Trolls in the Hamptons (16 page)

Then we came to a sudden stop and my pad went flying. I looked ahead and saw nothing but red brake lights in front of us. Our driver was on the phone with his home base or other drivers, I supposed, getting information on the snarl, and what exit to take to avoid it. Then he got on the intercom and announced that an accident had just occurred, right before the next exit, so we had nowhere to go until the road opened again. All eastbound lanes were shut down. We could see police cars with sirens and lights passing in the HOV lane or on the shoulder. Fire engines and ambulances, too, which looked bad for the accident victims.

We sat for what seemed like an hour, with the exhaust fumes feeding through the bus, and the couple across the way eating the second halves of their sausage and peppers, which ought to be banned from buses.

I was beginning to feel nauseated. So I had a Mallomar and called my mother. A big sign in the front of the bus asked passengers to limit cell phone use to one call per trip, of short duration, to be considerate of others. Nice, but no one followed the rules. Everyone I could see was on the phone, loudly warning their friends and family that they'd be late, or conducting business that couldn't wait the extra time the trip would take.

I left a message for my mother, who'd said she'd pick us up. She must be out with the dogs, I figured, so I tried her cell. I left a message there, too, even though she never had figured out how to retrieve her missed calls. She did not text, either, but that was the best I could do. If she was smart, she'd call the Jitney office and ask if we'd be on time or late. Knowing my mother, she'd have tea with Grandma Eve, who'd tell her when it was time to go.

After another twenty minutes—I worried we'd run out of gas, idling so long, but was happy for the airconditioning—we moved a couple of inches. One lane must have opened.

Police set up cones directing the three lanes to merge over to the HOV lane on the far left, keeping the highway and the shoulder open for emergency vehicles. Some drivers had pulled off to the grass verge, so they had to push their way into line, too, which made for slower going. And everyone wanted to see the accident, ghouls that we were.

We traveled in lurches and bus-length leaps, which did nothing to settle my insides. I had another Mallomar. Susan slept on, somehow.

I couldn't see ahead, not from so far back in the bus, but when we got close, I craned my neck like everyone else. The driver was cursing over the forgotten intercom. The hostess shook her head.

I shoved Susan awake and indicated she should unplug her earpieces. “What?”

“There's an accident in the right lane. What do you see?”

She put her face against the glass, blocking my view even more. “Oh, boy, it's a mess. There's a red fire truck on the grass, on its side. It must have been a water tanker, because the road is flooded. Other fire trucks are hosing it down in case the fuel tank was damaged, I guess. There's water everywhere.”

“What did it hit? Can you tell?”

“A trooper, I think.”

“An Isuzu?”

The man from across the aisle was leaning over my shoulder, breathing garlic in my face. “No, it looks like a State trooper. Or maybe that's just a first responder. It's hard to say with so much equipment around. What do you see?”

I saw a troll, hands out, under the streams of water, just like in my sketch, right down to the smile.

He couldn't see me. He'd certainly never hear me, and I doubted if he ever understood me. Grant said the language of the alternate world was half thought transference, so I tried to let my mind speak. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated.
Go home
, I repeated over and over, half demand, half prayer.
Go home, Fafhrd.

He never looked at our bus. I'm no telepath, no em-path. Maybe a sociopath, but hey, I was the Visualizer. I grabbed my pad and pencil again and wrote, “Go home” on it.

Could Fafhrd read? Did he know English? Damn, he was a troll, a species not known in folklore for its mental prowess. He did not know his own strength, much less the alphabet. The Visualizer had to do better. Sure.

How the hell do you depict “go home” in a sketch? I flipped back to the picture of Fafhrd in the rain, then started to erase it as fast as I could with the little eraser on the back of my pencil.

When I looked up, he clapped his hands and disappeared under the fountains of water. We crept past the accident scene. The man with garlic breath sat down; Susan popped her earphones back in and shut her eyes.

I stashed my sketch pad and pencil back in my tote, but my hands were shaking so hard I dropped a Mallomar. I bent down to get it and bumped my head on the seat in front when the bus picked up speed.

The driver spoke on the intercom again: “Sorry about the delay, folks, but I'm happy to report that no one was hurt. The ambulances and rescue equipment are all returning to their stations.”

A few of the passengers applauded, whether for the good news or the fact we were finally on our way at highway speed, halfway to our destination. I felt too limp to cheer. And I had a lump on my forehead. I asked the hostess for something cold to put on it, which dripped, so now my shirt was damp and the air-conditioning chilled me.

No, the idea that Agent Grant was right chilled me. I was starting to believe the unbelievable. How else could I explain Fafhrd's appearance, just like my sketch, or his disappearance once I erased him? The snake was also right that Fafhrd would follow me to Paumanok Harbor, getting into trouble along the way. I vowed to do another sketch as soon as we got to the Harbor, showing Fafhrd leaning against a tree—No, he'd topple it over; if the blasted tree was one of Grandma Eve's, I'd never hear the end of it. I'd have him sitting on the beach—by himself—with a book in his hand. He'd be learning to read English, damn him, so we could communicate. Then I'd tell him to get the hell out of my life.

I suppose I should call Grant. What for, to tell him he was right? He was still wrong to bug my apartment, wrong to make me think he cared about me. He was wrong
for
me. Besides, if he was so smart, he'd already know Fafhrd was with me. Let him figure out the rest.

The Jitney stopped at Manorville, but no one got off. We switched from the Expressway to Sunrise Highway and made good time to the Omni on the Southampton bypass, the base for the Jitney. The hostess got off, the driver changed, and half the passengers left, some for a different bus to take them toward Sag Harbor. We got onto Montauk Highway, an absurd relic from the days of the Model T, if not horses and wagons. It was one lane in either direction, with a turning lane here and there, bumper-to-bumper with landscapers and pool trucks and pickups with surfboards hanging out the back. The road was perfect for the sleepy summer resort the South Fork used to be, not what it was today, a playground for the rich and famous and wanna-bes.

The bus stopped at Watermill, a pretty little village with the worst traffic jams on the East End. Bridgehampton was next, another main street filled with antique shops and small stores and restaurants. It would have been quaint, except for the Kmart shopping center two blocks before it.

A couple of people got off at Wainscott, a between-village place that had its own post office, a gravel pit, and a commercial strip.

East Hampton was next, and you could feel the difference. Towering elms arched over the road, elegant swans floated on the town pond, gardens appeared to be painted, rather than grown. Nothing was out of place except maybe a dented old Nissan with Jersey plates.

We passed Guild Hall, the library that used to make residents of the other villages pay—even when they had no libraries of their own, and we all belonged to East Hampton Town. But this was East Hampton Village, an incorporated community with its own government.

Past the restored farm and schoolhouse came Main Street, which was trying to be Worth Avenue or Rodeo Drive, with Tiffany's, Ralph Lauren, Cashmere this, Star-bucks that, and real estate offices. You couldn't buy thread or a loaf of bread.

The only reason I could see to visit the place was the movie theater in the center of the street, but with no parking except blocks away, that was a pain in the neck, too. This was everything I disliked about the Hamptons, the conspicuous consumption of stuff no one needed, at prices no one could afford but the haves and the have-mores. Even on Tuesday, Main Street and Newtown Lane were filled with tourists carrying shopping bags and trophy dogs, buying Coach pocketbooks like they were donuts. This was the beach. Why the hell did anyone need three hundred dollar sandals? Of course East Hampton had its own beaches requiring its own parking stickers, lest the plebeians from Montauk or Springs trespass on their hallowed sand. Why, the bookstore in town didn't even have a romance paperback section, although everywhere else romances sold twice as many as all the other paperbacks combined. And they did not carry my books.

No, I did not admire snobby, elitist, East Hampton Village, except for its beauty.

Amagansett was a much friendlier little town, with bakeries, pizza places, pubs, and a pet store mixed in with the galleries and ubiquitous real estate offices. We got off there, near the Farmer's Market, which sometimes even had local produce. We left the Jitney, because the bus went on to Montauk without making detours to Springs or Paumanok Harbor.

My mother was waiting on the sidewalk, pacing. “You're late.”

As if it was my fault.

Maybe it was my fault.

I
STARTED TO SAY THAT I'D TRIED TO CALL. Actually, what I was going to say was if my mother ever bothered to check her messages or learned how to use the damned phone, she would have known the bus was late. But that was confrontational, and I was no rebellious teenager but a woman grown. And I'd just arrived.

Instead Susan said, “There was an accident. Willy thinks she caused the whole thing.”

I never told my cousin that, not once. I refused to believe she could read my mind, because if she could, the little shit-stirrer would be running in the opposite direction.

“Willy always thinks she's the center of the world,” my loving mother announced, helping Susan with her one bag and leaving me to manage my two suitcases, tote bag, and laptop. “What does she care if the dogs have to be fed?”

I never was the center of my mother's world. The dogs were. Any dogs. Anywhere. Right now two enormous poodles panted in the gated back of Mom's old white Outback. So all the bags and suitcases had to sit next to me in the backseat. Susan, of course, sat in the front.

The dogs that were soon to be my new best friends did not appear eager to meet me. They kept looking through the bars at my mother, whimpering. They were both black, but at least they had respectable haircuts, short curls instead of pom-poms like some ridiculous show dogs trying out for cheerleading squad.

“The one on the left is Ben,” Mom said, making an illegal U-turn across Amagansett's main street. “The other one is Jerry.”

I couldn't tell any difference between them, except Jerry was drooling more, over the seat back and on my shoulder.

Instead of watching the road, my mother kept looking in the rearview mirror. She saw me pull out a tissue and wipe at my shirt. “Jerry's not a great traveler. That's another reason Mr. Parker leaves them here most of the time. They're a little too high-strung for the city, but I've been working on that.”

High-strung? Ben was trembling, Jerry wouldn't let me touch him through the bars of the dog gate, but he did drool over my hand. “I thought standard poodles were supposed to be calm, intelligent animals.”

“These are inbred, of course. The AKC ought to have better control.”

Coming from someone who was born and raised in Paumanok Harbor and related to half the population, that was almost laughable. Mom and I never did see humor in the same situation, though, so I held my tongue. I did that a lot around my family.

She sniffed in disapproval anyway. Must be for the Kennel Club, I decided, because Mom knew what animals were thinking, not people.

“Have you heard how my father is doing today?” Susan asked.

“He's still on intravenous antibiotics. They're working, because the fever is down and he's complaining about the food. Your mother is staying again tonight at a motel near the hospital. The drive back and forth is too long for her, with all the traffic, and they have appointments with specialists in the morning. Jas hopes to be bringing your father home by the end of the week. Grandma Eve says you can stay with her if you don't want to be alone in the house.”

It was okay for me to be staying alone with these nervous dogs in a strange place, acres from the nearest neighbor, but Susan was invited to Grandma's instead of staying across the driveway in her own home. Not that I was resentful or anything. I was older, stronger, and more independent than Susan. And smarter.