth wide cackling happily before she managed to say: "I hope this combination isn't potent enough to knock down our inhibitions. How would I ever tell my mother I licked my best friend's pussy?"

"They say it's like kissing a man with a beard."

"To men with beards," she said raising her glass to Linda.

Linda drank some champagne, then slurped an oyster from the half shell, chewed with enthusiasm and drank the juice remaining in the shell. "Mmmmh. I'm glad you didn't waste these on some sorry man. Where did you get them? They're heavenly."

"Right off the beach. From a man with a beard."

"Our clammer?"

"Right."

They slurped, chewed and drank until the oysters and the Dom Perignon were gone. Erin lay back with her legs spread wide. "Always works. Always makes me feel so wonderfully horny."

"You don't needs oysters and champagne to get turned on," Linda said.

"True. True. The right man would do it with the emphasis on right." She held up her hand to stop Linda from responding. "Aha. Maybe that's the trouble Twinnie. Maybe I've fallen into a right wing rut. Every man I go to bed with seems to be shaped from the same mold. College Republican National Committee, soft on the outside, steel on the inside ala Karl Rove, wanting to be Karl Rove. Soft of belly, wire-rim glasses, prematurely balding. Talking politics and money. Acceptable, but not wildly memorable in bed or in conversation. And eventually boring."

"Sounds like you could use a change of pace Erin."

She lay half-slumped on the couch, shoulder touching Linda, warm and comfortable. The flames of the fire licking the air, a log bursting into sparks. She thought of the bearded clammer and the touch of his hand. She dozed into a delicious sleep.

\---

On Sunday morning after Linda left for the city, she found a Suffolk telephone book. He was listed. She dialed the number. Ten rings. No answer or answering machine. That was irritating. Maybe he was out clamming. She went out onto the terrace to scan Culligan's Harbor. Only rolling water and birds. Back in the house, she dressed, then drove to the bakery in the village where she bought four Danish, two cheese and two blueberry. Returning to The Guest Cottage, she made fresh coffee, changed into silk pajamas and a wool robe for warmth. She took the Danish, the pot of coffee and the New York Times to bed. After she finished the crossword puzzle, she called him. No answer.

In late afternoon, not long before sunset, she drove to the address in the telephone book. She was dismayed. An ancient pickup was parked in the driveway of a shabby little house, a relic of another age. On one side was a truck yard enclosed by a 12-foot high chain link fence topped by razor wire. On other side was a big flat-roofed shack, the exterior walls covered by pseudo-brick siding, inside a plate glass window was a red neon sign flashing 'computer service.' Atop the shack was a weathered, painted sign, Satellite dishes installed. She checked the address and the map again to be certain. She was looking at poverty. Clamming and oystering gave him fresh air and his own business, but not money. His big dog appeared at the gate of the chain link fence blocking the cracked concrete walkway leading into the backyard. The beast stared for a moment at her sitting in her Jaguar, then bared his teeth and barked ferociously. Erin decided against provoking the animal by getting out of the car. She dialed Billy's number again on her cell phone. After 10 rings, she hung up. The dog had quieted, sitting, watching her. She honked the Jaguar's horn provoking another round of fierce barking.

As she started the car, the dog turned away from the fence. Billy appeared at the gate.

"You looking for me?" he asked. He smiled. He had thought about her all night Friday, all day yesterday, and had her on his mind as he worked at chiseling a thick, wide piece of oak in the very beginning of a wood sculpture of two Double-crested cormorants sweeping across Huntington Bay. He had been thinking about this piece for a long time. The tree man who rented space in the truck yard next store, had become a source of great hunks of wood in exchange for a few dozen clams every once in a while. He brought the oak to him just before Christmas, and Billy had given him a sculpture of a red tailed hawk for his wife, who was fascinated by Central Park's Pale Male. Billy's model was a hawk he had often seen while clamming in the bay near the mouth of Long Island Sound.

"Remember me?"

"You're hard to forget."

"Should I take that as a compliment?"

He nodded.

"Good. Now down to business. I had an aha! You gave me, a flash of inspiration. I'm putting together the menu for a fund raiser at the estate, and I said to myself, 'Wow Long Island clams and oysters right out of the water in the backyard would be phenomenal.' I had this vision of a bayman standing behind a little bar, you get me, a clam and oyster bar, in his work regalia opening clams and oysters on the spot for the guests. I thought you could help me out with it?"

He sighed. "I don't usually sell retail. I have a buyer. A middleman. He sells to stores and people and restaurants."

"Do you ever open clams and oysters at parties?"

"Not really." He felt uncomfortable with that answer. Technically, he was telling the truth. Sounded like a Jesuit giving a cute answer. He and Tommy Ledge were the clam-opening team at the annual Huntington Clammers' Festival on the town green. Their knives pried apart the

shells to expose the succulent flesh of a couple of thousand hard-shell clams during the weekend festival. He decided to be honest. "I've opened a lot of clams in my life. And for crowds of people."

"Good. Then maybe we can do business. I'm asking you to get me clams, a bunch of clams right out of the water, and oysters too. And then play the picturesque role of the bayman feeding the masses. Of course I'm going to pay you for your time and the clams and oysters."

Billy felt attracted to her. He couldn't understand why? She was fat and pushy, something of a con artist; the only thing appealing about her was between her legs.

She put her hand on his arm. "Please."

He felt that same surge of delightful warmth that came when they shook hands the other day. That nudged him into saying, "I'll do clams, not oysters. How many clams do you want and when is this fund raiser?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

Billy carried the two bags of clams, 250 Little Necks in each bag, a bag in each hand, into the Culligan Mansion's huge kitchen, where a chef and half a dozen assistants were chopping, sorting, cooking, tasting, and arranging intricate displays of hors d'oeurves on serving dishes. The chef handed him over to the sous-chef, who opened and dumped one bag, on a stainless steel counter. He examined the pile of clams. "Beautiful," he said. He spread the gray hard-shell bivalves across the surface of the counter. He picked up a clam, examined it turning it in his hands, sniffed it. "Ahhh. The scent of the sea." He looked at Billy. "You dug them? You are the clammer?" Billy nodded. The sous chef smiled, "We're going to transform these into clams casino. The rest goes to your clam bar." He turned for a moment, looking around the kitchen. "Gerri," he called to an assistant dressed in a white cotton kitchen uniform. "This is our clammer. Take him to his station upstairs."

"Did you bring any tools?" she asked.

Billy held up a well-worn clam knife.

"Is that your uniform of the night?"

"I'm supposed to look like a clammer. This is what clammers wear." He was dressed in jeans and a heavy blue work shirt opened at the collar to expose the top of a green t-shirt.

"Follow me," she said, twisting her hand in the air above her and motioning him with her thumb to tag along behind her. She walked in a hurry, just short of a run. "So much to do," she said over her shoulder as they passed through another set of swinging doors into the Culligan Mansion's great hall. She led him to a narrow raw wooden table beneath a striped green and blue awning with a sign saying: "Fresh Clams from Culligan Bay" "I think everything you need is right here. Anything missing let me know right now."

The clam bar was set in a corner at the edge of seven multi-paned, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a lawn that swept down to Long Island Sound. The bar had a thick wooden cutting board for a work station set between two banks of crushed ice where the clams could be kept chilled on display.

"Looks good to me," he said going behind the table. He slid his clam knife from the holster on his waist, rolled up his sleeves and realized there was no stool or chair or even a wall to lean against.

"I figure you have about 50 servings if you give each customer five opened clams. That's not too much and not too little." She left with a wave goodbye.

Erin and Linda came through the big doors on the far side of the room. They walked directly to the clam bar. Linda took Billy's hand, a sparkling smile on her face. She held on while she turned to Erin: "Just like you said, a strong, manly hand. Real calluses. I'm afraid I didn't get the magical charge you did." She winked at Billy.

"Puhlease. You weren't supposed to say that," Erin said.

Linda laughed, releasing his hand. She said, "On to more practical matters. I saw you in your boat this morning, and the Muse of Advertising spoke to me. A consumer of one, she said to me. I have a small advertising shop in the city and I've been looking for the perfect model for a campaign that combines Scottish tea and Scottish shortbread. Have you ever modeled?" Her words snapped his mind away from the thought that Erin Prendergast had experienced an unusual sensation just as he did when they touched. Linda handed him her business card. "I would really love to talk to you. I'm staying with Erin tonight so maybe you can stop by after this event and have a glass of wine and talk out my idea."

"Sure," he said. He was conscious of the brass ring under his shirt. Part of the ride?

\---

Erin waited until they walked well beyond Billy's listening range. She took Linda by the arm and bent over in laughter.

"You nasty bitch. Come into my web said the spider. So this Neanderthal turns you on?"

"Some like 'em big and strong. I like his voice. I like the touch of his hand. I can imagine the touch of his beard," Erin said widening her eyes for emphasis.

"My muse tells me that the Scottish tea and shortbread pitch would be a grand way to ease your Billy Boy into a kilt. And you know what Highlanders wear under kilts."

\---

The guests, men in dark suits, women in cocktail dresses and tasteful jewelry, began arriving just after seven. They flowed in a predictable current from the bars with wines, beers, whiskeys and sparkling waters in hand to the buffet anchored at the opening end by two well-larded women in white with puffy chef toques carving ham and beef onto freshly-baked rolls, followed by piles of breads, salads, shrimp, chop suey, cheeses, pastry-wrapped hot dogs, miniature egg rolls, Swedish meatballs and chicken wings, the array ending with trays of clams casino. The raw clam bar with little plates, small silver forks, oyster crackers, and a variety of mixed sauces and ingredients for those with a preference for creating their own concoctions, was the final treat. Billy cut and scooped, as instructed, five clams to a plate. He discovered from snatches of conversation, the guests were from the city and Washington as well as Long Island and that this was a $5,000 a head fund raiser. That was five weeks income for him during a good season with the right winds and no storms. When things went wrong, he might put eight weeks on the water to make that much money.

A five-piece band with a guitar in the lead and a female singer played from the top 100 pop songs competing with the din of conversation, shouts of laughter and greetings.

As 8:30 approached, the noise subsided, people turned, and applause broke out to welcome a frail, stooped man with thinning white hair, walking slowly into the room with his right hand on the arm of a Chinese man with a shaved head and a serene expression. A step behind him was a slender, elderly woman in a simple flowered dress, her thick white hair in a bun; she had a small, sharp nose and wore wire glasses. Billy suspected the new arrival was Ralph Xavier Culligan III, his assumption confirmed when the guitarist strummed the opening bars and many in the crowd joined the singer in words that were well-known to hard-line conservatives: "Hey Bill Clinton the Root Beer King says no way, keep your hands off America's sweethearts or you'll rue the day. Hey Bill Clinton the end is near, when you're gone we're gonna cheer and order another round of Culligan's Root Beer." They lifted their hands over their heads to clap, laugh, shout and cheer.

\---

A couple of weeks ago, Billy had listened to a radio program observing Culligan's 92nd birthday describing how much he enjoyed being called the Root Beer King, a title endowed on his great-grandfather by a press agent and assumed in each succeeding generation by the eldest son baptized Ralph Xavier. Culligan was a fervent patriot, who was too young to serve in World War I and too involved with his family's business ventures in steel, oil, and coal to risk himself in World War II. He had a particular hatred for Franklin Delano Roosevelt for his socialist tendencies and for plunging the United States into the war by squeezing the flow of oil to Japan and flagrantly arming Britain through the Lend Lease program. His patient feeding of money into conservative causes began to payoff in the 1980s and had reached fruition shortly after the dawn of the 21st Century with the arrival of the Conservative Trinity: a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican president. For the first time since Ralph Landon's run for the presidency against FDR in 1936, there was an opportunity to shatter FDR's crown jewel, Social Security. "That would the best gift anyone could give me on my 93rd birthday. It would be so good for all Americans to end the incredibly costly payroll taxes and to allow individuals to use that money to fund their own, personally-owned retirement accounts," Culligan told the NPR interviewer. Asked for his reaction, Bill Clinton said, "Now I like a good root beer, but I have to be honest with you all, I don't like the taste of Culligan's root beer and I don't like Ralph Culligan's politics. Maybe if he wasn't born with a dozen gold spoons in his pocket just in case he ever lost the one in his mouth, he might have a different understanding of the benefits of Social Security to a man or woman who had to work hard all of their lives."

The NPR feature was spiced with the tidbit that security had become Culligan's overriding concern upon turning 90. A Chinese man, identified by his nom de plume, Ho Ho, said to be one of the foremost Tai Chi Chuan masters, doubled as Culligan's human cane and bodyguard. Deborah Arod, a clairvoyant with a dedicated world-wide following, accompanied Culligan wherever he went, even into the Oval Office, to use her peculiar talents to discern the character and intentions of those with whom he met. Clinton said, "I'd love to hear Ms. Arod's reading of Dick Cheney."

\---

Culligan was helped by Ho Ho onto the raised platform that held the band. He thanked everyone for singing his second favorite song, 'Culligan versus Clinton.' He said to peals of laughter and applause, "My favorite, of course, is Happy Birthday Ralph. Just can't get enough of that one." He called Erin Prendergast to the stage, kissed her on both cheeks, told her to turn around and using her back as a desk wrote out a check for $250,000, telling his audience that this sum was to match the money raised that night for TRUE, Ten Republicans United for the Environment. "Subject to an audit, of course," he said to more appreciative laughter. "This young woman has done a helluva job for America."

Erin signaled Linda, who came onto the stage carrying a red box. "I know you have this thing about not taking anything from anybody, but TRUE wants you to remember this night, Ralph. I am presenting you with the first and maybe the last Golden Green Elephant Award for everything you've done to develop crucial supplies of oil and natural gas so crucial to keeping America running and prosperous." She took a small elephant strung from a red, white and blue ribbon which she placed over Culligan's head. "That's real gold with a green patina," she said to applause.

Several times as Culligan and Erin spoke, Billy sensed that someone was staring at him. Across the width of the room, at the foot of the stairs leading onto the stage was the elderly woman who had followed Culligan into the room. She looked intently at Billy. Their eyes locked, and Billy, not she, turned away. Several times, he looked back at her and found she was gazing at him.

Billy had very few clams left when Erin led Culligan and his small entourage across the room.

"This is the young man who fascinates you," Culligan said to the clairvoyant. His voice was soft, but the eyes in his wrinkled face, seemed like agates of steel, appraising Billy. "Step out here young man where Madam Arod can get a better look at you."

He walked the few steps around the clam bar. "Are you going to try some Huntington Little Necks sir? They came out of Culligan Harbor this morning." His face flushed as he heard himself sounding like a toady.

"I used to dig them myself when I was a boy like you. I understand from Erin you take oysters from my beach too. How come you didn't bring any this evening?"

Billy considered recovering from the self-inflicted wound to his ego by telling Culligan, as he did Erin, that everything under the high water mark belonged to the people of the Town of Huntington. ('Why unnecessarily confront the old man?' Harvey said.) Billy shifted from confrontation to diplomacy. He said, "I prefer clamming on the water to scratching for oysters on the beach." That sounded so lame, he felt embarrassed.

Culligan nodded. He was standing with this young man who meant nothing to him only as a courtesy to Madam Arod.

While they spoke, Deborah Arod continued to examine him, her eyes sliding the length of his body from his head to his feet. "Could you do a slow pirouette for me," she said to Billy. He looked at her for a moment wondering if she were trying to make him look like a clown. She made a twirling motion with her right forefinger. "Please," she said.

"Be a good sport young man," Culligan said.

Billy turned in a circle, coming back to stare at her.

She took Billy's two hands in hers, startling him. She held on tightly so he couldn't move away from her. She turned to Culligan. "Ohhh!" She sounded as though she were having an orgasm. "The vibrations. The energy. The creative force." She let go of Billy. She said to him: "You must do more than this with your life," she said gesturing at the clam bar. "You are a man with a great potential. Tell me you're doing something serious with your life not letting this power you have go untapped."

"I'm a wood sculptor," Billy said.

She nodded. Her expression was neutral. She turned to Culligan. "I don't get many moments as pleasurable as this Ralph. Thank you." She strolled away, holding onto Culligan's arm.

"Wow," Erin before hurrying after them

CHAPTER EIGHT

The two women accompanied Billy into the kitchen where he found his jacket in the closet. Erin put twelve bottles of wine, eight red and four white, into a cardboard box. "Would you bring that along, Billy?" He followed Erin and Linda out a door onto a crushed shell path to The Guest House. Even with fur coats, the women were chilled by the iron cold of the late night made worse by the wind off the bay. The three of them hurried to the darkened cottage, Billy hampered by the box of wine, Erin and Linda by their high heels. When they reached the small wooden porch leading into the kitchen, Erin took a key, hanging within a set of wind chimes, to unlock the door.

"Put the white wine in the fridge. I am dying to get out of these clothes into a hot tub. So you and Linda get a fire started, talk your business and have something to drink. Red, white or Scotch, or even beer. Anything you want. I'll be back down."

Linda smiled and winked at her. "So then what do I have then Twinnie? An hour?"

Erin stepped close to her, "It only takes seven minutes when everyone's in the mood." She laughed and walked out of the kitchen.

Billy overhead and was stirred by that exchange.

There was kindling in a basket and seasoned firewood stacked in a large rack beside the fireplace in the living room. Linda poured Scotch over ice in two low-ball glasses while Billy got the fire going. She kicked off her shoes and wrapped herself in a yellow plaid throw. She waited until he had finished the fire-making chore to raise her glass, touching his, "To success," she said. "Sit down." She patted the cushion on the couch next to her. "I mentioned I've got my own little advertising agency. If you're interested, and I think you should be, I would like to get you involved in a triple threat campaign that I'm going to pitch for the American debut of Mother Douglas Scottish Tea Balls and Mother Douglas Scottish Shortbread. They are a big thing in Scottish specialty shops or on the internet on international foods websites. Mother Douglas wants to carve out a piece of the upscale U.S. market, not just the rich, there aren't enough of them, but the upper middle class action. The people who are willing to spend a few cents more to buy the best products." She grinned, enjoying the fantasy she was spinning.

She and Erin had played this manipulative game once before with an aspiring lobbyist from Cleveland they met at a house party in Washington. He was 20, tall, hair trimmed almost to a military cut, still young enough to have a flat belly and a taut face, bursting with energy, a born-again, who was furious over the Lefties' attacks on President Bush. He had taken the year off from college, anxious to be part of the right wing juggernaut, and looking for a job to accomplish that end. He was staying with his aunt and uncle across the river in Virginia. Linda, who thought him extraordinarily handsome, flirted with him. She and Erin locked onto him backing him into a corner where their conversation ranged over his education and his ambitions until Linda, high on martinis, slyly turned their conversation to sex. She portrayed herself as an advocate of the old-fashioned notion that a girl should remain a virgin until a preacher joined her forever to a man in marriage. He agreed wholeheartedly. Speaking softly, he confided that he had taken the purity pledge of his church. He was saving himself for the woman he would marry. His voice trembled as he said that he was determined to bring the gift of celibacy to the wedding bed.

Erin listening to the dialogue with fascination interjected, "The danger of that in this town is that people who count might suspect you're gay."

He assured her that he wasn't.

In parting, Linda asked for his phone number so they could keep in touch.

A few days later, Linda called him to suggest that he invite Erin to lunch since she had the connections that could boost his career over night to heights that on his own would take him years. She told him she would be returning to Washington on business and hoped to visit with him again. She whispered that she drew so much pleasure from their last encounter.

Erin met him in a trendy French restaurant, where the maitre d' bowed and scraped before her and half a dozen people stopped by their table to say hello. She urged a glass of wine on the celibate, but he stuck with Perrier. She talked of possible job openings in various offices on K Street, then reached across the table covered his hand with hers and told him that Linda, who had recently been divorced, had fallen wildly in love with him. "You can do yourself a favor and help Linda through a difficult time. She's coming down from New York for the weekend. Normally she would stay with me, but let me make a suggestion. You know the Hay Adams. That very nice hotel across the park from the White House. You book a suite there Saturday. Order room service for two, say for 7 o'clock. A nice steak dinner for two. A bottle of wine for Linda, Perrier or whatever for you. Call me on Friday afternoon with the room number. She's taking the four o'clock shuttle. I'll tell her to go to room so and so at the Hay Adams. There'll be a surprise waiting for her. And you open the door dressed only in the bathrobe that comes with the room."

He looked at her aghast.

She continued, "Suggest to Linda that she freshen up, take a shower after her trip. I'll give you odds she'll come out of the bathroom wearing a bathrobe. The Hay Adams always provides two. She loves martinis. Have a shaker waiting for her. Room service can do that for you. The rest is up to you."

He interrupted her. "I don't know why you're talking like this he said. I hope that my conversation with Linda didn't give you a false idea of who I am. I'm going to pray for you." He took his napkin from his lap placing it on the table. "I'm not going to see you again."

"You're not going to pay for lunch?" she asked.

He left without another word.

When he called Linda at her New York office to complain about Erin, she laughed merrily, telling him that he had saved himself the price of a very expensive room and the room service that went with it, and was avoiding the embarrassment of pointlessly sitting naked under a hotel bathrobe in the luxury of the Hay Adams since she wouldn't have appeared for the tryst. "We were joking you, honey," she said and hung up.

Erin and Linda had such fun recalling the rube from Cleveland that they decided to try again with some other gullible man. They entitled the endeavor 'playing the dupe.' They decided that their tactics would be more sophisticated the second time around. Linda could offer the bait of a career as a model in advertising and possibly as an actor in film. She loved the idea of doing it like the Hollywood moguls of yore. She could hardly speak from laughing when she hit on the idea of asking the target to pose in the nude for a portfolio of interesting men for a coffee table book. Erin could tempt the quarry with visions of access to power.

There was an element of danger in the game whether in choosing an effete or an aboriginal man. Potential violence was an agenda in any human conflict. The searing embarrassment of the target upon the realization that he had been exposed as naïve would be ego deflating and possibly enraging. Billy became a prime candidate for their foolery on the morning he came ashore to dig the oysters on The Guest Cottage's beach. "I'll bet he would look good without clothes," Erin said when she brought the dozen oysters back to house. She took the initiative by offering Billy the job of opening clams at her fund raiser exposing him to her dazzling environment of political power and money. She set him up for Linda to add her enticements and to exploit his body if she chose by getting him to accompany them to The Guest Cottage with the simple ruse of asking him to carry the heavy box of wine for them and to linger a bit until she paid him for his services.

In the shower upstairs, Erin found herself singing, "Where are you going Billy-boyyy, Billy-boyyy? Where are you going charming Billyyy?" She hummed a few bars as she ran her soapy hands across her body in the intoxicatingly warm water then sang, "Did she bid you come in, Billy Boyyy, Billy Boyyy? Did she bid you "come in," charming Billyyy?" She laughed at those lines and felt a tinge of jealousy in remembering the sensuous experience of just touching Billy's hand.

Downstairs in The Guest Cottage's living room, Linda's offer of a chance to be a model delighted Billy, but in his surprise he found himself saying, "I love shortbread cookies, but I never heard of the Mother Douglas brand."

"You will after my campaign. I'm looking for a solid character, just like you. I don't want an actor. The make believe always comes through no matter how good the actor is, no matter how unknown." A serene expression shone on Linda's face as she looked upward towards a place not in the room, envisioning what she was saying: "I want a man who is doing something real, feeding America, feeding the world. I envision you out there digging clams on a nasty day. You're in your yellow slicker, like the outfit you had on when I first saw you a couple of weeks ago. You come in with your clams. You sell them. You walk through the village past a Starbucks, you know a cookie-cutter coffee shop, past the McDonald's, the ultimate in empty Americana. You stop outside Sugar's; you consider going in. You shake your head. No. You walk on home. You go into the kitchen, fill the kettle with good clean water. Fetch your Mother Douglas Tea Balls from the cupboard, and you see right next to the box with the tea balls your Mother Douglas Shortbread. You take that out too. You put together a fire like you did tonight. The fire's glowing. You settle down with your cup of tea and your tasty shortbread. What a great way to enjoy a brisk winter day."

"Where's my wife and kids in this cozy scene?" he said to be funny.  
"You've got a family? That lady bartender told me you were single."

"Divorced. No kids."

"That's a flaw. We won't mention that to Mother Douglas if you come on. There really is a Mother Douglas only she's a he. He's a tough old Scot whose ancestors started baking the shortbread in Inverness about a thousand years ago when he was about six years old. We might have to fly you to Scotland. He'll want to meet you. He's a real hands on maniac. I'm getting a shot at this account, because, no matter what the money, none of the big agencies want to deal with him because he's so weird. I met him at a party the U.S. Consulate gave in Edinburgh. Erin got me on the trip. One of those golfing and touristy trips the K Street boys put on for Congressmen and their staffs. Along with the few bucks I was paid to help out, I got a nice trip out of it, and I was able to target Mother Douglas for clienthood."

Linda placed her left hand high on Billy's thigh and was leaning towards him, anticipating the pleasure of nestling her face in Billy's beard when she was interrupted by Erin saying "Whatever you guys are drinking, I'm drinking too."

They turned to see Erin in slippers and a heavy woolen bathrobe coming from the staircase. She had an envelope in her hand, which she dropped on the coffee table.

"That was a quick recovery. I thought you were going to take a nap after your shower," Linda said a bit too sharply in her annoyance.

"Oh God, I feel wonderful again. I recommend a cold shower for you Twinnie and a nice three fingers of Scotch for me." She flopped onto the couch on the other side of Billy.

Linda overcame a pique that flashed through her to fetch a scotch on the rocks for Erin and to refresh Billy's drink.

"You look so tired, Twinnie," Erin said, winking at Linda as she took the drink.

Linda offered her a grim expression, but accepted the shift in playing positions. She swallowed the dregs of her glass. "You two have a nice chat. Go over the party in detail. You can even talk about me." She kissed Erin on the lips. "I'll see you in a little while, sis." She pecked Billy on a cheek. "Think about what we discussed. There's a load of money and whole future for you if it works out. I've got more ideas swimming in this head of mine. We'll talk some more later." She started up the stairs to her bedroom on the second floor. Paused and said, a grin breaking across her face, "Maybe I should shut my door."

"Why don't you," Erin said. She picked up a remote from an end table. She said to Billy, "Music for dance or watching the fire."

"I'm not much of a dancer." He downed his drink. "I'd better be going too." He stood, glanced at the envelope. He figured that was the money for the clams and his work this evening. He felt a little dirtied by playing the role of servant, opening clams for the men in suits and the women in cocktail dresses. He wouldn't have carried the case of wine down from the big house if Linda Gold hadn't asked to speak to him. And, he was irritated. He had been on the verge of scoring with Linda when Erin reappeared. He had expected her to stay upstairs, while he and Linda did whatever they were going to do. He was hungry for Linda. He had danced with enough thick-bodied women to dread the ordeal of pushing Erin's heavy lump of flesh around the floor, hoping for the music to end. The time had come to go.

Erin pressed a key on the remote. Dionne Warwick's voice came out the speakers singing that she would never love this way again. "Just one dance then you can go into the night. No regrets. No demands."

"I don't want to be rude, but I'd like to get paid before I go into the night."

She turned off the music. She lay back in the couch, sipped her drink. "How much do I owe you?"

Clams were going for 16 cents from the clammer to the wholesaler. That's the price he would have charged an acquaintance or the friend of a friend. Originally, he calculated a fair price would 32 cents apiece. Since she made him carry the wine and wait for his money, he decided to up the price to 50 cents, still a lot cheaper than the $1 each she would have paid at a fish store and the clams wouldn't have been fresh out of the water. "Let's see. Fifty cents a clam at a count of 500. That's $250. And for opening them, carrying them here and sticking around, say another $150 for my time."

"There's the envelope," she said.

He picked it up and started to shove it into his pocket.

"Count it. Please."

He took the packet of bills, all hundreds, from the envelope. He counted 25. Two-thousand-five-hundred dollars.

"Looks like I value your time more highly than you do." She pressed a button on the remote. Dionne Warwick's voice filled the room again. "How about a dance, Sweetie? She stepped forward taking his left hand in her right and slipping her arm around his waist. He had expected her body to feel like a dead weight. Instead, within two steps of the dance a happy feeling surged through his arms into his body down his legs. He pressed his body against hers. She slipped her left hand behind his head and drew his face down to hers for a first kiss.

CHAPTER NINE

They sat slouched on the couch in front of the fire. She was barefoot. "I love a fire that toasts my toes. Take off your boots and socks, Billy. Share my pleasure."

He hesitated. That seemed like such a dopey thing to do.

"Before you get comfortable could you get us another drink and maybe the woolen throw with the big elephant on it? Then we can snuggle down and talk. I want to hear all about you. Your dreams, your schemes, your fantasies. And especially about being a sculptor."

Her curiosity made Billy uncomfortable. Conversation was a miniscule part of his life. He talked to Ledge about clamming and the water hunched over their beers at Sugar's or rather mostly listened to Ledge's complaints about his life, his lady love, and unhappy memories of Vietnam. Patsy acidly introduced him to others as 'my quiet man. Not like John Wayne, but like quiet as in nonverbal.' Just before the end, she asked him one evening, 'how was your day?' 'Fine,' he responded. 'I meant tell me what happened on the water today? Did you see birds or a seal, or a naked lady sunbathing? Did anything interesting happen that caught your attention and stuck in your mind as something you might amuse your wife with at the end of the day?' 'What's bugging you,' he said. She began slamming pots onto the stove. 'What time do you want dinner?' she asked. Why was she being so bitchy, he wondered.

Billy walked across the room to the mahogany liquor cabinet. He took a pair of crystal low ball glasses from a shelf and eight ice cubes, four for her and four for himself, from a silver bucket. There were three opened bottles of single malt atop the cabinet. He knew nothing about Scotch, preferring beer or Irish whiskey. He picked a bottle of Aberfeldy and filled the glasses halfway. He carried the two glasses back putting them on the coffee table. He went around the couch to get the throw from its rack.

Erin got up. "Wait a minute, Sweetie. Let's push the coffee table out of the way and bring the couch closer to the fire. She picked up the glasses while he tugged the heavy glass and wrought iron coffee table to the side. He pushed the couch close enough to the fireplace so they could reach their feet towards the flames. She flapped open the throw to display a red elephant against a blue background throwing three stars aloft with its trunk. "Isn't this just marvelous, Sweetie. Congressman Couter gave it to me as a remembrance of helping him in his campaign."

"I gathered from the party tonight you were in Republican politics?"

"Very much so, Sweetie. That's my vocation, avocation, calling whatever. It's what I do." She patted the couch, her face alight with a smile. "Come sit by me and we'll look into the fire together.

She held the two glasses while Billy pulled off his work boots and heavy socks. He sat down and arranged the throw to cover both of them. She shifted her body close to his. They touched glasses. She said, "To dreamers and their dreams." They sipped the scotch and she said, "Now tell me your dream. What you want out of life. I was bowled over when you told Madam Arod you were a sculptor. Maybe you've fulfilled your dream already. Do you have something in the Met or MoMA? Or is that what you're aiming for?"

"Most of the stuff I've done is fish and seabirds. I've got a couple of human figures, that's what I really want to do, but I don't want to talk about it. Maybe you don't understand that?"

"I understand completely. You're the strong, silent type. The struggling artist who's going to surprise the world someday. But be careful. I can't remember who said it, but remember 'He tooteth not his own horn, the same will not be tooteth."

Billy had a clear vision of what he wanted from life. Underlying his reluctance to describe his dream to Erin, or anyone else, was a primeval fear that saying it would kill it. He wanted to be an artist, a great sculptor, to be recognized for his art.

('Go ahead. Tell her,' Harvey whispered.)

'I can't,' Billy murmured.

"Can't what?" she asked.

"Can't believe I'm sitting here with so beautiful a woman with my pocket full of cash, drinking good Scotch, enjoying a fire."

('The flimflam man at work. The tongue is the key that opens the magic door into a woman's pants. Who said that?' Harvey said.)

In his mind Billy responded, 'Ledge.'

They sipped the whiskey, watched the dancing flames, felt comfortably groggy as the fire warmed their toes. Beautiful. That was the word that lingered, the narcissistic drug that overcame any inhibition standing between Erin and the man beside her. She slipped her left hand along Billy's thigh. "Your leg is so muscular, so solid," she said as he hardened to her touch.

She finished her drink. She turned to him lightly touching her lips to his, then pulled back. She smiled, "Let me tell you my dream, Sweetie. I want to write a best seller about George Bush and global warming so I land on all the cable news shows. I want to be an outrageous interview so they'll call me back again and again and I become a celebrity of the right. I want to make so much money that I am a prince in the Machiavellian mode, free of sponsors, free of mentors, free of male dependency. Tell me what you think of that?"

"Wouldn't you be a princess?" He put his empty glass on the floor, took her right breast in his hand; it was a small cone of delightfully firm flesh. She moaned. He closed his eyes and kissed her. The touch of her tongue inflamed him. He was aware as he ran his hand along her body that she was built like a pyramid with broad hips and a large backside, a narrow waist atop a soft belly, her arms were big and her thighs were like some of the tree trunks he carved into flights of birds.

('Those thighs are the size of barrels,' Harvey whispered.)

'Kegs,' Billy thought.

('What is a keg? A small barrel,' Harvey said.)

"I want to make love to you," Billy whispered to Erin.

('Why can't you just be explicit and say I want to fuck you?' Harvey said.)

"Wow," Erin said, a prolonged 'wow.' "That kiss was magic. I feel intoxicated. I love the way you said, I want to make love to you. You're so beautiful. (She used the word to excite him as it excited her.) You transport me, Sweetie Just the touch of your hand puts me in ecstasy. You make me feel so sexy."

She threw off the cover and her robe exposing herself as she never did to a man in a first encounter. Erin knew the shape of her body, how it compared to Linda's. She wished she hadn't given Billy so much money. Then she could be sure that he was replicating the sensations that were roaring through her and not just responding to her largesse, perhaps in hopes of getting more. All of the previous men who had taken her to bed had gotten to know her, admire her, to be awed by her. And she had felt the same about them. She was determined never to be an easy fuck, a one-night stand, although she succumbed on occasion to temptation. Conversely, she couldn't understand what drew her with such intensity to Billy, who on the surface lived the life of a drone, until he revealed to Madam Arod that he was a sculptor. Perhaps her subconscious had connected to his, discovering that he was so much more than he seemed.

Billy looked at her. A woman standing as she was expectantly and exposed before him usually stirred the creator in him, imagining her as the subject of a sculpture. As needy as he was for sex, he hesitated. He had never imagined making love to so wide a body. Her haunches were huge.

('You're not so skinny yourself,' Harvey whispered.)

She cupped her two small breasts in her hands. She turned and looked over her shoulder. "I'm ready to go upstairs. Are you coming?" she asked.

CHAPTER TEN

In the morning, Erin lay in the bed next to Billy experiencing a continued pleasure from the wetness between her legs. She didn't jump up, as she usually did, in the middle of the night to wash away the fishy aftermath of sex or to brush her teeth to eliminate the foulness of her mouth after sleep. 'Oh, let this morning never end, dear God,' she prayed aloud in a booming voice.

Billy stirred, stretched and rolled out of bed.

She said, "Don't get up. I want to spend the entire day in bed with you. Not even getting up to eat. Just make love over and over."

He bent over to kiss her, pushing her arms away when she wrapped them around him. "I have to go to work, but I take Sundays off so I'll be back tomorrow if you want me, and I really hope you want me."

"You must have made enough money yesterday to take today off."

"Maybe the best pay day of my life. No the very best. I made $2,580. The twenty-five hundred you gave me and $80 for the clams I sold to my buyer, my middleman."

"Sooo?"

"So, I owe my sister $1,960. Now I can pay her back. When I get a couple of bucks ahead, I just can't lay down on the job, especially in the winter. And as the William Wordsworth poem goes: 'This morning gives promise of a glorious day.'" He put the gold chain holding the brass ring over his head and went into the bathroom.

Money. Money was always an issue. Whether it involved tens or hundreds of dollars for Billy at the bottom of the economic heap or tens and hundreds of thousands for her. He had so little that she could afford to pay him a stipend, to keep him. Putting him in his own apartment was out of the question, but she could easily afford a room in her house or the other half of her bed for as long as the enthrallment lasted. Erin was too experienced, too sophisticated to be hypnotized by fantastic sex into believing the honeymoon could last forever. She propped herself up on an elbow. He was beautiful, that was the appropriate adjective for him. He had real muscles and the strength to toss her around the bed with a delightful ease. As they fucked the first time, she was consumed by happiness, hoping he would go on until she disappeared, was assumed into heaven or whatever happened to a woman touched by a god. Then they did it again and again and would have done it a fourth time only they fell drained into the depths of sleep. She didn't want to let him go this morning. She wanted to keep him in her clutches, in her bed. Yet, he was the kind of man she ordinarily would disdain. Working class. His life was a dead end. He did drudge labor every day for a miniscule sum of money. He could never dig enough clams to fulfill his needs beyond a few days or a week. He dug today and had to dig tomorrow and the day after and the day after in an exhausting cycle that kept him just above the abyss of dire poverty. And he didn't seem to mind. He had no ambition to buy a house or live in a really nice one instead of the dump he rented on an industrial street. At least he didn't have jailhouse tattoos. He told her he loved the two red and pink roses notched into the small of her back on stems that flowed from the cleft of her buttocks. He didn't sport an earring, like so many blue collars, not that she would have minded. Strangely, he wore a brass ring on a cheap chain around his neck. She asked him to take it off when it banged into her nose as they thrashed around. She wondered aloud if he had pocketed it from a merry-go-round instead of taking a free ride. He said, no. She had been with men who could take her to dinner in chic restaurants and select astronomically-priced wines or skiing in Europe for the weekend to prove their success and sophistication. None of them, however, whether her ex-husband, one-night stands or the four transitory live-ins she had enjoyed, endured, and dumped over the years, had made her feel as desirable and sensuous as Billy did last night.

He came back into the bedroom. Freshly showered. Naked. Erect. He looked down at himself. "Maybe nature is telling me to skip clamming today."

"That's more like it." She slid from under the covers. She twirled across the room, laughing, and turning into him, wrapping her arms around him. She kissed him and said she would be right back.

Billy lay in the bed, covered to his neck, staring at the ceiling. He closed his eyes for a clearer memory of the pleasures with Erin, a rapture that was interrupted by Sweeney whining outside the bedroom door. "Quiet Sweeney," he called. The Lab barked in response. A series of annoyed barks. Billy knew the Lab needed to go out. He pulled on his pants and went to the door. As he opened it, Sweeney slipped past him and Linda came out of her room dressed in gray sweatpants and a hooded pink Vassar sweatshirt.

"Good morning, Billy," she sang. "Sweeney and I have been up for a while. I let him out for his morning constitutional. And we had breakfast together. We've gotten very close the two of us."

"Thanks," Billy said. He whistled to Sweeney who was sniffing the tumbled bedclothes.

"What's our hound dog smelling in there?" Linda asked with a leer.

"He's a Labrador."

"Oh I know that, Sweetie, and I can figure out what he's smelling."

Billy didn't respond. He felt uncomfortable with her intimate prattling.

"Don't feel it's necessary to apologize for all the noise you two made. Even though you woke me up, I was happy you were having so much fun."

"I suppose so," Billy said. "Sweeney," he called. The dog jumped from the bed and sat beside him, tail wagging.

Linda stroked Sweeney's head. "You and Erin ready for coffee? I can make some scrambled eggs if you're up to it."

"Maybe later," Billy said.

"Mmmmh. Lucky Erin. I'll take care of your friend, while you're taking care of mine." She laughed. "Come on, doggie. We'll take a stroll down to the water. See you later Billy. Tell Erin I was asking for her."

Sweeney followed her down the stairs.

Erin came out of the bathroom 20 minutes later. Her teeth brushed, hair combed, fresh lipstick, her body showered and perfumed.

Linda woke them from their cozy sleep about when she stuck her head in the door to tell them she was leaving for the city. Sweeney pushed past her, leaping onto the bed, tugging the covers from Erin exposing her flesh while he clamored for affection from Billy. Linda stepped into the room and sat on the bed. "When did your pooch arrive in the house?" Linda asked.

Erin sat up; she pulled the covers up to her neck. "Billy and I went over and got him in the middle of the night. Apparently they can't bring themselves to spend a night apart."

"Hmmm. Sounds like an interesting relationship." Linda stood up, kissed Erin, pecked Billy's cheek, and ran her hand across the length of Sweeney, who stood wagging his tail. In parting, she said a pot of coffee was awaiting them in the kitchen.

Erin lit a cigaret. "I want to ask you a question, Sweetie. Are you married?"

"Divorced."

"Me too. I don't have any children. Do you?"

"Nope."

"That's one way a man is lucky. My biological clock is ticktocking to the end. You can have one any time." She took a drag on her cigaret. "Why no children? Don't you like them?"

"My wife wanted to wait, then things fell apart."

Erin smiled. "You look a little nervous, Sweetie. Don't worry. Your role in my life is sexual gratification, not procreation." She kissed him. She looked into his eyes, fluttered hers, and said, "Why don't we send Sweeney downstairs? We'll make mad passionate love, again. Sleep until noon. Get up, get showered, and find some romantic place on the water for a big sumptuous lunch to recharge us for a hard-loving weekend."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She parked the car at a meter on Main Street. No coins required on Sundays. She came around the car, where Billy was waiting on the sidewalk and took his hand. Walking linked together, hand-in-hand along the street, they picked up the Sunday New York Times for Erin and Sunday Newsday for Billy. Her idea of heaven was a Sunday morning spent in bed with the paper spread around her, reading the Week in Review, examining the front page of the main news section carefully then turning through the rest of that section, scanning the magazine and book review sections, but seldom finding anything to read thoroughly. After her rage at the leftward tilt of the stories and the unfair, underhanded assaults on President Bush and Vice President Cheney subsided, she would turn to the real reason for buying the Times, the crossword puzzle.

Billy felt an unpleasant anguish in their public parade of affection. He enjoyed holding her hand, feeling the glow of her flesh, but he would rather she had been slender, with a shapely backside, flat-bellied, and small breasted, not too small, with her dark hair pulled back in a pony tail. Erin was wearing some sort of haute couture jeans and a tight leather coat, a combination which emphasized her breadth. She looked better without clothes. Her flesh, her haunches, breasts, thighs and arms, was pleasantly solid to the touch, although her belly was a soft mountainous bulge. During the stroll, she was bizarrely critical of his life style, expressing astonishment that he had neither a credit card nor a bank account. "How do you pay your bills?" she asked. His very few bills were paid in cash or with postal money orders. When he pulled out his wad of 25 hundred-dollar bills to pay the luncheon tab in the restaurant. She insisted he put the cash away. She held up her Platinum American Express Card. "You would be paying with real money, Sweetie. I'm on an expense account. So let TRUE take care of the bill." She grinned. "As executive director of TRUE I can attest that you are more than worth the price of this little lunch."

"You make me sound like a hooker."

"Doesn't every man want to be a gigolo?"

"Do you always pick up the tab, or am I a special case?"

She leaned over to kiss him. "You're a very special case, Sweetie," she said softly. "I want to send you roses. I want to bathe you in champagne. I want to take you back to the house and fuck you."

"Well what can a boy do when a woman talks like that? Don't hesitate to pick up the check. I've never been treated this way before, but I can say it feels pretty good."

They stopped at the bakery on Main Street where Erin picked out half a dozen croissants and half a dozen Danish pastries. Back at the house with the Sunday papers, they shared a pot of coffee and the baked goods. She ate two croissants and three of the Danish. Billy had one Danish and gave half of another to Sweeney to the annoyance of Erin, who wondered aloud whether so good a pastry should be wasted on a dog. "Be careful. Ever see the movie, 'A Boy and His Dog'?" She shook her head. "It's a science fiction film set in the catastrophic future. When the chips are down, and the boy has to choose between the girl and his dog, he chooses the dog."

She came around the kitchen table, sat on his lap and kissed him. "I doubt if that would happen now, Sweetie. We're in the honeymoon phase of our relationship. Phase one is attraction; phase two is sex, the honeymoon where we are now; phase three if we get that far is companionship; and phase four, ennui, the tedium tee-de-dee just before the end of the affair. Phases two and three are good for about a year each. Phase four lasts any where from a day to a month. I really can't abide being in a dreary state of mind for too long."

"So I can expect my free ride for another two years and some odd days."

She laughed. "I don't believe the formula applies to gigolos. We'll have to see. I must admit you are turning out to be so much more than just a sex object, Sweetie. I must admit when I saw you clamming, you looked very inviting. I said to myself, 'I'll bet a strong, healthy man like that would be good in the sack. I was right." She smiled. "Linda was interested too." In her 36 years, Erin had had five double-chinned, pudgy lovers. She learned from her marriage right out of college that she never wanted to be chained to one man for a lifetime. Too monogamously monotonous. One of her boyfriends had lived with her for three years; the others for two each. Marriage had never been an issue with any of them, mutual boredom and irritation over little things like leaving underwear on the floor next to the bed or failing to recap the toothpaste tube led to fierce arguments and final exits. Those men had good incomes, healthy bank accounts, multiple credit cards, and nice apartments before moving into her three-story brick house in Georgetown as her cohabitant.

"I'm flattered," Billy said in response to being told of how attractive he appeared to two women." He toyed with the fantasy of connecting to Linda too.

('I wouldn't say that out loud,' Harvey whispered.)

"Do you think there is something mystical or magic about our relationship? I find it just amazing how hungry I am for you. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Sweetie, but I must admit you're not my type. Ordinarily I wouldn't even look at a man like you."

Billy petted Sweeney and slipped him a piece of croissant while he considered his response. He wouldn't tell her that she wasn't his type either. "Well since I'm playing the gigolo who turns you on, are you going to give me a big tip when the weekend is over?"

She stood and laughed. "You have to promise me that you won't tell anyone I'm paying you for your services. I was thinking of taping the way you moan and groan when we're making love so I could play it at parties in Washington. All the women would be jealous and the men would want to hop in the sack with me."

"And you look like you are going to blow a blood vessel your face turns so red."

She leaned down to kiss him, a gentle kiss. "Wow. You can really kiss." Then she stepped back, putting on a smile. "Sweetie, I won't hurt your feelings will I, if I ask you whether you have something to do this morning?" There was a pleasant January sun streaming through the French doors onto the queen-sized bed in her room upstairs. Erin was eager to enjoy that setting for the Sunday Times and the crossword puzzle. As soon as he left, she would brew a fresh pot of coffee. There were a cheese Danish and half a cinnamon left. Her mouth watered at the prospect of picking at the remains of the Danish, sipping the rich coffee, and doing the crossword puzzle.

That was okay with Billy. He felt an urge to work on his sculpture in progress and he wanted to stop by his sister's house to pay back the money she had given him over the past two years. He always insisted the sums were loans, but neither he nor Eileen, his sister, expected him ever to come up with enough money to erase his debt. The price paid for clams on the beach had become that bad. Whenever he did have a remarkable day on the water, the money was consumed by rent or car repairs or a dentist bill or the oil bill and a couple of times when Sweeney got so sick he had to take him to the vet.

Erin put on the fresh pot of coffee while Billy collected his things upstairs. As he went out the door, she kissed him in a wifely fashion. She said, "Why don't you come back for supper tonight. Pick up a couple of pizzas, say a sausage and a pepper and onion. We can watch a dirty movie and have sex for dessert."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Billy blew his whistle as he chugged past Tommy Ledge who was working his favorite spot near the Huntington Lighthouse. Trailing behind Billy at a respectable distance were the two clammers who had watched him sell the 4,500 clams last week. They had latched onto him on Friday, but he had clammed only long enough to dig the 1,000 clams he needed, 500 for Erin's party and the other 500 for his buyer.

The water was choppy and the wind stiffer than predicted. Billy cut his motor near Culligan Neck in Huntington Bay. He turned on his radio to listen to NPR as he worked, then clamped together three 12-foot sections of aluminum pole, added a six-foot section for extra weight and attached the rake to the end. He was distracted by the 'uhhh uhhh' cries of several double-crested cormorants streaking just above the rolling water. Billy watched them carefully. He fetched his small sketch pad from the pilot's cabin to draw his impressions of the birds before settling into the rhythm of digging. The sculpture on which he was working was of a pair of cormorants in flight, their black wings touching.

The two other clammers had stationed themselves on either side of his boat. The three of them ostensibly performed the heavy-lifting of digging clams with similar skills. Yet Billy hauled in a couple of dozen clams in each pass, the others pulled in half that number in their best shots. The brass ring at work? One of the clammers, trying to match Billy's harvest, moved closer to the area where he labored. Billy stopped digging. "Why don't you not catch clams some place else?"

The clammer shouted, "Fuck it." He slammed down his rake and danced in rage within the narrow confines of his little boat.

('Stay cool,' Harvey whispered. 'He said fuck it not fuck you so there's no need for bloodshed').

"No need to say that to me Harvey. I'm not looking for a fight," Billy said aloud, watching the angry clammer. He stopped raking until he was satisfied that neither of the pair was irritated and stupid enough to be violent. The foul-mouthed one took a couple more grabs nearby Billy then moved to more appropriate distance.

When static made listening to a program of Arlo Guthrie's music painful, Billy turned to Air America where Babs Budinsky of the cons-prober blog, was telling her hostess, "I've been wondering where Her Chubbiness Queen of the Poison Pen has been hiding out. And like the Shadow, now I know. I happened to be on the trail of Ralph Culligan, the billionaire money bags of the arch conservative movement. I followed him to his hereditary family fiefdom, Culligan Neck, on Long Island. The neck is this huge lump of real estate sticking out in Long Island Sound. Everything out there is called Culligan. The Village of Culligan, the Culligan Estate, Culligan's Harbor, and Culligan's Cove. Ralphie Deep Pockets Culligan, as I like to call him, turned 92 on Jan. 12. President Bush hosted a birthday party for him at the White House, which tells you where he puts his money."

"You're wandering. I know who you are talking about, but for listeners who have never heard you before, tell the world who and what Her Chubbiness is," the talk show hostess said.

"Her Chubbiness, Queen of the Poison Pen, both well-earned pejoratives is Erin Prendergast. You might recall, that in 2004 campaign, she was the executive director of Project Truth and Responsibility that went under the arrogant acronym Project TAR. While the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth went after the big fish in the presidential campaign, Her Chubbiness and her crew focused on lesser lights in Congressional Campaigns."

Billy stopped work. He knelt down near the radio to turn up the volume and to listen carefully.

('Is that your hefty lady she's talking about?' Harvey asked.)

"You know it is. Be quiet. I want to hear what she has to say," Billy said.

The radio show hostess said, "Babs give the listeners your favorite example of Ms. Prendergast's vile work on behalf of Conservative America. I know you are dying to."

"Roger Truman is a Vietnam vet from Georgia who won the Silver Star for heroism, who suffered a breakdown on the battlefield because of the blood on his hands, and who returned home to run his family's hardware store. Roger specialized in what I would call do-good community pastimes. He was a member of the library board and the school board and a couple of fund-raising programs to help the needy, the old, and the uneducated. Then along came the Iraq War. Roger blew his cork. He smelled another Vietnam only worse this time with American women, not the Bush girls of course, as well as men being sent to die for big oil, big business, and to foster the reelection of right wing Republicans in a foreign land that was no real threat to the United States.

"We all feel that way. So let's get to the red meat of your story."

"Roger got the Democratic nomination and was a serious contender against the Republican incumbent, who like most of them, was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War so naturally a foaming at the mouth advocate for the invasion of Iraq and ready to show his support for the troops by holding their coats while they did the fighting and offered their limbs and lives for the neo-con cause. The early polls showed Roger as a sure-fire winner. Then Her Chubbiness went to work. They did a campaign in which they asked, 'Did Corporal Truman really deserve that Silver Star—or was his special relationship with his platoon commander, who later died of AIDs, the reason for the award? Everyone got the message. Was the medal a reward for Roger sucking up or sucking off the lieutenant? They came up with a platoon sergeant and squad leader who signed statements saying they didn't see Roger do anything worthy of a medal and that they had the impression that Roger wanted to go home more than anything else. Of course, Roger wanted to get out of that hell hole, who didn't? Later it turned out that both the sergeant and the squad leader weren't even in the platoon at the time of Roger's heroics.

"Then they came up with the clincher. Roger refused to join the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He just wanted to put the war behind him and went into politics only because of his outrage over the unnecessary war in Iraq."

"So what is Her Chubbiness doing now?"

"She had to find something to do between campaigns, while supporting the heavy-eating lifestyle she has come to love. So Ralphie held a fundraiser last Saturday at Culligan House, his estate on Long Island. I was there I heard him say, they had raised $500,000 for Her Chubbiness' latest venture, Ten Republicans United for the Environment, which boils down to the acronym TRUE."

"When did these people ever tell the truth?"

"That's a truism, but I hear Erin got a $200,000 grant from TRUE for a book she's writing tentatively called, Wait A Minute, in defense of George Bush's stand that global warming is a Leftie myth. Ralphie is letting her stay in the guest cottage on his estate while she turns out that piece of trash. The only bright light in this dim tale is that everyone knows Bush will never read the book unless she produces a graphic novel without too many big words."

"God save America! Please God save America from these freaks," the hostess said closing the interview.

The show ended with the hostess and Babs singing along to John Lennon and Paul McCartney's "Give Peace a Chance."

Billy stood up and went back to clamming. He worked on automatic pilot with his mind focused on Babs Budinsky's nasty portrayal of Erin as a poison pen for right wing politicians instead of the rake, the wind and the water. Erin had told him what she did for a living, but what her calling meant hadn't registered until he heard Babs Budinsky describe how cruel and perhaps dishonest she could be.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He got to the cottage at 7, half an hour after the allotted dinner time. When she opened the door, their kiss was a peck on the lips. She was wearing a green apron decorated with giraffes and a somber expression on her face. "Well you finally made it. I wish you had gotten here earlier instead of later. I really could have used your company Sweetie," she said.

"What's up?" he asked. He tossed his jacket on a chair. She led him into the kitchen past a shotgun leaning against the pantry door. "I asked, what's up? Is there a reason you've got a shotgun out?"

"Yes. There's a good reason. I'll tell you about it after dinner." There was a bottle of red wine, glasses, plates, and silverware on the table. "We're having steak and French fries. It's all ready. You want a salad dish or can you eat it on your plate?" She opened the wine, filling her glass first and then his. She raised her glass, and he touched his to hers. "To better days," she said.

She took the steaks from the broiler and the potatoes from the oven where they had been sitting awaiting his arrival. The salad with an oil and vinegar dressing was in a large bowl on the kitchen table. He cut into the steak. It was less than warm, and raw. The French fries were a bit pasty at the center. Billy would have preferred a beer or an Irish whiskey to the wine, and Blue Cheese dressing to the oil and vinegar. He realized as he consumed the disappointing food that the touching of their lips at the door failed to generate a fire that should have surged through his body.

He looked across the table at Erin gobbling the mediocre meal. Billy, who was conscious of his weight, had a rule that he never ate anything that didn't taste good. Tonight, out of politeness, he was force feeding himself. Erin could eat with fervor, but obviously was incapable of cooking with any finesse.

Until he heard Babs Budinsky tear into Erin on WBAI that afternoon, attacking her personally as a fat slob and politically as a poison pen, Billy had not considered what Erin did for a living. He was slow in setting out for her house this evening as he sat, stroking Sweeney, lost in the question of what motivated Erin? Money? Ideology? Just doing a job? How could she use lies to destroy a brave man's reputation? Did she really believe that the national forests should be exploited and water and air be polluted for profit? That global warming was a myth of the environmentalists?

('Confront her with your questions. That's the manly thing to do,' Harvey said.)

As he sat across from her in The Guest House kitchen Billy knew that asking those questions would end their affair and the possibility he could make some easy money posing for the tea and cookies ads.

('I warned you about free rides. There's always a price to pay,' Harvey said.)

Billy felt embarrassed, but ignored him. Harvey must know, because he seemed to know every thought bubbling through his head, that he was searching for a way to graciously dump Erin without her retaliating by turning Linda against him.

('What's that old saying about whether the price is $15 or a million, you're still a whore,' Harvey said.)

Billy shook his head as though that would drive Harvey away. Erin didn't notice his discomfort. She ate in silence until she cleaned her plate. Billy had left most of the steak and half the potatoes uneaten. She finished the wine in her glass, and said: "I'm not a cook under the best of circumstances, and right now I have a lot on my mind."

She looked so pained, Billy hoped that she was going to tell him that she couldn't see him any more. That would be a relief, a parting without animosity, with him as the seemingly aggrieved party. "Go ahead. Tell me what the problem is."

"I need your help," she said reaching across the table to take his hand.

"If I can help you, I will," Billy said with an uneasy feeling that the escape hatch he saw had closed.

('Ah, the noble clammer,' Harvey whispered.)

Her eyes filled with tears. "Billy, today has been hell on earth for me, I've been so afraid. I don't know how I managed to eat and keep this bottled up, but I guess I didn't want to ruin your dinner. I got a call today from Ralph Culligan's Washington office to tell me that a venomous bitch who hates me had an item on her blog pinpointing where I'm living. On the Culligan Estate, in this house."

"Was that on the con-prober blog? I heard the woman who runs it on WBAI today. She said you were hiding out on the Culligan Estate. Are you?"

"Goddamn it, I'm not hiding. But I don't want to make myself an easy target for a loon who says he wants to cut out my tongue. And I know from his psychiatric reports that he is capable of doing just that."

"What are you talking about? According to Babs Budinsky, you're the one doing the attacking. She said you destroyed some Vietnam war hero in Georgia with a bunch of lies like the Swift Boat guys did to John Kerry."

Her mood shifted to anger. "That's bullshit. Roger Truman got a medal he didn't deserve and put on this act about being a modest war hero. The man's a fraud. He wanted to go to Congress where we need stand-up men to back the President. I helped save the country from having a bleeding heart loser occupy that congressional seat, and I'm proud of it."

"And so this guy Truman is coming after you?"

"No the Vietnam War took the fight out of Roger Truman. He isn't even capable of hurting his worst enemy's feelings any more.

"So who is after you?"

"His name is Leo Boston. He is certifiably crazy. He worked on Truman's Congressional campaign, and was so upset about Truman losing that he swore he would cut out my tongue. The Georgia Overview did a story analyzing the outcome of the election and they gave me the credit I certainly deserved for Truman's defeat. That's how this nutcase got on to me. Last month, he tried to break into my house in Georgetown, but I got lucky and a neighbor saw him and frightened him away. He dropped a pair of pliers and a carving knife when he ran. This guy spent time in a mental hospital, he's been in and out of jails, and was homeless until Truman took him in."

"So he is the reason you're here."

"Damn right. Ralph offered me the use of this house to give me a quiet place to write the book until the police picked up Boston. I never imagined he would find me here."

"So all you have to do is leave town again. Stay with your sister in the city or get an apartment in Los Angeles or Houston Texas."

"I'm not sure I can do that. Ralph is going to give me a call in the morning and we're going to discuss the whole situation. I want you to stay with me tonight so I can get a good night's sleep. Unless Boston is a regular reader of that blog or heard the NPR broadcast, he's probably watching my house in Georgetown. But I must admit I'll feel more comfortable with you sitting by my side."

"Is that what the shotgun is for?"

"Yes."

('Along side of Erin, Billy boy, you live a cloistered life. This bitch on wheels is a warrior, a brutal one,' Harvey said.)

"Don't worry," Billy said aloud in response to Harvey's whispering before he caught himself. The image of Leo Boston using a pliers to pull Erin's tongue from her mouth to slice it off with a knife gave Billy a chill that shook his body. He said to Erin, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll drive to my house. I'll get my shaving kit and some clothes and Sweeney. "He'll bark like hell if someone comes creeping around."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Billy was awakened by a throaty growl from Sweeney. Erin was wrapped around him, her left arm across his chest, her legs entangled in his. He listened. He could hear the wind. The alarm clock on the bedside table showed 2 AM. He slipped from the warmth of her body and the bed. She didn't even stir. Billy looked out the French doors, barely able to see the outline of the edge of the terrace below against the water. Sweeney stood at his side pressing against him, wagging his tail. The wind howled outside. The only other sound was Sweeney breathing. He went back to bed.

Erin had rolled over. He kissed her shoulder and lay back thinking about the $200,000 grant she had received for the book she was writing. Quick with numbers, he always arrived at how much he would receive for his clams before the buyer did doing the sums on his hand-held calculator. Billy figured that if he averaged a thousand clams a day, was able to work an average five days a week, he would make $40,000 for a 50-week year, so it would take him five years to make $200,000, digging 1,250,000 clams in the process.

His internal alarm popped him awake and out of bed into the cold of the winter morning. He checked the clock on the night table: 6:05. He dressed in the dark so he wouldn't disturb Erin, who was snoring gently. Down in the kitchen, he let Sweeney out the door into the fiercely windy pre-dawn dark. The wind was too high and thermometer too low to clam so he wouldn't be losing a day's pay to stay with Erin. The electric percolator was on the counter. He found a tin of coffee in the pantry. He turned on NPR's morning edition while the coffee perked.

At seven o'clock, the phone rang. Billy didn't answer it. Often he didn't answer his own phone. He wasn't about to pick up someone else's call.

On the fifth ring, Erin, stirred from her sleep, answered the upstairs phone, knowing before he spoke that Ralph Culligan was on the line. Culligan wanted to know if she had any idea how that damned blogger had gotten into their fundraiser? She certainly wasn't a guest, because he had shaken hands with every man and woman at the affair. The few he didn't know had been checked out by his director of security, Frank Kelly. Culligan told her that Kelly would arrive later in the day from Washington to determine just how Babs Budinsky infiltrated their fundraiser.

"Have you considered whether I should stay here or move to another location?"

"Kelly will advise you on precautions. Of course, I think it's best that you stay out of Washington until we find that madman, but I can't imagine Leo Boston finding you at the estate. He's probably living in a cardboard box somewhere. You get that book done honey and don't worry your head about Leo Boston."

"I agree," Erin said, even though she didn't. She had become a favorite of Ralph Culligan's, a situation that brought her access to the movers of the Conservative movement. Ralph envisioned himself as a fearless man of steel wrapped in a veneer of graciousness. He expected everyone around him to emulate his style and his philosophy from his college football career that the best defense was an overpowering offense.

"Did you find the shotgun in the gun closet?"

"Yes."

"If Leo Boston shows up, say hello to him with that," he said, adding his old man's chuckle. He knew how skilled she was with a shotgun. He thought back to the brisk winter day, a decade ago when he was still agile, that Erin had joined him for a weekend pheasant hunting party in Oklahoma. She was just getting traction in Washington politics, working as a low-level staffer on one of the political action committees he favored. When they were introduced, she smiled at him with bedroom eyes, as so many women did; he had a patrician's face with smiling wrinkles, high cheek bones and a head of thick white hair. Ralph Culligan appreciated women of all shapes. He enjoyed the boney and the plump as long as they were willing and interested, attitudes that aroused him. He appreciated those with bedroom skills and just the same enjoyed teaching his favorite techniques to the inexperienced.

Through the months following their first meeting, Ralph and Erin came across one another at several fundraisers. He put his invitation for the trip to Oklahoma in the context of a reward for her good work in the election that year. He really had no idea what, if anything, she had done, but that was a convenient reason. She had never flown in a private jet until that outing. They were up before dawn, as he always was, and out in the wonderfully clean air. They dined on the pheasants she had bagged. They slept together that night and the next night, but never again. That was how Culligan treated the young, ambitious, willing women in his corporations and political organizations. He was extraordinarily lucky and careful in his application of la droit du seigneur Culligan. He never left any pregnant, angry, or vengeful. He had had a long career, extending back to 1926, when he entered the family business after graduating from Yale. His sexual encounters with the women who worked for his entities had emerged in several of their memoirs, and more recently among the stream of anti-Conservative and anti-Bush books. He chuckled when he read them, especially when two of them described him as gorgeous in the nude. Over the years, his body had drooped from firm and muscled to the unavoidable softness of old age, but he was certain examining his physique in the mirror that he looked better than almost any man his age. Since his wife was dead, there was no one to berate him over his flings with the young and ambitious in his political and corporate worlds. He never exploited anyone. Instead of thanking the young women with flowers, he invariably improved their career opportunities, because he always chose the bright rather than the bimbo.

Culligan switched to his fatherly tone, a technique he had begun applying sometime around his 85th birthday, "Erin, I want you to promise you are going to focus on the book. We're going to make it a best seller. You wait and see."

"The writing is going very well Ralph, but if I have to take a few minutes out to defend myself I will."

He chuckled and chuckled. "I have a call coming, I have to take. God be with ye."

Erin came down the stairs in her heavy woolen robe. She wrapped her arms around Billy and kissed him with an exaggerated passion. "Just what every girl needs, a handsome man waiting to serve her morning coffee."

Billy made bacon and eggs with home fries and toasted English Muffins for breakfast while Erin sipped her coffee and watched. She reflected on the similarity between her subservient relationship to Ralph Culligan and Billy's to her. Ralph had entertained her, fucked her, and sent her on her way up her career ladder, never demanding any more sex, although she would have given herself to him willingly, because she liked and admired him and his performance between the sheets was as good as any of the others she had had. That was an arguable point. Did Ralph have her? For his momentary pleasure, for his life-long scoreboard of conquests, she was sure he kept one, for his sense domination. Or did she have him? She was a consenting adult and he satisfied her curiosity that an old goat could still perform. That was something she wanted to know so she wouldn't automatically exclude any venerable, handsome, well-preserved wealthy man from courting her. There was the possibility that no matter what the age difference an evergreen love would blossom, but that was unlikely. Her needs involved so much more than ephemeral excitement.

She used other people's money, funds from TRUE, for her conquest of Billy. She looked at him, she wanted him, she acquired him. Despite the intensity of the passion he aroused in her, they had so little in common that their connection was too fragile to last very long.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Frank Kelly arrived just after two o'clock driving his black Buick LeSabre slowly across the rutted, frozen surface of the dirt road leading from the big parking lot behind the mansion to the cottage. He wore a soft Lambskin leather car coat that pulled up revealing a huge backside when he reached deep into the trunk of the car for a soft shoulder bag.

Billy opened the kitchen door and Sweeney charged past him to set himself between the house and the stranger. The Lab barked furiously, the hair on his back standing.

"Call off the fucking dog," Kelly said. He was tired, just a bit groggy from the three Jameson's he had with his Irish stew lunch in Sugar's in the village. And he was stiff, his back still hurting from the six hour drive from Washington that would have taken five hours tops but for an accident on the Jersey Turnpike and a tangle of traffic on the Belt Parkway along Kennedy Airport. And this morning, he had to get up at six, instead of his more comfortable 8 AM. He knew enough to eat before he got to the Culligan Estate because Erin was a careerist with an expense account and without the foggiest notion of cooking; she either ate out or got take out.

Billy whistled. Sweeney trotted back to the kitchen porch. "Inside," Billy said, holding the door open for the dog.

Kelly measured Billy as he walked towards him. He was strong, the neck muscles told him that, somewhere in his 40s with a roughish outdoor face and a belly just beginning to show the first bulge of age and the wrong kind of eating. Too much beer, too much bread. Maybe too many French Fries with the hamburgers. Kelly knew all about the flavors on the tongue and impact on the body of that diet. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" Kelly asked. No mention had been made of anyone being with Erin. He didn't like surprises, but he was prepared for the worst of them with a nine millimeter under his left arm and his seven-inch fighting knife from a tour in Vietnam strapped in a holster on his left leg.

"You must be Frank Kelly. I'm Billy Plunkett. Erin said you were coming."

"Friend or employee?" He didn't have the demeanor of an employee. Kelly figured this guy must be fucking her. 'Some like 'em fat,' he thought.

Billy didn't answer. He could smell the liquor on Kelly's breath. He didn't like Kelly or the grim expression on his face. He pushed the door open so Kelly could slide past.

"After you," Kelly said. "I said after you," he said raising his voice. He wasn't going to allow a man he didn't know to position himself behind him.

Billy led Kelly into the living room. "Erin's upstairs writing. I'll get her."

"You do that. And take the mutt with you."

Billy whistled and Sweeney trotted up the stairs behind him. Erin was writing on her laptop computer at her corner desk in the commons room. She turned off the computer. "I heard him come in," she said. She walked past Billy and down the stairs.

Kelly was standing in front of the fire his hands stretched toward the flames. "Very nice, very comfortable. Maybe very romantic little set up," he said in greeting.

"Hello Frank," she said neither kissing him nor extending her hand. She didn't like Kelly, and he didn't like her. They were people who worked on projects where they had to intersect but without any unnecessary pleasantries or conversation with only a nod or an occasional hello passing between them.

Sweeney lay down near the fire. He watched Kelly's every move. Erin sat in one of the easy chairs with Billy standing behind her.

"What's the shotgun for?" Kelly asked, pointing the thumb of his right hand over his shoulder towards the kitchen where the weapon leaned against the pantry door.

"Protection."

"Not much protection. Leo Boston picks it up on his way in then that shotgun changes from your protection to his weapon. Go get it." She hesitated. "Go get it, I said." She got up and went into the kitchen. He turned to Billy, looking into his eyes. "Are you familiar with shotguns; the operation of that shotgun in particular?"

"I went duck hunting once when I was a kid. As I recall, you point it and pull the trigger. Or is there some mystery to it?"

Erin returned with the shotgun. Kelly took the weapon. "A Remington 11-87. Semi-automatic. Five shot. Ever use one of these?" he asked Erin.

"On a turkey shoot."

"Okay. Keep it within easy reach or locked away. Don't ever leave it lying around. Now tell me who is Billy Plunkett and what's he doing here?" he said pointing to Billy.

"Billy's a friend. He is staying with me until I'm safely out of here."

Kelly smirked. "Okay I want the two of you to stay right here until I get back." He took a small metal tool case from the shoulder bag. "I'm going up to the big house to get the discs from the surveillance cameras."

Kelly returned within an hour. He told Erin and Billy that he expected the discs to confirm what he suspected, that Babs Budinsky, whose real name was Maureen Masterson, infiltrated the fundraiser in the guise of a catering employee, most likely a walking hors d'oeurves server. He took a laptop computer from his case and put it on the coffee table in front of the fireplace in the living room. He plugged the laptop into an extension cord and inserted the disc from the hidden camera at the employee's entrance. He had three photos of Babs, which he showed to Erin and Billy before turning on the computer. As each woman came through the employee's entrance to the main house's kitchen, Kelly froze the frame and enlarged the image. The fourth woman through the door was Babs Budinsky, whose open coat showed her dressed in the black short skirt and black stockings of a server. "Okay," Kelly said.

"That bitch. Are we going to be able to prosecute her or sue her?" Erin asked.

"That's for the lawyers to decide, but I doubt it. We'll put this in a file in case we can use it somehow in the future and we'll watch for her at future fundraisers. Who did you hire to cater that party?"

"Lombardy Catering Services. We always use them for our New York parties. I've hired them half a dozen times and recommended them to other people."

"Don't any more."

Erin shook her head. She oozed fury. "I'm going to call up Anthony Lombardo and tell that stupid son of a bitch that the next Republican party he caterers will be the day hell freezes over. I'm going to spread the word that Lombardy Catering is kaput."

"No. We have to take care of this quietly. Just don't give them any more business. Maybe in a few months the word will get around somehow that Lombardy Catering is a security risk, but no one will be able to say it came from us." The words had barely dropped from Kelly's mouth when he remembered he was speaking in front of a man he didn't know. He experienced a flush of disgust with himself for having blundered away from the basic principle of never saying anything of consequence within the hearing of an outsider. He decided to dig a little deeper into who Billy Plunkett was. "How long have you and Erin been friends, Billy?"

Billy didn't answer him. Kelly was an abrasive bully who enjoyed shoving people around, probably physically as well as psychologically. He had no hold over Billy.

Kelly, his annoyance flagged on his face, stared into Billy's eyes, for 30 seconds that seemed like an hour. He broke the silence: "Are you being cute? Are you trying to antagonize me?"

Erin said, "I've only known Billy for about a week, but I trust him."

Kelly made a show of shaking his head. "I have to talk to you. Let's go into the kitchen."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

They sat for a while, in front of the fireplace, neither speaking. An uneasy passing of time while Frank Kelly drove and walked around the Culligan Estate in search of whatever he could find. Billy felt strangely on edge.

"That man is such a prick," Erin said. She stared into the fire. "I just can't write any more today. Do you want a cup of tea?" she asked.

"That would be nice."

She stood. "You made my day. You were so marvelously rude to Frank Kelly. He deserved it. He is so suspicious of everyone. But don't take it personally. That's his job, and he loves it. I'll bet he is checking you out even as we sit here. I had to go to his apartment once, and the whole place was full of files. He hasn't caught on to the paperless office yet. I wanted so much to read his dossier on me."

"Why didn't you ask for it?"

She shook her head.

"You live in an ugly world," he said.

She didn't respond. She went into the kitchen. Filled the tea kettle with water and put it on a burner. Took pound cake from the breadbox, and strawberry ice cream from the freezer. She sat at the kitchen table until the water boiled. She put Welsh Tea bags in two cups, filled them with hot water, and put scoops of ice cream on two pieces of pound cake. She had learned in their casual conversations about Billy's passion for pound cake. "The tea is ready," she called.

Billy sat across from her at the table. The silence between them extended through the consumption of the tea and cake. He was thinking of the environment in which she worked where files were kept by security men on employees, contractors and political enemies. Her thoughts were on Leo Boston, whether she could continue writing while half listening for strange sounds in the house. When she was growing up she hated going down the stairs at night into the basement of her family's home in Denver. Chills would run up and down her legs and her back. She would try not to think of demons lurking in dark corners, and she would run up the stairs expecting something from below to grab her ankle.

"Are you staying for dinner or are you going home early?" she asked. She was testing his devotion to her.

"I thought the deal was that I was staying with you until you moved on?"

As she anticipated, she could count on him. She said, "I'm not going tonight. I may not be going for a long time. I have to finish this book, which could take months. I have until December first. Kelly advised me to haul my ass to a gated community in San Diego, where the rent-a-cops and the fence around the community would protect me. And, to keep a low profile. Out of sight, out of mind. But I thought about what Ralph Culligan said, that he couldn't imagine Leo Boston finding me here. When Ralph speaks you have to listen carefully. He chooses every word with care so you better read him right or you'll be in trouble. I thought about it all night and all morning after talking to Ralph. He values people with guts. And, can you imagine how Babs Budinsky would play it when she found out that her piece was responsible for me moving. She would say I was like a rat hiding in a hole in San Diego. The Lefties love to say we're always ready to send somebody else's kids to fight our wars, that we're cowards making sure we don't get in the line of fire." She lit a Marlboro drawing the smoke deep into her lungs. She blew a column of smoke across the room, a sign to her of arriving at a decision. "I'm settled in here, in this romantic picturesque cottage on Long Island, on the water overlooking Culligan's Bay. I've got a fireplace, I've got you for sex and conversation, and I've got the shotgun for Leo Boston. What more could a girl ask?"

Billy listened to her monologue considering how he should respond. Today wasn't a loss for him. The weather was so lousy he couldn't have clammed anyhow. He could give up a day or two for her; he had more money in his pocket than usual for this time of year, but not enough to give up work for even a week. He had rent, oil, and utility bills to pay.

Erin kept her lips closed against the smile that was pressing from within. She knew what she was going to offer Billy. She refrained from speaking so he could babble out his thoughts, and fears. She could sense his dread of not being able to cobble together the money for his rent. He was so far down the economic totem pole that the rent on a shack was a burden. He spoke.

"I can't afford to not clam. That's how I make my living. I have bills to pay. I'll stay here as much as possible, all night every night. I'll be here for coffee in the morning, early in the morning, and dinner at night. When I'm not here, Sweeney will be. I'll leave him here with you. He'll bark if Leo Boston shows up so you'll have time to get your shotgun and call the police. Besides, I figure Sweeney will do a job on anyone who tries to attack you. So that's how things stand."

Erin cleared the cups and plates from the table and put them in the dishwasher. She used that brief span of time to tease him in the anticipation of her reaction to his willingness to be a part-time protector as long as it didn't interfere with his clamming. She said to Billy, "Having you here makes me feel absolutely secure. I can write without jumping at every noise or every time Sweeney barks expecting Leo Boston to come barging through the door. So I have a proposition to make to you. Tell me how much do you make a day clamming?"

Yesterday, Billy had hauled in 1,500 clams and was paid 16 cents a clam which added up to $240. In the week just before he found the brass ring, he had had a 650-clam day and a 900-clam day at 15 cents apiece taking in $97.50 one day and $137 the next. Normally Billy responded to questions about his income with evasions such as 'I made as much as I made.' He sensed Erin was going offer to pay him to sit by her side instead of clamming. He didn't want to rip her off, but he was embarrassed to tell how little he earned. So he said, "I made $240 yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I pulled in $720 one day."

She fetched a pen and a pad from her desk. She added the $240 and $720, divided by 2 for an average and came up with a figure of $480 a day. He was lying. He didn't make that kind of money. His house was too shabby, his clothes too ordinary, too worn. "How many days a week do you work?"

"I always take Sundays off. I don't go to church, but it's a cultural thing I guess. Shouldn't work on Sunday. So I work six days a week whenever I can in case I run into days like today when it's too cold or windy to go out on the water. So let's say I average five days a week year round"

"Give me an honest figure on what you average for a day? I love you, but you don't make any $480 a day." Why in the world did she say, 'I love you?' she asked herself. Maybe she was applying the massage technique of softening an attack on an underling's credibility by saying something nice so 'I love you' unintentionally tumbled out.

The words came with difficulty. He said, "On average I make about $150 a day. I bounce up from there once in a while and sometimes I make less. Usually, winter is a hard time. The clams dig down deep and the weather can be tough."

"What do you do when the weather's bad and you can't work?"

She was making him uncomfortable with her questions, probing into his life. Only because of the connection between them and her saying I love you just now, he answered. "I do things around the house, clean or whatever. I fix the car, work on the boat motor. Spend some time at Sugar's. I sculpt."

"I've had an aha! Here's my offer. I need you around twenty four-seven to make me feel safe, especially during the day when I'm writing. You make $150 a day. That's $1,050 a week for a seven-day week. I'm going to hire you for four weeks, minimum. So this is what you do, you go to the computer in my office upstairs. You type up a proposal for a grant to sculpt whatever you are sculpting now for $4,200 for four weeks. Just a simple note addressed to Erin Prendergast, executive director of TRUE, my foundation Ten Republicans United for the Environment, saying that sculptures of wild birds would be a great way to promote environmental consciousness among sophisticated people and that you need that amount of money to support yourself in TRUE's Art for Protecting the Environment program. Just thought that one up. The acronym is APE." She laughed at her own cleverness. "The money will cover you running errands once in a while, making breakfast and lunch and dinner along with whatever sculpting you have time to do. We'll renew the grant every four weeks until Leo Boston is found and locked safely away. Hey, along with the money, you get room and board and me. After I'm finished writing for the day of course."

Billy had often considered finding other work on the days when he couldn't clam in the winter, but had never gone beyond thinking about it. "Where can I do my sculpting around here?"

"I have a solution." Erin led him down the short hall on the first floor to the maid's room. She suggested he could remove the bed, the dresser and the single wooden chair to transform the small bedroom into a temporary studio. She stubbed out her cigaret. "Come on upstairs. You type out your grant request. Print it off. I'll sign it. Then I'll give you a welcome aboard quickie."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The thunk of the rubber mallet striking the gouge biting away another piece of the oak wood made Billy's very being sing. Never before in the expanse of the past 15 years on a day like this with a warm winter sun and a soft February breeze, had he been able to skip a day of clamming for a day of sculpting.

Billy had started whittling as a sophomore in high school. His specialty, which brought him amused acclaim within his family and circle of friends, was a lumpy unicorn in pine with a thick horn and chubby legs. When his advisor in freshman year at Rubicon College in Pennsylvania, Professor Grace Spencer, invited him with three classmates to dinner at her farm near the college, Billy brought one of his unicorns as a gift. The other students brought a cake, flowers and a bottle of red wine. Professor Spencer's husband, Gregory Spencer, a man with a scarred, craggy face, whose sneer defined his constant mood, was a modestly-successful artist with several paintings in minor museums. The college and the local town were very proud of Gregory Spencer.

Professor Spencer put the cut flowers in a vase on the sideboard. Gregory Spencer took the unicorn. He ran his fingers over the rough form of the mythical animal. He looked hard at Billy before putting the unicorn on the fireplace mantle in the living room.

The wine was served with dinner. Afterwards in front of a roaring fire in the big living room, they ate the cake with cups of coffee and tea. For a while, the professor and her students chatted about the weather, the football team's disastrous season, and Warren Beatty's film 'Reds.' In a lull of the talk, Gregory Spencer rose from his arm chair to step to the fireplace. He took the unicorn in his two hands. "Do you know what this represents" he asked the gathering.

"Rough sex in the forest," a coed said to the titters of everyone but Gregory Spencer.

"Very good. Very clever. But let's focus on something important." He held the unicorn on the flat of his right hand. "The style is primitive. But I see in this carving one of the most beautiful conditions of the young human animal."

"Potential." Professor Spencer said. She knew her husband so well. She smiled.

"Yes. Potential. The seed of what might be."

Professor Spencer assumed her lecturer's voice: "As I'm sure each of you know what John Greenleaf Whittier wrote in 'Maud Muller' Not the sugary 'Maud Muller on a summer's day/Raked the meadow sweet with hay,' but the precautionary, 'For of all sad words of tongue or pen,/The saddest are these: It might have been.'"

"Thank you, Grace, but I'm not speaking of anything as trivial as a momentary sexual spark between a man and a woman in a chance meeting. I am suggesting that I see in this carving of young Billy Plunkett a talent to be realized. I suggest you move on from the rough carving of wood to fully-realized sculpture. I'm suggesting Billy that you could be an artist if you made the effort and applied yourself."

"Could is the operative word," she said.

"I used it in the proper context, Grace, as in 'It might have been.'"

Billy flushed in the pleasure of being nominated as a potential artist. The next morning in the college library, he went through several collections of poetry before finding John Greenleaf Whittier's 'Maud Muller.' He typed out the poem. He still carried that copy in his wallet 25 years later. With Greg Spencer's encouragement, Billy took carving lessons from a skilled craftsman, who worked a farm near Rubicon College. On weekends during summer vacations, Rob Fodor, a formidable Hungarian wood sculptor and a friend of Spencer's, hosted Billy at his summer house in East Hampton, where he spent mornings in his studio, swam in the afternoons, and partied with friends in the evenings. After graduating from Rubicon, Billy studied under Fodor at the New School and occasionally visited the artist at his studio in Greenwich Village. Fodor nicknamed Billy 'my disappointment,' because he didn't devote his life to sculpture. His gruff assessment rolled off Billy, who from the start envisioned blending his carving skills with his work as a clammer. He didn't have the determination or the patience or the acceptance of rejection to pursue an artist's life. His first love was the water. When clamming was a lucrative calling, he did carvings of water birds and fish to fulfill his small appetite to be creative. Later when the price of clams stayed stuck at the level paid in 1980, he carved to supplement his income. He sold his water birds and fish sculptures through a local dealer for $300 to $500 each although the deduction of her commission meant only $195 to $325 went into his pocket.

Billy awoke one morning, almost ten years after his divorce from Patsy, with a hunger to produce a piece of wood sculpture that would impress Fodor, who was the audience he cared about. ('Patsy would be impressed too,' Harvey said.) Billy ignored that observation. He imagined his old teacher slapping him on the shoulder and saying he no longer could call him 'my disappointment.'

Billy had been aging three logs of cherry wood with the intention of turning them into the sculptures that would have made Fodor proud when a stroke struck down the old Hungarian at a cocktail party in East Hampton as the summer of 2004 was coming to an end. He returned from Fodor's funeral to begin the figure of Patsy with her flowing hair, high cheekbones, and solid haunches as he envisioned her on her last day as his wife at the moment she told him she was divorcing him. In the sculpture, Patsy had a distant expression in her eyes as though she were looking past him. He named the work 'Distance.'

The portrait of Tommy Ledge took almost a full year. In chipping the wood to draw out the finer points of Ledge's face, Billy realized that the friend he had considered so happy-go-lucky was deeply dissatisfied with his life. He searched for a title that would make the expression in the wood palatable to Ledge. He called the piece 'Introspection.'

Both works tormented him in his dreams, pulling him from sleep with the realization that his sculptures had revealed an unhappiness in each of his subjects that he had failed to see on their living faces.

While Erin worked on her book upstairs, Billy carved the cormorants in flight and a harbor seal resting on the rocks around the Huntington Light House. But much of his time was devoted to shopping and cooking, and even dusting. Erin was a demanding boss and Billy a compliant employee.

Billy could get by on hamburgers, cheese sandwiches, pizza, and an occasional steak. Erin had a more sophisticated pallet. She had started going through the library of cookbooks on three shelves in the kitchen pantry. For tonight's dinner she had chosen a recipe for Mallorcan lamb and sobrasada pie seasoned with saffron. He consumed the morning going into the village to buy the diced lamb for the recipe at the local butcher shop, but was substituting bratwurst for the sobrasada, the soft sausage from Mallorca. He couldn't find saffron at the supermarket so he decided to plunge into the recipe without that spice.

He was mixing the ingredients for the pie crust in the food processor when Erin came up behind him to kiss him on back of his neck. The delight of her tongue and lips touching his flesh rolled through his body, stirring his groin. "I love you," she whispered in his ear. Her first 'I love you' which had come out of nowhere in the course of hiring him as her bodyguard, shopper, cook, sometime maid, and lover had opened an avalanche of 'I love you' between them in bed making love, in passing in the kitchen at mealtimes, sitting in the living room reading or watching television. She said it and he responded at first, then he initiated it and she responded. He turned to kiss her. As their tongues touched, Billy had a sudden vision of Erin's face, flowing hair, shoulders and the small, horizontal pyramids of her breasts carved from the large piece of cherry waiting in his garage studio. He didn't know what he would uncover about Erin in the process of sculpting her, but a title for the figure of this woman of ample body, needs, and means, came to him: 'Abundance.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Billy stood at the stove in a blue apron stirring a light tomato sauce with sausage and peppers. Following the routine they had fallen into during the past two weeks, Erin sat at the kitchen table keeping him company while he made dinner. The penne pasta was in boiling water, almost ready to taste. He had set the table with a red-checked tablecloth, candles, bowls for the pasta, a loaf of semolina from the Italian bakery. Erin was sipping her nightly pre-dinner Scotch. She had opened a bottle of Valpolicelli to drink with the sausage and pasta. He was having beer, a Warsteiner, while he cooked and would have another with dinner.

The phone rang. Linda was on the line. She told Erin that she had called Billy's house every day and was furious over the failure to reach him and her inability to leave a message since he didn't have an answering machine. She had called Sugar's twice because she knew that was where he hung out. She said she couldn't play the game if she couldn't reach him.

Erin opened her mouth wide showing her upper front teeth while she laughed. "Should have just called me, Sis. He's right here. But he can't come to the phone. He's making my dinner." She cackled some more. "Why don't you call back after we eat, say in about an hour." She went into the kitchen to tell Billy that Linda had called, wanting to speak to him.

"Did she say what she wanted?" He was stirred by the anticipation of posing for her to make what seemed like very easy money.

"She is going to tell you that she needs to take some video and stills of you to show her Scottish client, but she really wants to set you up to add you to her collection."

"What collection?"

"She didn't tell you she's doing a table top of nude men of all races, classes, ages, and conditions. Very artsy. You should appreciate that." Erin was bursting with the amusement of this new twist in their game of manipulation.

"Mmmmh. I'll have to give that some thought." He had never considered posing in the nude although he had sketched naked men and women in art class and in Fodor's studio. As he moved more seriously into human sculpture he would be doing nudes all the time. He felt a bit excited by the vision of stripping down for Linda.

Erin who was watching him carefully said, "Sweetie, I think you like the idea much too much. I'm going to have to give this some thought myself. But I'm starved. Let's eat."

They chatted about her book and Linda's collection of male nudes as they sat across the table from one another. Erin alternated sips and gulps of the Valpolicelli with forkfuls of pasta or pieces of bread torn from the loaf. She ate two heaping servings of the penne covered with large dollops of the thick tomato-sausage-and-red pepper sauce. "I could love you for just the way you put together pasta," she said. Billy had a moderate serving of pasta with a piece of the semolina bread and a second beer. She finished the bottle of Valpolicelli, and asked Billy to run down to the basement for another. He brought the bottle to the table with a corkscrew. "Sorry, but I'm no good at opening wine," he said. She opened the bottle with a pop and filled her goblet halfway. He studied her face, her left ear showing through her long blonde hair, her arcing eyebrows over deep-set eyes, her sharp chin, the slight blob of flesh rolling from her chin to her firm, long throat, and her lips parted in speech as she made her points with a slightly-raised finger on her left hand. The sculpture of Erin's head and upper body was taking shape in Billy's mind. He would take some pictures of her, do some sketches, plot the idea against the wood. He had yet to tell her he was considering her as the subject for the third part of his Trio because of a hesitancy to ask her to pose nude. (Harvey smirked, 'Maybe you should sit naked to draw Erin in the raw while Linda snaps pictures of you.') Billy smiled at the suggestion.

She was staring at him, a dour expression on her face. "Why are you looking at me so closely?"

('Caught!' Harvey said)

"What do you mean?" Billy asked.

Harvey laughed and Erin responded: "You've never told me I'm beautiful or you like what you see. Tell me how do I compare to Linda? I know I'm not as skinny as she is, but am I as pretty?" The corners of her mouth were turned down in anger.

"I have said you're beautiful. What's the matter with you tonight? Why are you getting so nasty?"

She ignored what he said. "You can't give me a straight answer, can you Sweetie. You could have said, 'Oh you have a pretty face darling. You don't ever call me honey or darling. Ever notice that."

"I think you had a little too much wine tonight, darling."

She fired the crystal wine glass onto the floor, shattering it. "Don't patronize me," she yelled at him.

The phone rang. Billy picked it up. It was Linda, who told him that she had sold the concept of the campaign to Rory MacDuff, chief executive of the House of MacDuff's Scottish Tea and the Widow MacDuff's Shortbread. Mr. MacDuff loved the idea of an honest to goodness worker, a bayman rather than an actor or a model, for his products. And, he raised the prospect of expanding the campaign to include his Lachlan Distillery's single malt whiskey. Mr. MacDuff wanted to see photos and a film of Billy before he would approve the campaign. Linda suggested he come into the city in the morning so she could shoot him in her studio.

"I hear you're interested in taking a picture of me in the nude for your collection." Erin watched and listened.

Linda laughed. "Let me talk to her."

He handed the phone to Erin, whose mood was transformed from dour to a glow "Sis, why don't you come out tomorrow. I'll write in the morning and take the afternoon off so we can go out to lunch. You can grab some photos of Billy for your project. If you get him to pose naked, I want some copies. Put them on my bedroom wall."

"I'm sure he would feel more comfortable if we did the shoot alone in the city."

Erin's brief spike of good humor was replaced by an anger that gave a nasty edge to her words. "Work out the details with him. But get it straight. You take pictures out here tomorrow, not in the city." She handed the phone to Billy.

Linda said, "I get the feeling someone had too much to drink."

"Uh huh."

"So you're seeing the dark side of the moon. But don't let that drive you away. The sun will come out tomorrow."

"That sounds good."

"I'm anticipating you're going to go jaybird naked for me. Are you willing?"

('Why not? You think you look good without clothes,' Harvey said) Billy ignored him. He said to Linda, "Get out here early enough and we can do it while Erin's writing. So we won't disturb her."

"That sounds good to me."

"What time will you get here?"

"Tell Erin noon, but I'll be there by 9 o'clock."

"See you then."

"Sweetie, what time did she say she was coming?"

"Nine o'clock."

"So she can fuck you while I'm upstairs writing away. She's so transparent. Why the hell didn't you tell her not to come? Oh I guess I know the answer. I heard you say, 'So we can do it while Erin's writing."

"And what do you think I meant?"

"I know what you meant. You're not fooling me. But get this straight, you're on my payroll and as long as you are you're not going to fuck another woman."

"Jesus, she's your sister. What's the problem? If you don't want her here, call her up and tell her not to come."

"She's not my Goddamn sister. Knowing Linda, she probably wants to get into your pants. The pictures are a cover. Choose between us Sweetie. You work for me or you pose for Linda and fuck her for all I care."

('My what a milquetoast a few bucks and a fucking fat woman have made you,' Harvey said.) Billy flushed with anger at the provocative words spoken by Erin and Harvey. He pointed his finger at her. "Don't say anything more. Just get your pocketbook. You owe me five days' pay. I want it now." He took off the apron, bunched it up and threw it on a chair. He wanted to ask about Linda not being her sister. They were radically different physically. Erin was short and balloony with a haughty expression when she wasn't donning a mask, while Linda was slender with a body taut from working out.. He started up the stairs to their bedroom on the second floor, then stopped. He turned towards the maid's room to get the carving of the harbor seal that he had been polishing.

She stood looking as though her insides were being torn out. "Billy, I'm so sorry. Don't leave me now. I need you." She ran after him and when he turned, she wrapped her arms around him. Kissed him, and said, "I love you." And, she meant it. She cried hard, wetting him with her tears, repeating over and over that she was sorry, she would try hard to be a better person.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Linda, a camera slung from her shoulder, was greeted at the kitchen door of The Guest Cottage by Billy and a barking, tail-wagging Sweeney. She thrust a large white cake box tied with red string and two bags into Billy's hands. She wrapped her arms around his neck to kiss him on the mouth. "Mmmmh," she said. "You're a very kissy man."

A moment after Billy unloaded the packages onto the kitchen table, Erin appeared. She and Linda hugged. "Twinnie, I heard your car. I'm not writing today. I'm going to spend it with you and Billy."

Linda looked over Erin's shoulder to make a face feigning annoyance for Billy's benefit.

"Ohhh let's see the booty," Erin said. She cut the string on the box decorated with print of a well-larded man in a baker's cap fussing over a layer cake under a banner: Walter's Exquisite Bakery on Columbus Avenue. She sighed with delight lifting out a long cinnamon cruller. She bit off an end. "Coffee. Coffee. I want fresh coffee to go with my crullers."

"I brought French crullers, cheese Danish, and apple Danish too."

"I claim all the cinnamons."

Billy put together a fresh pot of coffee while the two women talked in the living room.

They were laughing uproariously over Linda's encounter with a classmate from Vassar who was buying an anti-aging cream at the Clinique counter in Bloomingdales.

He put the coffee pot, cups, small plates, napkins, milk, sugar and a plate mounded with pastries onto the table in front of the fireplace. Erin put the three remaining cinnamon crullers onto her plate. Billy took an iced French cruller, Linda an apple Danish.

"As ample as I am, I would to think how super-sized I would be if I could walk down the street like you do in New York and get crullers like these every day of the week," Erin said. She ate slowly enjoying the impact of the cinnamon and trace of lemon on her tongue. "This makes the coffee taste so good," she said.

"You might love the bakeries and the restaurants and the wine stores, but you could never live on the West Side, Twinnie. The West Side is a Leftie paradise," Linda said. She sucked tidbits of icing from her fingers.

After chatting for an hour about the traffic on the Long Island Expressway, the crowds on Fifth Avenue, the need for E-Z Pass if you drive in and out of the city, Linda put her napkin on the table. "It's chilly in here but I hope you're ready to take off your clothes Billy. Or as Auden said in one of his poems, are you ready to take your stand in the rude?"

"Right now?"

"Right now before you lose your nerve. I won't be the first woman to see you without clothes, will I?" she said grinning at Erin.

He hesitated. He found himself uncomfortable when confronted with actually stripping in front of the two women.

"Come on, big boy, you can do it. Just unbuckle your buckle and slip out of your underwear. We get the bottom off and the top will be easy. I know. Make out you're Betty Grable without the bathing suit."

"What are you talking about?"

"You must have seen Betty Grable's pin-up picture, where she's in a white bathing suit, she's in high heels looking over her shoulder. That way we can start with you facing away from me. So you can ease into the session. Like this." She posed chin down with a smile looking over her right shoulder, hands on her hips.

"Take off your clothes. That would give me a better idea," he said, smiling.

"If Erin weren't here, I'd love to."

"Well I am here, and I'm glad I am." "Come on. Let's get this done," Erin said.

He slipped off his jeans and underpants. And unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off his undershirt. He put his hands on his hips and looked across his shoulder.

"Smile."

He smiled as she snapped several shots.

"Up on your toes."

He went on his toes and she took more pictures. He turned around.

"Ooooow," she moaned. "I love your jewelry."

He grinned and looked down at himself.

"I meant your necklace."

He reached up to the brass ring. "Should I take it off?"

"No. It's a very nice touch. Now stand spread-eagled, hands and feet wide." She posed him with Sweeney, looking onto the harbor, with a chisel and mallet in a pseudo sculpting pose with the finished Harbor Seal. She had him lay on a blanket in front of the rug and stand in the kitchen at the stove and sink with and without an apron. She took shots of Billy in the kilt from all sides.

Erin said, "Excuse me for a moment." She went upstairs and returned carrying a tube of cream. "We'll use a little of this to produce the right effect." She squeezed cream onto her left hand, rubbed her hands together. "Warming it up. I don't want to chill you." She reached under the kilt to massage him.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Billy said stepping back, sliding out of her hand.

Erin lifted the kilt. "Oh my you must get me a picture of that."

('Don't be suckered,' Harvey said with an unusually parental tone.)

Linda giggled, raised the camera, but before she could snap, Billy had pulled down the kilt. "Be a sport Billy. Take hold of it," she said.

"No way."

"This will be a private shot for Erin's collection, not mine. So she'll have something to remember you by after the ball has ended."

He shook his head.

"Turn around and flap it so I can see your backside."

He picked up his clothes. "I'm going to get dressed," he said.

\---

Sugar's was packed with the regular lunchtime crowd of white collar workers from the village augmented by baymen driven off the water early by a fierce northeast wind. The jukebox was pounding out the Irish Rovers "A Long Time Ago" competing with a din of conversations and laughter. Tommy Ledge yelled a greeting to Billy, and Monnie Dwyer waved from behind the bar service station. Billy held up three fingers. Monnie told the waitress fetching drinks that Mr. Plunkett had a reservation, she looked at the clock, for 1:15. Billy knew that meant earlier arrivals were lined up waiting for tables. Monnie was pushing him past the drop-ins.

They ordered three Jameson's on the rocks with cheeseburgers, oven fries and coleslaw. "Clear up something for me. Are you two sisters or not? You don't look alike at all."

The two women laughed together. Linda said, "We were born on the same day, same year only Erin came into the world in Denver and I arrived in Portland. We found each other at Vassar. Roommates. I always wanted a sister and Erin always wanted a sister. We decided we were so close we should not only be sisters, but twin sisters."

The three of them walked along Main Street past the dress shops, the toy store, the bank, the ice cream parlor. They stopped to look into the window of the Alise Krugman Gallery at a single large oil of a sailboat rolling across a five-foot wave against a background of surging white-caps and a glowering sky. Billy knew the artist. She had graduated from Yale just a year ago and had sold half a dozen paintings of Long Island water and beach scenes, every one of them with threatening skies and serious waves. And, every one of them sold for $5,000 or more. Billy knew, from gossiping with Alise Krugman that the sailboat scene in the window had an asking price of $8,000. His work had never broken $500 and lingered for weeks and often months before being sold.

They went into the gallery. The walls were crowded with oils and water colors, the floor with marble and bronze sculptures. Billy's 18-inch mako, in wood, leaping from the water into the air, was on a pedestal just inside the front door. Alise came from her room at the rear of the shop. She was a skinny old lady with a face-lifted frozen expression and with wiry dyed black hair. "Billy!" she shouted with glee. She air-kissed the right side of his face. "Have you brought me lookers or buyers?"

"May the Lord make me a looker even when I'm buying," Erin said.

Alise examined Erin, assessing her. Alise could smell money. Erin filled her nostrils with her attitude, her Chanel hand bag. "I'm also looking for investors, people who can afford to buy now, hang on a little while and get a big return on their money some day. That oil painting in my window could evaluate ten or twenty times in the next decade or two. That young woman has the potential of greatness about her."

"If I buy can I get my money back if your prediction doesn't come true?" Erin asked.

Alise who was 78 said, "I'll write you a money-back guarantee that The Sailboat in Rough Waters will be worth a hundred to two-hundred thousand dollars in 30 years. We'll date it from today." They all laughed.

Billy introduced the three women. The four of them stood around the mako sculpture. Erin and Linda spit out the usual accolades: how beautiful, what wonderful details. Billy's own assessment of the mako was: lackluster, mediocre, pedestrian, uninspiring. In a community like Huntington where many residents and their guests had incomes that allowed them to buy $300 or $500 items on a whim, Billy's sales surged around Christmastime when shoppers were searching for gifts for the jaded ones who had everything. He could count on at least three and sometimes as many as five being purchased in the mid-December days approaching the celebration of Christ's birth. He turned from them to examine a bronze of a nude woman with her bathing suit in her left hand, her right hand doubled into a fist on her hip. The sculpture was entitled Skinny Dipper. The detail was impressive. Curly pubic hair, the hair on the head pulled into a pony tail tied by a soft cord. The texture of the cord told him it must be soft. That was a nice touch. But the face. The expression was blank. The eyes just globes. He knew the artist. Diane. Alise had introduced them at the Huntington Art Show on Village Green a good five years ago. "My two almost theres," she said before saying, "I'd like you to meet another sculptor, Billy."

Almost there! What a stinger. Alise was almost right. Billy had climbed onto a plateau of birds and fish done to as close to perfection as he could. He saw fire in the eyes of his hawks. His fish flew through the water that wasn't there. He could see that his work was really good, not great, not masterpieces, but really good. In reaching to be an artist, good was a slur that said, as Billy knew, lackluster, mediocre, pedestrian, uninspiring. "Good isn't good enough," Alise had told him. "You have to stand like a mountain over your competition if you want to sell, to make real money." Billy hadn't yet told Alise about the nude figure he did of his ex-wife, Patsy, whose gaze was directed past him, or of the portrait of Tommy Ledge, his best friend, whose eyes welled with desolation. He was waiting to do the third piece of his Trio. Billy had said to Alise, "An artist isn't in competition with other artists, just himself. I don't care about the money. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to make so much money that I wouldn't have to clam or so at least I could treat it as a hobby." She threw a caustic little laugh out of her mouth, and lifted the right side of her upper lip in the slightest of sneers. She said, "Billy boy let me assure you that I care about the money. And, whether you acknowledge it or not, you are competing with every artist in the whole goddamn world for the customers' dollars. So go back to your garage and every time you carve, you say to yourself, 'All that stands between me and success is the wood that I'm going to cut away to achieve my tour de force.'"

Erin saw the sadness in Billy's eyes. She said to Linda, "Wow! This carving would be a great conversation piece in the center of that big round coffee table in the living room of The Guest House. We'll tell people we saw a shark just like this jumping out of the water in Culligan's Harbor." She said to Alise, "How much? And do you take American Express?"

The price was $400. Billy, bowed by the shame of the suspicion she would not have bought it if he weren't standing there, carried his sculpture of the mako wrapped in a soft artsy paper to the car in the town's public parking lot behind the store. He sat in the back seat, the mako on his lap. "I would have taken just $200 for it if you didn't buy it through the gallery, but I couldn't say that in front of Alise. She might get so pissed off she wouldn't sell any more of my stuff."

"So you would find someone else. You're really an accomplished artist."

"Thanks, but that's not enough. You have to impress the gallery owner with your potential for sales. I'm grateful she sticks with me."
CHAPTER TWENTY

Tommy Ledge pushed aside the warm flannel sheet and covers. He rolled into a sitting position on his side of the bed. His back ached; the calf of his left leg was knotted in a painful cramp. He leaned over to massage the calf then bent his foot up and down. Because of the stiff back, he had to kneel on the floor to fetch his boots from under the bed.

"You okay?" Robin asked from behind him.

"Yeah." He got up and went into the bathroom to urinate, wash his hands and face and brush his teeth. He went back into the dark, cold bedroom; it wouldn't be light for a while. His clothes were laid out on a low bench so he would be able to dress without turning on the light so he wouldn't disturb Robin.

She switched on the lamp on her bedside table. "I'll make you breakfast," she said.

"Naw. I'm not hungry. I'll get a coffee and English muffin at the deli. Go back to sleep."

Robin pulled the covers up around her neck. "Turn up the heat before you go," she said.

Ledge went down the stairs. Yippie hopped off the couch, stretched, and trotted, tail wagging, to him. He petted the dog. "Good morning noble beast." They went outside into the icy, pre-dawn air. Yippie took a leak against a thick town maple near the curb. Ledge waited with the pickup truck's passenger door open. Yippie came back to bound into the truck onto the seat. Ledge drove down Duran onto McGuiness Boulevard towards the harbor. A few blocks from the water, he turned left onto New York Avenue and left again on a street facing Heckscher Park. He parked the truck in the driveway of Monnie's house. The light was on in the kitchen, where she would be waiting for him with coffee and he hoped her fresh sweet apple biscuits. This morning probably would bring a great roll in the hay because he didn't feel like it. But this was the first Wednesday of the month and he had been coming to her house every first Wednesday for years. The fucking was always fabulous when he had to force himself out of bed on winter mornings into the cold air. The coffee would be hot, the biscuits delightful on his tongue. And Monnie's body would be invitingly warm.

He cracked the window so Yippie would have a little fresh air. Not that he needed much on this cold a morning. He took a couple of dog biscuits from the glove compartment, dropped them in front of the dog, who looked at him with his sad eyes as if to say, "Don't do it." That's how Ledge felt too. He didn't want to do this any more. Monnie would be waiting bathed and perfumed and ready to bitch that the time had come for him to dump Robin and move in with her.

Many years ago when he first got involved with her, he would drift into sleep every night thinking of her, remembering the intensity of entering her, the ecstasy of her expression as she received him, the flush of red that colored her shoulders and her face in her orgasm. Last night, knowing he had to be here this morning, he got little sleep.

Monnie was sitting in a ratty bathrobe over a woolen nightgown at the kitchen table when he let himself in the back door. Normally she wore a black teddy with a matching thong under a silk robe for their Wednesday morning encounters. The coffee and muffins weren't on the table. He knew trouble was coming even before she issued her ultimatum. "Today's the last day," she said without prelude. "You move in with me tonight." She looked at him with her purposely tough expression. He had seen her use it in telling a drunk or a trouble-maker they just had their last drink of the night or maybe forever in Sugar's. The cops from the Second Precinct were regulars so she had them to back her up along with the clammers, Ledge in particular. He knew she had a pepper spray under the bar so she could take care of herself if no one else jumped in. Monnie was one tough lady, almost like a man. She was as hard as Robin was soft. They were two very different kinds of women, and Ledge had enjoyed both of them.

He was aching for a cup of coffee. "Let's go to bed," he said to end whatever was going on.

She tried not to smile. She was taking his redirection as an agreement to her demand. She got up. "I have to take a shower. You make the coffee. There are English muffins in the breadbox. I'll be back in a few minutes." She walked over to him. She kissed him, long and passionately, sucking gently at his mouth, her signal that wonders lay ahead upstairs in her bed. "I love you so much," she whispered in his ear.

"I love you too," he said, the expected response. He put the coffee in the electric percolator and got the muffins, butter and marmalade from the refrigerator. He could hear the shower upstairs.

The coffee was ready, and when he heard Linda Ronstadt singing 'I Can't Get Over You' upstairs, he put the English muffins in the broiler. Monnie liked to make love to the beat of country rock, especially Linda Ronstadt's drawn out notes on this album.

She came into the kitchen in a new white lace robe. The scent of her perfume rolled across him. She smelled and looked so good. He smiled. She undid the belt of the robe to let it slip away as she twirled to show herself in a pink silk teddy that rose high off her thighs and exposed the nipples of her breasts, which strained against the sheer material.

"Hey, you are one beautiful chick."

She sat on his lap. "You can have this every morning from now on, then dig your clams, and if you're not too tired, you can have it again at the end of the day, before and after dinner."

"Let's skip the coffee," he said. He kissed her, turned off the broiler, and led her laughing upstairs.

Afterwards, Monnie fell into a deep sleep and Ledge lay spooned against her body. He was tired, but he forced himself up. The sun was coming into the room. Looked like a nice day. Good for clamming. She stirred when he got out of bed. "Where you going?" she asked.

"Gotta work."

"Skip it today. Come back to bed. This is a day of celebration. We can go out to lunch. We can go out to dinner. Call up Robin and tell her you won't be coming home any more."

"I'm going. I'll see you."

She sprang out of the bed. "You son of a bitch. You think you can come around and fuck and then go back to the little lady at home. You know you don't love her. That's over. I told you. You don't have the guts to tell her, I will."

He decided he would skip coffee in the kitchen. He didn't want to be hanging around as a target of her vile temper. He walked out of the room and down the stairs. Behind him she was screaming he was a bastard. She would show him. Her balls were bigger than his. He picked up his parka and Yankees cap and went out into the cold.

"Hey," he said when he saw the passenger door of the pickup was open. He looked in the truck. The dog was gone. He looked around the yard, circling the house. He looked up and down the street. He whistled. "Yippie," he called. He walked along the street, crossed the road to the park. He went in the gate near the big pond. "Yippie," he called again and again. He walked through the park, asking town workers and the few people he came across if they had seen a basset hound? After a half hour, he went back into Monnie's house, up to her bedroom. She was whimpering. She got out of bed to wrap her arms around him, her tears falling on his back. "I love you. I love you," she said. He unpeeled her arms. "Listen. Yippie's gone missing. I don't know if he ran off or someone stole him. The passenger door was open. I don't see how he could have done that himself. If he comes around, take him in. I'll call you later. I'm going down to the harbor in case he decided to go to the boat himself. He's never done that, but I hope he did."

"The dog?" she said.

He turned around and went out to the truck. He drove slowly hoping to catch sight of Yippie along the way. He parked opposite his mooring. He walked along the road skirting the harbor asking clammers who were preparing to go out on the water to keep an eye out for Yippie. If they saw the dog to give him a call. Maybe he went home, one of them said.

Ledge decided to try the house.

Yippie, tail wagging, came right to him when he walked through the back door into the kitchen. "Hey," Ledge said, roughing and squeezing the dog. Robin was sitting at the kitchen table dressed as usual in stained orange sweat pants and a Syracuse University T-shirt. Kitty's husband was a Syracuse graduate. She put down Newsday and her coffee cup. She stared at him without speaking. "Hey, am I glad to see the Yip. When did he get home? He ran off on me. I looked every where in Huntington for him."

"I didn't have any trouble finding him," Robin said, her lip trembling, trying to stop from crying.

"Where was he?"

"Right outside of Monnie's house. In your pickup. Want to tell me what you were doing there."

He didn't reply.

"I want you out of this house right now. Pack your stuff and leave. Take Yippie with you. I don't want to separate you from your love."

"I love you Robin."

"I don't mean that fat bitch. I mean Yippie."

"Calm down Robin."

"I am calm. I've had time to think about you and me, you and us while you were fucking Monnie. I don't want you any more. I do want to tell you though that when you were in Vietnam, I got laid. I felt so guilty about that. I never told you. I always wanted you to believe I came to you as a virgin. So you're the second man I had. And I had a third. Remember that teachers' conference I went to in Washington three years ago. I fucked my principal. Mr. Haley, the guy you thought was a fairy. I can testify he isn't. He could teach you a lesson or two about making love. He wanted to see more of me, but I said no. I said I shouldn't have done what I did, but I had a couple of glasses of wine and really I wanted to see what another man was like. He was really good." She nodded her head affirming how good Mr. Haley was.

He looked at her. He wasn't angry despite her purposeful provocation. He thought of how soft and loving Robin had been, what a good mother she was, how much he loved her. "Hey that's okay," he said, not meaning to say that's okay. He should have said something more elegant, but his mind seemed frozen, speech wasn't coming easily.

She stared at him tears streaming down her face.

He went to her to put his arms around her. "No," she said pushing him away.

Why wasn't he angry like a man should be when his wife brags about cheating on him? Maybe, he thought, because he was heartbroken. He didn't want to lose her. Monnie was waiting for him, but he wanted Robin. "What about the girls?" he said stumbling into that dumb question when he should have been saying he was sorry, that he loved her like no other man had ever loved a woman.

"Leave. I'll send your things over to Monnie's. That's where you're going, aren't you?"

He stood still for what seemed like a long time until she rushed at him trying to pound his chest with her fists, but he grabbed her hands restraining her. She sank, weeping, to her knees. "Come on Yippie. Let's go to work," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Tommy Ledge dropped his rake over the side just after 10 AM at the spot he considered his own, the waters just north of the Huntington Lighthouse. It was an unusually glorious February morning under a nice sun and just the right breeze. So much had happened since he got up at 6 AM, he felt like a week had passed instead of just four hours. He had played the ruse of the loving husband telling Robin to stay in bed instead of getting him breakfast; he had had memorable sex with Monnie after she issued him an ultimatum that he was to move in with her tonight; he had gone through the pain of losing and the joy of finding Yippie, a happiness that was short lived; he had been told by Robin that she screwed two other men, some unnamed fucker about 39 years ago before they got married, and then the gay-blade principal about three years ago in the nation's capital where the moral majority reigned. He could go to the school and beat the shit out of the principal in front of the horrified teachers and the fearful children. Even though the guy was 10 years younger, Ledge had real muscles and although his body was wracked with pain in his back and aches in his feet and legs what chance would an office worker who spent his life cooing at children have against him? He envisioned his picture on the front page of Newsday. Long Island would eat up the story. A cuckolded ancient clammer pummels prancing principal or something like that.

His first pull was a good one. Fifty little necks and cherries. That would have been a predictor of a great day if Robin hadn't told him to get out of her life forever. The girls, Kitty and Penny, would be on her side. How could he look them in the face? Daddy having sex with another woman, a crabby bartender at that. The whole family knew Monnie. They had been to Sugar's for lunches and dinners and on occasion to drag him home when he got blind drunk.

The second pull brought him another 30 clams. And, his back had stopped hurting. This could be a 1,500-count day if his luck held. "Hey Yippie things are turning around," he said to the dog who looked sadder than usual. Yippie either sensed something was wrong or understood English. Maybe he didn't want to leave home either. He didn't want to end his marriage; he didn't want to move in with Monnie. He knew she would be a real bitch. She would have him tending bar and mopping the floor of Sugar's every night. Cleaning out the men's and ladies' restrooms. What was more disgusting than a barroom bathroom?

Dez Gideon spotted him. He was waving to Ledge, yelling something. Probably hello or where the hell have you been or why did you come out so late? He knew Dez loved him. He couldn't remember how many years ago it was that Dez said he hated going out alone in winter. Ledge told him, "Hey, no problem. Just follow me. I'm not going to wait for you in the morning or get there early for you, but if you need company you can tag along with me." Dez did, almost every day, for years.

Dez was working about a hundred yards away this morning. Close enough so he wouldn't feel lonesome. Dez would stay on the water as long as Ledge did, despite probably having started a couple of hours before him.

Ledge made his final pull around 2 o'clock. He counted 15 Little Necks, four cherries, and a big chowder. He threw the chowder back to produce another generation of clams for another clammer. "I won't be back," he said to the chowder. He figured he had about 1,000 clams of various sizes, each distributed into the appropriate bags. He took a slug of water from his plastic canteen and drank the last of the coffee in the thermos. He dug the three Swiss cheese on rye sandwiches from his waterproof bag. Robin usually made his sandwiches, but he had bought them and the coffee at the deli after she threw him out of the house. He zipped the bag, punched it down and spread the sandwiches across it. "Hey Yippie Ai Oh," he called to his Basset Hound, who was dozing in the sun. He watched Yippie gobble down the sandwiches. He filled the dog's water bowl, rubbing Yippie as he drank.

"I'm the last of the Mohicans Yippie."

That was his romantic way of saying that after four generations of Ledges digging clams and fishing and lobstering for a living, there was no one to succeed him. His two daughters, Kitty and Penny, had daughters. He had never seen a woman bayman, or should he say baywoman, on the North Shore. A woman could fish and maybe even lobster, but the fish and the lobsters weren't abundant anymore in Huntington's waters. A woman sure couldn't drag in a rake filled with clams and rocks and whatever at the end of 30 or 40-feet of pole for four to eight hours a day. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there was a determined, muscular woman somewhere who could clam as good as any man, but Kitty and Penny and their daughters were too delicate for this life, and he wouldn't want them to pursue it any how. The good days were gone.

Everyone's life became humdrum after a while. Ledge accepted that reality. He had had his moments of excitement in the Airborne on combat patrols in Vietnam; mostly tedium, but the scary moments burned in his memory. So did the sad ones of buddies torn to shreds. On the water, he enjoyed, in the aftermath, the tension of an unexpected storm or a sudden ripping wind; once a rogue wave overturned his boat; once he had been circled in his little sharpie by a mako. If a shark could smell fear, Ledge was a strong perfume as the big fin cut through the surface. The marriage to Robin had all sorts of pleasures and frights, happy memories of picnics and sex and meals and walks and the occasional penetrating conversation and the children from birth through school through weddings. The romance with Monnie had begun as an unexpected adventure. At the outset, he felt as though he were a character in a film. He saw himself living life in a special way with bursts of happiness whenever in bed with her and just in being with her. Now she was a burden.

He was being ground between those two women. They had squeezed the joy out of his life. He hated the thought of not going home tonight; he hated the thought of going to Sugar's. Monnie wanted all of him, to feel his flesh every night in her bed. He didn't want that either. He hadn't been happy for quite a while because of the two of them. He didn't realize how miserable his life had become until he saw his face in Billy's sculpture. He was embarrassed, exposed, stripped naked to his soul. The face Billy carved said that he didn't enjoy sleep or the women or clamming.

He said to Yippie, "It was me. Billy caught me. That's how I feel. This life is worthless. I can't sleep. My wife wants to hurt me. Monnie tortures me. She can't let things ride. She wants it all. I couldn't leave Robin. She's the mother of my children. She's a wonderful woman. She was a wonderful mother. I don't know how I got involved with Monnie, but I did. And I can't give her up. I almost hoped that I could tell Robin and she would understand, then I could go out with Monnie and come home to her. The family on one side, Monnie on the other. Why can't we do things like that? I don't care that Robin's screwing another man, but I didn't say that to her. I could have said you want an open marriage go ahead. But then I'd probably get pissed and hurt some poor guy who just wanted to get his rocks off."

He made his decision. Another version of Ronald Coleman getting on the white horse and riding into the Fuzzy Wuzzies.

He hooked the T-handle on the gunwale to steady it while he turned the nuts in the clamps holding the second section of pole. He put the rake back in the water, digging the teeth of the rake head deep into the bottom. Then, instead of clawing the surface down there for clams, he jerked the handle towards himself. The thought struck him that God could intervene at this last moment to save him. He didn't. The handle came loose in Ledge's hands. The momentum of the pull sent him staggering backwards and tumbling over the side into the frigid waters of Huntington Bay.

Dez witnessed the incomprehensible and fearsome event from the distance of a football field. He saw Ledge stumble backwards across his sharpie and plunge into the water. He dropped his clam pole, yelled as loud as he could, 'Tommy!' He took the few steps to his pilot house, and pressed the starter of his motor. As he moved closer, he saw Yippie with his paws on the edge of the sharpie, looking down into the water. The dog raised his head, howled, and leapt after his master.

Dez used his cell phone to call the police, the Coast Guard and Sugar's.

\---

After dinner, Erin went upstairs to work on her book and Billy went into his makeshift studio for the drudge work of sharpening his tools. He was trying to generate the enthusiasm to do another interim piece to fill the time until he was back in his own studio and could work on the sculpture of Erin.

The phone rang, sounding six times before the answering machine picked up.

As he honed a chisel, Harvey, came into his mind. Maybe he should do Harvey. He never had been able to form an image of Harvey so he could sculpt him. Harvey could be a wraith, a red-winged blackbird, a snake, an airy being who looked just like him. He had never done, nor even considered an abstract sculpture. He would have to give some thought on how to reveal Harvey to himself and to the world.

('I'm beyond your imagination," Harvey said.)

He held up a medium gouge. He had honed the edge to a razor and polished it until it glistened. Rob Fodor would have commended him for practicing what he was taught. Wood was an unforgiving medium, a worn or chipped tool could create a nightmare in the wood. The tune of 'Amazing Grace' played into his mind. The opening stanza was stamp in his memory from hearing it so many times on radio and in films, especially westerns. Yet he sang, not the familiar opening stanza but one that declared, "Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, /And mortal life shall cease, /I shall possess with the veil, /A life of joy and peace." He had never sung those words before.

The phone rang again, and the answering machine picked up.

Billy came out of his make-shift studio to find Erin sitting in front of the fireplace, sipping a scotch, watching the flames licking around several logs. Beyond her was the darkness, outside. He had worked without being aware of the passage of time. He looked at the clock: 9 o'clock. "Do you want another scotch?" he asked instead of what he really wanted to say, 'Come into the maid's room and see what I have accomplished." Beautifully edged tools would mean nothing to her. He wouldn't tell about doing a figure of Harvey. He had the superstition that the artist who talked about his work drained the inner spirit needed to achieve a work of art.

He was pouring two scotches on the rocks for Erin and himself in the kitchen when the phone rang again.

The answering machine picked up. He heard a woman's voice whose words, which he couldn't understand from the distance, were broken by sobs. He went into the living room. "Who was that?"

"Got me. She didn't leave a name. I'm not sure what she said."

There were three messages on the machine. He pressed the play button: "Billy. Ledge," the rest of her message was lost in tears. He recognized Monnie's voice. The second message was Monnie again. Her words halting as she strained for composure: "Billy this is Monnie, if you're there please call." He listened to the third message four times before he able to decipher the words through her tears: "Ledge is dead."

A fire burned the inside of his body just below the sternum between his rib cages. Billy leaned on his right hand flat on the table. He gasped for breath. Erin watched him. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"No," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The funeral home on New York Avenue was packed with clammers, relatives, neighbors and friends, who filled all the folding chairs facing the coffin, and the hallway, and spilled out into the adjacent parking lot, where the smokers huddled with necks drawn down, hands in pants pockets, and puffed their comforting white tubes of tobacco. Billy and Erin expressed their condolences to the line of Ledges: Tommy Ledge's parents, his widow, his two daughters, his 14-year-old and ten-year-old granddaughters. The widow Robin thanked Billy for the spray of flowers he sent. They knelt beside the closed coffin with Erin waiting on her knees while Billy went through a silent ritual of good bye. He realized that as Harvey and Amazing Grace blossomed in his mind on Friday, Ledge probably was being sucked under the water. Billy was 14 and in his first year of clamming when he became aware of Ledge with his reputation as one of the best, a fourth generation clammer. Once Ledge realized that Billy, who was on the water every day of that summer's school vacation, was a serious clammer he began talking to him, giving him hints on how to clam, how to act as a real bayman. Billy finished high school and went to college and came back to the water. It was imprinted on his soul.

They sat on two seats in the fourth row with Billy talking to the clammers, and Erin being introduced and ignored thereafter. When the funeral home closed a little after nine, they went to Sugar's for a few drinks and to offer sympathy to Monnie, who had stayed away from the wake, just as she would skip tomorrow's funeral Mass at St. Patrick's and the burial at Calverton National Cemetery. She wouldn't attend the funeral lunch for the mourners either. She wasn't welcome.

\---

No one went out clamming the next day, or for the next week. The temperature had dropped like a rock. Sheet ice formed in the harbor. Snow fell and with it came a wind that seared the skin and picked the water into six foot waves in the bay. It was as though nature had declared a week of mourning for Tommy Ledge. Dez never went clamming again.

\----

The sign in Sugar's window said 'Closed for Private Party.' The banner strung in front of the tiered shelves of whiskey, rum, gin, and assorted other bottles said: 15th Anniversary of the Rebirth of Tommy Ledge.

Erin and Billy were among the 50 guests invited to the celebration. Monnie's son, Jeff, who was a Wall Streeter dressed for the occasion in a maroon vest, matching bow tie, and striped high-collared shirt, was handling the open bar pouring whiskey, beer and soft drinks for the men and women. He had known most of them since his childhood. Taped to the big mirror behind the bar was a grainy 20 by 15 inch blow up of a photo of Monnie with a happy expression she seldom displayed to other customers serving Ledge a mug of beer. She was a squarish woman with long dyed blonde hair and vertical lines of smoker's wrinkles on her upper lip. Her angry face could be traced to the frustration and humiliation she felt in her failure to completely take Ledge from his wife. He was a Catholic who believed in adultery but not divorce.

Monnie, who had lost count of the Scotches she had drunk since lunchtime, went from table to table and flowed along the bar weeping and fumbling her words as she talked about her life with Ledge as though she were the grieving widow. She told them that this would be their, hers and Ledge's, final anniversary celebration. Monnie had kept Sugar's open to the public 364 days a day, including Christmas. Only the regulars were invited to her annual party every Feb. 25. They had different theories for the source of her once-a-year celebration. Some speculated it was in anticipation of spring or that it was Monnie's birthday. The wildest guess of all was that it commemorated Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech exposing Stalin's evil to the Communist Party Congress in 1956. Syd Brown, who taught Contemporary American Literature at Stony Brook University and had found his way to Sugar's a decade ago while writing a paper on the barroom in the 20th Century novel, was the source of the Khrushchev speech theory. He was at the end of the bar before a pyramid of Sugar's Honey-coated Chicken Wings, when Monnie approached. Syd, very much the college professor with his thick, white wavy hair and in his brown tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, opened their exchange as he always did with a bit of flattery praising the wings, but Monnie quickly cut him off. She stood, wavering a bit from side to side. She grasped his hands to steady herself and leaned towards him, "Syd, I want to tell you a great love story you should turn into a book. My first husband, Duke Dwyer, died on February 24th 1990. Cancer. A long, hard way to go. But let me get to my story. I fell in love with Tommy Ledge when I was 17 years old. I was standing next to my grandmother behind the bar and he walked in, right off the plane from Vietnam. He had Robin on his arm. We got married just a couple of hours apart on the same Saturday in June in 1968 at St. Patrick's. I married Duke, he looked like John Wayne you know, and Tommy married Robin. Tommy came in here two or three times a week and was always a gentleman to me and I was always careful to treat him like any other customer. Then Duke died. I was 40 years old and I still had three kids at home. On the first anniversary of Duke's death, it was one of those lousy nights with no customers. It was a sleet storm. And Tommy came in. He was unhappy. I didn't ask him why? I was unhappy. I told him why. I was lonely beyond belief. And he tells me, his life is worse than lonely. He's living in hell with that woman. She hates what he does. She resents having had to work and shop and clean while he fucked around the house or his boat when he wasn't clamming. I'm dead and I'm living in hell, Monnie, he tells me. I didn't say a word. I went to the front door and I locked it and I turned off the lights and I took him by the hand and led him upstairs. And I gave him a reason to live again. The whole time, neither of us said a word. We just did what we did."

Syd sat nodding, hoping somehow to comfort Monnie with that gesture while thinking, 'And they did again and again.'

"Give me a hand," Monnie said, stepping onto a case of Harp's beside the bar. With Syd making sure she didn't tumble, she climbed onto the bar. "Everyone. Everyone," she called across the murmur of voices. "Jeff turn off the music. I want to send one final message to the most wonderful man I ever knew." With everyone quieted and watching, Monnie spread her arms high above her head. "Wherever you are, Tommy, I want you to know." She began singing in a soft, dramatic voice "I'll never forget you wherever you are..."

Another voice, loud and powerful, from near the front door, interrupted the song: "If I wasn't so mad, I would laugh at you for being the clown you are."

Monnie stopped singing with her mouth still opened wide to shaping the words of "Unforgettable" to stare across the room at Robin Ledge.

Billy realized in the presence of the palpable hatred of Robin and Monnie for one another that he had unconsciously recorded in his sculpture the extraordinary agony Tommy Ledge felt in being caught between these two women.

"This is a private party. You weren't invited," Monnie said from her perch on the bar.

"I just came to call you a filthy whore."

Monnie nodded, pausing to think of a response. "Maybe you should stay Mrs. Ledge. Have a drink on me. All you want. I'm sorry the great love story of my life will give you bitter memories. Maybe you'll find a married man to love. The best ones are always married, Mrs. Ledge."

Billy flipped over the paper placemat on which his plate of ribs and beer had been sitting. He drew a quick sketch of the outline of Monnie. He filled in a few lines to depict the satisfaction her face displayed in her counter attack on the wife of her lover.

"Why are you drawing her?" Erin asked.

"Sculpture." He envisioned the sculpture of a naked Monnie with a whisky bottle and shot glass at her feet, her right hand pointing down to emphasize her caustic suggestion that 'Maybe you should stay Mrs. Ledge.' Bulbous sagging breasts, heavy belly, hips barely showing from the square of her body, a bush on the mound between her big soft thighs.' He would call the work 'The Other Woman.' He wondered what the sculpture would tell him about Monnie?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Billy envisioned the block of cherry wood waiting in his home studio and saw Erin, not Monnie in it. A nude Erin was striding towards him, her right arm extended, her hand waving. Her left hand was at her side. Rodin said he cut away the marble to reach the figure within. Billy could see her pyramid-shaped body within the cherry. The arm extended at a 30-degree angle. He would cut a general outline and begin the serious carving from the feet up the legs across the body to the arms and finally the head. He would tell her about his plan at dinner. Whether she said yes or no, he was going to sculpt her.

\---

He had a thick pea soup made with a ham bone leftover from last week's half of a smoked ham and a basket piled high with freshly-baked potato rolls on the dinner menu. They drank cold beer with the pea soup. For dessert, there was Welch tea and a home-made strawberry tart with fresh whipped cream.

Erin ate with obvious pleasure. She took spoonfuls of soup into her mouth with a near smile playing across her lips. She buttered pieces of role with a studied intensity of which Billy became conscious for the first time that night, and realized how shallow his awareness of Erin had been.

"Why are you staring at me?" she asked.

"I'm not staring, I'm studying."

"Studying how? Like I'm a history book or a bug under a microscope or a painting or a living statue?"

"Statue was close. I'm studying you like I would any subject I plan to sculpt. I would like to do a full figure of Erin Prendergast in the nude."

She put down her spoon. Her first impulse was to say, 'Definitely not.' That reaction played across her face. Then her experience as a political tactician prompted her to put herself in the position of controlling the outcome of Billy's carving. Until she saw the piece, she wouldn't know whether she would find it so appealing that she might want the world to see a statue of her. Her vanity centered on her achievements as a writer and political operative, not her beauty. She lit a Marlboro, blew a stream of smoke across the table, and arrived at a decision.

She stubbed out the cigaret on the used dessert dish that held a bare smudge of whipped cream. She looked into Billy's eyes. Her mouth peeled into a broad grin. "Wow. What an honor. I have a great mantelpiece in my place in Georgetown. Would it fit on there? Or are you thinking full size. Then I would have to clear a corner of the living room. Maybe with a planter on either side. That would be nice."

"I'm serious Erin. I have a vision of you that I want to sculpt."

"What happened to your vision of Monnie? Wasn't she supposed to be your next great project? The horny barmaid dancing on the bar?"

"I saw you in the wood."

"That sounds so mystical. Will you make me beautiful?"

"The sculpture will be shaped by the reality of whatever you are. I'll find out when I'm finished." He imagined what her figure would look like. The rolls of fat on the belly, her solid haunches extending over the backs of her dimpled thighs as though they should belong to a slender woman. Her cone-shaped breasts just beginning to sag, a prelude to severe droopiness.

"I'm sure it's going to be a fabulous work of art. And to be certain you have the time to do it, I'm going to arrange a grant from TRUE. Every committee chairman in Congress has a portrait painted, so I can't see anyone objecting to the head of a foundation commissioning a sculpture of herself. I can start a tradition of having a statue of TRUE's executive director on display in our offices."

('You do an honest job and she'll burn it,' Harvey said with what sounded a laugh.)

"Suppose you don't like it, will you destroy it?" Billy asked.

She hadn't expected him to be so quick on the uptake. "I'm flattered Billy that you want to do me in wood, but I must ask you whether this statue is going to look exactly like me so everyone who has ever seen me in clothing will know it is me in the nude. If you are open to input from me, I might appreciate an abstract that portrays my essence rather than my flesh, something that tells the world who I am rather than the surface my skin displays."

('You could say her soul might look worse than her skin,' Harvey said.)

"To be honest, I must tell you that I'm really interested in sculpting the human figure, not abstracts. So it's not going to be a Picasso."

"I saw a cubist sculpture of a woman by Picasso in Chicago. Something like that would great. You should reconsider your approach."

Billy smiled. "Steel and 50 feet high. That certainly would capture your essence. But I have to tell you, Picasso's actual sculpture was 42 inches high. It was the model for what you saw in Chicago."

"How big will your sculpture of me be?"

"From head to toe about 18 inches with an arm extended another four inches, a little more than four inches. In cherry wood, not steel."

"It sounds like it will be small enough to keep it right on my desk. Let's get down to the nitty gritty of how much this sculpture of me will cost TRUE. How much do you figure you make an hour for one of your water bird carvings?"

"I'm embarrassed to say about $5 an hour. But your figure is going to be a work of art. A wood sculpture."

"And how many hours will it take you to produce this work of art, this sculpture of me?"

"I don't know. Maybe a hundred, maybe 200."

"Is that because this is a first. You've never a human figure?"

"I've done one. My ex-wife. Two, if you count the portrait, the bust, I did of Tommy Ledge."

She pushed back her chair. "Let me do a little figuring," she said. She stepped to the kitchen counter, where a tall coffee cup emblazoned with a print of a roadrunner was filled with pencils and pens beneath a tear-off pad of shopping lists. She selected a red-ink pen and tore a sheet from the pad. She returned to the table. "Sweetie pour us a couple of Scotches while I go over the numbers. I'll have to pass it by my board of directors, but I'm almost positive they'll go along."

('Don't be a rube. She is the board of directors,' Harvey said.)

Billy filled a small bowl with ice cubes from the freezer and went into the living room where the scotch was stored in the liquor cabinet. Erin was seated on the couch in front of the fireplace by the time he finished putting together the drinks.

They touched glasses. "To art and beautiful artists," she said. She sipped the scotch and leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. "Now the numbers," she said becoming businesslike. "Say it took you 100 hours at your usual rate of $5 an hour that would be $500." Billy started to speak. She held up her hand. "Let me finish, Sweetie. Or 200 hours at $5. That would be $1,000. What I am going to offer you is $5,000."

Billy thought about $5,000. That would be a godsend. Enough to pay his rent through an entire winter.

"You wouldn't be able to begin the statue until I finished my book. You realize that."

"I would like you to pose for me. In the nude," Billy said.

"When I finish writing at the end of the day, I'm wiped out. Certainly not in the mood or in condition to sit for hours without clothes."

"Any sessions we have will be very short. When you're in the mood say. I'll take some pictures, do some sketches."

Pictures. Photos he meant. Did he think she was that naive? She looked at him, wondering for the first time whether he was a plant, an infiltrator for the Democrats or some bunch of Left Wing crazies. She had known him for less than eight weeks. Frank Kelly must have checked him out. If he had found anything, he would have called her posthaste. So there would be no doubt, she said, "Definitely no photos." She decided to take a harder look at him. The first and simplest step would be to be certain he had done the sculptures of his wife and Ledge. She decided she needed to do a close examination of his house and work shop. Wouldn't it be hilarious if the guy guarding her was one of the enemy? She said, "Before we work out the details of the grant, the price, the deadline etcetera, I want to see the sculptures of your ex-wife and Tommy Ledge. Are they at your place?" He nodded. She got up. "Let's go over there right now."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The shabbiness of his living room, the old couch, the worn easy chair, the home-made wood coffee table marked with scars from the heels of his work boots, struck Billy as Erin studied the nude sculpture of Patsy, his ex-wife, dancing, rising on her toes, her left hand on her hip, the right hand and arm extended. Billy could see his ex-wife on the day she walked out: long brunette hair, a face with full cheeks, slender with solid, enticing haunches.

"Did you throw her away, or is she the one who got away?" Erin asked.

He didn't want to answer that question. None of his friends, not even his sister, had been blunt enough to ask about the unpleasant details of their split. She had dumped him for a 50-year-old man, for Ronald Neuerstein, who was 17 years older than Patsy, than Billy. She was 43 now, so Neuerstein would be 60. He didn't know how their romance turned out. He hadn't seen Pasty for 15 or 16 years. She might have squared off; she might be the same slender beauty he loved to kiss on the back of her neck. He would do that when she was washing dishes; in the early days of their marriage when she still loved him or still found him inviting, she would turn to kiss him and often lead him into the bedroom. Towards the end, she would say irritably, "Not now. " She would shake her head like she was warding off an annoying bug and say, "I've got to get these done." She never told him exactly why she was leaving him. Patsy seemed to resent the time he spent on sculpting when the water was too rough for clamming. She said she thought he was selfish to work on the edge of an abyss without a steady income or a pension or his own health insurance or a paid vacation and paid holidays. What if something happened to her? she often asked him. He had no idea how she and Neuerstein met. She was working as an administrative assistant in the shipping department of a plastics factory in Melville at the end of their marriage. He saw in Newsday that Neuerstein was a real estate broker with an office in Manhasset. On occasion, on rainy days, he would go over to the Miracle Mile in Manhasset in hopes of coming across her. He never did.

Erin asked, "When did you do her sculpture?"

"Two years ago."

"I expected something special about it. All I see is a skinny woman with a disgustingly slight belly, kicking up her heels, looking past me."

"Yes," he said, pleased that Erin had seen the distance in Patsy's expression, but otherwise irritated by her critique.

"So you're going to do me in the raw?"

"I said nude."

She took the few steps to the bookcase to the wood bust of Tommy Ledge with his unhappy expression. "Is he nude? The part we can't see below his head and neck?"

He told Erin that he didn't do a figure of Ledge because it would have been embarrassing to portray his friend's nude body. Before he did any other man, he realized he must do a full-figure self portrait.

"But it's okay to do naked ladies."

"Yes."

"So you're a chauvinist pig?"

"To that extent, yes."

"Why don't you just do a head and naked shoulders of me so we can avoid any personal details I might not like the world to see?"

(Harvey: "Put her head on Patsy's body. The Greeks and Romans did it.")

Billy roared laughter. "Or vice versa," he said aloud before he could catch himself.

Erin's face twisted in anger. "What the hell are you saying?"

"I was thinking of an alternative. I could do your body without your head," Billy said.

"Wow! You really want to piss me off. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I'm a woman of ample body, ample needs, and ample means. I'll take my ample tits over her tiny blobs anytime. Just tell me, why do you want to do a statue of me?"

"I don't understand why I want to do your figure. I can only say that I have an overwhelming urge to sculpt you."

She walked past him into his bedroom. He followed. The walls were lined with sketches of Patsy on paper that was yellowing with time. "Still haven't gotten over her?"

"I've been meaning to take those down."

('Yeah,' Harvey said.)

Propped on the dresser were framed photos of Billy and Tommy Ledge, both with beards, their arms around one another, dressed in yellow waterproof overalls. Another of Billy and a teenage girl. "Who's this? An old girlfriend?" Erin asked. "My sister Eileen." "And this?" she asked picking up the photo of Rob Fodor in the smock he affected for publicity shots. "My mentor, Rob Fodor. His work is in museums all over the world." "Something to aim for," she said. "Yes," Billy said.

She pulled open the lowest drawer of the blue-painted, cheap pinewood dresser.

"Hey what are you doing? That's my dresser," he said, shocked that a stranger, even one he was fucking, would stride into his bedroom to pull open a dresser drawer.

"I know it's your dresser. I wanted to see the secret world of Billy Plunkett. Maybe you've got a gun in here, or pornographic pictures, or recordings of our conversations." She swept her hands through and under the four shirts and sweaters, three paperback books and a leather-covered photo album. She picked up the album and paged through it, glancing at family pictures of a couple, she assumed were his parents, of Billy and his sister through the years posed with birthday cakes, Christmas trees, and in front of bushes in bloom. Other strange faces, some very old, were in the album. Billy stood in different clam boats, alone and with various clammers. Several pictures of Tommy Ledge alone and with Billy.

Billy said, "How about putting the album back and closing the drawer and not touching any more of my stuff."

"Sweetie," she said touching his cheek and handing the album to him, "I just wanted to get to know you better. I didn't mean to offend you." She kissed him lightly on the lips, stepped back and smiled at him. "I'm very impressed by your work."

He put the photo album in the dresser drawer and closed it while Erin glanced around the room, taking in the crucifix on the wall over the head of his unmade bed and the books, none of the anti-Bush or pro-Left Wing variety, packed into a small bookcase. She decided in this quick survey of his few belongings that Billy was not an undercover agent or a political threat. "Let's have a cup of tea and we can talk about my sculpture."

('Don't let her box you in Billy. Don't give her control. Remember the fable of the wolf and the dog,' Harvey said.)

Billy considered Harvey's warning as he put on the tea kettle and took the box of Lifeboat Tea bags from a cabinet.

Erin sat at the kitchen table watching him. "As long as we're agreed that you won't take pictures of me in the nude and you won't tell anyone I posed for your drawings or your sculpture, I believe there'll no problem coming up with the $5,000 commission for the statue."

"I thought you were going to put it on display in TRUE's office. So how can you hide the fact that the sculpture is of you."

"As long as you don't tell people I posed, I'll have deniability."

"Are you running for president?"

"I'm trying to avoid exposing myself to my enemies. You heard Babs Budinsky lie about me on the radio. Can you imagine how she would rip me, especially with the born-agains, for posing naked in front of a man who wasn't my husband?"

"I'll tell you how we can avoid any problems. I won't do the sculpture until you go back to Washington and I go back to clamming. That way you can tell people it's a figment of my imagination."

"Then you won't get the money."

"Good news for you then. Without a grant, it might take me years and years to do."

She pursed her lips. "I'm not very happy about this," she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He sketched her in the nude on the sly and from memory as she bent over in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom brushing her long hair; and as she slipped jangly earrings into her pierced lobes; and drying her hair after a bath. He sketched her face in the morning; in the kitchen at mealtimes; in the evening with a glass of wine. Atop her in sex he memorized her in the first suggestion of pleasure and in the red-skinned frenzy of orgasm. He awoke in the middle of the night, turning on a bedside table light to sketch her in sleep. He drew her as she spoke on the phone and as she sat in the bath tub washing her extended arms.

He stashed his drawings of Erin in a folder in a lockbox in the back of his truck and under an extra blanket in the closet of his maid's room studio.

Twice when she went off to have lunch with Linda Gold, Billy seized the opportunity to go to the space Erin had created in a corner of the upstairs commons room to read her notes and segments of what she had written, hoping in the process to have an insight into who she was beyond the mask she offered the public, hoping to find the essence of the woman.

Ash trays filled with cigaret butts, dirty coffee cups and wine glasses, her manuscript, notes and the documents she was using for the book were strewn around her computer on a long wooden table beneath large framed photos of Ayn Rand, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Ralph X. Culligan III. The tentative title of her book was Wait a Minute/An Uncrazy View of Global Warming. A drawer in the table was locked, a tempting target for Billy, but he didn't dare jimmy his way into that hidden area.

Billy timed his forays into Erin's territory so he would be back downstairs before the two women returned. As a further precaution against being caught, he tied Sweeney to a line outside the kitchen door knowing being tied up irritated Sweeney so he would greet the arrival of the women with a barking plea to be freed.

She opened the book with a chapter, The Green Leopard, on the politics of a volunteer ice corer, an English professor at Harvard who as a Leftie in the 60's advocated resistance to the draft and the Vietnam War. After the 2000 election, he refocused his energy on undermining the Bush Administration with frightening warnings about the melting ice in the Artic.

The second chapter, The Green Green President portrayed President George W. Bush as pursuing reasonable policies, despite the howls of liberal tree huggers, to protect both the environment and the economy by rejecting the Kyoto Treaty, advocating the opening of the otherwise useless Alaskan wilderness to oil exploration, and creating jobs through the careful pruning of national forests.

He couldn't continue after reading the third chapter, The Frowning Clown deriding Al Gore's futile efforts to arouse the public over the issue of global warming and ridiculing his support of Triana, a satellite that would record the impact of global warming on Earth from a satellite a million miles away.

Erin and Linda came back from the village laughing, singing, and bragging about the number of kir royales they had consumed at lunch. Erin fetched a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and the two of them with Billy's help consumed that. Another bottle was opened to go along with a dinner of steak, oven fries, and goat cheese salad.

Erin's eyes were hooded; she was on the periphery of a doze when Billy asked her without preamble if she really believed global warming wasn't happening.

She said with some effort, "Someone's been reading my manuscript. Let me put it this way, Sweetie, the earth gets hot and cold in cycles. Sometimes Planet Earth has hot flashes and sometimes, she's a cold bitch."

Linda howled with laughter. "Twinnie you are just too much," she said.

Billy asked her why she bothered to attack Al Gore in her book since he was no longer in the running for president.

"Sweetie, that's what we call a just-in-case in my business."

"And what is your business?"

"Oh God, you know what I do."

"I'm doing a little research."

"In that case, Sweetie, I'll define myself. I'm an aggressive campaign specialist."

"One of the best, believe me," Linda said.

Erin squeezed her hand. "Thank you, Twinnie." She turned to Billy, "Sweetie, I have a magic touch when it comes to negative campaigning. I have the chapter on Al Gore in the book just in case he decides to run again. An aggressive campaigner, ala Karl Rove, goes full throttle against the opponent's strongest points. In Gore's case, he is a serious guy who loves to present himself on the side of the greens, ergo I portray him as a clown, whose ideas are laughable. I'll tell you frankly there are people who will buy the book in bulk because of that chapter if Gore runs again." Erin and Linda looked at one another and fell into spasms of laughter. Finally, Erin controlled herself enough to say, "No pun intended."

"Why does this guy, Leo Boston, want to cut out your tongue?"

"Don't forget my fingers. He wants to chop off my fingers too. After Harry Couter's election, the chief political reporter for 'The Georgia Overview' wrote the inside story about me turning around the election by putting the whammy on the reputation of Roger Truman, who was running against Couter because he backed President Bush all the way on taking out Saddam Hussein."

"You're leaving out the part where you fed the story to The Georgia Overview," Linda said.

Erin lit a Marlboro. "Now you're embarrassing me Twinnie. I wanted Billy to think I was so potent that I was a natural story. So I'm going to add to your education Billy and tell you that reputations like mine or Karl Rove's get built by seeding the garden."

('Does she fertilize with cash or sex?" Harvey asked in Billy's ear.)

She blew a stream of smoke towards the air and took another sip of champagne. "Getting back to the story. Truman was a hardware store operator with a phony war record and a do-gooder reputation. Before they brought me in, Truman was leading Couter by 10 percent in the polls. I worked my magic, like the story said, and when the votes were counted, Couter was in by point nine percent. So it was a 10.9 percent turnaround in just four weeks."

"And because his candidate lost, Leo Boston wants to cut off your fingers and rip out your tongue?"

She stubbed out the cigaret and stared into Billy's eyes. She said, "Let me assure you Leo Boston isn't what you would call a hundred per cent upstairs. He is in love with Roger Truman, and he was not the only man in the mood to love Roger Truman, I kid you not. If you asked me I would say flat out that male bonding was responsible for Roger Truman's medals in Vietnam. We just hinted at it in our ads and the voters got the message. I think the photo they ran of me with the article in 'The Georgia Overview' sent Leo over the edge. I love that picture. I have a 20 by 30 blow up of it hanging in my office in Washington. It shows me wearing a magician's high hat with a magic wand in my right hand, and a big, big smile on my face. Truman turned out to be a sore loser, he was quoted in the article as saying I was a lying witch, he didn't have the balls to say bitch, and he would like to cut my tongue out to prevent me from doing to somebody else what I did to him. I guess Leo decided to do what his hero didn't dare do. I guess cutting off my fingers too was Leo's way of saying he wanted to do everything he could to please the man of his dreams."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Billy interrupted the washing of the breakfast dishes to do another quick sketch of the sculpture of Erin that was emerging in pieces in his mind. He envisioned a nude Erin standing with her bulging belly, her legs spread, knees slightly bent, right leg a half step forward of her left leg to depict a woman poised on a solid, athletic base. Her arms would be raised on either side of her head. Hands would be facing forward, the fingers bent around unseen globes. Her mouth open, teeth showing, her eyes aflame. This figure would be casting a spell.

The idea had come to him from the expression 'whammy' used in the magazine article about Erin's efforts turning around the congressional race in Harry Couter's favor, and from the Democratic candidate's description of her as a witch.

He hurried out of the kitchen across living room and up the stairs to Erin's makeshift office. She turned at the noise of his approach. The corners of her mouth were drawn down, her forehead was pierced with a deep furrow. "God dammit, when I'm working I don't want you up here. I don't want to be disturbed."

"I just want to look at your dictionary."

"Wait till I've finished writing."

"I'm here now. I've interrupted your work. A couple of minutes more won't hurt that much will it?"

('You two are beginning to bicker like an old married couple,' Harvey said)

She stood. "Yes it will be an interruption. Go down stairs right now. And let me add something else," she said pointing her right index finger at him. "Don't you ever look through my papers again without my permission."

"You have a champagne headache?"

"No, I've got a pain in the ass and he's standing in front of me."

Billy turned and went back down the stairs. The impulse surging through him was to collect his tools from his studio, load them in his car, and leave this stewing woman behind him. He went out onto the porch overlooking Culligan's Harbor. Her nastiness burned his insides. He shouldn't have interrupted her, but he wanted to look up 'whammy' in her big dictionary. Her reaction was over the line. Billy had learned in the course of his life, in seeing men with short tempers flare into rages to calm himself down, to reflect on the spark that angered him before reaching a decision. April was a transitional month with lots of days lost to high wind and heavy rain. Today, the weather wasn't bad at all. He could be out clamming. Leo Boston popped into his mind. If he walked out on Erin, Leo Boston probably would pick this morning to appear with his pliers and shears. He had agreed to stay until she returned to Washington. So he would.

He went back to the kitchen, finished washing the dishes, and went through the rest of the morning in a cloud of angry thoughts about Erin.

She came down for lunch at one. She sat at the kitchen table, while Billy made grilled cheese sandwiches with pickles and Utz potato chips on the side.

"What are you drinking?"

"Tea," she said, the only word she spoke during their lunch.

They sat across from one another their legs and bodies at 45-degree angles, each reading a section of Newsday, separated by far more than the small table between them.

She dropped the paper on the floor when she got up. She started out of the kitchen.

"Pick it up or I'm gone," he said.

She looked at him without speaking, with a sneer on her face.

"The only reason I'm still here is Leo Boston. If I go out the door I'll give you odds he'll walk in. That's how the world turns."

The right side of her face twitched. She breathed in, then stepped back to the table, picked up the paper and took it with her.

He knew as she left that her mind was working on the details of replacing him before the day was out. What he should have done, he realized, was put her lunch on the table and have gone upstairs to look at the dictionary while she ate.

He put on a jacket, went back onto the porch, and sat with his feet up on the railing thinking about the sculpture of Erin. Until she told him about the article in 'The Georgia Overview' with the photo of her mimicking a magician casting a spell he hadn't arrived at the pose that would reveal her to the observer of the sculpture. The conflict that blossomed between them this morning freed him to be as cruel to Erin as his work demanded. He sensed a maliciousness about her that was waiting to be exposed in the sculpture. He wasn't certain yet what form that would take. Her misshapen body with a bulging belly, swollen thighs, and two conical breasts were not unconventional elements in paintings and sculpture. He wanted to reach something unique in this piece that he had yet to realize.

She came downstairs an hour later. She knocked on the French door, signaling him to come into the living room. "I've been on the phone with Ralph Culligan and Frank Kelly. I told them you had been sniffing around my desk."

"That was so I could get a better idea of what you were all about," Billy said.

"I told them that. Frank said he had checked you out and that by all accounts you are harmless. A nonentity is the way he put it. People like me have to be careful you understand that. And on top of that Mr. Culligan said that Madame Arod was particularly taken by you. She says there is something special about you. So Mr. Culligan considers you acceptable."

"Even though I'm a nonentity?"

('She said that to hurt you. Her nature is to be vicious to anyone who opposes her. So don't be offended. Don't take it personally,' Harvey said.)

She smirked and said, "Here's the deal. I have another week, maybe two more of writing. At this point bringing a stranger in would be more upsetting to my work than keeping you around. I want you to do the meals, like you've been doing, and I want you here 24 hours a day, like you have been doing. But, and this is a big but, but you sleep in the other room upstairs from now on. As soon as I finish the book we part company. You agree that you will stay out of my work space and won't look at the manuscript from this point on. As an incentive for staying on, I'll give you a bonus when we part company on my terms."

"It all sounds good to me, except for one thing. I want to use the big dictionary to look up a word. You can watch me while I do it. Or else, I'll give you until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning to find a replacement. Then I'm out of here."

"One word," she said.

He got his notebook and she followed him upstairs. Whammy was the word. He knew what it meant, but he wanted a more precise definition that could lead to a better title for the sculpture. The witch was no good. Whammy clashed with the gravity of his subject. He was in search of a word with an aura of the classical. Nude sculpture stemmed from the Greeks in their efforts to put human forms on gods and goddesses.

The thick 'Random House Unabridged Dictionary Second Edition,' was on a rolling stand. He opened to whammy: "the evil eye, jinx. 2. bad luck or misfortune. 3. a devastating blow, setback or catastrophe." Jinx caught his imagination. He could see that as the name of his goddess casting her spell of misfortune on Roger Truman or some other hapless Democratic candidate. He turned the pages to jinx.

"You said one word. Goddamit that's our deal."

He ignored her. He found jinx: "a person, thing or influence supposed to bring bad luck." At the end of the definition was "L jynx wryneck (bird used in divination and magic) Gk inyx." He closed the dictionary. "I have what I want. Take the extra word out of my bonus."

Jynx. That would be the title of Erin's figure. It had a mythological ring to it so much more than the ordinary-sounding jinx.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The two weeks passed with little communication between them. Billy made her three meals a day. Listened to Harvey's jibes that he had become the perfect housewife and patrolled the grounds with Sweeney a half dozen times a day, usually before she got up in the morning, after breakfast and lunch and at odd times during the evening and night. Instinct told him that when the end was in sight, and today should be the day, problems were likely to arise.

He spent this warm Sunday morning on the open porch overlooking Culligan's Harbor reexamining his scale drawings of The Jynx. He had moved beyond considering the sculpture to be one of Erin to a figure that would offer a universal truth.

The French door opened behind him. Sweeney, tail wagging, rose from the floor where he had been dozing in the sun. Erin said to Billy, "What have we got for lunch?"

"Four hamburgers in the freezer and some frozen French fries, and we've got one tomato left." Erin would eat two hamburgers, Billy and Sweeney would have the other two.

"Fine. We'll have champagne with our lunch. I just pressed the button to send the book to my publisher. So it's time to celebrate."

Billy grinned. "You going back to Washington tomorrow?"

"Can't wait to see me go. Aching to get back to clamming?"

"I'm going to put off the water for a while. I figure I'll be able to work on my sculpture of you full time for a while. I can hardly wait to begin."

She lit a cigaret, eyeing him as she took several drags before speaking. "Despite the little irritations that have built a wall between us, I would still like to help fund this sculpture. The $5,000 offer still stands."

('She never wavers from the target,' Harvey said.)

Billy nodded in agreement with Harvey, but Erin took that for a positive response. She said, "So we'll shake on it and draw up a contract."

"No," he laughed. "I was thinking that you stay right on target. You're one determined woman."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I don't know whether I'll be offering the sculpture for sale, and when I do what the price will be."

('Serious artists command serious money,' Harvey said.)

Billy continued, "My work is worth a lot more than I've been paid to date."

"So how much do you want? Fifteen-thousand?" She said as though the sum was a joke.

He hadn't considered an exact price until she provided one. "That sounds like it's in the ballpark."

"You are a dreamer. Even using other people's money, I couldn't bring myself to pay $15,000 for a piece of carved wood. The $5,000 might look a lot better when you finish the sculpture and have to pay the rent on that quaint shack you live in. But I'm going to have to like what I see if you hold out now and don't agree to do the sculpture on a commission from TRUE. Well?"

"As I asked, when are you packing it in?" Billy said.

"I can't leave until Friday. I called Ralph Culligan to tell him the good news, and he wants me to have dinner with him and Madame Arod on Thursday to celebrate. He is the force behind the book so I couldn't turn him down.

\---

On Thursday night, Billy moved his clothes and sculpture tools back to his house while Erin dined with Ralph Culligan and Madame Arod at 105 Harbor, a restaurant overlooking the water in Centerport. He stopped by Sugar's for a bowl of Irish stew and a beer. Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" was playing on the juke box. Monnie Dwyer was behind the bar. She was somber; Sugar's seemed subdued.

Monnie had little to say to Billy beyond the routine 'you haven't been around in a while' and 'what are you having?' He hadn't been back to Sugar's for over a month, not since Robin showed up to ruin Monnie's celebration of her affair with Tommy Ledge.

Billy threw darts for a while and talked about the weather with a couple of clammers. "Monnie's selling the place," one of them told him.

Billy went back to the bar. "What's this about you selling Sugar's?" he asked Monnie.

"I don't want to come here any more. Too many memories and too much embarrassment. That bitch called me a whore in front of everyone. Syd Brown came by a couple of days later. That stupid son of a bitch wanted to get all the details of my romance with Tommy. He said all he had to do was change a few names and he would have the great suburban love affair novel of the decade. I told him to get the hell out of here and not come back. He said he was going to write the novel anyhow. Then I get an unbelievable offer. Harry Dix and his wife come by and they hang around till the last call. When everyone clears out they say to me any time I want to take sex to another level, they're ready for a ménage à trois. And I said, Get the fuck out of my place and never come back." She stepped away to draw a pint of beer, a Harp's. She put the glass in front of him. "You still living with Erin?"

"I just work for her. In fact, tomorrow's my last day. I moved all my stuff out already. We're not sleeping in the same bed if that's what you're wondering."

"Pardon me. Don't get huffy. I just want you to know if you ever get lonely. Want someone to talk to. I'll be around. I know you like women. And I'll tell you. I'm very lonely."

('Be careful. Don't hurt her feelings. Didn't Zorba the Greek say that the only unforgivable sin was to refuse a woman," Harvey said. There was a smile in his voice as though he were enjoying Billy's predicament.)

Billy considered his response. What could he say that wouldn't offend her? He wasn't horny enough to jump at her offer. If Mrs. Dix were young with a taut, inviting body, he might have suggested they engage in a ménage à quatre, something he hadn't even imagined before. But Mrs. Dix could have been a stand in for Monnie with sagging breasts and a fattish square body. Aside from not being at all attracted to Monnie, he realized as he sat across from her in silence that because of his friendship with Tommy she was as taboo to him as if she were a nun in a black Dominican habit with a snow-white bib

She filled the silence: "I'm not going to be around here much longer. I called up a broker and I got an offer for the place already. They're gonna keep the name and the menu. This guy who lives in Ronkonkoma has six or seven bars. He makes good money because he can buy in volume and he knows how to keep the bartender's hand out of the till." She took a coaster. Wrote on the back and pushed it across the bar to Billy. "I've got to take care of the other customers, but if you're interested, give me a call. That's my home phone. Don't lose it. It's unlisted."

"Hey," he said, remembering his idea for a sculpture of 'The Other Woman.' "Would you consider posing for me?"

She smiled. She leaned towards him. "In the nude?"

"How else," he said, aware of how much more attractive she was when a smile literally lit up her face.

She winked at him. "You've got my number," she said and went off to serve other customers.

('She's so hungry for a piece of you that she didn't even notice that you said no.' Harvey said.)

"Why don't you mind your own business once in a while," Billy said. ('You are my business,' Harvey responded)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sweeney followed his usual routine. He trailed Billy up to the bedroom on the second floor, got onto the bed, and snuggled up to his master who was propped against two thick pillows reading the first chapter of Alan Furst's novel, 'Dark Star.' Billy was 100 pages into 'Dark Star' when he put down the book. He sat for a while remembering his conversation with Monnie earlier in the evening at Sugar's. He conjured a fantasy of a foursome: him, Monnie, Mr. and Mrs. Dix. Even a vision of the two square-bodied women and pot-bellied Harry Dix with an erection. That didn't excite him. He switched to a more inviting ménage a trois with Erin and Linda. That was better. Actually arousing as he considered Linda's appealing shape, her slender body with a waist just narrower than her hips, two shapely breasts, and a black bush of pubic hair. He imagined the two naked women playing with him, teasing him into a frenzy on the bed, which was interrupted by the sound of a car door slamming. Sweeney hopped off the bed to trot downstairs. He heard the kitchen door open and close. He looked at the alarm clock. Eleven o'clock.

"I'm back," she called up to him.

Billy walked to the top of the stairs. "Do me a favor, let Sweeney out," he called down. He went back into the bedroom to slip out of his underpants and undershirt into the dressing gown Erin had given him. He would greet her with a kiss and the half open dressing gown. He thought he might turn her on for one last tumble. He smiled. Give her something to remember him by.

Billy's musing was replaced with a surge of adrenalin by a sharp bark from Sweeney and Erin screaming, "He's here." The kitchen was slammed shut. He went leaping barefoot down the stairs, three steps at a time, the dressing gown flying open. Erin ran across the living room into his arms. "He's here," she shouted again.

"Upstairs. Call the cops. Lock yourself in your room," Billy said. He pulled away from her and grabbed the heavy brass poker from the fireplace. He moved cautiously through the kitchen out onto the porch. He stopped when he saw in the glow of the lights from the house a curly-headed man whimpering standing over Sweeney who lay on the wooden steps leading onto the porch. The man, who held a pair of shears in his right hand, rocked on his feet, almost falling backward, drool drifting from the corners of his mouth. He wasn't aware of Billy's presence.

Billy dropped the poker the moment he saw the blood running from Sweeney's throat. "Sweeney," Billy howled as though the sound of his name would call the dog back to life. He shoved the man away from Sweeney's limp body.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry," the man said. He dropped the shears.

Billy wrapped his arms around the companion who had shared every day of his life for the past twelve years. "Ohhh no, ohhh no," he wailed as he hugged Sweeney's lifeless form.

"I'm so sorry," the man said. He knelt on the cold ground just below Billy and his dog, his face contorted in anguish, in sorrow. "I didn't mean to do it."

Billy looked at him. "You're Leo Boston."

His hair was long and unkempt. He wore a four-day beard and stank of vomit and wine." He nodded.

"Why did you have to do this? You filthy fucking asshole. Why did you have to come here tonight." He spoke softly without anger. He was so heartbroken there was no room for rage. Tears poured down his face. He closed his eyes and was struck by the notion that perhaps this was the right way for Sweeney to die, an heroic death confronting an intruder with a deadly weapon in his hand. He died before the onset of his approaching fragile old age in which his joints would stiffen, his back would ache, cancer or some other awful disease would eat at his innards. His reverie in mourning was interrupted by Erin shouting, "Get out of the way Billy." He turned. She was standing, legs set apart, the shotgun at her shoulder, leveled, ready for discharge.

Boston cringed making himself a smaller target behind Billy and the dog. Billy looked up at her. "Put the gun down," he said.

She motioned with the shotgun, a directive for him to move aside. From her fierce expression, Billy realized she would squeeze the trigger if he did. She intended to blow away Leo Boston not for what he did to Sweeney, but because of his threat to her, because she was willing to be as fierce in a physical confrontation as in a political war of words.

"Stay put behind me," he said to Boston. He was confident Erin wouldn't pull the trigger while he shielded this interloper. "He said it was an accident," Billy said.

"Bullshit. You believe that piece of shit. Why aren't you tearing his head off? What kind of man are you?" She spoke with the shotgun leveled, the huntress waiting for a clear shot.

"Why don't you shut up," Billy said. He closed his eyes to stem the flow of tears. He felt as though his guts had been ripped from his belly. Leo Boston had torn a hole in his life and she was calling him a coward for failing to wreak a bloody revenge.

('Fuck her. You're doing the right thing Billy,' Harvey said.)

He gently laid Sweeney's body down, half on the porch, half on the upper step. He stood, careful to remain as a barrier between the mouth of the shotgun and Leo Boston. She stepped to her right for a clear shot, but Billy moved quickly pushing the barrel of the shotgun aside as she squeezed the trigger. The blast took away a piece of the porch's corner pole. "You bitch," Billy said slamming his open hand against her chin knocking her down. He pulled the weapon away from her.

"Leo Boston has another hero to worship," she said getting to her feet, weeping from pain and rage.

Billy pumped the shotgun empty of shells and threw it in an arc into the yard.

Boston remained kneeling on the ground, shaking his head from side to side, whimpering.

"Wow. He's sooo sorry for killing your dog, the fuck. He came here to cut out my tongue, Billy, and you're letting him get away with it."

"He's not getting away with anything. Did you call the police like I told you?"

"I didn't have time. I thought I'd have to rescue you from the dog-killer and I was right. He could have bashed your head in while you sitting there crying like a woman."

('She specializes in emasculation,' Harvey said.)

"Shut up, Harvey," he screamed. Billy's outburst puzzled both Erin and Leo Boston. They stared at him, waiting for whatever was to follow. Billy argued with himself, not with Harvey, that a bloody revenge, which he could still wreak on Leo Boston, would not bring Sweeney back to him. "I'm sorry I had to knock you down, Erin," he said at last.

"Not sorry for calling me a bitch?"

('She is a bitch,' Harvey said.)

"No." He looked at her, his face set in a grim expression, hers in contempt. "Now go call the cops. I'll watch him," Billy said.

"At times like this, one realizes how much the Frank Kellys of the world are needed," she said and went into the house.

Leo Boston looked up at Billy. "The dog jumped at me. That's how it happened."

"Just be quiet. I don't want you to talk to me," Billy said. He sat on the steps beside Sweeney. He put his hand on the Lab's head, stroking him, while he remembered their first encounter. He had heard a bayman on the East End had Labs for sale. Billy called him, made an appointment, and drove the length of Long Island on a windy and snowy December morning. The East Ender took Billy into the ancient barn behind his old farm house to take his pick from the litter.

The puppies were tumbling over one another at play in a wire-enclosed circle. One with his tail wagging came out of the pack right to Billy. He called him Sweeney.

('You still have me,' Harvey said to soften the ache tearing through Billy.)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

In the morning, after the crime scene photos had been taken, he and Erin had been questioned, and the last cop left, Sweeney's body, still lying at the foot of the steps, was rigid. Billy lifted him onto the long multi-colored quilt that had become the Lab's bed in the living room of The Guest Cottage. He put Sweeney's water bowl, some dog biscuits, a bar of cheddar cheese, and a half-chewed leathery bone beside the corpse before folding the quilt over and around him. He picked up the lifeless bundle, heavy in his arms, to carry it to his pickup truck. He considered putting it into the cab, but that wouldn't work. Sweeney would be jammed half onto the floor and the passenger seat. He eased Sweeney's quilt-enclosed body onto the bed of the pickup.

He drove to their house in Huntington Village. Leaving Sweeney in the truck, he went out to his studio in the garage. He pulled the black sack filled with shavings and bits of wood from the plastic garbage can and gathered half a dozen odd scraps of wood that he had thrown into a bin to eventually discard. There was an old copy of Newsday lying on his work bench. He took it along. Returning to the house, he went into the living room, where he emptied the books and movable shelves from his small cherry wood bookcase, about three feet wide and five feet high. From the table beside his bed, he took a framed photograph of himself and Sweeney on a happier day. He put all these items into the back of the truck with Sweeney.

On his way to the harbor, he stopped at the Texaco station to fill the truck with gasoline along with a five- gallon and a one-gallon fuel can. Mohammad, the Pakistani attendant, asked him why he looked so unusually glum.

"I'm on my way to a funeral."

Mohammad nodded. He went off to pump gas into another customer's car while Billy stood by the door of his pickup watching the traffic flow by, thinking of Sweeney.

He parked in his usual spot on the shoulder of Shore Road. His sharpie rode high in the water on its mooring. The other boats and clammers were gone, working out on the bay or in its nooks. Billy carried the bookcase, the fuel cans and the wood onto the harbor beach. He left Sweeney's body for last. He intended to put the dog into the coffin-like space of the bookcase, but instead placed Sweeney in his dinghy for one last ride together to the sharpie.

This was how they started many mornings. Billy would leave his paraphernalia on the beach, he and Sweeney would ride the dinghy to the sharpie, and they would come back to the shore in the sharpie for the load left on the beach.

Billy sang, as he usually did, "Hi Ho, Hi Ho. It's off to work we go. La, la, la, la, la, la." He could remember only the first few words. Tears came to his eyes, but he shook them away.

With Sweeney lying in the bow where he liked to stand, facing the wind, they motored slowly across the harbor with the dinghy trailing behind on a long length of rope, passing anchored sailboats, people waving from the shore, out into the bay. He circled the area beyond the Huntington Lighthouse, where Tommy Ledge and Yippie went into the water. That was the right way for a clammer to go. Still vibrant, still working, and with his dog. Yippie played the Indian widow jumping onto her dead husband's pyre. "So long Tommy. So long Yippie," he said.

He waved to a couple of clammers, boats bobbing, rakes in the water. He steered the sharpie into Culligan's Harbor, cutting the motor midway between the shores just below The Guest Cottage. He clamped three sections of pole together. He slid the rake into the water and dug slightly into the bottom. "Let see what we can get, Sweeney boy," he said. His first grab produced 50 clams, Little Necks, Cherries, and Chowder. He turned the basket load into the cull box. He didn't sort the clams. "We're going for weight, not quality today," he said to his dead companion.

"Ahoy there!" Ralph Culligan called from the porch of The Guest House.

Billy turned to wave in acknowledgement. Culligan was standing with Erin and Madame Arod. They had drinks in their hands. Champagne from the shape of the glasses. Culligan raised his glass in a toast towards Billy, who wondered if he were acknowledging the selfless bravery of an heroic dog or just making a pleasant, meaningless gesture? He saw Culligan turn to listen to Madame Arod, then he hurried into the house. The two women followed.

('She knows you want to be left alone,' Harvey said)

Billy went back to his clamming, to his patter of conversation with Sweeney. He worked for fours hours, pulling in the rake, putting the unsorted catch into two bags until there seemed enough weight to take whatever remains there were of Sweeney to the bottom of the bay.

He uncoupled the poles from the rake. Said, "Not long now, pal." And set off for one of the deeper parts of Huntington Bay. The sharpie thumped over the rolling green waters. Cormorants swerved past the boat. He heard an osprey's chirp, and saw one rising from the water with a fish. He cut the motor, dropped an anchor, and set about organizing Sweeney's funeral. He placed the empty bookcase in front of his pilothouse. He pulled in the dinghy, lashed it to the side of the sharpie, and dumped the pieces of wood into it. He poured about half the gasoline over the wood and into the bottom of the dinghy. He wrapped a long wire in a tight spiral around the quilt-enclosed body and tied a bag of clams to either end. He fitted Sweeney's body into the empty bookcase and propped the photo of him and Sweeney near the dog's head. He crumpled up the copy of Newsday dropping some of the paper into the dinghy and the rest into the coffin with Sweeney, then poured the rest of the gasoline onto the newspaper and quilt. Billy sat back to consider the mechanics of setting the gasoline-soaked contents of the dinghy afire without having a flashback. He cut away a piece of roping. He frayed it and rubbed the stringy material in the gasoline. He fitted the roping into the hollow end of a 12-foot section of clamming pole. He decided he would start his motor, ready to drive away from the floating funeral pyre if necessary.

He wished he had thought to bring some sort of flag, not an American flag, but something green or blue to symbolize the water and the shoreline or the water and the air. "What more can I give you for your journey to the other world, Sweeney?" he asked.

('The brass ring,' Harvey suggested.)

Billy slipped the gold chain holding the brass ring over his head. He undid the quilt enough to expose the upper part of the body and was taken aback for a moment by the stink of death, overpowering even the strong smell of the gasoline. He put the necklace around Sweeney's head and lifted the make-shift coffin into the dinghy.

"Un tour libre. No. Un tour final, old friend," he said. He went to the pilot house to start the motor and put it in neutral. He untied the dinghy, shoved it away from his sharpie, and lit the frayed piece of rope. With the dinghy and the sharpie bobbing in the water, he reached into the floating coffin to set the newsprint afire. The gas fumes flared almost immediately. He pushed the dinghy further away with the pole.

He watched the flames consuming the dinghy and its funereal cargo as it floated away in the lapping water. He should have lined the bottom of the dinghy with sand to keep the fire burning until Sweeney turned to ashes. Too late now, but the bags of clams should sink whatever remained of Sweeney.

He could see a boat coming across the bay towards him from the mouth of Long Island Sound. He hoped it was a clammer, not a cop or a Coast Guardsman. As the boat drew closer, Billy saw it was Crazy Mike Duhig, a little red-headed kid who had been clamming for less than a year.

What the hell are you doing Billy? he shouted.

"Viking funeral," Billy said.

Duhig watched for a while then took off for home. Billy stayed as the fire ate into the dinghy's wood, until the heat dried and burned the burlap sacks, popping and scattering the clams that were supposed to take Sweeney to the bottom. The dinghy lingered for what seemed like a long time on the surface, water lapping over the sides. The sun was setting when it foundered, and the ashes and bones were strewn by the wind and the waves.

CHAPTER THIRTY

She came through the backyard in the icy drizzle walking on the sparse wintered grass along the high side of the rutted dirt driveway. She assumed he was in the garage from the light slipping under the double doors and glowing above the skylights. The heavy garage door scraped as she pulled it open.

He was sitting in a worn webbed folding lawn chair, his feet propped on an upturned milk crate from a home-delivery dairy that went out of business sometime in the 1960s. Rising to meet her, he was surprised to see her again after their conflict, especially having called her a bitch and knocking her down, expecting that if she fulfilled her promise to give him a bonus the money would arrive in the mail. She strode right up to him stretching her face to his to plant a gentle kiss on his lips, a gesture that impressed him as forced and awkward.

She stepped back. "That confirms what I expected despite what Madam Arod said. Now I know I won't miss your kisses," she said.

('You're supposed to ask, what did Madam Arod say? Don't do it. She's trying to maneuver you into being the straight man of this conversation,' Harvey said.)

"Is that why you're here, to tell me it's over. I figured that out on my own."

"I saw you clamming yesterday," she said.

"That's what I do."

"I thought you might stop by to see me one last time. Maybe to apologize for what you called me."

('What a phony. She knows what she is,' Harvey said.)

Billy stood silent.

Erin said, "I had to laugh at what Madam Arod said about us."

"What did she say?"

('You had to ask," Harvey said.)

"That we're soul mates. Real soul mates. That we are the halves of a single soul."

"What half am I?"

"She didn't say."

"And you?"

"She didn't say."

('The dark side,' Harvey whispered.)

Billy said, "I guess she's like the Oracle at Delphi. She gives you a hint and you have to figure it out what the future holds yourself."

"No. She says she doesn't predict the future. She just sees what is in front of her. She did say I'd always ache for you. And I said, I don't want to offend you, Madam Arod, but I seriously doubt that. And I confirmed it today. Kissing you was like biting into a stale bagel."

"You mean when you stand naked in front a mirror in your Georgetown house you won't say to your image, how can Billy not spend the long nights longing for me?"

She felt a surge of anger for dangling her fat body between them. She struck back: "I think you're a selfish pig who has the illusion that he's an artist instead of a wood whittler. I would have left Long Island with a higher opinion of you if you had been gracious enough to come around to apologize. You didn't even interrupt your schedule to mourn Sweeney, who I thought was the great love of your life. Instead, you're out on the water clamming the next day."

"I was digging clams to burying with Sweeney."

"Wow! So Madam Arod was right on the money. When she saw you in the boat she said you were surrounded by a dark cloud."

"I certainly wasn't glowing with happiness."

She swung her big purse from her shoulder. She riffled through the papers and pamphlets, pens, make up containers, two packs of Marlboros, a cigaret lighter with an elephant whose trunk was raised in triumph, pulling a thin sheaf of bills from her bag and a red-colored check rimmed with American flags. "The bonus I promised and a check from Ralph Culligan."

He glanced at the bills, a packet of fifties, five-hundred dollars at the most. He had hoped for much more, maybe $5,000; at the very least $2,500.

"Not enough," she said reading the disappointment on his face, a statement rather than a question.

('She's trying not to smile. Now you know why she came here,' Harvey said.)

"Never enough. I caught the greed bug being around you. ('Touché,' Harvey whispered.) You got me used to getting more than I expected, not less." He examined the check, signed by Ralph Culligan. A thousand dollars. "What's this for?"

('Maybe a down payment on your soul,' Harvey said.)

"A new dog. A gift from Ralph," Erin told him.

('Tell her to shove it up his ass next time she's kissing it,' Harvey said.)

Billy didn't need prompting from Harvey. The dissatisfaction over the bonus from Erin and the grief that encased him like the dark cloud seen by Madam Arod spewed out of his mouth in a diatribe. "Tell Ralph Culligan I don't need his money. Tell him I consider taking a thousand dollars from him to replace Sweeney like eating shit." He tore the check in half and threw it in the cold wood stove. "Tell Ralph his gesture wasn't a total waste. I'll use the check for kindling for a fire."

('Bravo!' Harvey said.)

"Don't get carried away with your self-righteous indignation. Ralph is a bighearted man who recognized how desperate you are for a few dollars. I'm amused at my earliest reaction to you. I considered putting a skylight in the attic of my house in Georgetown. It could have been your studio, just like being in a garret in Paris." She spoke softly to his anger, her face set in an expression of self-satisfaction, of superiority. "The way you reacted to Ralph's generosity reaffirms my decision, Billy Boy that you could never fit into my world. When the going got tough you got soft. You could have become a fulltime sculptor with my support. Instead, you'll always be a penniless, self-employed laborer. You'll probably end up sleeping in a cardboard box in the end when your sister gets tired of bailing you out."

('Don't bite, Billy Boy. She's trying to belittle you,' Harvey said.)

They stood staring at one another without speaking, frozen by a mutual distaste. She broke the silence by indicating a big cherry wood log. "Is that going to be me?"

"Eventually."

She smiled, a practiced tactic to drain the hostility from a nasty situation. "Don't make me too ugly. But whatever you do I'm comforted by the fact that no one probably will ever see it. If I'm ever back in Huntington and you manage somehow to finish it, I'll stop by Gallery Alise to see if it's on sale. I'd be willing to pay $50 for it, for firewood."

"I thought you were willing to put up $5,000 to make sure no one else ever saw it."

"I didn't think you were bright enough to figure that out."

"Harvey told me," Billy said knowing what her response would be.

"Who the hell is Harvey?"

"Someone who has you figured out. He told me you were a bitch. That's why I would never apologize for calling you that. Harvey is a very perceptive being."

"I asked, who is this Harvey?"

Billy waited for Harvey to offer a snide response he could pass on to Erin, but nothing was forthcoming. "Why don't you put Frank Kelly on the case? I'll save you some wasted energy. Tell Frank I never speak to Harvey on the phone, but there's always a chance a bug might pick up my end of the conversation. Harvey is too ethereal a character for even the Frank Kellys of the world to pin down."

She took a pack of Marlboros from her purse along with the lighter.

('She's stalling for time. You got her goat. She wants to deliver a parting knock out punch, not just some pithy throw away,' Harvey said.)

Billy started to speak aloud to Harvey to confuse her by including him in the conversation, but Harvey stopped him with the warning: ('Don't give her any openings to suggest you hear voices.')

"Don't mumble to me," she snapped. Her anger bubbled onto her face. She forced herself to smile. "I could sue you to block that sculpture, but that would be doing you a favor, bringing attention to a nonentity. So whittle your revenge in your shabby little garage."

('She's digging you with her needle. She's sorry you're not a politician so she could rip your balls off in public,' Harvey said.)

"You'll be however you come out of the wood. I can't avoid that," Billy said.

"Wow. That sounds ominous." She turned to leave then paused. "Be careful. Don't be so cruel that you arouse my animosity."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

After Erin was gone, he sat back in the lawn chair looking out through the open garage door at the rain, heavier now. Then he turned back to the big, cherry log, to contemplate the figure within the wood.

He couldn't see her shape shimmering within the wood this morning. Erin's visit had been upsetting enough to block his creative impulse.

The rain was heavier, the wind whipping the chilly dampness into the studio. He got up to pull the door closed and took a wooden match from the box, struck it and lit the little pieces of Ralph Culligan's check within the kindling in the pot-bellied stove. While the fire was building, he filled the tea kettle at the deep stone sink beneath the window at the back of the studio garage. He put the kettle on the stove to boil.

('You're dawdling,' Harvey said.)

"I don't need a nagging wife. I have you," Billy replied. He had always assumed that Harvey could read his thoughts, but had never asked him.

('Yes, I can,' Harvey said.)

'A great mystery solved,' Billy thought, smiling at the subtleness of this communication. He thought of the creative process, his steps from a block of wood to sculpted form, human, bird, fish or animal. He had come to the conclusion that the human figure, the two he had done, were sculptures and his other efforts were carvings. There was so much more thought and effort put into the sculptures of Pasty and Tommy Ledge. And, he was hesitating to begin cutting into the wood to find Erin's figure. Where was his muse? "Are you my muse, Harvey? Are you withholding inspiration and the willingness to plunge ahead because you don't like Erin?"

('I'm not your muse. I'm not what inspires you or drives your hands to create. I'm not your conscience even though you seem to think I am at times.')

Harvey was always waiting somewhere near, whether he was on his boat or at Sugar's or even fucking, to whisper some pithy remark over his shoulder or in his ear. The voice alerted Billy or scolded him, or laughed at him. Erin had asked a question, he had often thought of raising with this entity who spoke to him. "Who is Harvey? I want the answer. I'm asking it out loud for emphasis, are you God?" Billy said.

('Don't be blasphemous.')

"So now we know what you are not. Tell me who you are?" Billy was tempted to put his question into the form of a demand, but didn't want to risk losing Harvey. He tried not to say to himself that he would have to continue with this voice in his ear without an answer. "Well, then answer a direct question. Again, are you God?"

('Don't be blasphemous.')

"Why not? You're foul-mouthed. Fuck and cunt and shit pour out of your mouth with disturbing regularity."

('I don't have a mouth. I don't need a voice box and a tongue and lips and a moving lower jaw to communicate with you.')

"No ears either."

('The words you hear can be offensive; my little joke because you are such a prude. When you used ass instead of your preferred derriere when you were trying to impress Erin in Sugar's that night, I would have been shocked if I could have been shocked.')

"I called Erin a bitch and I hit her."

('You can be forgiven such indiscretions in heated combat. After all you are only a man and a man stumbles through life periodically saying and doing the unintended.')

Ever since Patsy left, Billy had done his best to be pure of mouth. Irritants in a marriage add up to explosions that can break a couple apart. His use of fuck and Jesus Christ as exclamations angered her, and he wondered how much his crude language contributed to the end of their marriage. Until today, in a gesture of his distaste for Ralph Culligan, he had never used shit, a word that made him cringe even then because his imagination conjured a mound of oily human filth when it dropped from someone's lips. "Maybe you're just my alter ego, Harvey. Maybe you are just me talking to myself."

('Maybe you'll think of me when you are old and gray.')

"I've known you my entire life and I have never asked, Who are you? Now I am asking again. Who is Harvey?"

('Do you remember the morning Sister Catherine asked if you did your homework?')

"I'll never forget it. I was what, 12 years old? I said yes sister."

('Then she quizzed you about what you were supposed to have studied and you didn't know the answers. And she said you little liar.')

"And she slapped me so hard she hurt her hand."

('And she said, Plunkett you have the devil in you. Your assignment tonight will be to get on your hands and knees to ask your Guardian Angel to show you the right way through your crooked life. And write out, God forgive me for lying one thousand times.')

"I did what she told me. I knelt next to bed and prayed to my Guardian Angel for guidance."

('And what happened?')

"You told me that I better start writing out God forgive me for lying or suddenly it would be bed time and Sister Catherine would be waiting to punch me around for not doing my special character-building assignment."

('And you thought of that all by yourself? You made up the conversation in your head?')

"No you told me."

('So who am I?')

"Since you won't tell me, I'll say you are me talking to myself."

('You're making me repeat myself Billy not yourself. So who am I?')

"I would be just guessing but you can tell me better than I can guess."

('Yes I can,' Harvey said. There was a long pause, then he asked, 'How long have I been with you?')

"Since as long as I can remember."

('And in all that time, you haven't figured out who I am? You may have magic in your hands, but you have muddle in your head. I am going to deliver a five-word sentence to you whose contents you are never to reveal to anyone and I will never repeat: I am your Guardian Angel.')

The kettle atop the pot-bellied stove was whistling drawing Billy to his feet and into the near automatic process of putting a tea bag in a mug and pouring the hot water onto it. His mind was blank unable to process what Harvey had told him. He put the pot on a metal square atop his work bench. The words of the prayer his mother taught him tumbled into his head: 'Angel of God, My Guardian Dear to whom God's love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side to light and guard and rule and guide.' "You don't do all those things, do you, Harvey, light and guard, rule and guide. You never have. You're more of a sounding board or a critic."

('I didn't write the prayer, Billy. I'm not bound by what some maudlin priest imagines to be my role.')

Billy laughed. "You must know that some day I'll want to do a sculpture of you."

('What do I look like, Billy?')

"I can't see you. You're just a sound in my head."

('Then you don't see me as a wisp of smoke or a classic angel with wings.)

"I'm going to have to give a great deal of thought on how to portray a voice in my head when I get around to sculpting you."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

That afternoon to restock his larder, Billy went to the butcher shop in Huntington Village to buy sausage, chicken cutlets, a steak, hamburger, and cold cuts. His next stop was the supermarket for fresh mushrooms, celery, a box of Cheerios, lemon and strawberry yogurts, canned soups, baked beans, refried beans, cans of peas and carrots, eggs, milk, pita bread, rye bread, coffee, a box of Irish tea bags, a pound cake, two kinds of cookies, napkins, paper towels, olive oil and a copy of Newsday.

He waited until he got behind the wheel of his pickup in the supermarket parking lot to read the story about the arrest of Leo Boston. The photos accompanying the story included a mug shot of Leo Boston, looking wide-eyed with an unshaven rodent-shaped face under a burst of unruly gray curly hair; the one of Erin from the Georgia publication showing her right hand with fingers extended casting her deadly political spell on Roger Truman; the Culligan Village police chief at a press conference holding up the pliers and shears that Boston intended to use to cut out Erin's tongue; and a grainy photo of two skinny bare-chested young soldiers, arms around one another's shoulders, grinning with cans of beer in their hands, wearing soft caps and fatigue pants in front of a big canvass tent. Under the picture was the cutline: Roger Truman, left, Leo Boston, right, in Vietnam.

The Culligan Village police court judge ordered Boston to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after his arraignment on charges of cruelty to animals for killing Sweeney, illegal breaking and entering and attempted murder. Boston was described by Roger Truman, who had flown to Long Island in a private plane, as a decorated comrade in arms in the Vietnam War, who was a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He said he had spoken to Boston in the Suffolk County Jail. Truman described Boston as grief stricken over the accidental death of the dog, which he said attacked him without provocation when he knocked on the door of The Guest Cottage on the Culligan Estate. He said Boston was a gentle soul, who had come to Long Island against his advice to talk to Erin Prendergast, a political operative of the poison pen school, to urge her to admit she twisted the truth and lied about Truman in his unsuccessful race for a Congressional seat in Georgia in 2004.

Asked about the shears and pliers, Truman said the provenance of those tools would be investigated. Knowing Ms. Prendergast to be a ruthless manipulator of the truth, he would not rule out the possibility that the shears and pliers had been planted on his friend. "Do you think she somehow stuck the shears in the dog's throat?" the reporter asked Truman. He replied, "I wasn't there. All I know is that in America you are innocent until proven guilty. The Leo Boston I know, and soldiered with, is a kind, decent, unaggressive man."

Ms. Prendergast said that if it weren't for her having a shotgun, a madman would have murdered her and cut out her tongue. She said her experience proved the need for every American woman to be trained in the use of firearms and to have an appropriate weapon in the house. She said she was in discussions with lawyers over whether to sue Truman for provoking a mentally-disturbed man to pursue her with the intention of cutting out her tongue because she exposed him as a phony whose big medal could be traced to a gay lover in arms rather than any great accomplishment on the battlefield. She said, Truman said in public, quote I'd like to cut her lying tongue out unquote. She wondered if this attack were part of a plan by the Democratic National Committee to silence its critics.

Ms. Prendergast said her work had put her on the enemies' lists of the Democratic Left and environmental extremists. Her forthcoming book, "Wait a Minute/An Uncrazy View of Global Warming," which she said was a defense of President George Bush's reasoned stance on climate change was certain to enrage greenies with mold on their brains.

Army records showed that Truman was awarded the Silver Star on the recommendation of Lt. Avery Spencer for an action in which he organized a defensive position for their platoon, shattered in a Viet Cong ambush. Lt. Spencer said that Cpl. Truman, who killed or wounded half a dozen Viet Cong, dragged and carried him to safety during the fire fight. In the same engagement, Boston suffered a head wound, serious enough to invalid him back to the States.

Ms. Prendergast said she found two irrefutable witnesses, Truman's platoon sergeant and his squad leader, also a sergeant, who signed sworn statements that they didn't see Truman do anything of particular note in that battle. They said that the wounded lieutenant wrapped his arms around Truman and kissed him full on the lips before medics loaded him onto a helicopter to evacuate him to a hospital. They said that Truman, a draftee, certainly was no warrior, that he was more interested in going home than in fighting the enemy. They accused him of being a malingerer who tried to con his way into an early release from Vietnam and the Army by often sitting on his bunk weeping after coming in from the field. She said she tried to track down the lieutenant to determine whether he would recant his story about Truman's purported heroism, but discovered he had died of AIDS.

Ms. Prendergast said that she felt particularly proud of her work in exposing Truman, because after the Vietnam War he refused to join the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, and ran for Congress because of his opposition to the Iraq War.

Truman readily admitted his tears under stress. He said that he wasn't a man cut out to take another human being's life. He said that neither the platoon sergeant nor the squad leader witnessed what he did that day because they weren't involved in the battle for which he was awarded the Silver Star. He admitted he broke down following a combat patrol during which he inadvertently shot and killed a little girl. He came home from the war deeply ashamed of the killing and the tears. He said he just wanted to put the Vietnam War behind him and went into politics only because of his outrage over the unnecessary invasion of Iraq.

Truman said, "The Vietnam War was a tragedy in which Leo Boston and I were unwilling participants. We saw the horrors of war in which young Americans were killed and maimed, and Vietnamese men, women and children were killed and maimed. I never imagined that the United States would engage in another such senseless war. When the Bush Administration sent another generation of young Americans into Iraq to be killed and maimed, and to kill and maim and be scarred by what they saw and did, I decided I had to do what I could to end the madness. I ran for Congress as an anti-war candidate in a red state and found myself the victim of an unimaginable smear campaign. Leo and I were casualties of the meaningless war in Vietnam and I contend we should be listed as home-front casualties of the senseless war in Iraq."

Rankin Elmore, one of Suffolk County's foremost criminal lawyers, said that Truman had engaged him to represent Leo Boston. Elmore said he would be in court today to file a motion seeking a bail hearing and would request that Dr. Avery Fishburn, a forensic psychiatrist based in New York City, be permitted to be present at Boston's examination by Suffolk County mental health specialists.

Police said that the dog belonged to William O. Plunkett, a resident of Huntington Village who was employed as a handyman by Ms. Prendergast. Plunkett could not be reached for comment.

Billy studied Erin's picture. That was a good likeness with the same smug expression she had shown him on parting. He looked at her and realized that Madam Arod was no soothsayer. Rather than aching for Erin, he didn't even like her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Billy pulled into the driveway past a car, a Volkswagen Jetta, parked at the curb in front of his house. A man was sitting in the car reading a newspaper. As Billy got out of his pickup, the man, short with a roundish, unathletic figure, wearing a hooded blue jacket, emerged from the Jetta.

"Hello there," he said flipping the hood from his head, revealing an olive-skinned face with a pleasant expression. His hair was short, curly and gray. A pair of wire glasses leaned forward on his nose. He extended his hand in greeting. "I'm Roger Truman. I assume you're Bill Plunkett." He spoke with a Southern drawl.

"Billy Plunkett," he said shaking Truman's hand. He felt his body stiffen with suspicion. He waited for Truman to explain his presence.

"I'm sorry to meet you under these circumstances. You probably know I'm a friend of Leo Boston."

"I know who you are. I read about you in Newsday."

"I won't take up much of your time. I just came by to say that I'm damn sorry Sweeney got killed. I know what a dog can mean to a man. I'm doubly sorry because something stupid I said in the peak of anger caused all this trouble. Poor Leo Boston, I know you probably hate his guts for what he did to Sweeney. He could end up in prison because of me." He shook his head in sorrow.

He reminded Billy of a mixture of Harry Truman and an older Jimmy Stewart as the naïve Congressman in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

"Let's not say anything more to one another." He extended his hand again. "The only thing I can offer you is an apology. My lawyer says anything more could be construed as witness tampering. He didn't want me to come, but I had to. Lord knows there is more than enough misery in the world as it is. I'm sorry I added to yours."

Billy took Truman's hand. "I'm trying not to have any hard feelings towards Leo Boston. There are times when I get like a spasm in my body and I wished I had kicked your friend Leo Boston all over the lot. And other times when I realize what a pitiful creature he is." Billy turned from Truman to take the bags of groceries from the back of the pickup.

Truman watched him for a few moments. "I'll just say good bye Mr. Plunkett and in parting I want to express my gratitude for not pummeling Leo and for trying to forgive him." He got back in his car and drove away.

Billy mulled the concept of cause and effect while he put away the foodstuffs and other items he had purchased from the butcher and the supermarket. If the Vietnam War hadn't happened Leo Boston would never had had his head scrambled and never would have come into Sweeney's life. If Bush had not invaded Iraq, Roger Truman wouldn't have run for Congress, and Erin would not have appeared in his life to destroy his reputation spurring him to make the awful remark that he would like to cut out her tongue. Leo Boston's twisted mind sent him and her to Long Island and into Billy's life. She provided the money that got him through the toughest winter of his time on the water. The price he had to pay was a heavy one, the loss of Sweeney. There were no happy endings in this string of events that started with the Vietnam War.

('Why not with Dien Bien Phu?' Harvey said.)

It was almost lunchtime. He put a kettle of water on the stove to boil for tea. He bunched four slices of baked ham, from the butcher onto a slice of rye bread; he topped that with two slices of white American cheese. He was sorry now that he hadn't bought lettuce and tomatoes. He took a jar of Thousand Island dressing from the refrigerator. He spread a spoonful onto the cheese then closed the sandwich with another slice of rye bread. He wished for potato chips too, but had failed to buy them. Next time. He waited for the water to boil and the Irish Breakfast tea bag to steep for four minutes before beginning to eat the sandwich. He finished the meal with two slices of pound cake.

Afterwards, he reread the Newsday story. His attention locked on the photo of Erin with her right hand extended, her fingers fluttering. The reproduction was pretty good. Her expression and hand were very clean in the newsprint. A glossy print would have been better, but this was what he had. He took out his pen knife to slice the picture from the paper.

He crossed the backyard in the damp air to his garage studio. He pinned the clipping to the upright cherry wood log in which he intended to find his figure of Erin. The misty rain of the morning and a temperature hovering just above 40 had created a piercing cold that reached into his bones. Usually, he shrugged off cold or hot weather, taking pride in being acclimated to the extremes of temperature. Right now he needed to get warm. He opened the front door on the pot-bellied stove to bring the banked fire back to life with fresh kindling and wood.

As the fire took, he calculated how many days he could devote to sculpting with the money he had accumulated working for Erin. Once he settled on the details of the piece, he wanted to work on it straight to completion without the stops and starts that usually interrupted his sculpting to clam for his rent and food. There was one other psychological barrier to beginning the Erin statue. He needed to contact Linda Gold to find out when she wanted to do her shoot of him on the water in his clam boat; how much time he could expect to devote to it. Until he got past the modeling gig, he would clam. Once everything was behind him, he would start the sculpture.

He went back to the house. The answering machine was flashing. He went through the messages from Monnie, his sister, three clammers, and two from a Newsday reporter asking him to call. He erased the messages. He took Linda Gold's card from his wallet. She probably wasn't working since it was Saturday. He called her cell phone number.

"Hello," she sang into the phone.

"I don't think I'm the guy you were expecting," Billy said.

"And this is?" she asked, a business tone in her voice.

"Billy Plunkett, Erin's handyman if you believe what you read in the newspapers." He sounded chipper to himself. "I just called to get a run down on when you might want to start shooting the pictures of me on the boat. The forecast for Monday and Tuesday is rain so I doubt if you'll want to do it then."

"That Erin. She may be my best friend, but she can be exasperating at times. I can tell she didn't tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"That was just a make-believe game we were playing. There never were any cookies and tea for you to advertise. Erin loves to manipulate people."

A tightness gripped his neck and shoulders. His face burned with the embarrassment of having been duped by these women.

('Ask her why anyone would want to toy so cruelly with someone else's life the way they did?" Harvey said.)

Instead Billy fumbled out the words, "I don't understand."

"Think about it, you will, but do me a favor and don't call me again." She hung up.

('What a cruel bitch,' Harvey said.)

Billy said, "I wanted to ask her about the pictures she took of me." He started to redial her number, but stopped. "What difference would it make? There probably wasn't going to be any coffee table book of male nudes. Part of the game."

('On the bright side with those two bitches behind you, you can focus on being a sculptor,' Harvey said.)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Billy rolled out of bed at 5 AM. On a clear day the sun would be rising. This morning it was pouring. He made coffee thinking of Erin's fingers, the magic of her light, enticing touch on his body as an invitation to sex. He turned on WSHU. Classical music. He wasn't in the mood. He turned it off. He wished he had called Newsday to reinstate home delivery. On mornings like this, he appreciated finding the Sunday paper on his doorstep. He certainly wasn't going out to the deli in the rain just to get the newspaper.

While the coffee was perking, he took the box of Bisquick from the refrigerator and his folder of recipes from the cabinet over the sink. He turned the loose pages. Blueberry muffins. That's what he would have enjoyed this morning. He should have bought blueberries at the store, but he didn't. He decided on drop biscuits. They were the simplest and quickest. He had a cup of coffee while the oven heated.

The rain was so intense that the backyard was flooding. He picked this moment to miss Sweeney. The dog loved blueberry muffins and drop biscuits. Like Billy, he wasn't that choosy. When one wasn't available, he liked the other. He felt teary remembering how he would have petted and rubbed Sweeney's neck while he drank his coffee and watched the rain on a morning like this.

The joy of drop biscuits was that they took only 11 minutes to bake in his worn oven. The recipe said eight minutes. That was for a kitchen with a good oven like the one in The Guest Cottage. That thought sparked the recall of his dream. He had hauled himself out of bed during the night, feeling the presence of someone in the room. His heart was pounding. He was ready with his fists. She stood there, a sneer on her lips, her hair alive with writhing snakes. She laughed at him. The snakes hissed. He screamed: No! And realized he was standing naked, shaking with fear, on the rug next to his bed. He got under the covers, but couldn't sleep. He didn't want to sleep; he didn't want the Medusa to come back into his dream that night. He looked at the alarm clock. Four AM, the witching hour in his lexicon. He lay awake for the longest time, not wanting to fall back into the nether world of sleep, where she might be waiting.

"Well Sweeney boy, what does that dream mean?" he asked his lost companion. Harvey had told him long ago that he wasn't an interpreter of dreams.

Billy rose from the table at 10 minutes 30 seconds. He stood by the oven door, waiting, watching the clock. At 11 minutes, he took the cookie sheet of biscuits from the oven.

He consumed a half dozen biscuits with butter and strawberry preserves, drinking three cups of coffee, taking extraordinary pleasure in the soft taste of butter and the sweetness of the strawberry preserves and the dark flavor of the coffee. Orange juice would have been nice. He should have gotten that too. His morning seemed full of should haves.

('Your life seems filled with should-haves,' Harvey said.)

"Yeah. I should have paid more attention to Patsy. I really miss her on mornings like this. We'd be going to bed now for a tumble in the hay, and I suppose you'd be the voyeur in the room."

('Please. I am neither pleasured nor horrified by your physical foibles, your failings, or your achievements. I observe and comment.')

Billy washed the breakfast dishes and utensils in the kitchen sink and left them to drip dry on the counter. At 5:45, he put on his yellow rain jacket to cross the yard into his studio. With the boost of some very dry twigs from his tinderbox, he had the pot-bellied stove generating a comfortable heat while he sat with his back almost against it contemplating the newspaper photo of the waving Erin pinned to the stripped cherry wood log.

He walked to the work bench that ran the width back of the studio. He had hundreds of books stored on the shelves above the bench: novels, home repair guides, several manuals for repairing the second-hand pickup trucks and cars he had owned, and a collection of books and files on sculpture of all sorts, wood and otherwise. He searched until he found the folder containing the article he had pulled from the internet at the Huntington Library about 'The Venus of Willendorf' by Christopher Witcombe, an art history professor at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. The picture of the tiny sculpture that was about 24,000 years old showed an obese woman with bulging belly and breasts, a gross band of fat around her waist that hung over her hips and soft thighs. With no pubic hair, the split of her sex well defined. Her face and most of her head was hidden by what appeared to Billy to be a knitted winter cap pulled down to just below the mouth. Witcombe described what Billy saw as a cap as seven rows of plaited hair.

He carried the folder back to his chair near the stove. His eyes flickered from the print of the bloated Paleolithic sculpture in Witcombe's article to the photo of a clothed Erin in Newsday.

('You're looking for inspiration from an artist who worked 24,000 years ago with a slob for a subject. Why not bring his technique into the taste of the modern world?' Harvey said over Billy's shoulder.)

"Erin isn't as fat or soft as the Venus of Willendorf. So what are you talking about?"

('The face. Do you see fatso's face? Be creative and avoid the risk of Erin coming after you. Put a flag where her face is supposed to be. She comes from the super-patriot class doesn't she?')

"And I could tell people this is modeled on a woman I fucked for Old Glory. I would have to describe your humor as trite. I don't want to sculpt a comic-book figure. So leave me alone to find what I have to find inside myself."

('So often you see the answer to a riddle, but it doesn't register.')

Billy closed his eyes and remembered last night's dream of the Medusa. She was naked, her body a pyramid of heavy thighs and broad hips like Erin's. Beneath the writhing snakes atop her head was Erin's face. He opened his eyes and stepped across the studio to the big cherry wood log in the work area. He touched the log and walked around it. He had the shape locked in his mind. Putting Medusa's head of snakes on her would be too much of cliché, too obvious. Erin didn't turn men into stone; she was a sorceress of another kind, she poisoned their lives with her black magic. He decided snakes would work but in a different form for The Jynx.

Inspired by Leo Boston's intention of cutting out Erin's lying tongue, he decided to give The Jynx a forked snake's tongue. Erin, however, wasn't only a liar but a source of deadly venom. The Jynx's right hand with her fingers spread would be casting toxic spells. He needed to find five poisonous snakes. One for each finger. The copperhead and the rattlesnake came right to mind. The coral snake was deadly, so was the cottonmouth. He needed a fifth. He considered a cobra for her thumb. He rejected the cobra as too obvious and foreign. He wanted to use American snakes, because Erin was a creature of American politics.

He would be telling the story of modern American politics through The Jynx. A fleshy body implying softness, a magician's pose, a hand flinging evil at the spectator. He overcame a fluttering stomach to begin the process by sketching a rough outline of The Jynx on the face of the log. He weighed several U-gouges in his left hand, selected one about two-inches wide, touched the polished razor edge, put on his goggles, and picked up the mallet to take his first cuts. Paring and touching, Billy used the tips of his fingers to find his way into the wood. He intended to carve The Jynx rising on her toes, one foot a bit ahead of the other to provide a solid base flowing from a pedestal carved of the same log. No breaks in the work, no joining of pieces. The entire sculpture would come from this single piece of wood.

Billy paused before striking the next blow. He laughed at the idea of one small piece outside the continuity of a sculpture otherwise taken whole from the log. He would pierce The Jynx's erect left nipple with a wooden ring made of waste cherry wood from the log. He would inscribe the inner course of the ring with a French phrase: 'Prenez garde!' The English translation was 'Beware!' No. He would cut both the French and English into the ring.

He would work until the library opened at one o'clock. He felt a burning frustration to get to the library in search of a book about snakes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Around noon, head bowed against the weather, his hands sunk deep into the pockets of the maroon windbreaker his sister had given for his birthday, he walked through a drifting rain into the Village. He couldn't wait any longer. He wanted to find the fifth snake so he could see it weaving along with the others through his imagination as he sculpted.

Every parking space along Main Street was filled, but pedestrians were rare on the wet, somber sidewalks. There were a few couples, alone or with children, either under the moving shelters of umbrellas or scooting towards restaurants or their cars. He stopped to look at an ensemble of six watercolors of clammers and lobstermen on rising steps filling the front window of Gallery Alise. He knew the artist, whose technique was to take a single photograph, which became the model for the painting.

He went into the gallery, empty of customers and browsers. Alise Krugman came out in response to the tinkling of the bell over the door. "Billy. Always a pleasure to see you." She had the bubbly personality of a master saleswoman, who instilled in the potential customer a desire to buy from her.

"Nice display in the window," he said pumping his thumb over his shoulder. "I'd love to have you do that for my work."

She clapped her hands together. "I wish I could say I sold one of your pieces. Today, I wish I could say I sold anything to someone. I could be in Ohio for all the sales I've made this weekend."

Billy ran his hands through his wet hair. He said, "I'll bet your counterparts in SoHo are telling their favorite artist I could be in Huntington for all the action I've had today."

"At least I can offer my favorite artist a cup of tea in consolation. Come. We'll have a sit by the samovar. My little nook is particularly cozy on a day like this. Even better when you can share it with someone you admire."

Billy followed her through a beaded curtain into her private room in the back of the store where her golden samovar sat beside three high-back chairs lined with thick pink and blue flowered cushioning set around a circular glass table whose gold surface was decorated with pink and blue flowers matching those in the chairs. Mini cream puffs were mounded on an English china cake plate in the center of the table. Alise seldom had anything but sweets for her mid-day meal. She poured Russian Caravan Tea into two china cups that matched the plate, which she held out to Billy encouraging him to take a cream puff.

He bit the pastry in half, relishing the sweetness that surged across his tongue. He held up his hand when she offered a sugar cube. He drank his coffee and tea straight, preferring the unalloyed natural flavors.

Alise sucked at the teeth in the left side of her mouth with a kissing sound, an unconscious tick in anticipation of something unpleasant, such as a request for an advance. "So why are we here today?"

"Just passing by. I'm on my way to the library to do a little research for the final piece of my Trio."

"Trio?"

"My little surprise. From this moment on, no more sea birds and sharks and seals and whatever. I'm doing human beings in wood. Real sculpture. True art. I've done two so far. A nude of my ex-wife and a portrait of a clammer friend. I'm just starting the third piece of what I am calling my Trio, and to be honest I expect something great to come of this."

She took another cream puff, her fourth. Her stare told Billy that she was considering something harsh that she didn't want to say, but had to. "I don't want to put a pin in your balloon Billy, but representational art is labor intensive and won't bring you enough money to compensate for the time you spend. Tell me, have you figured out how many hours it took you to do the first two figures?"

"They were simple alongside this one. I'm guessing this piece will take 200 hours of actual cutting and carving. There's difficult detail I'm going to put into it."

"A connoisseur would appreciate the detail and interpret the story the piece tells. The Culligan Neck stay-at-home moms who shop in here have to be turned on by the figure. You can only snare them if you're doing a naked man with interesting parts, or they see a color in it that matches their rug and couch. I hate to tell you this, but no matter what you do, you'll never get more than a thousand dollars. So after my 35 percent commission, your end is $650 presuming someone is willing to pay the full price without squeezing a discount out of me." She took a small calculator from a drawer in the table. She punched in the numbers: $650 divided by 200. "That means you're being paid $3.25 an hour. That's my definition of art for arts sake."

He nodded, deciding that another cream puff would taste like sawdust after her frank assessment of his monetary worth as an artist. His dream was to have a show at Gallery Alise of his Trio in Cherry Wood to bring him acclaim. World-wide fame would be wonderful for the money that it would bring along with the prestige, but he would be happy to have his talent recognized by his acquaintances on the water and in Sugar's, and by his sister and her husband, certainly by Patsy, and maybe his classmates from high school and college. A showing of his trio of Distance, Introspection and The Jynx, when he finished it, would bring a story in the Long Islander. Maybe with some luck, because luck was always an element, there would be critiques in Newsday and the Long Island section of the Sunday New York Times. ('Ask her,' Harvey whispered.) "When I finish my trio would you at least consider a special exhibit? Maybe I could provide the wine and snacks. Maybe send out a press release?"

Alise put down her tea cup. She leaned back in her easy chair and bit her lower lip, a signal of what she was about to say. "Do you know why I charge 35 percent instead of 45 or 50 percent like so many other galleries? Because I love artists. I love their innocence. I love their creative energy. I love them for the same reason that Don Quixote has fascinated perceptive people for 400 years. But I'm also running a business with a certain reputation. You bring me your three pieces, and if I consider them pieces that will sell quickly, you'll have your show even if I can only price them at $1,000. You can bring the wine and cheese and arrange for the press release. But other than your clamming buddies showing up for the free wine and cheese don't expect a crowd with checkbooks in hand."

('Don't let your art become a bargain basement throw-away,' Harvey whispered.)

Billy started to say he was hoping for a lot more than $1,000. Before he could speak, the door bell jingled.

"Commerce calls," Alise said. She got to her feet and went out into the shop.

Billy finished his cup of tea. After a while, tiring of waiting for Alise to return, he went through the beaded curtain, where she was processing the sale of a watercolor of a lobsterman from the front window. She waved the American Express chit at Billy as he said so long and headed to the library.

There were two books on poisonous snakes in the Huntington Library. Sifting through the books, Billy decided that his research confirmed his impression that there were only four poisonous snakes native to the United States: copperheads, cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, and coral snakes. He almost settled on the eyelash pit viper, which ranged from Peru to Mexico, for the fifth snake, until glancing through the internet for further information he saw a reference on Google to pit vipers being the only poisonous snakes in Kentucky. Pulling up that reference, he discovered the copperheads, cottonmouths and rattlesnakes are all pit vipers. Within a few minutes of scrolling through the internet articles, Billy came to the conclusion that two American natives, the timber rattler and the pygmy rattler, were different types of snakes. He walked home through the drying streets happy to have found five American snakes for The Jynx's five fingers.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Billy walked out to his front lawn retrieving Newsday to read with his morning coffee. It would be a great day for clamming. June days usually were. The heavy rains of last week had passed so had the closure of the waters of Huntington Bay and Culligan's Harbor to shell fish harvesting because of a marine biotoxin scare in another harbor, Northport Harbor. He got back into the kitchen at the point of the browned perfection of the English muffins in the broiler. He sat in his Adirondack chair in the backyard to eat the two muffins buttered and spread with strawberry preserves and to drink his first cup of coffee of the morning. Pouring a second cup before opening Newsday, he paged through the paper past the murders, the car accidents in which teenagers and mothers of young children died, past the reports from Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel with the usual stories of bombings, beheadings, and mounting civilian and military casualties, stopping at the small headline deep within the newspaper: Vietnam Vet Pleads.

Leo Boston, who had been accused of killing Sweeney, breaking and entering, and attempted murder, pleaded guilty to a single charge of menacing the Republican political operative Erin Prendergast. In the plea bargain deal, Boston agreed to immediately leave Suffolk County, to never again enter the District of Columbia or to knowingly come within 10 miles of Ms. Prendergast, and to undergo counseling for his addiction to alcohol. He was placed on probation for a year with jurisdiction over his case transferred to Trentham County, Georgia. Ms. Prendergast complained that dirty Democratic politicians had arranged what amounted to a sweetheart deal and a miscarriage of justice because of Boston's relationship with Roger Truman. Asked to identify those Democratic politicians she described as dirty and what she meant by Boston's relationship with Roger Truman, Ms. Prendergast said that Boston and Truman were men who had an unusually close relationship, she suspected that their moral shortcoming extended to some of the Suffolk Democrats involved in the deal. She said she would not identify them because she felt so sorry for their wives. Truman, who was in court for the plea and to accompany Boston back to Georgia, said that Prendergast's irresponsible, venomous remarks stretched the right of free speech under the First Amendment to the very edge of the outer limits. He said that he and Boston had been friends since their days together in combat in Vietnam. "Leo was a nice, innocent kid when he arrived in Nam. He was sent home as a shattered old man. That's how he got caught up in the alcohol. He was fine when he worked for me in my run for Congress, but what that Prendergast woman said about me, costing me the election, drove him off the wagon and into this bind."

A spokeswoman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office expressed outrage at the Prendergast woman's suggestion that politics or male bonding, a strange choice of phrase, entered into the settlement of this complicated case.

Billy finished reading the story, drank the rest of his coffee, and went into the house to check his answering machine. He had heard the phone ringing in the distance as he worked yesterday afternoon in his studio garage. After every third ring, the answering machine had picked up. There had been several calls, but the only message recorded was from a Newsday reporter to ask whether he wanted to comment on the sentence of the man who killed his dog? "No," Billy said to the machine. He pressed the erase button. He felt relieved that he wouldn't have to endure the disruption that testifying at Leo Boston's trial would have engendered.

A detective from the District Attorney's office had stopped by the house a week ago. He insisted on showing Billy his badge and on sitting in the living room to give him a lengthy explanation of the plea deal. The detective, who admitted to being a dog lover, seemed angry that Boston would be escaping without jail time. He said that off the record if he were Billy, he would demand that Boston replace Sweeney with another pure-bred Yellow Lab. Billy said he just wanted the whole thing to go away. Another dog wouldn't be Sweeney. That suggestion, Billy said, would be like someone guilty of killing a little boy or a little girl providing a new child to the grieving parents. The detective seethed with such anger at Billy's remarks that he got right up to leave. He turned in the doorway to say, "If you answered your goddamn phone I wouldn't have had to come by here today to hear your bullshit."

The encounter with the detective had upset him so much that he couldn't continue on The Jynx that day.

He went out to the studio to work on the first of the snakes comprising the digits of The Jynx's hand casting the spell. He had braced and wrapped the body and arm of the figure as precaution against somehow breaking the wood.

('Don't be superstitious,' Harvey said.)

But Billy was. He was bringing a wicked figure out of the wood, which he found upsetting. He would have preferred a beautiful dancing woman or man or dog. A Max Bohm painting he had seen of two young women in long dresses dancing together on a beach flashed across his mind like a slide being projected onto a wall. He could feel the movement of the women, their dresses flaring just above the sand, their feet moving.

('Do what you set out to do and stop procrastinating,' Harvey said.)

The fingers of The Jynx's right hand were ready to be detailed. The thumb was a coral, the most poisonous snake for the most powerful digit. He etched the bands that marked the open-mouthed coral snake into the thumb. He worked slowly with a light touch first with a razor-sharp knife then fine sandpaper. Harvey seldom spoke to him when he worked on a carving or sculpture. He didn't hear the phone ringing in the house. The thumps of trucks being unloaded in the yard next door and the doors of the vehicles being slammed didn't intrude on his focus. When the alarm on the timer beeped telling him to put down his tools for the day at 5 o'clock, he was surprised by how quickly the minutes and hours had been consumed. With the passage of the days he etched the markings that distinguished each snake. The index finger was a cottonmouth; the middle finger twisting above the others was a timber rattlesnake; the ring finger was a copperhead; and the pinky was the pygmy rattler. His ambitious attempt to do a sculpture without adding parts became impossible when the fragility of the wood interfered with his artistic ambition. The forked and flaring tongues and the fangs of the two rattlesnakes had to be shaped from separate pieces of cherry, which he glued in place.

Erin had a tattoo of two red and pink roses rising from the cleft in her buttocks on the small of her back. Up until he carved the snakes onto the fingers, he had planned to mark The Jynx's lower back with a monarch butterfly. As he considered his subject, he realized that would be too gracious a symbol for so vicious a woman.

He turned the work around and began with the buttocks using irregular lines to create the impression of two hanging wasps' nests. From the crack between two the wasps' nest that was the derriere of The Jynx, he cut the head of an emerging yellow jacket, the most aggressive and nasty of the wasp family. He imbedded full-bodied yellow jackets crawling in a curved column up the length of her back to The Jynx's right shoulder.

He sat for an hour, vacillating between leaving the skin of The Jynx smooth or turning the entire body into a wasp's nest. He decided that would be too much.

Over the next week, he sanded and polished The Jynx. The finished sculpture was the nude figure of an overweight woman with small, pointy breasts just beginning to sag, the wooden ring engraved with the warning 'prenez garde' pierced her elongated left nipple, ridges of fat rolled from her chest to the overhang of a large belly, yellow jackets crawled from the cleft of her solid haunches—now wasps' nests--up a back marked with more folds of flesh, her body supported by two legs with heavy thighs and muscular calves over narrow ankles and wide feet rising from the wooden plateau. Her hair was long, flowing past her shoulders; her face wore a broad smile and sparkling eyes; her left hand hung at her side; her right hand was casting a spell with fingers of writhing, poisonous snakes extended toward the viewer.

Billy poured himself a Bushmill on the rocks to sip while sitting before his creation to consider the quality of his work. He raised the glass in toast to himself. This was no longer only a sculpture of Erin but a universal portrait of her poisonous ilk.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Alise Krugman had fallen into a delicious doze, escaping for the first time that day, on the first day of summer, the pain of the arthritis that gnarled her right hand and the ache that flowed like a river from her left haunch to the heel of her left foot. The bell over the front door tinkled startling her mind awake with her arms and legs and head locked in the concrete of an exhausted old lady's body at the end of a long, hard work day. She was so tired she wasn't certain she could get out of the cushioned chair in her cozy room in the rear of Gallery Alise.

"Alise. You here?"

Billy's voice. Gosh dandy what did he want? She struggled to rise from the chair. Irritated by being awakened and the sudden recall of the sale of his Osprey in flight for $500 two weeks ago. She should have called him, but she didn't. She knew he always needed money. The embarrassment she experienced made her angry at him for showing up unannounced.

He knocked on the frame of entrance to the cozy room.

"Just a minute. Don't come in here," she said barely getting the words out. There was something in the back of her throat that choked her. She picked up the tea cup she had been drinking from all day long. She swallowed the cold dregs to wet her throat. She coughed. The pain in her hand and leg made her wince. Why didn't he leave her alone?

"You okay?" he asked through the beaded doorway.

"Yes I'm fine. Just stop being a nuisance. You're not the only one in the world." She hacked and choked on whatever had flown into her throat. Her eyes teared from the effort.

"I'll wait out front," Billy said. The glow of excitement in anticipation of showing his trio to Alise drained away as he heard the grouchiness in her voice. He had sat in his truck at the parking meter right outside waiting and fidgeting for 20 minutes until five to six, just before closing time, to come into the Gallery Alise. He had packed the three pieces, the nude of his ex-wife, Edge's bust, and The Jynx, cushioned in bubble wrap in a large metal case with a padlock for the short trip to Alise's He had carried The Jynx into the store, setting it on a table halfway to the back beside the marble nude figure of a woman with an owl's head and feathers covering her arms.

He put the statue of the woman with the owl's head on the floor. He arranged the Trio with Edge in the middle. He wanted Alise to exclaim over The Jynx, to say it belonged in the middle, to praise it as the best he had ever done.

She came out of the back with a check in her hand. "I suppose this is what you came for," she said handing him the check.

"The Osprey?"

She nodded and stepped to the table display of the Trio. Her crankiness welled up. She spread her hands as though encompassing his three sculptures. She turned to him, shaking her head from side to side as she spoke. "Don't ever touch anything in here without my permission." She pointed to the Trio. "Take your stuff off that table and put back the work that belongs there."

"This is the trio of figures I told you I was doing. Finally finished, enfin fini."

"Spare me your Charles Boyer accent." She put her hands on her hips, pursed her lips and barely glanced at his work. "If I were you I'd stick to birds and bees." As she spoke she couldn't understand her own meanness, and she couldn't control it. Everything about him antagonized her. She wanted him to leave so she could get home to her prescribed pain killer. She really wanted a glass of wine or a high ball, but didn't dare mix alcohol with the drug. She did that a few years ago and almost died.

Billy stood very still.

"Please leave now," she said.

"You're not even going to look at them?"

"I'm not the only dealer in the world. What doesn't appeal to me may strike someone else as breakthrough art instead of a cartoon character carved out of wood," she said waving a hand towards The Jynx.

(Harvey snickered, "Ask her why a woman with an owl's head isn't a cartoon character?')

Billy's hands trembled as he picked up The Jynx. "Give me a minute so I can put this in the truck without damaging it."

"Just move as quickly as possible." She needed a drink. Her body ached. Her head ached. She was taking her suffering out on Billy. She returned to the back room. Stood in indecision, then went back into the store. She could see his truck at the curb. She went to the door to call him back, to apologize for being an ill-tempered old lady.

She was too late. His truck was gone.

Billy drove home on automatic pilot, suspended somewhere, unattached to the world through which he moved. He remained only aware enough to stop the pickup at red lights and to avoid running into people or other vehicles. He didn't see shops or houses or trees or strollers on the sidewalks.

He parked the pickup in the driveway. He didn't take the pieces out of the locked metal case. He went into the studio and sank into his chair, burdened by failure. He took the check from his wallet. He looked at it, $325. "Hmmh," an exclamation of deep disappointment. He had planned to tell Alise that he wanted $15,000 for The Jynx, enough to finance at least two winters of sculpting instead of clamming. The big leap towards shifting from being a clammer-wood sculptor to being a wood sculptor-clammer. The other two pieces, Distance and Introspection, were not for sale. He had intended to keep Distance, the nude of his ex-wife, Patsy, as a memento, of possibilities and failure. Introspection would go to Ledge's eldest daughter, Kitty. That was the Solomonic solution avoiding a choice between Ledge's widow, Robin, and his ladylove, Monnie. He had anticipated that Alise would laugh at his hopeful $15,000 price tag, and would be furious over his refusal to sell the other two sculptures. He had prepared his arguments in support of charging a top price for the Jynx and explaining his reasons for not selling Distance and Introspection. He never expected her to be so contemptuous and dismissive of his work. In his mind, he had cast Alise as an old lady who failed to get the prices that his wildlife carvings were worth. To fulfill his fantasy of advancing to another level of sculpting, financially and artistically, he knew he should find a more potent dealer. But he felt bound to Alise by a loyalty that prohibited him from trying to find someone else.

He stared at the check. The $325 was a godsend of sorts. He was broke again. Tomorrow morning he would have to go back out on the water to rake for clams. He had two weeks to earn enough to push his eternal rock, the rent and the next round of utility bills, back up the steep hill of his life.

('Fuck her. She probably would have told van Gogh to go back to being a school teacher,' Harvey said.)

"Thanks Harvey," Billy said. He got up. He couldn't leave the Trio in the back of the truck no matter how blue he felt. He carried the sculptures, one by one, into the house placing Distance and The Jynx on the kitchen table, and Introspection on the counter.

He studied the sculptures of the two women. The slender, sensuous Patsy was such a bright, friendly woman. Everyone liked her and she liked everyone. "Except me," he said to Harvey.

('Don't get into a funk. Van Gogh didn't have a wonderful life either.')

"He had a brother who cared about him. I guess I have a sister."

('What about me?' Harvey said.)

"And a Guardian Angel." He picked up The Jynx, running his hands up and down the body of the statue. "I wonder if Erin would be in the market for an abstract sculpture that captures the essence of what she is all about?"

('I don't think so,' Harvey said.)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The air was sultry on the open bay where the water rolled lazily and dark. It had been a drudge of a day. A standstill wind and an overcast sky had turned the digging into an ordeal. The clams were slow in coming. He intended to stay out until he had 1,500 clams, the least he needed for rent. Sweat stung his eyes and soaked his clothes. No seagulls or cormorants swerved across the surface to relieve the tedium. Maybe he should have held onto the brass ring.

At three o'clock, he had been on the water for seven hard hours with 50 clams to go before he could head home to a cold beer and a bag of pretzels in the shade. The reverie of work was broken by a sparkling white, top heavy, elephantine cabin cruiser, at least 40 feet long, plowing past him, creating waves that bounced Billy's sharpie up and down. "Mother fucker," he shouted at the craft as it slowed, turned in a wide circle and came back to him. At a distance pleasure boaters irritated him. Up close this one made Billy, who ordinarily was laid back, fume.

A bare-chested, sunburned sixtiesh man with a pregnant belly and a captain's cap leaned over the railing on the top deck. "Howsa about 100 clams, sweet little ones, buddy."

A slender, well-browned woman in her 20s came to the railing, a sweatshirt draped over her bare shoulders. Small breasts, erect nipples peeking through the sheer cloth of a pink halter top. She smiled at Billy.

Just looking at her made him feel better. He could feel the shift in his expression from grim to pleasant.

The old man put his arm around the young woman's shoulder, giving her the slightest of hugs, a signal to Billy that this piece of lusciousness was his.

Billy got the message. He felt a surge of contempt for the old man. He looked into the woman's eyes. "I didn't think I'd see any sunshine today. Is he your daddy or your sugar daddy?"

"Hey buster don't be a wise-ass," the old man said.

"I didn't mean to offend your daughter," Billy said.

She laughed. And Billy laughed too.

"Don't get me riled, sonny. You might lose a sale." He held up a $20 bill. "I said 100 clams. Nice clean ones. I have a nice bottle white wine on ice that will be marvelous with sweet clams."

"Have to sell you 150."

('Don't be a wiseass,' Harvey said, anticipating what was to come.)

"Okay commander I'll take the 150 off your hands." He climbed down the ladder to come to the railing near the sharpie. A middle-age couple, smiling, in bathing suits with their skins red from the sun appeared out of the main cabin. "I'm getting some Little Necks right out of the water for snack time. Nothing like 'em with an ice cold bottle of Sauvignon Blanc," the man with the belly said to them. He turned to Billy offering him a forced smile. "Put the clams in a nice clean bag and heave 'em over sonny."

"What about the money?"

He held up the 20. "Right here. And I want $5 change. So put the five in with the clams and you'll get your pay day."

The middle-aged man was laughing as he climbed to the top deck. The woman who had accompanied him wore a broad smile. Billy sensed that the scam was to burn the boat away leaving the dumb clammer without his money gawking after them. "No. You toss the money over first."

The old man laughed. "Trust me but cut the cards. Is that the game?"

"Let's get this over with so I don't waste any more time on you. For 150 clams, I get 150 clams. I'll translate that, $150."

"You got to be shitting me. What do you get when you get on shore with those clams, six cents apiece?"

"They were paying more than that when you were a boy, 60 years ago. And they're paying more than that now."

"You wise ass punk. I ought to come down there and kick your ass."

('He's got your number,' Harvey said.)

"Here I am," Billy said. He picked up a six-foot section of aluminum pole. He doubted that the gushy man would jump onto his boat, because he was a talker, out of shape, and old for his years, but if he did, Billy had decided he would use the pole to either poke him in mid-air or to bang him with it if he made it onto the sharpie. Either way his attacker would be in the water.

('You do that and you'll end up in jail. You're just preening for the audience,' Harvey said.)

The fat man stared at Billy. He was locked in place by his own role as an actor in front of the pretty, young woman. He didn't want to back down before this punk in his little boat.

('He thinks he could do a job on you. This must have been what it was like in the gunfight at the Okay Coral,' Harvey said.)

"I'll bet you could have taken on three of me when you were 50 years younger," Billy said, enjoying himself for the first time that day.

The middle-aged man said from the top deck. "Didn't either of you John Waynes ever hear the saying, 'The art of losing face will some day save the human race?' Let it go, Harry."

Harry turned away, muttering. He climbed to the upper deck of the cruiser. Within a minute, the boat was speeding off with the young girl laughing and waving goodbye.

Billy worked for another hour until he had the 1,500 count. At four o'clock, he headed back to Huntington Harbor, putting the heat and tedium behind him. He felt worn out as he approached the beach, but relieved to see the buyer sitting on a chair under an umbrella that kept off sun and rain. A storm was approaching. He could feel it, and sometimes the buyer would head back to his shop early to avoid the weather unless he needed product. Thunder was rumbling to the north somewhere over Connecticut. Billy sensed a downpour was imminent. He unloaded the clams and a clothes basket holding a cooler that held three empty POWERade bottles and a nearly empty half gallon water jug along with his rain slickers.

"Sixteen cents today," the buyer said. That was a penny more than yesterday.

Billy did the arithmetic. He was grateful for that extra penny, another $15 in his pocket. He would get $240 for his haul.

('Probably means they're charging $3 instead of $2 apiece for Huntington clams at the Waldorf Astoria, and your buyer is getting 40 cents a clam instead of 35,' Harvey said. )

"Have a cold one, Billy," the buyer said.

('Maybe he is getting 45,' Harvey said.)

Billy took a beer, a Budweiser, from the buyer's ice chest. He chatted with the buyer for a few minutes and other clammers who had come in just before him came back from their trucks to share in the buyer's benevolence of free beers.

Billy gulped down the beer and went back to his boat. He motored the short distance to his mooring, tied up the sharpie, and rowed back to the beach in his dinghy. He had just turned to drag the dinghy to the chain where he locked it when a vast lightning bolt cracked standing high in the sky over Long Island Sound. He counted 1001, 1002, 1003. And the thunder blasted. "Three miles," he yelled to the buyer. "Going to be here in a minute."

He picked the gas tank out of the dinghy and with the clothes basket in his other hand, he climbed up the embankment to where his pickup was parked on the side of the road. He threw his stuff onto the front passenger seat and got in as the rain flooded down. Drops as big as ping pong balls, followed by a clatter of hail.

He turned on the windshield wipers. He started home with the white hail bouncing off the hood and clattering on the roof of the pickup. Sixteen cents a clam, a smile from a beautiful girl, a free beer, and beating the rain. Maybe his luck was changing?

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The note on bright yellow paper was taped inside the screen to the backdoor. "Call me," the printed message from Alise said. She probably wanted to stock another bird or fish. Billy pulled the damp piece of paper off the door. He crumpled the note and threw it into the trash can just inside the kitchen door.

('You could call and see what she wants,' Harvey said.)

"I don't care what she wants. I'm not in the mood."

With the lightning still crashing around, Billy didn't dare take a shower. He stripped off his work clothes and underpants damp with sweat. He put on fresh underwear, shorts, and a t-shirt emblazoned with a print of the water lilies in Monet's garden, a gift from a woman he dated briefly a couple of years ago. She brought it back from a day spent in Giverny on a trip to Paris. He felt more comfortable in clean clothes.

He wondered about that woman. She was a brunette with a helmet cut and glasses, didn't wear much make up. He took her to the movies twice. She talked about the off-Broadway plays she had been to. She considered Broadway shows to be extravaganzas, not theater. She had never married, and never intended to, she told him. She worked in a library somewhere in Nassau County. Billy never found out whether she was a clerk on the patrons' desk or a real librarian.

She was slender. He was sure that she looked good without clothes, but he never found out. A French kiss was a far as they went. When he groped her, she pushed his hand away. "Not yet," she had whispered in his ear on their third date. She had traveled to France for a 10-day holiday between their second and third dates.

"If not now, when?" he was tempted to ask. He decided that it would be never since there was something more distant about her than even Patsy in their last days before she left. He walked away from the librarian's door, the house where she lived with her parents, with the intention of never dating her again.

She called an hour later to tell him that she had misled him in saying 'not yet' since she had made a vow of celibacy to the Virgin Mary when she was 12 and they could never do anything wrong.

"Wrong," he said into the telephone.

She continued talking telling him that she had considered becoming a nun, but she had decided to wait until she was 40; if she maintained her maidenhood until that significant birthday then she would be worthy to take her vows and a veil. That meant there were ten years between her and her calling. She said she was finding it harder to resist temptation with each man she met, especially young priests. She asked him not to blame himself, that his attempt to lead her astray was just in the nature of any man. She asked him to say a prayer for her, and she in turn would ask the Virgin Mary to find him a woman he could marry and have a family with.

"I'm divorced," he said.

('You bastard. You couldn't just thank her,' Harvey snarled.)

"Then I'll pray that you come to accept celibacy as a gift from God," she said, and hung up.

That was three years ago. Billy still had her phone number. He played with the notion of calling her up to ask if her maidenhead had been pierced. If so and if she were willing to promise in advance that the gates of her path to paradise would be opened to him too instead of paying the rent he would take her to an off-Broadway play and dinner. Preferably some nice inexpensive Italian restaurant, maybe a pizzeria.

('I don't care how horny you are, don't make that call," Harvey said.)

Billy went barefoot into the kitchen, laughing all the way at Harvey. There was a half pound of Boar's Head Virginia ham and at least a pound of Land O'Lakes white American cheese in the refrigerator. He made two thick sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise on seeded rye bread. He sat at the kitchen table eating the sandwich, moving his hand like an automon between a big bag of Utz pretzels and his mouth, and drinking a cold beer.

He watched the rain dancing across the blacktop apron at the entrance to his studio, happy to be where he was and to have enough money to pay the rent. The wind blew cool, heavy wet air across him in the kitchen. On the water being caught in a heavy downpour would have meant a choice between being wet with sweat under the rain gear or being soaked by the rain. He enjoyed being the spectator this afternoon. Dry and sitting at a comfortably warm temperature consuming a sandwich and beer and pretzels with a pleasure that made life worth living. Yesterday, he started reading "The Kite Runner" and had come home overflowing with the anticipation of continuing the novel. He hadn't been out to his studio for almost a week since Alise rushed him out of her store, dismissing him as a hack. For a couple of days, he had felt helpless, suspended in midair unable to reach the sure-footing of the ground.

He would call her. He had to. Maybe she telephoned to clarify their break so that in case he had any doubts, she wanted to assure him they were finished. He wouldn't go knocking on her door to tell her that her behavior had reminded him of the frenzy that seizes postal workers when they go to their offices to kill the people who harassed them, and wind up killing innocent souls because they happen to be there. Maybe he happened to be there last Wednesday. There was the possibility that she wanted to continue selling his water birds and fish. Maybe he should let her have them, after all. He had eight pieces on the high shelf in the studio: five birds and three fish. If she were still interested, she could have those, but all of them at once or none. He needed a dealer even one as ineffective as her, but he wasn't going to let her spit on him.

('I don't want to be an agent of gloom, but you might have a lot of trouble finding another dealer. Be polite,' Harvey said.)

He dialed Alise's cell phone number.

"Billy, I'm so glad it's you," she said without even an hello.

She had read his number on her phone before she answered. Another of life's little mysteries eliminated by technology. How graciously quiet Long Island's waters would be if pleasure boaters were forced to use sails for propulsion instead of overpowered motors that polluted nature with noise and exhaust. A step back to sail would fill the air with bird calls, the slapping of the water on hulls and rocks, the wind sweeping across the surface. Even better than tuning down the noise, soft old men like the one who accosted him today would sit ashore instead of venturing onto the water into the work of sail and the uncertainties of wind. In this instance the cell phone assured that his call would find her at home, or in the store, or in her car.

"Billy are you there?"

"Yes. I was wondering why you called me."

"Why wouldn't I darling? You're one of my artists. There's an absence in Gallery Alise. We miss your work."

"I have eight fish and fowl for you. Take 'em or leave 'em. All of them." He could hear her sucking her teeth on the other end of the connection.

"Yes. But I want to say, I behaved like a crabby old lady the other day. Perhaps because I am an old lady and I was feeling miserable and out of sorts. We must have a special relationship Billy. I could never have treated a stranger like that. Could I? Now I'm going to ask you to swallow your injured ego long enough to bring your three figures down to Gallery Alise so I can evaluate them under happier circumstances."

"I thought you were closed on Mondays."

"I am. I'm waiting here for you with a bottle of ice cold champagne to celebrate your triumph and to let you know whether I think you're as good as you think you are."

"And if you don't?"

"Let me take a look before we cross that minefield."

CHAPTER FORTY

Billy watched Alise examining The Jynx under a series of lights: the natural, gray half-light of the rainy day, a medium electric light, then a spotlight. She used a magnifying glass for the details of the snakes, for the yellow jacket crawling out of the crack of the wasp's nests haunches, for the flowing hair, for the teeth. "Magnificent," she said every once in a while.

He experienced disappointment, sadness. His instinct about this woman was right. She was a phony. She was more interested in placating him, because she wanted to make up for her dismissal of his work when her grouchiness overcame her usual civility last week. He wanted an objective assessment, not just to be stroked.

('Don't be so negative,' Harvey whispered.)

"I don't think we'll have trouble selling any one of these. I love that head of Tommy Ledge. I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't get you some commissions. That's something to consider. Huntington is filled with people with money and egos. What better a birthday gift for the man who has everything than a sculptured bust? So you have to give some thought to how much you would charge for that kind of work. It could build into a real business."

To tell her how crass she sounded would tear them apart again. Harvey was right, he shouldn't be negative, he needed her as his bridge to the public. The words that had been building like a volcano somewhere in his chest sounded cold when they flowed from his mouth: "What I want is a showing here in Gallery Alise. There's only three pieces so you don't have to devote your entire store to the show. Clear out the front half, say. Run a spotlight overhead for each piece. Wouldn't need an electrician. We could do it with extension cords."

"You've given a lot of thought to how you would employ Gallery Alise, haven't you?"

('She's sounding nasty again,' Harvey said.)

Billy continued as if she hadn't spoken. "Maybe one of the draws would be that only The Jynx will be for sale. I have no intention of selling Distance or Introspection. They mean too much to me personally to put them on the market. I'm thinking of giving Introspection to Tommy Ledge's daughter, the oldest one."

"That's very nice of you, but maybe you should consider renting a space somewhere for your showing?"

('She's trying to let you know how vain you sound.')

"I thought your commission took care of the space the artwork takes up until you can sell it?"

She stared at him for a moment to suppress an angry reaction." "Of course, that is the deal. And if the piece doesn't sell, I swallow the cost of providing the space. And you're telling me that you want me to go to the expense of moving all of the items in the front of the store somewhere, say into storage. To tell all of those hungry artists like you that their goods won't be on display so Billy Plunkett can have his 15 minutes."

"I wasn't thinking in that context. You're probably right. If I want a big show, I should rent a storefront or something. Well, to be honest, I can hardly pay my rent so I can't hire a hall or pay you for your space. Maybe you could just line up The Trio where you have room and we'll call it a show."

"Billy now you have figured out why I devote my window to individual artists. That's the Gallery Alise form of a show. That space is designed to move art from this gallery into the customers' homes or offices."

"So you won't give me even a little bit of space for all three pieces. Just the one I want to sell?"

"Yes. I really think The Jynx is a worthy piece. I can tell my clients that you have produced something special. I'm sure we'll find someone willing to pay $2,500 for The Jynx."

"I want $15,000. We'll both make more money that way. If I can't sell it for that, I'll hold onto it."

"You are joking," she said, putting down her magnifying glass. "You want my honest opinion and maybe a reality check? I've never sold anything for $15,000. That's a Manhattan price. Go in there, find someone willing to represent you, and maybe they'll have a customer with deep pockets they can con into buying The Jynx as an investment. I just couldn't bring myself to do that to someone. I'm willing to try to move it for $2,500. Not as an investment, but as a work of art to put in the living room or the family room to enjoy and to show off to company to prove that they are cultured."

The numbers went through his mind. He had spent at least 200 hours on The Jynx so $2,500 worked out to $12.50 an hour. No his share would be $1,625 after Alise took her commission. That would give him $8.12 an hour. He laughed. "You know, Alise, I just figured out that The Jynx could be my breakthrough piece. It would take me out of the less than minimum wage bracket to $8.12 an hour. Not bad."

"Big money is nice, but artists like you have to realize that they're not in the big leagues and never will be," Alise said, trying to play a sympathetic expression across her face to soften her hard words.

"Van Gogh didn't do it for the money did he?"

"You're right. And he led a pretty Spartan existence, like you. For his art."

"And now his art is worth millions, and he doesn't get any of it."

"If he's looking down from heaven, Billy, he must revel in how his paintings are appreciated."

('What a perfect all encompassing word. You might ask her if she intended a double entendre," Harvey said.)

Billy bowed his head trying to erase the disappointment that was rattling him. He took a deep breath. "So no show, no go. I won't be leaving The Jynx with you. Do you want my eight nature pieces or not? "

"I would be happy to take them just like we've always done in the past. When someone buys one, you can bring in another. I know from experience that if you line up eight pieces in a row like that, a buyer will wonder if someone is turning them out in a factory in China. The appeal of the unique piece is lost."

"You don't think filling your display window with several pieces of other artists' works turns away customers. Only mine."

"Please Billy don't be like that."

"Then, I'll get this stuff out of your way. I want to thank you for what you've done for me in the past." He sounded to himself like he was whining. He stopped speaking even though there was a lot more he wanted to say, that he was striving to be an artist and knew that he had to endure rejection. That sounded corny just thinking it.

She sucked her teeth, looking as though she were going to cry, watching as he enclosed each of the figures in bubble wrap and placed them in separate corrugated boxes. He carried The Jynx out to the cab of the truck, where he locked it and went back into the store past the front window where every one of the six watercolors had small tags that said: "Sold." He should have asked her, were they made in China?

"Bring it back," she said when he returned. "I'll make a deal with you. I'll put your Trio in the window for one week. So you'll have your show, darling. We'll put signs on the two saying, not for sale, and a $15,000 price tag, one that is very clear, on The Jynx. Maybe the price will convince someone it must be worth acquiring. So they go in the window tomorrow and come out next Monday night. Seven days of glory. In return, we go back to the way things were. I get your birds or bees one at a time."

He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. "Let's open that bottle of champagne. Time to celebrate. It's a deal," he said.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

First Billy spotted the old Plymouth Horizon parked in front of the house, then he saw the guy sitting on the front porch in the rocker with his feet propped up on the railing, slugging beer from a bottle. Billy didn't know him, but his face was familiar. He was wearing a tweed sports jacket, which might mean he was some kind of a salesman or a cop with a warrant. The beer in his hand didn't go with door-to-door salesmen or cops on duty.

Billy pulled his pickup truck into the driveway. He left the bag with the meatball hero and the half pound of potato salad from the Italian deli on the front seat. He wanted to find out what the stranger was doing on the porch before he unloaded his gear. He walked up the porch steps and immediately recognized him. Ted Neary. The wire glasses, the black mustache and thick black hair on his head. Even the baggy sports jacket. He had seen Neary interviewed on TV and his picture in the paper a couple of times a week. He remembered the opening words of the column he did on Tommy Ledge a good number of years ago. "When Tommy Ledge, Huntington's legendary clammer, isn't scooping up those delicious bivalves somewhere on Huntington Bay, he can be found on his favorite bar stool in Sugar's." Neary had come to Tommy's wake and the party celebrating his life at Sugar's. Billy was grateful that Neary didn't write a column about the exchange between Monnie and Robin Ledge.

"Hey," Neary said with the grin that was part of his anatomy as Billy came onto the small porch.

Billy responded, "My name is Ted Neary and I write a newspaper column." That was Neary's pitch on radio and TV ads for his column. "Why are you here? You looking for another legend?"

Neary's grin grew stretching almost to his ears. "I thought you might like a beer," he said proffering the cardboard carrier with four Budweisers left in it.

"Looks like you had a two beer wait."

"Nice day. I didn't mind. How'd the clamming go today?"

"Like usual."

"You don't answer your phone, do you? You must be the only person in the United States without an answering machine."

"I have an answering machine. I turned it off."

"I heard about the $15,000 carving."

"Wood sculpture."

"Okay. I wanted to ask you how you go from $500 a pop to $15,000."

"Perhaps by doing a masterpiece or something special or because the figure is worth it. Have you seen it?"

"I stopped by the store this morning. Very nice piece of work. But I'm no judge of art. I'll tell ya that I wouldn't mind meeting the lady who posed for you." He took a reporter's notebook from his back pocket, opened to a page of notes, and said, "For Distance."

"No one posed for it. I did it from pictures and sketches and memory."

"Did Erin Prendergast pose for the piece that exposes her?"

"Ask her."

"I did, and all she said was where did you see it? I told her in a window in a store in Huntington Village with her snaky fingers and without her clothes. I asked her if she really had snakes for fingers. She laughed, but she didn't sound too amused. She said, 'What gives you the crazy idea it's me.' I said the likeness is there. And the title captures you: The Jynx. I had a lot of other questions, like does she really have bees crawling out of her ass, but she hung up. Now I guess you and me have something in common. We're both on her shit list."

"What can she do to me?"

"I'm sure she'll think of something. I'm gonna say in the column that it would be worth $15,000 to her to get that work of art off the streets before some Democrat decides to buy it so the whole world can see it. I'm gonna say that it sends the message about why two Democrats who were honest to goodness war heroes in Vietnam couldn't win the White House in 2004 or even a two-bit Congressional race in Trentham, Georgia. Because she's one nasty woman who knows how to poison the opposition."

"I would be happy if someone were willing to pay the $15,000, but I would hope they would buy it as a work of art, not politics."

"I'd buy it with my expense account, but I couldn't get a $15,000 curio past the bean counters." He laughed with his signature 'heh, heh, heh.'

Billy felt his face freeze. He wasn't amused.

('He's trying to be funny,' Harvey said)

Neary realizing his attempt at humor had burned his audience picked up the cardboard carrier holding four remaining bottles of beer. "Hey Alise Krugman tells me you have a studio out back. Can we take a look at it?"

"Sure." On the way to the studio, Billy picked the bag with the sandwich and potato salad out of the pickup. "My lunch," he said.

"I haven't had time to eat yet either."

"Then you can join me." Billy split the hero with Ted Neary, but ate all of the potato salad himself since there was only one plastic fork and he didn't feel like going into the house for another. They each drank two bottles of beer with the late lunch. Neary took notes about Billy's dream to devote the winter months to wood sculpture while continuing to make a living for the rest of the year as a clammer.

"So who's the beauty without clothes?" He looked at his notes. "The one you used for Distance?"

"My ex-wife. I'd rather keep her out of this conversation."

"I understand. I have an ex-wife too. Part of the American nightmare."

"Alise tells me you're keeping Distance for yourself and you're giving Introspection to one of Tommy Ledge's daughters."

"That's the plan."

"Hey, tell me something. After seeing Introspection and the expression on Tommy Ledge's face, I couldn't help but wonder if he committed suicide."

Billy said he was certain he didn't.

"Why did he look so forlorn?" Neary asked.

"Ask him next time you see him."

Neary chuckled at that answer. He walked around the studio, taking a few notes. "You put those skylights in yourself?" he asked pointing to the ceiling. Billy nodded. "I like that stove. I should get one," Neary said. He examined the tools on the bench and the work area where several logs stood along with a large bulletin board on which Billy had pinned his sketches of a naked Erin in different settings. Three of the sketches showed the tattoos: the one of the red and pink roses rising from the cleft in Erin's buttocks, the other of the monarch butterfly with red and pink wings, and finally the yellow jackets emerging from the pair of wasps' nests that were the sculpture's backside. Neary pointed to the drawings of the roses and the monarch. "Hey is one of these the real McCoy. Is this what Prendergast has on her back?"

Billy laughed. "Why don't you fly down to Washington and ask Ms. Prendergast to take off her clothes and turn around."

"I would, but I'm a little afraid of her. She's the kind of a woman, who wouldn't hesitate to tear your balls off. I mean really tear them off. Tell me are the bees on the sculpture supposed to be a tattoo?"

"No. My first idea was to do a tattoo, then I decided real yellow jackets, which are wasps not bees, would be a more appropriate. Bees gather honey and are kind of passive, live-and-let-live kinds of creatures. Yellow jackets are always ready for a fight, always ready to sting anyone who gets in their way."

"That sounds like Erin Prendergast," Neary said. "How well did you know her? Well enough to see her tattoo?"

"I worked for her. I'm not going to say any more than that."

"I've got to be going," Neary said. He paused at the door to shake Billy's hand. "Make sure you pick up Sunday's paper." He winked, grinned, turned and went whistling out to his car.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

He couldn't sleep. Awake at 3 AM; he looked at the clock at 4 AM; and finally got up at 5. He slipped on underpants, shorts and an Earth Day t-shirt with a big sunflower encircled by the motto: Save our Planet. He went outside. The Sunday Newsday wasn't there yet. The deli didn't open until 8 so he would have to wait to get the paper. He walked through the living room, half expecting a drowsy Sweeney to crawl off the couch to greet him. How he missed Sweeney.

In the kitchen, he made coffee, got a French crumb coffee cake from the freezer, put it in the oven, and went out onto the tiny back porch to smell the weather. The air was pleasantly soft and cool. Only the coffee popping in the percolator in the kitchen behind him and the chirping and calling birds among the leaves of trees and bushes were breaking the silence of the dawn. The truck yard and the electronics shop on either side of his house lay quiet resting from the work week; no traffic to disturb the peace of this early Sunday morning.

The scent of the perked coffee and the warmed cake drew him back into the kitchen to fetch his breakfast. He took the pot and a cup in one hand and the cake with a knife in the other. He returned to the yard to sit in a striped lawn chair under the big oak tree, flanked by maples. Grass didn't grow well in his shady domain enclosed on three sides by natural walls of forsythia, blue hydrangea, and Japanese holly. The bushes were an anarchy of uncontrolled growth. He had yet to trim them this year. He never had the patience to manicure them, which was good since he saw beauty in their wildness. For the same reason, he had no need for a carpeted lawn cut and poisoned into a uniformity devoid of dandelions and weeds.

He alternated between sips of black coffee and bits of the very sweet crumb cake while musing on a vision of a rich collector reading the paper and hurrying to Main Street to buy The Jynx before some other money bags was stirred to shop. He did the arithmetic. On a $15,000 sale, his share would be $9,750. After taxes about $8,000. With that money, he could spend full time sculpting from Christmas into mid-April or maybe all of April. His needs were small. He could get by on $2,000 a month for rent, utilities, food, insurance, and a little left over for a few beers or an Irish whiskey or two at Sugar's, if nothing went wrong.

He realized that his daydream of a surge of prosperity to free him to sculpt through the rough of winter was dependent on The Jynx, his depiction of a perpetrator of misfortune. Was he being as poisonous as Erin in showing the world what he thought of her and her way of politics? He returned to the kitchen to turn on Living on Earth, the environmental program on WSHU, as a report on the politics of offshore drilling began. Billy plugged the electric percolator back into the socket to reheat the remaining coffee. Sitting at the kitchen table, he listened to what he knew, that Republicans in the House of Representatives wanted to open more coastal waters to the search for oil, the same corporate-owned politicians who wanted to pollute the Artic National Wildlife Refuge with their drilling. These were the people Erin celebrated as heroes of prosperity in her book. He listened and no longer felt any doubts about depicting Erin as The Jynx.

After another cup of coffee, he stripped off his clothes to shave and take a shower. The phone was ringing when he came out of the bathroom toweling himself. After six rings, it stopped. As he put on a pair of good shorts and a short sleeved shirt, the phone rang again and twice more before he went outside to check the lawn again for the newspaper. It wasn't there. He wished he had turned on the answering machine. The calls probably were about the story about The Jynx in the Sunday paper. The calls could have been from one person or four different people. He went to the phone on the side table in the living room and pressed the answer-on button. He decided to walk to the deli.

Hardly any cars and no pedestrians other than him were on the streets as eight o'clock approached. He was the first customer of the day into Ali's Sunshine Deli. Mo, the counterman, opened the still tied bundle of newspapers with a hooked carpet knife. "I thought you'd be in bright and early. I read the story before I left the house. I didn't know you were a big time artist."

"Neither did I," Billy said. He ordered a black coffee and a fried egg and bacon sandwich on a bagel to go with his paper. He sat outside the deli at a small plastic table in an uncomfortable plastic chair to have the coffee and sandwich with Newsday. Turning through the paper, he found the Ted Neary's column was flanked by a full length photo of The Jynx and the picture of Erin Prendergast from 'The Georgia Overview.' Under The Jynx was the cutline: A work of art or politics? Under Erin's photo was the caption: Political sorceress captured?

Neary began his column with: 'I love a mystery, especially about politics, money, art, magic, and perhaps naked bodies.

'Billy Plunkett is one of those robust, muscular clammers who give the Huntington waters a certain charm. Billy is out on Huntington Bay almost every day of the year despite the tropical sun of summer and the incredible cold of winter. When he isn't clamming, he carves statues from wood. He would be the first one to admit that he isn't recognized as one of the world's great sculptors like Rodin say. Someone we all know. That doesn't mean he isn't aspiring to greatness and a paycheck that might go with it.

'Until this past week, you could buy an original Billy Plunkett wood carving for $500, a pretty hefty sum for the average guy. The subjects were not roses, but ducks, flounder, all kinds of birds and fish.

'In his move towards the stratosphere of art and money, Billy has upped his price tag by 30 times, from $500 a pop for a feathered bird to $15,000 for a naked one. Well, for his wood sculpture, The Jynx, who is a naked chubby woman with writhing snakes for the five joints of her right hand (from which I got the impression she was casting an evil spell) and a string of yellow jackets on her back just above her backside. Yellow jackets are formidable bugs to watch out for. So is Erin Prendergast.

'Why someone would be willing to pay $15,000 for a wood sculpture by a carver who usually gets $500 a work is a mystery to me, but my career as a collector has been limited to a few museum prints—not originals.

'Billy says The Jynx is art; I come to the conclusion it's politics. Why not? Sculptures are used to glorify gods, beautiful men and women, generals, birds, bees, fish, monarchs, and slaves. Why not use one to tell the story of the ugliness of political campaigning in modern America, where the reputations of war heroes like John Kerry running for president and even a guy most of us never heard of until recently, Roger Truman, running for Congress in some backwater in Georgia are sullied for votes.

'Erin Prendergast, the political operative who spit the poison on Truman's achievements in Vietnam, was the target of an attempted murder (according to the indictment papers) by Leo Boston, another Vietnam vet, who came to somewhat excessively admire Truman as an eye-witness to his selfless courage in rescuing him and others from certain death in a fierce battle in that unfortunate war.

'Truman came to Long Island a couple of months ago to rescue Boston again. This time from a prison sentence for supposedly showing up at the Culligan Estate, where Prendergast was lodged as a guest of arch-conservative billionaire Ralph Culligan who made his fortune by being born into the right family. Yes that's a pun. Boston came with a knife and shears to cut out Prendergast's "lying tongue." His words not mine.

'So Truman—with the permission of an understanding judge--took his old Army buddy, Leo Boston, back to Trentham, Georgia, where he installed him in his hardware store as a clerk to give him something productive to do while keeping an eye on him.

'Prendergast used the occasion of the sweet outcome for Boston to spread more vile on the waters. She screamed politics was behind the modest sentence of a man who suffered mightily, getting his brain scrambled, in Vietnam. And she implied that Boston and Truman and the officer who put Truman in for a Silver Star for valor were gay. I don't see anything wrong with being gay, but the righteous such as Prendergast and her patrons certainly do. Darn it. I should have called the Log Cabin Republicans for comment. Next time. I'm sure they'll be a next time.

'I did call Prendergast to ask her to solve another mystery: did she pose in the altogether to be immortalized as The Jynx. Instead of responding to that simple question, she called me some unprintable names. Billy, like the Shadow, knows the answer but he's not telling.

'If you would like to own a wood sculpture of a fat lady who looks very much like Prendergast with snakes for fingers and a bunch of nasty wasps crawling up her back, Gallery Alise is selling Billy Plunkett's work of art, The Jynx, for $15,000. Or if you just want to satisfy your curiosity, The Jynx, who looks very much like Prendergast in on display today and tomorrow in Gallery Alise's front window, along with a couple of other wood sculptures by Billy, on Main Street in Huntington Village.'

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Billy went back into the deli to buy nine more copies of the paper. He could have Xeroxed the column, but ten originals seemed appropriate for an inexplicable reason. He didn't have to give one to his sister. She was a Newsday subscriber. Alise probably would print piles of the column to hand out to customers and browsers. Maybe not. There was no great plug for her store, and The Jynx would be on display only today and tomorrow.

He walked for a block with five copies of the thick Sunday newspaper under each arm. Pausing by a trash basket, he tore page 7 from each of the papers and discarded the rest. When he reached his house, Sunday Newsday was lying in its clear plastic bag on his little lawn.

Inside, he checked the answering machine. Six calls. His sister, Eileen, who gushed about how proud she was. Call me, she said. Alise, who said she had called three times before, to tell him of the great column Ted Neary had written. Read it and call me, she said. Kitty Ledge left a message saying that as soon she read the column one of her cousins had called to tell her about it, she went to see the bust of her father in Gallery Alise's window. She said she had been crying ever since, not sure whether out of happiness or sadness, perhaps a mixture of both. Call me, she said. The other calls were from clammers, who said, Way to go Billy; I'm ready to pose naked; and Congratulations.

He dialed his sister's number. To his relief, there was no answer. Undoubtedly she was at Mass. He would call back only in response to another call from her, or if he sold The Jynx for the $15,000. Then he would have to take her and her family out to dinner to celebrate. When he made his first sale in 1989, a peregrine falcon for $300, he took his wife, Patsy, his parents, his sister and her boyfriend who later became her husband, to Sugar's for a party. That was a happy night. He had envisioned a future of spiraling prices and an expanding market for his carvings. The naiveté of the first sale had congealed into an understanding of what little chance he had of financial success. He would have to find pleasure in just the act of sculpting, of finding the figure in the wood, of appreciating his accomplishments. The money would never be there. He asked $15,000 for The Jynx not really expecting to get it, but because he was tired of being boxed by others into the lowest tier of the economy of sculpting. Through the price he was declaring his confidence in himself, a proclamation that he was an artist to be noted.

He walked to Main Street accompanied by a new fantasy, that Patsy would call him after reading Ted Neary's column.

\---

Two women in their 30s with short hair, one a blonde, the other a henna head, both exposing well-toned midriffs and haunch-cleaving shorts were gazing at the Trio in the front window of Gallery Alise as Billy approached. He stopped behind them, and a couple of more people came up behind him. He wanted to tell them he was the artist, but that would have been too gauche.

"She looks very familiar," the henna head said.

"Ted Neary said she was a big-time political operative," Billy said over her shoulder.

Both turned to look at him and without responding to him turned back to look into the window. "I was talking about the skinny one, not the witch," she said.

"Come on, let's go," her companion said.

Billy stepped aside to let the couple behind him move closer to the window.

"I wouldn't pay $15,000 for it," the man said.

"I'm sure people who said that when Jackson Pollock was just starting out are sorry now," she said.

"You think The Jynx could be worth millions some day?" Billy asked.

The woman said, "Why not? You ever see some of those modern paintings or welded sculptures. You know big boxes on their side. At least this guy is showing some skill. Look at the detail in those snakes. I'd like to get a closer look at it."

"But you wouldn't pay $15,000 for it. Aren't you afraid you're losing your chance to buy a work of art at a bargain basement price?" Billy said.

"Some bargain," the man said. He and the woman, arm in arm, strolled down the street, turning to one another to chat and laugh. They disappeared into the coffee shop on the corner.

Billy stayed by the window for another hour, listening to the conversations of couples drawn to satisfy the curiosity sown by Ted Neary's column. Most looked and left without speaking or murmuring comments he couldn't hear. At 10:30, Alise showed up. She air kissed him on both cheeks.

"Darling, I know artists are supposed to be odd, but I wish your particular peculiarities didn't include not answering the phone. Did you at least listen to my messages?"

"I read the paper."

She unlocked the door and he followed her inside. "Good. I'm thinking of giving you another week in the window. And I want to ask you how far down are you willing to come down in price? I certainly have a lot of issues with Ted Neary and his column today, but he might have sparked an interest somewhere so I have to know if some big spender comes along would you be willing to take $8,000, say?"

"Why $8,000?"

"That's the highest price I've gotten for anything in the Gallery."

"What do you think it's worth?"

"Twenty-five hundred. I've told you that darling. I don't want to hurt your feelings. I wish you could get $15,000 or $50,000 for that matter, but let's face reality. If Neary were an established art critic instead of a bubblehead who everyone reads we might have gotten some serious inquiries. Darling, I'll make a lot more out of this than you. People who never imagined they would step into the Gallery Alise will come to browse, and some will buy. So you got some publicity and I'll get a lot more browsers and a few more customers. What is the answer? Give me a figure between $2,500 and $8,000."

Bargaining was an exercise that Billy abhorred. For his entire work life, the price of his labor had been set for his clams by the buyer on the beach and for his wood sculptures by Alise until he arbitrarily decided on $15,000 for The Jynx. The phrase 'the laborer is worth his wage' swung through his mind. The wage he got for the clams that he dug with such skill and muscle was set by the market. Even his buyer on the beach was controlled by that evasive thing called the market. He had checked out the wholesale price of clams many times in the newspapers when they still ran them and more recently on the internet. He knew the buyer's markup, and his buyer wasn't shortchanging him. He had come to trust his buyer only after cutting the cards. He smirked.

"Why that look?" Alise asked in her cranky voice.

"Whatever expression I had on my face is because I caught myself thinking a string of clichés. I've always trusted your judgment Alise. You know what sells and at what price much better than I do, but I've set the price. If I took less, I know I would be waking up for the rest of my life saying I should have gotten more. Not could have gotten, should have gotten. I know how good The Jynx is. I've decided what it's worth."

"Why not $100,000 then."

"Just because I disagree with you, don't think I'm a fool."

('Touché,' Harvey said.)

"I gave you your window show. If you want to try another dealer go right ahead. I won't be offended."

Maybe she wanted to get rid of him as much as he wanted a dealer who could get him recognition and more money. "I'll pick up the Trio tomorrow just before you close. No need for another week in the window. I've had my 15 minutes of glory. When I stop by, I'll drop off a harbor seal on a rock that I did."

"I'm closed tomorrow. You can pick them up any time Tuesday, morning, afternoon, or closing time. You don't want another week in my window? Then don't bother me with your seal. We've worked together a long time, but all good things must come to an end. You might notice that that's a cliché, darling."

"So it's my way or the highway."

"Let's stop the back and forth now. Come by Tuesday. We'll have a farewell cup of tea. Collect your Trio. We'll always be friends." She laughed. "I've said that to three other men in my life. The first was my husband when I realized I couldn't stand him any more. The other two were married to other women and that came at the end of the affairs. Please don't ask for details."

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Billy was on his second Irish whiskey, in the midst of dining on an open steak sandwich with onion rings and tomatoes when Arnie, the bartender, shouted from the end of the bar: "Is there a Billy Plunkett in the house?" Billy was shaking his head no when the bartender listened to the caller and shouted: "Big news from Alise Krugman of Gallery Alise. Anyone who comes across Billy should ask him to call her on her cell phone."

"Gimme the phone, Arnie," Billy said extending his open right hand. His heart was pounding. "This is Billy," he said.

"Don't expect to see The Jynx in the window tomorrow," Alise said without prelude. She was almost singing with a richness in her voice that told him she was delivering good news.

"Someone buy it?" His mouth was trembling with excitement.

"No. But I just finished wrapping it up so a potential buyer can take a look at it. I got a call from a dealer in New York saying that a client of hers wanted to see The Jynx. She's someone I've dealt with before. She is a heavyweight so you can be sure her client is someone with real money."

"You mean you're letting someone you don't even know who it is take it out of the store? No."

"Billy when you're dealing with this type of customer they expect special treatment. Sending a piece out on approval is done all the time."

"How many times have you done it?"

"I've let hot customers I know who are serious buyers take home paintings and other pieces on approval plenty of times."

"Did you get a deposit?"

"Of course not."

"I don't like it."

"I know this is your baby, but we have to take this chance, Billy. There is no other way. I shouldn't use the word chance. We have to take this opportunity."

"I don't want some messenger service picking it up. I'll deliver it if it comes down to that."

"You don't have to. The dealer's assistant is going to pick up the piece on her way to the East End tonight. She's going to stop by my house. She's going out very late to be behind the traffic. Don't be paranoid Billy. You wanted $15,000. There aren't many people willing to pay that price."

"Sculptures go for more than that all the time."

"Not from unknown artists. Not for wood carvings. Be realistic."

"Okay," he said. He was handing the phone across the bar to Arnie when he realized he didn't ask how long this potential buyer would be looking at The Jynx before deciding on whether to buy or not.

The bartender had been listening. "You getting the fifteen grand Billy?"

"Maybe Arnie. Some rich man or woman, I don't know which, is going to take it home for a few days to look at it. They're going to let me know."

Arnie mopped the bar. He reached to the counter behind him where bottles of liquor rose in diminishing tiers to the mirror. He picked up the bottle of Bushmill, dug a lowball glass into the ice in the box behind the bar, and poured a stiff drink. "On me," he said tapping the bar with his forefinger.

Billy hoped Arnie wasn't jonahing him with a premature celebration. 'Jinxing the joker, who jacked The Jynx,' he said to himself knowing that wasn't a very worthy alliteration.

Arnie stood in front of him waiting for Billy to raise his glass in the typical barroom acknowledgement of his generosity.

"Happy days," Billy finally said, taking a sip of the whiskey.

"What are you gonna do with all that money? I'd have to get his by a car to get a lump that big. You could spend the winter in Florida with that kind of dough."

"If the sale goes through, I am going to take the winter off, but I'll stay right here in Huntington so I can use the time to do another sculpture."

"Jesus, isn't that the story of life. We work so we can get enough money to feed our faces and put a roof over our heads so we can keep working. Ledge was always talking about that guy pushing the rock up the hill and never getting to the top."

"Sisyphus. You're right. He should be the patron saint of the working class."

"That's who you should make a statue of Billy. They could put it up in Central Park."

"Or at least in front of town hall."

"So do I get credit for giving you your next idea?"

"If I do it, I'll use you as the model."

"If I have to take my clothes off, it's no go." Arnie laughed uproariously along with a couple of regulars sitting at the bar close enough to overhear their conversation.

"You're out of the picture then, Arnie. You know what might make an interesting Sisyphus? To make him into a woman with a mop." Billy had yet to decide his next sculpture. He thought about a nude woman, her arms extended putting pressure on the mop, breasts dangling, one leg a step ahead of the other. She could be young and slender, thick of body like Erin, or old and worn by the endless tasks of everyone's life.

He finished his drink, left a $5 tip on the bar for Arnie, and went walking, driven by the excitement spinning between his stomach and his chest, to the harbor, the length of Shore Road, and through the meandering roads and streets to his little house.

He went out to the studio to remove the sketches of Erin and everything else connected to the creation of The Jynx. He put the material in a folder and carried it into the house. He pulled down the folding attic stairs. He climbed up into the dusty crawl space, where he had stored many of the remnants of his marriage. He crawled along the wooden walkway in the middle of the attic to the box holding his wedding album and stacks of loose photos from his courtship and marriage to Patsy.

Dragging the box behind him to the stairway, he carried it down into the narrow hallway that divided his little house in half.

('Keep your eye on the donut and not the hole in your soul, Billy,' Harvey said.)

"Mind your own business," Billy responded.

('You are my business.')

The whisky, as it did sometimes, had intensified his yearning for Patsy. He had taken the box from the attic twice before over the 16 years since she dumped him. Her departure came as a surprise, but it shouldn't have. They had stopped making love and then even talking to one another for months before she announced her departure.

"Why?" he asked her on that last day.

"Because I want children..."

He interrupted her, "I want children too. You're the one blocking it."

"How can we have children when you don't have a real job or health insurance or anything in the bank? If it wasn't for me, we couldn't even pay the rent."

"Weren't. The conditional subjective."

"Oh fuck you and your college education. And a lot good it's done you."

"You don't have to be foul-mouthed with me."

"That's a laugh. Fuck, Jesus Christ, and son of a bitch are the main words in your college-educated vocabulary."

"I didn't know you felt this way. I knew we were having a battle of wills, not fucking, not talking, but I thought one day we'd get together and make wild love and everything would be the same again."

"Well you were wrong. I'll be honest with you. I've met someone else. And he's everything you're not. He has a clean mouth, he's a gentleman, he can afford to take me out to dinner. And he loves me and I love him."

"You always told me you loved me."

"I did. Past tense. I don't any more. I don't even want you to touch me any more."

He sat at the kitchen table as she walked out the door. He heard a car door open and slam. Someone had been waiting outside to drive her away.

Billy sat at the same kitchen table 16 years later with their wedding album and the photos of their life together, before they were married and throughout their marriage at beaches, at birthday parties, at Christmas.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Billy picked up the phone when it rang in the morning. "So you have changed. Now you answer your phone." The woman's voice was shaking with rage.

"Is this Patsy?" he said recognizing her voice after all these years.

"You bastard. My mother saw that statue you did of me. Without my permission. In that store window, where everyone can see it. I have a happy life now. I put you behind me years ago. Are you trying to cause me trouble? Can't you leave me alone?"

He was shocked at how much hatred there was in her voice.

('Hang up,' Harvey said.)

"I can't," Billy said.

"You miserable bastard. You got your revenge. Didn't you. I loathe you. I hope you're living in some dump. I hope you're broke and have cancer." She was sobbing.

Billy realized that his response to Harvey, "I can't," had prompted the frenzied outburst from Patsy, who assumed he was saying he wouldn't leave her alone. Before he could speak, she slammed down the phone. He felt as though someone had stripped the flesh from his chest and stomach. There was no thought of revenge, just art, when he did the sculpture. Patsy became the subject because she was always on his mind. He had found himself saying 'I love you Patsy' out of nowhere on the water, walking down the street, watching television. Distance, his sculpture of her, told him how far apart they had grown in their marriage. Mulling the causes, he attributed the chasm between them to his insensitivity, to his foul mouth, to his inability to leave the water for a job that would provide a steady income with health insurance, paid vacations, and a pension.

He put the handset back on the cradle in deep distress over the curse Patsy had hurled at him: "I hope you're broke and have cancer."

('Maybe you weren't the only one at fault in that marriage,' Harvey said.)

Clamming had been fairly lucrative during the span of their marriage. They never wanted for food or money for clothing or trips to the dentist and the ophthalmologist and the doctor. He never had go to go a doctor, but her health insurance from her job covered almost the entire cost of her visits for pap smears and other female needs. They reached a peak of $7,500 in their savings account, which he diminished considerably by spending $6,000 on a new outboard motor. She was furious. Had he gotten a second-hand motor would they have stayed together? No. She was probably fucking Mr. Neuerstein in the sexual drought he endured before the break up.

('Don't jump to conclusions,' Harvey said.)

"It doesn't make any difference now anyhow does it?"

('Any psychiatrist or guru would tell you just that. The present and the future are what matter.')

"You're getting very profound Harvey."

The phone rang. Billy picked it up, hoping it was Patsy with a tearful apology for the awful affliction she had wished up on. "Yes," he said.

"This is Mr. Neuerstein."

Billy was surprised, but he came back a mocking intonation in his voice: "Mister Neuerstein."

"Listen Plunkett you've caused a great deal of turmoil in my house. Unnecessary turmoil that should never have happened." His words were delivered with an ice-cold rage.

('Ask him if he has seen the sculpture that's causing his family so much agony,' Harvey said.)

"I take it you don't like my sculpture," Billy said.

"How could anyone like that piece of crap."

"Most women would be honored to be portrayed in a work of art," Billy said.

"Mrs. Neuerstein is not. We have two beautiful children and a position of some prominence in the Manhasset community. We don't need a wood chopper trying to embarrass us."

"Does Patsy still look that good in the raw, Mr. Neuerstein?"

"I'd like to give you a good punch in the nose."

Billy laughed. "You sound like one tough cookie for a real estate agent."

"I was a light heavyweight boxer in college, and I stay in shape. I could wipe the streets with a punk like you. But I'm not going to. Mrs. Neuerstein wants me to sue you. I told her that would be a mistake because it would bring publicity to an insignificant wood chopper."

('Hang up,' Harvey said.)

Billy paused. He swallowed the first response that flashed through his mind to say anytime you want to wipe the streets with me come on out to Huntington. Neuerstein was needling him by the continued reference to 'wood chopper.' He decided that the best counter punch was to ignore the insult and the macho stance of Patsy's husband, the father of the children she wouldn't give him.

('Ask him if he saw Distance,' Harvey said.)

"Aside from the nude body, which is not unusual in a classic figure, were you pleased with Patsy's face? Did I capture that at least?"

"I would strongly prefer you to address my wife as Mrs. Neuerstein. I have no idea about the nitty-gritty details of the statue. Mrs. Neuerstein and I just want it removed from public and burned if you really want to know how we feel about it."

"Sounds like you haven't seen the sculpture yourself Mr. Neuerstein. This conversation has gotten so tiresome," Billy said and hung up the phone. He had had a hard time getting to sleep last night, was still excited over the prospect that a collector might be willing to pay $15,000 for The Jynx. Patsy's mother had recognized her daughter's face meaning his work wasn't a piece of wood choppery. He wished instead of hanging up he had said, 'Tell Mrs. Neuerstein that her call to me has made my life so much better. Age hasn't improved her. I'm better off without her."

Patsy's call made him question whether he should hold onto Distance? Maybe he should sell Distance for whatever Alise could get? No. Patsy was his first love, his first wife, his first true sculpture. He thought back to her resentment over using his time in pursuit of being a sculptor. She and Neuerstein had shattered his excitement. She had muddied his day with sadness. He wouldn't answer the phone again. He could be reached through his answering machine and on occasion, when he was in the mood to respond, at Sugar's.

Today was the Fourth of July so he couldn't clam. The water would be thick with pleasure boaters. He didn't feel like cutting the grass or starting the next sculpture. He went out to his pickup just before 11. The air was thick and hot; the sky seemed ready to explode. Not a good day for clamming or pleasure boating. He drove to Main Street; most houses along the way behind their trimmed lawns and flocks of impatiens were flying the Stars and Stripes. He slid into the parking place right in front of Gallery Alise, getting out just as the wind churned past him and the clouds poured torrents of rain onto the street. Thunder was crashing somewhere in the distance.

Alise Krugman came from the back as he entered. She kissed and hugged him. "Darling. It's a deal and maybe more for you if you're willing."

"What do you mean?"

"I literally just got off the phone when you walked in the door. Do you know who I was talking to?" She sucked her teeth. "Of course you don't. I was bowled over when he called. Do you know who I just finished talking to? George Dragon, the billionaire, the one they call Mister Peacepennies."

"Is he the buyer?"

"If you want $40,000, he's the buyer."

"You've got to be kidding me. Of course I want $40,000. Why is he offering more? Are people bidding for The Jynx?"

"A little more complicated than that, darling. Mr. Dragon loves The Jynx. I don't have to tell you $15,000 is nothing to him. What he wants to do is to pay you another $25,000 for all rights to The Jynx." She sucked her teeth again. She was nervous.

At the outset, he never expected anyone to pay $15,000 for The Jynx. Now he was confronted with someone willing to add $25,000 to the price. He had never considered rights to one of his works. People just bought them and took them home. He could feel indecision locking down his mind. He didn't like the sensation. He rarely was confronted with choices involving anything other than what kind of a Danish or hero to order. "What if I want time to think it over?"

"I don't know if this is some sort of impulsive decision on the part of Mr. Dragon. But he was explicit in that either it's a whole deal, he gets the statue and the rights or there is no deal."

"Do you have any idea what he's going to do with it? Is there a lot of money to be made somehow?"

She sucked her teeth again. She wanted this sale. This would be the biggest single sale in the history of Gallery Alise. "You know I get 35 per cent for representing you on the statue, but I'm not taking any part of the $25,000. That's all yours. That's a lot of money. If Mr. Dragon has something in mind that will make him a fortune that could be to your benefit too. The whole world will be coming to you for your sculptures. He'll give you a name in the process. If you don't want to clam any more you won't have to if that comes true. Alternatively, I don't know of anyone else willing to pay the price. We haven't had any other offers. Mr. Dragon is a miracle of sorts. So you either get $40,000 and maybe a name. Or you take The Jynx home and put it in your living room and say to yourself, 'Why didn't I grab the brass ring when I had a chance.'"

Billy laughed. The brass ring again. "Call Mr. Dragon and tell him it's a deal. He'll get what he wants, because he's got the money. I'll get what I want, the winter off to sculpt, maybe two or three winters off, because he's giving me a little of his money."

"He's giving you a lot more, Darling. This could be a springboard to fame for you."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

A hefty girl in tight white shorts and an apple-green Life is Good t-shirt decorated with a white and yellow daisy got out of a sand chair under the shade of a maple. She carried a clipboard. "Greetings," she said. "And you are?"

"Billy Plunkett."

"Oh yes. Welcome Mr. Plunkett. We've been expecting you." She lifted the top page of the clipboard. Glanced at a head and shoulders shot of Billy and at Billy sitting behind the wheel in his old pickup. She smiled. She talked into a walkie-talkie, "Mr. Plunkett is here." The heavy metal gate across the driveway swung open. She said, "Go straight ahead, take the right fork that will lead you to the family parking lot right outside the main house."

The gate closed behind Billy's pickup. The driveway was a tunnel under a canopy of trees, walled on either side by pink and white flowering bushes. The right fork led him into an open expanse past a large pond surrounded by a manicured lawn. On a rise between the pond on the east and Noyac Bay on the west was a long, two-story home encased in natural wood shingles and encircled by a broad, covered porch. A short man with dark hair and glasses, an open collared white shirt and yellow slacks rose from a rocking chair as Billy parked. He came down the steps, a golden retriever at his side.

The dog, tail wagging, reached him first. Billy put his open hand below the retriever's mouth then swung it around to pet him.

"Greetings Mr. Plunkett. I'm so happy you could make it." The man stuck out his hand. "I'm your host, George Dragon. You've already met Janet." Dragon roughed the dog's head with his two hands. "Come on. Let's go out back. I want to show you the scene."

Dragon took Billy around the house to a flagstone terrace where The Jynx stood on a round solid oak trestle table. On a long table, nearby, was a stack of packets whose white covers were emblazoned with a photo of the sculpture with the underline: The Jynx Award/This Is What You Are. Across the base of the packet in blue lettering was The Center for Campaign Decency.

Dragon handed a packet to Billy. "You can read that later. The whole story is in there. I'm creating a new non-partisan campaign watchdog organization with the goal of returning simple decency and honesty to American political campaigns. I'm so tired of the Karl Rove tactics of tearing the guts out of opposition candidates with half truths and absolute lies. Look what the Swiftboaters did to John Kerry, look what Erin Prendergast and her phony Project TAR did to Roger Truman. I invited Truman up here for today's unveiling but he couldn't make it. What we're announcing here today is the establishment of the Jynx Award. We're going to give one to whichever political operative runs the ugliest, nastiest, most dishonest attack campaign in an election year. Don't worry I'm not going to ask you to carve me a new Jynx every year. I've arranged to have The Jynx cast in bronze. The bronze copies will be the award. I'm going to keep the original for a while, then maybe donate it to MOMA or the Smithsonian or wherever is appropriate. The first award is going to be a bit retroactive. Can I trust you to keep a secret until we announce it to the public? It's going to Prendergast. After all she deserves it. She's the inspiration not only for your piece, but for the Center for Campaign Decency.

So that was why Dragon wanted the rights to reproduce The Jynx. Dragon's mention of The Jynx someday being exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art or the Smithsonian thrilled Billy. His fantasy immediately shifted from being able to take off for the winter to being recognized as a major wood sculptor.

"Let's go have a cup of coffee. My wife is dying to meet you. She spotted those sculptures of yours in the gallery in Huntington and called me right up and said, "Mister Peacepennies have I got an idea for you. As soon as I saw The Jynx I knew she was right."

Billy knew from NPR, bits popping up on TV, and in Newsday that 76-year-old Dragon was married to Hannah Farnham, the 43-year-old actress. His fourth wife. Her third husband. They met at a fund-raiser for Howard Dean's presidential campaign and were married within a month. She was a Yale graduate with all of the awards that the film and theater industries could give an actress, and was known for her brains and attraction to Left Wing causes as well as her body, which was lovely to look, and often shown in the nude on the screen. He was short, with a flat stomach but big backside, a Rotary-looking guy. He had gotten his three degrees up to PhD from state colleges. He said in almost every interview that he never forgot where he came from. When an entertainment reporter asked Hannah how she could marry a man so much older than herself, whom the beautiful people might describe as a frog?" Hannah said, "Girlie, you should be so lucky to find George Dragon in your bed. He'd give you a something to write about." She said she loved him, his politics, his money, and his myth as a self-made billionaire who spun a Laundromat in Syracuse into a Laundromat chain into a real estate empire into a dot-com adventure, which he sold for $300 million before the crash at the turn of the century. The $300 million had spiraled though his private equity firm to more than a billion and a half dollars in the past five years. Hannah Farnham was the source of his Mister Peacepennies tag. When a political reporter asked how many millions Dragon was spending to oust George Bush from the White House in the 2004 election? She said that the millions were pennies to Dragon. She said, "The Republicans have lots of Daddy Warbucks, so why shouldn't the Democrats have one Mister Peacepennies."

Hannah Farnham rose from a rocking chair as they came onto the porch. She was at least four inches taller than Dragon. "Billy Plunkett, the artist," she said extending her hand.

"Billy meet the Mrs., Hannah, and her daughter, Nicky."

Billy shook Hannah Farnham's hand. He decided with the warmth of skin lingering on his that he would love to sculpt her. Newspaper stories described her face as pleasing, not beautiful. He disagreed. She was beautiful with a longish face, her high cheek bones accentuated by her hair pulled back into a pony tail tied with a green ribbon. She glowed when she smiled, displaying one slightly crooked tooth. Her teeth were her own, not the product of cosmetic dentistry. She was dressed in green shorts and a white muscle shirt that showed the nipples of her tits and no bulges on her body. This was a woman who worked out and watched what she ate. Her daughter who had the extraordinary beauty of youth with full cheeks and juicy lips half rose from her chair to touch his hand.

A red-headed teenager in a maid's outfit appeared to provide a tall silver thermos of hot coffee and a tray of freshly-baked cheese and blueberry Danish pastries. She removed a thermos that had been sitting on a table around which four rocking chairs had been positioned. "Anything else, sir?" she asked Dragon, her voice marked by an Irish accent.

"Is coffee okay or would you prefer tea, Billy?" Hannah asked.

"Black coffee would be great," he said.

Hannah waved the maid away and asked whether Alise at the Huntington gallery had told him that she was so taken by his work that she wanted to buy Distance and Introspection along with The Jynx. At that point, the friend Hannah was with told her about the story in Newsday. Alise produced a copy of Ted Neary's column connecting The Jynx to Erin Prendergast. "I was struck by lightning. I went outside and immediately called George. I said, 'George this is not only a work of art worth having, it is a political work of art that could be the earthquake that could shake this country out of its lust for dishonestly dirty politics. I told him I loved the imagery of the wasps. Boy oh boy did you capture the essence of what Erin Prendergast is. George had The Jynx brought out here, and agreed that we must have it. So here we are. So here you are."

Dragon said, "We're having a press conference at noon. You have the packet we're going to distribute. I'm targeting August thirtieth for the bronze copies of The Jynx to be available. On that date, we're going to have the first official meeting of the board of the Center for Campaign Decency at our place here. Those who can't be here in person we'll have on a video hookup or speakerphone or something similar. I strongly suspect everyone will agree with me that Ms. Prendergast should be our first honoree."

"Dishonoree," Hannah corrected him.

"Thank you, love. We're also having a few guests, maybe 20 to 25 people over to watch today's press conference. We'll have lunch and a little music afterwards out on the dock." Dragon stood up to point out the dock, mostly covered by a tent with tables and chairs, at the water's edge.

"I could kick myself," Hannah said. "I should have asked you to bring along the rest of your Trio. The crowd we're having today are the kind of people who might have been prompted to offer you commissions for sculptures of themselves."

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

He was saying goodbye and thanks to George Dragon, when Hannah Farnham took him by the arm, announcing she needed a minute alone with the artist. Dragon smiled as if he knew some pleasant surprise was coming. She guided him onto the porch, telling him as they went up the stairs that she knew a bayman on the North Fork, whose Yellow Lab had just had puppies. She had done a little research on Billy. She knew about Sweeney and wondered whether Billy would be interested in one of the puppies?

The maid with the red hair was holding a box with a Lab puppy, a green ribbon tied around his neck. The beautiful, famous Hannah Farnham offering him a gift. That would be a story to tell in Sugar's. He said yes.

Hannah took the puppy from his box. "He's a real gummer so I named him Gummer. You can pick a different name if you like, but Gummer seemed a natural."

He said the dog and the name delighted him.

They chatted for a few minutes longer with Hannah musing aloud on her temptation to have Billy do a figure of George Dragon for his 77th birthday next June. He didn't tell her how dangerous that might be, that his sculptures tended to reveal the truth.

"I would rather do you," he said.

('Be careful. She has spent her adult life being hit upon,' Harvey whispered.)

Her smile seemed to thin. She said, "I would be flattered. Something I'll have to think about."

Billy said to himself, 'You jerk.' She seemed like such a nice person, so accessible, so happy, and at lunch revealing that she was concerned with the issues that troubled him: the war in Iraq, pollution of the air and waters, especially Long Island Sound. Maybe that would show in her face or be reflected in her stance or the shape of her hands. He certainly would enjoy seeing her naked body up close.

('Rent a DVD of one of her movies,' Harvey said.)

His hunger for her must have shown through. He could feel the gap that had opened between as she guided him to his car, gave a hurried wave goodbye, and turned to walk back to the house before he pulled away.

Billy sighed. In any future dealings with her he would be as polite and reserved as possible. He had had a hard time keeping his eyes off her body throughout the day. He felt Dragon watching him watching Hannah's swinging hips as she walked away from the lunch table. His face flushed as Dragon gave him a little smile and winked at him.

('Don't worry Billy boy, George Dragon acquired Hannah with the full awareness that she is a living work of art that ordinary men like you can only lust after. Adds to his self-esteem,' Harvey said.)

'I'm an artist and women find artists very appealing,' Billy said in his mind to Harvey.

('You wish,' Harvey said.)

* * *

In the morning, Billy was on the water by 6:30. Wind was relatively light from the southwest. Not the best direction. He would have preferred a west wind since he was working Culligan's Harbor. As he clamped the poles together for the dig, he said, "Gummer, this looks like a good day for clamming. But then every day is a good day for clamming."

"You're one lucky dog, Gummer," he said as he dropped the rake over the side. "Being on the water is the greatest life I could imagine for a Lab. And for myself of course."

His work day was punctuated by fantasies of Hannah Farnham calling to say she would be delighted to pose for him, and of Hannah standing naked on a white, furry rug in a much nicer studio than his under a big skylight. He decided he would take Harvey's advice and rent a DVD of the film, she did early in her career, in which she swam naked, her body pictured from every angle by an underwater camera.

By one o'clock with the sun beginning to burn the day hot, although a cooling wind had picked up, Billy dismantled the poles from the rake and headed back to his mooring. He had 1,000 clams of various sizes, not a bad take.

He steered past the breakwater into Huntington Bay thinking about a self-portrait. All artists did them. Some did dozens of themselves. He had to admit that he was a little fearful of a self portrait for what he might expose about himself. His hands knew him very well. Would a self portrait reveal him as a delusionary lecher for fantasizing that Hannah Farnham might have been as interested in his body as much as his skills as a sculptor? Or as a greedhead for willingly taking Erin's money? He knew he didn't want his face to reflect his hard-heartedness in showing Tommy Ledge the portrait that might have helped send him over the side to his death. He mulled the mystical power of his hands.

He had stood yesterday beside George Dragon listening to the mandolin player of The Global Coolers, the quartet playing on the dock, tell his audience, "We are continuing a tradition of a sort playing songs of protest. Our grandparents did labor songs, now we play cool songs about the environment and peace in a very hot world." As they finished the first number, a woman on a fiddle, a woman on a guitar, another man with a banjo, and the spokesman with mandolin and stamping feet, Dragon said to him: "I think I would like to commission you to do a bust of George Bush. I can just see it, and maybe you would too, of a two-faced Bush, one side the handsome smiling frat boy, the other the face of Dorian Gray he keeps in the closet upstairs. I'm thinking of offering you $25,000, or one of my foundations offering you $25,000, for your interpretation of our president. Depending on where we want to go from there, maybe we'll offer a little more for all the rights just like The Jynx."

('Be careful. He's a shrewdie, who acquires people,' Harvey whispered.)

Billy ignored Harvey's comment. He was excited all the way home to Huntington over the prospect of doing George Bush. He smiled at the thought that his hands might reveal a sincerity he would never expect to find in President Bush. The project would be an adventure. He would dabble in drawings and go over photographs and watch Bush on TV as much as possible. He would think about the president's accomplishments and failures, what a damaging force he had been to the environment of the United States and the world.

He was so anxious to begin that he realized he couldn't wait for the first cold days of January. He decided as he drove away from the buyer on the beach with the day's pay of $160 that he would start on Labor Day. That was six or seven weeks away. If he could hold out that long.

He got Gummer fresh water and himself a cold beer before listening to the answering machine. She was the first and second message, from 8 o'clock this morning, Erin. She raged so long at him over the snidely-written story about her and the photo of The Jynx in today's Style section of the Washington Post that she ran out of time on the tape of the first message. She was precise in the second message: "I know you're not going to return my call you coward. I'll get you for this, and you know I'm capable of getting you somehow. Have you paid your taxes? Are there any old warrants out for you? Have you ever fucked an under-age girl like you fucked me? You bastard."

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Billy walked with uncertainty to his garage studio on Labor Day right after a late breakfast of bacon, eggs and hot rolls with butter. Today was the day he had set to begin the portrait of George W. Bush. A huge block of basswood had been delivered a week ago intensifying his appetite for the project. On Wednesday, he had spoken to Mr. Minerva, one of George Dragon's many assistants, who told him that the first bronze copy of The Jynx had been delivered to Dragon's Manhattan office the day before. That was followed by the initial meeting of the board of directors of The Center for Campaign Decency. The directors, as expected, voted unanimously to name Erin Prendergast as the first recipient of The Jynx Statue for her extraordinary contribution towards undermining decency in American politics through her over-the-top maligning of Roger Truman during his 2002 bid to become a member of Congress.

"The Jynx made me laugh and laugh. You put the needle in her where it hurts the most," Mr. Minerva said. When he stopped chuckling, he said, "Right after Labor Day, as soon as we get back to work, I'll be cutting the check for you for the Dorian Gray bust of Bush 43. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that. I've become your biggest booster. You have a touch of the comic that puts serious subjects into perspective. I consider you the equal of any of the great editorial cartoonists working anywhere in the world today. You're as good as Mike Luckovich; I look at his cartoons in the Atlanta Constitution every day. He stabs old Bush with a pen, you're going to do it with a chisel. I can hardly wait to see your version of Bush 43."

"Right," Billy had said and hung up the phone. The money from George Dragon would propel him into a new life as a sculptor who clams instead of a clammer who carves wood. But he had a vision of himself as a serious artist not a cartoonist who used sculpture to zing arrogant politicians. His Jynx was a work of art that coincidentally fitted into George Dragon's need to illustrate how ugly American political campaigns had become. His enthusiasm for the Bush portrait slowly leaked out of his system as he replayed in his mind Mr. Minerva's words of praise, equating him to a cartoonist.

\---

Gummer dropped the stick he been chewing to trot across the backyard to follow Billy into his garage studio. The puppy sniffed around. Billy stood staring at the wood. He walked around it. He had thought out the sculpture of George Bush. His sketchbook was filled with his impressions of the dualism of George Bush, the confident, smiling public face and the nightmare karma carved into his soul by his decisions that caused so much suffering to so many people. On his work table beside the block of basswood lay his copy of the Oscar Wilde novel, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.' He opened to the final page, which he had read and reread, for inspiration:

"When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was."

That was Wilde's depiction of the measure of a man's sins and failings. George Dragon wanted Billy to produce a sculpture that would mirror Wilde's book. Billy had accepted that general outline, but knew from the Trio that there was a truth lying in the wood that he would uncover. He said to his hands, 'Let's begin. Show me what's in there.' He ran his hands over the basswood and felt nothing. He stepped back to stare into the wood, to imagine the public face and hidden soul of George W. Bush exposed by the mallet and the gouge. He saw nothing. ('Harvey whispered, "Don't do it.') Billy experienced a tickle within his stomach and realized Harvey was right he couldn't do this. He wanted to be an artist, not a billionaire's hit man with a chisel, another version of Erin.

He was drawn from his stew of anxiety by Gummer barking and the honking of a horn. He stepped outside the studio. A white van was parked in his driveway outside the gate. A woman leaned out the window. "That dog bite?"

"That's a puppy."

"Whatever. Are you Mr. Plunkett?"

"Yeah."

Gummer, who stood at the fence, was almost hoarse with barking.

The woman in khaki shorts and a pink t-shirt with a picture of Mercury in a gold skirt got out of the van. She was carrying a large envelope. "Keep the gate closed. I've got a thing about dogs."

"He's not going to bite you. Quiet Gummer," Billy said.

She kept eyes on the dog while extending a large brown envelope and a sheet of paper with a list of names to Billy. "You got to sign," she said.

He looked at the sheet. Above his name were initials next to Ted Neary, Sugar's and Gallery Alise. "What is this?"

"Got me. I just make the delivery."

He initialed the form and turned away from her, opening the envelope as he walked. He pulled out a sheet of paper with a single line of print in large blocks: LanceofStGeorge. A penciled note on a yellow sticker said, 'Check this website out .' No signature. If he hadn't seen the other names on the receipts list, he might have assumed the delivery was some sort of promotion. He went into the house. The answering machine was flashing: two messages. He pressed the answer button. Erin's voice: "You said it couldn't be done. I said just watch, Sweetie." He pressed for the second message: "Mr. Plunkett. I don't know if you've seen that scurrilous website, the Lance of St. George. Half the country will be looking at it before the day is over. The boss has decided it would be unwise, at least for the time being, to proceed with that sculpture you discussed with us. You can do what you want, of course, but our offer is withdrawn. You can call me, but I would rather you didn't." The caller didn't identify himself, but Billy recognized Mr. Minerva's voice. He wouldn't call back. He didn't want to do the Bush portrait anyhow.

The phone rang as he stood there wondering whether the library was open on Labor Day so he could use the computer. He picked up the receiver. "Billy, this is Alise. Have you seen yourself on that blogsite?"

"No. What's this all about?"

"You don't have a computer with an internet connection do you?"

"Of course not."

"You might want to come over to the Gallery to see this St. George thing. There's a little ad promoting it on the front page of the New York Times today so you're going to be hearing a lot about it."

* * *

Alise excused herself from the customer who was examining a pseudo-Rembrandt of a lighthouse by a Long Island painter. She led Billy into her backroom. "Do you know how to use a computer?"

"The research librarian usually helps me if I get lost."

Alise typed in the blogsite's address. "I'd rather not be here when you look at this anyhow. I'm old enough to be embarrassed by such things. If you run into a problem, I'll be out front."

Billy looked at the computer screen. Below the date, Sept. 1, 2006 was an underlined headline in red:

'Expose George Dragon and the sycophantic perverts around him.'

Followed by: 'Welcome to the Lance of St. George Society. This blog is dedicated to exposing George Dragon for what he is: a pervert with money who hates President George W. Bush because he is a fearless Christian leader who believes in the sanctity of marriage and waging a relentless war against terrorism. Anyone who believes in decency in politics, in the arts, in the family, and in the American flag, in supporting our troops is welcome to become a member of the Lance of St. George Society. The first items shown on this site are like the snow atop an iceberg. There is so much more beneath the surface. Help us expose this fiend for what he is.'

Underneath the opening statement was a picture of George Dragon in an oval surrounded by the head and shoulders shots of two men and four women: Billy was one of the two men. Beneath his picture were 'Latest Male Friend' 'Billy Plunkett' 'Wood carver.' and 'Video'

Billy used the mouse to access the video. The page came up showing a series of still photos of the bare-chested Billy in the Scottish kilt bordering the video, the pictures taken by Linda. He smirked when he saw the one of the kilt raised, mooning the camera. That wasn't him. He had refused to do that. He pressed the play symbol on the video. The video opened with the first still showing him and then went into a close-up of a twirling figure with the kilt lifting high above the waist to expose the backside and rather substantial private parts and ending with another still of the figure holding the kilt up while an obviously male hand grasped the penis.

"Jesus Christ," Billy screamed burning with rage and mortification.

Alise came through the beaded curtain.

He turned to her. "That's not me in the video. That bitch must have put this together."

"Calm down Billy," she said. "You're frightening my customer."

"She said she would get me. I'm going to go to the district attorney with this."

"I don't want to upset you, but the man in the pictures is either you or your twin."

"I'm in the pictures, but I never posed for that video."

Alise returned to her customer and Billy replayed the video. The kilt on the man in the video had a different pattern and different colors than the one he wore in the photos taken by Linda. He pressed the back button returning to the page with the photo of Dragon surrounded by the others. Beside the picture of 'the first male friend' was an asterisk. At the bottom of the screen was the explanation: "Died of AIDs." Under the women were the lines: Wife One; Wife Two; Wife Three; and Wife Four, who was Hannah Farnham. Under her photo was a line: 'Immoral Thespian.' He moved the mouse cursor to the link under Hannah Farnham. The page that came up showed her in a full frontal nude shot, a still from a film that he had never seen. He would never have forgotten that scene. He went through the others. Nothing very interesting. One wife arrested for drunk driving, another pictured sunbathing topless on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris, the third a suicide with a police photo of her body strung up in a seedy hotel room in Buenos Aires. The first male friend, whose name wasn't given, was shown in a grainy home-movie cavorting in the raw with several other men on a Fire Island beach with ocean waves breaking on the sand.

Billy examined the blog's home page. The date was Sept. 1, two days after George Dragon's Center for Campaign Decency announced that Erin was the first recipient of The Jynx Award. If she put together this attack website in just two days, it was frightening to consider what she was capable of doing with the passage of time. He understood why Dragon didn't want to give him any more money for his sculptures for fear of how Erin would spin it.

('She did a job on you Billy Boy. She scrambled your ego with an embarrassing lie. The only thing that counts in your life is sculpture. So do it,' Harvey said in a voice so loud Billy thought that even Alise might hear him.)

"Well, I'm not going to let her get away with it. I'll do a sculpture with Erin's head on a big fat leech. I'll call it Slime," Billy said aloud to Harvey.

('No. No. No. Then Erin would slam you again with something more obscene. Let it go. If anyone brings it up, just say, Oh what a pitiful piece of fabricated bullshit that was,' Harvey said.)

Billy replayed the video again and again. He felt helpless and frustrated. The thought occurred to him that he could ask the Newsday columnist to tell his side of the story. That probably would prompt another attack from Erin. Harvey was right, he usually was. He wasn't going to participate in a game of endless attack and revenge. That would be like getting into a barroom brawl over some minor insult resulting in pain, bloodshed, maybe an arrest and certainly enmity for life. He would tell anyone who grabbed him, a clammer or a reporter, his sister, Patsy or Hannah Farnham the picture of him exposing himself and getting a hand job was faked, and he would say no more about it."

The customer was leaving with the Lighthouse enveloped in bubble wrap and brown paper when Billy went back out front. After the door was closed behind her, Alise said, "Well."

"I'll give you a call when I finish my next piece."

She said, "I wouldn't be too discouraged Billy. People expect artists to be different, to be Bohemians."

"The positive way of looking at it is that my name is being spread to a wider audience. The negative is that people might think I let other men play with me. I'm going to tell the truth. That picture of the man's weenie being held by another man isn't me. You don't see my face, do you?" He held up his hand. "Don't say anything more to me about it. I'm not going to discuss it with you again. I'm going home to begin my next piece. As I said, I'll call when I finish it."

Back at his house, he erased all the messages on the answering machine without listening to them, and turned it off. He didn't want to hear any murmurs of sympathy or perhaps amusement from some clammer hardly able to speak for laughing in saying, 'I didn't know you were queer.' Who knows maybe even Newsday or more likely the New York Post would call about it. He didn't know how large an audience a blog like that could attract, but he was certain Erin and Linda would work hard at spreading the blog's address far beyond New York Times readers.

He got out his bottle of Jameson's and the ice tray from his freezer. He needed a drink. He had never said that to himself before. He poured two shots into a lowball glass. He raised it in toast: "To my next sculpture whatever it is."

Gummer whimpered. He opened the back door to let Gummer out and with the drink in his hand he crossed the yard to his studio. Seeing the dog raise his leg against a tree, he mused that if Gummer were like every Yellow Lab that he had encountered, especially Sweeney, he would be loyal, loving, and fearless. Maybe he should use the basswood to do a figure of Sweeney?

Billy walked around the chunk of basswood in the studio. He stood to stare at it. He ran both hands over the wood. He sensed a figure of himself, nude with his hands cupped shoulder high before him as if feeling what was in the wood, as if holding the world between his two hands, with an expression of anticipation.

He would begin the self-portrait tomorrow. What would he call it?

('The Sculptor,' Harvey said.)

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dan Crowe, who is an honest to goodness Huntington bayman, for the information he provided on the art of clamming and life on the water.

In addition, I want to express my gratitude to the Sewanee Writers Conference at the University of the South (1997) and the New England Writers Workshop at Simmons College (1994) for what they taught me and what I learned about writing novels.

