By Connor MacInnis
“45 years of marriage and you’re still just as bad a Canasta partner as the day I met you.” Janet Cesario shook out her wrist, her Sri Lankan bangle bracelets playing like a tambourine in a Greek restaurant when the waiter encourages you to start smashing plates. “Not worth the carpal tunnel.” The rusting legs of her camping chair squealed as Janet sat up to comb the cabin of the Hunky Dory for another can of ginger ale, which she would pour in a red Solo cup and top with a maraschino cherry. Seeing her husband’s shaky pointer finger raise through the cabin window out to the deck, Janet cut in. “Izzy, you can get another beer yourself. I’m putting you in a corner for getting us fined on that last meld.” Her eyes tracked through the other pane, to her friends. “Louie, Bunny, would you two like anything?” Louie and Bunny weren’t married, and maybe that’s what made them such a formidable team. Louie’s wife Nancy wasn’t much of a cards person, preferring the odd game of Words with Friends on her iPhone 4s to whatever the Cesarios cooked up on the bait-stained filet table of their boat. And as for Bunny, who was very much a cards person, partners didn’t come in the form of husbands. At 72, Bunny was unmarried, and it seemed it would remain that way. It was either Solitaire or Louie for cards, and she chose Louie every time. Nancy would often joke that Bunny was Louie’s card wife, and she was just the side chick stuck making his Sunday sauce. “How very sportsmanlike of you, Janet.” Bunny put a finger to her chin, pretending to weigh her options. “I’ll take a Chardonnay, extra ice.” Janet begrudgingly took out the bag of ice and followed through with Bunny’s demands, grimacing at the clicking and popping of wine on the rocks as if the sound itself was an affront to some personal religion. Janet delivered the drink into Bunny’s cupholder and took a seat. “Gorgeous ratio.” Bunny knew she was in for more water than Chardonnay with every sip, but the fleeting chill of the first would always be worth that exchange. Bunny ruffled her honey-blonde coif and pulled a visor from her tote to keep the late afternoon sun from tipping her over into headache territory. The heat didn’t make it out this far east often, but it seemed to Bunny that this season was different. In windless Manhattan, summertime doldrums churned heat so stale and wet you could cut it from the air with a butter knife and spread it on your morning toast. But never Montauk. Once, on a drive back from her niece’s piano recital in late July, Bunny watched her car’s temperature reading go from 89 to 67. Just crossing the Triboro Bridge into Queens had relieved four degrees, but the real magic happened much closer in. The Napeague Stretch, the air conditioning unit between Montauk and nearby Amagansett, clearly needed repairs. Bunny took a second sip from her Chardonnay, whose oak had turned pale and acrid on her palate, mingling with bagged ice. Still, she’d done the hedonistic calculus enough times to know that it was always worth it on a hot day. “So my daughter and the kids are in for the holiday,” a beerless Izzy started. “And you’ll never believe the list she gives my wife when she gets here.” “Oh Iz, knock it off.” Janet, who’d probably heard his retelling twice since Friday, feigned annoyance, but her grin gave her away. “Janet, you tell them then.” Janet gladly picked up where Izzy had left off. “First entry,” Janet paused for dramatic effect. “Cashew milk.” Janet said the word ‘cashew’ like a fourth grader practicing for a vocab test—convinced of the word’s pointlessness but forced to confront its existence by circumstances out of her control. “Cashew milk,” Izzy repeated for added effect, ‘cash’ and ‘ew’ drawing syllabically farther apart from one another until there were almost three. Bunny had always been taught that the devil has enough advocates, but in this crowd, she felt responsible for keeping hyperbole in check. “Your point?” Janet and Izzy looked almost insulted at feeling like they owed an explanation. “Bunny,” Janet started in. “Have you been to the IGA? I can barely justify buying lactose-free so Izzy doesn’t shit his pants at breakfast, but cashew? No way.” The Cesarios, like much of Bunny’s ‘way-back’ Montauk crew, were comfortable but made a point to set off their humble tastes. A different stock than the new money Hamptons folk and their nut milks. In their own self-mythology, Bunny’s friends were the last of a dying breed of Long Islanders who made their small fortunes in trash-hauling and carpentry, selling scrap metal and coke bottles before the paradigm of cryptocurrency and NFTs. Though Bunny could commiserate with them if she let herself, it was fun to poke holes in their rigid ideology. Bunny twisted the knife. “How much extra would cashew set you back then? If you’re already buying specialty milk. . .” She lingered on specialty with malice. At this, Louie was inconsolable. Nancy could be heard laughing from inside the boat cabin. The guys made it a point to emphasize Izzy’s lactose intolerance, like choosing to buy Lactaid was some conscious lifestyle choice he had wrestled with and not because he would, in fact, shit his pants otherwise. “It’s never been about the cost.” Izzy was red in the face. “It’s just the damned principle of it!” “I mean, even almond I’ve heard of before.” Janet chimed in support of her husband, swigging from her half-baked, grenadineless Shirley Temple. “And at least then she was letting me buy from a grocery store and not from some tutu at the farmer’s market.” Izzy started up again. “I tried to buy some jelly, you know, for bagels in the morning.” Izzy readjusted in his chair, placing his elbows on his knees and craning his neck forward. “So I pick up the good shit. Smucker’s grape.” First mistake. Bunny washed down her opinion with a gulp of Chardonnay before it could escape her. “You’d have died if you saw her face Bunny. When Izzy took the jar out the fridge it was like we’d brought up abortion at Thanksgiving.” Janet rolled her white capris a notch higher to accommodate for sweat. “All for what, added corn syrup? Last I checked we eat corn on the cob all summer long.” “Leo, her youngest, he’s got some of his gramps in him, though.” Izzy laughed his way into a rolling cough, his only trophy from a 50-year smoking career that, to Janet’s aggravation, left his skin shockingly unmarred by wrinkles. “Caught him two-thirds down the Smucker's jar while his mom and dad were out for the afternoon. Going at it with a fuckin’ fork of all things.” Janet stuck her bottom lip out with pity for her grandson. “I mean, the desperation! Poor kid was digging around my purse yesterday . . . I didn’t know until I saw the crumbs, but he’d dredged up a packet of Lorna Doone’s I got from a vending machine at the DMV. And I mean months ago! Didn’t make a difference that half of them were cracked, they were down the hatch within a minute. Two, tops.” “Young one’s all her mom though,” Izzy cut back in. “You mean to tell me that Ava, a five-year-old, doesn’t ‘do’ refined sugar?” Bunny teased Izzy for his sudden self-seriousness. "It’s Ava now, remember Bunny?” Janet made her ‘A’ into a drawn-out ‘Ahh,’ as if practicing for her daughter. Trying, but failing, not to roll her eyes reflexively. After four years of using what they’d named ‘the American A,’ Pierre, the Cesarios’ son-in-law, had thought it sounded more French this way. Bunny never had the full story on the pronunciation switch, but assumed it might be cultural. “Pierre’s family is from France though, no?” “North Jersey.” Worth a shot. Bunny raised her glass in a toast and stood from her camping chair. “Anyone want some tots? I’m gonna run up the dock to Dave’s. God-willing, he plans to open for dinner.” Dave’s Dockside, a greasy spoon with the loosest hours Bunny has ever known in a full-service restaurant, was the exclusive caterer to any event on the Hunky Dory. On a rainy day, the doors could be closed until dinner service. At the first signs of life in the marina, Dave Campanelli would call a squad of line cooks to defrost seafood en masse in bowls of lukewarm water. At the mention of food, Nancy stumbled onto the deck, made unsteady in her flip-flops by a rogue wave jostling the boat. “I’ll take a chicken salad wrap. Louie?” Louie, whose food preferences aligned with the in-patient offerings at a hospital, was known to order the least appropriate dish for any given setting. “Uh . . . I’ll take the chili.” Naturally, thought a chuckling Bunny. “Two packets of oyster crackers,” Louie spoke with an unreciprocated seriousness, holding his pointer and middle fingers up. Someone walking by on the dock might have mistaken it for a peace sign. “Fine, but you’ll have to cover delivery if Dave has to place a takeout order from Southampton General.” Bunny set her straw hat on the chair to mark her territory and leaped nimbly over the chasm between the boat stairs and the docks. Over the creak of rotting planks, Bunny heard Nancy call out. “Oh and Bunny. . .” Nancy grinned, the late afternoon sun glinting off her Croakies. “Tell Davie I’m going somewhere else next time if he shafts me on my pickle again.” But both of them knew there was nowhere else they would go, and—pickle or not— she would take her chicken exactly salad how it was served: $8.99, overfilled, and gloriously mayonnaisey. At the bar, Dave’s right-hand man Kenny rang up orders for two Hofstra University girls a half-hour too early for the 2-for-1 sangria special. “I always make an exception for pretty ladies,” Kenny said with a smarmy wink before clearing a shelf of forehead sweat with a dishrag. The giggling girl on the right, hair pulled into a low and sloppy bun, shifted a spaghetti strap and pulled a sandy ten from her bra. Bunny hunched over the splintering bar and wagged her finger, but Kenny hadn’t yet noticed her. He was busy pouring from the pitcher of ‘Sangria,’ which, after a boozed-up admission from Dave himself, Bunny knew to be an unholy potion of boxed Zinfandel cut 50/50 with Orange Fanta and tap water. “Bunny!” Kenny said her name with surprise and delight, as if in complete denial of her being here an unfailing three times per week for card games. All within the same one-hour window no less. “What can I do you for?” Bunny relayed Nancy and Louie’s orders, making mention of the pickle, but especially of the two packages of oyster crackers. “And sweet potato tots for me.” “Christ, a chili?” Kenny scribbled a perfectly unintelligible sequence of dots and lines across a notepad, something like Morse code. “How long does he have? It may need a few to defrost.” “Make that a clam chowder,” Bunny course-corrected. In one continuous motion, Kenny made change on the Hofstra girl’s ten, poured an ice water for Bunny, and yelled the order into the kitchen. Kenny wasn’t supposed to be bartending at 32. Seven years ago, fresh out of Columbia Law, Kenny took summer shifts at Dave’s to chip away at loan debt while studying for the New York Bar exam, but he passed a different kind of bar in the end. After one too many 400-dollar nights, he’d lost all desire to join a firm. By 27, Kenny was sufficiently estranged from his parents, who viewed his debut in bartending as the undoing of their life’s work. Nonetheless, he’d emerged debt-free from seven years of postsecondary education all in three summers of work. ‘I can take it whenever,’ a passing reference to the bar exam, became Kenny’s adopted mantra. Dave had caused somewhat of a mutiny, rallying his barbacks to write it out on a whiteboard in the kitchen. They kept a summer-long tally, completely unknown to Kenny, making predictions about how often he would say it that week, and placing under/over bets accordingly. The Hofstra girls, bored watching Phil Mickelson try to chop a golf ball from eight different vantages, called out for Kenny to switch the bar TV to something more lively. Two fellow geriatrics in a corner booth hollered out as the channel changed in the middle of a drive. A Judge Judy rerun, the last half hour of Dirty Dancing 3, and a Cash Cab episode were the first three flicks up from the Golf Channel. The girl on the left took out her claw clip and yawned, letting frizzy coils of ombre hair roll down her neck. “I mean it is 4:30 on a Saturday. The John Deere Classic might be the best digs.” Kenny blushed and apologized as the options got bleaker and the girls less interested. Any higher and we’ll be into porn, Bunny thought. Or worse, the music channels. Kenny reset the cable back to Local News 12, arguably the most inoffensive option, and the girl on the left flashed a resigned thumbs-up. On the screen, a stuffy weatherman gave his spiel about the heatwave. Up next: tracking relief from Long Island heat. More record-topping temps on the way after tomorrow’s storms?, the risks of leaving furry friends in the car, and the best ways to treat that nagging sunburn ... after a short break. A few minutes passed wherein Kenny exhausted all his knowledge of herb gardening and Bunny feigned interest in his online mixologist certification. When he was needed most, Dave came out of the kitchen with a bag of takeout containers, a cheeky pair of bunny ears Sharpied to the outside. “The Cesarios kick you off their boat yet?” Dave teased, voice thick with tobacco. “Or did they manage to win a round for once?” Bunny took the bag from Dave’s nubby hands, more mitts than flesh in their disproportionate size, and inspected for the extra packet of oyster crackers. “What do you think?” She grinned. “You and I both know that has more to do with Izzy than Janet, though. Poor girl doesn’t have a fighting chance with him as a partner.” “Always been a shitshow, that one. Me and the guys wouldn’t let him play a single slot at his bachelor’s party when we took him to the Mohegan Sun. Unlucky bastard . . .” Dave erupted in a spat of cough-laughs before a bombshell blonde on News 12 stole his attention from behind Bunny’s shoulder. “So what important business were you up to earlier today when I got munchy?” Bunny prodded. “How dare you for not being open any time I get a salt craving.” She saw that her words were falling on deaf ears. “You would have killed it at lunch. You know, three separate couples asked me where they could get a margarita. Seriously. You lost some good business. Heat sells.” Dave stood transfixed by the screen behind her. “Did I lose you to a pair of perky tits or is the heatwave that interesting?” Bunny tried again. “Hm, where were you?” More silence. “Uh, Davie.” “Funeral.” “Shit, Dave!” Bunny’s grip loosened on the takeout and she almost wet her shoe with Louie’s clam chowder. She almost moved in to embrace him, but something changed in Dave’s steely pupils that made her ears prick up to the newscast behind her. “Hold up one sec, Bun.” Dave staved off more questions. His Adam’s apple caught like a piece of unchewed steak at the bottom of his larynx. Bunny heard before she saw. Just breaking out of Montauk, where detectives have been deployed from up-island: the body of a man found dead at the bottom of a bluff has just been identified by his wife as a ‘Dirk Folegrinn,’ age 63. While we have little information to report at this time on how the tragedy occurred, our thoughts are with the Folegrinn family as we await further details. “At a funeral,” Dave repeated his answer from before, eyes glazing over like stale donuts. “With Dirk.”
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