Quick wit that I am, I pulled a gasoline receipt from my pocket and pretended to study it as I drove. "Let's see here… nine more. I'll call your parents tomorrow, so that will leave only seven…" She didn't reply, because there were children present.

We drove back to Stanhope Hall on Monday, and for the next few days our house was lively as the children's friends came and went. I actually like a house full of teenagers on school break, and in short doses. At Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving especially, the presence of kids in the house lends something extra to the holiday mood and reminds me, I suppose, of my own homecomings from school.

The children of the old rich and privileged are, if nothing else, polite. They are acculturated early and know how to make conversations with adults. They'd rather not, of course, but they're learning early how to do things they don't want to do. They will be successful and unhappy adults. Carolyn and Edward had booked flights on separate days, naturally, so that meant two trips to Kennedy Airport at inconvenient hours. It's times like those when I miss chauffeurs. We could have packed them off in hired limos, I suppose, but after telling my own parents to buzz off, I was feeling a wee bit… something. After my children left, the house was quiet, and it rained for a few days straight. I went to the Locust Valley office to fill up the days, but didn't accomplish much except to find the file I needed on the East Hampton house. I spent a day figuring out my expenses on the house, so that when it was sold, I could calculate my profit accurately, and thus figure out my capital gains. Of course, as before, I could reinvest the so-called profit in another house and defer the tax, but I knew that I would not be buying another house in the near future; perhaps never. This realization, which was forced on me by the mundane act of having to crunch numbers, sort of hit me hard. It wasn't simply a matter of money that made me realize there would be no new house in my future; I might be doing very well in two years. It was more, I think, a decision on my part to stop making long-range plans. Modern life was geared toward a reasonably predictable future; thirty-year mortgages, seven-year certificates of deposit, hog belly futures, and retirement plans. But recent events convinced me that I can neither predict nor plan for the future, so screw the future. When I got there, I'd know what to do; I always know what to do in foreign countries. Why not the future?

The past was another story. You couldn't change it, but you could break away from it and leave it and the people in it behind. My objective, I suppose, was to float in a never-ending present, like the captain of the Paumanok, dealing with the moment's realities, aware but not concerned about where I've been and charting a general course forward, subject to quick changes depending on winds, tides, and whatever I could see on the immediate horizon. As I was getting ready to leave the office, my phone rang and my secretary, Anne, came into my office instead of buzzing me. "Mr Sutter, I know you said no calls, but it is your father."

I sat there a moment, and for no particular reason, I saw us on that boat again, he and I, nearly forty years ago, in the harbour at night, and saw this sort of close-up of my hand in his, but then my hand slipped out of his hand, and I reached for him again, but he had moved away and was talking to someone, perhaps my mother.

"Mr Sutter?"

I said to her, "Tell him I do not wish to speak to him." She seemed not at all surprised, but simply nodded and left. I watched the green light on my phone, and in a few minutes it was gone.

From the office, I went directly to my boat and sat in the cabin, listening to the rain. It was not a night you would choose to go out into, but if you had to go out, you could, and if you had been caught by surprise in the wind and rain, you could ride it through. There were other storms that presented more of a challenge, and some that were clear and imminent dangers. Some weather was just plain death.

There were obviously certain elemental lessons that you learned from the sea, most of them having to do with survival. But we tend to forget the most elemental lessons, or don't know when they apply. This is how we, as sailors, get ourselves into trouble.

We can be captains of our fate, I thought, but not masters of it. Or as an old sailing instructor told me when I was a boy, "God send you the weather, kid. What you do with it or what it does to you depends on how good a sailor you are."

That about summed it up.

Friday morning dawned bright and clear. Susan was up and out riding before I was even dressed.

She had finished the painting next door, and we were to have an unveiling at the Bellarosas' as soon as Anna found the right place for the painting, and Susan found an appropriate frame. I couldn't wait.

I was having my third cup of coffee, trying to decide what to do with the day, when the phone rang. I answered it in the kitchen, and it was Frank Bellarosa. "Whaddaya up to?" he asked.

"Seven."

"What?"

"I'm up to seven. What are you up to?"

"Hey, I gotta ask you something. Where's the beach around here?"

"There are a hundred miles of beaches around here. Which one did you want?"

"There's that place at the end of the road here. The sign says no trespassing.

That mean me?"

"That's Fox Point. It's private property, but everyone on Grace Lane uses the beach. No one lives there anymore, but we have a covenant with the owners." "A what?"

"A deal. You can use the beach."

"Good, 'cause I was down there the other day. I didn't want to be trespassing." "No, you don't want to do that." Was this guy kidding or what? I added, "It's a misdemeanour."

"Yeah. We got a thing in the old neighbourhoods, you know? You don't shit where you live, you don't spit on the sidewalk. You go to Little Italy, for instance, you behave."

"Except for the restaurant rubouts."

"That's different. Hey, take a walk with me down there."

"Little Italy?"

"No. Fox Place."

"Fox Point."

"Yeah. I'll meet you at my fence."

"Gatehouse?"

"Yeah. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Show me this place." I assumed he wanted to discuss something and didn't want to do it on the telephone. In our few phone conversations, there was never anything said that would even suggest that I might be his attorney. I think he wanted to spring this on Ferragamo and the New York press as a little surprise at some point. "Okay?" he asked.

"Okay."

I hung up, finished my coffee, put on jeans and Docksides, and made sure twenty minutes passed before I began the ten-minute walk to Alhambra's gates. But was the son of a bitch pacing impatiently for me? No. I went to the gatehouse and banged on the door. Anthony Gorilla opened up. "Yeah?" I could see directly into the small living room, not unlike the Allards' little place, the main difference being that sitting around the room was another gorilla whom I supposed was Vinnie and two incredibly sluttish-looking women who might be Lee and Delia. The two sluts and the gorilla seemed to be smirking at me, or perhaps it was my imagination.

Anthony repeated his greeting. "Yeah?"

I turned my attention back to Anthony and said, "What the hell do you think I'm here for? If I'm expected, you say, 'Good morning, Mr Sutter. Mr Bellarosa is expecting you.' You do not say 'yeah?' Capisce?"

Before Anthony could make his apologies or do something else, don Bellarosa himself appeared at the door and said something to Anthony in Italian, then stepped outside and led me away by the arm.

Bellarosa was wearing his standard uniform of blazer, turtleneck, and slacks. The colours this time were brown, white, and beige, respectively. I saw, too, as we walked, that he had acquired a pair of good Docksides, and on his left wrist was a black Porsche watch, very sporty at about two thousand bucks. The man was almost getting it, but I didn't know how to bring up the subject of his nylon stretch socks.