I just said, “Wow,” though I had no idea what could be had in Montauk for that kind of money. I thought, Probably not
much house or property, but I figured that it was the Hunter’s turn to share and my job to listen and agree, so one
more time I said, “Wow,” and waited for him to continue.
He did, right on cue. “I’m from across the sound, Connecticut, and I bought this place right up the road three years
ago for five hundred thousand dollars, and the price shot up so fast I could hardly believe it. My wife and I and our
two kids take the ferry over on weekends. It’s nice; we love it over here.”
Our conversation, like all others in this place, was not as private
as we thought. When the topic is money, all ears generally perk
up no matter where you happen to be. The ears in the Liar’s
Saloon were no exception.
Old Hippie chimed in. “For five hundred thousand, what you
bought in Montauk was a postage-stamp lot, and you were
lucky to find one at that.”
Maybe Old Hippie knows the real-estate business after all, I
thought.
The Hunter seemed a bit put off by Old Hippie’s description of
his treasure, but the discussion continued anyway, heading off
onto the money to be made trading in postage-stamp-sized lots.
Though the other locals around the bar listened to the
conversation between two out-of-towners and one of their own, I began to sense that Captain Johnny, Annie, and
Papa were feeling excluded because we were discussing matters of no significance to them. As a bartender working
mostly for tips, how would Annie ever manage to acquire the money needed to buy even the smallest house in her
own town? Papa seemed too old to want to stop telling fishing stories so that he could debate the intricacies of real-
estate transactions. He seemed content to be a pillar of the Liar’s Saloon. Captain Johnny had on his mind the
screwing over of Americans by the news media and the government while he was chasing squid so that he could
pay his boat loan, insurance, and taxes.
I noticed Papa shoot a cold glare at the high-tech BlackBerry with its little color screen so much clearer than the
screen of the ancient TV flickering away above our heads. Was it just my imagination, or had Annie and Captain
Johnny become withdrawn and sullen along with Papa as they too focused their attention on the BlackBerry, tool of
outsiders? Maybe things began just like this a few years back, when the city slicker with the pink shirt almost got his
balls shot off.