“How was the concert?”
“So the problem isn’t that bad?”
“It is. But I want to wait until we sit down.”
“I see. Just tell me—did anyone die?”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“I am not ready for another death after Hiram.”
“I know. Speaking of which, I got a letter from Robert today. I saved it to read with you.”
“Oh good, thanks.”
Agnes juggled bottles and ice and finally handed Polly a glass. The white sky was becoming pearly, and the street lamps suddenly punctured the gloaming. The living room was spare but plush, all green and yellow, the furniture simple. A thick lemon carpet ran nearly wall to wall. Polly sighed as she sank into a mint sofa. “It’s so comfortable here,” Polly said. “Unexpected, for you.”
“People change,” Agnes said. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over. You may quote me on that.”
She looked around at her own design for serenity and was pleased Polly liked her efforts. She’d moved to the apartment ten years earlier, at age seventy. Prior to then, she’d lived all her Philadelphia life in the family house on Walnut Street, a building ancient by American standards and owned by the Lees since the mid-1800s. It had been her Philadelphia turtle shell, inseparable from her flesh. Then she’d had a few falls that gave her black eyes, and a few illnesses, mementos of the gross reality that she could no longer take her health for granted. Ease and convenience, qualities for which she’d never had any use, began to make sense. An elevator and a doorman and food that could be delivered up—why not? She sold a great deal of the dark wood from the Walnut Street house and bought new Thomas Moser pieces. Minimalism was her mandate for this last chapter. Whoever was stuck with emptying the apartment after she died would not have much to do. To her way of thinking, that was decent.
Anyway, it wasn’t entirely the case that she’d rid herself of her belongings. She’d had her favorite things shipped to Fellowship Point. Maine was her real home now and had been for forty years. The apartment was for the winter months she spent in Philadelphia, to escape the difficulty of being snowed in at Leeward Cottage. Or so she said to people, weather being an excuse that didn’t arouse curiosity. The real reason she came to Philadelphia every winter was for research. For a few hectic weeks she hauled herself to her clubs and to luncheons and dinner parties, charity events, galleries, and shops, taking notes on what people did and what they hid, in preparation for writing her next novel. She had years of notes for the present book, but dammit. Was it possible that she no longer had the stamina for a novel?
Her whole chest felt strangled and trampled on, but she affected calm for the sake of her agenda. She needed Polly to see things her way.
“So what’s going on? Don’t keep me waiting any longer,” Polly said.
Agnes reached for the Cape Deel Gazette. “This came today. Remember our old friend Hamm Loose?”
“I’d rather not.” Polly took a healthy swig.
“It’s about his son Hamm Loose Jr. and their development company. Read the article here.” She had the paper open to the offending page and handed it over.
“My glasses are in my bag in the hallway,” Polly said.
“Use mine.” Agnes took a pair from a basket on the side table to her left.
Polly put them on. She gave a quick glance around. She wants a mirror, Agnes thought. For God’s sake. The habit of pretty.
“Are they strong enough? Can you see?”
“Yup.”
Polly rarely acknowledged Agnes’s little digs. Marriage to Dick Wister and three sons had inured her to teasing.
“Hamm Loose Jr. is large, isn’t he?”
“That’s not the problem. Just read it.”
“Aloud?”
“No. It already ruined my lunch.”
The story was about the groundbreaking ceremony for a new luxury condominium and marina complex near Deel Town, which was close to her and Polly’s houses on Fellowship Point. The resort was being built by the firm of Loose Properties, owned by Hamm Loose and his sons Hamm Jr. and Terrance, known as Teeter. As Polly read the article, Agnes gazed at her, at first in an attitude of waiting, but then with a sudden objectivity. She rarely stepped back from Polly long enough to see her. Twenty years earlier Polly’s hair had turned all white, the gleaming kind of white that looked ageless and soft. She still wore it either in a headband or barrettes, as she always had. Her skin was relatively smooth, due to her lifelong habit of keeping the sun off her face. She’d had a few basal cell skin cancers removed on her arms, leaving pale spots behind, but she could pass for being in her sixties. Agnes had read once that men liked women who smiled; smiling was Polly’s essence. A good temperament, laughing eyes—easy to be around, as went the compliment of their youth. They spent summers in next-door houses on Fellowship Point and lived within blocks of each other in Philadelphia until Polly moved out to Haverford after her daughter Lydia was born. She’d wanted a backyard for her boys so she could enjoy the baby in peace.
Polly still made her opinions and motives and intentions plainly apparent. She was never confusing or devious or wily. A real Quaker lady, plain and good. When they were girls, Polly was often invited along on other families’ vacations and cruises, and on day trips to see plays in New York or monuments in Washington, D.C. Every teacher at school was glad to have her in the room, even the bluestockings usually resistant to the more social types. Yet for all Polly’s popularity, she was also underestimated, her unflappability interpreted as middling brain power. This wasn’t accurate. Polly was smart, but she didn’t develop her thoughts. Agnes had for a time given her lessons on how to be more penetrating. Polly had listened graciously and carried on being herself.
Odd to have a best friend who was received so effortlessly by the world, when Agnes inadvertently offended more than a few people. So it had always been, and she was used to it—which didn’t make it unremarkable.
Polly laid the paper back onto the coffee table and crossed her arms protectively over her middle. “Darn it! I always loved that spot.”
“I know. That’s bad enough. But how about when Hamm Jr. said he plans to build more resorts on Cape Deel, and that his ideal property is Fellowship Point?” Agnes hammered the point home.
“Sickening! And what about when he said everyone has their price!”
Polly was upset, thrilling Agnes. It was so satisfying to have horror met with horror. “He’s appalling!”
“Like father, like son. I hate them. I don’t hate anybody but them, but I do hate them. How dare he even think about Fellowship Point? It means he has looked around.”
“We know his father looked around.”
Once when Agnes and Polly were fourteen, they’d seen Hamm Loose—Senior, now an old man—and a gang of his pals invade the Sank and shoot an eagle flying back to her nest with food for her cheeping offspring. He’d also kicked gravel at their bare legs on the playground in Deel Town. Polly had tried to understand these actions through the lens of class grievances and the local versus away people conflict, and though Agnes normally adored a good sociological analysis, in this case it was an obfuscation, and she’d gotten Polly back on track by writing a vow for both of them to recite that included preventing Hamm from doing any further harm to Fellowship Point. They pricked their index fingers and pressed them tight to each other’s to seal the deal.