by Rae Lawrence
“Haven’t seen him, Stella,” Lyon said.
“Well,” Stella said. She took a big swallow from one of the drinks. “Well, well, well. Anne, your earrings are adorable.”
Lyon excused himself to go make a telephone call.
“God, I love his accent,” Stella said. “I was always such a sucker for an English accent. How long have you two been married?”
“Ten years.”
“Me too! Lyon, what a catch. He always makes the party-game list.”
“What party-game list?” asked Anne.
“Oh, you’ve never played with us? This is fun. We can play now. Okay, how many people are here, would you say?”
“One-fifty, maybe two hundred,” said Anne.
“A lot of people. A lot of rich, beautiful, successful people.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Now. Think of all the men here. Imagine someone waved a magic wand and Lyon didn’t exist. Who else in the room would you want to be married to?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Oh come on, Anne, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud. I won’t tell. Who? How about him?” Stella pointed to a lawyer who had just successfully sued a national tabloid for libel.
“Don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Just because,” Anne said.
“Because even though he’s rich and smart and funny and probably great in bed, he’s also fat and short and probably has hair all up and down his back, right? You don’t have to say it. He never makes the list. Okay. How about him?” Stella nodded at a real estate developer who had just gotten divorced from his third wife.
“No.”
“You see, he’d be on my list. He’s totally charming and he’d take me all over the world and then he’d dump me, dump me in some horrible way, dump me the way he’s dumped all his other wives, but I’d get a great settlement, right? I could definitely stand to be married to him.” Stella had finished her own drink and was now starting on Arthur’s. She tilted her head at another lawyer, on the far end of the dance floor. “And also, to him.”
“Are you and Arthur having trouble?” asked Anne.
“Trouble? No trouble. He’s fucking my colorist, but this too shall pass.”
“You’re not serious.”
“What’s the point of being serious?” Stella said. “Anyway, she’s not such a great lay. I know this for a fact.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Arthur never feels like fooling around, I mean hardly ever, anymore. I can’t remember the last time we did it. It’s the great irony of life. Whenever Arthur is having a really hot affair, he turns into this absolute stallion. He just never stops. He’s like a teenager. It wears me out. So, you know, the girl can’t be much in bed.”
“Oh Stella. I’m so sorry.”
Stella shrugged. “But she’s a genius with foils.” She bowed her head and shook her long auburn hair across her shoulders. “She can fuck my husband all she wants, so long as she does this for me every six weeks.”
Lyon was back. “I found Arthur. He’s in the kitchen, they’re all singing Gilbert and Sullivan. Anne, I’m bushed, shall we?”
They rode halfway home without talking. Lyon whistled along with the radio.
He turned to her at a stoplight. “Do they all flirt with you this way when I’m not around?”
“They’re not flirting, they’re just being polite.”
“Oh, my dear, dear innocent girl. They are flirting. When a man looks at your knees, that is most definitely flirting.” He grinned. “Promise me you will never wear that dress when I’m out of town.”
“You’re always out of town.”
“You know, you flirt back. Just a little.”
“I don’t!”
“You do.”
“I do not flirt.”
“You flirt so well, you don’t even realize you’re flirting.” They were home now. “You flirt like a princess. Unapproachable and come-hither all at once.”
“Have you been flirting with princesses?”
“You see,” Lyon said. “There you go.”
She turned off the alarm while he got out the key. Inside, she bent over to take off her heels.
“Leave your shoes on,” he said.
Upstairs it was dark and warm and smelled of the sea. She sat on the far side of their bed and waited for him to tell her what he wanted. He ran his thumb back and forth across her mouth. I’m too tired for this, she thought, holding him against her lazy tongue, hoping he would come quickly. His sounds were the sounds of a man slipping into a warm bath after a day of hard physical labor. When it was her turn, he started at her feet. He took his time, kissing the backs of her knees and the hollows of her hips, and she read a hint of rebuke in his ardor. Afterward, they undressed slowly and silently, hanging their expensive clothes on padded hangers.
“I miss you,” she said.
“I miss you more,” he said. “How are you, darling?”
“In general?”
“Right now.”
“Right now I’m happily, deliriously satisfied, sir.”
“New pajamas?” he asked.
“Old. Just haven’t worn them in a while.”
“Lovely.”
She felt herself beginning to drift off. His fingers were pulling at her pajamas. She was as tired as he was eager. The combination seemed to excite him. In a few minutes it was over, and he was fast asleep, and she was wide awake.
She tried to remember the last time they had done it twice in one night. Had he kissed her? Had they said good night? She wondered, what would his mood be in the morning. She wondered, how old was the girl in Maine.
Neely found the man she was looking for at a fund-raising dinner for local Democratic candidates. The campaigns weren’t terribly important, but the host ran one of the top-notch agencies and the guest list was guaranteed to be pure A-list.
Her daily horoscope had read, “Pay attention to those close to you.” For a moment Neely thought this might refer to her twin sons, Bud and Judd, who lived with their father (Neely’s second ex-husband) a few miles away. She hadn’t seen them in a couple of weeks. It was hard to keep track of fourteen-year-olds. They rarely called her when they were staying with Ted. Judd spent most of his free time closed up in his room, playing on his computer. Bud (who recently insisted that everyone call him “Dylan”) was usually off at clubs with his friends from high school.
Dave Feld was closer than that. He was seated next to her at dinner. Neely did a quick clockwise sweep of the table, starting with herself. Neely, Dave Feld, the hostess, one of the high-profile candidates, an actress with a current box-office hit, a big-name criminal lawyer, the wife of a studio chief, an actor who’d been active in the Democratic Party for years, a television producer, someone from some big consulting firm in Washington.
The second-best table. Pretty good for a crowd this big, but still. It made Neely crazy that you weren’t supposed to ask where you’d be seated before you attended these things. It was unbelievable to her that someone could ask a big star like Neely O’Hara to show up and to write a check, and there was never any guarantee where she’d be seated. It seemed like something an agent would be able to negotiate, but Gordon had explained (first slowly, then with a bit of impatience in his voice) that when people entertained in private homes, questions about the seating chart were considered bad form.
Dave Feld had all the right credentials. He owned a big piece of a production company that currently had four prime-time hits on two different networks. He had grown up in Washington and moved to Los Angeles right after graduating from NYU. He had gotten divorced six months ago, just before his fiftieth birthday.
“I love your tie,” Neely said. She swept her eyes down the length of his tie and slowly brought them back up, lingering on his mouth. He drove her home, and they made out in the front seat, just like teenagers. Neely knew better than to invite him in. Recently divorced men needed t
o be strung along a little. So she strung him along, and two months later he invited her to spend the summer with him in East Hampton.
Neely loved East Hampton. She loved Dave’s big house, which he’d been able to keep after the divorce by giving his wife the house in Beverly Hills, the apartment in Greenwich Village, and the condo in Aspen. She loved all the party invitations, as many as a dozen a day on the summer weekends. She loved the humid weather, which did miracles for her skin. She loved that the place was full of gay men, most of whom still thought Broadway was the center of the universe. From behind her big blue sunglasses, she watched them recognize her and nudge each other when she walked through the little shopping district in search of tiny scented soaps and imported hair conditioner and whatever else there was to buy. That’s right! Neely O’Hara is in town! She was a big, big deal in East Hampton.
And the fifteen pounds just melted away. Dave wasn’t a stud, but he knew how to use his hands. Like most divorced men, he liked to cuddle, but he was a sound sleeper and Neely could usually pry herself loose after the first annoying half hour.
The Burkes lived somewhere nearby, but she never saw them. Their names came up in conversation at parties or at the beach, but they seemed to move in a slightly different circle. Neely was relieved. She hadn’t seen Anne in seven years, not since her affair with Lyon. What kind of person cared about who was fucking who seven years ago? But that was so like Anne: making a big deal about sex and never actually having any. Southampton was just the right place for her, with all the other no-talent country-club princesses.
In August they were invited to one of the most exclusive and talked-about parties of the season, a fund-raiser for an environmental organization at the home of a movie director who had a huge spread right on Georgica Pond. Here was a guy who wouldn’t even say hello to her in a Hollywood restaurant, and now she was invited to his house! Neely was starting to get the hang of how these summer places worked. People were much friendlier here than in New York or Los Angeles. If only someone had told her this fifteen years ago, when real estate cost a fraction of what it did now. Just think of all the connections she could have made.
Everyone at the party was dressed casually. It seemed to Neely that the more money someone had, the less they cared about their clothes. It was a form of showing off, really. Faded polo shirts, unpressed chinos, well-worn deck shoes: an arriving stranger might have guessed this was a group of suburban bankers or, even worse, college professors.
Neely spent the first hour with Dave, moving from group to group. Everyone loved Dave, and everyone loved his television shows, which had just enough sophisticated technical touches and narrative twists to keep the critics happy. Lawyers were always coming up to them and offering plot ideas for the show set in a law firm, and doctors were always suggesting situations for the show in a hospital.
That was another thing she had noticed about the Hamptons. People had opinions about everything under the sun: television, movies, books, politics, fashion, music, and most of all the stock market. For people who considered themselves artistic, Neely had never heard so much talk about the stock market.
When the conversation turned to the price per share of a major computer manufacturer, Neely drifted away, toward the bar.
“Will you sing a little, later?” the hostess asked. “We rolled the piano out by the pool.”
“I never sing at private parties,” Neely replied. In California, people would have known better than to ask.
“Just one song. Did you know my husband studied music in college? He can play anything, in any key. He’d be thrilled, he has all your records.”
“I’ll think about it,” Neely said, which they both knew meant no. She regretted it instantly—what a great story it would make when she got back to California, that she had sung while the director George Dunbar played the piano for her, right in his own backyard.
The party rolled on as the sun set behind the house. The lawn was ringed with scented candles to keep away the mosquitoes. George Dunbar made a speech about the importance of protecting wildlife, someone gave a toast to endangered species, a woman from the environmental organization announced how much money the party had raised, people clapped.
“And,” George announced, “I will write another check, in the amount of twenty thousand dollars, right here tonight, if Neely O’Hara will do us the immense honor of singing just one song for all of us.”
What a bastard, Neely thought. Dave put his arm around her and squeezed with pride. Twenty thousand dollars for a bunch of birds! For a second she wondered whether there would be some way to split the money, fifty-fifty. Twenty thousand dollars, and she wouldn’t see a penny of it.
The crowd began to clap in rhythm. “Song! Song! Song!”
Neely smiled. She pictured herself back in California, hanging out with the Dunbars, just her and Dave and George and Sandy on a Sunday night, George getting out some old sheet music, Neely seated beside him on the piano bench. Maybe they’d cook a little pasta together in the kitchen. Maybe they’d watch a video of one of George’s movies, just the four of them in their stocking feet, sharing a big bowl of popcorn. Once word got around that she was in George Dunbar’s inner circle, everything would change.
And so she sang. It was one of her old torch songs, in an easy key that wouldn’t give George any trouble. She gazed at Dave for the first few bars and then worked the crowd for the rest of the number. On the last three notes, the breathtaking high notes that she could still hit with confidence, she stared right into George Dunbar’s eyes.
Then she made a star’s exit, not waiting for the applause to end, not waiting for the hugs and the handshakes. She walked slowly back to the house and found a small bathroom off the kitchen where she could reapply her makeup and give them all time to talk about how amazing she had been, how she still had it. She wondered whether there was any chance George Dunbar would offer her the opening song in his next movie. He owed her, he owed her big-time. But why talk of owing, when now they were such good friends? It wouldn’t even be like asking him for a favor. He’d have a demo cassette at the house, and he’d play it for her and Dave some evening, and she would start singing along, she would show him just how the phrasing should go, and he would beg her to do it. Of course, George, she would say. Anything for you.
She heard murmuring in the kitchen. She pressed her ear against the door.
“It’s almost nine and no one is leaving.”
“It’s a wonderful party, Mrs. Dunbar,” came the voice of the Polish housekeeper.
“Too wonderful. I have to get them out of here.”
“Do you want me to put out the candles?”
“They’re all so drunk, they won’t even notice.”
“They’ll notice the bugs.”
“Brilliant! Have the guys put out the candles. I want everyone out of here by nine-thirty. Our dinner reservation is at ten and they’ll never hold it for us on a Saturday night.”
“For you, they will hold the table. Of course they will hold Mr. Dunbar’s table.”
“No way anyone is going to hold three tables of eight on a Saturday night, not even for George Dunbar. Tell the bar to cut off the booze.”
Neely gasped. There was another party after this one; this wasn’t even the real party! This was what the East Coast was like, a social onion, you peeled layer after layer, you thought you’d arrived, and then you discovered there was something else to want, something even more exclusive, even harder to get.
And Dave Feld hadn’t been invited. Maybe he wasn’t so important after all. There were still three good weeks left to the summer season; maybe it was time to start thinking about trading up.
“Call the restaurant and ask them to start seating even if we’re a little late. The Burkes will probably get there ahead of us.”
So it was Anne who would get to go to the Dunbars’ special little dinner party. Without having to sit through this long, boring cocktail party, without having to write a check like
everyone else. It isn’t fair, Neely said to herself. It’s never been fair.
She stayed in the bathroom another fifteen minutes. Let Dave worry about her; she was sick of his midlife crisis, his neediness, his endless talk about life being short and making every day count. Next week Judd and Dylan were coming for a week’s visit, and she was looking forward to the distraction.
Her sons would have everything. Ted was a great father, she had to admit that much, and he had done it nearly all on his own. But now that they were almost grown up, it was time for Neely to get involved. What did Ted know about the best schools, the best people?
Neely pictured them sitting in Dave’s backyard, having a talk about buckling down and getting good grades. Judd would go to Harvard, and Dylan would go to Yale. They’d make friends with kids from nice families. They’d all go out to dinner, the boys and their girlfriends and their girlfriends’ parents. She tried to remember the names and ages of all those Kennedy cousins.
Who needed East Hampton? It was a good place to start, but everyone knew the real power summered on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. She would peel another layer, and another layer after that, and she would leave these people behind, because she always had, because life wasn’t about looking back, it was all about looking forward. With her voice and her guts, what could stop her? Maybe she didn’t have Anne’s pretty face, her pretty breeding, and her pretty Radcliffe degree. Maybe she had something better.
No one gave a better party than Anne and Lyon. On the first Thursday in October, when everyone had come back from the Hamptons, they took a yellow legal pad and two matching fountain pens to a small Italian restaurant with wallpaper in a pattern of zebras, and they began to plan the guest list for their annual New Year’s Eve celebration.
Over red wine and stuffed mushrooms, they went through last year’s guest list, gossiping about everyone’s behavior. There were good guests (people who arrived early and stayed late, people who danced, people who sent thank-you notes) and bad guests (people who hid in the library all night long, people who dropped ashes on the carpets, people who got sloppy when drunk).
