Two weeks ago, after the memorial gathering with my friends from Columbia, I spent the night in Brooklyn at my friend’s apartment. In the morning Helene, her two kids, Dean, 9, and Paulina, 6, and I drove out to the North Fork of Long Island. Paulina was shy, and very much a girl, but Dean was all boy, and we spent a big part of the drive east discussing horror and disaster movies. We got on the subject because he mentioned wanting to see 2012, Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming apocalypse. (I guess he never runs out of floods and fires and landslides.) Dean wanted to know the plots of as many of the movies I could remember, and when I launched into the Alien series we were set for the better half of the two-hour drive. (Paulina was watching a video...and it wasn't Alien.)
The house Helene and her husband rent was on Peter’s Neck, which juts out between Orient Harbor and Gids Bay. The heat and humidity were ferocious, and so were the mosquitoes. It was the first time all year I couldn’t be outside for long without drenching myself in Off! Read, Jenny, and Lake Blinn, friends from Keene, New Hampshire (Read is also a Columbia alum) were waiting for us. We all tumbled out of the car and got settled with some fried chicken and chips. Another friend from CU, Laura, showed up with her two kids, Declan, 9, and Jaden Li, 5, and soon, doused with bug repellent, all the kids were chasing fiddler crabs through the tidal shallows and grasses. Jodi and her partner Jocelyn showed up, and we got ready to head to the beach. The heat was still intense, so the water was cold and refreshing. We splashed around for a while and explored some of the rocks. The others arrived with Boogie boards and umbrellas and towels. We spent a long while in the water, and I was in the process of dragging Lake around on the Boogie board, when suddenly both of us jumped. “Ouch! Something bit me!” said Lake. “It’s a jellyfish,” I said. “I got stung too.” I’d never been stung by a jellyfish before. The sensation is like pins-and-needles, only coming from outside. Lake got out of the water, and between us someone remembered that peeing on a jellyfish sting relieves the pain. (I didn’t ask anyone to pee on my sting.) Eventually we went home and started cooking up linguine with clams (discovering that the secret is that you can never have too much sauce) along with an impromptu marinara for the kids. Read and his family had to start home for New Hampshire (they had to catch the 7 o’clock ferry to New London, CT), but the rest of us sat and ate and talked into the darkness. Eventually Jodi and Jocelyn had to leave, but the rest of us stayed the night.
The next day those of us who remained had a leisurely morning, and all remained fairly calm until the keys to the Volvo stationwagon got locked inside by yours truly. There was a moment’s panic until we figured out there was nothing to do but divide into two groups, one that stayed home and waited for AAA, another that went back to the beach and waited. The lunch and most of the towels were in the car’s rear compartment, so we had to wait for the roadside assistance to show up at the house, open the car, and then for Helene and her son to come with the food. I decided to take a long, penitential walk on the beach--actually, I just wanted a chance to explore, and Laura was watching the kids. By the time I returned, the others had arrived with the food.
The plan for the remainder of the day included ice cream at Nina’s in Orient Point. Helene extolled their root beer floats, and after a hot day at the beach, a delicious, peppery, vanilla-y, creamy, foamy root beer float sounded delicious. We were waiting for the kids to finish their treats, when a man about my age walked in with an older woman, who was wearing a tank top and shorts with a pair of raspberry-colored Ugg boots, which seemed odd considering that the temperature was in the low nineties. I noticed the boots, then noticed the man who was with her. I had that frisson you get only in the moment of recognizing someone famous, and thought, Well, I guess you can’t have a trip to New York…or the North Fork of Long Island…and not see a celebrity. The man and I nodded at each other--in this case, I felt sure that it was more gaydar than him knowing that I knew who he was, and also felt sure that Helene, who knows more about music than I do, recognized him, but was playing it cool like a true New Yorker. Only when we got out to the sidewalk did I say to Laura, “Did you see who that was? Rufus Wainwright!” “You’re kidding!” both women said. “I thought you saw him and were playing it cool…” I said to Helene. “I wondered why you were being so friendly with him,” said Laura, a twinkle in her eye.
Laura and kids headed back to Brooklyn within the hour, and I hung out with Helene and Dean and Paulina for one more day, enjoying the cool and the quiet and the marvelous beauty of Peter’s Neck. I watched the sun go down over the western end of Long Island, and told myself that the summer had come to an end. I returned to Buffalo reconnected with my friends from Columbia, ready for the new school year.
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