Lapham Rising Read Online Free Page B

whaler.
    On each side of her boat, port as well as starboard, facing both my island and the long line of developed and developing houses across from me, is a large red-painted sign: “Polite for the Elite, Realtors.” The lettering is thick, high, and three-dimensional. One could read it from miles offshore. I imagine that the signs allow her to write off the boat as a business expense. But the real, unforgettable, visually ineradicable advertisement is Kathy herself, out for her regular morning swim.
    She has been skinny-dipping off her boat for nine glorious summers. And there is hardly a man around here—including those who drive over for the occasion from as far away as Shirley and Mattituck, and including all the– ogues on both alligator jaws: Patch-, Cutch-, Haupp-, Aquab-, as well as Qui- and Qu- who does not stop whatever else he is doing at precisely ten o’clock to gaze in appreciative wonder at the wonder of Kathy Polite.
    “Hah, Hector!” He scampers down to the water’s edge and makes a snowy flurry of greeting her. His manner with people other than me is to rush toward them exhibiting a franticeagerness, wagging and levitating, as if he were a kidnap victim signaling for rescue.
    “Hah, boys!” she calls to Dave and his men. Dave and Jack give her a decorous wave from the waist. The Mexicans are more demonstrative.
    In her way, she is a genius. Other realtors in the area spend a fortune on brochures advertising houses that are “this side of Paradise,” or that offer “location, location,” or that were “built in a unique style by the owner,” meaning that they were designed by someone on whom German silent horror films made an indelible impression. The brokers need to print updates every week, because all of these houses sell in a snap and are immediately replaced by new listings. It is expensive to produce the brochures, and it takes both time and effort to distribute them around the sidewalks in front of the cheese shops and the basket shops and the shops that sell photographs of other shops, and to place them in the doorways of the “We have mahimahi!” restaurants, where they lie in stacks and gather sand.
    What Kathy figured out was that it would be much more convenient, not to say more consonant with her own taste and character, if instead of having to seek out customers, she could devise an activity that would entice them to come to her . So without using a flyer, posters, a Web site with “such a cutename dot-com,” or any other instruments of modern publicity, she attached her signs to her boat and began the practice of her mute morning sales pitch. She was, and is, her own Open House.
    “Why don’t you join me today, Wrinkles?” she calls from the side deck.
    “No time,” I shout back. “I have to water my duck.”
    “Your WHAT?” She clamps a hand to her mouth as if shocked. The last time Kathy was shocked was when her cousin said no. She heard me, all right. I say the same thing to her every day.
    “What’s wrong with your ear, Harry? Did you pull a Van Gogh?”
    “Yes, Buttercup, I cut it off as a gesture of my love for you. Actually, I was trying to cut my throat.”
    “Not if Ah get there first. And what is that under the tarp? It looks quite sinister—much lahk yourself, Harry March.” She often says my first and last names together, as if she were addressing and classifying me in the same breath. She presents two even rows of large, newly whitened teeth.
    The front of the Da Vinci lies to my right. A portion of the aft crosspiece is still showing. I cover it. “Why don’t you just go on with your morning’s work?” I try not to sound too eager.
    She preens on her deck, her face as cute as neon. She turnsfirst to the left, then to the right, as a much-honored actress might do onstage: the first lady of real estate, acknowledging an audience she cannot see but knows is out there. Distracted, she slips out of her green top and her beige shorts, displaying