Labor Day Weekend
“Remember, we’re not here for the money,” said Beauregard. The four of them huddled behind the pro shop, waiting for the Michelob Ultra truck. They wore face paint and matching jumpsuits. The moon loomed orange as waves grumbled behind the dunes.
“We don’t need the money,” said Beau.
“Speak for yourself,” said Cook.
“You're gonna what,” said Dingwall, “lift the driver’s wallet?”
“There could be bank bags,” said Cook.
“Leaving the money is an essential component of the heist,” said Beauregard. “In fact, it’s the second most essential component. The first objective, being, of course, to secure the kegs.”
“Of course,” said Dingwall. “But Beau, what about evading capture?”
“Fine: number one is securing the kegs, two is a clean escape and three is leaving any money on the table. If we take the money — if there’s any money and we take it — the whole job loses its prankish charm and becomes your average, everyday hijacking, a crime which typically results in fines and jail time and destroyed relationships and reputations.”
“Felons can’t vote,” said Dingwall. “I'd like to be able to vote. Once I’m old enough.”
“Don’t worry,” said Beau. “Voting isn’t real.”
Roger Cook had done the majority of the recon work. He was good with spreadsheets, fantasy leagues, split checks and pawn shop haggling. He knew how many yogurts Kiwi Slaughter had for lunch. He knew how much a teacher’s tires cost. He knew how many milligrams were in a bottle based solely on the rattle, knew how many grams would be required for a weekend in the city, knew the likelihood of a K-9 unit on the train, knew which precedents to cite.
Cook knew the school handbook, facebook and annual report inside out, knew acceptance rates and diversity quotas, endowment sums and fundraising goals. But he was an unexceptional student, more interested in short cuts than the finish line. Plus he figured he could always find work in Client Services.
The weed failed to provide the courage they sought. Instead it clouded their adrenaline. Fears and anxieties swirled with memories of television shows and suburban legends.
Dark premonitions, frightening despite their obvious cinematic influences, played in their minds: the driver’s blood pooling on the pavement, the four of them in handcuffs, a phone ringing in a dark hallway, fathers searching for their slippers.
The job was a Hail Mary shot at self-sufficiency, an endless spring to feed their dwindling summer, more than enough liquid courage to go around. They’d be swimming in it, could drain and fill the pool, drift away the last days of summer on the inflatable alligator, dip a mug into the foam and savor another hard-won guzzle.
“I wish we had music,” said Moore. There was only the buzz of a bug light, the occasional tumble of the pro shop’s ice machine, the waves, a clinking flag pole. Moore preferred jangly, meandering jams, cassette tapes and weathered mixes passed down from seniors, team captains and older brothers, recovered from island wagon glove compartments and tennis cases, the same reliable melodies that soothed previous generations. The others were into nostalgic tracks as well, deep cuts from the beach bar jukebox, hairspray rock, two tickets to paradise and a cheeseburger once you got there. When weren’t the boys back in town?
“Concentrate on the plan,” said Beauregard.
The plan was born after another fake ID was confiscated and the MDMA shipment fell through and a huffing experiment left Cook with a nosebleed. Once again they found themselves sitting in Moore’s pool house, paper towels jammed up their noses, trying to ignore their ghostly highs and concentrate on the AC blowing on their necks, the reassuring tingle of their deep tans, their abundance of brick weed and energy drinks, Adderrall and mouthwash. They tried to count their blessings: the moonlight on the already lit pool, the vast array of mustards offered at dinner, promising texts from neighborhood nannies. But nevertheless there remained real problems: the water trampoline was surrounded by jellyfish, the Whaler smelled like guts, the Foosball table was tilted, maybe even warped. Every day from May to September the driveway was lined with trucks and sprinter vans, an endless parade of men carrying ladders and paint cans, shovels and mulch, sand and stone. Moore’s mother, their host, spent her days wondering why the world was conspiring against her, threatening her sanity and sanctity. The florist was taking advantage, the contractor was dragging his feet, the household staff were mid-mutiny and the government was relentlessly attacking the fortunate and upstanding.
“Still,” said Moore, “some tunes would be nice.”
“We’re not criminals,” they said, when Beau first introduced the idea. And their summers thus far had been relatively crime-free. Dingwall took a girl’s Cabriolet for a joyride. Cook swiped a watch from an estate sale. Moore mainly stuck to local vandalism.
They preferred to work just beneath the surface of plausible deniability, always leaving plenty of room for dubious misunderstandings. Thus they remained clueless, innocent, childlike, practically drooling. They wore shaggy blond hair, well-placed freckles, crisp tennis whites. They had ketchup under their nails, chocolate on their lips. But Beau insisted they weren’t taking full advantage of their good fortune. They had to leverage their advantages, risk their reputations.
Beau was a hardened felon by comparison. The summer before starting Grove he and a group of Bermuda locals hosted house parties in vacant Bankers’ Cay villas. One night Beau left a monogrammed flashlight on a kitchen counter. When the police arrived, accompanied by an apologetic gatekeeper, he was napping in his suite above the garage. The judge sentenced Beau — deemed a “ringleader” despite twin twenty-year-old co-defendants — to a month in jail on three counts of B&E, suspended due to the fact that he was already 1000 miles away, moving into his third form Grove cubicle.
“We should have guns,” said Moore.
“Automatic 25 years,” said Cook.
“Gotta take advantage of that juvenile non-stick coating,” said Moore.
“In the eyes of the system,” said Dingwall, “we’re all grown up.”
“Okay,” said Moore. “How about knives or tasers?”
“Ninja stars,” said Cook.
“Gimme a nine-iron at least,” said Moore. “Anything’s better than this.”
They had liberated the croquet mallets from a cobwebbed corner of the Moore garage. Earlier drafts of the plan had called for spray-painted water pistols. Then one day they were playing croquet at dusk, sharing a blender of strawberry daiquiris spiked with Mrs. Moore’s benzos, when Beau had the idea for the crew to arm themselves with croquet mallets.
“I’m thinking of the optics, here,” said Beau.
“Always with the optics,” said Dingwall.
“What if the driver sees them and laughs?” asked Moore.
“The driver won’t even know what they are,” said Beau. “Anyways it’s brilliant because it only matters if we get caught, when it serves as a helpful detail for our defense.”
Moore didn’t do optics. He barely understood shame. He was always the first one naked in the locker room after practice and the last one to get dressed. He may have been groomed for maximum emotional restraint but he had certainly never timed a load of laundry to coincide with his father’s arrival home from work. He never wrote thank you notes or emptied the dishwasher. He’d hog the common room TV to watch golf all weekend. Moore had a hard time with motivation and mostly relied on tradition. Traditionally, those like him (siblings, cousins, father, grandfather) went to Grove. Traditionally, they spent a gap year abroad and waited out the Z-list. Traditionally, they joined the Pluto Club. The rest was just paperwork.
There was a clatter. Everyone jumped except Cook. “Raccoon,” said Cook. They were wearing surgical gloves and shoes that didn’t fit. Beau forbade Grove sweats or gear emblazoned with other identifying institutions. He also enforced a deeply unpopular ban on crime-scene dipping, so as not to taunt the authorities with a puddle of DNA.
Teddy Dingwall whistled “Simple Man” through dry lips, trying to ignore the shadow of his father’s notoriety. Senator Edward Dingwall (R-CT) was off the grid three years almost exactly, skipping out on a million-dollar bail after a violent melee outside a downtown supper club. His disappearance extended a shroud of toxic clout over his son and, by extension, his son’s friends. But if girls were interested in this aspect of Teddy’s life it was usually because a child star gone bad had played him in the streaming movie.
They heard the wheeze of hydraulic brakes and fastened their grips. The truck’s headlamps cut across the dark fairway, casting all the way to the sea. A current of panic shot through the crew. Dingwall had to piss. Moore’s eye black began to run. Even Beau wasn’t immune to these jitters, though he recognized them and their attendant choices: fight or flight, pump or dump, smash or pass.
“We should have masks,” said Moore, blinking furiously. “Hockey masks.”
“Stockings,” said Dingwall.
“Yoga pants,” Cook.
The beer truck rounded the club’s circular driveway and groaned into the alley.
It was the Tub & Mallet Labor Day Weekend load, twice the usual, kegs and cases stacked like ammunition, ready for a three-day stand filled with wedding receptions, memorial luncheons and the annual farewell fireworks dinner.
The driver opened the door and dropped gingerly down to the pavement. They’d been expecting a Teamster, an artfully built musclehead. But the driver stunned by Moore’s high beam was a scruffy patrician with a beard like a sudsy mop, skin slightly fried, kind eyes. A model train enthusiast in a tangerine cardigan, pockets full of Werthers. Exactly the sort of man they’d been trained to respect. Their collective nerve took off running down the beach.
Dingwall tried to gin up the contempt required for the task at hand. He’d been counting on the usual spurt. Instead he fought the urge to lift his mask and wink. His appendages drifted out of his control. His vision toggled between darkness and some blinking dreamscape. Panic whistled in his head. He was steaming like a Cup o’ Noodles. Soon he was hovering above his body like a wincing spirit. No grit. Poor form.
Gone was the giddiness of their earlier crimes: giggling as they slashed the dorm master’s tires, swiped gas station dick pills, passed off doctored scripts at the infirmary, yanked watches from locker rooms. Instead there was only static, the slow motion disconnect between plan and action, old goads ringing in his ears, defensemen waiting on a juke, a shrug and hot smile budding from within, glory retreating into the horizon.
Beau smacked him in the back of the head, same way his father once did.
Move, motherfucker!
Dingwall knew Beau would be wearing his fight face, instantly recognizable but so infrequently deployed it always managed to take recipients by surprise: wide features broiled smooth and drained of color, jaw jutting, teeth bared, notoriously heavy eyes drawn wide and white. Instead of spurring Dingwall to action, it spun him out until he shook with curtain call piss.
Meanwhile Cook did the math in his head, reevaluated a few futures, calculated the velocity of his social plummet. Four years in Danvers Correctional instead of five at Rollins or Gettysburg, his mother catatonic, his father tragically stoic, his sister truly shaken. Cook understood that his brand of rotten apple wouldn’t intimidate too many inside. And he lacked the capital to overwhelm any potential adversary’s commissary.
Protection rackets were pricey. He’d looked into the economics. But third formers ran in fetid herds, you could hardly ever get one alone long enough to extract a few bucks, unless they were already being bullied and came to Cook for help in his capacity as prefect, in which case Cook’s allegiances generally sided with the bullies.
Get the lead out, mate!
Wait, was Beau using an accent? They hadn’t discussed code names or accents. They barely had an escape route.
The only member of the stick-up team seemingly unperturbed was Moore. He wasn't an excitable sort, never overly amped about an impending hookup or vacation. This absence of passion riled up the others. At least Beau, similarly positioned financially, enjoyed his good fortune. But this shallow complacency may have been somewhat strategic. It’s why a good percentage of Grove girls stepped up to try and make him go gooey.
Mr. Moore ran a PE shop out of Stamford, laundering war chests for unsanctioned governments. Mrs. Moore was the granddaughter of an industrialist who ordered the machine gunning of his own employees. But Moore’s conscience was clean: either biologically stunted, bought off, or simply polished by the housekeeper every afternoon.
He felt no remorse, remained immune to charms or pleas for pity. Hey, if a guy didn’t want to get robbed he shouldn’t be holding something Moore wanted. Don’t like your job? Get a new one. Nobody — save the invisible hand — was forcing this guy to drive a beer truck. This is America: no prize for waiting in line the longest.
“Good evening,” said the driver. “You fellas members?”
They rode home in the getaway car at regular speed, kegs rattling in the boot of Dingwall’s hand-me-down Swedish wagon. Nobody wanted to say it, but a victory party felt fradulent — all the adrenaline they’d hoped to burn had been choked down like water in the lungs.
Outside hedges blurred in the moonlight. They idled at a stoplight within sight of Moore’s gated driveway, enjoying the street lamp and satellite radio. A melancholic breeze shook the trees as they recalled July’s lush patter.
They hadn’t exactly put the word out, fearing it would jinx the job. And it was a bit late for feelers — could come across as creepy, desperate transmissions from men without options. Likely calls (nannies, townies, hook-ups relegated to the Afters bin for whatever minor transgression) would be unimpressed by the score, file it away as unnecessary evidence that the rules only applied to others.
Another vehicle approached the intersection. Even in the dark it pulsed with a seductive feminine energy, ghostly blue headlights and shrill pop.
“Who’s that?” said Moore. “Looks like…”
Dingwall inched the car forward while Cook stuck his head out the window.
“Sommer goddamn Grand,” said Beau. Sommer Grand of New York, New York and Beaver Valley, Colorado, Fox Island, Maine and Tortoise Cove, Jamaica. Sommer Grand of Harrimans and Roosevelts, ancient Dutch coinage, a recent Styles spread. “What the hell’s she doin’ in town?”
“Of course we’re in Dingbat’s ride,” said Moore. “Just our luck.”
“Suck it,” said Dingwall, perhaps more tartly than intended. His car had been selected for its color (midnight blue), ample trunk space, unassuming presence and blank rear bumper (campaign stickers, alma maters and favored airport acronyms scraped off by Mrs. Dingwall).
“A classic,” said Beau.
They rolled deeper into the intersection, windshield slightly steamed. Cook and Moore craned and jostled between the bucket seats. Dingwall leaned out his window and there she was, basking in the ethereal glow of dashboard gizmos.
“What?” said Sommer, her tone flat and cool. “Get out, you guys.”
They felt their cheeks sizzle. But gradually other shapes began to emerge from the darkness, with some troubling implications. Dewey, a criminally handsome Grove grad and man about various resort communities, was riding shotgun, his intentions obvious even from across the street.
He immediately clocked the costumes. “What’s with the get-up, gents?”
“Howdy, Dew,” said Dingwall, buying time.
“Paintball,” said Beau.
“Where are you guys headed?” asked Sommer, chin resting on her forearm, blonde hair falling down her face.
“Moore’s,” said Beau. “Across the way.”
The back window slid down with a screech. “My place,” Moore clarified.
“All welcome,” said Beau. “Even Dewey.”
“Couple cat burglars,” Dewey slurred.
“What the fuck is she doin’ with this guy?” hissed Cook.
Sommer and her passenger conferred for a moment. He placed a hand on her shoulder, whispered something in her ear. Cook’s knees were jammed into the back of Beau’s seat. Their chests thumped as she laughed. Dingwall squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.
“Dewey’s about ready to retire,” she said.
“We’re a bit over-dressed,” said Dewey, fiddling with a cuff link.
For the first time they noticed his tuxedo, looking slightly worse for wear.
“Very reasonable,” said Beau. “Of course, no shortage of beds where we’re headed. High thread count, dreamy duvets, plus plenty of space for us night owls to party down.”
“Hmm,” said Sommer. “I haven’t partied down in a minute.”
They rolled a keg across the patio and blasted foam until the tap ran yellow. Once sufficiently sticky, they dove into the deep end, washing away disguises and frustration. They hooted at a volley of shooting stars, possibly drones. Meanwhile, Dewey pouted in a guest bedroom, leaving loud voicemails for his so-called executive assistant.
“So,” said Beau, smoking in the pool, “Sommer, how’d you spend your vacation?”
“Dude ranch in Argentina,” she said.
Though they had been classmates for three years, Sommer remained a mystery. She didn’t expose herself to the usual high school indignities. She didn’t date Grove guys or their contemporaries. Instead, she fielded calls from gadabouts like Dewey, nightlife magnates, well-built scions refining their tastes at cushy MBA programs, drop-outs flush with venture cash, natty Social Register all-stars. She floated through lectures and social obligations with an enviable ease, buffered by wealth and beauty and, as a last line of defense, her faithful sentries Panda Talbot and Kiwi Slaughter. Beyond simply attractive, she seemed to defy humanity, unencumbered by any number of greasy, innate burdens the boys wrestled down every day. Certain biological functions did not seem possible, even necessary. Dingwall in particular was convinced Sommer represented the next stage of human evolution. At school they often went down to the weight room just to watch her arms glisten.
“How about you guys?” she asked.
“July intern at Peach,” said Beau.
“Fishing around the Rock,” said Moore.
“Caddy at Shapeleigh,” said Cook.
“Uh,” said Dingwall.
It was a delicate trick. The honest answer — delivery driver for a florist near his family pile — was too far from their life experience and conversational expectations. It would only make them uncomfortable, which could lead to revoked invitations. However, too fantastic a lie would mark him a fraud.
Even a casual deferment (“just gettin’ fucked up, mostly”) could fall flat. Obviously it went without saying that complete idleness was the ideal, that nobody truly wanted to goph at a finance firm or a PR agency or go abroad and fix cleft palates, but at this particular stage it was essential to maintain the illusion of productivity, sophistication, or, at the very least, good will toward man. Beau’s step-father had a seat on the Peach board. Moore made thousands selling his catch to local restaurants and fish markets. Cook’s hustle was the perfect training for his inevitable future as a fixer for panicked executives. Meanwhile, Dingwall was a mirage stitched together with hand-me-down houses, hand-me-down wagons, hand-me-down resort wear, stopped timepieces and black and white photographs. He sighed, vowed to craft a better reply before school started.
“Not too much…”
“Son of a gun coached squash in Nairobi,” said Beau.
“That’s sweet,” said Sommer.
Dewey emerged from the bedroom in a waffled robe, dangerously refreshed, whiskey bottle in one hand and deck of cards in the other. “Revelations, anyone?”
It had been the game of the summer, shorting friendships and igniting ego deaths up and down the peninsula. Patio furniture clanked ominously.
“Come on, Dewey,” said Sommer. “What don’t you know already?”
“I’m not leaving here without the truth,” said Dewey.
“The truth?” Beau laughed. “Wasn’t your dad on the flight logs?”
“You want to talk dads?” said Dewey. “You want to talk flight?”
Monday afternoon they said goodbyes muffled by hangovers and an aching sense of missed opportunity. Moore stayed in bed all day. Beau took a car service back to the city, dropping Cook at the train station. Dingwall drove alone to the ferry.
And just before night fell the Grands boarded a helicopter. It lifted off from their yard and crossed over the marsh, following the shoreline. Soon the waves were reduced to wrinkles and the season was over.
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