“Heather’s not my girlfriend. It’s...complicated,” he’d claimed, and being as he was one of the hottest guys to ever show interest in her, she’d been tempted to believe him. But Rachel had learned to interpret that pervasive catchphrase as “I have someone I’m probably going to marry, but we’re taking a break so we can screw around this summer.” Rachel wanted no part in that. Bringing her grand total of summer prospects down to...
A zero was watching her from every which way.
“So you didn’t meet anyone?” her sister asked more pointedly. Rachel looked up at the six gaunt, heavily made-up faces eagerly awaiting her answer (and staring at her sunburn—or was that merely her imagination?).
“Not really,” Rachel said, pretending to be studying the menu she could by now nearly recite, and considering rehashing the Dana–Gregg meeting story herself.
Fortunately the waiter came to take their order (which, who would have guessed, consisted of salads all around). But even though Rachel was hoping his departure might inspire a change of subject, Dana picked up right where they left off.
“So what clubs is Mark promoting?” she said, awaiting the answer as if she’d just asked What’s the meaning of life? Rachel was long accustomed to her mother’s probing, but her sister’s interest in anything besides herself was novel. Why, if Rachel hadn’t known any better, she might have suspected Dana was the tiniest bit jealous.
“Pink Elephant on Friday and Star Room on Saturday.”
“Star Room!” the zeros shrieked, exchanging enamored glances as if Rachel had just conjured up some long-lost memory.
“We also went to a Hamptons Magazine party at Hampton Hall,” Rachel added, neglecting to elaborate on the drama that resulted from this. Although just as she was about to mention the celebrities she’d seen...
“So is there anyone in the house I’d know?” her sister asked, which Rachel construed as, Back to me.
“Probably not,” she lied. “But I mean, it’s not like we sit around talking about you or anything.”
Dana didn’t buy this for a minute. “What about Ilana Friedman? She e-mailed me and said that she met you at DIP the other night.”
“Oh, yeah. She’s doing the house with two girls.”
“Girls from Penn?”
Because that would validate their existence? “I have no idea,” Rachel said. Although glancing up at Dana and her friends, they suddenly struck her as spanking images of exactly how Ilana and the Tara/Jocelyns might look three years from now: harder faces, more shrunken bodies, fussier personalities, and clad in much more expensive designers.
Dana paused only to regroup. “Well, what did you think of Mark?”
“Mark!” erupted the group. Looking down, Rachel was beginning to feel sorry for the diners at the tables beside them.
“Did you tell him you’re my sister?” she said, plunging forward.
“Oh no, I forgot,” Rachel fibbed, purely to ruffle Dana’s feathers.
Dana looked noticeably disappointed. “Definitely tell him next time. Isn’t he adorable?”
Rachel hadn’t really thought of Mark that way; she and her friends had spent the entire weekend debating whether his aloofness was due to the fact he wanted to maintain his authority, or because he was lacking in the personality department. Perhaps annoyed over the club debacle, Jamie contended it was the latter. “He’s a good-looking guy, I guess. A little distant, but he’s so wrapped up in the house.”
“It is so funny he’s running a share house!”
“He was, like, the baby of our house!”
“It’s crazy how things change.”
Jerking her head back and forth, Rachel could barely follow the babble. Or the gazillion names being fired off in rapid succession.
“Do you guys remember ‘Fingers’ Chuck? I’m getting chills!”
“And ADD Craig? But he threw one hell of a White Party!”
“What about Jeff Grossman? What a waste of a face.”
Could this be Jamie’s Jeff?
“Actually, there was another guy who knew you,” Rachel suddenly recalled, reluctant to introduce the name of a guy who’d snubbed her, but curious for some backstory.
“Who?” Dana pried, her eyes blazing.
“Aaron.”
Instead of a scream, his name garnered a tableful of blank expressions.
“Aaron who?” Dana asked, scrunching her perfect (cosmetically corrected) nose.
“Not sure. He’s cute, though,” Rachel admitted. “Said he used to work with you.”
“At Goldman? Oh, Aaron Nash? He’s a total dork.”
“I think he used to like you or something,” Rachel said, neglecting to mention it took asking for her number to realize this. “At least it seemed that way.”
“Doubtful,” Dana said. “We actually never used to get along.” She shuddered, as if physically repulsed by the idea of him. “Anyone else?” she asked greedily.
Rachel shook her head. “No, that just about sums it all up.” It was merely her wishful thinking.
But shortly the waiter brought over their salads. All had personalized them with some ingredient omission (“no bacon” or “no cheese”) that was hardly enough to distinguish themselves.
“I miss the Hamptons,” one of Dana’s friends said, sighing as she placed her bony elbows on the table. Rachel could always tell a zero by the way she preferred conversation to food. But only in public. “I mean, I wouldn’t still want to be doing a share. But it was a blast while it lasted. Like college.”
“You couldn’t pay me to spend a night in a share house and split a bathroom with forty people again,” Dana declared, delicately placing a forkful of lettuce into her mouth. “Besides, I think it’s so pathetic that these thirty-year-old guys are still running around share houses hooking up with twenty-one-year-olds.”
“If I remember correctly,” her friend retorted, “when you were twenty-one you liked the thirty-year-olds best!”
Dana shot the zero a wicked grin, and they (finally) progressed to talking about something of greater significance: the delicate art of table seating.
After the waiter cleared away the abundant leftovers and presented them with the bill, Rachel’s mother and aunt resurfaced from their own conversation.
“So when is your next trip to the Hamptons?” Rachel’s aunt asked her from across the table.
“Not this weekend, the weekend after,” Rachel said. “We have a half share, so technically we could go on off-weekends without a bed, but—”
“Where would you sleep, if not a bed?” her aunt asked. The specifics of share houses sounded so silly when conveyed to adults. Or really, to anyone unfamiliar with the inane customs.
“Um, in empty ones. Or on the couch, or sleeping bags on the floor.” Or with other people, Rachel thought, not that she’d ever do anything of the sort...
“On the floor? How much are you paying to sleep on the floor all summer?”
“Like two thousand.”
The pain of this number seemed to revisit her mother all over again. “Two grand and there’s not a single guy in that whole house you’re interested in? At least for Dana it was an investment in her future,” her mother joked, though Rachel wondered how much of the comment was truly in jest.
“Mom, we only just met everyone. Plus, it’s really hard to meet people when you’re out at nightclubs and stuff.” Which Rachel regretted the moment she mentioned it, for she knew what was coming next.
“Can you believe these girls go out as much as they do and never meet anyone?” her mother exclaimed, expressing to her aunt something Rachel had heard many times before. “Young, smart, beautiful...”
“Well, maybe Rachel will meet some eligible guy at the wedding,” her aunt suggested with a wink.
“Actually, I don’t really have that many single friends,” Dana said, her brow furrowing. “That’s why we invited all the single people with dates.”
“Oh,” her aunt said. This was news to Rachel a
s well. “Is Rachel bringing a date?” Aunt Susan innocently asked—and a hush came over the entire table.
For just like that, she’d mentioned it. The even bigger elephant in the room.
At once all eyes were on Rachel—the girl burned in the romantic arena now just as visibly as the physical one. And again, she was glad her face was already red.
“No,” her mother responded for her. “Unless...honey, did you want to bring a date?” As if it had just now occurred to her, she asked what they’d awkwardly been tiptoeing around for months.
“That’s just silly,” Dana butted in before Rachel could answer. “She’s not even dating anyone. Who would she possibly bring?”
“There are plenty of people I could bring,” Rachel said. Who did they think she was, the Elephant Man?
“People you want us to pay two hundred dollars for and introduce to every family member?”
Rachel paused. As usual, Dana was on-point with her social perceptiveness.
“Well, the wedding is three months away. A lot can happen in three months,” her aunt said, giving Rachel a hopeful nod. Though from the dubious looks of everyone else at the table, no one imagined anything would change in the next three months.
This disparagement didn’t bother Rachel much, for its persistence over the years had forced her to develop thick skin—at least on the inside. And as she followed her family out of the restaurant, she banished their pessimism wholly from her mind.
But an elephant never forgets.
Chapter Eleven
A white-frosted cake was front and center in Jamie’s eye line when she stepped into the share house their next assigned weekend. But as she greeted everyone (one particular male face standing out among the twenty or so others), front and center on her mind was her desire to take the cake.
Though with Ilana continually attempting to steal the show, she imagined it wouldn’t be easy.
“What is that?” Ilana demanded the moment she pranced in. She extended a French-manicured finger dramatically, as if not only had she never seen a cake before in her life but the sight of one fully repulsed her.
“It’s a cake,” Rob answered. “You know, food? Some people eat it?”
Ilana flashed him a reproachful look before flipping her hair, and turning to Jeff to giggle girlishly. “Obviously. But how did it get there?”
“I brought it for Jill’s birthday,” Mark answered, referring to one of the perky pair of girls not from New York. His face quickly reddened, though, when this summoned a chorus of the Awwwws girls typically reserve for babies or pets. “Oh, don’t be too impressed. They sell these at the Associated Supermarket by my apartment,” he justified, smiling shyly.
Catching his eye, Jamie grinned back. Perhaps he was more decent a guy than she’d originally thought...
“So what’s this I hear about your mother coming to the share house?”
Then again, perhaps not.
“Who, my mother?” she returned, hoping she wouldn’t have to answer. But the rumor had propagated at rapid speed, and the house demanded answers.
“Did the valet really refuse to give you your keys ’cause you were drunk?” someone asked.
“Wait, I thought you lost them in a club?” came another voice.
“If your mother wanted to do a share, she should have just paid like the rest of us.” (That was Rob.)
Jamie hated being interrogated on this subject, but apparently hating it even more was Ilana. For she quickly tried to refocus the attention back on herself.
“That’s nothing. Once, I mixed up the address and we went to the wrong house!” she interjected, attempting to one-up Jamie just as Jeff said, “So how did your mother even get here?”
And in the name of taking the cake, Jamie happily took the abuse.
Which wasn’t all that bad, because even though it was only their second weekend out there, Jamie felt like she’d known this group for ages. Sort of the way that, when you live on the same hall as people freshman year, one week in college time translates to four or so normal weeks. Of course there was a sprinkling of new faces, but enough of the core group was present to erase any of the awkwardness of the first weekend. And as they gathered to sing happy birthday to Jill that night before heading out to Pink Elephant, a close-knit family appeared in the making.
Few of them touched the cake, though. In an unsurprising turn, no one was eager to waste calories on what was known to be a supermarket concoction. Not that Jill minded, or even expected anything to the contrary. In bikini season, it was two entirely separate matters to have a cake and to eat it, too.
And apparently, a third altogether to exhaust energy in putting it away.
Thus, out it sat on the table all night, a disfiguring blob of gooey frosting. And out it remained all the following day, while the house fielded the muggy eighty-degree heat poolside. In the worthy company of food leftovers and garbage and cigarette stubs, the cake soon became a kitchen table fixture, a landmark they’d pass en route to the pool or numbering their trips to the bathroom. After a while its unsanitary presence was no longer questioned, but rather expected. And after a longer while, the birthday token was pretty much forgotten.
Until everyone all poured in from the sun around 5 PM—post-pool, pre-barbecue—and piled sluggishly around the long wooden table.
It was like the cake was staring at them.
“I’m hungry,” Ilana whined, triggered perhaps by the smell of liquefying frosting. The Tara/Jocelyns loyally agreed.
“Are you going to barbecue?” Mark nudged Craig, who took pride in his position as resident Saturday chef.
Craig’s eyes lingered on the dessert sitting in front of them before rising to his feet. “Oh, let them eat cake,” he scowled before retreating. Which was pretty mocking, because most of them wouldn’t even eat bread.
Rob, now eyeing the uneaten baked goods suggestively, suddenly proposed an idea, almost as if he thought the reality-show cameras were still rolling.
“So how hungry are you?” he asked Ilana, picking up the melted heap of sugar and presenting it to her as a waiter might.
“That is so disgusting,” said Ilana, to whom a twenty-four-hour-old cake was only marginally more disgusting than a freshly baked one.
“What if I pay you to eat it,” Rob offered, the fraternity boy in him resurfacing. “A hundred dollars says you can’t even finish half.”
“I’m in on that,” Dave and Brian added immediately.
Seeing all eyes on her, Ilana actually debated it for a second. Though naturally she refused, so Rob assumed the wager on her behalf. For nothing short of a hundred bucks and a half-used MetroCard, he bet he could consume the entire cake in one sitting. And pretty much for lack of a better activity, everyone in the house gathered around to watch.
He dove in headfirst, shoveling cake into his mouth at an impressive (if horrific) pace, and Jamie had a difficult time watching. Which she was still doing, however, fifteen minutes later, when he reluctantly admitted defeat. About a third of the cake remained when everyone headed outside for Craig’s barbecue (everyone except for Rob, who presumably headed to the bathroom). But that’s not all that got regurgitated.
When Ilana later rehashed his defeat to any eager listeners at Star Room that night (the way she normally rehashed every inkling of house gossip unrelated to herself), it didn’t seem to bother Rob much—until it scared away each of the potential conquests he’d lured to the table. And then it bothered him immensely.
“Could you shut up with that story already?” he said after the latest round of reality-show groupies departed “in search of a bathroom,” yet in the direction of the dance floor.
“You’re the one who tried to eat a whole cake,” Ilana said with a shrug, reminding him of, well, the reality of the situation.
Rob pounded his fist into his palm in frustration. Taking a deep breath, he tried to approach this rationally. “You’re embarrassing me in front of my fans.”
“Fans?” Il
ana let out a roar of laughter. “You were on a cheesy reality show for, like, two seconds. No one even knows who you are!”
Rob’s face flushed with anger. And though he began to utter a retort, he apparently changed his mind and turned dismissively away. Needless to say, he and Ilana were fiercely at odds throughout the remainder of the evening.
Not at odds, however, were Jamie and Jeff. With Ilana otherwise engaged (and emerging more as the house enemy with each passing moment), Jamie felt “the cake” increasingly within her reach. She’d felt that way from the start of the weekend, as if Jeff had come away from the last one having had time to reflect on what he really wanted, and having identified her as his target. And no doubt regretting his previous lapse in judgment. Jamie still didn’t like it, but she was willing to overlook his initial hesitance. Not that ambivalence was a quality with which Jamie was well acquainted. For when she wanted something, she went for it. Like now.
As she danced by the booth with Rachel (Allison and Brian had been attached at the hip, spending every minute of the past off-weekend together), Jamie could feel Jeff’s eyes on her. And though she sensed his cocky resolve, she had to admit she was all too eager to oblige. But it was like those occasions she went into a store with a specific (however sizable) agenda in mind. If she knew she was going to finish the sale, what reason was there to make the sales guy work for it?
So even though there was a bottle of vodka on their table, when Jeff came over and asked if she wanted to get a drink from the bar, she easily followed him.
As they pushed through the crowd, he didn’t really say much. Though in Jamie’s opinion, anyone who looked like that didn’t really need to. Still, she noticed numerous girls attempting to get his attention with come-hither looks that faded into disappointment once they spotted Jamie trailing him.
When they got to the bar, he ordered something dark and scary like Jack. Jeff then pointed to her, and Jamie smiled at the bartender as she requested white wine. Even though she religiously drank vodka sodas (whose ingredients were stocked in bulk back at their table), when something is too readily accessible to you, you begin to lose interest.
How the Other Half Hamptons Page 14
