Gold Coast

I saw now that it was a statue of Mary, her arms cradling the infant Jesus. I found the juxtaposition of this Christian icon across the pool from the pagan god rather curious. Here was this loving woman enveloping her child, and in the same setting staring at her, as it were, was this half-naked, virile god with upraised trident, the antithesis of the Judaeo-Christian God of love. I was reminded of the first time I was in Rome and being surprised at how the two dominant strands of Italian culture – pagan and Christian – coexisted in art with no apparent contradictions. The tour guides seemed to have no theological or aesthetic problems with mixed motifs: for instance, a frieze of nubile nymphs and randy cupids adorning the same room that held a statue of La Vergine. The Italians, I decided then, were themselves pagan and Christian, like their art, both cruel and gentle, Roman and Catholic. It was as if the wrong religion had been grafted onto a country and a people who by temperament made good pagans and lousy Christians.

It occurred to me, too, that the same Frank Bellarosa who restored the trident to Neptune, who knew what that clenched fist needed, was also the Frank Bellarosa who felt a need to balance his world with this symbol of love and hope. This was a man who covered all his bases. Interesting. I heard a dog barking from the direction of the mansion, and I decided to wonder about all of this while moving rapidly away from the don's hit men. I may have been crazy, but I wasn't stupid.

I headed in the direction of Stanhope Hall, moving as fast as I could, considering I hadn't had anything more substantial to eat than radicchio and cheese since Saturday's lunch. The barking dogs, two of them now, were closer. I put on a burst of speed, crossing the tree line at full tilt. I didn't slow up, however, figuring the dogs and the hit men, while not mounted gentry, would still surely cross into Stanhope land in hot pursuit.

I saw the shallow pond near where Susan intended to move her stable and charged into it, half wading, half walking on water, until I reached the other side. What I lacked in stalking skills, I made up for in escape and evasion techniques.

I kept ru

I came into the house through the rose garden and saw by the clock in the study that I had apparently misjudged the time. It was past eleven, and Susan was gone. Again, I discovered that I didn't care. Finding out that you didn't care about things you used to care about was all well and good, but the next step was trying to find out what you did care about.

I went into the kitchen and saw a note on the table. It read: Please remember to be at your aunt's at three. I crumpled up the note. Screw Aunt Cornelia. I opened the refrigerator and grazed awhile, stuffing my mouth with whatever struck my fancy, leaving a mess of opened containers, wrappings, and half-eaten fruit. I grabbed a handful of blueberries, slammed the door, and went upstairs. Primitive is one thing, but a hot shower is something else. I stripped, showered, and ate blueberries, but I didn't shave. I dressed casually in jeans, sweatshirt, and loafers without socks and got out of the house before Susan returned.

I jumped into my Bronco and drove onto the old, overgrown path that once co

I guess I was still royally ticked off about the events of the previous day, though I knew if I were to verbalize my complaints to a friend, he or she would not fully comprehend how the hayloft incident or the Bellarosa incident could have put me in high dudgeon. People never do. Of course I would say, "There's more to it." And there was, but most of that was in my head, unco

Anyway, I drove around a while and wound up in Bayville, which is sort of a blue-collar town sitting on prime Long Island Sound real estate. This place is ripe for gentrification, but I think there's a village ordinance against BMWs and health food stores.

The main industries of the small village of Bayville are fishing, boatyards, nautical stores, and the dispensing of alcohol. You wouldn't expect to find so many gin mills in so small a place, but it's a matter of supply and demand. Some of the places are rough, some rougher, and the roughest is a place called The Rusty Hawsehole. A hawsehole, if you care, is the hole in the bow of a ship through which the anchor cable passes. I think the bars and restaurants on Long Island are scraping the bottom of the bilge for unused nautical names, but this place looked like a rusty hawsehole, and it was open for Easter services. I parked the Bronco in the gravel lot between a pickup truck and four motorcycles and went inside.

A waterfront gin mill at night has a degree of local colour, exuberance, and je ne sais quoi. But on a Sunday afternoon, Easter Sunday at that, The Rusty Hawsehole was as depressing as the anteroom to a gas chamber. I found a stool at the bar and ordered a draught beer. The place was done up in standard nautical motif, but I wouldn't outfit a garbage scow from the junk on the walls and ceilings. I noticed that my fellow celebrants included three men and a woman in interesting black leather motorcycle attire, a few old salts whose skin had that odd combination of sun weathering and alcohol pickling, and four young men in jeans and T-shirts playing video games and alternating between catatonia and St Vitus' dance. I don't think there was a full set of teeth in the house. I was aware that the dark corners and booths held more of the damned. I bought some bar snacks, the kind of stuff that should have warning labels, and munched away. The Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club is a mile or so down the road from here, and in the summer the nautical gentry will visit places like The Rusty Hawsehole after a day of sailing. When one is safely back at one's country club, one will casually mention the visit, thus suggesting that one is a real man. But here I was in off-season, sipping suds and eating prole food, watching the blue haze of cigarette smoke float past the bar lights. I ordered another beer and six of those beef jerky sticks for dessert. Just when it seemed that no one was interested in me or offended by my presence, one of the leather gentlemen at the bend in the bar inquired, "You live around here?" You have to understand that even in jeans and sweatshirt, unshaven, and with a Bronco outside, John Whitman Sutter was not going to pass for one of the boys, especially after I opened my preppie mouth. You understand, too, that there was deeper meaning in that question. I replied, "Lattingtown." "La-di-da," he responded musically.