“Listen,” I said.
“I don’t hear anything,” she answered.
“Listen to everything.”
“Neither do I,” David said.
Sandy suddenly pulled her hand away, frowned, and said, “This is creepy.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” David said.
They turned and swiftly walked away from me. I could hear the surf far away, the repetition of an insect’s song, the gentle soughing of the wind in the tree-tops. I hesitated only a moment longer and then I followed them.
That night, David got grounded.
This was a full week after the rainy afternoon with the truth serum, and I really thought it was senseless to punish David for something he had done a week before. Besides, when you considered the element of chance involved, the retroactive grounding seemed even more idiotic: if Mr. Porter hadn’t sent his bill on the fifteenth and charged David’s mother twice for the beer, she never would have found out at all. I was disgusted with the whole concept.
The preceding Monday we had each sneaked six-packs of beer out of our refrigerators, this being before we’d made our working arrangement with Violet. Because of the peculiar circular design of David’s house, the storage space was severely limited (not to mention the fact that you couldn’t place anything flush against the curved and sloping walls — maybe David’s father was a lousy architect). So instead of putting one carton of beer in the refrigerator to chill, the way most people do, leaving the spare cartons in the pantry or the closet, in David’s house they would order three six-packs every week and stick all three in the refrigerator. David’s mother always shopped on Saturday, and the truth serum business took place on Monday, and the very next day she noticed that there were only two cartons of beer in the refrigerator instead of three. In fact, there were exactly seven bottles of beer, since David’s father had drunk a few between Saturday and Tuesday, so that was when the first call to Mr. Porter took place. The first call, as it was later revealed, went something like this. David’s mother told Mr. Porter that she was certain he had delivered only two cartons of beer instead of three because here it was only Tuesday and they hadn’t had any weekend guests and yet there were only seven bottles of beer in the refrigerator. Mr. Porter said he had made up the order himself and distinctly remembered putting three six-packs into it, but he would nonetheless send his boy over with an additional carton and, of course, would not charge her for it. So on the following Monday, David’s mother got the bill and, instead of Mr. Porter not charging her for the additional six-pack, he had charged her — and he a millionaire. So David’s mother made the second phone call to Mr. Porter, telling him that he had made a mistake with his bill, and going over the entire incident again, while meanwhile David and Sandy and I were exploring Violet’s island and drinking the beer Violet had sold us.
Mr. Porter calmly explained to David’s mother that yes, he had charged her for the extra carton of beer because upon checking further, he remembered something about the order but had not had a chance to call her back. What he remembered was that he’d had only three cartons of Heineken (David’s father’s brand) in stock when he’d gone to the refrigerator, which fact had caused him to write a memo to reorder, which memo was now in front of him, would David’s mother care to have him read it to her on the phone? Yes, David’s mother said. Very well, Mr. Porter said, Reorder Heineken Beer, and it’s dated Saturday, July the eighth, and right here in the corner are my wife’s initials, MJP for Mary Jane Porter, meaning she has already taken care of the reordering. So that’s how I know I gave you three cartons and not two, and that’s why I charged you for the extra one I sent over, which you may have noticed was Löwenbräu and not Heineken, because the Heineken still hasn’t come in yet. Thank you, David’s mother said, and hung up.
She then, naturally, called in the maid, whose name was Eudice, and asked her whether she remembered how many cartons of beer she’d put into the refrigerator last Saturday when the order came from Mr. Porter’s — was it two or three? Eudice, who was raised in North Carolina, and who had difficulty counting past the number five, examined her fingers and told David’s mother that she had put three cartons in the refrigerator, and then went on with amazing if not total recall to itemize the exact number of times David’s father had gone to the refrigerator for beer, as for example the two bottles he had drunk with the barbecued spare-ribs they’d had that Saturday night, and the one he’d had on Sunday afternoon after fixing the water pump, and the two he’d had with those funny clam things—
The marinated clams, David’s mother said.
— yes, on Sunday night, Eudice went on. As a matter of fact, she herself had been surprised last Monday, what with it raining so hard and all, to find only a carton and a little bit more of beer, instead of there being two cartons and a little bit more.
When did you discover this? David’s mother naturally asked.
It was just after your son left the house, Eudice the rat answered.
So that’s what was waiting for David when he stepped through the door after the day on Violet’s island. His father went through the outraged older party routine, the shame of learning that his own son was drinking behind his back, what other things was David doing that his father knew nothing about? Are you smoking, too? he asked, are you?
David denied drinking, he denied smoking, he almost denied breathing. If only you had asked, his mother said, we would have given you the beer (which was a bald-faced lie). But no, you had to steal it, oh David, I’m so ashamed of you, and so on, as if she had just cracked the Brinks robbery.
So they grounded him.
For three days.
The grounding was a full-dress one, too. He wasn’t permitted to leave the house, of course, but neither was he permitted to have friends there or to talk to them on the telephone. He was allowed only one phone call (as soon as he hung up, Sandy said to me, “Do you think we should get him a lawyer?”), which was how he managed to let us know what had happened. All in all, it looked as though a desolate few days lay ahead.
The first day was very difficult.
We had gone out to the point on Tuesday morning, searching for our cache of beer near the telephone pole with the aluminum strip marked 7-382 on it, and practically digging up half the beach until we remembered we’d buried it at the foot of 7-381. We unearthed two bottles and carried them into the tall beach grass because there were some other kids around, and also some adults playing volleyball without a net. Sandy took the bottle opener out of her bikini top, removed the Kleenex she had wrapped it in, opened both bottles, said, “Here’s to the prisoner of Zenda,” meaning David, winked, drank, and then reached into her canvas beach bag for what looked like a railroad timetable.
“Did you see this?” she asked, and handed it to me.
The brochure was perhaps eight inches long and three inches wide, folded in half lengthwise and then in half again. It was printed in blue ink. The headline read: INTRODUCING SELECTA-DATE.
“What is it?” I said.
“Read it.”