It Happens in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  “Yes, but your heart counts, too.”

  “Well, I know, but I prefer to focus on other things in life, like my child, and windsurfing, or my job. But, honestly I’ve never been so fucked up over two different men, or what to say to them. And it isn’t sitting right.”

  “You got time. Just keep everything discreet, which isn’t that difficult if George is gone half the summer in the city. Somehow you’ve found yourself matched up with a true local gem as well as an upper-class Hamptons gentleman. So just go for the ride. Go eat bad tuna salad with Poppy Porter, eat sandy hot dogs on the beach with Luke, and make them experiences to have had. You’re not necessarily in them forever. Time will give you answers, nothing else really will.”

  As Julia packed to go, and walked up to the camp drop-off area, Katie walked fifty yards down the beach along the shore.

  Unlocking her bike, Julia said to her mini-me daughter, Alexa, “I promised Richie we’d go for a bike ride all the way to camp this morning, so I missed pushing you out the door, but you shouldn’t be so late, you were fully finished with breakfast at eight-thirty when we left, sweetie.”

  “It’s fine, Mom. I’m here, I don’t even really go in the water that often.”

  “That’s ridiculous, get in the water. Soon. I gotta go to class now,” Julia answered. She started to drive her big front handlebars out toward the road, and looked back to confirm Alexa seemed ready to surf. Instead, she witnessed her daughter veering straight for Kona.

  Kona had planted himself on top of a cooler, where he studied the ledger clipboard, having gotten most of the kids settled. A few sixteen-year-old girls who tended to hang out before surfing or wakeboarding tried to flirt with him. He’d taught them to dive under scary waves at seven years old, forever someone’s cute younger sister to him.

  Alexa Chase, another breed of young woman altogether, walked up to him now, her sexuality so ripe it exploded. In front of Kona and two leering young men down the beach a bit, she leaned over and struggled a little to pull her Indian-print pants down over her round bottom. She let the pants pool up around her ankles as she arched her back. She sucked her twenty-inch tummy in, all the while squeezing her boobs in tight with each inner arm so her cleavage flowed out of her skimpy bikini top.

  Julia stood ten yards back, her legs straddling the bike, feet planted firmly on the asphalt. Grabbing those wide Townie handlebars tighter, she watched Alexa do her disrobing in the bright sun, maternal worry pulsating inside. She noticed the two men couldn’t keep their disgusting eyes off her daughter.

  Her young daughter’s buttocks were barely covered by a thong that had almost no elastic on the bottom part. As wind picked up, it flapped up high and signaled that entry was not only possible, but quite possibly welcome. Julia lamented that, in a fit of weakness in a little beachside shop the previous Christmas break in Mustique, she’d been the one who’d bought Alexa that miniscule piece of fabric. She’d given her a long wetsuit to wear at camp today, and of course Alexa, though she had promised, had never put it on.

  Kona got off the cooler, walked down the beach ten yards and told the sleaze-bags with gaping mouths, “This girl is sixteen, cool it.”

  Kona then threw a towel around Alexa. “Kid, don’t wear a bathing suit like that on my beach. You’re going to get yourself in trouble with the guys who can’t be trusted to behave. I’m going to buy you a burka if you don’t get what I’m saying.” And then he threw a camp wetsuit with long arms and legs at her. “Put this on, wear it just like the other kids do, and get yourself a board before I smack you.”

  Julia steered her bike down the lot, relieved the guys were fighting the tough match with her. She’d have to spend this summer getting Alexa in line. The kid clearly didn’t understand the dangerous power of her body.

  Katie waited on the shore in front of the children out at sea, knowing Luke would have to come in from the ocean at some point. With two twelve-year-olds by his side, exhausted from their seven hundred yard swim around the ropes, he finally rode a wave into the beach, holding the skinny boys under each arm.

  “Hey,” he said to Katie. “I’m working.”

  “I know, I just want to talk.”

  “I’m really not talking.” He looked at her, his lower lip curling, not able to hide his humiliation from the lunch table Bucky surprise.

  “Well, later? When is good because . . .”

  “Yeah. Later.” And he walked away without saying good-bye or when.

  At that, Katie’s heart clenched up so much, she instinctually rubbed it with her hand to try to disperse the pain.

  Chapter Forty-One

  George Is Baaaack

  Thursday, August 17

  George “Bucky” Herbert Bradford Porter Jr. didn’t see a need to inform Katie Doyle every time he showed up in town. It took him a day or two to get acclimated to an honest day’s “work” running the club and securing more voters for his election to the town board.

  At this very moment, on the deck of the Seabrook Club, Bucky was engaged in his favorite pastime. He aimed his iPhone special telephoto attachment lens discreetly between a high school girl’s legs across the busy pool. She was reading her book, her legs thankfully propped up and separated just right.

  Nice, tight, little pussy. Here, little pussy . . .

  He kept his “beaver shot” collection in a special photo folder on his phone and computer entitled, cleverly, Nature Shots. His second favorite pastime (or, third if you count pleasuring himself to said photos) was sharing the photos and showing them off to the bartender Henry Walker, the only employee of real class here. Bucky knew this southern gentleman in the club’s employ could be trusted.

  He took Henry’s silence as astonishment at the caliber of photos, instead of the speechless disgust Henry actually experienced. It was a good thing Bucky would regularly leave his phone for Henry to charge behind the bar. Even better that he’d hand it to Henry before the password lock came up. Henry knew what to do; he’d document the photo folder entitled “Nature Shots” and use them in good time, at the right time.

  A little beaver amusement got Bucky through all the requests he had to handle like those, that very morning, of Mrs. Bitsy Fainwright. The portly fifty-five-year old Patio Party chair, a woman who had “summered” at this club since she was an infant in her mother’s arms, had complained again about the surf school that, in her mind, invaded club water. “You must really get the town board seat and get rid of those surfers. They look like human seals out there. Why don’t they find meaningful employment and stop ruining our view?”

  Bucky nodded with determination.

  “And once you get elected, I want you to publicize photos of their camp headquarters on our beach,” Bitsy continued. “All the garbage, along with those unseemly coolers from Kmart. It’s the Hamptons after all. Can’t they get those charming striped ones we all have from Lands’ End? Don’t they understand life is just more pleasant for everyone’s eyes when things match?”

  Bitsy’s hair was pulled back in a tidy, teeny, bouffant-on-top short ponytail that stuck out of the back of her head, fastened by a pink bow. She wore a pink golf skirt that fell above her thick knees. Her exposed calves looked like huge blown-up water balloons, and, on her feet, she wore sensible white, very bulbous Reebok sneakers, circa 1994. She added, “I also want those filthy wetsuits and towels off the dune fence. Surely there must be some kind of legal violation you can slap them with, Bucky? Doesn’t a fence that could fall affect piping plover hatchlings? Can we use that against them?”

  Her entreaty gave Bucky Porter another opportunity to go down the beach and stake his claim on ancestral property. He hoped darling Huck wouldn’t be there, in case those instructors were “working.”

  Bucky surveyed the Seabrook scenes before him: little children in bright Ralph Lauren bathing suits running around with impossibly white-blond hair; young teenagers batting their eyes at each other in the assurance that they would all grow up within these inhibiting,
incestuous walls and marry each other. And the adults: fresh off the tennis courts, having “earned” getting sloshed with a few rounds of Southsides from dear Henry; and, of course, fresh young beaver everywhere to document for his “Nature Shots” collection.

  Bucky breathed in an air of invincibility at the extraordinary assortment of good American breeding before him. He marched down the beach toward the camp.

  Halfway down the beach, something more potent than slipping on the soft sand in his loafers stopped him: young Alexa Chase walking in the most revealing red bikini he had ever seen. Her sexual, willful gait terrified him—not because he felt manly stirrings in his boxer shorts, but because she looked agitated in a way he might not be able to regulate.

  Worse, she looked like she hadn’t kept their little secret so tidy.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Everything Isn’t Quite as Shipshape as It Seems

  That same day, after her seventh difficult tutor session with little Jeffrey in the huge house, Katie rushed up the stairs to the Seabrook Club. She was running only ten minutes late, a time frame infraction that might equal ten hours in Poppy’s rigid mind.

  As she searched for her lunch date, Katie wondered if she should start calling George his nickname, “Bucky,” instead. It might be nice for Poppy to hear her call him that; it would be a show of acclimation to the Hamptons planet she’d landed on.

  “Bucky” was just . . . not that sexy.

  A shiver ran down Katie’s body as she tried to cast off any feelings of guilt about him. She had to focus on Huck’s happiness and her job. Within a week, she’d hear if she’d been accepted into the school district as a substitute or even replacement. Those words of her mother rang in her head, “Your greatest love should be your work, not your man,” as she ran down to the restaurant veranda toward Poppy, two steps at a time.

  After wandering around the club for ten minutes, through the bar area and back up to the top, there was still no sight of Poppy. Katie stood on a brick pathway with purple posy plants on either side, surveying the gorgeous Atlantic before her. She saw a bunch of instructors, including Kona and Luke, with about twelve kids dragging surfboards down the beach. And then, to the left of dozens of tattered yellow-and-white umbrellas, she spied Bucky in the sand.

  This on its own was strange. He hadn’t called or texted to say he’d come out on a Thursday. Still stranger: he was vigorously arguing with Julia’s daughter, Alexa. In fact, from the looks of it, Bucky was yelling at her. What on earth had she done to deserve that?

  Katie watched as he turned his back on Alexa and began to walk away. She ran after him and pounded his back with her fist. Bucky now turned back to her and got in her face, with his nose right up against hers. Alexa started yelling back again with her arms flailing at her sides like she was frustrated or furious or both.

  Why would Bucky yell at a sixteen-year-old girl? Why would she scream at him? Had she hit him with a board out in the water, while he took a swim? Alexa, come to think of it, didn’t have a wetsuit on, and her long curly hair looked dry as it flew about in the wind around her.

  A tap on her shoulder. “Dear, you’re late.”

  “I’ve been here, I was . . .”

  “I see,” answered Poppy. “I was looking at the young children swimming. I thought I’d see you at the entrance. Perhaps my error. Let’s sit, way back at my table. There’s too much wind by the sea.” Poppy was unaware of the disturbance on the sand between her son and the young woman. Katie started to point it out, but decided against it. She sat down, hiding her angst with a tight smile and sunglasses and readied herself for a dissertation on the nautical skill sets of 1700s settlers.

  In the glare of the sun down by the water, Bucky squinted at his Rolex Daytona, wondering how much time he would have to devote to calming down this unhinged, hormonally unbalanced girl.

  “Why are you trying to shut down the camp? It’s so horrible. Everyone was just talking about it at drop-off. I thought you were just giving them summonses, but now everyone’s really saying you’re going to do it. We all love camp, it’s so cool.”

  “You don’t understand, there are safety issues, they mess up . . .”

  “No, you don’t understand, your club lifeguards have to ask the Tide Runners surf instructors to save your drunk members, who get, like, totally hammered at ten in the morning. The surfers know the ocean better than anyone. They read currents, see riptides when no one can, so don’t say they aren’t safe because they are safer than the guys you hire. Maybe we should shut down the club because of your safety issues?”

  “It’s hard for someone to understand, someone who . . .”

  “You don’t need to talk to me like a child who wouldn’t understand. You were seducing me with iced tea on the beach way back in early May, Bucky. I was thirsty . . . you knew how athletic I can be and need hydration.”

  He ground his teeth. All females were hysterical lunatics, from puberty to pregnancy to menopause. One needed to keep them properly bridled. And then, he could only think: shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit, fucking fuck.

  “And another thing altogether: you wanted me here, on your turf, in that disgusting little beach cabana, far away from my house,” Alexa yelled at him.

  “Whoaaa, young lady, you suggested the cabana that first time. Let’s keep the facts straight here. You, young lady, came at me that day; don’t act like I used you for some selfish . . .”

  “I understand you have a lawyer.” She put her hands on her hips, biting her bottom lip to see how Bucky reacted to that that. She’d heard him talk to him several times about inheritances.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Not telling.”

  “Well, everyone has lawyers.” What was she referring to, this little bitch?

  “Well, why do you need one?”

  “Are you going to sue me for having my way with you in the cabana?”

  “We did it there only because I’m not a little snotty member of your club. So I couldn’t go upstairs on real club grounds. I had to stay in the sand, near one of those gross huts. All because my family isn’t the right kind of family—we’ve got too much money. You said it yourself.”

  “Please, calm down, Alexa,” Bucky pleaded. “I didn’t mean too much money, I meant you haven’t summered out here long enough to get through the . . .”

  “We aren’t the right family, Bucky. You said it, so own it. That’s why you gave me fresh iced tea on the beach and never had me inside the club. My camp coolers don’t have iced kombucha or iced chai latte, or anything I like, ever. You knew that, you plied me with iced tea, you told me I looked fit. You joked about my tits fitting into my wetsuit, or acting as a nice pillow on my board, or, come to think of it, you’d suggested a nice cushion for your face. Only then did I have the idea we could . . .”

  “Yes,” Bucky pleaded, whispering loudly. “Exactly. You did suggest you show me your expert tongue techniques. That’s how it started, with you insisting.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Alexa said. “I just hinted I’m kinda good at blow jobs, which is the truth. But then you flirted and I thought, well, we can just hang out a little. Like on the sly.”

  Oh Jesus H. Christ, thought Bucky, another woman with her goddamn feelings hurt. Now she too would want something in return. The emotional connection that women are wired for was the real problem on this planet. That Katie Doyle was so much calmer and cooler than any woman he’d ever met. She didn’t get all wigged out when he didn’t call nor focus the universe on her.

  As for the Alexa problem, none of this was his doing. This little tramp had flaunted her body on the beach, and had sat with him in a beach chair when she was too lazy to surf. This was way back, one of the first weeks in May, before the season was in swing. Christ, they’d even laughed how competitive women were about their bodies or some such. Now, he couldn’t even remember.

  People were always blaming the man. “Oh, poor little Pollyanna, she’s so innocent, she didn’t kno
w, he took advantage of her.” She sauntered up to him in her overpriced bikini and asked him for something to drink. That’s what led to using the club bathrooms (the ones on the sand, of course, not in the clubhouse), which led to giving her fresh towels and a chair even though she wasn’t a member, which was insanely nice of him to do.

  Then, she, not he, she started coming onto him, mashing those huge tits into her wetsuit that never once got wet, talking about her blow-job technique, how she gets off in the bathtub with the warm water rushing onto her little pussy. She told him all this. How she straddles the fucking faucet, legs stretched out “like a big V,” she’d said, he even knew the position! The V! Who could forget that? That was proof it was all on her! He loved folding women in V’s, his favorite!

  Bucky, however, did start to question the wisdom of it all as he saw Alexa’s father, Jake Chase, pumping his arms back and forth as he power-walked toward the arguing pair. Bucky hadn’t properly gauged the big scene he and Alexa were causing mid-beach, right between the club and the public entrance to camp.

  Jake was slightly out of breath by the time he reached them. “Do you guys mind telling me what the problem is? Did she do something with her surfboard that isn’t allowed?”

  This hairy orangutan did not say hello properly, which, Bucky knew, was the reason people like Jake Chase were not allowed into the Seabrook. People at the Seabrook said hello to each other even when there was a disagreement. Granted, Bucky did acknowledge to himself, this morning’s fracas had the potential of being a little more than a disagreement.

  “Well, uh, Dad, kinda . . .” Alexa tried to intervene before this got ugly.

  “I’m talking to Bucky,” Jake went on. “That’s your fuckin’ name, right?”

  Bucky could just not get over how people from the great city of Manhattan introduced each other. Who was this guy, some cop from Queens or a gentleman owning an estate in the Hamptons? What was the world coming to when the landowners of Southampton could not even address each other?