                                                                                                     CHAPTER 3
                                                                                   Return to East Hampton - July 2026
Stretching my legs across to the opposite seat in the empty train car, I listened to the sound of the train as it ran along the underground track out of Penn Station, thankful, a moment of peace. That solitude suddenly interrupted as the train burst from the tunnel into the bright sunlight of the suburbs of Long Island. 
Pulling at the visor of my baseball cap, I looked down at my forearms, marked by random tattoos cut deeply into the skin, at age fifteen: a heart, a shamrock, a cross, a spider, a pirate’s knife. My fingertips gently ran along my left arm, holding fast at a four-inch scar, the result of being stabbed with a box cutter, at age sixteen. 
More than memories, these visible badges, plain to the eye fifty years on, a reminder, I am a fighter, a warrior. A message to everyone else, fuck off.
But that was another life. A life before college and law school, before a license to practice law hung on the wall, before I was presented with a gold badge as a New York State prosecutor. Indeed, a life without the Egyptian-cotton shirt sleeves and gold cuff links, which for decades so effectively concealed these suggestions of another time. 
The only constant between these two lives was an overwhelming desire to fight. Against what or whom, I’ve never been certain. Maybe it was that quiet, underlying rage, that resentment at feeling left behind, disregarded, disowned. Perhaps it was that overwhelming urge to seek fairness, to find justice in a legal system I have been exposed to my entire life, a system that has only served to prove to me, over and over, its complete and total failure.
As I sat on the train to East Hampton, I thought, at sixty-five, maybe I’m done fighting. 
My license to practice law has been suspended. No, not the typical stuff that gets lawyers in trouble, like stealing a client’s money, or screwing a partner’s wife. Instead, it was my mouth. I completely lost control of it. A mortal sin for any lawyer. 
It started about ten years ago, in my mid-fifties.  I began talking trash to everyone, clients, judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. It wasn’t some midlife crisis. It was something more. Honestly, I didn’t care. For years, I played the game, I did it well, working hard to say the right thing at the right time, to the right people. And then, I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Alcohol helped, especially the day drinking at the corner bar with other misfits from the courthouse. But I knew there was more, acutely aware I had a lifetime of buried trauma, anger, resentment, and I suppose, regret. I also understood that someday, I have to come to terms with it.
My wife complained. About the lies, the closet-drinking, my inability, perhaps outright refusal to communicate, to be intimate on any level. “You're shut down,” she said. “I don’t even know you.” 
She was right. My wife said I had trust issues, said it was related to my childhood, the death of my mother, foster care, juvenile lock up, reform school, group homes, the violence, the beatings, the abuse. So much to choose from, really. 
But there is more.
The Bar Association suspended me, ordering proof of alcohol rehabilitation before I could be reinstated. 

My law partners suggested I take a break. “Take a year off,” they said, “Go find yourself.” It wasn’t a suggestion. They provided boxes to clear out my office. 
That was more than enough for my wife.
I considered my life might have taken a different path. Once, one of the most successful trial prosecutors in the Manhattan DA’s office, I was fearless, aggressive, unafraid to take on difficult cases. All the big white-shoe law firms in New York wanted a pit bull in the courtroom, and so they called. There were dinners, cocktails, golf invitations to the finest country clubs. 
But it never felt right. 
I had few friends in the DA’s office, keenly aware, my success in the courtroom was fueled by my intense dislike of the very people I worked with. I couldn’t understand their sense of entitlement, their naiveté, their callous indifference to the lives of people they impacted every day as lawyers and prosecutors. I didn’t respect them. Despite my efforts, I never possessed that ease with which they engaged in the shallow banter and off-color jokes often told in judges' chambers and courthouse hallways. 
So, I walked away, opening a small practice in New York City, where I spent the next thirty years as a knock-around criminal defense attorney, grabbing court-appointed cases, wife beaters, traffic tickets, and DWIs.
Taking a long draw of vodka from a pint bottle, I looked out the window of the train, on my way to East Hampton to speak at the funeral of a fisherman I hadn’t seen in fifty years.
                                                                                    East Hampton Train Station 
“Where to?”
“I need a hotel.” 
“Not much out here," cab driver said. “Fourth of July weekend coming up.”
“Any suggestions?” I said.
“Flanders, Riverhead, maybe. Might find something.”
“Can you get me there?”
“Sure,” he said, “Bit of traffic today, might take a while. Summer people are here.”
“That’s OK.”
“You understand Riverhead’s not the Hamptons?”  
“Got it.” I said, looking at him in the mirror.
“Alright, then,” he said, as we pulled into the crowded mid-afternoon street in East Hampton Village.
“Here on business?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Family?”
“No.” 
“Vacation?” he said, pushing.
“Funeral.” 
“Sorry, man.”
I didn’t feel like talking. He had the sense to know it. There were no more questions.
Bored with traffic, I observed the driver. Tall, lanky, ponytail, missing teeth, thick-framed glasses, the kind they hand out in jail. Like many of my clients, a hard life, I suspect, but relatively uncomplicated. Smokes a lot of weed, no mortgage, no wife, no kids, hangs out at the beach, doesn’t give a fuck about much. 
I envied him.
Today, I’m returning to East Hampton after managing to stay away for decades. Not an easy task, considering everyone in the city went to the Hamptons on summer weekends. Now that I’m here, I just want to leave.
Reading the name on the taxi license hanging from the visor, I was stunned, immediately struck, for a moment, incapable of thinking or speaking. 
Then I smiled for the first time in a long while.
“Mikey.” I said.








                     

CHAPTER 3

Return to East Hampton - July 2026

More than memories, these visible badges, plain to the eye fifty years on, a reminder, I am a fighter, a warrior. A message to everyone else, fuck off.

As I sat on the train to East Hampton, I thought, at sixty-five, maybe I’m done fighting.

My license to practice law has been suspended. No, not the typical stuff that gets lawyers in trouble, like stealing a client’s money, or screwing a partner’s wife. Instead, it was my mouth. I completely lost control of it. A mortal sin for any lawyer.

Alcohol helped, especially the day drinking at the corner bar with other misfits from the courthouse. But I knew there was more, acutely aware I had a lifetime of buried trauma, anger, resentment, and I suppose, regret. I also understood that someday, I have to come to terms with it.

My wife complained. About the lies, the closet-drinking, my inability, perhaps outright refusal to communicate, to be intimate on any level. “You're shut down,” she said. “I don’t even know you.”

She was right. My wife said I had trust issues, said it was related to my childhood, the death of my mother, foster care, juvenile lock up, reform school, group homes, the violence, the beatings, the abuse. So much to choose from, really.

But there is more.

The Bar Association suspended me, ordering proof of alcohol rehabilitation before I could be reinstated. My law partners suggested I take a break. “Take a year off,” they said, “Go find yourself.” It wasn’t a suggestion. They provided boxes to clear out my office.

That was more than enough for my wife.

But it never felt right.

So, I walked away, opening a small practice in New York City, where I spent the next thirty years as a knock-around criminal defense attorney, grabbing court-appointed cases, wife beaters, traffic tickets, and DWIs.

Taking a long draw of vodka from a pint bottle, I looked out the window of the train, on my way to East Hampton to speak at the funeral of a fisherman I hadn’t seen in fifty years.

East Hampton Train Station

“Where to?”

“I need a hotel.”

“Not much out here," cab driver said. “Fourth of July weekend coming up.”

“Any suggestions?” I said.

“Flanders, Riverhead, maybe. Might find something.”

“Can you get me there?”

“Sure,” he said, “Bit of traffic today, might take a while. Summer people are here.”

“That’s OK.”

“You understand Riverhead’s not the Hamptons?”

“Got it.” I said, looking at him in the mirror.

“Alright, then,” he said, as we pulled into the crowded mid-afternoon street in East Hampton Village.

“Here on business?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Family?”

“No.”

“Vacation?” he said, pushing.

“Funeral.”

“Sorry, man.”

I didn’t feel like talking. He had the sense to know it. There were no more questions.

I envied him.

Today, I’m returning to East Hampton after managing to stay away for decades. Not an easy task, considering everyone in the city went to the Hamptons on summer weekends. Now that I’m here, I just want to leave.

Reading the name on the taxi license hanging from the visor, I was stunned, immediately struck, for a moment, incapable of thinking or speaking.

Then I smiled for the first time in a long while.

“Mikey.” I said.