Beach Lane

  jfk baggage claim: jacqui picks up more than her luggage

  KEEP LOOKING, A LITTLE BIT TO YOUR LEFT, UH-HUH, these are real, all the way down, yeah, baybee, you like what you see? I know you do, pervert, three, two, one. . . .

  BINGO.

  The thirty-something guy with the slicked-back hair, faded jeans and sockless mocassins touched Jacarei Velasco on her arm. It was a soft tap—a mere flutter, really; he didn’t pat her arm as much as hint at the start of a caress.

  “Manuela?”

  That she didn’t expect.

  “Qué?” she asked, raising her wraparound shades to assess him further. Bronze tan. Oversized Rolex. Aviator sunglasses. The shoes were obviously hand-made. He’d do.

  “Sorry, I thought we’d met somewhere before, Miami Beach maybe?” he said, smiling so that the faint wrinkles around his bright blue eyes crinkled charmingly. He shrugged and turned away. Well, if that wasn’t the oldest line in the book. But she wasn’t about to let him get away that easily. “Maybe we have,” she called.

  The guy turned. “The Delano bar? Last year?”

  Jacqui shook her head, smiling.

  “Ah, well. Rupert Thorne,” he said, shaking her hand firmly. “Those yours?” he asked, spying a matching pair of shiny black patent luggage on the ramp.

  Jacqui nodded. “I’m Jacqui Velasco.”

  * * *

  He motioned deftly to a uniformed driver to pick them up.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “The, ah, ’Amptons?”

  “Exactly where I’m headed.” He nodded approvingly. “City’s no good in the summer. Fry an egg on that concrete. Not to mention the smell.” He grimaced.

  “Are you from New York?” Jacqui asked, amused by his complaints.

  “Originally. We’ve got a place up in Sag. But I’ve got the cross-country commute. I’m still on Malibu time.”

  She smiled, letting him yap while her mind was elsewhere. She wondered where this was headed. In São Paolo she was so accustomed to being hit on by older men that figuring out how much she could get away with was a favorite pastime. As a salesgirl at Daslu, the most fashionable store in Brazil, she had zipped the country’s richest women into handmade Parisian ball gowns. She was no mere wage slave, either, more like a glorified stylist, as the store only employed girls from roughly the same social class as its customers. Jacqui’s family wasn’t rich, but her grandmother sent her to a prestigious convent school in the city, where Jacqui was a middling student. At Daslu she was adept at conducting ongoing flirtations with many of her patrons’ husbands. Keep them entertained while the missus spent most of his paycheck on Versace leather pants and she picked up that sweet commission. It was all part of doing business.

  And it came naturally to Jacqui: Ever since she’d started filling out her C-cup bikini top, men had noticed her. Their eyes lingered on her chest, her hips, her long black hair, and Jacqui had come to believe that being beautiful was the only thing she was really good at. It was certainly the only thing anyone ever paid attention to.

  But her life changed when she met Luca. Sweet, earnest Luca. The American boy she met in Rio during Carnival. Luca, with his goofy grin and his omnipresent backpack. He was the first guy she ever met who didn’t hit on her immediately. Like many revelers, she was masked at the time, but unlike most of her friends, who were staggering on the cobblestone streets trying to hold their liquor, Jacqui had been content to stand on the sidelines. After all, every year was the same wild frenzy. She didn’t know then, but she was dying for a change. She found it when Luca, an American high school senior, asked her for directions and then walked away, even when Jacqui gave him her warmest smile. They’d only exchanged a few words, but when he turned to leave, something in Jacqui wanted to follow him. And she’d certainly never felt like that before.

  Unlike the overly obnoxious wolf-whistling boys from her hometown or the salacious older men from the city, Luca didn’t even seem attracted to her at first—which certainly piqued her interest. Jacqui had no false illusions about her looks. Her black hair fell in long, inky waves down her sun-kissed shoulders, and as for her body, let’s just say Giselle would have wept. The only reason Jacqui wasn’t a model was because she’d tried it once and it bored her. The endless standing around, the vacuous conversation, the asinine flattery. She had better things to do with her time than play photographer’s mannequin.

  Luca was spending his spring break backpacking through South America—hiking in Machu Picchu and the Aztec trail—and seemed totally unimpressed by Jacqui’s glamour. He listened to Jacqui like he really cared what she thought, and she was quickly charmed by his lazy smile and enormous backpack. They spent a wonderful two weeks together—hitting the samba clubs, downing liters of cachaça, climbing the peak of the Corcovado, sunbathing in Ipanema. He had even convinced her to go camping with him in Tijuca one weekend. They had snuggled in his sleeping bag, kissing under the night sky.

  Luca had told her the sexiest thing about her was her brain. Their first night together, Jacqui couldn’t go to sleep. She kept smiling to herself, not believing her luck. She tossed and turned, clutching at her stomach, feeling happy and frightened at the same time. So this was what love was like.

  Then, after an amazing week, he just disappeared. He left without so much as a goodbye or a note with his e-mail address. She didn’t even know his last name. Jacqui was crushed. For the first time in her life, Jacqui was in love. The only key to his whereabouts was that he had once mentioned his family normally spent the summer in someplace called “the Hamptons.”

  It was 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? Mas naturalmente! 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 didn’t have 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 had always led men to promise chinchilla furs and hand over platinum AmEx cards. “Lead the way.”

  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 Bofi 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 hung out 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 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 enoug
h 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?

  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.

  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—she had 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 out last time because I wouldn’t turn off my cell.”

  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 oldest daughters, Sugar and Poppy, who were twins.

  “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.”

  “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 necessities), 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 she was coming back to retrieve what was rightfully hers.

  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 rundown 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 any 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.”

  “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, wav
ing 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!”

  “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.