Belle Harbor Skeletons

The soft, golden glow of early morning spread like smoke through the silent bedroom. Yawning sleepily, Barnaby Moss stretched his slight frame and opened his dark eyes.

The bed, comfortable though it was, was unfamiliar territory; still, he silently supposed, it had to happen sometime. Although he was frequently mistaken for one, he was not a kid anymore. He was 24 years old. Eventually, he was going to have sex. The odds of his missing out on it completely were slim. He just wished he could remember where he was and with whom.

Too much champagne made him feel a lot worse in the morning than too much beer; he would have to remember that.

“Where the hell--?” he whispered. Then the memories of the previous night flooded his consciousness, and, at the same time, he became aware that his bed companion was still sleeping beside him. It was the bed companion he wanted; he had not wandered off in a champagne haze to sleep with a total stranger.

“Oh, right” he sighed, “Arnie.”

Arnie Kotkin was Barn’s best friend and partner in every scheme imaginable since they had met at the age of seven in what would be their first choir. Although they had grown up only a few blocks away from each other, the boys had come from vastly different worlds.

Lawrence and Stella Moss, both full-time postal workers and part-time grocery store clerks, raised their two sons, Barnaby and Frederick, in a modest home in one of Lawton, New York’s middle-class neighborhoods.

Their unpretentious, 2-bedroom/1-bathroom residence had never wanted for love, encouragement and good humor--although, when the boys were small, it had sometimes wanted for the telephone. 

Now that Barn had his own apartment, and Fred was in college on a full academic scholarship, the Mosses indulged themselves in dinner out one night each week, and occasionally even managed to get away for a long weekend! 

They felt that life had been very good to them, and in all the important ways, it had.

Barn’s parents had instilled a good work ethic in him, and also taught him that a job well done was worth more than a job well paid for.  As much as a paycheck, Barn wanted the satisfaction of doing his job better than anyone else could have. Extremely competitive and in possession of an impressively high IQ--165--Barn knew his drive was a greater asset to him than his IQ, remarkable as it was. Without drive, even an intelligent person could be a failure.

Only ten blocks away, in an upper-class area long known to its snobbish residents as Belle Harbor, the Kotkin family enjoyed a much different lifestyle.

The elder Kotkins both came from old money. It could be no surprise to anyone that while other children were saving 50 cents a week in their piggy banks, young Thelma Fine and Joseph Kotkin were learning about NASDAQ and the DOW.

Joseph Kotkin, an unassuming man, despite his vast wealth, held a senior administrative position at Webster-Morrison Investments.  It was nice to work near the family fortune.  He remembered believing, as a very young child, that his home was located on Wall Street; it was certainly a street he heard a lot about.  

Thelma Fine Kotkin, who clung to the belief that the entire English-speaking world discussed the Kotkins over dinner each night, had similar memories about the fictitious Easy Street; of course, for all intents and purposes, she lived there now and always had.