"No," Lennox answered. "I'm taking a last trip home."
It was cold and still on the East River. A heavy grey ceiling hung low in the sky. As Lennox climbed from the dock to the pontoon of the tiny Cub and then into the cabin, the pilot looked dubious.
"There's fog coming in at Montauk," he said. "I hope we can beat it."
He swung the Cub out into the river and taxied frantically toward the 59th Street bridge. Lennox wondered whether they were going under or over the bridge when suddenly the buffeting of the chop ceased and they shuddered their way sky-ward. Instantly The Rock was transformed into a make-believe city ... a toy on a table.
They flew east over Long Island City and Jamaica and then northeast from Freeport up Great South Bay, past Amityville and Babylon to the Bay Shore Harbor where the Cub landed in Great Cove and taxied in.
"I won't be an hour," Lennox told the pilot.
He went to a white clapboard fish-house on the dock, phoned for a cab and waited in the bar. There was an enormous coal fire glowing in the fireplace grate and an enormous jolly proprietor glowing behind the bar. He looked like a benevolent wrestler.
"If you were drinking your last bottle on earth," Lennox asked him, "what would it be?"
"Irish," the wrestler answered promptly.
Lennox sampled the Irish until the taxi honked its horn outside the fish-house. He got into the car and they drove through Bay Shore to Islip and then down a bleak road to the Champlin Marshes.