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Twenty-Four

HARVEY LAY on his blanket in the late August sun. The Long Beach train had just disgorged another load of passengers, and Harvey could see them swarming down from the boardwalk, weighted down with their coolers and their folding beach chairs and their newspapers. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes, turned off his Walkman, removed the earphones, and rolled over onto his back. Soon he was asleep.

When he woke up it was two-thirty He looked at his watch and sat upright. He had been asleep for over an hour and a half. People were beginning to leave the beach. He shooed a few seagulls away from his blanket and reached into his bag. He oiled his back with an expensive French sun-treatment and rolled over onto his stomach. There was a baggie filled with dried apricots and nuts on the corner of the blanket. Harvey reached for it, reconsidered, and rolled back onto his side. He patted his belly a few times, pinched the fat below his navel, and got to his feet. He gazed up at Seymour's Clam Bar on the boardwalk, patted his belly again, and headed for some fried clams.

He ate his clams with a tall draft beer on one of the benches at the end of the boardwalk. Tan, hard-bodied teenagers were playing volleyball on the beach. A large-breasted blonde with teased hair and a skull tattoo on her nearly naked butt stood talking and drinking out of a brown paper bag at the next bench. The three young men with her all wore the same thing: workboots, blue jeans, and no shirts. They were all heavily tattooed. Screaming eagles, coiled snakes, snarling panthers, skulls with top hats, and swastikas covered their chests and backs. An old man with an eye patch in a motorized wheelchair pulled up next to Harvey's bench and began throwing bread crumbs to the pigeons and seagulls. Soon there were birds everywhere. Disgusted, Harvey got up and walked back to his blanket.

He lay on his stomach for a while, but the shadows were getting longer; more people were gathering up their things and heading off to the train station. Harvey checked his watch. It was three-thirty. He applied apres soleil to his face, chest, and arms and began to pack up. He put a pair of white linen shorts on over his bathing suit and a red polo shirt over his head.

He found his Toyota sitting alone in the center of the parking lot. It was stifling inside, and the vinyl seats burned his legs below the shorts. He rolled down all the windows and put a tape on. Marvin Gaye sang about radiation underground as Harvey peeled out of the parking lot. Thankful for the breeze, he sang along with the tape, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He drove past the train station and turned left over the short bridge to Island Park, then right onto a side street that ran parallel to the narrow channel between Long Beach and Island Park. There were a number of bars and restaurants alongside the waterway, their parking lots filled with shiny new muscle cars and rows of motorcycles. Harvey drove past a lobster wholesaler and turned into a small lot in front of a mission-style fake adobe structure. A cactus-shaped sign out front said THE MESA GRILL.

He walked around to the rear of the restaurant to a wooden deck. There was a small, circular bar covered with a gaily striped tent. A stairway led from the bar down to a dock crowded with speedboats. Sunburned speedboaters bounded up the steps and into the crowded bar, holding beer cans in little foam-rubber coolers. Three chubby white men played reggae music on a small stage. Harvey edged his way to the bar, the smell of Coppertone and mousse thick in the air, and ordered a Sauza margarita on the rocks from a busy bartender. When he got his drink, he looked around for an empty table. Finding one in a back corner next to a bus-stand, he collapsed, perspiring, into a chair. An overworked waitress with a red face asked him if he'd care to see a menu, and he shook his head. He pulled a dog-eared copy of Gourmet from his bag and leafed through it while he sipped his drink.

At four o'clock, a tall, thin man of about forty-five with a long, graying ponytail and a dark suntan emerged from the main bar area inside the restaurant. He was wearing a faded Hawaiian shirt, black Ray-Bans, jeans cuffed at his calves, and a pair of rope sandals. A thick, gold hoop earring gleamed in his tanned left ear. He came over to Harvey's table and sat down.

"Hey dude," he said, flashing a row of very white teeth. The skin around his eyes crinkled like old leather.

"Hi, Julius," said Harvey. "How you doin'?"

"Just got back from Belize," said the man.

"Nice?"

"Oh, it's great down there. Really outstanding diving. Nice reefs."

"Sounds nice," said Harvey.

"I'm buying a new boat next week," said the man. "A sailboat this time. Thinking about sailing it down to Antigua in the fall."

"Ahhh, Julius, what a life you lead," said Harvey. "That's what I should be doin'—sailin' around the Caribbean. That's what I should be doin'."

"You over at the beach today? Catch some rays?"

"Yeah," said Harvey. "Nice weather for a change. I get any color?"

"You got good color," said the man. "You use any sunscreen?"

"Yeah, I use a sunscreen," said Harvey.

"What do you use? What number?"

"I use a 12 on my face and a 7.5 on the rest. Estee Lauder. It's expensive."

"You should use a 15 on your face," said the man. "You want to end up lookin' like Willie Nelson? No way."

"You have that thing for me?" asked Harvey in a hushed voice.

The man reached into the chest pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and removed a crumpled tissue. He glanced over to the bar and then slipped the tissue across the table and anchored it under the ashtray. Harvey picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of his shorts.

"There's a half there. That's what you wanted, right?" said the man. Harvey nodded. "It's not racy like some of the shit that's around."

"Can I get you for this next time?" asked Harvey. "I didn't stop at the bank on the way to the beach. I didn't wanna miss prime ray time."

The man nodded. "Try to get me next time, though. We're getting up there. I'd like to carry you, but I gotta get some things for the speedboat."

"I can run to the cash machine," said Harvey. "I think there's one in town."

"Get me next time. That's cool," said the man. He glanced at a thick Rolex dive watch on his wrist. "I should be getting along. I got some people I gotta see over in Atlantic Beach. Try to get that bread for me next time." He got up and walked to the stairs leading down to the dock, and disappeared from Harvey's view for a couple of minutes. Then there was a loud roar from below, and Harvey saw him, standing at the helm of his speedboat. He pulled out into the center of the waterway, opened the throttle, and sped away, leaving the other boats bouncing in his wake.

Harvey finished his drink and headed for the bathroom.

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