Monty would say, “Ask her if she imagines my idea of the perfect life is working twelve hours a day in some hick store selling Sugar Daddies to runny-nosed kids?”
Martha would say, “Ask him when he’s ever worked twelve hours a day anywhere.”
“Ask her,” Monty would say, “if she thinks I got an education at Yale to stand here marking half the TV Guides New England and half Manhattan.”
“Ask him,” Martha would respond, “if he could have done better with his striking Yale education why he didn’t.”
They were your real all-American happily married couple, the kind you saw eating out in restaurants across the table from each other without saying anything but “Pass the salt,” or “Where’s the butter?” Silently We Eat Our Sizzling Sirloins, Hating Each Other’s Guts Department.
Lunch was really Martha’s mutt, but he followed Monty whenever Monty took off for the beach, which was a lot in the summer. Monty would swim out and Lunch would stand in the surf barking, as though he was a scolding stand-in for Martha.
Lunch’s blind eye was a light blue color; the other eye was black.
“Did anyone ever tell you you were hilarious looking?” I asked him.
The dog ignored me. Sure enough, there was Monty out in the ocean, riding the waves on a surfboard.
The only other person around was this blond girl, sitting on a towel. Everyone else was in the area where the lifeguards were, about a half mile down the beach.
I was standing there wondering what the chances were of going in the water without having to strike up a conversation with Monty.
Monty’s conversations begin something like this: “Hi there, Wither-Away, seen any good corpses lately?”
A variation: “Hi there, Withering Heights, I’m dying to see you.”
Then he’d hold his sides laughing, give me a cuff to my ear, and start in on my relationship with Harriet.
“You going to marry her?” he’d ask. “Lots of luck, fellow. I married my high-school sweetheart and it’s been downhill ever since.”
I wasn’t in a mood for Monty ever; that day, I really wasn’t.
I walked down the beach away from him, past the girl on the towel.
Then I heard her calling me. “Hey! Hey, there! Hey!”
I turned around and she was standing, taller than I was, this long-legged, slender, pale girl with large green eyes and a tiny mouth. She wore a black bathing suit and a large gold cuff bracelet. She looked as though she’d been hospitalized all summer, or imprisoned—kept somewhere where the sun never shined.
“I came down here with cigarettes and no matches,” she said, walking up to me. “I don’t know how I could be so dumb.”
“I don’t, either,” I said.
“Well do you have a match?”
“It isn’t dumb to forget your matches,” I said. “It’s dumb to smoke.” I stood there trying to figure out why there was something vaguely familiar about her, even her voice.
“Thanks an awful lot,” she said. “I had the feeling I could count on you the minute I saw you.” She was holding a package of gold Merits in her hand.
“Do you think you can count on the tobacco companies to look out for you?” I said.
“I don’t need someone to look out for me,” she said, “I need a match.”
She started to walk back to her towel. I didn’t want her to go. It wasn’t that I needed another girl who towered over me in my life again, but I had this really flaky feeling that I’d spent time with her. Déjà vu or something. My father and mother had a song when they were courting called “Where or When.” My mother liked to play it on the piano and sing along. It was about meeting someone and feeling you’d stood that way with them and talked before, and looked at each other the same way before. That was sort of the feeling I had with this girl.
I tried to stall her. “A long time ago,” I said, “cigarettes had simple names: Kools, Camels, Lucky Strikes, Old Golds.”
“They’re still in existence,” she said. “Where have you been?”
“Where have you been?” I said. “You’re the whitest girl on the beach.”
“I was in an insane asylum,” she said.
“You’d have to be a little crazy to let the tobacco companies manipulate you,” I said. “Why do you think they’d name a cigarette something like Merit? Merit’s supposed to mean excellence, value, reward. What’s so excellent, valuable and rewarding about having cancer?”
“I’ve heard of coming to the beach for some sun,” she said, “for a swim, for a walk. I never heard of coming to the beach for a lecture.”
“Think of the names of the new cigarettes,” I said, realizing I’d stumbled on an idea that wasn’t half bad. “Vantage—as in advantage; True; More; Now. The cigarette companies are using hard sell, because they’re scared that the public will wise up to the fact they’re selling poison.” Not bad at all, Witherspoon. I complimented myself. “Live for the moment because you won’t live long. Get More. Be True to your filthy habit.”
“Just say you don’t have a match,” she said.
At that moment, Lunch came skidding in between us, chasing a rubber duck that had been tossed in our direction. He was wet and she let out a scream, while Monty came jogging up to us with one of his sadistic grins. He had on a T-shirt with YALE written across it. He had his usual ingratiating opener.
“Hi there, Wither Up And Die. Cheating on Harriet?”
Then he took a look at the girl and did a double take.
Monty is not subtle in any way. He is this big palooka who lifts weights every morning and measures his chest size once a week. He is a wraparound baldie, who uses the last few strands of hair he has left to wrap around his already-denuded crown. When he does a double take, his whole body participates. His shoulders swing, his neck jerks, his hands shoot up to his hips with his elbows bent outward, his mouth drops open and his eyes bulge.
“Why, you’re Sabra St. Amour,” he croaked.
“That’s right,” I found myself agreeing aloud in stunned amazement. “That’s who you are.”
That’s who she was, not nearly as beautiful as she came across on the big boob tube, but it was Sabra St. Amour, ail right: the soft long blond hair and sea-colored eyes, the husky voice (not so sensual sounding when you realized it was caused by clogged lungs), the small, slanted smile.
I said, “But I just saw you on the tube,” and stood there like any star-struck jerk, incredulous, and staring at her.
“That was on tape,” she said.
Monty stuck out one of the elephant paws he has for hands and said, “I’m Montgomery Montgomery. How do you do.”
She winced in pain as he crushed her bones and pumped her arm up and down. “How do you do,” she said.
I managed, “I’m Wally Witherspoon.”
“Hey, Sabra St. Amour!” said Monty. “How about that?”
Lunch began to bark furiously, standing there like Martha complaining about the whole idea of Monty striking up a conversation with a star.
“Shut up, Lunch!” Monty commanded. Lunch barked all the harder.
“Well.” Monty tried talking above the noise. “Tell me more!”
Sabra St. Amour made a face as though she