Chapter Twenty-Five
Usually, when Ben Morse had to leave the island midsummer, he was immediately filled with dread. Today, he was filled with relief. He couldn’t get away fast enough.
The woman next door had cracked his hardened resolve, crawled under his skin, and then jumped back out, leaving an open, festering wound. OK, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but that’s how the novelist in him perceived it. Even the fact that he could work up that over-the-top sentiment alarmed him. The closest he got to writing with emotion lately was this past winter when the petulant goalie he was writing a feature on stopped a goal at the buzzer and won the Stanley Cup. Even that only garnered the sentence “Grown men blinked away tears as he circled the arena with the legendary trophy.” It figured that the first time he had enjoyed talking to, even flirting with, a woman since Julia for reasons other than purely carnal satisfaction had left him broken and rejected.
Lesson fucking learned, he thought, before burying his nose in the Fire Island News, hoping to discourage early morning conversation on the ferry.
Ben had turned in his first draft of the Terrence Williams piece the night before and was meeting his editor at the Sports Illustrated offices late that afternoon. Enough time to grab lunch with his agent first at one of his favorite downtown haunts.
The Paris Cafe was a dark waterfront restaurant circa 1873 where Thomas Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, and even Butch Cassidy are said to have dined. After eating at the same handful of places all summer long, he was definitely looking forward to mixing it up a bit. At least his tastebuds were excited about something.
He arrived first and ordered an iced tea from the bar. He didn’t like to drink before meetings. His agent, Elizabeth Barnes, arrived before his beverage did. Ben’s sportswriting gig had little to do with his formidable book agent, but she kept close tabs on him since Julia died. Her greeting lacked the pity-based warmth she had presented with as of late.
“What the hell, Ben? You skewered that surfer.”
And there was the woman he remembered! He summoned the bartender. “Make that a Bloody Mary instead.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” he moaned.
Elizabeth pulled out her phone and quoted him.
“At first, one may be fooled by the seemingly sincere surfer, but in the end, I doubt a wave is the only thing Terrence Williams is hell-bent on riding.”
“Really? You usually love a good alliteration.”
“Benjamin!”
“Let’s see what my editor says.”
“He already called me. He’s not publishing it.”
Back to the bartender. “Drop a vodka floater in this, please.”
“Wait, he wants me to edit the article?” he asked defensively.
“He wants you to throw it out and start again. Every sentence is laced with acrimony.”
“He said that?”
“No. I said that. He said, ‘It’s a bloody hack job that isn’t worth a dog pissing on it.’?”
“That sounds more like him.”
“He canceled your meeting. There will be a car waiting at your apartment at four to bring you and a photographer out to Montauk. He wants you to cover the tournament. Speak to other surfers about Terrence’s legend. Report with zero bias.”
She put her hand on his arm. No one brought out her faint thread of maternal instinct more than the widowed Ben Morse.
“What happened, Ben? When we spoke, you were all keen on this guy.”
“I don’t know,” he said unconvincingly.
She raised her eyebrows. In the old days she would have scared a confession out of him, but little scared him anymore, aside from possible heartbreak. He read her expression and threw her a bone.
“Fine. I do know, but I don’t want to talk about it except to say things got personal. I was wrong to be so harsh and judgmental, and I will do the rewrite.”
“OK. Let’s sit in a booth and eat like two human beings, please.”
And they did. But Ben barely spoke.