I was fairly chewing on the knuckles of one of my hands as I watched the team of men pull the Petrof baby grand piano out of the ferryboat at the landing and start to muscle it up to the beat-up old pickup truck. Most of the men looked as scruffy as both the ferryboat and the pickup looked, but this was as good as it was going to get on Daufuskie Island. At least they had the bed of the pickup well swathed with thick blankets. I could have hoped for a larger truck, but this was close to the only truck on the island.
Thank god that the young man who was heading the crew and giving it direction seemed to know what he was doing. I was quite glad that he'd appeared at the last minute when the men had stopped circling the piano case—its legs removed—laying in the bed of the boat and were about to start heaving it up. As I myself had observed, the young man of mixed race, who had introduced himself as Vandi LaRoche, had been deeply otherwise occupied up to the moment he had appeared. I couldn't help seeing them—him and Tish, Damien Peer's young wife, behind the trading post, which Vandi apparently managed. They had been kissing and groping, and, when I passed by on my way down from the house we'd rented for the summer at Haig Point to meet the ferryboat, I thought there was every reason to think they'd be fucking in the bushes soon.
The contrast in their much-exposed skin was startling, Tish being milky-white pale and the young man being berry brown. I was to learn the young man was a Gullah native of this isolated island, which lay by the Hilton Head resort island off the coast of South Carolina and at the mouth of the Savannah River. The Gullah were a mixed race of English, Scottish, and West African extraction who had settled and mixed on and near the South Carolina barrier islands centuries ago and who had become somewhat isolated and insular. LaRoche's mix relied heavily on the West African, but in a "best of all traits of each" sort of way.
I was surprised, yes, but not shocked to see Tish in action so quickly. An international model, Tish Angel had been as free as this with herself in New York. She was much too young for her husband, Damien, who was wildly and perpetually on the make himself, and he'd never shown an indication of being either willing or able to control her catting about.
The question, of course, was how Helena and I had come to be living with them for the summer on this island, accessible only by boat, and, other than a small Gullah community, populated mostly by absentee millionaires who raised the barricades to their neighbors even when they were in residence. I didn't remember how we had come to this arrangement—and at this location—any more than I could remember how I had agreed to have my baby, what Helena called my muse, my Petrof baby grand, delivered here under these primitive conditions. I was sure that it had been at Helena's insistence.
And I was equally sure that I couldn't have had any part of this—and other—decisions for this summer's retreat. This was quite unlike us. We usually summered either in the Hamptons, sponging off friends moving there en masse from Manhattan, or in Paris, where Helena had maintained a pied-à -terra since before we'd been married.
My heart leapt into my throat as I saw the piano case teeter to the right dangerously over the side of the truck bed, to be saved at the last instance by the sure and strong hands of Van LaRoche, his rippling chest muscles bulging and straining for the moment before others in the crew took hold.
I wondered if Tish Angel had found his hands just as steady and sure and his rippling muscles as sigh producing while he was pawing her behind his trading post near the dock. This clearing at the dock was the point of the island's connection with civilization, where each week three sets of tours from Hilton Head and two from Savannah arrived for a short tour of this famous, but isolated island. Daufuskie wasn't connected to any part of the mainland or any other island—by the choice of its largely well-heeled sometimes residents. There was one dirt road running up the spine of its five-mile length and only two across its two-and-a-half-mile width.
For sure this was the island that Pat Conroy had made famous in his novel Water Is Wide and Jimmy Buffett in his song "Prince of Tides," but it still obviously was one of those places where time stood still outside of the walls of the millionaires' frequently deserted compounds.
Come to think of it, was it the singer and artist John Mellencamp, a sometimes resident of the island, who had instigated this summer's destination? I couldn't remember. Both Damien and I knew Mellencamp, of course, from our separate disciplines, but I can't think that it was I who suggested coming here upon John's recommendation.
I do know I needed to go somewhere away from New York—and from my collaborator, Charlie. Well, my collaborator up to the time we fled New York. Who knew who I'd find for a lyricist when I returned to the city. I surely couldn't go back into that situation.
When we'd discussed coming here, Helena asked me if I was going into hiding. That had scared the shit out of me, I'll tell you. Helena seemed almost clairvoyant. But I don't think she knew how close to the mark she'd hit. At least she hadn't followed up on that tack. It didn't seem, however, that coming here was her idea. Of course Helena could—and did—work almost anywhere.
"Please drive slowly . . . and carefully," I heard myself call out to Vandi as he opened the driver's door of the pickup.
"Don't worry, Mon," the handsome—really almost obscenely handsome, and so well muscled—young Gullah called back. "We'll go with the snails. Do you want to ride in the cab? The men will walk with the truck. That's how slow we'll go."
"No, thank you. I have something I need to do here at the dock. I'll be up at the house later."
The young man gave me a look as if I'd been overtouched by the sun, but he said nothing and started the pickup toward the road to Haig's Point at the promised snail's pace. He had every reason to look at me that way, of course. No one had business he "had" to do on this island. Moving my Petrof baby grand from dock to the house probably would be the highlight of these men's year.
Nothing to do but maybe fuck my wife's step-brother's wife behind the trading post as I was sure Vandi was about to do—and probably still would do—when the piano floated in. And why not? Every other man she encountered probably had. Why not me? If I could manage it. I should at least give it a shot, I thought. The question needed to be answered.
But that reminded me why I was lingering here—other than the nerves of not wanting to know what was happening to the Petrof until it had been delivered and had been reunited with its legs, and until it was waiting, miraculously intact and in tune, for me in the house's lounge. I was lingering here because I didn't want to face Helena this morning.
* * * *
It was as if the house had been furnished just for our party. We were sitting in a circle on the screen porch overlooking the waterway leading to Hilton Head Island to the northeast. Five substantial rattan chairs around a circular cocktail table. Three men and two women chatting amicably, but saying nothing of any importance, which would have been considered a crime in our intellectual circles in New York. The undercurrents among us were stirring more than the faltering breeze filtering into the porch from the sea, promising an undertow at the first misspoken word. I looked at each of the other four as if they were strangers to me—and that included my wife of eight years. I'd say my trophy wife, as Damien Peer, who was sitting next to me in overpowering animation, sucking up all of the air in the circle with his "hey, look at me" presence, could say about his young model wife, Tish. But
I
was the trophy spouse for Helena, sitting across from me.
Was that on purpose? Was Helena sitting separated from me because of last night—because of what didn't happen? Was she punishing me? I had expected her to settle down on the other side of me from Damien, but she moved deliberately to a chair across from me, and Tish had slid in beside me and placed her hand on top of mine and was playing with the hair on the back of my hand. I wondered if I was the only one present to know that she expected me to fuck her this summer just like all of the other men she encountered and fancied.
I had avoided this inevitability in New York, but on small, isolated Daufuskie there was no place to hide. And now there was a reason for me to give it a go, as a test, just to be sure, if nothing else.
I looked over at Helena, who was giving me a benevolent look even though I was sure she could see the attention Tish was giving me. I decided to let Tish have her way—even to fuck her as opportunity and capability arose. Helena certainly seemed as relieved last night as I was after the embarrassment had passed. Helena was the "star" of our marriage. In many ways, she fulfilled the magnet role in any group the same way her appreciably older artist half brother, Damien, did. She had chosen me. Seven years my senior, she had proposed, suggesting that we both could benefit from the camouflage. I had no idea what she meant at the time. I can't say even now that I know what she meant in relationship to herself, and I certainly only recently had an inkling how it might relate to me. But I can't say it had not been a beneficial—or even amiable—marriage so far. She was witty and brilliant and preoccupied with the writing of her deep women's novels. That left me more than enough space to be preoccupied with composing my music.
Whereas most married New York couples met over breakfast and dinner and cocktails between, we met at art openings, concerts, and book signings. That's where we had frequently met with Damien and Tish earlier in the spring and when somehow someone had suggested a summer together somewhere "different," and the rest of us had agreed.
Surely I hadn't suggested that.
"I must say this was a sterling idea of yours that we summer in South Carolina," the fifth occupant of the circle fairly barked, shattering the surface, meaningless chatter of the rest of us.
I looked up sharply at Benjamin Wangle, middle-aged and perpetually untidy and out of style. The rest of us were at the height of style. Wangle could afford not to be in style in New York circles. He was a book agent, and a powerful one at that. He could be anything he damn well pleased, including completely open about his proclivities. Lucky man.
He was looking directly at me. Was he suggesting that this conclave—here—had been my idea? Surely not.
"Yes, everything is perfect now that Adrian has his Petrof here and set up," Helena spoke up, saving me from responding to Wangle. "Adrian's summer is all in order now. Is it in proper tune, darling?" She leaned the bulk of her chest over the coffee table, flicked the ashes from her cigarette into a tray, and picked up her martini.
"Yes, thank god, dear," I answered. "It's a miracle, but it seems to have weathered the trip."
"Good. I know it's your lucky piano, your muse. I know you'll knock out glorious tunes by the dozens. You'll see that I was right to insist that you have your piano and no other."
I felt myself flare up. She'd always thought of my work as effortlessly "knocking out tunes by the dozens," as if doing so were a piece of cake in contrast to knocking out novels with long paragraphs and five-syllable words by the dozens was. I knew I wouldn't be "knocking out" tunes here. I had the piano, but I didn't have Charlie, my collaborator, my lyricist. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to knock out a tune again, whether here or in New York.
