“Yeah. I got it. I get it. Thanks.”
With that vile bit of knowledge swirling around his brain, Luke tore down the steps to his van, like the degenerate everyone inside assumed he was.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Push the Pause Button, Please
Luke sat on the bench outside the Sun Spot Surf Shop in town, studiously ignoring his phone. Katie had called about ten times since lunch, but he had no intention of picking up. He enjoyed seeing missed calls, missed calls—all from her. How could a woman so cool inside and outside be attracted to a man like Bucky Porter? What did Bucky do for her? How did he charm her, see her a few weekends, and cajole her to come east for a whole summer?
He looked back down at his phone. Each time she’d called, she’d left voice mails. So far, he’d only listened to two:
I bet you made him feel threatened, like we were on a lunch date or something. That’s why he behaved like that. I told you, my life was a mess when we met, my mom had died only a month before, he came in and handled stuff. He’s just, honestly, please can we just laugh about how bad it was? He would have been much nicer if he’d been warned, but I didn’t expect him to be out. He must have just had a hard week in New York and then wanted to unload and see me after ten days. Like I said, I bet he got a hint of . . . a good-looking man with me at lunch and . . . well, he got jealous. Can you blame him for being not so friendly?
And then, in the second one, she’d added: You have to give me a break, Luke. I know you hate people like that, people who come out for the summer only and act like jerks. We laugh about it. But I swear, he didn’t behave the way he did at lunch when we met. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s Oregon and how it just chills you out; it’s magical out there. He was different, we spent the day in Hood River and he was amazing, I swear.
In Hood River, he was kind to Huck, he told me he had a house with extra room, and we should see the East Coast. He said he wouldn’t even be here much and I’d have a chance to create a new life, teaching here after all the mess at home.
He stopped listening to the second message halfway through. Women made Luke insane. He couldn’t decrypt any of their motivations or reasoning. Simone had also given him some long justification for the fact that, though they had epic sex and he made her laugh all night long, she decided to leave him for no one in particular and everyone in general.
“Hey, man, you look bummed out,” said Kenny, who took the seat next to him on the bench. “What the hell is up with you?”
Luke exhaled. “I don’t know. Women. All of them.”
“Who now?”
“Not talking about it. I just can’t deal with it. They’re going to literally kill me.”
Kona walked out of the surf shop and slapped Luke’s shoulder, joking, “Hey, man, does it still burn when you pee?”
“Shut up, Kona. No diseases here. I don’t even know if they have a name for the infections growing on you.”
Kona sat next to Luke on the edge of the bench with his legs spread wide, elbows resting on his knees.
And, that was a good thing because the lovely Julia Chase came strolling down the street and stopped right in front of the bench and, not surprisingly, chose to stand right in front of Kona.
She said, “I was thinking I need a boat ride.”
“You get anything you want. You tell me the time and place.”
“Stop.” Julia smiled and combed her fingers through her honey-blond hair. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re so bad. I just meant I need a water-ski workout or to get some fresh air.”
Kona put his hands on the back of her knees and was surprised she didn’t flinch. She did say, “You hopeless flirt,” but she didn’t pull away or stop him. Kona appreciated a married woman who ignored all those silly restrictions in life, especially when he could feel his dick going from six to twelve.
“You want to go down to the boat right now? It’s nearing sunset, the wind is calm if you want to water-ski a little. Keep these beautiful calves firmed up; the water is so smooth, it’ll be like carving butter.”
Julia put on her sunglasses to hide her disbelief at his cockiness. “I’d like that. I might do that. Today might work, or maybe tomorrow.”
Kenny elbowed Luke, who took her indecision for another housewife crush and whispered, “I’ll tell you one thing: behind every rich man, there’s a woman who’s tired of blowing him.”
Out on the street, before this merry little group, teenaged traffic cops, (called Brownies), stopped cars for crosswalks. They watched for illegal U-turns and ensured the mid-Main Street traffic jams of harried moms, demanding fathers, and fed-up workmen didn’t result in any homicides.
While Kona and Julia did their sexual maybe-we-will-screw-one-day-maybe-we-won’t dance, Luke’s father, Frank, eyed the group from across the street. He walked into Halsey Hardware to get a faucet washer, muttering to himself that his only child, that motherless boy of thirty, would continue to give him acid reflux, high blood pressure, and possibly heart disease down the line if he didn’t start behaving more cautiously with the city people.
Luke didn’t see Frank watching him, nor did anyone on the bench notice Jake Chase’s new Range Rover SV edging through town down Main Street on the opposite side of the street.
Jake started to stop and wave at the group, but noticed his wife there, with his surfer dude friends, not hers.
Wait a minute. Was Kona touching her?
Like any husband still madly in love with his wife, he was proud of Julia’s drive and good looks. He didn’t mind her walking around town looking like a hot forty-something smoke show. She was still catching the attention of most men, which only reflected well on him. But Kona actually touching her legs across the way was a step too far. She was a piece of art meant for looking only. But don’t ever, ever touch.
Jake pulled into a spot directly across the street. He parked straight in, perpendicular to the sidewalk, not at an angle, and so took up two spots. And though he looked like an idiot in his orange driving moccasins that matched his orange linen shirt, Jake Chase wasn’t an idiot and he had a plan.
The Brownie walked up to his window, “Excuse me, sir, you’re taking up too much space, town is crowded, and you need to park like the rest of the people. Why don’t you back up on the street and I’ll hold the traffic for you and you can go in at an angle like every other car on the road?”
“Shhh, cut it out, kid. I got this,” Jake demanded.
“Uh, sir, really, I’m going to ask you to back up now. Careful when you back up not to cross the yellow line while doing so, in which case, I’ll have to issue a ticket for . . .”
“Do me a favor, kid: meet your daily ticket quota, write me up a ton of tickets any way you want, just do it quietly. Let me take both these spots, straight in. I promise you, kid, there’s a reason for this. And when you grow up, you’ll have a time in life when you are pleading to another man to leave you in peace.”
The kid looked confused. “You know, man to man, that’s okay, I feel you, I do, but I’m going to get into trouble if I don’t write up a . . .”
“That’s my point, kid, we got a deal here, right? An understanding. You’re going to write me up for a hundred fuckin’ simultaneous violations, you’re gonna meet your ticket writing quota for the whole week in the next six minutes . . . only you’re going to walk away and quietly and not draw attention to us.” Now, at the right angle, Jake’s trunk faced his wife and Kona directly on the sidewalk behind him. He slumped down in the front seat to watch the rearview camera.
Self-made kagillionaires like Jake Chase got to where they were for one reason: because they hustled. He did not work harder than the union leader, the lobster boat captain, or even the hot dog vendor jockeying for his spot outside the park. But, Jake’s forté had one special coating: he played people who thought they were slicker than he, without them even knowing.
And so, on this sunny Thursday afternoon, around four-thirty, Jake Chase kep
t his car idling directly across the street from the bench at the Sun Spot Surf Shop. He sat there with the engine of his spanking new Range Rover on, the gear shifted into “R” for reverse, his foot on the brake. His eyes were glued to his rearview backup camera screen so that he could watch Kona, the guy who thought he had smoother moves than all of them, caress those famous legs that belonged to his wife.
And then, he thought. I like this backup camera. I got an idea . . .
Chapter Forty
Talk Therapy
Friday, August 11
The next morning, Katie and Huck headed up to Tide Runners drop-off. He tugged her arm. “Faster, Mom!”
She found Julia kicking down the stand of her Townie pale blue bike and then helping her son Richie with his.
“How did the meeting with the club women go?” Julia asked. “You were heading to a party planning meeting last time I saw you. Did Sissy or Fee Fee draw you into some preppy fantasyland?”
“You have no idea. Let’s go sit on the beach a bit. I want to finish my iced tea before my two tutoring sessions and before I go into the Seabrook with George’s mother, Poppy. I’m a little agitated today, and that scene is really getting to me.”
“Okay, let’s walk, what’s up?” Julia yanked a $3,800 straw bag with original Massai warrior beading out of her bike basket. Designed by a posh former colonialist from Kenya, the bags had sold out at Barneys in two days.
“Just a perfect storm is all I can say,” answered Katie, looking everywhere for Luke, who had not acknowledged a dozen calls and texts. “I’ll find you in ten minutes, I have to talk to someone first.” Katie trailed off in search of the furious Luke. She walked down near the docks, around several dozen cars and pickup trucks to make sure he wasn’t changing into a wetsuit behind one—no Luke anywhere.
Julia could tell her friend was upset over men, not plans. “You want to ask Kona or Kenny or one of the guys where Luke might . . .”
“Nope.” Katie shook her head. “It’s just a little thing.”
“Honey, it’s never looked to anyone, not me, not the guys, like just a ‘little’ anything . . . just F.Y.I. . . . he’ll show at camp. He has to.”
“I have to explain to him,” Katie admitted quietly. “It’s horrible.”
“It’s too early for a martini, but I bet I can help. Then again, we can meet here after your tutor and I can bring a shaker full. Don’t worry; we’ll sort it out.”
Julia and Katie walked down the sand in the morning sun, which already felt like it was burning their faces. They pulled on the brims of their hats as they got closer to the ocean glare.
“You don’t have to tell me everything, but the headlines are blinking in bright lights with the way you and Luke hold yourselves. I’ve never seen you with George, but I’d wager it’s not the same. C’mon. Sit. We’re going to sort the whole thing out here and now. I can see you’re in some heartbreak.”
Julia flapped out her huge baby-blue towel with a six-inch Hermès silk horse bit trim. “Sit down, there’s plenty of room for two.” Katie lay down on her side, supported on her elbow, touching the exquisite silk with her fingers.
Julia lay on her back, playing with the indigo beaded necklaces cascading down her cleavage.
“Where did you get the necklaces?” Katie asked. “You have so many things I would have no idea where to find.”
“Oh, God, they’re just something I found in town.” (She’d bought four necklaces at $2,200 a pop out of the Ralph Lauren antique glass cabinet the week before—amulets found on Native American reservations, now sold for a hundred times their original price.)
Katie, taking in the last sips of her iced tea, studied how Julia’s necklaces played off the cornflower blue towel. “Julia.”
“Yeah?”
“The towel, which I’m going to bet you didn’t buy at Pottery Barn, matches your beads. You know that, right? Tell me you did that on purpose and I’m going to freak out.”
Julia answered deadpan, facing the sun, “I did it extremely much on purpose.”
“I knew it,” Katie huffed loudly at the sky. “You make me smile even on a day I’m dreading something.” She jammed her straw into the ice of her plastic cup and violently tried to stab the lemon wedge inside. “I’m not sure I can go into the club with Poppy today I. Just. Can’t.”
A sweep of sandpipers danced around the white water lapping the shore. Julia kicked her legs in the air and sprayed oily suntan lotion on them. The muscles in Julia’s tight torso bulged together as she scissored her legs to dry them. She asked, slightly out of breath, “What’s so much about a simple lunch?”
“I woke up feeling like George was an experiment. His mother and his ladies-who-lunch friends are drawing me into a community I don’t like at all.”
“That club isn’t easy.” Julia smiled kindly, then added, “I know some great women in there, but most of it is tough for an outsider.”
“The Patio Party has now mushroomed like lives are dependent on it going well. I told them you’d know better than I how to best entertain at a party. I don’t care about a table setting, but I simply wanted my own girlfriend team, just to walk through their girlfriend gauntlet. When you listen to the women plot and plan, you have to wonder if Harvard offers free lobotomies along with the art history degrees.”
“I would have loved to see their expressions when you suggested me.” Julia started laughing.
Katie bit into a piece of ice, a bit distracted by activity at camp down the beach: a few younger instructors unloaded surfboards and brought them to the shore. Suddenly, a tall, thinner guy with chocolate, shaggy hair, shuffled onto the sand. As he dragged several foam boards down to the kids who were treading water, Luke surveyed the view left and right, and pretended not to notice that Katie was lying down the beach with Julia.
Katie watched him with a hard tug in her heart, as he dove over a crashing wave and powered out to the kids sitting on their boards. No matter how far away, any mother can make out the shape of the shoulders and head of her own child, and she pinpointed Huck grabbing the back of Luke’s shoulders and hanging on.
Katie said aloud, “I fall for men who handle my son well.”
“Luke will cast a spell on any mother,” responded Julia, blowing out Lamaze-style breaths as she held her legs out three inches above the sand.
“I mean even George, too. That first time I brought him to my Hood River loft, introducing him to my son as the new friend he was, he went straight into Huck’s room to help reconstruct a lopsided Lego Star Wars ship—some toy Huck was obsessed with.”
“In our home it was the Lego Death Star that almost did us in. It was designed for sixteen-year-olds, and Jake bought it for Evan when he was ten. It took so long to build, Jake had it encased in a Lucite case in our front hall on Fifth Avenue, a huge sphere. People come in and probably think it’s a pricey piece of art we got at auction.”
“Okay, so you get how Legos take over a household with a boy,” said Katie. “A man comes into mine, and, before I even have time to pour him a glass of wine, says to my son, ‘Hey, I’m a new friend of your mom’s and I came to see her. But clearly, there’s a Lego crisis going on and she’s going to have to wait.’ I remember Huck’s eyes saying, to the world, ‘Finally a man in my house!’”
“Doesn’t mean you have to love the guy because he pays attention to Huck.”
Katie watched a larger set of waves curl and crash. The white water silently crept up the ledge to within inches of her toes. Katie threw her Patagonia knapsack over her head.
“Yeah. But I specifically remember George saying to Huck, ‘You’re never going to sleep right if it’s upsetting you.’ I’m telling you, he was in my kid’s head in the first thirty seconds.”
“Okay, I take back what I said. Anyone would want to jump into a man’s bed who did that.”
“George then spent forty minutes fixing the Legos from the inside out, something I just couldn’t do. He sat on the floor in that uncomfor
table way non-limber men do, with one knee folded sideways, another bent upwards jammed into his armpit, stretching his arms painfully to reach a little, elusive piece. I remember his reading glasses were half falling off as he turned the building manual this way and that to decipher the mess poor Huck had gotten himself into.”
“Women will beat themselves up over anything,” Julia reminded her. “It’s not a bad thing to be attaching yourself to men who are fixated on your son. You just have to think about what you need, which isn’t simple. You may not want to admit it, but I know you’re watching all the kids trailing behind Luke down there. What single mother wouldn’t fall for a man who possessed that kind of grace and talent with children? He makes my own heart beat faster when my kids smile up at him like he’s Ironman and Batman and Spider-Man all rolled into one. Sometimes I want to go up to Luke, when my Richie is hanging off him, you know, and just say, ‘will you marry me, please?’”
Katie’s mind turned to Luke’s world-class kisses, the gropings on the beach at night, and she wondered if ending up with someone her own age, and who was from her same level background, was just easier. Plus he was hot. And fun. And a teacher.
“You listening to me, Katie?” Julia asked. “You’re in la-la land.”
“So sorry, I appreciate your advice, I really do. And you’re right, I’m falling for Luke harder than I can handle. I feel a little to a lot guilty because with George, my stomach just doesn’t get into knots the way it does with Luke, you know . . . but then, when George comes over, and literally the way he grabs the wine bottle from my hand and opens it or pours it or stands when I get up to find the salt, I kind of melt for him, too. And then I think, okay, maybe my stomach does get into knots with George, too. Whatever, I’ve got to focus on the fact that my child is settled and I have employment. That’s what counts,” said Katie, slapping her knee.
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