Life Guards in the Hamptons Read Online Free Page B

meet another sentient species face-to-face. If not for the Coast Guard and marine mammal stranding officials keeping boats away from the pod, and the beach patrol keeping more boardsmen out of the water, every dude with a board and a paddle might have jumped in to play.
    The ponytailed guy said he didn’t bother bringing his wet suit with him. The beaches were closed along the whole coast.
    He shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to spend more time with my girl.”
    Experts thought the pod intended to head around Plum Gut and down to Long Island Sound along the North Fork. They frequently chased schools of baitfish there, occasionally getting trapped in tiny harbors when the tide went out. Worse, dolphins sometimes tried to navigate the clogged East River past Manhattan. The Coast Guard stood by, ready to try herding them to safety.
    Other experts believed the dolphins might turn back toward Montauk and head for the open ocean. No one knew their goals, or the reason for their sudden antipathy to anyone in the water.
    Another conspiracy theory claimed they’d secretly been trained and sent by the Jersey shore, the major competitor for big surfing events in the east. A lady in a lavender jogging suit suggested the dolphins were getting even with us for polluting the ocean.
    The marine science people had plans to dart one of the animals with a tracking device. Another boatload of specialists were on their way with underwater sound equipment. They hoped to record the dolphins’ vocalizations for comparisons and interpretations. Meanwhile, swimming, surfing, and kayaking were prohibited in the area. Which, I was sure, did not stop kids from sneaking out to get a look and maybe a ride back to the beach.
    On another front, a worried-looking man in arumpled suit told us that the personal data of every employee of the town of East Hampton—as opposed to East Hampton village—had been hacked. Someone posted social security numbers, salaries, and home addresses on line for every cop, clerk, and town board member. Judges, secretaries, department heads, all had their bank accounts locked down to prevent cyber-piracy. Now over three hundred people couldn’t pay their bills or buy groceries. The man was bringing a new ATM card for his wife. And cash, I guessed, from the way he kept checking his wallet and his inside jacket pocket. The town budget director feared the tax rolls were next.
    I feared a lot of things. Okay, I was a complete chicken-shit coward, and not just about the usual culprits. Thunder and heights and tunnels and bridges and guns and little boats and big boats and snakes and spiders—I shook at them all. Add in taxi drivers with eye patches, choking on chicken bones, going crazy or getting Alzheimer’s, dying alone and unloved, and I was a basket case. The last shrink I’d been to, years ago, blamed my anxieties on my parents’ divorce, like Little Red’s foibles. He said it didn’t matter, though, because I didn’t let my fears rule my life. I coped.
    If I’d ever told him that my father made doom-filled prophecies, my uncle recognized if someone told a lie, and my grandmother was a witch, to say nothing of the family friend who controlled the weather or the librarian who always knew what book I wanted to read, the shrink would have me locked up in a second. Instead, he wanted to prescribe drugs, which made me worry I’d lose my creative instincts. I stopped going.
    But right now I didn’t have a single qualm about anything except Little Red and Matt. And the chiggers, of course. I tried not to scratch where anyone could see.
    Maybe I had to close my eyes when the bus went through the seemingly endless Midtown Tunnel, which was far underground, with dark, cold water on every side. But the goings-on in the Hamptons didn’t faze me a bit. After what I’d seen and been through recently, simple robberies were child’s play. I didn’t have enoughcash to worry about, or an account in Paumanok Harbor in case the bank