Chapter 14
Fourteen
It was a humid, rainy Tuesday morning in Hell’s Kitchen and the gloomy weather matched Colby Jackson’s mood.
His weekend on Fire Island was a bust. It was such a failure that he left an entire day early, in the most unglamorous way; he embarked on an odyssey he hadn’t made since his early twenties.
Colby took the ferry from Fire Island Pines to the Sayville dock where he boarded a shuttle that deposited him at the Long Island Rail Road which eventually dumped him in the bowels of Penn Station, otherwise known as “the worst place in New York City,” according to social media.
Colby and a group of cohorts from their touch football team, Pride Pack, drove out to the large island that runs parallel to the south shore of Long Island on Thursday night to get a jump start on closing out the summer with a bang.
Labor Day weekend was always one of Colby’s favorite four days on Fire Island or “Chelsea with Sand,” as many city-dwellers called it.
But this weekend was different. He had an uneasy feeling since Wednesday night when Kenny ditched him at Hole in the Wall Mexican without explanation and then actively avoided him for two days, until she sent the terse message stating that she’d be unreachable for five weeks. It didn’t make sense.
He always worried when Kenny was deployed on these “off the record” and “off the grid” trips but he was especially worried about this excursion.
Colby needed to talk to Kenny. If his boss, Muffin Evans, the Manuscript Eater, got to Kenny with the news that Border Books was not going to publish Armchair Detective before Colby could soften the blow, all hell would break loose.
When Kenny was given access to these top secret missions, she had to be laser-focused, steadfast. One slip-up at these controlled environments and production teams would get the boot, certainly eliminating any chance of an invitation back and closing the door on opportunities to ask follow-up questions.
Colby assumed she had finally struck a deal with one of her contacts at the Indian reservation, nudist colony, or religious cult compound she had been trying to infiltrate.
But regardless of where in the world Kenny was for the next five weeks, no place was going to be a good one to learn that her first novel wasn’t going to be sold.
Text to Kenny: Hey Doll! Know you’re busy being important and fabulous but can you puh-leez make time for a check-in?
You don’t have to tell me what weird, twisted story you’re covering, but I need to hear your voice.
You were SO right about Paolo. Ran into him at The Pines and he looked like SUCH an old man. LYMIB.
At least part of the text was true. Colby did need to talk to Kenny, and he did run into Paolo, his first, much older lover at a house party on Fire Island.
The whole truth was that he had to tell Kenny that they were both wrong about Armchair Detective being a sure-fire hit.
And she was wrong about Paolo. He did look “older” but was aging like a fine wine that Colby wanted to guzzle by the magnum.
The combination of running into Paolo and meeting his new boyfriend, not talking to Kenny in several days, and the inevitable twinge of dread that comes the morning after the last holiday weekend of the summer hit Colby like a Mac truck.
He felt like he had a black cloud hanging over his head and knew it wouldn’t blow over until he talked to Kenny.