Sag Harbor (30 page)

Taking their shifts was Jen, a redheaded local girl and student of New York State's labor laws, especially with regard to the duration and frequency of breaks. She declared, “I'm going on my break,” as if daring the manager to stop her, and when no one said anything, because no one was paying attention, she added, “We're allowed two ten-minute breaks per shift!” before storming away. For some reason I can't fathom, she was a tip magnet, which was fortunate because we divvied up the tip cup evenly, a nice system for someone like me, who sent customers' change plummeting down their pockets.

D-day, I was on with Jen and NP. The start of the shift was so uneventful, I almost forgot it was a weekday. Then Jen said, “The Boat People are here.”

The Boat People, done picking Main Street clean, came our way to continue their destruction. What I knew about Connecticut could fit in a thimble, or more properly, a sugar cone or blue eight-ounce plastic serving dish, but I did know this: every weekday morning, residents of that fine state boarded a ferry for an outing to the Hamptons. That the boat didn't sink is a wonder, given the stupendous human mass that poured down the gangplanks onto the Long Wharf at noon. They raided the curio shops, stopped traffic as the slow herd of them meandered across the street, dawdled in glassy-eyed pleasure at the kitschy whaling paraphernalia and WASP accoutrements in the windows. They stopped to eat. They rose from the tables in unison, greasy napkins falling from their laps like a flock of doves in sudden, communal heart attack. They strolled back
to the ferry up Main Street, up the asphalt of the Long Wharf, patting their bellies, which gurgled with fish-and-chips and fried clams and battered cod, the bottom halves of their bodies busy with digestion and their brains full of that peculiar melancholy that marks the end of an adventure or of an exploit winding down. Then they smelled it. The waffle-cone aroma dancing on the sea breeze, and they were renewed, stampeding into Jonni Waffle with their tongues hanging over their lips.

Boat People rushes were brief—no one wanted to be left at the end of the wharf, waving at the disappearing ship—but the departure-time anxiety made the customers all the more boorish and bullying. It was overwhelming. I reminded myself that it would soon be over. The assault had a finite length. I used that rationalization a lot in those days. When things wound down, I drifted into one of my midscoop space-outs. Sometimes when you had your head down in the vats, time stopped. The swirling white mist stalled in the air, hanging like ribbons. All sound dropped out, the whirring of the blender and the radio, and even the static-y buzz of your own thoughts. I don't know where I went during those spells. They only lasted a few moments yet they contained a little scoop of the infinite, a waffle-perfumed eternity.

I heard a knocking on the glass and assumed it was the customer scolding me for scooping the wrong flavor, but it was Erica, frantically waving hi once I looked up.

“You're really working in there!”

I was still partial to Erica's charms, but had put aside my fantasies of her dumping NP and then in the exhilaration of her new freedom realizing my virtues. It didn't seem like the NP-Erica unit was going anywhere, making it hard to look at her sometimes, especially when she had her hair in a ponytail and her face became a still life of teenage promise, dark and benevolent. If I had a coffee shop or dry cleaners, I'd put her head shot on the wall by the register even though she wasn't a celebrity. NP'd stopped giving us updates on whether he had touched her tit or whatever, adopting a reserve and circumspection we'd never seen in him before. His elaborate yarns
dried up, at least when it came to stories about girls. Is tamed the word? He came out from the back of the store and we took our breaks, Jen nodding with proud, motherly encouragement.

Outside, Devon waited with Bobby. Devon wore a blue polka-dot bikini top, khaki shorts, and red toenail polish; Erica wore a red polka-dot bikini top, khaki shorts, and blue toenail polish. It had been a busy morning. Devon smiled at me while radiating that familiar school-year vibe that she was very, very unimpressed with me. I was standing out in the sun, the seagulls pecking a few feet away, but I could've been back in the city, stumbling like a clod through the hallways of my high school. Picture the great factory churning out the women who would never smile my way except in condescension, the busy assembly lines, the intricate distribution plan that ensured that my vicinity was well stocked. Erica, at least, would chuckle at some oddball comment of mine. Devon didn't understand a single word out of my mouth, but she was raised right and didn't express her revulsion overtly. I think she was simply puzzled by me.

We stood on the little strip of green across from Jonni Waffle, me and the double-daters. The thing about dating cousins, I observed, was that it generated a lot of nonverbal communication, bushels of quick glances and raised eyebrows, as the boys reassured themselves that their banter and posturing was working, and the girls checked in with each other to make sure they'd made good choices.

It was a famous part of the Sag Harbor experience, dating within the developments, swapping spit with other chosen ones. Your own kind. There were famous local teenage pairings that went on forever, led to marriage, repopulation of the neighborhood, extension of the brand. NP's parents were one such Golden Couple. When they first started coming out, their houses were across the street from each other—see them waving at each other before they turned in at night, the mosquitoes hopping on the screens. Everybody knew everybody's family, so partners came prequalified and notarized. Whether things worked or not, you were going to be in each other's faces for the rest of your lives. The double-daters had to ask themselves, Where is this going?

The bridge to North Haven was a long white frown before us. From time to time, suicidal painters and playwrights (few artists from other disciplines partook for some reason) flung themselves from its concrete heights, but the water wasn't very deep, and they usually ended up being dragged by a gaffer's hook onto a passing motorboat, or wading out dejectedly, pissed that they'd lost their wallet. A few yards from our feet, seagulls staggered and pecked at a fallen waffle cone—run the film backward and the bits fly up into the hand of an anguished child, un-breaking and fitting together as his face transforms from anguish to absentminded, Oreo-licking ecstasy.

Bobby rubbed his leg and told us a story about how on the way out of the house, he tried to jump into his car like Crockett and Tubbs when he slipped. “I almost crushed my sacadiliac,” he said.

We all laughed except for NP, who said, “Saca-what?”

“My nut sack,” he said, gesturing at me for backup.

I said, “I read a book about Sagaponac by Honoré de Ballsack,” but that only confused things more so Bobby explained about the big brown nuts and the rest. “Look it up.”

“In what?” NP asked. He was right—no one had a dictionary out there. Maybe an old Scrabble dictionary, missing half its pages and frothing with silverfish, but that was it. “I'll bet you a hundred dollars you're wrong,” he said. From time to time, this competition emerged between NP and Bobby over who was the alpha dog in this double date, complicated by the fact that Bobby had the car keys. A hundred-dollar bet was a serious escalation of stakes, three weeks' wages.

Bobby couldn't back down. His girl was watching. His girl's cousin was watching. He looked at me for reassurance, and I shrugged, but it was already too late anyway. He was committed. The money was in the bag—if you can't trust a nerd with a big word, who can you trust?

The hydraulic wail startled us and we turned as the big tour bus pulled up in front of Bayside. Destination:
CHARTER
. Roadie-looking guys in black T-shirts stepped out and Erica squealed, “It's them!”

Devon said, “I have to get a look at the Educated Rapper,” starting a discussion with Erica over who was “all that,” him or Doc Ice.

We walked over, halting at an invisible line by the planters that we sensed civilians shouldn't cross. We waited for a glimpse. “I'm going to get y'all in,” NP said. “I got the hookup. Except for you, Benji. I don't have that much of a hookup.”

I wasn't offended. I had my own scheme, and even though it cycled between doom and sure thing every five minutes, I was going to execute it. I wanted in. But to say it was to kill it, to express a want out loud was to be slapped back down. I kept my mouth shut.

When no one else got out of the bus, I said, “Maybe it's just their equipment.” Devon scowled at me as if I were their tour manager, arranging their travel to stymie her. It was exactly the sort of buzz-kill comment a puzzling fellow like me would make.

We gave up. NP and me returned to work, and Bobby took the girls home so they could “get ready for tonight.” Perhaps something else of note happened in the next hour and a half, but I don't remember because Lisa Lisa and U.T.F.O. walked in.

Yeah, we got celebrities in Jonni Waffle. Nowadays Bayside is this big theater, so there's always some actor or actress who's doing a show there, hanging around the wharf, plus Sag Harbor itself is not the same place, so the ambient celebrity quotient has gone up, our baseline celebrity presence, but back then it was different. They came for Bayside, to club, and sometimes they came into Jonni Waffle. F'rinstance, do you know the actor Saul Rubinek? He always plays the weaselly lawyer guy, the supporting player who double-crosses the leading man, like in
Against All Odds
. Anyway, he starred in this romantic comedy called
Soup for One
, which I don't think got a big release, but I saw it on TV during one of my many becalmed afternoons and not long after, he walked into Jonni Waffle.

“Hey, you were in
Soup for One”
I said.

He seemed dubious. Or even disappointed for some reason. “Where did you see that?”

“Cable,” I said. He looked sad. I didn't give him free ice cream. Karen Allen from
Raiders
walked in once and I gave her free ice cream, because who in the world didn't have a thing for Karen Allen,
who literally would have been the coolest girlfriend in the world. Punching out motherfuckers, shooting Nazis. She had these incredible freckles covering her face like sprinkles. Some other celebrities came in, drunk or high after going a few rounds in Bayside, and scooper-customer confidentiality forbids me from naming them, but let me just say that you'd be surprised (Lori Singer). The biggest sighting, of course, was when Lisa Lisa and U.T.F.O. walked in that day.

Lisa Lisa was shorter in person, but her chest was bigger. I signed off on that. She wore a red leather jacket with long fringes and tight tight jeans rhinestoned down the overworked seams. Cult Jam, the two guys who were her backup players, weren't with her. They were probably putting on their mascara, a lengthy process judging from the music video. There weren't any other customers, but Lisa Lisa ripped a number from the dispenser anyway and looked at us meaningfully with tender puppy eyes. Jen jumped up. She didn't recognize her.

U.T.F.O. was dressed in Adidas track suits, out of character—Doctor Ice's stethoscope and white smock waited in the wardrobe trunk—except for the Kangol Kid, who wore his trademark chapeau. NP and me rushed to take their orders, giving cool-cat head-nods by way of introduction.

“So you guys are playing tonight, huh,” NP said, grabbing a scooper from one of the tiny sinks attached to the vats.

The Educated Rapper grunted and tapped the glass above the Mocha Praline Surprise.

The Kangol Kid asked for two scoops of Strawberry with M&Ms. “In a waffle cone?” I asked.

“What's that?”

“It's a cone made out of waffle.”

“Yeah, one of those.”

I made it for him and he told me, “Mix Master Ice will have two scoops of Fudge Ripple.” I hadn't heard the DJ speak.

“In a waffle cone?” My eyes darted between the two men.

The Kangol Kid checked in with his partner. Mix Master Ice blinked slowly and tilted his head ever so slightly. “Yes, a waffle cone,” the Kangol Kid said.

I dug into the vats with NP. “This is cool,” I said.

“I'm going to ask the Educated Rapper.”

“Ask him what?”

“About the sacadiliac,” he said. “I ain't losing no hundred dollars.”

“Why don't you try Doc Ice instead?” I suggested. “Since it's a part of the body.”

“Good idea.”

He handed Doc Ice his cone and said, “Can I ask you a medical question?”

“Shoot.”

“What's a sacadiliac?”

“Excuse me?”

“The sacadiliac.”

“Perhaps you're referring to the sacroiliac joint, between the sacrum and the ilium. Is that possible?”

NP looked at me. “Is that it?”

I said, “You know, from ‘The Message’?”

“Oh yeah, Melle Mel is always going on about his back problems. The
sac-ro-i-li-ac
. Can I help you with anything else?”

We shook our heads and Doc Ice reached into his pocket.

“No, it's on the house, brother,” NP said. “No problem.” Doc Ice thanked him, and NP quickly snuck in, “But there is one thing … since we're helping each other out here, you know … can you put me on the list tonight? So that I get in? I've been like dying to see your show all summer.”

Doc Ice glanced over at his crew. They licked their ice cream. Mix Master Ice nodded.

“I can do you plus one. What's your name?”

“NP.”

“NP what?”

“Just NP. They know me there.”

After they left, he said, “Just in case.” Now that the day had arrived,
I wasn't going in for that if-one-of-us-gets-in crap. I was pissed at the thought of them inside and me standing outside the club like a fucking jerk. We leaned against the counter. The new Soft Serv machine hummed ominously, underscoring the emptiness that was our lives in the aftermath of a celebrity sighting. C-list, but still. Jen said, “Sacadiliac?”

AT HOME
, I laid out my costume. I dug in the closet and retrieved a pair of Sperry Top-Siders from two summers ago. They didn't fit, but I could fake comfort until I got inside. I grabbed one of my father's Ralph Lauren polos, my skinny arms poking out like sticks. I inspected the pleated khaki shorts my mother got me at the beginning of the summer. She bought them on automatic pilot as if I
still wore clothes like that
, hoping that my bummy phase had exhausted itself. I had five hairs on my face, two on the left, and three on the right, which I hadn't shaved since July, in anticipation. I pepped them with my fingernails so they stuck up—grotesquely, in retrospect, but I was satisfied with the effect. With any luck, I wouldn't have to speak, just hand my ticket over and shuffle in. Because of my fucking braces.