Pages from a Cold Island Read Free

strikingly deft opponent, one that, were I a lawyer, I ’ d as soon not take on.
    “ Not only has he a nice literary flair, ” I said, “ but he has seized our Elysian little sandbox with uncanny suc cinctness. ”
    “ Fuck you, Exley, ” Toni said.
    She didn ’ t speak to me for two weeks, at which time she rushed into the downstairs bar and gave it to me as incontrovertible fact that—for reasons she never specified —Jackie and Ari Onassis had extended the legal fees to defend sweet Charlie Manson and his three demure cohorts.
    “ It ’ s the fucking truth, ” Toni assured me.
    One shouldn ’ t have teased Toni (where did she get this stuff? The National Enquirer! Midnight ? ); and in fairness to her desire to keep her son with her, the island—save for our block. Beach Court—was inhabited by respectable middle-and upper-middle-class families. From left to right facing the sea, Beach Court housed the editorial and business offices of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine ; the Island Beauty Salon; a Quick Stop grocerette (open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.); Schneider ’ s Orange Tree and Beer Barrel (hamburgers served on one side of the Western-type swinging doors, beer and win e on the other); the Surf Apart ments (cheap); and the Seaview Hotel, from where I wrote and where beneath me in the Islander Room the nightly floor show featured a comic named Mother Tom and two dancers (variously named Rosa Bella, Harlowe Angel, Sunny Day, Burning Embers, Miss Charlie, Hallow Ween, Honey Hush, Pandora ’ s Box, et al., they came and went) who removed their gowns to the taped music of Aquarius, permitting lonely salesmen and rowdy cowhands in from Pahokee and the Glades to see the G-strings jammed up their raunchy bums.
    Outside, our block was commandeered by the kids. All orange-brown from the sun, the girls wore their hair long and parted in the middle—the sun-bleached strands fell in such a way that by contrast all their brows appeared minia ture sepia pyramids—and went for weeks in nothing but bikinis displaying smooth flat tummies; and the equally long-haired boys went shirtless, flexing their youthful biceps, their only apparel faded Levis jaggily cut off with pinking shears at the thigh. On their wrists they sported Spiro Agnew watches, around their necks love beads. They leaned against the backs of cars facing the ocean; they offered an up-yours finger to those they had pronominated The Citizens or The Sillies who cruised by and stared in audacious disgust or dismay at them; they drank Busch beer from cans, held in insulated styrofoam containers; smoked pot chased with Boone ’ s Farm apple wine; they popped their pills. For long periods of time they closed their eyes against the relentless sun, opening them to find that all the world was as seen through gauze; now and then they rose from their lethar gy and walked across to the out door tennis and volley and basketball courts that separated our block from the beaches, sometimes for a swim going all the way to the sea. Frequently they went up into the apartments above the stores or drove to isolated Airport Beach at the north end of the island where—in my grievous envy I wanted not to believe it, but it was true, true—they fucked and sucked (could I with scrupulosity say “ made love ” ?) They did not give the finger to me.
    When at midmorning I went for the New York Time s and Daily News , they said hello, with no detectable respect, with in fact an unmistakable irony. Nevertheless, they did say hello. I was too oldl but I had abandoned skivvy shorts and deodorants and my bare feet and bermudas were as dirty as theirs, my face often as unshaven. Perhaps they housed pity for me, taking me for an old fool or a drooling lecher yearning to be at one with them; perhaps with that reservation dictated by the awful division of our ages they accepted me as a kindred spirit who knew that Spiro Agnew was indeed a Mickey M ouse whose proximity—the prover bial