The Au Pairs

  It had been only two days ago that Jacqui logged on to the store computer and googled "the Hamptons" yet again. But this time she found something new: Kevin Perry's classified ad for "the summer of her life" in East Hampton. She heard back from him almost instantly. (Jacqui's head shot had that effect on people.) It was urgent; could she hop on a plane tomorrow to arrive in town by July 4? Clara que sim! She was convinced she'd find her Luca in the Hamptons somewhere. And if not, she could always fly back home. It wasn't as if she really needed the job.

  Rupert consulted his watch, breaking her reverie. "If we leave now, we'll still have time to hit the beach before sunset. My car is waiting outside," he said, pointing to the curb, where a stretch Hummer was waiting.

  "Sure." Jacqui shrugged. She hadn't had any concrete plans on how to get to the Hamptons. She just figured something would turn up like it always did.

  Jacqui gave him her flashiest megawatt smile. The one that always led men to promise chinchilla furs and hand over platinum AmEx cards. "Lead the way."

  15

  eliza tells a couple of not-so-white lies

  The cab dropped Eliza off in front of her former building, an imposing prewar high-rise that was one of the city's most sought-after addresses. Its bronze gilt doors shone in the bright sun. How she missed it. In Buffalo her family occupied the first floor of a row house. The bathroom had never been renovated, and Eliza swore there was mold behind the tub. Every time she showered, she felt dirtier than when she'd started.

  Her old bathroom boasted a panoramic view of Central Park and a gleaming eggshell-white tub that Eliza had personally picked out from the Boffi showroom with her mother's decorator. Original paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning hung in the hallways, heirlooms from Eliza's maternal grandmother, a former debutante who kept company with the abstract expressionists in the fifties. Woody Allen had once scouted their living room as a possible location for one of his movies. The only movie Eliza could ever imagine being filmed

  16

  in her new home was something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Okay, so she was exaggerating. Slightly.

  Cracking linoleum tile in the kitchen. Rusted aluminum siding. Wall-to-wall putrid avocado shag carpeting. A cramped six hundred square feet! Even their former servants had lived better. Her parents kept reminding her it could have been worse. Much, much worse. Dad could have ended up in--but Eliza couldn't go there. Bad enough that it had even been a possibility.

  The weekend doorman opened the cab door and recognized her immediately.

  "Miss Eliza!"

  "Hi, Duke."

  He tipped his cap. "Been a long time."

  "You're telling me."

  "You guys back in the building?"

  "Not exactly," she said, trying to appear casual. She looked down the street. There was no sign of Kit's convertible. "Kit around?"

  "Mr. Christopher?" Duke scratched his forehead with a black leather glove, which was part of the uniform--even in ninety-eight-degree heat. "I think he just left."

  She cursed under her breath. She couldn't believe she'd missed her ride.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Ashleigh are upstairs, though. I can ring up." "No thanks," Eliza said, suppressing a temptation to gnaw her nails. What on earth was she going to do now?

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  Just then a familiar red convertible pulled up in front of the red canopy. An agreeable-looking guy with a blond crew cut hopped out of the front seat without waiting for Duke to open the door. He gasped when he saw Eliza.

  "Liza!"

  "Kit!"

  "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, before enveloping her in a bone-crunching bear hug.

  Eliza ignored the question. "It's great to see you!" she said, rubbing her fingers on his spiky hair and giving him a noogie.

  "I forgot something--I just gotta run up and grab it. You goin' to Amagansett?" Kit started jogging backward into the marble lobby. "Hey, you want a ride?"

  "Sure!" she said, relieved. Good old Kit. Eliza let Duke put her bags in the trunk and settled in the front seat to wait for Kit.

  "Damn, girl! I missed you!" Kit said when he returned. He fired up the engine and they cruised top-down on Park Avenue. "You, like, went AWOL."

  "Yeah, well, after everything that happened," Eliza said offhandedly, "my parents wanted to get out of the city to just relax, you know? So they decided to ship me off to boarding school. Quel drag." Eliza found Kit's Marlboros on the dashboard and helped herself to one. Her hands shook slightly as she rooted in the glove compartment for a lighter. "Lights out at eleven and the hall monitor is a tool," she said, firing up a Zippo and inhaling.

  18

  Kit grunted in sympathy. "Dad threatened that once. But I don't have the grades for Andover. So, uh, how are the 'rents, anyway?" Kit asked tentatively.

  "They, um, spend all their time in Florida these days," she improvised. Eliza knew what everyone had read in the papers, but no one knew just how bad it had gotten. The gossip pages and business section had lost interest after her dad got off without an indictment, and before long the Thompsons had feigned exhaustion and disinterest over all the hubbub and left Manhattan for good.

  "I didn't know you guys were down in PB!" He smacked the steering wheel, looking relieved. "We gotta hook up winter break!"

  "Of course!" She felt sick to her stomach having to lie to one of her best friends. Especially since he automatically assumed the Thompsons had retired to Palm Beach. God, she missed their place by Mar-a-Lago.

  It was all her dad's fault. She felt an all-too-familiar bitter resentment welling up inside her. It just wasn't fair. Her parents could hide out in Buffalo and avoid all their old friends. But Eliza was sixteen--not sixty--with her whole life ahead of her. She wasn't about to waste her chance. She wanted back in, no matter what it took.

  "So it's just you this summer?" Kit asked.

  "Yeah, thank God I bumped into you! I thought I'd have to take the Jitney. Ugh. You know I got kicked off last time because I wouldn't turn off my cell."

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  Kit grinned. "I remember. It made the Post."

  "Anyway, I'm staying at my uncle's place on Georgica," she said. It wasn't such a stretch, really--Kevin Perry was one of her father's lawyers and after the last year, well, they were practically family. Eliza decided she was really just "helping out," and if she got paid doing it, what was the harm? Come to think of it, she was really more like an honored guest. After all, she had grown up with his twin daughters, Sugar and Poppy.

  "Cool. That's not too far from our new place. Got any plans for tonight?"

  "No, what's up?"

  "A couple of the gang are hitting Resort--there's a party in the VIP room around midnight--then afterward there's P. Diddy's Red, White, and Blue soiree at the PlayStation2 House."

  "Sounds cool." Eliza nodded. She knew the guys who ran the PlayStation2 House. A couple of New York club promoters had convinced Sony it was a good idea to fund a weekend party house to "market" their new games. In the Hamptons it was unofficially known as a model landing pad. Kind of like the Playboy Mansion but with nubile flat-chested eighteen-year-olds who were more likely to be found marching down a runway than spread-eagle in a centerfold.

  "I'll put you on the list."

  "Hey, have you seen Charlie around, by the way?"

  Kit gave her a furtive glance. "Last I heard, he was dating some hoochie he met in summer school."

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  "Huh."

  "I'm sure it's not serious."

  "Kit, you're too sweet."

  She remembered Charlie's face, crumpled in disbelief, when she told him over Christmas that it was probably not a good idea for them to see each other anymore. For weeks afterward he had left her voice mails wondering where she had gone. She wasn't at school. She wasn't at Jackson Hole after school. She wasn't at Barneys on Saturday mornings or at Bungalow 8 on Thursday nights. Then she changed her cell number to a local Buffalo area code (some luxuries are just necessiti
es), and she stopped getting the messages. Eliza had thought it would be easier if she just disappeared--she knew that she might break down and tell him everything if she saw him, and that was a risk she simply could not afford to take.

  The convertible inched its way out of the city, and Kit paid the toll at the Triborough Bridge. Eliza savored the freeway signs as they sped east, Long Island towns with funny-sounding names like Hicksville, Ronkonkoma, and Yaphank bidding her on her way, taking her back to where she belonged.

  She relaxed for the first time that day. So far, so good. Kit had bought her story about boarding school and her "uncle," she was already invited to some pretty fabu soirees in the Hamptons, and even if her ex-boyfriend was currently unavailable, Eliza loved him and was coming back to retrieve what was rightfully hers.

  21

  Mara Discovers the rules for hamptons travel

  "Ah, de Hamptons, berry, berry rich people there," the bearded cabdriver told Mara when she told him where she was headed.

  "So I've heard," she agreed. Her sister Megan, the US Weekly addict, had given her the full run-down before she left. "I hear Resort is hot this summer but stay away from the Star Room-- it's so over. And try to get a table at Bamboo if you can." As if Mara had any idea what she was talking about. For Mara the Hamptons was the episode on Sex and the City where Carrie goes to stay with a friend and accidentally sees her friend's husband naked. Mara knew it was some sort of rich summer place, but she went to the Cape every summer--it couldn't be much different from that, could it?

  "Very, very rich people, yes. You lika Jerry Seinfeld? Billy Joel? They inda Hamptons all dee time. The guy who dated Jennifer Lopez before this Affleck. He has big party this weekend. Piff Daddy."

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  "P. Diddy?" Mara laughed.

  "Yeah, him. I useta drive limo for him. Big party. Big, big fireworks. So many beautiful people. So thin. All the girls, thin, thin, thin." He angled back to appraise Mara. "You thin. You rich?"

  "No, I'm not rich," Mara said. "I'm going to be working for some rich people, though."

  "Ah, not rich. Working girl, eh?"

  "That's right."

  "Here Forty-third and Third. Jitney over there," he said, waving toward a large silver-and-green bus with The Hampton Jitney in cheerful lettering on the back.

  "Great!" Mara said, giving him the exact amount on the meter. "Here you go, thank you very, very much!" She scurried out of the cab and slammed the door.

  "No tip?" the confused cabdriver asked to the empty air.

  Mara ran to find another long line waiting for her in front of the Jitney. She shuffled patiently to the front, where a tough- looking middle-aged woman wearing a fanny pack stood with a clipboard.

  "Name?"

  "Mara Waters."

  "Waters, Waters, Waters ... Huh. I don't see you. Did you make a reservation?"

  "Was I supposed to?" Mara asked, a little nervous.

  "Sorry. This bus is fully booked. You'll have to go standby on the next. But I doubt you'll get on. It's July Fourth weekend!"

  23

  "Omigod. Are you serious? I'm not going to be able to get on?" "Not without a reservation, you're not."

  "But--but---I didn't know... ."

  "Step aside, miss," the bus madam said rudely.

  "You don't understand! I'll be late for my job, and it's really, really important I get to East Hampton by five. Please?"

  "Can't help you. Try tomorrow."

  Mara moved numbly to the side, shell-shocked. She had been on the road since six o'clock in the morning and now this! It was just like Kevin Perry to forget to mention the reservation policy on the Jitney. He just assumed that like everyone in New York, Mara would know the drill.

  "Please--is there any way?" she asked, inching back to the front.

  "I told you, miss, you'll have to STAND ASIDE!"

  "Excuse me! What's the holdup?" asked an elegant woman in an oversized straw hat, holding a tiny lapdog in her handbag.

  "No reservation," the grouchy clipboard-nazi said, pointing to Mara.

  "I didn't know. I really need to get on this bus or I'll be late for my job," Mara explained, her eyes welling up.

  "Fine, fine, fine." The woman sighed loudly behind her sunglasses. "You can take Muffy's seat as long as you hold him," she said in a martyr's tone.

  "Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!" Mara said as the lady deposited her dog and its carrier in her arms.

  24

  Harried and still a little upset, Mara was finally allowed to climb aboard the bus and take a seat. She squeezed in next to her benefactor, who promptly put on a frilly eye mask and fell asleep as the bus pulled away.

  Mara looked out the window at the receding New York skyline. In Queens they passed Shea Stadium, festooned with American flags and patriotic bunting. An hour went by. Traffic on the freeway was brutal. Mara pressed her nose against the glass, counting the aboveground pools that sprouted in every backyard once they hit Long Island proper.

  It reminded her of Sturbridge. She should really call Jim to try and work things out. She didn't like leaving things the way they had, and she hated to think of anyone being mad at her. Just as she was wondering whether she could try him again, her phone began to ring.

  The slumbering silence was suddenly broken by a wheezy DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM. The digitized opening bars of "Sweet Child of Mine."

  "Cell phone!" hissed her seatmate, lifting her eye mask. "Who's got the cell phone?"

  "Turn it off! Turn it off!" demanded a pinched-looking girl a few years older than Mara, looking up from her knitting.

  "The noise! The noise!" quavered a bald middle-aged man holding up the latest Harry Potter novel.

  Mara frantically began searching for her tiny phone inside her overstuffed backpack. A cantankerous voice thundered from the

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  front seat. "No cell phones allowed! Will you please turn that off?" Everyone craned their necks to see who had broken the most august law on the Hampton Jitney. Fifty pairs of irritated, sleep- rumpled eyes glared in Mara's direction. The clipboard-wielding bus madam who'd already given Mara grief for getting on the bus without a reservation gestured angrily. "You there!"

  "Sorry! Sorry! I didn't know!" Mara said, fumbling with her phone. "Hello???" She brushed her long brown bangs off her face with a hurried sweep.

  "Mar! It's me! Hey, I--"

  "Jim! I can't talk now!" she said, snapping the phone shut and cutting him off in mid-protest.

  The long-haired Chihuahua in her arms stared her down with an indignant look on its pointy face.

  "What's wrong, pup?" she cooed nervously, holding up the dog close to her. As if in answer, the dog peed in her lap. "Hey!" Mara yelped.

  "Oh. He does that to some people." Muffy's owner yawned. "You should really have turned off your phone. Didn't you see the sign?" she added, motioning to the image of a cell phone inside a circle with an angry red slash drawn across it.

  Mara sank lower in her seat. It was going to be a very long ride.

  26

  somewhere on the montauk highway: jacqui can really hold her licquor

  The smarmy movie producer was starting to look very, very attractive, but that was probably Johnny Walker talking, Jacqui thought.

  For the most part Rupert had acted the perfect gentleman; in fact, he had barely paid her any attention except to refill her whiskey glass. He had been glued to his cell phone's wireless earpiece, yelling into the little receiver about some botched film deal. By the time they reached Noyak, Jacqui had already watched three episodes of That 70s Show on the Tivo, played numerous games of Halo on the Xbox, and watched as the landscape out the window changed from crowded metropolis to suburban wasteland to picturesque vineyards.

  "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said, taking a moment to squeeze her left knee.

  Hmmm. She didn't know how she felt about that.

  Maybe she'd feel better after just one more drink, she thought, reaching over for the
crystal decanter. Rupert had said to "help

  27

  herself," and she wasn't one to pass up on the limousine's amenities. Who knew when she'd ever be in a stretch Hummer again?

  Rupert finally put away his phone and turned to her. "Sorry about that. The floozy signed the contract, but now she's trying to get out of it to do a movie with Tom Cruise. Didn't mean to be rude."

  Jacqui waved it away, still holding her cocktail glass.

  He smirked and poured himself another shot of bourbon. "Cheers," he said.

  "Salude." To your health.

  They clinked glasses. Rupert took a hearty sip and smacked his lips. "Much better," he said, unbuttoning the topmost button on his oxford shirt. "So, what are you doing in the Hamptons this summer?" he inquired.

  "Au pair," she said.

  "No way. You're serious? I was sure you were a model or something. And that's not a line. I see pretty girls in my business every day."

  "Niio sou modelo."

  "Actress wannabe?"

  Jacqui shook her head. She had absolutely no desire to generate even more attention for herself.

  "Just a nanny, huh?"

  "Au pair," she corrected.

  "Right. Right." He smiled. "Who's the lucky family?"

  She told him about the Perrys and gave him their address on Lily Pond Lane. He looked impressed.

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  "Perry? Not Kevin Perry?"

  She nodded.

  "The lucky bastard," Rupert said, now grinning broadly. "Maxine and I know them," he said as he put a hand on her knee. "My wife, you know. We just got married last year. It wasn't my idea," he added as he ran a hand up her toned thigh, stopping just short of her denim miniskirt. He let his hand rest there--just below--to see what she would do.