Dan's Papers - August 17, 2007

Anyone who thinks men are from Mars and women are from Venus and ne'er the two can ever really meet ought to consider the following story.

At ten minutes to six last Saturday night, a blue Ford pickup truck came slowly down the beach from Amagansett toward East Hampton to arrive at the long stone jetty that juts out into the ocean just to the west of East Hampton's Main Beach.

A slender man with a deep suntan got out and looked around. He appeared to be about forty. He wore jeans, a billowy white shirt and sandals.

At that hour, with the sun beginning to set lower on the horizon over Main Beach half a mile away, there were very few people over here by the jetty. A couple walked by. There was a woman in a bathing suit, pregnant, sitting on one of the big boulders of the jetty, watching an eight-year-old play. A heavyset man walked by with his dog.

The man, satisfied, then got back into the truck, turned it so it faced back in the direction he had come and then backed it up so whatever was in the pickup bed would be closest to the jetty. And then he began removing items from the truck. A large white folding table. Two folding chairs. A bottle of propane. A smaller table.

These he walked over the foot of the jetty -- you can't drive a car over the boulders of the jetty -- and set them up carefully on the sand on the opposite side, about ten feet to the west of it.

Next came a table cloth, some firewood, some stones, a portable grill, two chairs, four six foot long bamboo torches that can be stuck in the ground and lighted at the top, a crystal candelabra, a small serving table, two champagne glasses, a silver bucket, a bag of ice, two bottles of champagne, two white napkins and some silverware, all of which he began to artfully arrange in and around the table. It was apparent he was building a dinner party. For two.

Then he noticed that I was there. I was at the top of the dune at the back of the beach, sitting in a sling chair, writing an article for Dan's Papers on a laptop computer. I do this sometimes.

"Hi," he said, smiling up at me. "Writing something for the paper?"

"Yes. But I'm also watching you. You're kinda fun."

"I'm making a dinner party for my wife," he said. "Lobsters."

"A special occasion?"

"Lucky lady," I said.

There was a pause. I did not know this fellow, but when it gets to around six o'clock, I think of dinner. It looked like it might be pretty good. It was a reflex. Maybe enough for three. What was I thinking?

He didn't say anything. So l let it pass. Although, forgive me, I thought that thought passed through his mind, too. But what I did get was a smile.

"Just keep doing what you're doing," I said. "Don't mind me. I'll just be up here in the bleachers."

He gave me a friendly salute. Then he got back to work.

For the next ten minutes, while he placed things all around, people would walk by, stop and then walk on. However, there were two couples who, separately, saw him at work and came over to talk to him briefly. Both couples then came up the path from the beach to the top of the dune where I was to walk to a road that is behind the dunes.

The first couple, clearly tourists, stopped where I was writing. It was obvious what I was doing. They didn't have to ask anything.

"Is he going to propose?" the woman asked.

They walked off. The second couple also spoke to him for a moment and then walked up the path. They didn't stop to talk to me, but as they walked past, the man, an older man, very well dressed, grinned at me and whispered, "I thought he was a caterer."

Down below, the man was busy as a bee. The logs got stacked up, teepee fashion, in a little hole he had dug off to the right. The grill went to the left, between the table and the boulders. So did the propane tank and the low work table. The big dining table was now turned at a forty-five-degree angle to the water and I knew what that was about. The chairs would be put adjacent to one another at the back of the table so the diners could each have a view of the ocean. Now, the white tablecloth went on the table. The candelabra, much heavier than it looked by the way he hefted it, got put in the center. And the dishes and silverware and cloth napkins got put at the two place settings. Finally, the torches, all three of them, got stuck in the ground to frame the table.

He stood back, put his hands on his hips and admired his work.

"Can I take a picture?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. He posed. I took the shot you see on page 17.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Rick McManus," he said.

"You're something," I said.

"You gonna be here for a half hour?"

"Depends on if I finish what I'm writing." I was writing about the polar ice cap melting, woolly mammoth tusks and global warming. It did seem absurd that I was writing that at this particular moment.

"Well, if you are here, you can meet Kathy."

"I'll look forward to it," I said.

Rick McManus then hopped into his truck, started it up, and then turned it off and got back out. He had forgotten something. He skipped over the jetty and he went around and lit the torches. Then he went back to the pickup and drove off.

As I continued writing, I do admit to stretching out the story about the melting glaciers and the mammoth tusks, because I wanted to meet Kathy. A half an hour passed. Then three quarters of an hour. And I thought, reluctantly finishing up with something about cavemen and caves, well, that's that. I guess I have to go. The torches, by the way, were still burning.

I stood up. You know women, is what I thought to myself. Getting ready for things can sometimes take two hours. And at that moment, there was the sound of a car engine. There it was, the blue pickup truck. I sat back down.

Rick McManus held the hand of this beautiful, slender blonde woman as he guided her over the boulders to their little beach dinner party. She did not seem particularly surprised. Then, McManus spoke to her quietly and pointed to me and they both looked up, so I got up and headed down to them.

I looked at her and Rick said, "this is Kathy." And I said, "My name is Dan, and you're a lucky lady." She nodded to me and I shook her small hand and made a motion toward the torches as if to say, let the show begin, and then I said "goodbye" and quickly climbed up the dune and folded up my chair.

Before I left, however, I did ask them if I could take a picture of them together and they said "yes." So, here is that picture.

Two hours later, I returned. Or almost returned. I had climbed up the back of the dune to a point where I could see over the top of it, but no further. What I saw were the torches flickering in the moonlight.

It was enough. They were there. Love is alive and well and on the beach in the Hamptons.