The High Season

  “All right. I rented the house. I didn’t want to be in the Hamptons, I didn’t want to go to parties like this all the time. I wanted a place to retreat to if I had to. If we don’t have an exclusive relationship, why should I give up myself for you?”

  “I never asked you to give up yourself. I’m trying to teach you how to be yourself within the context of a committed relationship.”

  Doe had to muffle her snort.

  “Committed relationship? When you have another woman and a third in the wings?”

  “I have other committed relationships, yes. You accepted that. Have things changed?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. Maybe.”

  Adeline’s voice skittered around, but Daniel never lost his soft monotone. Doe had to strain every muscle to hear him.

  “I see.”

  “I did agree to your terms. Yes. But I didn’t think that your latest mistress would be at the same parties, either! I don’t care too much about Samantha’s existence, but I do care that she’s in my face. Our agreement was New York was my territory.”

  “She’s staying in Amagansett, I could hardly not invite her. I thought you two could be friends. You have a lot in—”

  “If you complete that sentence, that hoodie is in the ocean.”

  Oh, please, let me get that shot, Doe thought. Us Weekly, here I come!

  She moved to the right of the door, hoping to get a photo at an angle.

  “I can’t talk to you about this now,” Daniel said. “It is extremely unprofessional for you to bring it up—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t mean to say unprofessional. I meant to say unmannerly.”

  “Oh, really? Well, I meant to say fuck you.”

  Doe heard the footsteps and was around the fireplace before Adeline had clattered back into the room, moving fast. Doe flattened against the stone but the two were intent only on each other.

  Daniel reached Adeline and grabbed her arm. It was a hard grab. Doe felt sweat spring along her spine. They were in profile, their faces and bodies in perfect tense lines of fury. She snapped the shot.

  His voice was so clear. Doe knew that low pitch of threat. Her stomach turned over.

  “You don’t want to start this. Not with me.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I create the narrative. Not you.”

  Adeline threw off his arm. She stalked out of the room. Daniel let out a breath. She watched his shoulders move. He waited until he heard the front door slam. Then he walked out into the hall.

  Doe backed up and slipped out the door. It closed behind her with a soft click. Damn, shoes. She’d left them behind.

  * * *

  —

  “EXCUSE ME. CINDERELLA?”

  Her sandals dangled from his fingers. He was about her age, twenty-two or -three. A face to take your breath away. She felt his ticking assessment, up, down, all around. Blond hair, blue eyes the color of Miami ocean when the sky was white.

  She chose not to smile. This one was too used to the smiles of girls.

  “Prince Charming—I knew you’d show up eventually. How did you find me?”

  “You’re the only barefoot girl.” He held the shoes out of her reach. “How come I don’t know you?”

  “Do you know everyone?”

  “I know all the beautiful girls in the Hamptons.”

  “I could have sworn you took in more territory than that.”

  “Sabrina!” He shook his head. “I’ve had about six girlfriends who were obsessed with that movie. I don’t get it. She ends up with the boring old guy?”

  “Who controls the family fortune. Is that so dumb? Anyway, it’s all about the clothes.”

  “I knew that. So, I found these inside the house.”

  “I’m a friend of Lark’s.”

  “Coincidence. Me too. Yet I don’t know you.”

  “I had to tiptoe out. Daniel was wearing his hoodie,” she said. “Apparently you’re not supposed to interrupt him.”

  He shrugged. “Stupid house rule, right? But at least it’s out in the open. It’s those hidden ones that catch you. Anyway, I’d put up with it if I got to live in that house, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t put up with anything,” she said. She meant it to sound careless, but it came out hard and fast.

  He tilted his head. She saw she’d snagged him. Before it was just play. “Lucas,” he said.

  “Doe,” she said.

  He didn’t make the “a deer” comment, like everyone did. “I think I like you.”

  “The jury’s out on you, though,” Doe countered. “Just so you know.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I don’t need to be liked. Just appreciated.”

  Lark suddenly careened into view, a full glass in her hand. She grabbed onto Doe and kissed her on the mouth. “You did it!” she cried. “Now I owe you me!”

  Just like that, standing between the two of them, her summer shook itself out like a sail.

  16

  DANIEL STUCK OUT his hand. “Daniel Mantis.”

  “Ruth Beamish,” Ruthie said, shaking his hand and trying to cover her embarrassment. “I’m sorry, you caught me admiring your Rothko. Your daughter told me to take a peek at the Peter Clay, and I got waylaid.”

  “You like Peter’s work?”

  “I worked for him back in the nineties.”

  “Then you must see the painting. But first, the Rothko. Come on, you need a closer look.”

  She followed him farther into the house. “It’s a lovely party, thank you. I’m sort of crashing. Adeline Clay invited me.”

  He swiveled. “You know Adeline?”

  “She’s renting my house.”

  “Ah. You’re the one with the nice husband.”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “I see.”

  A blue slate floor, and out the back, the sudden shock of ethereal blue of sea and sky through the enormous wall of glass. White and blue everywhere. She tried to tiptoe. This was a space in which even a footfall felt unseemly.

  “The house is extraordinary,” she said. “It’s like heaven, if God had taste.”

  “Ha. I like that. It’s a sacred space, isn’t it,” Daniel agreed. “The volumes are so carefully articulated, yet you get no sense of effort. I look at this and I can’t see schematics or blueprints. Just inspiration. It’s as though it was always here, isn’t it? Yet the modernity grounds you in the now.”

  His stump speech, she could tell. He recited it as though someone else had written it for him.

  “Come, I want to show you something. I can tell you’ll appreciate it.” He moved farther into the vast cathedral of the house.

  She could glimpse the formal dining room. A long table that could seat twenty or more, the wood polished and rich. A stunning Cy Twombly on the wall. “The chairs are beautiful.”

  “Jacques Adnet.” He stopped. “Sometimes I just stand here for twenty minutes at a time. It’s the exact center of the house. And of course the Rothko right in your center sight.”

  That Rothko, floating blue and anchoring black.

  “The Richter abstract to your left.” A knockout-punch Richter, skeins of bright paint over navy. Ruthie estimated maybe forty million. It was a guess; it could be worth more.

  “Now look down.”

  She looked down at a tiny square of golden tile in the middle of the stone floor.

  “I had the architect put in that square. The guy argued with me, like he was the boss. Look up.”

  She looked up into a blue sky through a skylight.

  “I think of this space, right here, as art. Just here. Do you feel it? It’s like my own Turrell. I walk in every Friday, and I stop. This is where I center. This is where serenity kicks in.”
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  Could serenity actually kick?

  “Do you feel it? Like you’re at the center of a turning world?”

  What does one say to a billionaire except “Yes.”?

  “Let’s exhale.”

  Obediently she blew out a breath.

  “I like to come here right after meditating, before espresso, without any chemical buzz. And now, the Rothko again. Do you see it now through a different lens?”

  Ruthie struggled for the right thing to say, something that wasn’t a hearty Bullshit. A riff. “When I first saw it I was struck by how well it reflects the elements of the house. Repeated forms, that deep blue. Now I’m seeing something within the painting, maybe back to the intent of the artist himself. I’m seeing that Rothko didn’t suck out light, he infused the painting with it. Even the black.”

  “Exactly. It’s a spiritual exercise, standing here.” Daniel beamed at her.

  He didn’t command her to exhale, but she did.

  “And now, the dialogue with the Clay.”

  “From the Dowager Series. A good picture.”

  They walked closer. On the opposite wall from the Rothko hung a signature Peter Clay portrait, a piece Ruthie was intricately familiar with, being that she had been the one to paint it. Peter had become bored with the actual process of painting later in his career, spending all of his time thinking about art rather than doing it. That was for his studio assistants. She’d gone from mixing colors to underpainting to painting under Peter’s direction as he sat in the red upholstered armchair, drink in hand, and yelled instructions across the studio. She had a sudden plunge backward, remembering the smell of the studio, the blare of the music—the Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention.

  In the beginning, just being in the studio with Peter was thrilling—she’d started when she was still a student. There were long stretches of boredom while he sat in a chair, talking to his dealer or collectors, and then sudden, brilliant bursts of talk and, occasionally, sketching. Peter could draw a line on a page and she could identify it as his mark, and probably still had the muscle memory to replicate it. She had been in the presence of something that ordinary people didn’t have, maybe even couldn’t comprehend, and she’d felt privileged to see it.

  For a while.

  She wasn’t surprised that Daniel had a Dowager painting. Society portraits, Peter had called them, most of them commissions. Peter hadn’t thought much of them but now those portraits turned out to be the ones that survived to influence contemporary artists, with their thin washes of paint and simple lines, close to cartoons. The subject matter made art critics foam and lather. He painted daring young socialites as dowagers, their older selves, and dowagers as ingénues, vacuous or rapacious. Some of them awkwardly, splendidly nude. They all loved the recognition but no doubt hated the portraits. “What a hoot,” they had said, “how marvelous.” They were rarely flattering, and most of the subjects had sold them.

  “A dialogue? I’m not sure,” she said. “More like a standoff. Rothko liked a raw, rough canvas, and Peter of course was the opposite, a very tight weave. He was all about precision, that sort of eggshell Renaissance quality. It’s like Peter is saying, You think you know blue, Mark, my friend? Now, this is a blue.”

  “Arrogant bastard,” Daniel said, grinning. “That’s why I love him. Didn’t he always say he was a misanthrope rather than a misogynist? And people couldn’t tell the bloody difference?”

  “Actually he said people couldn’t tell the fucking difference, but yes.”

  “Ha. I think it’s brutal in all good ways,” Daniel said. “The life force unleashed.”

  “Yes, he captured spirit, didn’t he.” She gestured at the painting. “But I have to confess I still see the misogyny.”

  “I don’t believe in misogyny,” he said. “It’s too limiting. I believe in tribalism.”

  He reached over and touched her wrist, then lifted it. For a panicked moment she thought he was about to make a pass. But he only looked at the watch. “May I?” There was a detail on it, a slender piece of metal that she realized could slide as Daniel touched it.

  Fairy sounds. Ding ding ding and then a higher ping ping ping ping…coming from the watch itself. Some kind of alarm?

  “Lucky you,” he said. “I almost bought one once. Just for that minute repeater music. The vintage ones are hard to find.”

  He gave her a look that indicated she was undergoing a reevaluation. “I’ll have to check out the Belfry sometime.”

  “That would be great. I’m always there.”

  “Dedication. I like it.”

  A woman appeared at the end of the hall, dressed in a white polo shirt and black pants. A housekeeper. She stood still, and Ruthie had a feeling it was a signal. Nothing so crass as a raised hand, or a nod.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Daniel said. “Party details. My daughter always tells me she’ll handle everything and then halfway through she’s dancing on the beach. Take your time, explore a bit, enjoy the art.”

  The two disappeared behind a white wall.

  Ruthie peeked down a hallway and found another room, this one with a fireplace and an Ed Ruscha. She jumped when she saw herself reflected in a mirrored sculpture that looked vaguely like Louise Bourgeois but wasn’t, and then into another room, this one with glass walls that faced the activity on the lawn and four white leather Mies benches placed in a perfect square. One exquisite curved steel hook in the wall with a gray hoodie hanging on it. That was it, no other furniture. No art, but she sat down anyway.

  Ruthie lifted her arm. The watch slid like a bracelet, or a handcuff. She had barely looked at the watch this morning, just strapped it on. She noticed, maybe for the first time, how beautiful it was. She examined the smooth moony texture of the dial, the elegance of the numerals.

  The hair on her neck prickled.

  She reached for her phone and plugged in Patek Philippe. Scrolling and searching. AUCTION PRICES…IMPORTANT WATCHES…IMAGES…

  What the heck was a minute repeater?

  Holy crap. She pinched the glass on her phone, and the image bloomed. She looked from her wrist to the screen.

  If it were real, it wouldn’t be nickel or steel, it would be platinum.

  With shaking fingers she unbuckled it, then looked at the transparent back. She pushed the metal slide again. Ding ding ding ding ding ping ping tring tring tring tring tring tring tring…

  It was five thirty-seven. It had just told her the time.

  Which meant she was holding at least a quarter of a million dollars in her hand.

  How could it be real, tossed in a box for a six-year-old? But who could make a fake this beautiful, this intricate? Surely someone could. People faked everything.

  What had Carole said? Vintage stores and Canal Street and the Brooklyn Flea. Canal Street vendors ran whole businesses on fakes.

  Was it possible that it was real, and Carole didn’t know? She’d bought a box full of junk for dress-up. A jumble of jewelry, of glitter and glass. A little girl pawing through it, ignoring the utilitarian, going for the bangles. A fortune tossed aside.

  But if it was real…The cost of the watch would be so little to Carole and Lewis, a fraction of an annual bonus. For her…she could pay off the mortgage. They could own the house clear.

  How many of her fights with Mike had centered on money? Where to spend it, how to save it. Unlike her, he hadn’t grown up without it.

  Mike wasn’t used to the scramble for rent, let alone the fear. The shock of his parents’ death in a car accident was followed by the shock of discovering that they weren’t just New England parsimonious, they were in debt. They had been running on the fumes of the Dutton family inheritance, and it had petered out years before. They’d sold the family house and were renting from the new owners. The erosion of his dreams, for Mike, had resulted in an aggri
eved battle with a world that had cheated him.

  In one of their most spectacular fights, Mike had called her on the big lie of their marriage: that they got the best of the house. They said it at Thanksgiving, as they sat around the fire. They said it at Christmas, they said it on snowy February afternoons, they said it when the forsythia bloomed. Oh, the spectacular fall! The fairyland winter! The explosive spring! Bullshit! Mike had cried, brandishing a spatula in the air. They lived in a summer town, they had never had it between Memorial Day and Labor Day, not after the first year, when the house was still crap and they were broke. We never made a home, we made an investment. Admit it!

  They had been doing the dishes, and Ruthie had gone on primly rinsing a cup, resisting the urge to throw it against the wall. She did not believe in hurling crockery during arguments. She didn’t believe in arguments. Mike had never raised his voice to her before. When he was angry, he just accented his consonants. He called her by her name and hit the R hard, his lips forming an angry rosebud. RRU-thie.

  “It’s all such a compromise,” Mike said. “Can’t hang my paintings because they aren’t neutral enough, have to have only white sheets and towels so that we can bleach them, only white paint, white plates, white cups, white fucking slipcovers.” He shook a white plate at her. This is our life! he’d shouted. This crummy white plate!

  What are you talking about, crummy? It’s Williams Sonoma!

  The plate had been Frisbeed against the wall, and shattered. Crockery had been thrown. Ruthie had stared at the shards and thought, Well, it’s only a salad plate. How bad could this be?

  Within six months, he’d moved out.

  She rose and went to the window. How funny life was. She had stood with a billionaire admiring his fifty-million-dollar painting (How much were Rothkos now, worth unimaginable for one person to afford, yet they did, mere museums could no longer afford to buy these paintings…sixty million? Eighty?) while wearing couture and (possibly) a quarter of a million dollars on her wrist. Had Daniel’s notice of the watch changed her in his eyes, was that the meaning of the warmer look, the reevaluation of her importance?