Trolls in the Hamptons Read Online Free PDF Page B

years younger than me, and tattling to her mother and my mother about every bad thing I did. I never figured out how she knew, except for snooping. Susan’s older now. Besides, she has cancer. The least I can do is give her a place to sleep and a friend at her side when she comes for treatments and stuff.”
    â€œSo you let her stay here because you feel sorry for her?”
    â€œI ask her to stay because she is family. There is no question of her taking the bus back to the Hamptons when she’s sick or tired.”
    â€œAnd I can’t see you when she’s here?”
    â€œWell, I am not about to be making love with her sleeping in the next room over. Or go out and leave her alone when she might need help. I thought I’d take her to a museum, if she feels up to it, or the park.”
    â€œAnd I am not invited.” That was a statement, not a question, so I did not have to answer.
    â€œWell, call me when your new best friend leaves and you have time for me.”
    I figured we both knew that wouldn’t be for a long while.

CHAPTER 5

    I WAS OKAY WITH LOCKING THE door behind Arlen. Both ways. I guess Arlen was okay with it, too, because he didn’t call to talk later, or the next day, either. I didn’t call him, not even when my cousin left a message that she wouldn’t be coming into the city until Sunday evening. There was a bachelorette party Susan wanted to go to at home in Paumanok Harbor, out at the edge of Long Island’s South Fork. I was glad she felt well enough to go.
    Mom was glad when I told her about Arlen.
    â€œHe was never good enough for you anyway. Once a pig, always a pig.”
    This came from my mother who trained dogs and sometimes fostered a couple of shelter animals. Ever since leaving my father and Manhattan, where no dogs are permitted in the apartment, her house at the beach was always full of dog hair and sand. One blot on the scorecard of my sink and Arlen was Attila the Hairy, an unworthy warthog.
    But maybe I was judging Mom too harshly, because she went on, “And there was no smile in your voice when you talked about him, no sighs or secret whispers when I saw you together.”
    I was touched she noticed, but said, “Mom, I’m not in high school, giggling in study hall.”
    â€œYou never seemed excited to be with him.”
    How could I be when I was waiting for my mother to go for his jugular? She insisted on being the dominant member of her own pack. That’s hard enough for me to take, much less for a man who did not care for dogs. Which was another black mark against him in Mom’s book. And mine, now that I thought about it. I’d have a dog in a minute, if I were allowed.
    Anyway, my mother had gone on to her favorite topic, after the four-footed variety. “Now maybe you’ll meet someone who’ll push you out of your comfortable niche, who’ll make your head spin.”
    I already had, but I don’t think Mom meant a troll. To stop her before she could explain how it was my duty to keep the entire race from extinction, I told her, “Actually I met a nice guy this afternoon. A cop.”
    â€œA cop? Oh, that mess in the street.”
    â€œYes. He came to ask me if I saw anything, and he was a real charmer.”
    I thought I heard Mom lick her chops like Georgie, a huge Bernese mountain dog she sometimes boarded. Before she started to drool, I said, “He’s black. African-American.”
    Now I thought she said, “Jesusmaryandjoseph,” but we’re not remotely Catholic. Then she rallied, good liberal that she is. “Well, it’s early days. And he must be a nice man or you wouldn’t have mentioned it. Unless you want to ruin my day.”
    â€œNo, Mom. He just showed me what I was missing.”
    â€œWell, good for him. And for you.”
    â€œYeah, I think so.” Then I decided to see just how open-minded my opinionated mother was. I knew her liberal