Yesterday's News

fine at first, lots of parties and yachts and things. Mostly just things, though, acquisition of assets. You know what I mean?”
    “He bought things for investment, not enjoyment?”
    “Exactly. That’s exactly what he did. I was like that to him. An athletic young wife who would mature well, paying many dividends in the form of rousing sex and admiring glances at the club.”
    “Sounds kind of unfulfilling for you.”
    “‘Unfulfilling.’ How diplomatic. He was a domineering shit, is what he was. But that was okay, in a sense. I left a crummy job at a crummy paper to marry him, and I’m glad I got life in the fast lane out of my system.”
    “What led you to come up here?”
    Rendall poured herself a little more wine. “I went to college in Boston . Simmons.”
    “Fine school.”
    “Yeah. It was a good time to be in college, too. Cambodia semester my sophomore year. You remember that?”
    “I was a little older.”
    She smiled. “ ‘You carry the years lightly.’ ”
    “Is that a quote?”
    “I think so, but I have trouble remembering things like that. You... you went to Vietnam , right?”
    “Your sources are still batting a thousand.”
    “I... I don’t want to pry or anything, but I’m thinking of doing a series for the paper on vets today, not just the crack-ups, but a cross section. Could I call you about it?”
    I reached for the bottle. “Okay if I say no?”
    “Sure, sure.”
    There was an awkward silence. I said, “So why Nasharbor?”
    “Huh?”
    “Simmons explains your coming back this way, but why Nasharbor in particular?”
    “Oh, that’s easy. After the divorce, I needed a change of scenery. I’d had it with the City. New York was becoming what it wasn’t. I wanted to leave before I became what it is now.”
    “Which is?”
    “All hype and money. I know that sounds pretty cliched, but I really could see it in just the four years I put in down there. Everybody was into things they couldn’t afford.”
    I swung my head around the boat. “This isn’t what I’d call the brink of survival.”
    Liz shook her head. “No, no. I didn’t think you understood me. I don’t mean they couldn’t afford things in the cash-and-carry sense. It was more that everybody was trying to be something they weren’t, hyping the person next to them in every encounter. No straight talk, no real people.”
    “And Nasharbor’s real.”
    “You bet it is.” She got a look in her eye, a lot like Bruce Fetch extolling redevelopment. “Here we’ve got every problem and every advantage that real people do. The old, the sick, the poor. The ones trying to help them or exploit them. People care about the real lives they lead, not some image of life they lifted from TV. It’s like the difference between a movie made in the forties and one made today, you know?”
    “James Stewart and June Allyson are real, Sean Penn and Madonna aren’t.”
    She pouted. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
    “Almost, but not quite. Sorry.”
    “You’re forgiven. Help me clear the table?”
    We shuttled the dirty dishes to the galley. Liz piled them into a dishwasher and said, “You ready for dessert, or would you rather wait?”
    “How about if you show me what you found at the paper first?”
    “Sure. Here...” She reached into a cabinet, came out with some Benedictine and Brandy. “Take the B & B and two glasses down into the living room. I’ve got the file in my study.”
    I carried the bottle and the small bell glasses down the stairs, setting them on the coffee table and myself on a rattan chair. I rocked back, finding it a little tippy. Liz appeared shortly, untying the string on an accordion file and withdrawing a sheaf of newspapers and a reporter’s spiral notebook. “It looks like more than it is, I’m afraid.”
    She sat on a sectional piece next to me. “Why don’t you just follow along on the notes from the police incident, then you can read Jane’s articles on Coyne and Dykestra while I get dessert?”
    “Okay.”
    Rendall started through the notebook, stopped, then turned one more sheet. “Here we go.” She ran her finger down the page. “Date of death: July 12, 1971. A little farther back than you thought. Decedent’s name: Meller, Dwight. Age: eighteen.”
    “Who was the reporter?”
    “C. E. Griffin.”
    “You know this Griffin ?”
    “Never heard the name before. Definitely not there now, though.”
    “How about the paper’s employment records?”
    “I