Beach Lane

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “I didn’t know. I really need to get on this bus or I’ll be late for my job,” Mara explained, her eyes welling up.

  “Fine, fine, fine.” The woman sighed loudly behind her sunglasses. “You can take Muffy’s seat as long as you hold him,” she said in a martyr’s tone.

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!” Mara said as the lady deposited her dog and its carrier in her arms.

  Harried and still a little upset, Mara was finally allowed to climb aboard the bus and take a seat. She squeezed in next to her benefactor, who promptly put on a frilly eye mask and fell asleep as the bus pulled away.

  Mara looked out the window at the receding New York skyline. In Queens they passed Shea Stadium, festooned with American flags and patriotic bunting. An hour went by. Traffic on the freeway was brutal. Mara pressed her nose against the glass, counting the aboveground pools that sprouted in every backyard once they hit Long Island proper.

  It reminded her of Sturbridge. She should really call Jim to try and work things out. She didn’t like leaving things the way they did, and she hated to think of anyone being mad at her. Just as she was wondering whether she could try him again, her phone began to ring.

  The slumbering silence was suddenly broken by a wheezy DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM. The digitized opening bars of “Sweet Child of Mine.”

  “Cell phone!” hissed her seatmate, lifting her eye mask. “Who’s got the cell phone?”

  “Turn it off! Turn it off!” demanded a pinched-looking girl a few years older than Mara, looking up from her knitting.

  “The noise! The noise!” quavered a bald middle-aged man holding up the latest Harry Potter novel.

  Mara frantically began searching for her tiny phone inside her overstuffed backpack. A cantankerous voice thundered from the front seat. “No cell phones allowed! Will you please turn that off!” Everyone craned their necks to see who had broken the most august law on the Hampton Jitney. Fifty pairs of irritated, sleep-rumpled eyes glared in Mara’s direction. The clipboard-wielding bus madam who’d already given Mara grief for getting on the bus without a reservation gestured angrily. “You there!”

  “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t know!” Mara said, fumbling with her phone. “Hello???” She brushed her long brown bangs off her face with a hurried sweep.

  “Mar! It’s me! Hey, I—”

  “Jim! I can’t talk now!” she said, snapping the phone shut and cutting him off in mid-protest.

  The long-haired Chihuahua in her arms stared her down with an indignant look on its pointy face.

  “What’s wrong, pup?” she cooed nervously, holding up the dog close to her. As if in answer, the dog peed in her lap.

  “Hey!” Mara yelped.

  “Oh. He does that to some people.” Muffy’s owner yawned. “You should really have turned off your phone. Didn’t you see the sign?” she added, motioning to the image of a cell phone inside a circle with an angry red slash drawn across it.

  Mara sank lower in her seat. It was going to be a very long ride.

  somewhere on the montauk highway: jacqui can really hold her liquor

  THE SMARMY MOVIE PRODUCER WAS STARTING TO look very, very attractive, but that was probably Johnny Walker talking, Jacqui thought.

  For the most part Rupert had acted the perfect gentleman; in fact, he had barely paid her any attention except to refill her whiskey glass. He had been glued to his cell phone’s wireless earpiece, yelling into the little receiver about some botched film deal. By the time they reached Noyak, Jacqui had already watched three episodes of That 70s Show on the Tivo, played numerous games of Halo on the Xbox, and watched as the landscape out the window changed from crowded metropolis to suburban wasteland to picturesque vineyards.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, taking a moment to squeeze her left knee.

  Hmmm. She didn’t know how she felt about that.

  Maybe she’d feel better after just one more drink, she thought, reaching over for the crystal decanter. Rupert had said to “help herself,” and she wasn’t one to pass up on the limousine’s amenities. Who knew when she’d ever be in a stretch Hummer again?

  Rupert finally put away his phone and turned to her. “Sorry about that. The floozy signed the contract, but now she’s trying to get out of it to do a movie with Tom Cruise. Didn’t mean to be rude.”

  Jacqui waved it away, still holding her cocktail glass.

  He smirked and poured himself another shot of bourbon.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  “Sua saúde.” To your health.

  They clinked glasses. Rupert took a hearty sip and smacked his lips. “Much better,” he said, unbuttoning the topmost button on his oxford shirt. “So, what are you doing in the Hamptons this summer?” he inquired.

  “Au pair,” she said.

  “No way. You’re serious? I was sure you were a model or something. And that’s not a line. I see pretty girls in my business every day.”

  “Não um modelo.”

  “Actress wannabe?”

  Jacqui shook her head. She had absolutely no desire to generate even more attention to herself.

  “Just a nanny, huh?”

  “Au pair,” she corrected.

  “Right. Right.” He smiled, revealing a row of yellowish teeth. “Who’s the lucky family?”

  She told him about the Perrys and gave him their address on Lily Pond Lane. He looked impressed.

  “Perry? Not Kevin Perry?”

  She nodded.

  “The lucky bastard,” Rupert said, now grinning broadly. “Maxine and I know them,” he said as he put a hand on her knee. “My wife, you know. We just got married last year. It wasn’t my idea,” he added as he ran a hand up her toned thigh, stopping just short of her denim miniskirt. He let his hand rest there—just below—to see what she would do.

  It must have been the alcohol because even if she had expected this, Jacqui wasn’t as repulsed as she normally would be.

  “We won’t get into East Hampton for another hour with this traffic,” he murmured, leaning in to smell her hair. “What do you say?”

  Jacqui giggled into her glass. Really, men were way too predictable. “I don’t know, what do you say?” she asked, finally pushing his hand away.

  “Well, I think we should get to know each other a little . . . “he began to suggest when they were both jostled by the limo swerving to miss a red convertible.

  Jacqui looked out the window and saw a cute guy giving the limo the finger while a blond girl laughed beside him.

  “Luca?” she called. It looked like him—from the back—was it? She couldn’t be sure. Thinking of Luca sobered her up. What the hell was she doing in the back of a limo with a guy twice her age?

  It was time to take control of the situation.

  “Rupert,” she said, turning around to let him know she needed to be dropped off in East Hampton pronto and she wasn’t about to play any more games. But Rupert was already on the other side of the car, answering his cell phone.

  Thank God for Hollywood diva crises.

  east hampton, new york: god, eliza missed this

  THREE HOURS AFTER THEY SET OFF FROM PARK AVENUE, Kit and Eliza arrived on East Hampton’s main drag. Eliza felt a wave of nostalgia and affection at the sight of the familiar tree-lined shopping street with the shiny new Citarella anchored at the end of the block. The store stocked even better salmon pâté and stuffed grape leaves than the one on the Upper West Side. A few blocks away stood the Creed outpost, a pink jewel box of a store, where she had spent hours trying on perfumes last summer, finally selecting one especially made for the duchess of Windsor.

  That’s what Eliza loved about the Hamptons—Manhattan’s most elegant boutiques and gourmet food stores supplanted to a gentler setting. The Hamptons were just like the city, except with only one-tenth of its inhabitants—the top one-tenth. It was like the social equivalent of Harvard, Eliza decided. Of course, there were too many of the hoi polloi these days—wannabes who pil
ed into illegal fifty-person “share houses,” where the beds were stacked up right next to each other like the gyms that doubled as disaster-recovery zones whenever there was a flood or a fire or a tornado or one of those other terrible things that happened far, far from here.

  Regrettably, the Hamptons were getting more media attention every year. There had been a number of cable specials, documentaries, and “exposés” on everything from the singles dating scene to the environmental problems. It was a favorite target of lazy lifestyle reporters who were forever sounding the death knell and declaring the scene “over” and the beach “spoiled by civilization.” Still, it didn’t keep the hordes of up-and-coming Hollywood stars, Grammy Award winners, sitcom royalty, rap impresarios, and literary lions as well as assorted social-climbing aspirants from calling the place home-away-from-home three months out of the year. After all, a forty-mile stretch of beach only four hours’ drive from Manhattan (make that two if you speed on Route 27 after dinner and The Sopranos on Sundays) was a total godsend.

  “You can drop me off right here,” she told Kit. “I’m meeting my uncle by the windmill.”

  “Okay.” Kit nodded, finding a spot by the curb. He popped the trunk and helped her with her bags. “So we’ll see you tonight?” he asked.

  “Duh. Of course.”

  “Rockin’. Don’t forget—if they ask, you’re on my list. Any problem at the door, buzz me,” he said, miming a phone call. He kissed her on the cheek. “Later.”

  “Later.” She waved. She walked over to the bench where a Jitney was disembarking its passengers. A disgruntled girl wiping away a stain on the bottom of her shirt walked off the bus and sat down next to her.

  Eliza barely noticed. She was oblivious to the outside world and already plotting how she would ditch work to go to the party. She wasn’t totally clear on the rules per se, but if the party started at midnight, there was no reason she wouldn’t be able to go, right? Kevin was just doing this as a favor to her dad. It wasn’t as if the Perrys actually expected her to watch their children.

  ryan perry is adonis in board shorts

  “YECCH. IT’S NO USE!” MARA COMPLAINED, MAKING one last effort to clean up the mess. She threw the tissue away in disgust, making a perfect arc into the trash can. It was her best going-out shirt, too. A nice rayon-poly blend she’d gotten at the Sturbridge Mall for, like, thirty bucks! It wasn’t so pretty now that the little beast Muffy had peed all over it.

  Mara looked around, blinking at the quaint small-town storefronts that announced exclusive brand names. A white summer cottage read Tiffany & Co. in the window; another rustic shack read Cashmere Hampton. A glittering assortment of Mercedes-Benzes, Jaguars, BMWs, and Porsches made a slow, rumbling parade down the center of town, where a giant windmill towered at the intersection. Mara had never seen a Bentley in her life—and in two minutes in East Hampton, she had already counted two.

  Everyone moved at a leisurely, languid pace. Elegant women with psychedelic silk scarves wrapped around their heads carried fluffy white dogs in their Hermés pocketbooks. Balding men with women less than half their age walked arm in arm down to the nearby park. Giggling teenagers wearing nothing but the tightest tube tops and the highest platform wedges darted in and out of traffic.

  “Do you have the time?” asked the girl beside her. Mara did a quick double take. The long blond hair, the annoyed expression, the tennis racket . . . She’d seen this girl before, but where?

  “It’s ten after five,” Mara replied, discreetly checking out the girl’s outfit. Mara wished she had thought to wear a little skirt and flip-flops. She was wearing her leather cowboy boots in a misguided attempt to impress. It was ninety degrees and she was boiling.

  The girl nodded and started paging through her PalmPilot.

  “Excuse me,” Mara said.

  Blondie raised an eyebrow without looking up from her task.

  “Weren’t you in Port Authority this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I thought I might have bumped into you this morning. . . .”

  “No. Wrong person,” she said curtly, sliding down to the opposite end of the bench to make her point.

  “Oh, okay. Sorry,” Mara said. They lapsed into an awkward silence.

  The two of them sat on the bench and studiously ignored each other.

  A silver Aston Martin Vanquish convertible pulled up in front of the bench, and the two girls immediately sat up a little straighter. A tall, tanned guy wearing a holey Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt and cutoff board shorts eased out and walked barefoot on the sidewalk. Cue: dreamboat music.

  Guys that like that are so out of my league, Mara thought. Not that she was in the market for one—she did have a guy at home. What was his name again? Jim. Right.

  Of course, the hottie went straight up to that prissy blonde who’d been so rude to her earlier. It just made sense.

  “Ryan Perry! It’s been too long,” she cooed.

  “Hey!” Ryan said, bending over for a quick hug. “How was the Jitney?”

  “What Jitney? I rode in with Kit.”

  “Very cool. How’s he doing?”

  “Not bad. There’s a party tonight. At Resort,” she said, self-importantly flipping her hair.

  “Yeah, yeah. I heard.” He grinned. “I got the e-vite.”

  “Maybe I’ll let you be my date,” she teased, basking in the glow of his attention.

  Ryan Perry was the type of guy girls swooned over and guys considered their best buds. That he was superlatively good-looking was intrinsic yet somehow irrelevant to the totality of his charm. He had that sunny, good-natured disposition that came from being incredibly lucky both in looks and in life. He wore the mantle of privilege carelessly and would have been just as appealing driving a Pinto as a Porsche. He was the kind of guy who was loyal to his girlfriends and could always be counted on to provide the biggest liter of tequila to any party. Of course, he could also be counted on to empty it.

  Mara watched them flirt without the slightest bit of envy. They might as well have been from another planet as far as she was concerned. Mara was always afraid she was just a “sorta.” You know, “sorta cute,” “sorta smart,” “sorta popular” but nothing special. So when Ryan suddenly called her name, he had to repeat it three times since she was so shocked to have even been noticed, let alone recognized. She wasn’t the only one. The other girl was now looking at her with renewed, if slightly hostile interest.

  “Mara? Mara Waters?” Ryan asked, giving her the full benefit of his dazzling dimples. One on each cheek. Mara could hardly bear it.

  “Uh. Me?” Mara squeaked.

  “I’m Ryan Perry,” Ryan said, offering his hand. “My dad was supposed to come get you guys, but he had to do something for Anna. This your suitcase?” he asked, picking up her oversized roller bag.

  “Uh-huh.” Mara nodded, dying as her bag went clackety-clackety-clack all over the cobblestone tiles. She almost wanted to disappear when the bag careened wildly and the magazines she’d stuffed in the back pocket went flying. She swore the first thing she would do when she got paid was find out where to get her hands on one of those cute canvas monogrammed tote bags everyone seemed to carry around here.

  Ryan held his door open so Mara could climb inside.

  “So . . . have you guys met?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes,” Mara replied.

  “No,” the other girl said.

  “Oh-kay.” Ryan laughed. “Eliza, Mara, Mara, Eliza. We’re all really glad you’re both working here this summer. God knows Anna has been totally freaked out the past couple of days.” He drove off the highway into a road with a Private Property: No Trespassing sign. Seeing the concerned look on Mara’s face from the rearview mirror, he said, “Oh, don’t worry. The Mortons let us use it all the time. The traffic’s so bad here, everyone has to use the back roads to get anywhere.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Eliza agreed.

  Mara nodded. But her mind was still on what Ryan
had said earlier. We’re so happy you’re both working here? Huh. Looked like there was more (or a lot less) to this Eliza girl than she had first thought.

  mara is the odd girl out on lily pond lane

  THEY DROVE PAST A PRACTICALLY UNENDING LINE OF ten-foot-tall hedges—Mara could barely see the roofs of the houses. Ryan steered the car steadily down the one-lane back road, occasionally calling out hellos and waving. Several groups walked on the side of the road, carrying surfing or water sport gear. Others pedaled on English Raleigh bicycles, shopping bags from Dreesen’s tucked in their baskets. Practically every other car was a convertible. Eliza spent the entire time glued to her cell phone, making calls to various friends and updating them on her plans for the evening.

  “Hey, was that . . .?” Mara asked, turning around so quickly she almost gave herself whiplash.

  “Yeah, that’s Steven Spielberg. They have a house near us on the pond. We always see him at Nick and Toni’s,” Ryan mentioned offhandedly. His dad had a standing table at the restaurant, one of the most popular gathering spots for bold-faced names.

  “Oh.” Wow. Mara tried not to look too impressed. “I saw Tom Hanks once,” she offered.

  “Really? Where?” Ryan asked, sounding genuinely intrigued.

  “The airport,” she said sheepishly. “He gave my sister an autograph. She chased him all the way to the men’s room.”

  Ryan laughed.

  “Tom and Rita used to come to your mom’s fund-raisers all the time, didn’t they, Ryan?” Eliza lifted her chin from her phone and asked in an extremely bored voice.

  Mara felt slapped in the face.

  They drove up to another row of hedges into a private driveway that snaked up to a white mansion with huge Grecian columns. In the driveway were a Mercedes SUV, a Range Rover, a vintage Corvette convertible, a Porsche Cayenne SUV, and two motor scooters. Talk about an auto show.

  “Here we are,” said Ryan, bringing the car to a stop on the gravel drive.

  A stretch Hummer limousine with rims that spun in reverse even when the car was stopped was parked out front.