Skinny Dipping

by Melissa de la Cruz

  "I'm Alan's mother," the woman declared. "Is this some kind of joke? Can you get my good-for-nothing son out here to let me in? This is ridiculous. I've got clients waiting here."

  "I'm sorry, do you want to try Alan on his cell phone to confirm? I can't do anything," Eliza apologized.

  The woman threw her arms up. "This is bull! I am his mother! Now let me inside!"

  Eliza held her ground. Alan's voice echoed in her brain. The List is God. It could be my mother out there, but if she's not on the list, tough luck. What if this woman was some kind of impostor? Although she did have Alan's receding chin and bug eyes. But rules were rules, and for once, Eliza didn't want to break them. It was too much fun to say no sometimes.

  "Sorry. I can't help you," Eliza decided. "Please step to the side. You're not on the list. Next!"

  "Hey, E," a familiar voice said, and a hand tapped her shoulder.

  Eliza's heart leapt for a moment--Jeremy had arrived! But when she looked up, it was Ryan who was standing in front of the velvet rope. He was wearing his linen sweater that brought

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  out the green in his eyes, and a pair of jeans. Totally not dress-code-worthy, but rules didn't apply to guys who were as handsome as Ryan Perry.

  "Oh, Ryan, hey." Eliza smiled, nodding to Rudolph to unhook the rope.

  "Crazy night, huh?" Ryan asked, motioning to the teeming, seething mass of people who stared angrily back since he was able to cut the line. Someone even threw a beer bottle, which smashed right in front of Eliza's feet, and Rudolph immediately hustled the frustrated civilian away.

  "You have no idea," Eliza said, shaking her head at the mess. "What is it about nightclubs that bring out the worst in people? The regular people insist they're on the guest list, the guest list people demand VIP tables, the VIPs want. . . oh, God, well, they want everything. The other day I had to baby sit Naomi Campbell's fur coat. Apparently it needed a massage." Eliza laughed.

  Ryan shrugged, grinning. "Ah, you can handle it."

  Eliza handed him some free-drink tickets. "I guess." She rolled her eyes. It was nice to see Ryan again. They'd hardly seen each other at all since they'd gotten back, maybe because of what had happened in Palm Beach. Damn Palm Beach. Eliza wished, not for the first time, that she'd never even gone there.

  "Eliza! Hey! Over here!"

  Eliza turned and saw Mara and Garrett push their way through the crowd. She felt another burst of happiness at seeing a

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  familiar face and waved back, ushering them to the front of the line as well.

  Ryan turned around too, but his face clouded as soon as he saw Mara and Garrett. "I should go," he told Eliza, bumping a fist on her shoulder. "I'm meeting Allison inside."

  "Where you going, Perry?" Garrett called.

  Mara saw Ryan walk away without saying hello, and her heart ached. He looked so cute in that sweater. It was her favorite sweater. Last summer she'd borrowed it from him when they were on the beach and it got cold, and the sweater was so big, it reached down to her knees.

  For two weeks, Mara had brushed Garrett off with excuses, saying she had to stay and watch the kids, or she was tired, or that she was busy with something else. But yesterday, she'd finally caved. She'd bumped into Ryan and Allison walking on the beach and then come home to the racks of fabulous clothes. It seemed a shame not to let them see the light of a paparazzi bulb. Wasn't that what she was supposed to do anyway? Wear the clothes and pose for pictures?

  "How are you?" Mara gushed, giving Eliza a dramatic double air-kiss. "Where have you been?"

  "I've been, um, good," Eliza said, feeling guilty about Palm Beach all over again. "I've been here. You know where to find me."

  "All right, but seriously, we need to hang out!" Mara said. "Anyway, do you think we could get a table? My heels are, like, killing me."

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  Last summer Mara had lived in either Reeboks or flip-flops. Eliza noticed she was wearing a pair of shockingly high Manolo Blahnik sandals with two bands of sparkling rhinestone straps at the toe and ankle. The same ones Eliza had wanted, except they'd been all out of her size. Where had she gotten those?

  Eliza led them through the double doors, past the bi-level dance floor, which glittered under the strobe lights. The music was deafening, and the crowd was a mix of underdressed women and overdressed guys. Eliza noticed a particularly amorous couple stretched out on one of the king-sized ottomans and wondered if she should throw a coat over them.

  "Garrett, my man," Kartik said, as Eliza seated Mara and Garrett. "Good to see you."

  Then he turned to Eliza. "Did you let in those eyesores in the back?" Kartik accused, jerking a thumb toward two nondescript men and their shellacked dates, who were eagerly looking around, taking pictures with their camera phones.

  Eliza shook her head. They must have made dinner reservations to get inside.

  "Turn the lights down around them, will you? They're seriously killing the mood. And I want them gone before Mitzi gets here."

  Eliza nodded. She asked the busboy to dim the lights, then walked back to where she'd sat Mara and Garrett, not realizing she'd put them uncomfortably close to Ryan and Allison's table.

  "How about shopping tomorrow?" Mara asked, after they'd

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  given their drink orders to the cocktail waitress, and the bartender promptly zoomed up the wall to retrieve a bottle of the expensive Finnish vodka that Garrett had ordered. "We get paid!"

  "Well, I don't, but yeah, sure," Eliza said, a little more tersely than she'd intended.

  Mara saw Ryan across die VIP room, leaning against the bar with Allison. The tall Nordic blonde was laughing at something Ryan was saying, and it was killing Mara how Ryan was smiling back at her, his dimples flashing.

  "Penny for your thoughts," Garrett said, handing her the mojito she'd ordered. After Eliza had made the tangy Cuban cocktails that first weekend, they had quickly become Mara's favorite drink. The sugarcane and crushed mint leaves reminded her of the last time she was really happy. Since arriving in the Hamptons, things had not exactly turned out as she'd hoped: Ryan was with another girl, Eliza was being weirdly distant, and she felt like a third wheel around Jacqui and Philippe. Even the kids didn't seem to like her as much as they had last summer.

  "I was just thinking ..." she said, watching as Ryan rubbed Allison's shoulders. Ugh. She turned back to Garrett. "Let's dance."

  Garrett smiled. "You got it." He stood up and offered her his hand. They snaked their way to the center of the dance floor, where the crowd was gyrating to Nelly's "Hot in Herre." The song was kind of last year, but it was still a club favorite.

  Mara began to swing her hips and feel the music throb against her body. She moved to the beat, dancing sexily around Garrett,

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  letting her hands slide up and down his back, and pressing her legs against his. Garrett, unlike most guys his age, who kept their dancing to a one-two shuffle, could actually move--and he ground his pelvis into Mara's hips in a sinuous, sexy rhythm. Mara lost herself to the sensation of the music, the alcohol, and the feel of his breath against her neck. She turned around, and Garrett pulled her toward him, pressing against her back. He licked the back of her neck, and she raked her fingernails up his thighs behind her.

  It was quite a performance--one that Ryan wouldn't be able to miss, but that was sort of the point. Mara sneaked a glance in his direction, and was gratified to see that he'd stopped talking to Allison and was watching Mara with a scowl on his face. Mara tossed her hair back and pulled Garrett closer to her.

  "God, you're hot," Garrett said, whispering raggedly in her ear. "Where'd you learn to dance like that?"

  Mara smiled slyly. She liked Garrett. But more than that, she liked that being with Garrett made Ryan jealous. Maybe that way, Ryan would do something about it.

  On the other side of the club, Alan grabbed Eliza's elbow as she ushered Kit and a crew of Eastern European gazelles to his table. "My mom just
reamed me out. She said she couldn't get into the club earlier. What's the deal?" Alan demanded of Eliza.

  Eliza froze. "Your mom? Margot Whitman? But she wasn't on the list!" she explained in her defense. "And you said--"

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  Alan's features relaxed. "She wasn't on the list? Well, in that case ... hold on ... Ma! ' You didn't RSVP!" he yelled into his wireless receiver. "How many times do I have to tell you, you gotta RSVP?! No, I can't do it for you! I am a very, very busy man! Why don't you ever listen to me? You don't get in if you're not on the list! Twenty-four hours of labor? C'mon, I run a business here!" Walking away, he patted Eliza on the shoulder, mouthing, "Good job."

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  never trust a seven-year-old to keep a secret

  ANNA PERRY FINALLY SHOWED UP FOR A WEEKLY PROGRESS

  meeting the next day. It was the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend, and she was taking the kids to Nantucket to visit their grandparents. Unfortunately for Anna, Kevin's family didn't believe in help, and so the au pairs were granted a holiday break as well.

  "Oh, hello, Mara," Anna said, actually standing up to kiss Mara on both cheeks.

  Mara responded graciously, oblivious to Jacqui s puzzled look.

  Before heading to Seventh Circle last night, Mara and Garrett had bumped into Anna at the Boys & Girls Club annual harbor fireworks benefit, and Anna had noticed Mara chatting with Jessica Seinfeld. A dinner invitation to the Seinfelds' was the Hamptons biggest "get," and Anna had yet to score one.

  "How is everyone today?" Anna asked, looking around the table pleasantly.

  Philippe smirked and sat with his feet on top of the table, but

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  Jacqui squirmed in her chair beside him. She was certain they were going to be fired after being caught fooling around in the game room by Zoe. Since then, she had stayed as far away from him as possible, rebuffing all his attempts to pick up where they'd left off. Jacqui was certain Anna was just relishing the moment before swinging the ax.

  Anna went through the progress reports, which were more tragic than usual, even for the Perry kids. Dr. Abraham had reported that William was now showing signs of bipolar disorder on top of ADHD and that he and Cody--who was possibly schizophrenic--would have to be constantly monitored. Zoe still couldn't recognize the Cyrillic alphabet (although she had memorized a Marie Claire article on how to find your G-spot--Zoe thought it was in her elbow), but Anna was strangely ebullient regardless.

  "Rome wasn't built in a day, now was it?" she asked, winking at Philippe while dispensing three cash-filled envelopes. "Jacqui darling, can you stay a bit?" she asked, as they filed out of the room.

  "Sure," Jacqui nodded, settling back into her seat apprehensively. Mara gave Jacqui a questioning look as she walked out, but Jacqui pretended not to see it. She hadn't told Mara about Philippe, since she was well aware she'd broken her rule and she didn't want to be lectured about it. She felt stupid enough already.

  "First of all, Philippe has told me everything," Anna said, once everyone had left and the door was closed.

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  This is it. I'm fired, Jacqui thought. Good-bye, East Hampton. Good-bye, New York. Hello, retail and sales, for the rest of my life.

  "And I think it's an excellent idea." Anna nodded crisply, stuffing her papers into her handbag.

  " Desculpe-me . . . er ... pardon?"

  "You, staying with us in New York for the year." Anna smiled. "That is what you want, isn't it?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "So you can finish your senior year in the city. That was the plan, wasn't it? To attend Stuyvesant so you can apply to NYU?"

  Jacqui nodded, speechless. Philippe had told Anna about that? Why? And why was Anna looking so happy about it?

  "I think that can definitely be arranged," Anna nodded thoughtfully. She blew her nose daintily on a pink tissue. "Nanny will be back, but she'll need an assistant. The kids are getting so out of hand lately. Of course, you'll have to work very hard."

  "Of course," Jacqui said, chewing the inside of her cheek.

  "And have absolutely no distractions," Anna said meaningfully. "I have to insist on that. If you're going to be working for us during the school year, I expect you to be above reproach this summer." Anna glanced toward the door. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "I see." It slowly dawned on Jacqui what Anna was expecting from her in exchange for the job next year: Philippe.

  "One other thing. I've decided to move Philippe into the main house. Zoe mentioned something about a particularly

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  interesting game of pool she walked in on, and I really don't think we can have that kind of behavior around the children. Understood?"

  A heavy, tension-filled silence settled on the room. Anna's laptop computer was the only sound for several seconds. Jacqui's mind raced with the implications of Anna's offer. On the one hand, Anna was offering her everything she was working toward that summer: a job, a place to stay, an opportunity to better herself. Yet on the other hand . . . there was Philippe. Philippe, with his sardonic grin, his angelic face, his bronzed, diesel-cut body. Philippe, the only guy since Luca who had set her blood pounding.

  "Do you think you'll be able to manage?"

  It was a bribe. An out-and-out bribe. All right, Jacqui thought grimly. If that was what it took, that was what it took. She would stop seeing Philippe. Never kiss him again. Never run her fingers through his soft hair. But, hey, there were other guys, right? One hot French guy wasn't worth her dream of moving to New York and going to college. No guy was worth her future.

  She nodded. "Of course."

  Anna Perry smiled. "I knew I could trust you."

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  the best things in life are free?

  WORKING AT A NIGHTCLUB WAS NOWHERE NEAR AS

  glamorous as Eliza had expected it to be. Somehow even the ego stroke of deciding who was going to get in and who was going to have to call it a night didn't make up for all the humiliations that catering to the celebrity and wannabe-celebrity clientele entailed. The other night she'd had to spritz a famous actress's face with Evian mist every fifteen minutes, since the actress didn't want her skin to dehydrate while she downed magnums of champagne.

  And it was the opposite of glamorous when she'd opened her pay envelope and found out how much, exactly, she was actually making while working at Seventh Circle. She had stormed into Alan's office, insisting that a mistake had been made. Alan glanced at her check. It appeared there had been a mistake--they hadn't taken FICA taxes out, and the amount should have been even less. Eliza did the math and realized she was barely clearing minimum wage. When she complained to Kit, he told her that when he'd interned at Rolling Stone one semester after school, he

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  hadn't been paid a dime. It was a prestige job, not a paying one. Eliza was privileged enough to work at Seventh Circle, and surely, since her parents were doing better, she didn't really need the money, right?

  Except that she kind of did. Her parents had been generous enough to provide her the use of a MasterCard again, but after several trips to Calypso, Tracy Feith, and Georgina, she'd already maxed it out. She had to find a different stylish and sexy outfit to wear to work every night, and that was getting hard to do on a limited budget.

  The job at Seventh Circle was supposed to be her entree back into the good life, but instead of becoming an important fixture on the scene, like a junior Mitzi Goober, Eliza found herself catering to her former friends instead. The other day, she'd had to arrange for Sugar to bungee-jump off the top of the liquor cabinet--to the delight of her camera crew--and then sweep up the broken bottles she'd sent smashing to the floor.

  Eliza arrived at the au pair cottage just in time to catch Mara and Jacqui counting the money in their pay envelopes. Philippe had already left for the weekend, citing an invitation from friends in Sag Harbor. Eliza felt a little ill seeing all that cash.

  "Can we go to the bank?" Mara asked happily. If she spent one
more summer working for the Perrys, she would have her entire college contribution covered.

  Jacqui stuck her pay envelope into her bureau drawer carelessly, taking out several hundred-dollar bills just in case they

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  went anywhere fun. She planned to use most of the money to pay for her SAT class, which was expensive but would hopefully be worth it.

  "What's all this?" Eliza asked, noticing two rolling racks of clothes jammed in the corner. "Oh my God--are those the Sally Hershberger jeans?" Eliza squealed, pouncing on a pair of distressed denim jeans that retailed for one thousand dollars. "I want these," Eliza said covetously, holding the jeans up to the light and examining them closely. "How on earth did you get them?" she asked Mara.

  "Mara's famous," Jacqui teased, rifling through the shopping bags and finding a pretty psychedelic Pucci scarf. It was true. Garrett Reynolds was the heir to a billion-dollar fortune, and the papers chronicled his love life with the same zeal with which they documented the spiraling construction costs of the Reynolds Castle. (The blueprints had recently been leaked to the press, revealing the home's thirty-five bathrooms.) Garrett's former girlfriends included actresses like Kate Bosworth and rock royalty like Keith Richards's model daughter Theodora. Mara's relatively obscure background made her even more of a choice subject to the press, especially Lucky Yap, who loved to run photos of the very public, very attractive couple. Page Six had nicknamed them "Beauty and the Billionaire Boy."

  Mara blushed and explained in an apologetic tone that they were "gifts" from designers to wear around town.