We’re bumping along in the “bus,” which is actually more of an overgrown golf cart, following the outer boundaries of Sanctuary Island, which is itself not really an island, but a development with creeks and canals on three sides and a swampy lake on the fourth.
As FX drives with one hand he gestures with the other, pointing out the many benefits of life here, most of which seem more immanent than actual. “It’s simply a place where folks like us who share common values can cooperate and coexist in a thriving community that shares those values. As you can see, we’ve already made tremendous progress, but you better believe it Charlie, you can bet we are prepared and determined to make even more tremendous progress in the future.” We rattle over a narrow culvert while beneath us two skinny black kids in shorts poke with sticks at something in the shallow water. As we turn the corner FX says “Of course there are still a few anomalies.”
Maybe more than a few – as we move into the property I notice that almost every block has a house that’s neglected if not completely abandoned, with boarded up windows and dried up dirt lawns. There’s graffiti scrawled on the stop signs and pot holes frequent enough that even the experienced FX can’t completely avoid them.
I’ve known him since prep school, but, since I was a few years younger, it was more me knowing of him and knowing enough to keep out of his way. He’s at least a III, possibly a IV or even as high as a V, but seemingly has yet to distinguish himself as a suitably distinguished member of his extremely distinguished family.
At the moment he’s being much more hospitable than when I was a freshman, but as we drive on he seems to be picking up on my lack of enthusiasm and starts to lose some of his chummy bonhomie. His wife Pam was my year, and she’s the one I’d actually been friends with, close friends not all that long ago, and it was her familiar handwriting on the postcard inviting me to “personally take advantage of this unique opportunity” that lured me out here, although they must be kind of desperate to think I have either the desire or means to buy in.
We stop and FX indicates the future site of the “Health and Wellness Center,” a muddy field that’s already cleared and a placid wooded hillside that’s soon to be.
“Hey, that’s great,” I say. “Cool. Chop down those trees.”
He just snorts and strides to the cart, taking off before I’m all the way in, flooring it through the grid of streets, beeping at a flock of skateboarders as they reluctantly part for us, hardly bothering to languidly raise their middle fingers.
Surprisingly, I find that I’m taking FX’s annoyance to heart, feeling like I’m acting under false pretenses, an infiltrator here among the privileged, wearing their uniform, speaking their language and even knowing their trivia, but still not truly one of them.
I’d felt this way often when I was in prep school and private college with these people, as if we were in the same place but a parallel dimension. My father had been a professor, nominally a professional like the lawyer and doctor dads, but with nothing like their income.
When you’re there like that, so close, nose against the candy store window, watching the other kids gorge on clothes and cars and all the status money can buy, you can either go kind of crazy trying to get in, like my sister who married a doctor who uses more drugs than he prescribes just so she could finally join the country club and have her daughter be the debutante she always wanted to be, or decide, as I did, that all the crap in there is probably sour anyway.
But nothing is ever as firm as when you’re a teenager, is it? If I’m not exactly feeling sorry for FX, I can at least sympathize with him – after all I’m out here wasting his time under basically false pretenses. He drives with purpose, cutting toward the lake, humming away at top speed without a word until we finally turn sharply into a driveway and roll to a stop in the gravel parking lot of a long, low building on the shore.
“Nice,” I say. “What’s this?”
He just grunts, searching for something on the dashboard, then says “She’s in there.”
“Who’s in there?” I ask, though I know perfectly well. He locates his pack of cigarettes, shakes one out and snaps a lighter to it, taking a deep drag, finally exhaling a wide plume of smoke, squinting back across the property, absently swatting a mosquito on his neck.
“Well, great, thanks a lot FX, I enjoyed it,” I say when it’s clear he’s not going to answer. “I’ll just stick my head in and…” But he’s already skidded out, gravel flying, barreling toward some old codger walking his Westie. I watch them greet each other, a little numb with surprise. I have to give him credit, because even though it’s something I’ve barely articulated to myself, he’s right, the only reason I’m here is to see his wife.
Certainly I’d been able to cling to a consoling bitterness about the preppie milieu back then, but at deeper or more precisely lower level I’d been branded for life. Some guys are turned on by bad girls in leather hot pants, but in my world the hookers would wear headbands, pleated skirts and penny loafers. I’ve walked away from the suburbs, but I still can’t resist their women, Pam being an particularly outstanding example.
There are several black limousines splayed at angles in the lot and I edge my way around their gleaming bumpers to reach the heavy wooded doors of what is, according to the brass plaque The Boathouse, and after taking a deep breath, pull one open.
I walk into a photo shoot – there’s a line of half a dozen chairs in the middle of the floor, an illuminated island, Pam in the center, flanked by Japanese business types, all attended by a flock of scurrying females who adjust lights and screens at the direction of a manic, long-haired photographer in a madras jacket, his barked orders getting louder by the second.
The suits are stiff and awkward, trying to look natural despite the glare, but no matter how it shifts and flashes, Pam remains incandescent, her smile bright and broad, the red highlights playing in her hair, shiny stockings glistening around her incomparable legs, crossed at the knee, one foot dangling like bait.
“Try talk,” the photographer shouts, and they turn toward Pam and make an attempt at earnest conversation. I’ve moved off to the side, and all I can see of the guy next to her is a patch of male pattern baldness shimmering between two jug ears, but she leans to him, rapt and beatific, her lips dramatically red over gleaming teeth as she smiles encouragingly, her outlined eyes and mascaraed lashes as big as a cartoon character’s, the hair fluttering over her shoulders as she nods, pearl drop earrings swinging, this close to a caricature, but clearly pulling it off, carrying everyone and everything before her. One of the subordinate suits surreptitiously lowers his eyes to her smooth thighs as she shifts in the chair and who can blame him.
All in all, it’s a truly mesmerizing spectacle, a beauty in the midst of the performance of beauty.
But really, in point of fact, the thing is that Pam, with her bony forehead, too wide eyes and pointy chin, isn’t really what most people would call beautiful. Granted she looks better now than ever, having gained enough prosperity and experience to make the most of what she has via hair dye, cosmetics and contact lenses, her tailored business suit artfully framing her best feature, those striking legs, displaying them against the chair leather like two matching pearls on a jeweler’s pillow, but if you saw her at the supermarket or rolling out of bed in the morning you wouldn’t look twice.
Right here and now, however, radiant and engaging, charming and disarming, there’s something irresistible in the way she carries herself, graced by the certainty and confidence of privilege, a faint and unwavering sheen that makes her absolutely worthy of the world’s regard, if only because she can so clearly afford to live without it.
And then, just like that, with a few trailing flashes, the light dies as the photographer’s assistants briskly fold umbrellas and coil cables, their subjects blinking silently for a second, then, smiling and stretching, haltingly continue their pleasantries as if to demonstrate it wasn’t all for the sake of the camera. This leads to a formal round of bows and farewells, all of the suits careful to give their deepest respects to Pam, a few even nodding cursorily to me on their way out.
The Chinese are the ones with all the juice now, aren’t they, but it seems appropriate that it’s the Japanese who are here. America and Japan are like an aging cowboy and Indian in a Wild West show, the two of them in slow decline, bonded as fast friends following their vicious conflict, clinging to a vanished world, propping each other up as they stagger to the gutter.
When they’re gone, Pam settles back into the chair, crossing her legs and smiling the way she did for the shoot, illuminated now only by the refracted light coming off the lake through the back window,
“So,” she says finally. “What brings you here?”
“Your husband. He had the idea I might want to see you.”
“Really? What about?”
“I’m not really sure.” I begin to circle the room, to the side of her and then behind, examining the frayed ropes, crossed paddles and crew pictures that cover the walls. “Just in general I guess.”
I look back, but she’s still facing straight ahead. “So did you enjoy your tour? Not many people get it from FX himself, you know,” she says.
“Well, I’m assuming you do.” I study her, the back of her head and her straight shoulders, but there’s no reaction. “What I want to know is why is this place called the Boathouse? I mean I see all sorts of crap in here but the one thing I don’t see are any boats.”
“Who knows? Every island needs a boathouse, right?” I come all the way around and stop a few feet in front of her. Her smile’s collapsed to a crooked line and she pushes her hem toward her knee with stiff fingers, the golden coils of her engagement and wedding rings winding to her knuckle. “I know you think this is all bullshit.”
“No, not at all,” I say automatically, taking a step toward her.
“This is who I am, Charlie. This is what I do.”
“O.K., honestly, maybe I do think that a little bit.” I feel flushed and exposed, found guilty of being whoever the hell I am. “But believe me. I don’t think you’re bullshit.”
“Gee, thanks. You say the sweetest things.’
“Quite the opposite actually.”
“Hmmm.” She looks down to her watch. “God, it’s late. I’m starving.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too. Let’s go get something to eat. I hear the food around here is great.”
“The food around here sucks. They’re all just places for people to get drunk in.” She stands up, smoothing down her skirt, then looking ahead to meet my eyes, her smile returning. “So is that Mexican place still across the street from that hovel you live in?”
