Black Swan Read online

  We heard a little ding. It was the email program telling us Burton had written back. He wrote that the plane he'd chartered would be delivering the goods the next morning, in time to get back to Maine before the storm hit.

  "Put up more vodka. You'll be pinned to the dock for a few days," he wrote, signing off.

  Gwyneth brought us our coffee orders.

  "Your friend told me you're staying at the Swan," she said.

  "At one of their docks."

  "They have the only rentable rooms on the whole island," she said.

  "Get out of here," said Amanda, not looking up from the screen.

  "I'm surprised the town didn't buy the place so they could shut it down," said Gwyneth. "Not the worst thing. I've got a sleeping porch with a fold-out cot. I could corner the market. What happened to the nose?" she asked me.

  "Rene Ruiz, the Filipino Phantom, took advantage of a moment's distraction and busted it with a right jab."

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  "You could have that straightened out."

  "Not without losing a daily reminder to pay attention, especially in a boxing match," I said.

  "Those Swissies who bought the Swan, what do you think?" she asked.

  "They'll try to make a success of the place," said Amanda, rescuing me from having to dodge the question. "What do you think?"

  "I thought they'd already thrown in the towel and you two were the next owners."

  "Really," said Amanda.

  "Are you?"

  "No," said Amanda. "We want what everyone else wants of us. To leave here as soon as possible."

  "Not me," said Gwyneth. "You can stay forever far's I'm concerned. Improve the gene pool. Though you're a little old for that. I'm forty-two. Tell me I don't look a day older than seventy-five. What's your position on cannabis? Stuff grows like Topsy on the island."

  "We're all set, but thanks," said Amanda, vaguely, her attention still thoroughly absorbed by what she had on her screen.

  I didn't know much about the Internet, not owning a computer or committing much time to learning the ins and outs. What little I did know I'd learned from Jackie Swaitkowski, my lawyer friend, who like Amanda, seemed to have a remarkable facility with the thing. I realized much of the world's information was now literally at your fingertips, an alluring concept. Maybe after I finished all the books at the Southampton Library I'd give it a shot.

  "Subversive Technologies, headquartered in Weston, Massachusetts and developers of the software N-Spock, has a market capitalization of one point five billion dollars. Golly," said Amanda, reading off her screen. "That should help cover the Swan's new paint job."

  "And Fey sold out?" I asked.

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  She scrolled down the page. "Apparently. The other cofounder, CEO and CFO Myron Sanderfreud, now holds the controlling shares, followed by Derrick Hammon, formerly head of sales and marketing, who succeeded Fey as Chief Technology Officer. He's in charge of the next big release, N-Spock 5.0, projected for the 1 Q next year."

  "What's a Q?" asked Gwyneth.

  "Quarter," I told her. "We're now in the 4 Q of this year—October, November, December."

  "N-Spock is the dominant application for massive analytical processing, serving notably scientific research, securities trading and industrial R&D," read Amanda off her screen. "Though in recent years a number of competitors have eroded this position with applications that take better advantage of Next Gen processors and cloud computing. Whatever the hell that means."

  "The march of progress is catching up to them," I said. "Happens to everybody."

  "It's more drag race than march," said Amanda.

  "I wouldn't feel too bad for them. Dominant share is still dominant share, and it'll be years before people are willing to chuck their proven N-Spock platforms for the flavor of the month."

  "Throwing in the towel on the Swan will not be a financial decision," said Amanda. "The Feys are crazy rich."

  "They're in the right place," I said.

  Gwyneth scoffed.

  "New money means nothing here, folks. No matter how much you have."

  "According to the corporate press release, Fey simply announced his retirement, apparently in keeping with a succession plan, and that was that," said Amanda. "There's not much else on Subversive that makes any sense to me. If you want to savor the technical enhancements to N-Spock 5.0, I'll go do a little shopping."

  "We have some nice things on sale," said Gwyneth.

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  I was actually tempted, but since the N-Spock of my day was version 2.5, I didn't think I'd understand the technical specs any better than Amanda. So we left after she bought a book on divination strategies from the I Ching that Gwyneth insisted was the only reliable way to keep track of the impending storm.

  "A lot more dependable than the official weather report," she said.

  We took another circuitous route back to the Swan, stopping along the way at the general store to take Burton's advice and stock up on essentials, like breakfast food, batteries, water, paper towels, ice and Absolut. There was no sign of Anderson Track, the surly gas station manager, and made it all the way back with no further incident.

  In the small parking area to the right of the Swan a silver Lexus was parked next to Derrick's Town Car. It had a Massachusetts vanity plate that read SUBVERTECH.

  "What is this, the company party?" said Amanda.

  We walked around the hotel and out onto the docks. I unclipped Eddie and he made a dash for the boat, considered for a moment leaping up on the deck, then thought better of it. He looked back at us and barked.

  "Keep your fur on."

  We spent the next several hours securing the boat. I stripped off the sails and stowed anything that could blow off in the wind. Being a brand new boat, there was a minimum of gear hanging off the railings that tends to accumulate over time. Still, I went around with a screwdriver and pair of pliers and a box full of cotter pins and rings, tightening anything remotely suspect.

  I used bungee cords to pull clanging halyard fittings away from the pristine white mast and cleated off the running rigging. I hoisted the dinghy's motor up and into a deep lazarette, then pulled the dinghy itself onto the dock where I deflated and folded it, then stowed it with the motor.

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  It took a while to retie the lines, doubling up and estimating the necessary slack. I looked with envy across the inlet at the yacht club's floating docks, which would have made so much fiddling unnecessary, inured as they were against the rise and fall of the tides.

  Amanda stowed and re-secured all the provisions, put fresh batteries in the lanterns and flashlights, and filled the refrigerator with ice against the possible loss of shore power. The boat's main battery banks were topped off— good for a few days—and we could always start the engine if needed. Not being at sea, we had less concern about flying objects below, and it would be about twenty-four hours before the worst of the storm was scheduled to hit, but overpreparation was never a bad idea in my mind. The mind of an engineer. Frequently disdained and usually blamed the first time anything goes wrong.

  "Now what, Cap'?" asked Amanda when I went below at the end of the afternoon.

  "We eat, drink and rot in the cockpit. What else?"

  It was after dark and in between uncounted rounds of cocktails and wine when a tall, broad-beamed guy with an unruly head of long curly hair and a skinny white-haired woman half his size strolled down the center dock toward our boat.

  They paused to admire the Carpe Mañana, then spotted Eddie trotting down the deck, and subsequently Amanda and me in the cockpit.

  "Hello," I said.

  They walked down our dock, with Eddie following along on the boat.

  "We didn't see you there," said the man.

  "We're keeping a low profile," I said.

  "Christian said he had unexpected guests in the marina."

  "That's us. Sam and Amanda. And Eddie. He's the dog."

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  "Grace and Myron Sanderfreud," said the woman. "We're also unexpected."

  Myron smiled down at her.

  "Grace would rather be home winterizing her garden, but I can't do without her company. I uprooted her to come racing down here. Is this a pleasure cruise or impending voyage?"

  "Delivery. Broke a steering cable. We're only here till the parts come, then we're on our way to Long Island. To winterize her."

  "She has a beautiful sheer," said Myron, looking down the boat's hull. "We're on a Hinckley 59. When I can get away, which isn't often."

  "Never," said Grace.

  "We did when we were younger."

  "And smarter."

  "Care for some wine and Italian breadsticks?" asked Amanda.

  Myron looked interested, but looked down at Grace for the go-ahead.

  "If you want," she said. "It is a pretty boat," she added to Amanda, so we wouldn't think her reluctance was any fault of ours.

  "How do you feel about dogs?" I asked.

  "We love dogs," said Myron.

  He stood behind his wife and grabbed her below the armpits. Her look of alarm turned to embarrassment as he lifted her up and onto the deck, where I helped her through the gate in the lifelines and down into the cockpit. She used a hold on Eddie's scruff to balance herself. Myron followed on his own, noticeably tipping the boat with his sizeable bulk.

  "This is why I married her," he said. "She came in a handy, easy-to-carry package."

  "For Lord's sake," said Grace, though not without a trace of good humor.

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  Amanda took care of her wine and I went below to rustle up a beer for Myron. I could hear the click and scratch of Eddie's claws on the deck as he bestowed on our guests the dubious pleasure of a hearty welcome.

  It was hard to stick to small talk when both Amanda and I were itching with curiosity, though the Sanderfreuds made it easier by engaging in the kind of boat-talk that can absorb sailors for endless hours. Despite Grace's initial carping, they'd racked up considerable experience cruising the Eastern coast and more exotic seas like the Greek and Polynesian archipelagos. Though not as much recently.

  "Why is it the more successful you are, the harder you have to work?" asked Grace, nearly unsettling the social equability we'd just established.

  Myron seemed either annoyed or defensive, or both.

  "Work ebbs and flows," he said. "We're just in flow-mode at the moment."

  "He's talking about how busy he is. Not how much money he's making."

  Myron's good-humored composure lost its hold on his face.

  "I don't think these folks are interested in that sort of talk," he said, still indulgent, but terse.

  Grace looked chastened.

  "I'm sorry," she said, "you're right. It's just that I worry about him."

  "She thinks software is a young man's game. She's right," he added, the avuncularity back in place. "I can still work the twelve-hour days, but the stress doesn't get any easier. How about you guys. Ebbing or flowing?"

  I pictured Amanda in dust-covered T-shirt and jeans, stalking around one of her work sites with a worried subcontractor in tow, pointing out shortcomings and praising achievement in equal measure. Later that day, she'd be sweeping floors, salvaging useable materials and writing

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  instructions on the open studs and walls with a black Sharpie. With her money, none of this was strictly necessary, but she'd been a regular girl for most of her life, and only felt like herself when under life's load, however manufactured.

  I didn't have her wealth, but shared her point of view. I had to work to pay the bills, but I would have done so anyway, having come to the realization that work was what kept you connected to the world in ways that were impossible for the leisure-prone, and disenfranchised, alike.

  "We go with the flow," said Amanda, the question both answered and ambiguous. Myron seemed to enjoy that.

  "We should let you people get back to work," he said. "It looks arduous."

  They disembarked using the same procedure, in reverse. Grace seemed more receptive to the idea, now that she had some warning. Some pleasantries concluded with Myron inviting us to visit them the following evening for cocktails. Make it a storm party.

  "We'll stay by the windows so you can keep an eye on the Mañana," he said.

  Now that we'd established a history of being invited to Christian Fey's hotel by people other than Christian Fey, I told him to expect us.

  "As long as we can bring the dog."

  "Better yet."

  We watched the two morphological opposites walk back down the center dock and disappear into the hotel. We sat in the quiet of the night, or what I thought was quiet.

  "You're making those sounds," she said.

  "What sounds?"

  "The ones you make when something's bothering you but you don't want to talk about it."

  "I'll stop."

  "Just tell me what you're thinking."

  "Nothing," I said. "It's none of my business."

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  "Those are two different thoughts," she said.

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  I got her off the topic by plying her with more wine and Italian breadsticks, and tales of adventure on the high seas, or low seas, if that's how you'd describe the beloved and capricious Little Peconic Bay, into which thrust Oak Point, where our houses stood side by side at the water's edge. It's where I'd learned to sail—on little boats worth less than the box of Eddie's dog food stowed under the galley sink. Leaky clinker-built dories and skiffs usually salvaged out of the marshland and powered by sails also scrounged, this time from the dumpster behind the sail loft in Sag Harbor, modified to fit their reduced circumstances. Luckily, the principles behind these makeshift craft and boats like Myron Sanderfreud's million-dollar Hinckley were essentially the same. They all had sails, keel, rudder and the rigging needed to control it all, to the extent nature allowed anything to be controlled.

  Sailing is both an engineer's nightmare and dream. The dream part is the endless potential for tiny mechanical variations to dictate the success of the enterprise. That's the nightmare as well. Though less so for me, an engineer as besotted with the beauty of random circumstance as with the elegance of flawless precision.

  And an engineer whose attention was often seized by happenstance falling somewhere uneasily in between.

  chapter

  6

  T he next morning's dilemma was determining when the plane was going to land and how to get there and back again with the boat parts. My reluctance to bother the Feys with additional logistics meant we'd have to take the more difficult, yet less socially awkward approach of getting up early and walking with Eddie to the airport, a solid five miles away, with hopes of discovering a better course along the way.

  The airport was deep within the confines of the Country Club, the private reserve that made up three quarters of the island. The single road that accessed the club had a gate and a stern guy in a uniform during the season, roughly Memorial Day to Labor Day. During other times, the territory was patrolled by private security teams who were legendary among the transient sailors who anchored out in West Harbor, though none of us had ever seen one.

  The day was grey and windy, the high-contrast clarity of the prior day's colors replaced by a soft fuzz, the air now thick with moisture and portent.

  None of which dampened Eddie's mood, or enthusiasm for snuffling under leaf piles and marking every available object.

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  I took us on a route that passed by Gwyneth Jones' emporium of the peculiar. We were rewarded by the sight of her in a burgundy velour sweatsuit doing stretching exercises on her front lawn. The bulldog and Eddie sniffed at each other through the fence slats.

  "Hale to thee," she said, when she saw us looking over the morning glory-enveloped white picket fence.

  "You're probably not open ye
t," said Amanda.