Often, she travels to these exotic locales with other expensively clad women, a network of fellow influencers she’s dubbed her #stylesquad. There are hundreds—thousands!—of other women on Instagram doing the exact same thing she does; she is by no means among the highest profile, nor the most ostentatious, but she’s clearly found her audience. And an income stream, too, as she starts shilling jewelry lines and bottled green juices in sponsored posts.
A handsome boyfriend appears, usually in exuberant clinches, as if to prove to her followers how much he really adores her. The dog gets his own hashtag. Meanwhile, she grows skinnier and skinnier, her tan darker and darker, her hair more and more blond. Eventually, a diamond appears on her ring finger as she peers coyly through her fingers at the camera. Guys, she writes, I have news. There are photos of the interior of an exclusive bridal salon; her eyes peeking over the top of a flower arrangement. I’m thinking peonies.
But then, starting last February, the tone of her account suddenly shifts. There’s a close-up snapshot of a man’s hand, liver-spotted with age and resting on the edge of a hospital bed. The caption reads: My poor daddy, RIP. Then, for a few weeks, nothing, just a note: Sorry guys, taking some family time, back soon. When she returns, the photos of her outfits—black now, lots of black—are interspersed with generic inspirational quotes. Nothing is impossible—the word itself says “I’m possible!” The only person you should strive to be better than is the person you were yesterday. Happiness is not something ready-made; it comes from your own actions.
The ring has disappeared from her left hand.
And then, finally, there’s a shot of her Manhattan loft, stripped of furniture, floors piled high with boxes. Guys: It’s time for a new adventure. I’m moving back to my family’s historic vacation home in Lake Tahoe. I’m going to fix it up while spending some “me time” in great Mother Nature! Stay tuned for my new adventures!
* * *
—
For the last few years, I’ve watched all this from afar, judging her with distaste. She was a spoiled trust fund kid, I told myself. Not terribly bright, skilled at nothing but self-aggrandizement, leveraging her own insider access to get more of everything that she had done nothing to deserve. Canny at self-image; shallow at heart. Careless with her privilege and hopelessly out of touch with the real world, she was someone who liked to use those with less as props for her own fabulousness: a deluded elitist who believed she was actually a populist. She was clearly at a low point in her life and making some stab at self-actualization, judging by all those motivational quotes.
But it wasn’t until she announced that she was moving to Lake Tahoe that I started to pay close attention to her. For the last six months since she moved, I’ve been tracking Vanessa’s life closely: Watching as the glossy, professional quality of her photos disappeared, replaced once again by selfies. Watching as the fashion shots vanished, replaced by image after image of a crystalline mountain lake surrounded by stately pines. Looking for a familiar glimpse of a house I know so well, a house that has haunted my dreams since I was a teenager.
Looking for Stonehaven.
* * *
—
A few months back, I finally found it. She’d posted a photo of herself hiking with a young couple, everyone tanned and glowing with health. They stood on the summit of a mountain, the lake spreading out below them as they laughed with their arms flung around each other. The caption: Showing my new BFFs my favorite Tahoe spots! #hiking #athleisure #beautifulview. The friends were tagged. I clicked on one and found myself on the Instagram feed of a young Frenchwoman documenting her travels across the United States. Three photos in, there it was: a shot of the couple sitting on a familiar cottage stoop, surrounded by ferns. The open door behind them allowed a shadowy glimpse of a cozy living room, a couch upholstered in old-fashioned brocade that made my heart beat faster. The caption: Cet JetSet était merveilleux. Nous avons adoré notre hôtesse, Vanessa.
My high school French was rusty, but I knew what this meant.
Vanessa had started renting out the cottage.
* * *
—
It takes just an hour to pack a bag. When I tell my mother that I am leaving town—that I’ll call often, visit as soon as I can—she starts blinking rapidly and I wonder if she is going to cry. But she doesn’t. “Good girl,” she says instead. “Smart girl.”
“I’m calling that home aide we used last year. I’ll have her come and check on you daily once the radiation starts. She’ll clean and do the shopping. OK?”
“For goodness’ sake, Nina. I’m capable of setting up my own home care. I’m not an invalid.”
Yet, I think to myself. “And the bills—you’ll have to pay them instead of me. You’re already on my bank account; I’ll top it up as soon as some money comes in.” I don’t want to think about what will happen to my mother if it doesn’t.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m an old hand at this now.”
I kiss her forehead, and wait until I am out of sight before I let myself cry.
Lachlan and I check in to a budget hotel in Santa Barbara. Nothing near the beach where we might hear the waves; just a concrete slab and a pool with gray crust soiling the tiles and leaves growing slimy on the bottom. The shower is prefab and it leaks, and instead of miniature bottles of soap and shampoo they offer one bottle of catch-all “washing liquid.”
We lie side by side on the bed, sipping wine from disposable cups, my browser open to JetSet.com. I type Lake Tahoe into the search field and then start scrolling through the listings until one jumps out at me. I turn the laptop around and display the page for Lachlan. “This is it,” I say.
“That?” He gives me a quizzical look and I can see why: The photograph is of a modest shingled cottage, timbered and painted pale green, nestled in a stand of pines. Compared to some of the other lakefront listings, this one is humble, easily overlooked. The cottage has a worn, Hansel and Gretel quality to it: slatted wooden shutters, window boxes laden with ferns, moss growing up the stones of the foundation. Cozy Caretaker’s Cottage, the listing reads. Lakefront 2 Bedroom, Short- or Long-Term Rental.
“Click on it,” I command him. He raises an eyebrow at me but he obeys, and takes the laptop.
The listing has six pictures. The first is of a tiny living room anchored by a stone fireplace and a faded brocade couch, artwork tiled along the walls and antiques crowding the corners. The furniture is all slightly too large for the cottage, almost hodgepodge, as if someone had emptied the contents of a different house here and then thrown up their hands and walked away. The second photo shows a vintage kitchen dominated by a classic enamel O’Keefe & Merritt stove, the wood cabinetry hand-painted with stencils. There’s a photo of a pristine lake view and another of a modest bathroom and yet another of a bedroom with twin sleigh beds nestled up against each other under the eaves.
Lachlan squints at the photos. “This is your area of expertise, not mine, but that dresser…isn’t it Louis XIV?”
I ignore this, reaching over him to click forward to the last photo in the series. It shows a bedroom with a four-poster bed, positioned alongside a picture window framed in gauzy curtains. There’s a white lace coverlet draped across the bed, and a painting of a farmhouse perched over a cascading river. The glass in the picture window is thick and warped with age, but through it you can glimpse the blue of the lake beyond.
I know that bed. I know that painting. I know that view.
“That’s the bed I lost my virginity in,” I hear myself say.
Lachlan jerks around to stare at me, and at the serious expression on my face he starts to laugh. “Seriously? This very same bed.”
“It’s a different bedspread,” I say. “But everything else is the same. And the dresser is rococo, not Louis XIV.”
He’s rocking back and forth with laughter. “My God, no wonder you hav
e a thing for antiques. You got deflowered on bloody rococo.”
“That’s the dresser. Don’t know what the bed is, but it’s not rococo,” I murmur. “Don’t think the bed’s that valuable, actually.”
“What the fuck is this place? Who puts eighteenth-century French furniture in a crumbling old cottage like that?” He scrolls down the listing and reads the summary. I peer over his shoulder.
Enjoy a magical stay at the Caretaker’s Cottage, part of a classic estate on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe! So much charm packed into two cozy bedrooms: Vintage kitchen, beautiful antiques, a working stone fireplace! Lake views, nearby hiking, and just steps away from a private beach. A perfect sojourn for a couple or an artist seeking inspiration!
He turns to look at me, quizzical. “Classic estate?”
“Stonehaven.” That name in my mouth conjures up a strange stew of emotions: remorse and nostalgia and loss and a hot blast of rage. I enlarge the photo of the bedroom and examine it closely. I feel disembodied, my present and past selves split between these two beds, neither of them mine. “It’s a huge lakeside mansion that’s belonged to the Lieblings for over a hundred years.”
“These Lieblings. Am I supposed to know who they are?”
“Founders of the Liebling Group, a real estate investment firm based in San Francisco. They used to be Fortune 500, though I think they fell off a while back. Old money, though. West Coast royalty.”
“And you know them.” He is studying me with an expression on his face that suggests I’ve betrayed him in some way by keeping this valuable connection to myself until now.
Fragments of memories are surfacing from someplace deep within me: The darkness of that cottage, even with the setting sun cutting sideways through the glass windows. The way the coverlet—blue wool back then, I recall it was woven with some sort of crest—scraped against the backs of my bare thighs. The frothy cascade of the river in the painting, water descending to the edge of the painting as if ready to spill over and anoint me. The tender red curls of a boy who smelled like marijuana and spearmint chewing gum. Vulnerability, loss, the sensation that something precious inside me had been dragged out and exposed to air for the first time.
So much that felt so vital then that I have since managed to forget.
I am disoriented, feeling as if I’ve tumbled back a dozen years and landed in the body of the chubby, lost teenager I once was. “I knew them. Just a little. A long time ago. I lived in Lake Tahoe for a year, back when I was a sophomore in high school. I was friendly with their son.” I shrug. “It’s all a bit of a blur, frankly. I was a kid.”
“Sounds like you knew them more than a little.” He clicks back through the photos in the listing, studying them. “So wait. Will this woman—”
“Vanessa.”
“Vanessa. Will she remember you?”
I shake my head. “She’d already gone off to college when I was living there. I mostly knew her brother. I met her only once, briefly, twelve years ago. So she’d never recognize me now—I look nothing like I did then. I was overweight and had pink hair. The one time we crossed paths she barely even looked at me.” I remember it clearly, too—the way her eyes skidded across me, as if I was so insignificant that she couldn’t be bothered to register my presence. The way my face burned hot underneath the thick makeup I’d so carefully applied to hide my adolescent acne, my rampant insecurity.
Benny, though: He’d recognize me now. But I know where he is these days, and it’s not Stonehaven.
I’m not ready to think about him. I push him from my mind and pull up Vanessa’s Instagram feed for Lachlan to peruse.
Lachlan clicks through the photos, pausing to examine a photo of Vanessa on a gondola in Venice, the hem of her Valentino dress trailing behind her in a soft breeze. I can see him registering her practiced prettiness, the way she casually ignores the gondolier, the complacent expression on her face suggesting that the picturesque canal and sweating old man exist for her pleasure alone. “Still, I don’t get it. If she’s so rich, why is she renting out her caretaker’s cottage?”
“My guess is she’s lonely. Her father died, she just broke up with her fiancé and moved from New York. Stonehaven is pretty isolated. She probably wants company.”
“And we will be that company.” As he scrolls through Vanessa’s photos, I can see his mind running through its calculations. He is already starting to map our way in: the gentle persuasion we will use to convince her to invite us into her world, the vulnerabilities we will discover and exploit. “So, what are we shooting for here? The antiques? Family jewels? All those handbags she’s been collecting?”
“Not the antiques this time,” I say. I realize that I’m trembling a little, maybe because I can’t believe I’m finally opening this door after all these years. I feel a warm rush of vindictive anticipation, underlined by a whisper of disbelief that this is where the last decade has taken me: from that idyllic lakeside cottage to this cheap hotel, where I’m conspiring with a con man. I realize, with a twinge of self-awareness, that I am about to break two of my own rules: Don’t get greedy. Take only what won’t be missed.
“There’s a safe hidden somewhere inside Stonehaven itself,” I say. “Inside that safe should be a million dollars in cash. And get this—I already know the combination.”
Next to me, Lachlan is suddenly alert and quivering. “Jaysus, Nina. You’ve been holding out on me.” He leans in and breathes into my ear, the tip of his nose cold against my earlobe. “So,” he whispers lasciviously, “did you lose your virginity to a Liebling, or to their caretaker?”
6.
LACHLAN AND I LEAVE Southern California in the sunshine, the kind of morning when café windows are flung open and people eat breakfast en plein air. By the time we make it to the Sierra Nevada foothills the temperature has dropped thirty degrees and rain clouds are gathering overhead.
We stop in a small town halfway up the mountains and eat hamburgers at a Gold Rush–themed restaurant called Pioneer Burger with red-checkered tablecloths and wagon wheels hanging on the walls. Forest animals carved from tree stumps lurk near the ladies’ restroom. I order a surprisingly good burger and surprisingly bad fries.
Lachlan carefully brushes crumbs from his lap, frowning at a ketchup stain on his button-down shirt. He’s left his tailored suits behind in Los Angeles, and packed jeans and sneakers instead.
“Your name is…” he suddenly says.
“Ashley Smith.” The name still feels sticky in my mouth, unwilling to roll off my tongue despite the time I spent in front of the mirror, practicing. “Ash for short. And you’re Michael O’Brien, my devoted boyfriend. You worship the ground I walk upon.”
“As well you deserve.” His expression is wry. “Your hometown is…”
“Bend, Oregon. And you are on sabbatical from teaching…”
“English 101, Marshall Junior College.” He smiles at this, apparently amused by the notion of guiding the youth of tomorrow. “Am I a good professor?”
“The very best. Beloved by your students.” I laugh along with him, but really, I think he would have made a very good teacher in another life. He has a good ear for articulation and the patience required for the long con. And isn’t that what a college education is, after all? It’s the longest con of all: a promise that leaves your pockets empty and rarely deposits you where it says you’ll land. But maybe Lachlan’s talents are more suited for one-on-one tutoring—intense and focused and intimate. The way he’d once tutored me.
Together, we have studied Vanessa’s Instagram page, using the thousands of photos and captions she’s posted there as a road map of her vulnerabilities. She often poses with classic novels, using Anna Karenina or Wuthering Heights as a prop while she’s lying on the beach or sitting at a café. Clearly, she wants to be perceived as intelligent and creative. So Lachlan will become a writer and a poet, will appeal to he
r as an “artistic soul.” As for her recent turn to inspirational quotes: She is attempting to be deep and grounded, perhaps as a counterbalance to the frivolousness of all that couture. So I will be a yoga teacher, the Zen ideal to which she aspires.
She’s lonely; we will offer friendship. And then there’s the matter of all those come-hither poses, the glittery little minidresses and the bikini shots. “She wants to be desired, obviously,” Lachlan offers. “I’ll flirt with her. Just a little. Keep her interested.”
“Not in front of me, or she’ll think you’re a cad.”
He smears a fry in ketchup, forks it into his mouth, winks. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
And one critical, final touch: Lachlan will pretend to be from old money, a ginned-up family heritage back in Ireland that will be difficult for her to verify. The rich are always the most comfortable around their own kind: Familiarity breeds affection.
We seeded the Internet with our new identities before we left town: A Facebook page for “Ashley,” jammed full of inspirational quotes from Oprah and the Dalai Lama, and photos of women in contortionist yoga poses that I skimmed off other websites. (Plus: A thousand “friends” bought for a mere $2.95.) A professional website, advertising my services as a private yoga instructor. (Safe enough since I’ve sweated through enough Bikram classes in Los Angeles to be able to fake it.) “Michael” got a personal Web page with clips of his writing (lifted from the home page of an unpublished experimental novelist from Minnesota), plus a LinkedIn bio listing his teaching credentials.
The whole thing took less than a week. This is what the Internet has given my generation: the ability to play God. We can make man in our own image, birth an entire human being out of nothing at all. All it takes is a spark, flung out there somewhere alongside the billions of other websites, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts: just one profile, a photo and a bio, and suddenly an existence has flamed into life. (It is also much, much harder to snuff that existence out once it’s been created, but that’s another story altogether.)
Pretty Things Page 5