Black Swan (6 page)

    I went below and washed up, scrubbing the lubricating grease off my hands and brushing fiberglass dust off my clothes. When I came back up Amanda handed me my drink

and a cracker laden with a teetering mound of pepperoni and cheese.

    "We need to dig out all the fenders we can find," I said.

    "The only fenders I know are on my car."

    "Fenders are short, inflatable tubes that look like chubby hot dogs, or short torpedoes, that cushion the side of the boat. We'll also need a garden hose which we'll cut into sections and slip over the dock lines to reduce chafing."

    "You think it'll be bad?" she asked.

    "Better to prepare for the worst."

    "We can handle the worst?"

    "I didn't say that."

    Amanda and I decided to repress concern over the coming storm and delegate preparation to the next morning. We drank, ate tasty things off platters and luxuriated in the autumnal air, the super-saturated colors born of the magichour light, the stalwart buildings surrounding the harbor and the inner logic of two people joined together for reasons neither quite understood, but in a conspiracy similar to the one with NOAA, choosing to ignore the dangers so to embrace the beautiful illusion.

G
etting ready for dinner with the Feys had its own challenges. Neither of us had packed for a social occasion, planning only to rent a car to get to Maine, pick up Burton's boat, and sail it back to Southampton, stopping along the way to buy provisions and give Eddie a chance to run around with something other than fiberglass beneath his feet.

    I was the luckier one, since the boatbuilder had included a blue blazer in the hanging closet as part of the deal, fitted to Burton's lanky frame, but close enough to mine. All I needed was a black T-shirt and jeans and I was there.

    Amanda had to piece together an outfit anchored by a denim skirt topped by a puffy white Mexican shirt partially concealed by a fuzzy blood red pashmina. Luckily, Amanda's a very good-looking woman, which in the end makes up for almost everything.

T
he front door to the Swan was locked, but ringing the doorbell brought a quick response. Axel Fey opened the door, grabbed Amanda's hand and bowed nearly to the ground, where he seemed to linger, gazing at Amanda's naked ankles. She took it calmly, using her captured hand to pull him back into an upright position.

    "Welcome to the Black Swan," he said. "The ever black and swanny little bed and breakfast by the Inner Harbor. Nice legs, by the way."

    I took his wrist and extracted Amanda's hand.

    "Sam Acquillo," I said, forcing him into a handshake. "Anika said she had a brother. That must be you."

    "I did?" said Anika, swooshing into the foyer, and pulling us off the front stoop where Axel had us trapped. In the better light I got a good look at Axel, who was a younger, flimsier version of his father, with narrow shoulders, features squeezed into the center of his face and pale plastic-rimmed glasses slumped part way down his nose. His skin was peppered with blemishes and his light brown hair needed to be combed. As if noticing me noticing, Anika reached up and did her best to rake in a part and clear the straggly locks off his forehead. He took it with pained forbearance.

    Anika's wine-colored silk dress had been applied with a paint brush. Her figure was a type of near zoftig that rarely held up past a woman's forties, but at this stage, was close to a modernist platonic ideal. My tastes had always run toward the soft-edged ectomorphic, as exemplified by

Amanda Anselma, though I could imagine how others might see the appeal.

    Anika herded us into the main dining room at the back of the hotel where they'd set a single large table. A sideboard was covered in trays filled with chicken skewers, broccoli and shrimp. I snatched a small plateful and headed to a small service bar. A little table-tent sign told me to serve myself, something I was highly equipped to do. Halfway through pouring a vodka on the rocks, Christian Fey approached the bar and ordered a bottle of Spaten beer.

    "Pretty tricky," I said. "Get the guests to handle the bar."

    "I apologize for my daughter's presumptuousness," he said, pouring the beer into a heavy glass mug. "But please feel at home. We are, after all, a welcoming small hotel, season or no season," he added, with a sincerity that might not stand up to a gentle breeze.

    "Are your friends coming?" I asked.

    He paused before answering.

    "You must mean Derrick and his entourage," said Fey. "He's my ex-business partner, though we've had our friendly moments."

    Amanda joined us and I poured her a glass of pinot noir after Fey had a chance to make her feel at home as well. Like his son, he bowed, though with less depth and shorter duration. He also complimented her outfit, which was probably the most diplomatic thing he'd do all night.

    I made it out from behind the bar right before Derrick and company arrived on the scene, saving me from another round of bartending. He was still in his suede sport coat, but his companions had freshened their looks, with the big meatball now in a white polyester jacket over a flowered shirt and tan slacks, and the blond in a turquoise dress that lent an opportunity to examine key features of her anatomy. I was tempted to ask where they'd parked the cruise ship, but Fey was talking, trying to explain what we were doing there.

    "Sam Acquillo," I said, offering my hand. "And this is Amanda Anselma. What Mr. Fey is trying to say is we washed up on shore in a damaged boat and he's been a prince about letting us stay until it's repaired."

    "Looks that way," said Derrick, now behind the bar assembling a pair of martinis for himself and the woman, and snapping open a Budweiser for the guy. In the course of this I learned her name was Del Rey, after the big marina in Los Angeles where her parents proudly owned a condo, and the big guy was Bernard 't Hooft, who like Fey, spoke with a European accent, I surmised Dutch. Del Rey helped me get the spelling right.

    "Imagine if the first letter of your name was an apostrophe," she said, giving 't Hooft a friendly swat on the arm.

    Derrick ignored the interplay and focused on asking about the
Carpe Mañana—
where it was built, the trip down from Maine, the nature of the failure. As I spoke he seemed to deliberate over the answers, as if comparing them against a list of unexpressed criteria. Despite the creases in his face, I guessed his age to be late forties at most. His hair looked a natural light brown, and his eyes were pale blue, pale enough that pupils and whites nearly merged into one.

    "So who owns the boat?" he asked. "Custom jobs are big bucks."

    Burton liked to protect his privacy, so my first impulse was to keep that information confidential. But then I thought of how we'd imposed on the good graces of the Feys, who were outside the conversational circle, but close enough to overhear. It seemed somehow impolite to be that secretive, so for their sake, I gave it up.

    "Burton Lewis," I said. "A friend of mine in Southampton."

    "Burton Lewis as in Lewis and Straithorn? The law firm?" asked Derrick.

    I nodded. He nodded back.

    "Good friend to have," he said.

Del Rey waited to be filled in, but he ignored her.

"I never had time for gentlemanly sports," he said.

"Too busy conquering the world," said Anika.

    Derrick toasted her with his martini glass. Christian took Anika's elbow and used the long sweep of his other arm to herd the group toward the table.

    In both the unconscious and overt maneuvering for seats I ended up between Anika and 't Hooft, with Amanda across from me flanked by the younger and elder Feys. Derrick and Del Rey anchored the opposite ends. Nobody seemed entirely happy with their seating, but the dice were cast. I tried to cushion the disappointment by offering to schlep another round of drink orders. As always, a good idea.

    "So what do you do when you're not delivering boats?" Derrick asked me, speaking across Anika.

    "Installing crown molding, baseboard and window trim," said Amanda. "He can also handle tricky shopwork, like mantelpieces and built-ins. Very proficient. And affordable, especially for me, since I've yet to pay him a dime."

    "Sounds like tit for tat," said Del Rey.

    "We could use you around here," said the elder Fey to me. "Sometimes I think surface tension is the only thing holding this place together."

    "Rethinking the investment?" asked Derrick, a little too quickly.

    "Not for a moment," said Fey.

    Del Rey polished off half of her second martini before all the drinks had cleared the tray. She was about to finish the job when 't Hooft slid his meaty fingers through the stem of the glass and anchored it to the table. Del Rey shot him a glance of equal parts fear and reproach, but kept her hands in her lap.

    Meanwhile, Amanda was holding her own inside the brace of Feys. Axel was in and out of his seat as he checked on various servings, carried out to us by his sister. This

benefitted Amanda, who otherwise had to endure a continuous violation of her personal space. When he crowded into her, she was forced to lean into his father, who looked just as pained by the imposition.

    As a distraction, she asked Derrick how long they'd be staying at the Swan. The meager burble of conversation at the table suddenly ceased.

    "That depends," said Derrick, before the dead air became unbearable.

    "Indeed," said Christian Fey, tilting back his head to chug the ample remains of his beer.

    "I'm thinking of launching a reality show," said Anika. "
'So You Think You're Dysfunctional!'
What do you say?" she asked me.

    I said something about the dysfunctional management of the Yankees infield, and the room settled back into a tentative equilibrium. Another distraction was the food, which as advertised, was delicious. Axel studied each of our faces as we ate, and only picked at his own food, arranging the portions into geometric shapes, further sorted by color and composition.

    I caught myself staring at his plate and returned to general awareness in time to notice the sensation of fingertips tracing the top of my thigh. I reached down and gripped Anika's wrist, returning her hand to her own lap. I shook my head in a way I hoped conveyed a message to her alone. Amanda didn't notice, thankfully, still engaged in a contest with Axel Fey for the airspace rights around her chair.

    "You might not know there's an airfield here on Fishers," said Derrick. "I'd be happy to fly you to Long Island and arrange to have your boat towed to a larger marina. The one in Greenport, say."

    I told him I appreciated the offer, but felt I owed it to Burton to bring his boat home on my own. And if I had to capitulate, I'd let Burton foot the bill.

    "Your choice, of course," he said, holding his wineglass up to the light, on the lookout for impurities, I guessed.

    Christian Fey overheard the talk about the airport, and leaned toward me so I could hear him over the other conversations.

    "The man at the airport called and said they can't deliver your parts. He's down a man and it's too late in the season to hire another. We could, of course, drive you there."

    I couldn't let him do that.

    "Don't worry about it," I said. "We'll figure something out. You've done way too much already."

    The evening staggered to completion about an hour after that. Amanda was the first to rise from the table, ostensibly to stretch her legs, but actually to escape the persistent attentions of the young Fey. I was next up for similar reasons.