Killer Summer

Oops.

“I come home a little while ago and find dinner half-made,” he continued, shaking his head. “I don’t know what gets into her.”

“So, uh, dinner is still on?” I said hopefully, wondering how I could surreptitiously put the coriander on the counter without him realizing I was the cause of this culinary disaster.

He finally looked up at me, eyes roaming over me as if I had two heads. “It’s ten o’clock. We can’t eat now. I’m just trying to finish the sauce she started before she took off to God knows where.” He sighed, as if the thought of the wasted meal deeply disturbed him. “I guess we’ll eat this tomorrow. If Maggie ever gets back with the coriander,” he continued. Whack. Whack. Whack.

Seeing my opening, I said, “Actually, I think I might have some coriander in one of these bags.”

He looked up, knife paused in midair as he regarded me anew. I guess he didn’t figure me for the type to be packing a jar of coriander. And with good reason. I didn’t even know what coriander was until the grocer at Gourmet Garage kindly explained it to me. Locating the jar in the shopping bag, I placed it on the counter before him, transforming myself from the neglectful tardy dinner guest to the heroine of the piece.

For all of thirty seconds. “Oh, so you got Maggie’s message? She wasn’t sure you did.”

“Uh, yeah. I, uh, got a later ferry than I expected.” And since I figured I had already effectively destroyed my momentary heroic status, I decided to come completely clean, pulling out the wine and the Vidalia onion, which was looking a bit bruised. “I got these, too.”

“Ah, well,” he said, eyeing the onion. “I already used the Spanish onions we had in the fridge. I can’t tell the difference anyway, but that’s Maggie for you,” he said with a roll of the eyes. “An onion’s an onion, if you ask me.”

“Yep, it’s all the same to me,” I said, in an attempt to bond with dear old Tom over our mutual ignorance of the varieties of onions.

Janis Joplin, who had been humming a low whine as I emptied the contents of my shopping bag, was now clawing at the screen door.

“Dammit, Janis!” Tom roared, returning to his former austere—and somehow more intimidating in that towel—stance.

Even Janis backed down, lowering to her stomach and whimpering, her eyes on me, pleading.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into that mutt,” Tom muttered. “Must be a full moon tonight.” Whack. Whack. Whack.

I didn’t think there was any moon tonight, judging by all the darkness I had just ploughed through. But I wasn’t about to argue.

Whack. Whack. Whack.

“So, um, where is everyone…else, that is?” I asked, not wanting to invoke the name of Maggie again, seeing as Tom was none too pleased with her at the moment.

He lined up another garlic clove. “Sage had a date or something. And I’m not sure where Nick is.” He frowned, and I wondered if he was remembering how cozy Nick and Maggie had gotten on Memorial Day weekend. God, maybe Nick and Maggie were…Oh, yuck. I wouldn’t put it past Nick, though. He didn’t seem to have many scruples when it came to his love life. And ever since Bernadine had moved to San Francisco, he seemed to have even less.

Whack. Whack. Whack.

Janis let out a low moan.

“Shut up, you damn mutt!”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Um, maybe I should take her for a walk or something?” I said, realizing I had found my escape.

“Yeah, why don’t you do that?” Tom replied, in a tone that implied that perhaps I should make myself useful for a change.

Whack. Whack. Whack.

Grabbing my wheelie and my knapsack, I quickly shuffled my load down the long hall that led to the back bedroom, which Tom and Maggie had designated as my and Sage’s sleeping quarters.

I unloaded my stuff in the middle of the room, then flicked on the lamp on the nightstand between the two twin beds, shedding a dim light over the small room. The green room, as it was aptly referred to with its mint-green walls and matching mint-green curtains, looked like a little girl’s bedroom with white furniture and ruffled bedspreads. But at the moment, it looked more like the inside of the dressing room at Victoria’s Secret. Must have been some date, I thought, figuring the assortment of bikini tops, bras, postage-stamp-size skirts and slinky tops that littered both Sage’s bed and mine was Sage’s date-preparation debris. I briefly wondered who she might be out with—Sage had no small amount of admirers on Kismet—then figured it was likely the dock boy she’d been chatting up on the beach the last time I was here. I couldn’t remember his name, but I wasn’t sure it would matter in the long run. He was the kind of young, buff little boy that Sage usually aspired to. But who was I to judge? I hadn’t had sex in two months. Almost three, I thought, remembering that July Fourth was coming up. Maybe it was the reminder that I had spent last July Fourth weekend with Myles that had me shoving my wheelie and knapsack off to one corner and quickly leaving the room.

I spotted Janis Joplin’s leash hanging from the coatrack by the screen door the moment I returned to the kitchen. Thankfully, Tom had finished his merciless chopping and was now stirring a pot on the stove, sipping a glass of wine freshly poured from the bottle I’d brought. I beelined for the leash, not wanting to banter over the merits—or lack thereof—of the wine. (Tom was, I had already learned, a bit of connoisseur. I wasn’t.) The moment I pulled the leash from the coatrack, Janis’s whimpering turned into an all-out howl of impatience.

Tom turned from his stirring briefly. “There’re some Baggies in the top drawer right there,” he said, gesturing to a small pantry cabinet.

“Baggies?”

He raised an eyebrow. “For the poop?”

“Oh, right,” I replied, suddenly remembering that my mission was not simply to escape Tom-in-a-Towel but to possibly provide a little relief for Janis, who was now tugging full throttle at the leash I’d snapped on her.

I opened the drawer, pulled at least three bags from the box I found (I wasn’t taking any chances with a dog this size) and headed out the door.

Once I got to the top of the wooden walkway that led to the beach and saw the ocean rolling toward me in crashing white waves, I remembered the other reason Sage had managed to prod me into taking this share. I loved the beach. Had spent half my childhood on it, mostly with Sage and sometimes Nick, when Nick realized being the only guy among girls might be an asset. And later, with Myles, who grew up two towns away from me on Long Island, though we hadn’t ever met until we both lived in New York City. That was another thing that had drawn me to Myles: He understood the angst of growing up in the shadow of Manhattan. The hollowness of claiming native New Yorker status when you knew no two islands could be more different than Long Island and the island of Manhattan. Myles had strolled along this very beach with me once.…

Now, as I stepped on the sand, felt the breeze in my face, all I could remember was that walk along the beach with Myles. I even started to relish the memory a bit, and I might have enjoyed it even more if Janis didn’t seem hell-bent on taking us straight into the tide.

“Whoa!” I yelled, tugging back on the leash. Whoa? That was a horse command. Despite all my recent experience with the dogs of the Washington Square Park dog run, I couldn’t think of the command for stop. So I went for the obvious. “Stop!”

Surprisingly, Janis did stop. Though I wasn’t sure it was my plea that did it as I watched her raise her face into the wind, then drop her nose to the sand, sniffing furiously for a moment. And just when I thought she was going to give me a reason to whip out those bags I’d stuffed in the pocket of my jeans, she took off at a dead run.

“Janis!” I yelled, pulling hard against the leash. Then I remembered the appropriate command. “Heel! Heel, Janis, heel!”

Not that it did me any good. Janis would not be heeled. So I started to run right along with her. I really didn’t have a choice. Besides, the last thing I needed right now was to lose Maggie’s beloved dog. Especially after the coriander fiasco.

Just as I was starting to get comfortable with the idea of a late-night jog—I did, after all, like to run, though usually in sweats and not jeans—I realized we were almost to Saltaire, the next town over. I didn’t know how much stamina this dog had, but I wasn’t going any farther than Kismet, I thought, as I eyed the lonely tuffs of dune grass we passed.

Spooky.

I kept my gaze on the beach in front of me and then was sorry for it when I caught sight of pale white skin in the tide. I quickly looked away, embarrassed. Oh, God, some happy couple was doing a little romantic From Here to Eternity roll in the tide. And if I didn’t get Janis to heel, I was soon going to be right on top of them.

“Janis, heel!” I said. But Janis only ran faster, and just when I feared I was about to become an unwanted third to the twosome in the tide, I realized it wasn’t a twosome. Just one person. A woman. And judging by the way her skin glowed pale against the darkness, she was naked.

What the hell…?

Suddenly the leash flew out of my grip, and I watched in horror as Janis became smaller and smaller, practically disappearing against the darkness. Shit! I started to run faster, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was happening in the tide.

I finally caught up, but only because Janis had come to a dead stop, letting out a howl that sent a shiver through me as I looked down on those sightless eyes, wide and blue, staring up at me.

Maggie.

Naked. Her hair matted with seaweed.

And, from the look of things…

Dead.

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