Nowhere, as usual.
When Jacqui waltzed back, sipping a frosty drink, Mara lost it. “You’re never around when we need you!” she accused in a whispered, hostile tone.
Anna and Kevin were mingling and kiss-kissing friends, randomly introducing a kid when he or she happened to be in the line of vision. Sugar was sitting looking pouty, sexy, and bored, as usual.
“Shhh! They’ll hear you!” Eliza warned, hastily wiping Zoë’s chocolate-covered mouth.
William decided it was great fun to hang on her hair, and he pulled her backward just as Taylor and Lindsay walked up, holding several bulging shopping bags.
“William! Please let go! Let go!” Eliza pleaded, trying to wrench the little monkey away from her head.
She looked up and saw Taylor and Lindsay by the Marc Jacobs booth, trying on pinstripe sundresses.
“What do you think?” Taylor asked, smoothing down the front of her peplum skirt. She caught Eliza’s eye and turned away in embarrassment.
“Oh, it’s Eliza. Hey,” Lindsay said, giving her a weak wave.
The two scooted away as soon as they had swiped their charge cards.
Eliza couldn’t decide what was worse—that her friends were ignoring her or that they obviously felt sorry for her.
“Excuse me, miss? Can you get me a drink?” Charlie asked, a twisted smile on his face.
“Can’t you see? She’s working right now.” Sugar laughed, getting up from her seat. “Hey, Bill, pull harder,” she told her little brother.
“I got ya!” William crowed.
“Fuck you,” Eliza said, looking directly at Charlie.
“Excuse me?” Charlie asked.
“Eliza, did I just hear you say the f word?” Anna asked primly. “You know we try to keep that kind of language away from the kids’ ears. Spoils their interactive development.”
“Sorry, sorry. I . . .”
“Here,” Anna said, expertly wringing William away and giving Eliza a doubtful look. “Now go play with the Kennedy-Cole kids. Over there, over there. Scoot!” she said to her stepson.
“Thanks,” Eliza said weakly, feeling a little humiliated to have been rescued by Anna of all people.
* * *
Mara found a quiet place by the outdoor restaurant to try calling Jim again. He hadn’t picked up his phone since Saturday night. She didn’t want things between them to end this way, and she wanted to get her story straight with him. It made her furious to think about what kind of lies Jim was probably spreading about her back home. What if everyone thought she was a two-cent hooker when she got back? She was class secretary, after all. She had a rep to protect.
She dialed his number again. Straight to the answering machine.
“Jim, it’s me, Mara. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you have to. You have to give me a chance to explain. I’m really, really sorry about what happened. . . .”
“Hey.”
“Jim, you’re there.”
“Yeah.”
“Look—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry I blew up at you on Saturday. It wasn’t right and I’m sorry.”
Mara was stunned.
“I don’t know what happened between you and that guy, and I don’t really want to know.”
“Noth—”
But Jim kept talking. “The thing is, I kinda knew you wanted the job to get away from here. And I guess I was mad at you for deserting me. But the thing is . . . well . . .” He sounded a little sheepish.
“What?”
“I think I’ve met someone else,” he admitted.
Mara exhaled. Now that, she hadn’t seen coming. She had mixed feelings about his admission. On the one hand, she was in the clear. On the other, what the hell? She’d been so worried about his feelings all summer, but apparently he wasn’t really thinking of her at all.
“Who?”
“Stephanie Fortuna.”
The head of the cheerleading squad. Mara had a vague memory of how the little curly-haired minx seemed to jump extra high whenever Jim got a tackle.
“I’m . . . happy for you,” she said, almost actually meaning it.
“Yeah, well. We had some good times, though, didn’t we?” Jim asked.
“We did,” Mara said softly. She and Jim had been dating for almost two years. It was the end of an era. It was the most anticlimactic end to an era that she could ever imagine. It was like the last sequel to The Matrix.
“Good luck with your job and everything. And I didn’t mean what I said . . . about the Camry. It’s yours if you still want it,” Jim added.
“Thanks,” Mara said simply. “You take care.”
“You too.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Mara hung up the phone without saying “I love you” like they had every time they got off the phone for the last two years. It was weird, especially because she was pretty sure she really didn’t love him anymore. She felt unanchored. Free. She wasn’t Jim’s girlfriend anymore. She was Just Mara, but she wasn’t quite sure what Just Mara wanted to do next.
“Hey, Mar, can you lend me a twenty?” Eliza asked, coming over and holding up a cute black sweater. “Please?”
Mara stared at her blankly. Was she serious? Eliza sure had some nerve. They weren’t even officially talking to each other just yet.
“Are you still mad at me?” Eliza bit her lip. She wasn’t used to people staying mad at her. Being rude or out of line wasn’t new to Eliza, but having to take some responsibility for the things she did, was.
“Listen, I’m . . . I’m sorry about what I said the other day. It’s just with everything . . . and I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” Eliza still wasn’t very good at this apology thing.
Mara folded her arms. “Well, you did.”
“I know. I suck,” Eliza lamented.
“Yeah,” Mara said, noticing that Eliza’s eyes were starting to mist a little bit. Now that was something she’d never seen before. “I’m sorry too.”
“For what?”
“Nothing, I just don’t want you to cry.”
Eliza giggled, and ran her finger underneath her lower eyelashes to wipe away any makeup. “So, can I borrow the money? Promise I’ll pay you back.”
“Oh, alright. I’m charging interest!” Mara joked.
Eliza hugged Mara impulsively. “I hate it when you’re mad at me. I kind of missed your nagging.” Eliza bought the sweater and they walked back to Anna’s booth, where Jacqui was handing out doughnuts.
* * *
“Here you go, Chloë,” she said, giving Zoë a chocolate-sprinkled one.
“Chloë?” Anna asked, looking up sharply from writing up a bill of sale for a particularly ugly poncho.
Eliza elbowed Jacqui. “Zoë.”
“Zoë . . . Zoë,” Jacqui sang, getting red from her slipup.
“Zoë’s been wanting us to call her by different names lately. This week she’s Chloë. Last week it was Julie. Right, Zo?” Mara asked.
Zoë nodded, rapturously eating her doughnut. She was only six, but she could be bribed.
When Anna turned her back, Jacqui apologized.
“Dios mio! I’m so, so sorry. I totally lost my head. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, looking completely wretched. “I don’t want to get us in trouble.”
“It’s okay. It could have happened to any of us,” Eliza said.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”
* * *
They spent the rest of the afternoon stalking a supermodel that the three of them were obsessed with. Mara and Eliza were just thinking how the day didn’t turn out to be such a washout after all as they piled the kids back in the car when Jacqui ran up.
Her eyes were shining and she was obviously very excited about something.
“I’ll catch you guys later! I just saw a friend of mine who invited me to this great party at Sting’s house!” she said. “Ciao!”
Mara rolled her eyes.
“What is it with that girl?” She asked Eliza. Mara had had enough of Jacqui. She was getting paid just as much as the rest of them—for doing less than a third of the work. William pulled on a lock of Mara’s hair and then ran away. God, another pair of hands sure would be useful to wrestle that little boy sometimes.
Eliza felt extremely annoyed, too, but not about Jacqui ditching them. Hello, a party she didn’t know about? The reality of social ostracism was starting to set in.
jacqui is not a chick gone crazy
RUPERT THORNE SMILED A CATLIKE SMILE AT HIS quarry. He had never forgotten the girl he’d given a ride from the airport that day. Spotting her again at the Super Saturday benefit his wife always dragged him to was indeed a pleasant surprise.
He mentioned Sting was in town—a private concert—and would she care to join him?
They had started the evening by having dinner at The Palm, where Rupert ordered a seven-hundred-dollar bottle of Chateau Latour. “I’m celebrating something,” he’d explained to Jacqui. Afterward he had taken her to the bar at the elite Maidstone Club, which was legendary for its stringent exclusionary practices concerning its eighty-acre golf course. Bill Clinton hadn’t been deemed worthy enough to tee up during his 1999 visit. Rupert had broken several rules concerning women, foreigners, and Catholics just to impress Jacqui.
The Hummer into an enormous estate overlooking the sea. It was the hundred-thousand-square-foot mansion owned by a former investment banker-cum-techno-DJ (not Sting—Jacqui had misunderstood) who liked to throw wild, twenty-four-hour Vegas-style parties on the grounds, complete with showgirls giving lap dances. The house was frequently rented out for movie shoots, music videos, and twelve-hundred-person bashes like this one.
At the door a woman gave the two of them releases to sign, explaining it was being taped for television. Jacqui signed her name on the sheet without bothering to read it. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to sign a release at a party—some cable station or another always seemed to be taping something in the Hamptons. Rupert did the same and gave her his hand as they entered the party.
It was wild. Massive. This was partying on a grand scale. Hundreds of sweaty guests danced under a throbbing laser light show. A two-story-high ice sculpture of a vodka bottle melted in the middle of the fountain. The swimming pool had been turned into a massive grotto. Cocktail waitresses in corsets and tiny boy-shorts handed out free packs of cigarettes.
“Wow,” Jacqui said. “Where’s Sting?”
“Oh, he’s performing later,” Rupert replied. The truth was Sting had already bowed out of the event, citing a scheduling conflict, but word had it that he just wasn’t into this kind of scene.
“Let’s enjoy ourselves, shall we?”
Roaming camera crews dressed in CHICKS GO CRAZY! hats and logo T-shirts cajoled guests to flash their ta-tas to the cameras. Wait a second. Jacqui had seen these videos advertised on E! once when she was watching that disgusting pig Howard Stone, or whatever his name was.
“What about you?” a bearded, potbellied man asked Jacqui.
“No, no thanks.” She smiled, feeling uncomfortable. It wasn’t quite the star-studded event Rupert had led her to believe she was attending. Where were all the big names? Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz? Sara Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall? Or at the very least, Tara Reid and Paris Hilton? It wasn’t an elegant A-list bash. In fact, most of the guests were cheesy guys in shiny shirts and polyester pants, and most of the women were overly tanned, silicone enhanced, and wearing cheap spandex dresses.
“Uh, I think I’ll just get a drink,” she said.
“Good idea,” Rupert agreed, licking his lips.
Rupert kept refilling her glass even when it wasn’t empty, so she wasn’t even sure how many drinks she had. In her growing anxiety Jacqui drank a lot more than she had intended. The piercing light of a filming camera suddenly flashed onto Jacqui. She squinted to see several hefty bodyguards and camera crews standing at the doorway.
The twenty-eight-year-old topless-video entrepreneur who was throwing the party took a bullhorn. “It’s that time of the night, ladies and gentlemen. Any woman who isn’t naked in five minutes better leave now.”
“What?” Jacqui said.
Rupert grinned. “Oh c’mon. It’s no big deal. Everyone knows these parties always end this way.”
“I didn’t!”
“Hey, you signed the waiver at the door. C’mon, let’s have a little fun,” Rupert said, reaching over to pull down the straps of her shirt.
“Wait! Wait!” Jacqui said, pushing his hand away.
Rupert scowled. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “I show you a good time, I take you to dinner and the Maidstone, and this is how you thank me? C’mon, I just want to have a little fun,” he said, keeping his hand on her breast with a little too much force.
“Of course we’re going to have fun,” Jacqui said, her mind racing. “I just need to go to the bathroom and take care of a few things.” She winked, her heart pounding.
All around them women were stripping down and shaking their breast for the cameras. It wasn’t a fun, careless goof like Mara and Ryan skinny-dipping in the pool. This was business. This was frightening. This was not what she bargained for when she said she’d like to see Sting play a private concert.
“I’ll wait right here,” Rupert drawled.
Jacqui stood unsteadily on her feet. “I’ll be right back,” she promised.
It was four in the morning and she was in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t have money for a cab, and she didn’t even know where she would call for one. No one at the party would take her home.
She found a phone in the hallway and dialed the first number that came to mind.
“Luca! It’s me—I really need your help!”
“Who is this?” a sleepy female voice demanded. “Who’s calling?”
“It’s Jacqui. Can I talk to Luca?”
“He’s sleeping right now. What’s this about?” the suspicious voice asked.
No use. Jacqui dialed another number.
“Leo! It’s me, Jacqui. I really need your help.”
“Jacqui?” Leo asked. He was still awake, having played fifty-four straight games of John Madden Football on his PlayStation. “The girl who said I was just a mercy screw?”
“Leo—please.”
But he had already hung up.
Jacqui was in tears. In a few minutes Rupert would storm out looking for her and God knows what she would do then. She dialed the last number she could remember.
The phone rang and rang, and Jacqui had almost resigned herself to walking down the four miles of the Montauk Highway when Mara’s voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Mara. It’s Jacqui. I really need your help. Can you guys come and pick me up?”
Mara sat up in bed and looked at the clock. “What the hell? Just because you blow everything off, doesn’t mean we can just up and get—”
“Mara, please,” Jacqui said, starting to cry.
“What’s going on?” Mara asked, suddenly realizing something was wrong here.
“I’m at this party—Sting isn’t here—it’s just—I need to get away.”
“Where are you?”
Jacqui told her. “I’m really scared, Mara.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes. I have to get Eliza up, I don’t know how to get there, but I’m sure she will. Hang in there.”
Jacqui put down the phone and tiptoed out the front gate. It was getting cold outside from the ocean breeze, but she would rather freeze than walk into that house again.
sometimes people actually forget that the hamptons is long island
A FLASH OF HEADLIGHTS AND A FAMILIAR CLUNKY RED Volvo pulled up to the front door. Mara threw open the car door. “Jacqui?”
Eliza lit herself another cigarette. God, talk about drama.
Mara had hastily explained why they had to get up and go get their lost roommate, but Eliza still wasn’t sure exactly
why she had to leave her comfortable bed at four-thirty in the morning.
They found Jacqui huddled by the steps. When she spotted them, she burst into tears.
“Oh my God! What happened!” Mara said, fearing the worst.
“Nothing—nothing. I just didn’t know if you were actually going to show up,” Jacqui whimpered.
She was shaking and so upset, a totally different person than the confident, glacial, sophisticated South American who was so jaded about everything. In the moonlight she looked all of her sixteen years.
“I was stupid,” she said. “I should have known something like this would happen.” She told them all about Rupert, the bait and switch, the sketchy party, the leering guys, the video cameras.
“You’re under the age of consent,” Eliza said. “We could put them in jail.”
“I signed the release form,” Jacqui admitted.
“Who cares? That doesn’t matter. That’s never going to hold up in court.”
“C’mon, let’s get out of this place before they try to get new recruits,” Mara suggested.
Jacqui sniffed and wiped her nose with the palm of her hand. She looked at the car. “You guys took the Volvo?”
* * *
They drove west—all the way west—to the part of Long Island where it was more strip mall than stripper party. After all, it’s not all about the Hamptons. By now they were a little sick of the place, to be honest. All that posing, primping, and posturing. The constant need to match one’s bikini, sarong, handbag, and flip-flops. It took hours just to get dressed to go nowhere.
“Look, there’s a Denny’s,” Mara said. “I haven’t been to one in so long.”
“Anyone up for breakfast?” Eliza asked.
“Sounds perfect,” Jacqui agreed.
They found a corner booth by the window and opened menus.
“What can I get ya?” a waitress in a checkered uniform with a beehive asked them. She was so far from the sylphs who dole out minuscule plates of tofu at Babbette’s that the girls couldn’t help but grin at each other. This was exactly what they needed. A dose of reality.
“I have lumberjack special,” Jacqui decided.
“Three eggs, two pancakes, bacon, sausage, and ham?” Eliza asked in horror. There was absolutely nothing on the menu that was under her four-hundred-calorie-per-minimeal ratio.