Beach Lane Collection

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “So, where else have you been?” Eliza asked, reaching for the crock of couscous on the table and spooning some onto her plate.

  “Oh my, everywhere,” Midas said. “Let’s see, last month we were in Hanoi for Visionnaire,” he said, naming a very avant-garde fashion magazine. “We had snake for dinner.”

  “Snake?” Eliza shuddered.

  “It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac. You eat the heart and the blood,” Marcus explained, smiling as Eliza looked askance. “We couldn’t offend our hosts, so we did it.”

  “What did it taste like?” she asked, happy to be chewing on a baked fig and not some uncooked reptile’s guts.

  “Chicken.” Midas laughed. “Ever had fugu?” he asked, naming the rare Japanese blowfish.

  “Isn’t that poisonous?” Eliza asked, dipping a falafel ball into the cup of yogurt. She usually skipped the food offerings at a party, but the spread was too tantalizing to resist.

  “Not if it’s cooked correctly. Besides, I like to live dangerously,” he said, raising an eyebrow James Bond style. “Easton. Midas Easton,” he added for effect.

  She laughed and took a bite of the falafel ball, careful not to let the yogurt drip onto her dress. “So what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “When we went scuba diving in Palau with Quentin Tarantino, we came face-to-face with a great white. Thought that was it, that was the end. But he just bumped us, scared the shit out of me—and went on his merry way.”

  Eliza raised an eyebrow, impressed. “I went running with the bulls in Pamplona one year when I was little. With my parents. We didn’t know they didn’t let kids do it. I got separated from them and cried my eyes out.”

  Midas whistled in sympathy. “Bet you gave the bulls a good run, though,” he teased.

  She smiled at Midas. For all his celebrity-studded stories and global travels, he was so down-to-earth and easy to talk to. He leaned back in his chair and studied Eliza thoughtfully, his shaggy bangs falling into his eyes. “By the way, I looked at the fall portfolio you sent over. It’s really quite fantastic.”

  “Thanks.” Eliza smiled, coloring with pleasure.

  “I worked for a season with Phoebe Philo, of Chloé. Your work reminds me of hers. It’s incredibly modern and fresh,” he continued.

  Eliza gaped. Phoebe Philo was pretty much her hero. “Go on,” Eliza said demurely.

  Marcus chuckled. “You’re going to get a lot of attention because you’re so young and beautiful, you know. But you’ve also got the chops to back it up. I won’t be surprised if you start getting backers. Or if the Vuitton group snatches you up, launches you like they did Stella McCartney. Of course, you can look like a troll and still be successful in this business—I won’t name names.” He grinned wickedly. “But if you have the looks as well as the brains and the savvy, nothing can stop you.”

  Eliza lowered her lashes and blushed. It was so flattering to have someone—especially someone who knew the fashion industry—understand and appreciate her work. Plus, he’d said she was beautiful, hadn’t he?

  “So who’s the lucky guy?” Midas asked, nodding toward the rock on her finger.

  “My boyfriend, Jeremy,” Eliza replied. “We’ve been dating for three years,” she added, almost apologetically.

  “What’s he like? What does he do? Describe Mr. Right to me.” Midas settled back into the plush cushions behind him, as if waiting for Eliza to unveil all the secrets of womankind.

  Eliza tucked a lock of hair behind her ear before answering. “He’s really nice. Sweet. He’s from here. The Hamptons. But not ‘The Hamptons,’ ” she added quickly, making air quotes with her fingers. She explained about Jeremy’s modest background and how he’d overcome it.

  “So why him?” Midas asked, reaching over and lighting the gold hookah pipe that sat in the middle of the table. He took a puff and the sweet smell of fruit-scented smoke filled the air.

  “That’s a personal question, don’t you think?” she asked tartly, lightly slapping him on the knee. “Why are you so interested?”

  Midas didn’t answer her and instead blew out a smoke ring, passing her the pipe.

  “I don’t know—because he’s the nicest guy I ever met,” Eliza said before inhaling the sweet tobacco.

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  Of course it was enough . . . wasn’t it? Eliza felt her brow furrow. What were Jeremy’s goals? What did he want to do with his life? For the life of her, she couldn’t remember anything he wanted to do except renovate a big old house and have a soccer team of kids. But surely that wasn’t all. . . . Jeremy had big plans, didn’t he? Eliza racked her brain. Something to do with building his landscaping business? Maybe?

  “Nice guys finish first, huh?” Midas smiled, a slight sadness in his deep blue eyes.

  “I guess.” Eliza shrugged. She’d never really questioned the reasons why she and Jeremy were together before. He was cute and loving and he made her laugh, so why was she feeling so defensive suddenly?

  “And where’s Mr. Right tonight? He doesn’t like parties?”

  “No, he does . . . ,” Eliza protested. He came with her to events like this when she asked him to, but she knew all the air-kissing and talk of fabulousness just wasn’t his thing. Jeremy was completely supportive, but she knew all the fashion stuff bored him—bored most guys, really—to tears.

  “Not his thing, got it.” Midas nodded, seemingly glad to have figured out “Mr. Right.”

  Eliza shrugged uncomfortably. She didn’t want to say anything to Midas about Jeremy that was disloyal. Especially since it suddenly occurred to her that Midas was the type of guy she’d always thought she would end up with—sophisticated, well traveled, culturally savvy. Until she’d ended up with Jeremy, who thought a trip to Connecticut was exotic.

  Just then her cell phone rang. The display read J STONE, and oops, 10 p.m. She’d promised she’d meet him at the dock for fireworks a half hour ago. “I’m almost there!” she sang into the phone, even though she knew she couldn’t make it there for another half hour at least. She started to get up from the table just as the waitress finally returned with their champagne.

  “Sure you can’t stay for one drink?” Midas asked, taking the bottle from the bucket with a flourish and preparing to pop the cork.

  Eliza glanced at the label. Cristal. And this was about business, after all. . . . She eased back down onto the cushions.

  “To Eliza Thompson, this generation’s Coco Chanel!” Midas proposed as the champagne bubbled over their glasses. “To the best spread ever,” he added as he handed her a flute of bubbly, his blue eyes shining.

  Eliza accepted the glass. How could she leave when she was being toasted as the next big thing? She’d go meet Jeremy after this one drink. After all, it was the Hamptons. Nobody was ever on time.

  www.blogspot/hamptonsaupair1

  galloping gourmands

  The other day we had to prepare five different lunches for the kids, who are encouraged to “explore their personal palates” and “discover new tastes and new experiences” according to their gifted programs and therefore demand individually crafted meals with stringent specifications. Violet wanted a soy burger cooked extra-crunchy, Jackson wanted quinoa-and-tofu teriyaki, Logan a Provencal pot-au-feu, and Cassidy spit out the mashed organic zucchini I prepared for him until I got the texture just right (not too lumpy!). Thank God for Wyatt, who was happy with PB and J. My kind of guy.

  miss crankypants in the hamptons

  J. is a supermodel! Her photos from the Fourth of July party appeared everywhere. E. can’t stock enough of that dress. . . . J. is also now dating that handsome photog, who’s a bit too slick for my taste but is definitely a cutie. J. is over the moon, singing while she changes diapers; she’s in such a good mood she didn’t even blink when S. called us in for an emergency meeting after Wyatt failed his KRTs. Poor kid’s gotta go in for remedial kinder-tutoring.

  As far as I know, E. and J. are on the
road to the altar, although E. is so busy with the store she hasn’t begun to plan the wedding or even picked a date. Gotta get that girl on the ball. Doesn’t she know it takes a year to get everything together? Oh, well. From the way she waves the subject off every time I ask about it, she isn’t in any sort of rush.

  Meanwhile, D. is officially out of the picture. Haven’t heard from him since the day before I sent my nasty e-mail, when he was in Rome. (Apparently, D.’s last words as my boyfriend will have been to convey that the pasta in Italy is beyond scrumptious. I’ll never know.) I really should have waited just a little while to get drunk and mean, since I’d asked him to pick me up a fake Hermès bag from this guy E. knows who has a table by the Trevi Fountain a while back. I can’t really hope he’ll still bring me one now that we no longer appear to be together, right? Is there such a thing as a breakup parting gift?

  And not to keep whining, but I really, really don’t want to run into my ex R. and his new gal pal T. Thank God, I haven’t seen them anywhere, not even at the tea shop where R. gets all his super-antioxidant green tea that he’s addicted to. Phew. I don’t want to be a bitch (but I will be), but T. isn’t all that great. I know she’s gorgeous and athletic and good-spirited and all (at least that’s what R. always said about her—sans the gorgeous part, although that was obvious enough to everyone). But can I just point out that she has a slightly horse face and a hyena-like laugh. A veritable zoo in one package. Okay. That was so Mean Girls. But whatever. I’m allowed. No one reads this blog anyway, right?

  Till next time,

  HamptonsAuPair1

  dalai lama says: enlightenment means making friends out of enemies

  MARA WOKE UP TO THE sound of the baby crying from the monitor. As she eased her feet into her slippers, she shot a grumpy look in the direction of Jacqui’s empty bed. It was Jacqui’s turn to give Cassidy a bath and a bottle, but the Brazilian au pair was nowhere to be found. Since hooking up with Marcus on the Fourth of July, she’d spent almost all of her free time with him, even after the shoots. She was usually good about getting back to the mansion before the kids woke up, but this time, she was late.

  Mara dialed her cell number. It rang and rang and then went to voice mail. Not willing to give up that easily, she tried again. Jacqui picked up on the last ring.

  “Jac? Where are you?” Mara asked, trying to sound more concerned than irritated.

  “Mmmpph?”

  “It’s seven; we need to get the kids ready. It’s Dalai Lama day, remember?”

  “Merda!” Mara heard the phone clatter as it fell to the floor and then Jacqui’s voice again. “I’m so sorry, I overslept. But I can get there and be ready to go in an hour.”

  Mara sighed. The kids had to be in Southampton’s largest auditorium before then. Their father, before he’d gone on his walkabout and never returned, had raised his kids as Buddhists, the religion he was practicing at the time. Suzy, who wasn’t religious, made sure the kids kept to the noble eightfold path so that they’d feel close to him when he came back—whenever that was. The Dalai Lama was in town for a whole week of events, but the morning’s special lecture, “Making Peace,” was to be the highlight of his trip.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mara told Jacqui. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Are you sure?” Jacqui asked, although the relief in her voice was all too evident.

  “I’m sure,” Mara said with a huff, keeping an eye on the clock. She had to get the kids dressed, fed, and out the door as soon as possible if they were going to make it.

  “We were out last night with some friends of theirs from Auckland, and Deus, can those Kiwis drink! We didn’t get in until five in the morning. Marcus promised me he’d set the alarm, but—Marcus . . . what are you doing? Don’t, I’m not ready. . . . Oof! He just took my picture!” Mara heard the sound of Jacqui pummeling her boyfriend with a pillow. When Jacqui came back on the line, she was still giggling. “Seriously, though, if you need me, I can meet you there,” Jacqui offered.

  “I told you, it’s okay. Do you know where the kids’ togas are?”

  “Togas?”

  “You know, the Tibetan prayer robes they have to wear. I asked you to send them out with the dry cleaning on Friday.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “I forgot,” Jacqui admitted in a small voice.

  Mara sighed. She didn’t want to complain—after all, Jacqui was now the “face” of the Eliza Thompson line, and being seen at all the right events was part of that job—but it was the third time that week that Jacqui had messed up on the job. Last Thursday she’d been out all night with Marcus and had been so out of it the next day that she’d brought Violet to chess camp and the twins to ballet. Mara didn’t want to say anything, but it was getting ridiculous.

  Plus, life was getting a little lonely. Eliza and Jacqui were always out, doing fun things together, while Mara was left at home with the kids. Jacqui and Eliza invited her to everything, but after one party where a guest asked if she was Eliza’s assistant and another one where she bumped into Ryan and Tinker together—if you could call catching them making out in one of the cabanas at the Star Room “bumping into them”—Mara had decided it was better to stay at home with the kids or to work on her blog. When she’d first launched it, she was elated to receive a handful of hits, but as she began posting more and more of her adventures, she found her audience growing steadily.

  The more time Mara spent alone, though, the more time she spent wishing she hadn’t been so cold to David. If he were still in her life, she’d at least be getting texts and e-mails that let her know someone was thinking about her. But she was too proud to rescind what she’d written. Everything she’d said was still true—she was hurt that he’d left her at the airport and then never even bothered to call. She blamed it on the stupid modern world. If there wasn’t such a thing as texting and e-mailing, he’d have had to call her the old-fashioned way from the start, and maybe then she’d still have a boyfriend.

  “Listen, I owe you,” Jacqui said gratefully. “Thanks, chica.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Mara sighed. “We’ll catch you later.” She turned off her phone and hurried to pick up the baby, who was squalling loudly on the monitor, seemingly aware that Mara was now behind schedule.

  * * *

  When they arrived at the auditorium, the line to the entrance stretched around the block, all the way to the village green. The sidewalk was littered with tents, pillows, plastic chairs, sleeping bags, illegal charcoal grills, and assorted garbage, since some people had camped out the previous evening. Apart from stopping by the UN, this was the only public stop the Dalai Lama was making in the country, and people had traveled from all over the eastern seaboard to see him.

  “What’s that smell?” Jackson asked, crinkling his nose as they hurried past the Porta Potties the town had hastily set up to accommodate all the pilgrims.

  “Don’t ask,” Mara said grimly as she hustled them to the front of the line.

  Only a handful of tickets had been made available to the public, and all had sold out in a matter of minutes, but the mood was oddly cheerful and politely cooperative for the Hamptons, where scowls were regularly exchanged at Citarella over the last slice of Scottish lox. Since the holy man was a guest of the Southampton Cultural Board, where Suzy was a trustee, the kids had received VIP tickets. Mara scissored her way expertly through the crowd, waving their laminated passes over their heads, the kids clutching their prayer beads.

  Many of the town’s wealthy denizens were dressed in orange prayer robes accessorized with Blahnik slides and Verdura earrings, mingling with the friendly Tibetan monks. The festive air was similar to that of a fashion show, with a lot of air-kissing and jostling over seats. Mara noticed that a good number of sleek scenesters were carrying elaborate floral bouquets, overstuffed picnic baskets from the Barefoot Contessa filled with imported truffles and handmade brownies, or beautifully wrapped boxes from Tiffany and Christofle.

  “What�
��s up with all the gift baskets?” Mara asked Lucky Yap, whom she spotted snapping photos of socialites demurely bending over their prayer wheels.

  “Ritual offerings,” Lucky explained over the click of his camera. “The uninitiated can make sacrifices to move up in rank. Food, flowers, or water—symbolized by bowls. Hence the run on crystal bowls at Tiffany. They’re all gone.”

  “Gotcha.” Mara smiled, bemused. The Dalai Lama probably didn’t care if the offerings were from the supermarket or the gourmet store, but the Hamptons crowd certainly wouldn’t dream of making a donation that was less than what could be found in their own, utterly gourmet kitchens.

  After a quick goodbye, Mara found their seats up front, and the kids quietly settled in. She marveled again at how well behaved the children were being. Violet was already chanting her fifth mantra, while Jackson and Logan were intently studying the geometric mandalas they’d found on their seats. Cassidy was lulled to sleep by the low hum of the crowd. Only Wyatt was wriggling in his seat, already bored to death.

  The lights dimmed, and the head of the organizing committee welcomed the Dalai Lama to the Hamptons amid an explosion of applause. Mara clapped heartily along with everyone else. The holy man walked slowly to the middle of the stage and climbed on a generously proportioned armchair that had been provided for him, which allowed him to sit with his legs crossed underneath his body.

  During the hour-long lecture, the crowd was rapturously silent. Not even an errant cell phone ring or BlackBerry buzz or the sound of gratuitous sniffling broke the spell of the Dalai Lama as he spoke of compassion, kindness, and gentleness.