The Summer We Read Gatsby

Author:Danielle Ganek [Danielle Ganek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780670021789
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2010-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

9

It was a scene straight out of Hitchcock, the wide sky filled with black birds, hovering above us like crows over a carcass. The birds were mostly of the Sikorsky variety, enormous helicopters flown by not one but two pilots, seating six or eight passengers, and they waited their turn to land on a tiny square patch of asphalt with a white painted H in the center, perched right up against the edge of Shinnecock Bay.

The small square hardly seemed big enough for the black chopper that landed in a froth of whitecaps and wind. As we watched, supposedly taking a break from a casual afternoon ride on ancient high-handled and rusted bicycles we’d found in Lydia’s garage, one of the pilots came around and opened the passenger door. We weren’t the only gawkers. The helipad on a Friday afternoon appeared to attract an audience. There were four or five cars of spectators in the parking lot and more than a few cyclists and walkers and older women with strollers watching the choppers maneuver into a landing. A black Mercedes with tinted windows rolled forward to pick up a dapper bald gentleman in a blue blazer emerging from the helicopter with a vase containing a fresh white flower arrangement in his hands and an attaché over his shoulder.

Behind him was an elegant woman in white holding a brown-paper-wrapped parcel under one arm and a purse on the other. She wore a straw hat she had to hold awkwardly to her head as she hurried to the waiting car, while the little man in a suit and a red tie who’d picked them up passed her to unload the rest of their things. The rest of their things included bags of groceries, a big red cooler, garment bags, golf clubs, endless small shopping bags, and four enormous matching suitcases that must have been heavy, for the little man could hardly drag them. They were the Hamptons version of the Beverly Hillbillies, and it took a very long time for them to get all their belongings loaded into the car. You could almost hear the people in the sky cursing down at them.

“Now that?” Peck shouted at me over the whir of the helicopter as she gestured toward the people overstaying their welcome on the helipad. “That’s bad manners.”

Finally the parade of weekend necessities was over and that bird was free to soar back up, allowing another one to buzz down. The landing looked terribly precarious, the copter tipping from side to side before touching down in a rush of wind and noise and rippling waves. This one took less time to unload, spilling out four golfers and their bags of clubs, each with one small overnight bag. These four didn’t have a ride, a fact that seemed to incense each of them, and they stood in the middle of the parking lot with the bags all around them, all four of them in the same pose, clutching one ear and screaming into the cell phones that were smacked up against the other.

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