The Summer They Came: A Novel by Storandt William

Author:Storandt, William [Storandt, William]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781588360557
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-01-22T17:00:00+00:00

Wesley was getting nowhere with this conversation. For weeks, Walker and James, his best friends in Lyme, had been receding into a sulk of abandonment over his talk of Long Spit and the Ferryman House. He’d finally decided to take the bull by the horns, invite them for dinner, and talk it out. But it had turned into a tag-team event. Walker, an elegant retired banker, hammered away from the snob’s high ground, while James sneaked in disguised as a caring friend to deliver the sour-grape bombs.

“About a month after you move,” Walker was saying, “when you’ve walked down that tacky Front Street a couple of dozen times, and had all those ditzy airheads ignore you because you’re too ancient, you’ll be wondering what you could have been thinking of. It’s bad enough that it’s come down to you basically hiring your fun, when you should just act your age, stop trying to dress mutton up as lamb, kidding yourself that you’re still in the scene.… Honestly. But these guys you cajole into your bed with fancy meals are just as happy if that bed is in Lyme, thank you very much. Stick around here, you better, so in a few years—I hope it’s just a few—when you come to your senses and let go of it, you won’t be stuck in that no-account place, which by the way will probably keep getting tackier and tackier every year those boys work on it, if P-town is anything to go by.”

“I’m not paying for Jim,” Wesley replied in a wounded voice.

“Oh, that one,” James chimed in. “He’s another thing. Look, he likes you and you two have fun, but he is twenty years younger than you, cute, professional. If he moves east, he is going to be high on a few people’s lists. Not to be mean, but you two are not going to be riding into the sunset.”

Walker persisted. “Why you would want to, at a time when, for your own mental health, you should be trying to calm down—”

“Yeah, getting a hobby,” James put in, with a wry smile.

“Why you would think,” Walker continued, “that it makes sense to plant yourself in a brand-new ghetto where you’ll just be tormented by all these temptations.”

“That don’t even know you exist,” added James.

“I mean, spare yourself.” Walker pulled a shrimp from his paella, peeled it with a deft twirl, and popped it in his mouth. “And not just on the emotional front …” He licked his fingertips. “God knows we’re are as fickle as they come when it comes to our haunts, but if this so-called new gay scene is any more than a flash in the pan, you’ll be seeing all the old families putting all those drafty old shingle piles on the market at once, and you’ll be marooned with your white elephant in a glut of mansions that’ll take years to sell off.”

“Jeez, give it a rest, guys.” Wesley worked at keeping a smile on his face. “Can I help it if I prefer feeling alive? This town is like a mausoleum.

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