Cape Cod Noir

PART II



SUMMER PEOPLE





BAD NIGHT IN HYANNISPORT

BY SETH GREENLAND

Hyannisport



I was dead. That was the main thing. And I never saw it coming. Maybe if I hadn’t been suffering from the worst hangover of my life I would have sensed something was amiss. The aftermath of a tequila bender can do that to you—dull your perceptions, make you a tad less sharp, create a membrane between you and reality that will keep your receptors from taking in the subtle signals that often spell the difference between survival and oblivion. That was the extent of the wisdom I had accrued over a lifetime: I was an expert on hangovers. But what do you expect from someone who had just turned nineteen?

This was 1974 and it had already been a strange year. Abba had won the Eurovision Song Contest but back then bad music was the least of it. Everything was crap. Bleak and corrupt. The Watergate saga had unspooled and Nixon had resigned. It was the middle of August and I had just finished my freshman year at a famous university. Here is all I will say about the school: you probably couldn’t get in. I don’t mean to sound arrogant. People have told me I can come off that way. But is it arrogance if it’s the truth? You probably couldn’t get in. Don’t kill the messenger.

I was spending that summer as a construction worker on Cape Cod. We were building condos in Hyannisport, not far from the Kennedy family compound. My job was to build forms, wooden structures into which concrete for the foundations would be poured. I was the only college kid on the crew and I spent my lunch hours sitting alone, eating bologna on white bread, and reading Atlas Shrugged. I wasn’t being a snob. I could just tell the other guys didn’t want to talk to me. Early in the summer I thought I had a friend on the crew, this guy Bob. He was around my age and had a sister. She was a couple of years younger and middling attractive. They were locals. I took her out one night, slipped something in her drink, and made it with her on the beach in Harwichport. I wasn’t sure if she remembered when she woke up. A couple of days later, Bob asked if I planned to call her, but I didn’t see the point. Although Bob and I were together at work all the time, he didn’t speak to me again until he told me she was pregnant. How was that my problem? I asked. Bob said he was going to kick my ass. I told him to try it.

Every night after work, I’d go to the beach. I’d swim out and pull off my shorts and float until the last rays of the sun disappeared over the horizon. As peaceful a scene as you could imagine, like a Winslow Homer painting that hung in the art museum at school. All this naked swimming had one profound effect: it made me incredibly horny. Nineteen-year-old boys are notorious hormonal cauldrons, but there was something about the feel of salt water against naked skin that induced a sensuality so sublime I desperately wanted someone to share it with. I already told you I wasn’t interested in Bob’s sister. So it was after one of these twilight immersions that I decided to call Margaret Shaughnessy.

Ah, Margaret, light of my life, fire of my loins! Yes, I know Nabokov wrote that in another context—we did him in freshman English—and Margaret was nineteen, not whatever age Dolores Haze was, but you get the idea. We had met two years earlier in Chamonix, France. Please don’t think I’m some jetsetting dickweed who casually wings to Europe for coke-and-champagne-fueled skiing jaunts. It was my first time in France. I was there with my suburban Connecticut high school ski club and Margaret was with her family. We met standing in line at a ski lodge where I was trying to order sausages in my eleventh grade French. We spent the rest of the day gliding down glaciers cutting S-curves in the snow. That night we got drunk on Tuborg (no one checks IDs in France) and we skied together for the rest of the week. A mane of thick, honey-blond hair cascaded over her shoulders and down to the middle of her back. The perfection of her white teeth was rendered more exquisite by virtue of being marred by the left incisor leaning slightly out of alignment. Her skin, burnished by the Alpine sun, was flawless, although now would be a good time to say I never got to lay a hand on it. Our brief European idyll ended and we both returned to our American hometowns. Her family lived in the Boston area so we found ourselves more than a hundred miles apart. A few letters were exchanged, then we promptly lost touch.

Margaret’s family had a summer house in Hyannis. She had not forgotten me and we made plans to go out. Roomful of Blues were playing at a local club called Connie’s and I was no stranger to the unlikely aphrodisiacal nature of the 1940s-style swing they purveyed. If Margaret couldn’t swing dance I would teach her how. And then sex would ensue.

Nonunion construction workers didn’t make a lot of money on Cape Cod in 1974 and I had no intention of spending what little I had on drinks. So before picking Margaret up in my blue 1969 Peugeot, I purchased a pint of tequila. When I knocked on the door of her family’s sprawling house Margaret answered and looked exactly as I remembered her. The diffidence was new, but I ascribed that to not having seen each other in two years. Her parents loomed disapprovingly in the hallway. Gray and thin-lipped, they were a matching set ordered from an L.L. Bean catalog. Margaret’s mother would develop Alzheimer’s. Her father would die from a massive heart attack. I could tell they didn’t like me so I shot them my best Burt Reynolds smile and hustled their ripe daughter into the beckoning evening.

On the drive to the club, Margaret told me she had just finished her freshman year at the University of New Hampshire. I had no problem with that. It wasn’t like I was going to marry her. I asked her what she planned to major in and, honestly, it’s hard for me to remember her answer. She sounded less interested in it than I was. Next came some desultory reminiscing about the few days we had spent together in France. By the time we arrived at the club, I was afraid we might have exhausted the conversational possibilities for the evening.

Connie’s had once been a large, private home but walls had been ripped out and a bar and dance floor installed. Now the place jumped from June to Labor Day. I paid the cover charge and we sat at a table and ordered beers as we continued to chat about nothing. Margaret liked college. She was working as a waitress at a clam shack for the summer. One of her brothers had beaten the shit out of a guy she’d been dating and served six months in jail for assault. What? That was interesting. He’d just been released and had moved back in with Margaret’s parents. I asked her why he had done it and she told me it was because she had asked him. Did I want to meet him? Not really, I said. Then she laughed like she was kidding about the whole thing.

The band started to play and they were terrific. I had been eager for them to go on because I was hoping that, however difficult our verbal communication was, Margaret and I might find communion on the dance floor. But when I stood in front of her with my hand extended in my best Fred-to-Ginger gesture, she demurred. “I don’t know how to dance to this,” she said. I told her it didn’t matter, that it was easy, that I would teach her. I might as well have been talking to a lobster. The vivacity of the music, revelers popping and jiving all around us, the beers—nothing made an impression. It was then I realized that smoothly moving along a French glacier in a haze of sunshine and Tuborg will make anyone seem fascinating. I sat back down and stared at the band, who were tearing their way through “Choo Choo Ch’boogie” by Louis Jordan. Margaret went to the ladies’ room. My plan for the evening was not working and clearly I needed another. I drained the remainder of my second beer, removed the pint of tequila from my pocket and emptied the contents into the beer glass: sixteen ounces of pure Jose Cuervo. Over the next ninety minutes, I proceeded to drink every last drop. I have absolutely no recollection of what I discussed with Margaret. All I remember is that the tequila made the conversation a lot more scintillating than what had come before. But I was tired of not dancing.

I excused myself and stepped out on the small dance floor where I began to do the modified neo-lindy hop that passed for swing dancing in the post-hippie era. This is not the easiest thing to do without a partner. I looked completely spastic but I didn’t care what these people thought. Two taps of the left foot, two taps of the right, and I swung my arms around and spun, accidentally slapping the woman next to me hard across the face with the back of my hand. Her boyfriend took exception to this and smashed his fist into my chin, causing me to crash into a table where another couple was sitting. I heard breaking glass and the girl—blond, topsiders, and a tight red Lacoste shirt that encased striving breasts—swore loudly. As I was trying to stand, the bouncer grabbed my elbow. He was a gorilla in a Bruins jersey and when he escorted me outside, I made sure to tell him the Bruins sucked. Maybe that’s why he threw me to the pavement and kicked me in the gut.

I was spitting tequila-flavored stomach juice out of my mouth when I looked up and saw Margaret staring at me as if I were a traffic accident. I asked if she’d like a ride home but she told me she had already called her jailbird brother and he was on his way. This did not sound promising. I had no intention of meeting him so I said I’d call her and lurched toward my car.

Unsure of the way home, I gunned the Peugeot into the night. One turn, then another—in complete control of the car, thank you very much—and I found myself in Hyannisport. Traffic was remarkably light, and all going in the other direction. I was quite pleased with myself. The alcohol coursing through my bloodstream coated the recent events in a patina of hazy amusement, and I ascribed the evening to experience, a story I would tell the three guys from school with whom I was sharing a ramshackle garage apartment. Tomorrow, I surmised—ever the optimist—would be a better day. The flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror put a toe tag on that thought. I cursed under my breath and pulled over.

A bright light shone in my eyes. I squinted. “Can I help you, officer?” I asked.

The cop was young, in his twenties. He had pasty white skin and black hair, cut short. As he scoured the interior of the car with his flashlight it occurred to me that I might be more inebriated than I realized. He asked for my license and registration. I handed them to him with the most helpful-seeming alacrity. If I could convey the essential sweet harmlessness of my nature, I knew he would just wave me along.

“You know where you are?”

“Hyannisport.”

“This is a one-way street, and you’re driving the wrong way,” he said, to my immense chagrin. Then he ordered me out of the car where, beside the curb, illuminated by the headlights of the patrol car, I performed the DUI ballet: walk in a straight line one foot directly in front of the other, touch your nose, turn around, and repeat. I executed it perfectly. So I was stunned when he told me to place my hands behind my back.

“Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” I asked as he slipped the cuffs on, like I was Mr. Howell and he was Gilligan. He told me I was under arrest, which came as a shock, although in retrospect the handcuffs should have been a giveaway. Then he told me to shut the f*ck up. In a Boston accent. Which I hate. The tequila said he should go f*ck his mother. I noticed his name tag read, O’Rourke. He shoved me in the backseat of his car.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” I asked, as Officer O’Rourke drove toward the police station.

“You’re the dipshit I just arrested,” he replied.

“I think you’re missing my point,” I said. “I pay taxes, so that means you work for me. Take me home.”

O’Rourke laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh you hear when a guy thinks something is funny. It was a little brutal. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk.”

“I’ll do all the talking I want,” I said. Yes, I was sitting handcuffed in the backseat of a Hyannisport police car, conversing with this submoron O’Rourke, but he would have to release me eventually and I’d have another piquant detail to add to the saga this evening had become. What would O’Rourke have? Another shitty night, then home to a beer and bad TV. I told him that. What was he going to do? Beat me to death? O’Rourke grunted in reply. Then I threw up in the back of his patrol car. Up came the tequila, along with the cheeseburger and fries I had eaten for dinner. I was careful to cant my body forward and didn’t get any on my khakis or white Brooks Brothers polo shirt. I told O’Rourke that if he had let me go he wouldn’t be stuck scraping the reeking detritus of my stomach off his backseat. Then I asked him if he knew what the word detritus meant. He did not say. Instead, he cursed me volubly. I asked him how he liked his job. More curses flew my way. I laughed at O’Rourke and took pains to let him know I was laughing at him. When I was done laughing, I said: “You f*cking loser.” Then I said: “Do you really not know who I am?” It wasn’t like I was really anybody, but I was better than O’Rourke and wanted him to know it. He didn’t answer. I got a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror. He had that look Elmer Fudd gets right before he shoots Bugs Bunny. Then Elmer pulls the trigger and the shotgun blows up in his face. I asked him if he ever watched Bugs Bunny. O’Rourke would be killed in a one-car accident on Route 28 nine years later. If I had known that at the time, I might have treated him better.

When we arrived at the police station, O’Rourke led me into the squad room. There were five officers there and they all looked as if they had just returned from a saturated fat convention. “If this is what the police force looks like,” I remarked, making sure it was loud enough for them all to hear, “no wonder crime in America is exploding.” It was like talking to a painting, but not a real painting by an actual artist—more like the kind where dogs play poker. I sat down and one of the fat bastards requested I blow into a straw attached to something that looked like an old radio. It was a breathalyzer, someone explained. I was bored with the conversation—honestly, it was like throwing a tennis ball at a marshmallow wall—so I did what they asked. This would be a good time to tell you that I received a nearly perfect score on my college boards. I was accustomed to doing well on tests, so when I registered a 0.27 on the breathalyzer, I wasn’t surprised. 0.08 is considered drunk. At the time I found this very amusing, but my laughter failed to move them.

I was allowed a phone call. I couldn’t contact my father who was presumably asleep in our house in Connecticut. He was an attorney at a Wall Street firm and this arrest would not comport with his worldview, in which his son progressed seamlessly from high school to college to law school, partnership, marriage, and high-achieving children, without any detours into jail cells along the way. So I called Bob, the guy from my construction crew. We had been friends when the summer began and I thought if I explained the situation, he would let bygones be bygones and bail me out. Bob was surprised to hear from me and I could tell he was about to hang up until I let him know where I was. He said he’d meet me in court the next day. I’m not sure why I called him other than I was smashed and not thinking rationally. I should have been suspicious when he agreed to come.

The cell was about half the size of my dorm room. Unlike my dorm room, it had a steel toilet and a steel bed. It was down a hallway with several other cells, all of them empty. (Apparently, I was a one-man crime wave.) There was a large metal door at the end of the hallway and when the cop who had escorted me to my cell departed it closed with unsettling finality. For about five minutes I sat there and stared into space, angry, humiliated—no, insulted—that I was being treated this way. Then I began to yell. I cursed, screamed imprecations, made demands. This went on for a while. My throat became raw. I was beginning to feel dehydrated. The brutes in the next room continued to ignore my cries. Eventually, after it became clear that they couldn’t care less whether I lived or died, I lay down on the metal rack and tried to sleep. My mouth tasted like the inside of a sneaker, my eyes were brittle, and my ribs ached from when that ape at the nightclub kicked me. I thought about what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in a cell. I decided I’d rather be dead. Was this where they’d taken Margaret’s brother after he beat up her ex-boyfriend? Was that story even true? And if it was, it occurred to me he might know some of these cops. Would they let him into the cells to work me over with a truncheon? But I hadn’t really done anything to Margaret other than embarrass her, so maybe I was safe.

Somehow, a facsimile of sleep arrived, and when I awakened it felt as if a flock of tiny raptors were battling in my skull, their spiny wings throbbing against my delicate membranes. Pain like I had never known radiated down the left side of my head and to my neck. It sang in unbridled cacophony to my quivering tendons and hollow bones. As soon as I realized where I was, the feeling intensified. I was too dehydrated to urinate so I sat frozen in a vortex of self-pity until I heard the metal door open. Was this someone coming to exact revenge, to beat me in all the places that would never show when I stood in court? No, just a cop unlocking the cell door. He said he was taking me to be arraigned.

In the courtroom, I looked for Bob, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d had no real intention of showing up, his little revenge. The judge was a bald man with black horn-rims who asked me how I pled. “Not guilty,” I responded. My plan: take the money I had made that summer, hire a lawyer, and have this stain removed. Out, damned spot, right? My father would never have to know and my future legal career would go as planned.

I was given a court date and released on my own recognizance. I didn’t need Bob to post bail after all. When I left the building, sunlight eviscerated my eyes. The tiny raptors continued to beat against the inside of my skull. Bile sluiced through my gut as I wobbled down the courthouse steps. I heard someone calling my name. It was Bob. He was backlit by the sun so it was hard to see the expression on his face, but I could tell the person standing next to him was his sister. Was she going to shoot me or do something equally trite? Bob said she wanted to have a word and I had better do her the courtesy of listening, but I was in no condition for a sidewalk colloquy with a one-night stand and I said as much. I didn’t see Bob’s fist, but the blood pouring out of my face an instant later suggested he had broken my nose. The pain, of course, penetrated the penumbra of my hangover and I felt like a grenade had discharged in my sinuses. The blood-soaked white polo shirt looked like a crime scene as I staggered away, the pathetic maledictions of Bob’s sister raining down on me. Why are people so unbelievably annoying?

The Peugeot had been taken to the police garage so I walked the short way there from the courthouse. The guy in charge of the motor pool, prematurely gray with hawkish features and a scar on his left cheek, stared at me and didn’t say anything. I looked down at my bloody shirt and shrugged. “A bad night in Hyannisport,” I said. He nodded warily and told me there was a problem with the transmission. If I wanted, he would fix it, but it wouldn’t be ready until the afternoon. The oil stink of the garage was making me nauseous and I had to get out of there. I thanked the man and told him I’d be back later. Then I thanked him again. I remembered enough of the previous night to recall that after my arrest my behavior had left something to be desired, and today I was going to make up for it. I’m not a bad guy. I thanked him a third time before I left.

The walk home from Hyannisport to West Dennis was about ten miles. My hangover seemed to have gained in intensity and I thought a cocktail of fresh air and sunshine might make it dissipate. The list of places more beautiful than Cape Cod in August is a short one. As the salt breeze filled my nostrils, I noticed that a few dabs of ochre and yellow had begun to peek through the leaves. I headed east along the blacktop, still trying to will my hangover into submission and humming the opening of “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin. Their drummer, the great John Bonham, would be dead from drink six years later. The temperature was in the nineties by now and I was beginning to perspire. By the time I hummed my way through the song once, I knew I didn’t want to walk.

I stuck my thumb out and two cars passed me, a Volvo station wagon and a Ford Pinto. Wouldn’t it be just my luck, I reflected, if Margaret and her brother drove past? Was she kidding when she told me he had been in jail for beating up her old boyfriend? I still couldn’t figure that one out. Sometimes people said things just to play with your head. And what if Bob and his sister happened by? It wasn’t like I could run. A red Malibu with mag wheels pulled to a stop. I approached and looked in through the rolled-down passenger window at Officer O’Rourke. This was a stroke of luck. It’s not often the possibility of redemption presents itself in so convenient a way.

“I’m really sorry about last night,” I said. “I acted like an idiot.”

“Where you headed?” His face was neutral, but cops are like that. I said I was going to West Dennis and he told me he could take me most of the way. I got in the front seat. O’Rourke was dressed in civilian clothes: painter’s pants and a gray T-shirt that said, Eddie’s Seafood Shack, Since 1972. That was a joke, since it was 1974. Eddie obviously had a good sense of humor, which was more than I could say for O’Rourke. There was a snub-nosed revolver on his hip. We rode in silence for a minute. This made me uncomfortable. I like small talk.

“How long you been a cop?” I asked, leaving out the word have in an attempt to be familiar.

“Five years.”

I nodded. It was clear O’Rourke wasn’t interested in talking. I settled into the seat. At my feet there were a pile of eight track tapes: Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Bachman Turner Overdrive. Utter crap. I hated all of it but wanted to be friendly.

“Okay if we listen to some music?”

“Sure,” he said, as he picked up the BTO tape and slid it into the player. “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” filled the car. I closed my eyes and sighed. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous, I thought, if this shit was the last thing I ever heard?