Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel by Hilary Thayer Hamann

Author:Hilary Thayer Hamann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Psychological, Alternative History, Coming of Age, Fiction
ISBN: 9781588369383
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

Montauk was the Vegas of my imagination, a dwarfish Vegas, with garish toylike motels and two-story arcades bright as airfields, and tourists in unscrupulous attire. Men in black socks played miniature golf at Puff ’n Putt with beet-skinned ladies in extra-large T-shirts, while teenagers secreted off to the muddy seclusion of paddleboats. Chesty guys from the boroughs named Sisto and Vic who ate three- and four-pound lobsters but never got a drop of lung on their shirts swatted at their kids’ heads, and checked me out through my sweater, while their wives bought miniature lighthouses and driftwood seagulls and boats inside bottles. Locals I never saw but read about in the paper grew pot in their gardens and kept arsenals in their basements, and celebrities hid like game in the cliffs. Steps away from the midget scrub pines of the village was the ocean. Not a tranquil ocean, like the lagoonish satin-lit backdrops of Florida or the Caribbean, but a northern one that coerced you into the confidence of its fury. When you swam at midnight in Montauk, you waived everything—you surrendered. Montauk was not pretty; it was something else entirely.

Sometimes we’d go to the Tattler, or to the Montauket for sunsets. The Dock was the place to get coffee after midnight, black or with Baileys. At the Dock, the tables would fill up with people Rourke knew from slow-pitch or the beach and occasionally with people I knew, like Lisa Tobias or Sam the Dominican waiter from the Lobster Roll, and his girlfriend, Lou, from the Surf Shop. The first time we went, Ray Trent and Mike Reynolds walked in, and they were surprised to see me. I introduced them to Rourke, and the three of them sat around until closing, talking about rugby, the start of the Olympic Games in Moscow, and whether or not Ali stood a chance against Holmes in Nevada in October. I left them alone, like leaving three toddlers in a room with toys, and when Rourke pushed back his chair that night to go home, I pushed back mine as well, kissing those guys goodbye. Rourke didn’t seem to mind them anymore, not like he had the day of the St. Patrick’s parade.

If Rob was in town, we would go to Gosman’s for dinner and wait for an outdoor table even if it took twice as long, because Rob didn’t come all the way from Jersey to sit indoors. “If I wanted to sit inside,” he’d snap at the hostess who’d make the obligatory inquiry: inside or out? “I coulda stayed in Jersey watchin’ Love Boat with my grandmother.”

From the cocktail patio near the docks, we would observe the eerie cortege of yachts slinking to berth after a day of lusty immoderation, the strings of spotlights on deck shining into the sable wax of water. You couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be those people on the yachts, with arrowhead jaws and matted hair and wrinkled whites, flesh alive with the stink of coconut oil and vodka.

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