But no sooner did security come over—informing them that if they didn’t want another bottle, they should pay and clear the table—than the girls departed. They slid a whole two tables over to a group of suits with an unopened Belvedere, passing out flutes of champagne.
It was just one of life’s inequalities that girls could get away with something for nothing.
And it was a spiteful move for Dave to attempt to as well. Watching him, Rachel could almost see the spokes in his mind turning as he grappled with the (non-zero-sum) game that is prisoner’s dilemma. If he cooperated, he and Aaron would split the bottles and put in $450 each. If he betrayed, he’d pay nothing while Aaron was left with the whole nine hundred. And if Aaron betrayed, well, Dave would be held responsible for the entire sum himself. So the solution to this self-serving game was that no matter what Aaron did, Dave was better off defecting.
“Tell Nash I’ll be right back,” he uttered, slipping away. That was the last Rachel saw of him that night.
Half an hour later Rachel and Aaron shared a cab home. After ransacking every inch of the club and calling every phone number they had, Aaron was forced to charge the entire bill on his Amex. He was justifiably furious, even after being enlightened as to the drunken aftermath: Jamie had stepped on glass and flipped out because her foot was bleeding; Allison, Brian, and Jeff had escorted her home; Steve and Rob went back to some other house with Steve’s “girlfriend” and her Floridian cousin; and Dave insisted that he couldn’t find anyone and had to leave the club alone.
Regardless, Rachel continued to feel sorry for Aaron, who was a decent guy and didn’t deserve this. Though Aaron didn’t allow his friends to get away with something for nothing for long.
On Monday morning he sent out an e-mail to the entire share house. It was titled “Bottle-Service Etiquette”:
1.If you enter the club for free with the people getting the table, you contribute.
2.If your friends already have a table, and you want to just hang out, let several table members know you are not drinking, and just want to use the precious seating space.
3.If you walk in and want “just one drink” from the table, put in twenty-five dollars immediately to the head of the table, or the one of us who is least drunk.
4.If you are paying for the bottle, that does not mean you can offer your girlfriend, and her friends, and their cousins visiting from Miami, a drink. Every one person who pays can host one other person. (Dave—just because you are trying to sleep with three women that night, does not mean all three can drink from our bottle. Pick a girl and stick with her.)
5.Do not leave the table until the check is paid and the person who put the credit card down is content. (Dave, Brian, Rob, Jeff, and Steve—I’ll expect cash or check in the amount of $150 each.)
And that was how Nash established a house equilibrium.
Chapter Fourteen
The first time she was dissatisfied with the way Mark was running things, Jamie decided to bite her tongue.
But as the summer wore on and her list of share house grievances grew exponentially, Jamie began to bite his head off.
“How can you expect us to go to your clubs every weekend and not give us a single comp?” she’d argue. Accustomed as she was to waltzing in for free anyplace she chose, by virtue of contacts she knew far less intimately, Mark’s stinginess week after week continued to astonish her. She’d tried to inform him of this. “Do you realize I have friends who’ll take care of me any other place I go?”
No matter how convincing her pleas (which most people found pretty damn convincing), Mark would show her no leniency. “I just can’t comp some people and not others,” he’d say.
Which made her that much more adamant about the issue of weekend swapping.
“I have the premiere for the new George Clooney film this Friday,” she’d explained, in a way any reasonable person would understand. “Do you care if we come up next weekend instead of this one?”
“Sorry, next weekend’s rough,” he’d replied, even though every weekend Jamie had been there so far was decidedly “rough,” and she couldn’t imagine the subsequent one being any less so. When she’d pointed this out (ever so politely), he failed to budge, merely repeating, “You know the rules.”
And you know exactly where Jamie wanted to shove them!
But, looking back, those were comparatively minor conflicts. The final straw came when Jamie brought up Fourth of July weekend.
“What do you mean, our friends can’t come out? Everyone’s friends are coming!” Jamie cried to Mark over the phone just a few days prior.
“Can’t do it. The house is already packed,” he stated, his tone frustratingly stoic.
“But they’ll even sleep in our beds with us, and pay your obscene holiday guest fees!” Jamie shouted. What was his problem?
At this, Mark was silent for a moment, and Jamie wondered if she’d convinced him. She didn’t wonder for long. “Why don’t they come a different weekend?”
“Why are you such an asshole?” she blurted out.
“Listen,” he said with a sigh, not letting her rile him one bit. “If I didn’t have rules, the entire share house would fall apart. There wouldn’t even be a share house to begin with.” He chuckled a bit at his own supposition—a pompous, self-indulgent chuckle. “I know you think I have it in for you, but this is just how I run my business.”
“Well, don’t worry,” she snapped. “You’ve made it quite clear to everyone your interests are purely monetary.”
Seething as she hung up the phone, Jamie decided then and there that she was done biting the bullet. This was war.
“I hate him!” she shrieked to her friends, pounding her fist on the steering wheel during their trafficky drive to the house that weekend. “Have you ever met anyone so insensitive? Maybe he’d actually make some friends if he stopped trying to steal everyone’s money!”
“Apparently not everyone thinks so,” Rachel reminded them. “I’ve never seen a guy get that much ass! He leaves the clubs practically the minute we get there to bring girls back to his room.”
“I know! He’s not even that cute,” Jamie said, picturing his beach-bum-browned unshaven face and hating to acknowledge that he wasn’t utterly repulsive. “It cracks me up how these girls flock to him like he’s a celebrity, when all he does is run a cheesy share house! And run it horribly, I might add.”
Breaking her silence thus far, Allison once again proved to be the sympathetic one. “Well, it must be hard to make everyone happy,” she piped in from the back, only to be met by Jamie’s and Rachel’s death stares. “Imagine you were the one running the share house. No one likes to be the bad guy.”
“First of all, I would never run a share house. And second—haven’t you noticed, he’s only the bad guy to us!” Jamie bellowed. “Practically every other group is bringing out friends this weekend! Do you really think two more people would make the house any less of a mob scene?”
“Ugh,” Rachel moaned, her face overtaken by disgust. “I’m dreading what the clubs are going to be like.”
“That’s another thing!” Jamie continued (since complaints were like cocktails—why stop after one?). “If we go where he wants—which we’re going to want to do, so we can be with the group—we’ll have to pay those atrocious cover prices. I am so sick of this!” Throwing her head back in surrender, she pummeled the wheel once more for effect.
But that’s when Jamie had an idea.
“What if we get the whole house to go somewhere else tonight?” she said, the rebellious plan taking shape in her head. “That would certainly show him—if he lost, like, forty people’s worth of cover!”
Rachel’s eyes perked, and then dropped. “Yeah, but there’s no way to guarantee twenty guys will get in anywhere Fourth of July weekend without buying bottles...and you remember what happened at Dune.” Mulling it over some more, she shook her head conclusively. “They won’t want to do it.”
“Maybe th
ey will,” Jamie argued.
They didn’t. And understandably so, for when they walked in, the house was flooded with so many new faces, it was almost like being at a party already. Why, there was barely a need to go out at all, much less any impetus to deviate from a situation that—from vans to venue choice to line skipping—was so neatly worked out for them. Though, as an endless stream of unapproved guests continued to file in, Jamie felt less inclined to celebrate the American Revolution as to lead a revolution of her own.
Infuriating her even more was the fact that Ilana and her friends had spawned a crew of clone-like counterparts, all equally self-righteous and even more obnoxious than the originals. Seizing control of the central couch, their positioning enabled them to drive the room’s activity like the nucleus of a cell. Jamie thought that this would never have been possible had she been permitted to bring her own friends...which actually would have been possible, if not for the Grinch who stole her Independence Day.
Just for that, Jamie refused to so much as look in Mark’s direction the entire time they were downstairs, and she resolved not to for the remainder of the summer.
Once she was upstairs getting ready for the evening, though, Jamie could suppress her anger no longer. “Screw it. Let’s just us three go somewhere else tonight.”
Predictably, Rachel and Allison exchanged dubious glances.
“Because that worked out so well the last time?” Rachel asked.
“We only had a problem because we tried to drive. This time we’ll just take cabs,” Jamie reasoned, having learned never to bite off more than she could chew. But her friends had learned a different lesson: never again to follow her lead.
“Let’s not try this,” Allison suggested, as firmly as she ever said anything. “Besides, all the guys are going to Pink Elephant. Brian—”
“Oh, you can leave Brian for one night,” Jamie teased, aware her scheme would entail leaving Jeff as well. But there was little Jamie wouldn’t give up in this endeavor, as it was now a matter of pride. “I just refuse to give that guy any more of my money. Please? I’ll work out all the details.”
So after much pleading (followed by even more pleading), she eventually did. A quick text message to Mike Satsky—who was an owner of Stereo by the Shore in Southampton—and they were on the list for the Victoria’s Secret party that night. See how simple this could be? And, just as Jamie was picturing the look on Mark’s face (upon discovering they were straying off somewhere else, somewhere better), she was afforded a glimpse of that very face a bit sooner than she’d planned.
“Jamie,” Mark called from outside their room, his voice laden with authority. Knocking sternly, he opened the door they’d left slightly ajar.
Still wearing an oversize T-shirt and the horrific plaid boxer shorts she’d gotten as a sorority favor, Jamie was busy doing (what else) her makeup at their full-length mirror. Not bothering to turn around, she merely gazed back at the reflection of the last possible person she wanted to see.
“Sorry to do this to you,” he said—the last possible words anyone wants to hear—“but I need you to move your car to the train station.”
“What do you mean?” she shrieked, whipping around defensively. “It’s our weekend, and that’s the one car for our group.”
“I know,” he continued unapologetically. “It’s just, Fourth of July is a joint weekend for A and B people, so there are too many shareholders’ cars to begin with. We’re asking people to move them on a first-come, first-served basis.”
This last part silenced her, as she was about to demand Why me? But, desperate to be rid of him, she quickly muttered her assent. Only he didn’t go anywhere.
“Actually, Craig’s waiting out in front. He’s leading a whole group of people to the station now, so he can drive everyone back all at once.”
It took Jamie a moment for this to register. “Wait, you want me to move it now?” she repeated. “No way, I’m not even dressed.” (That, and she looked like a ghost in the transition stages of blending her eye makeup.)
Mark sighed. “There’s going to be no one to take you later once we all leave for Pink Elephant—”
“We’re not going to Pink Elephant,” Jamie practically sang.
“Well, unless you’re taking your car with you, I think you should just go with Craig now,” Mark cautioned, paying her admission no mind. When Jamie didn’t exactly jump, he added, “Please don’t fight me on this—you know we can only have eleven cars in the driveway overnight. And trust me, the cops are looking to give people a hard time this weekend.”
Like one car is really going to make a difference? she thought. But in the interest of time (and to the detriment of her eye makeup), Jamie chose compliance. “Fine,” she sputtered, hatred for him seeping out of her ears like smoke. And as she pulled on a pair of jeans, she couldn’t believe he’d found yet another way to spoil her weekend.
Scary ghost makeup aside, Jamie probably looked possessed as she flew out into the pitch blackness, hopping madly into her car amid the awaiting congregation. She was just as unnerved operating a vehicle on the dark rural roads now as she always had been (if not significantly more so, as even she would never live down publicly smashing another shareholder’s car). But blasting up the music (and deciding that, in the event of an accident, Mark would simply be the scapegoat), her anger somehow inspired courage.
And off they went, a lineup of cars not unlike a funeral procession. As Jamie followed each unmemorable turn, she couldn’t help but think what a pain in the ass it was that the train station was almost twenty minutes away. (Was Mark trying to make her late?)
However, she spotted train tracks before she knew it. Parking in the spot Craig directed her into like an airplane, she breathed a sigh of relief that the life-endangering portion of the evening had concluded.
“Do you have your keys?” Craig demanded, less a joke than a credible inquiry. And after flashing him a look, Jamie nodded (but then checked).
Now here’s the part she hated to confess: the ride back to the share house was actually a relatively good time. Forgetting for a moment about her haphazard appearance (even forgetting that, in all the chaos, she’d forgotten to put on a bra), Jamie basked in the attention of six new guys she hadn’t met before. As the only girl in the group, this was quite the responsibility. But no sooner did she reenter the house and storm past Mark than she reapplied the scowl this fruitless errand had deserved.
Though as it happened, that scowl was the last time she frowned all night. By nothing short of a miracle, everything else went exactly according to plan.
First, the cab they’d pre-ordered pulled up to the house at eleven on the dot. (Jamie felt entirely no remorse as she sauntered past the flip cup station.) Mike Satsky was stationed conveniently out front when they approached the crowd at Stereo, and waved them inside (past notoriously selective Butter doorman Binn) effortlessly. But best of all, beyond the mobbed exterior, the party inside was thriving.
This indoor-outdoor venue—complete with tropical decor and the vigorous sounds of DJ AM—was filled with energy. Sure, there were Victoria’s Secret models and a sprinkling of celebrities (Haylie and Hilary Duff were currently in her eye line), but not in that see-and-be-seen way; it was more of a just-want-to-dance-and-let-loose thing. So that’s exactly what they did.
They were thrilled to see different faces, to hear the impromptu performance given by drop-in guest Lily Allen, and most of all to not be at Pink Elephant. Which Jamie resolved could be only fractionally as fun, during her many mental comparisons. Why she bothered was beyond her, for really there was nothing to compare: Mark was a cheap asshole who treated them like walking wallets, while Mike had invited them to join his table, introduced them to his colleagues, and treated them as his guests.
And as the time ticked on, and the music grew infectious, and the benches became any dancer’s game, Jamie didn’t want the night to end at all.
When they finally severed themselves (leaving a less
successful Alessandra Ambrosio still in motion on the dance floor), Jamie felt extremely satisfied. See, they didn’t need Mark to have a good time, she thought. In fact, they didn’t need Mark at all.
What’s more, throughout the cab ride back Jamie considered what a loss it would have been had they missed this night entirely. Only stepping into the share house, what they’d apparently missed was plenty.
“Holy shit!” Jamie shrieked, walking in to discover more people crammed in the common room than she would have thought existed in all of the Hamptons. It reminded her of back when they used to smush as many bodies as they could into a phone booth, only this hardly seemed intentional. Jamie and her friends gazed around in astonishment.
There were people on the couch. There were people by the grouch.
There were people on the ground. There were people sleeping sound.
There were people here and there.
There were people everywhere.
Which, in share house world, could only mean one thing...
“Two Oh Eight North Sea Road just got raided!” a redhead snuggled beneath a sleeping bag shouted, as she’d apparently been doing every five minutes for new arrivals.
“Ohmigod!” Allison gasped, lunging toward Brian (whom Jamie could now recognize huddled around the coffee table with faces she’d actually seen before). But, frozen in alarm, Jamie cautiously took in her surroundings.
“What do you mean, raided?” she asked, taking a timid step forward (yet being careful to mind the wall-to-wall human obstacles).
While she imagined the drama had already been rehashed a good dozen times, several strangers spoke up with undimmed enthusiasm.
“The cops busted in at, like, three in the morning!”
“My car got a ticket for two hundred dollars!”
“Two hundred dollars? Now that the house is shut, we’ve all lost thousands!”
Just as Jamie was struggling to get the facts straight, a guy with squinty eyes and a mop of brown hair (who appeared so high, this all seemed amusing to him rather than frightening) stepped forward. “Basically, the cops came and woke everyone up about an hour ago,” he said as matter-of-factly as if he were relaying a movie plot. “Obviously there were people with coke and stuff, but they found, like, a million other health code violations.”
How the Other Half Hamptons Page 18
