Twanged (7 page)

Now he ‘d have another chance to try and get to her. And be alone with her. Fan Fair had been impossible. Branson had been impossible.

He’d make it happen in the Hamptons.

10

B
rad Petroni and Chuck Dumbrell had both loved country music from the time they’d been kids growing up next door to each other in Hicksville, Long Island. Their favorite game had been to dress up as cowboys, and instead of building a standard treehouse, like most young boys, they’d nailed together a little structure called Dumboni’s Saloon, handpainting the name over its makeshift swinging doors. Since neither one of them had access to horses, the family dogs were often called in as stand-ins, getting hitched to the post outside their establishment for thirsty cowboys.

At night in the summer, they’d arrange rocks in a circle and pretend they were sitting around a camp-fire, imagining themselves to be Roy Rogers.

When their friends had started listening to rock music, they’d put on their headphones and tuned in to Gene Autry and Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. Now their selections included Garth Brooks and Clint Black and Dwight Yoakum and Reba McEntire and Mary Chapin Carpenter and the teenage sensation LeAnn Rimes. Their dream had always been to start a country music station in the New York area, which wouldn’t be easy.

They never gave up the dream.

Now, both aged thirty-five and divorced, lonesome cowboys, as they called themselves, they’d pooled their limited resources, gotten a couple of loans, and bought a small, faded station in Southampton. They’d gone on the air Memorial Day weekend and were still working out the kinks, but their biggest break was not only to be named as the esteemed hosts of the Melting Pot Music Festival on July Fourth but also to obtain the broadcast rights. People would be driving in their cars to parties and listening to their radios at home. Everyone knew about the festival: maybe they’d tune in to listen to all the action and then leave their dial on Country 113.

One of their missions in life was to spread the word about country music. The other was to make a living at it.

Seven mornings a week they were on the air together. Sometimes at night, too.

Off the air they spent time dreaming up ideas for contests and promotions. Anything to get people to listen. Recently they’d been discussing how they could do some sort of tie-in to the music festival.

Right now they were both working quietly at their desks, doing catch-up work.

Chuck scratched his scalp and pushed his granny glasses farther back onto his pointy nose. He’d been thumbing through newspapers, looking for anything that might spark an idea for an on-air discussion when he’d come across the item in the
Irish Tablet
about Brigid O’Neill and her fiddle. Since much of country music had its roots in the rhythms and strings of the music Irish immigrants had brought across the sea with them, Chuck took out a subscription to the
Tablet.
It was a place they should advertise, he thought. Everybody these days wanted to get back to their roots. People who read the
Tablet
should be brought up to speed on how their ancestors’ music had such an influence on country music today. “Let’s leave no stone unturned, partner,” he often said to Brad.

As Chuck read, he tugged on his strawberry blond hair, pulled back in the obligatory ponytail. He was a long and lanky type who always managed to look as if he had a couple days’ worth of whiskers on his face. A toothpick hung from his mouth, its end decorated with blue foil. Slowly he looked up from the paper. “Ya know what?” he asked.

“Nope,” Brand answered absentmindedly. He was busy poking around his desk, gathering papers together. A short, dark-haired man with rounded features and wild eyebrows, he was driven by a great desire to pay the bills. He never wanted to go back to working for somebody else.

“I feel a wind blowin’. It’s brainstorm time.”

“Shoot.”

“I think I know how we can plug the Melting Pot Festival. . . . This article here talks about Brigid O’Neill and that fiddle of hers. We’re going to have her on the show next week.”

“Monday,” Brad declared. He walloped the head of a stapler with his palm, and the three pieces of paper he had gathered together were now an official document. “Gotcha!” he said with satisfaction.

“The initials CT are carved into it. Why don’t we have a contest to see who can come up with the best explanation for the initials? We’ll give out VIP tickets to the concert for the most creative answer. And a copy of her new album that she can autograph in person at the concert.”

Brad looked over at his partner, naked admiration in his eyes. He held up an imaginary gun in the air and fired the trigger. “Good brainstorm, Kemo Sabe. What kind of things do you think people will come up with?”

Chuck caressed his stubble. “My brainstorm didn’t get that far. But the pot is stewing on the campfire. The fiddle is supposed to be cursed if it leaves Ireland. I guess Brigid O’Neill doesn’t care. I hope she’s right. Why don’t we also talk about that and other Irish superstitions on the show with her?”

“You think she’d mind?”

“Nah. It’s a hot story. We’ll get everyone talking about the initials and the curse. And any other good curse stories we can dig up.”

“What other famous curses are there? Besides the Hope Diamond?” Brad asked, referring to the diamond that always seemed to bring bad luck to its owners. Some of them, like Marie Antoinette, had been beheaded.

Chuck leaned back in his chair and chewed on his toothpick for inspiration. “Lava rock in Hawaii. If you take any home with you, the gods get real upset. Brings bad luck.”

Brad started to get excited. “This is good,” he said, his barrel chest heaving up and down and his rangy eyebrows furling and unfurling. He looked at the calendar up on the wall. “The concert is Friday. Let’s announce the winner of the initial contest Thursday.” He paused. “This is our big chance to get in the saddle, isn’t it, partner?” he asked.

“You said it, buckaroo. It’s our chance to kick up a little dust and raise some hell.”

With that, the phone rang. Chuck took the call. Brad couldn’t get the gist of the conversation because it was a lot of “yups,” “nopes,” and “good enoughs.”

When Chuck hung up, he yelled, “Yeehaw!”

“What is it, partner?” Brad asked.

“Because we’re the esteemed hosts of the Melting Pot Music Festival, we just got ourselves an invitation to ride over and dine with Miss Brigid O’Neill tonight at the Chappy Compound.”

They leaned together and high-fived each other across the desk.

11

G
et downstairs and help them out!” Chappy yelled to Duke’s closed door as he pounded on it. He was dressed in white pants, blue blazer, and white buck shoes. People were due to arrive any moment and he was frantic.

The door opened. Duke was standing there with a can of hair spray in his hand. He looked at Chappy’s flyaway locks. “Want some?” he asked.

“NO! Now
let’s get going!”

“Okay, okay.” Duke took one last look at himself in his full-length mirror, put down the hair spray, picked up a bottle of cologne, and gave himself a good spritz. “Want some?” he asked again.

“NO, NO,
I don’t! I can’t believe how long you take to get ready! Let’s go!”

Duke, clad in crisp khaki pants and freshly washed blue-and-white striped shirt, had enjoyed a workout an hour before in the exercise room. He lifted weights, rowed a stationary boat, and did stretches. Now he closed his bedroom door behind him. “Are any casting directors coming?”

“What are you asking me that for?”

“But you said—”

“FORGET
what I said. This party is so we can get Brigid to trust us. So we can get close to her. So at the end of the week we can switch the fiddle. That’s what I’m worried about.” Chappy stopped in the middle of the hallway to point his finger at Duke. “Got it?”

Duke saluted. “Roger.”

“Ugh!” Chappy cried as he led the way down the grand stairway and across the foyer into the monstrous-sized kitchen where Bettina, dressed in a gold jumpsuit and spike heels, was harassing the help about the hors d’oeuvres.

“I told ya I wanted more healthy choices,” Bettina crowed at Constance, who was in the process of preparing pigs in a blanket. Two waiters, dressed in the standard uniform of caterers at Hamptons parties—black pants and white shirts—were struggling with a pastry bag at the two-hundred-square-foot kitchen table.

Constance squinted her beady eyes at Bettina. “These pigs are Mr. Tinka’s favorite.”

“Did you make Peace Man’s recipe?”

“The ingredients for that can only be found in the rain forest,” Constance replied. “And I didn’t have time to book a flight.”

Chappy cleared his throat. Duke, following his cue, coughed.

“Hello hello,” Chappy sang. “How is everything coming along?”

Bettina turned to him, plastering a big smile on her heavily made-up face. “Hi, poopy. Constance made you your pigs in a blanket. I was just thinking that some of the others might prefer a few more healthy choices.”

“Oh”—Chappy waved his hand—”put out some wheat germ. And peel a few carrots. That’ll keep them happy. Constance, did we set up a Mexican station out on the deck with tortilla chips and hot sauce?”

Constance looked up from rolling a piece of dough around a miniature hot dog and smiled. She was dressed in a starched gray dress that brought to mind the servants one might see on a PBS special. Chappy liked western wear during the day but Old English dress when they entertained. “Yes, sir. And that’s where we’ll put out the ice cream, sprinkles, and choice of toppings after dinner.”

“Oh good!” Duke said.

The doorbell rang. It was actually made to sound like a gong.

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” Chappy cried. Slapping Duke’s hand, which was picking at a tray of mushroom quiche, he ran out of the kitchen.

At the front door, which was the size of a jumbo wall unit, he composed himself and pulled it open. There stood Peace Man in what looked like a pair of gray pajamas with beads around his neck.

“Greetings,” Peace Man said somberly.

Chappy turned away. “Bettina!” he screamed. He turned back. “Come on in,” he said begrudgingly.

“Is Peace Man the first to arrive?” Peace Man asked.

Chappy looked at him. “Not a surprise. You only had to travel from the side of the house.”

“Peace Man is very happy there. The ions from the ocean soothe. Only two problems. One is you don’t have enough trees. Peace Man likes to hug a different tree every day. Number two is that big bus is blocking my sunlight.”

Chappy was about to reach over and strangle him when Bettina came into the foyer.

“Sister,” Peace Man said with a bow of his head.

“Peace Man,” Bettina said with a slight curtsy. “Welcome to our humble home. Can I get you a drink?”

“Scotch on the rocks.”

“Scotch on the rocks, coming right up.”

“With a twist.”

“With a twist, coming right up.”

Together they ambled through the foyer, headed in the direction of the deck outside, where a bar had been set up. “Peace Man, I invited some of your other followers, but since this was planned at the last minute, they had already committed to other important parties and such,” Bettina was heard saying.

“Peace Man understands. Will they be here for the special enlightenment session tomorrow?”

“They wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

Chappy wanted to throw up but luckily he was diverted by the sight of the architect for the theatre, Claudia Snookfuss, and her boyfriend, Ned Alingham, the feng shui specialist, getting out of their brand-new Range Rover, bought from the proceeds of their work together. She drew up the plans for houses and whatever buildings people wanted to erect, and Ned told her where to place objects such as the banisters. “Or else the energy flows right out when the door opens.”

Unfortunately for Ned, a lot of people didn’t buy the idea of feng shui and wanted no part of him or his fees. Claudia worked alone on those jobs.

Together they came up the steps. Claudia, with a little button nose and straight chin-length blond hair held perfectly in place with a pink headband, looked as if nothing in her life could possibly be out of order. She had on a pair of striped pink-and-green canvas shoes to match her pink skirt and green top. Ned, average-sized with perfectly parted brown hair and owlish glasses, had a certain nervous intensity. He wore the expression of a child about to burst into tears. His relentless pursuit of harmony in his surroundings apparently did not apply to what he hung in his closet. He was wearing a pair of blue-jean Bermuda shorts, a multicolored iridescent floral shirt, white socks, and sandals. A camera hung around his neck.

“How do you do? How do you do?” Chappy asked as they stepped inside. He tapped Ned’s camera. “I see you’re planning to take a few pictures.”

“Actually I’ve decided to self-publish a how-to-picture book on feng shui. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a few preliminary snaps of the work I did here.”

“Well then, shoot! Shoot away! And how are you, Miss Claudia?”

“Purr-fect,” she replied, smiling her little smile. Not too broad, but friendly, as her mother had always told her.

“How are our plans for the theatre?”

“As ready as they were months ago!” she said. “We’ll be raring to go with the bulldozer when you get rid of your tenants in September. But we have to talk. The seats are going to cost more than we thought.”

“More money for the seats?” Chappy exclaimed. “Well, just as long as they’re comfy.’

“Oh, they are,” Claudia assured him.

“And they’ll be facing west,” Ned added. “A better position for entertainment and relaxation.”

“Oh good,” Chappy said, but he felt momentarily irritated. The longer it takes to get this theatre started, he thought, the more it seems to cost. God, how I’ll need that fiddle. The Tinka thumbtack fortune was not, as he would have liked, a bottomless pit. The castle had already put enough of a dent in it. Chappy slapped Ned on the back of his shimmering shirt and pushed them on through. “Get yourself a drink. Yes, yes, here come some more guests. . . .”