Four Blondes

  The amazing thing was that this didn’t seem to turn any of the men off. They clustered around the table, ordering drinks and smoking cigarettes. Janey had recently developed a theory that the worse you treated men, the more they wanted you. Peter, from three summers ago, came over, swinging a chair around to sit with his arms draped over the back. “You’ve changed, Janey. You seem so confident,” he said.

  “I’m not the same girl I was two years ago, Peter,” she said, and smiled viciously. “I would never put up with your shit today.”

  “I never gave you any shit.”

  “The ultimate was Labor Day weekend. Driving back from the Hamptons in the pouring rain. Remember? You dropped me off just outside the midtown tunnel. On Thirty-fifth Street and Third Avenue. ‘Get a cab,’ you said.”

  “It was over,” Peter said, and grinned. “And you lived all the way uptown. Why should I drive a girl all the way uptown if I’m not even going to get laid?”

  Janey expected Zack to be at the bar in The Palm when she arrived at six-fifteen. He wasn’t. When he still hadn’t turned up ten minutes later, she took up two guys on their offer to buy her a drink. She ordered a margarita. At six-forty-five, there was a slight commotion outside. A green 1954 250 GT Ellena Body Ferrari pulled into the circular driveway. Right-hand drive. Zack got out. He wore old tennis shoes and walked with his hands in the front pockets of his khaki trousers. Janey became very animated, talking to the two men. Zack came up behind her. Whispered in her ear, “Hello there.”

  She jumped a little. “Oh. Hi,” she said. She looked at her watch. “I was going to scold you for being late, but the car makes up for it.”

  “The car is priceless,” Zack said. He slid onto the bar stool next to her. He took her hand. “If you want to be with me, Janey, never, ever scold me. Unless I ask you to.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “It is. If you play your cards right.” He leaned toward her. “Do you have a dark side, Janey? You look like a girl who has a dark side.”

  Janey laughed, and so did Zack. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. Zack lit a cigarette. Filterless. In the daylight, he was not quite as attractive as she remembered. He had bad English teeth, ranging in color from sickly yellow to light gray. His fingers were stained with nicotine and his nails were dirty. But there was the car. And his money. And the whole summer and hopefully even longer ahead of her. “Let’s take things one step at a time, okay?” she said.

  “I guess that means you want to see my house before you decide whether or not you want to fuck me,” Zack said.

  “Come on,” Janey said. “I’m interested in you. Everyone says you’re fascinating.”

  “Everyone is a fool,” Zack said. And then: “You’re going to love the house. It’s perfect.” He stood up and pulled her off the bar stool. He put his arm around her, walking her to the door. He was taller than she, the perfect size, she thought. “I got the house just for you,” he said.

  “Of course you did,” Janey said. She believed him, not thinking for a moment that it was unusual for a complete stranger to rent a house in the Hamptons in the hope that she would be with him. She nodded at the valet, who held open the car door. She slid into the front seat. The car was in perfect condition. She took off her baseball cap and shook out her hair. She laughed. “It’s beautiful,” she said, feeling generous. Zack started the engine. “Ah yes,” he said, pulling out of the driveway. “I suppose that’s where I’m supposed to say, ‘No, you’re beautiful, Janey.’” He looked at her. “Feel like you’re in a movie?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a very silly girl. Don’t you know that it’s dangerous to be so silly?”

  “Maybe I’m not silly,” Janey said. “Maybe it’s just an act.”

  “Maybe it’s all just an act,” Zack said. “But then where does that leave you?”

  He turned the car onto Further Lane. “I told the rental agent I wanted a house on the best road in the best town in the Hamptons. I hope she hasn’t done me wrong, Janey.” He growled a bit on the word “wrong” and Janey thought he was adorable all over again. They turned in to a long gravel driveway. “I know the house,” Janey said. “It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Really?”

  “A friend of mine rented it five years ago. It’s the perfect summer house. Pool, tennis courts . . .”

  “Did you play tennis without your knickers on?”

  “Oh please, Zack.”

  “That’s how I imagine you, all in white, without your knickers . . .”

  The house was situated well back from the road, fronted by a long green lawn that was always set up for croquet. It was a classic, shingled-style manse, built in the 1920s for a rich family with a pack of kids and servants. Zack pulled up to the front. “Come along, come along my lovely, and we shall see . . .” he said, jumping out of the car and taking her hand. There was a wide porch and a balcony that ran around the second floor. He opened the door. “A veritable fun house,” he said, turning around. “Now, I expect you to play lots of naughty games.”

  “Like what?”

  Zack rustled through a paper sack. “Provisions,” he said, holding up a bottle of vodka and a plastic container of tonicwater.

  Janey laughed a little nervously.

  Zack went to the kitchen and returned with two cocktails. “Chin-chin,” he said, holding up his glass. “Cheers,” Janey said. “To a great summer.”

  Zack came up behind her. He put his arm around her waist and pressed her to him. “What’s behind all this great summer nonsense?”

  Janey turned and slipped out of his grasp. “Nothing,” she said.

  “There must be something. I’ve never heard of anyone so obsessed with summer. I spent my summers working in a factory.”

  “Of course you did,” Janey said softly.

  He pointed his finger at her and shook it. “You have to answer my questions. That’s one of the rules. I get bored very easily. Right now I’m interested. In hearing all about you. About all of the men who have had you before me.”

  “What?” Janey said.

  “This is going to be fun,” Zack said. “Do you take coke?”

  “Coca-Cola?”

  “Cocaine,” Zack said with mock patience. Then: “You’re not very bright, are you? When I first met you, I didn’t think you were, but then I thought perhaps I’d made a mistake.” He sat down on the couch in front of a coffee table, looked up at her, and smiled. “But then, one doesn’t really need intelligence in these situations. Just a sense of adventure.”

  “I don’t do cocaine,” Janey said coldly.

  “What a shame,” Zack said. “I figured you for a player.” He tapped some cocaine out on the coffee table, rolled up a bill, and snorted it up. He tipped his head back, inhaling deeply, the bill still in his nostril. Janey stared, and he caught her eye. “Stop playing the good little American girl, will you,” he said.

  “How do you know I’m not?”

  “Oh, come off it,” Zack said. He stood up. Walked to her. Touched her hair. “I didn’t invite you here to be my girlfriend,” he said.

  “Then why did you invite me?”

  “I didn’t. You invited yourself Remember?”

  “Fuck off,” Janey said softly.

  “Come here,” he said. “Sit down. My dear, you’re as transparent as that shirt you’re wearing. Everyone knows what your game is. You’re available. For the summer. Providing the man is rich enough. At least I want to know why.”

  “Because I just want to have a good summer,” Janey screamed. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “But you don’t do anything,” Zack said. He snorted some more cocaine.

  “I don’t do anything because I don’t want to. I don’t have to.”

  “You don’t feel much of anything, do you, Janey?”

  “No,” she said. She shrugged. “Even if the sex is great, it doesn’t mean anything. Because the guy isn’t going to stick around. So why not b
eat men at their own game. Use them. I’m a feminist, Zack,” she said, which somehow made her feel better.

  “Oh, the modern woman speaks,” Zack said. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Janey said, casually lying. She’d been fibbing about her age for professional reasons for so long that she actually believed it.

  “You look older,” he said, and laughed. “You use men, but you yourself are totally useless. You think your views are revolutionary, but they’re not. They’re just annoying and immature.”

  “And yours aren’t?”

  “As a matter of fact, they’re not,” Zack said. “I’m what you Yanks would call a self-made man. Everything I have, I got myself” He lit up a cigarette. “But along the way, I noticed something curious. I lost my emotions. My ability to feel. It comes from having to fuck people over all the time to get what you think you want.” He smiled. Those teeth! Janey thought. “So you see, you and I are really quite alike.”

  “I have my reasons,” Janey said.

  “No doubt you do. But they’re probably very mundane,” he said. Janey reached across the couch and slapped him. He grabbed her wrist. “Very good,” he said. “You’re getting the idea.”

  “I’m not mundane,” Janey hissed.

  “Oh, but you are,” he said. He pushed her back against the couch. She didn’t struggle too much. “Degradation,” he said into her face. She could smell his breath. “That’s all that’s left for people like us. Degradation. It’s the only way we can feel.”

  “You’re nuts,” Janey said.

  “Come upstairs. Quickly!” he said. He grabbed her hand. He hopped up the stairs two at a time. He pulled her into the bedroom. “I’ve been looking forward to this all week.” He pulled off his shirt and pants. Underneath, he was wearing tatty stained briefs that were frayed in the leg holes. He turned around and pulled down his underpants. His bottom was splattered with pimples. “Hit me, Mum!” he shouted.

  “I’m not your mum,” Janey said.

  “Hit me, Mum! Please!”

  Janey didn’t know what to do, so she started screaming. She backed toward the window. It was open. She backed out of it, onto the balcony. Then she ran to the edge and jumped over, onto the roof. She scrambled across that and jumped to the ground. “Owwww,” she screamed.

  For a few minutes, she just lay there. Then she heard footsteps coming down the stairs and the front door banged open. Zack, still naked, and smoking a cigarette, walked toward her. “Get up, you silly cow. You’re not hurt.”

  “Fuck off,” Janey said.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the premises as quickly and expediently as possible,” Zack said. Then he went back in the house and snorted more cocaine.

  Janey limped into the house. She passed Zack. He didn’t look up. She went into the kitchen to make a phone call. “Please, please be home,” she said, then, “Thank God.” She started sobbing. “It’s me. Something terrible has happened. I was with this English guy and he went crazy. I’m scared. Yes. Yes,” she said, sniveling, and gave the address. Then she went out onto the porch to wait.

  Twenty minutes later, a Range Rover came roaring up Further Lane. The driver bypassed the driveway, and drove across the lawn, scattering bits of the croquet set. The Rover stopped in front of the house and Harold got out. He kept the car door open. “Your ride is here,” he said.

  Zack ran out of the house with a towel around his waist. “You really fucked it up,” he said to Janey. “You had a chance. We could have spent the whole summer together. You blew it.”

  “Get away from her,” Harold said.

  Zack ignored him, following Janey as she limped to the car. “Go back to your little Jew boys. Where you feel safe.”

  Harold took a step forward. “Hey. Listen here, asshole. Take it easy. This is America. You can’t talk like that.”

  “Oh yeah?” Zack laughed. He took a drag on his cigarette. “I’ll say whatever I damn please.”

  “When my lawyers get finished with you, you won’t be out of court for years,” Harold said calmly. He got into the car and slammed the door.

  “Yeah, yeah, ‘course you will,” Zack shouted. “You Yanks. Take all the fun out of everything with your damn lawyers.” He hiked the towel up around his waist and walked back into the house.

  Harold backed the car across the lawn. “Jesus Christ, Janey,” he said.

  “Harold,” Janey said. She put her hands over her eyes. “I can’t really take any lectures right now, okay?”

  “I’m not going to lecture you, baby. I just want to make sure you’re all right. He didn’t . . .”

  “No,” she said.

  “Who is that creep?”

  “Zack Manners,” Janey said. “The English record producer.”

  “Goddamn Brits,” Harold said. “Why don’t they go back to England where they belong? Don’t worry,” he said, patting Janey’s hand, “I’ll see to it that he’s persona non grata on the East End. He won’t be able to get a reservation anywhere.”

  “You’re wonderful, Harold. You really are,” Janey said.

  “I know,” Harold said.

  “I just wanted to have a good summer,” Janey said an hour later, lying in a bed in a private room in Southampton Hospital. “Like when I was sixteen.”

  “Shhhh,” said the nurse. “Everyone wants to be sixteen again. Count backwards from a hundred and go to sleep.”

  Sixteen. That was the summer when Janey had gone from ugly to beautiful. Until then, she’d been the pudgy, funny-faced kid in a family of beauties. Her father was six foot two, all-American, the town’s local doctor. He wanted Janey to be a nurse, so she’d find a decent husband. Her mother was French and perfect. Janey was the middle child, sandwiched between a boy and a girl who could do no wrong. While the rest of the family ate veal with a mushroom cream sauce, Janey’s mother served her half a head of iceberg lettuce. “If you don’t lose weight, you won’t find a man. Then you’ll have to work. There is nothing more unattractive than a woman who works,” she’d say.

  “I want to be a vet,” Janey said.

  Every summer, spent at the country club, was agony. Janey’s mother, thin, tanned, in a Pucci bathing suit, was constantly drinking iced tea and flirting with the lifeguards, and later, with her son’s friends, who adored her. Janey’s brother and sister, both on the swim team, were state champs. Janey, who had a fat belly and fat thighs, was never able to distinguish herself. At fourteen, when she got her period, her mother said, “Janey, you must be very careful with boys. Boys like to take advantage of girls who are not pretty because the boys know the girl is, how you say, desperate. For attention.”

  Then Janey turned sixteen. She grew four inches. When she walked into the country club that summer, no one recognized her. She took to wearing her mother’s Pucci bathing suits. She stole her lipstick. She smoked cigarettes behind the clubhouse. Boys flocked around. Her mother caught her kissing a boy under a picnic table. She slapped Janey across the face. That was when Janey knew she’d won. “I’ll show you,” Janey said. “I’ll do better than you.”

  “You cannot do better than me,” said her mother.

  “Oh yes I can,” Janey said.

  The Saturday after Janey jumped from Zack’s roof, she showed up at Media Beach in Sagaponic with Redmon Richardly. Her foot was in a cast, and Redmon helped her, limping, across the sand. He settled her on a beach towel, then he went to take a swim. Allison came running over. “Is it true?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Which part?” Janey asked. She leaned back on her elbows, in order to better display her magnificent body. “You mean about Redmon and me being together?”

  “No. About last night.”

  “Don’t say anything to Redmon. Especially don’t mention Zack’s name,” Janey said.

  The night before, Janey and Redmon had stopped at the club Twenty-Seven on their way out to the Hamptons. Zack was there. He walked by Redmon and said, “Another sucker born every minute. I
sn’t that what you Yanks say?” and Redmon had taken a swing at him. Since then, Redmon had told everyone that Zack had been in love with Janey, but she’d left Zack for him, and that’s why Zack was flipping out.

  It was a small misperception that Janey had no intention of ever correcting.

  IV

  The next year, Janey determined to get her own house for the summer. This would probably entail a certain amount of hardship, since the kind of houses she was used to staying in probably cost their occupants upward of a hundred thousand dollars for the season. Nevertheless, she had a strong feeling that it would be a much better “look” for her to be independent, even if it meant doing without a pool, a gardener, a cook, a car, and maybe even a dishwasher.

  But even this would be preferable to what she’d had to endure the summer before with Redmon and Zack. Something Zack had said kept repeating itself in her head like an annoying pop tune: “You’re available. For the summer. Providing the man is rich enough.” It was one thing to date rich men, but another to have people thinking you were a whore. Someday (maybe soon), Janey would likely have to make one of these rich men her husband. She would have to be madly in love with him, but even so, it wouldn’t do if this rich man heard that his future wife had a reputation for being a prostitute. Janey had learned that while most rich men thought women were whores deep down anyway, they didn’t actually want you to be one.