“You sure it’s okay? Will we be able to wash the sheets?” she asked, a pace behind him. She was sobering up, suddenly feeling less sexual and more anxious.
“I got it handled, Caroline,” he said, pulling her along. He dimmed the bedside light. “I want to be able to see you, every part of you. At least I’ll have that in my head.”
“What do you mean, at least?”
He hesitated before saying, “I don’t know, just, as a memory I guess.”
“Memory?” That felt sad, even as they had barely begun. But she understood and of course agreed—in the fall.
“Never mind on the memory comment,” he said. “Sorry I even said it. Let’s just concentrate on the now.”
“Well, I mean it’s okay to kind of . . . never mind,” Caroline said. She had wanted to say it was good to be clear about the rules, not to make it all a mystery. Her anxiety, always present, was spiking now.
What was she supposed to do in the fall? At that market? Say hi to him and his wife when they were buying out the rest of the blueberry muffins? People who had grown up out here had the same patterns. They checked the ocean at the same spots on the same dirt roads with the views of the same little cliffs (not from the big public designated overlooks the city people used). When Caroline would pull over at that spot near Wiborg Beach, she’d often see a Verizon truck or a landscaper. Locals knew how to move around here. Ryan was one of those people. They’d be on the same local paths, whether on foot or in a vehicle.
For the first time since meeting Ryan, her heart hurt a little. He was right: this was a finite event, like a departing summer; the sun would fade with the crackling leaves of fall. Right about the time the cornstalks sprouted flowering branches on the top, they’d be saying goodbye. A real goodbye.
She nudged him to sit down at the edge of the bed. She sat on his lap, straddling him. She touched his cheeks as she kissed him hard again, signaling her longing as best she could. Might as well make this good, she figured. As she felt the rough skin of his face, she thought about how rugged and handsome he was, but not someone all women would be drawn to. Still, his substantial build, his green eyes, and messy graying hair must attract a bunch. His maleness, his upright shoulders, his solid legs would draw a woman’s attention across a crowded room. Maybe she wasn’t the first. Maybe she was.
Her kissing made him moan a little, and he felt himself get hard. He stood, bringing her to her feet too, and he pressed his midsection against hers so she could feel what she was doing to him. She kissed him again, slowly, biting his lips a little. It seemed to make him even harder and more eager. He turned her around so now her back was to the bed, with him up against her, still pushing into her. She braced her legs against the side of the bed to keep her balance, hoping to prolong everything.
Then, as she wrapped one leg around his, she listed backward toward the mattress, a plump, ironed, downy comforter waiting to catch her. Ryan placed one hand on her neck and the other on her lower back and guided her to the bed while continuing to kiss her. Now, laying on top of her, he somehow, with one hand underneath her, adjusted her position forty-five degrees, so that her head was on a pillow and her legs could stretch out to the bottom of the bed.
She didn’t intend to compare Eddie with Ryan—it was unfair—but it was unavoidable. Ryan’s body was so much bigger and stronger and better proportioned. Eddie had muscular arms, but he was pretty short at five foot eight. Short men didn’t have the space in their limbs to be so nimble. He also had a sizable gut that protruded and often got in the way in bed. Eddie would never have had the strength or agility to make that same smooth adjustment in her position as if she’d been buoyed by clouds.
Ryan unclasped her bra with a flick of his fingers and pulled her sweater off in a single motion. Then, reaching to the side table, he lit a small candle. He laughed and said, “I need more light, have to see what I’m working with here.”
Caroline lay there, still amazed he’d been able to pull this all off so gracefully while still kissing her.
He pulled back and kneeled again, yanking his own shirt off. His chest was damn good, Caroline decided. A little paunch on the belly, but otherwise chiseled pecs, a nice covering of male hair on his chest, and very good arms. Epic arms, actually. He then lay on her again, both of them now shirtless, in jeans only. Caroline would try to remember every moment of this for Annabelle, who had a thing for men with clearly defined triceps and biceps. Arthur worked out with that young trainer woman to keep pumping his up. Come to think of it, was he sleeping with her as well as the masseuse?
As Ryan kissed her breasts, his mouth on one and his fingers playing lightly with the other nipple, she watched his arms flex in the gentle light. There were huge muscles that showed themselves in certain positions. She watched his triceps on the back of his right arm as he shifted his weight from elbow to elbow.
Caroline’s breathing became short and labored as he lingered on her breasts. She kept reaching inside the back of his pants, pulling him closer, and guiding his hand down further.
“I’ll get there. I’ve got some more work to do here first,” he whispered. “We have a lot more time, so don’t you even think of rushing me.”
She arched her back, pushing up against him, wishing badly he’d just touch her below. She closed her eyes, as she tried to slow her breathing. She smiled a little and whispered back, “I’m trying to be patient.” She knew that if he touched her softly beneath her jeans, she wouldn’t be able to last.
She took in several long breaths to try to calm the throbbing between her thighs. This time, not able or willing to wait a second more, she pushed his arm down her torso. He rested it on her inner thigh, rubbing hard, but stopped when he got too close. With the back of his hand, he tickled her waist.
She whispered, “It hurts down there. It’s literally aching, you’ve got to keep going, please.”
“I can tell” was his answer. “That’s a good thing, Caroline. That’s how we want it. It’ll only get better, you’ll see.”
Chapter 24
Keep Your Mouth Shut and Smile
Midday, Wednesday, the following week, beginning of July
Caroline took her least favorite client, Astrid Gleeson—Mrs. Tristan Gleeson III—into Southampton to purchase finishing touches for her powder room. Mrs. Gleeson was nearly done with her five-thousand-square-foot “cottage by the sea,” but wanted to hire Caroline by the hour to “cozy it up” on her “tight budget.”
Mrs. Gleeson, though fifty-three, had an ancient aura about her as she strolled down the sidewalk in her lime-green Belgian loafers with yellow bows and trim. Her legs were so long and thin that she had to lift her knees high to swing her feet forward like a pendulum. Crinkled skin, far too tan, sagged off her protruding bones. A bright Hermès scarf was draped over her shoulders and matched her pink blouse and yellow pants; the bands of colors aligned like a roll of Life Savers. She wore her blond-whitish hair in a 1950s-style anachronistic bouffant and carried a small Nantucket basket with a scrimshaw etching of a whaling vessel that she inherited from her aunt Dabby. With a bridge game starting at the Meadow Club in two hours, Mrs. Gleeson was in no mood to dawdle.
“I love this store, let’s start here!” she exclaimed to Caroline.
“Mrs. Gleeson, I have several items on hold in other stores, this is just a knickknack kind of . . .”
Mrs. Gleeson was already inside the small boutique on a side street in Southampton, which sold shells, sea glass in jars of all sizes, doorstops made of needlepoint covered bricks—all the unoriginal items a small gift shop might carry for tourists in town who’d taken a day trip here. Not at all the type of store where Caroline curated a right look for her clients. Mrs. Gleeson cradled a blue glass globe the size of a basketball in her hands. “It’s so perfectly nautical. I used to sail with my father off Salem Harbor in Marblehead. I’m going to need two of these, but then . . .”
She made her way to the back of the shop, reaching from shelf to
shelf, her limbs moving like those of a praying mantis. “Caroline, I’m going to need dozens of shells for bowls. Please keep an eye out for that fabulous shagreen. Stingray skin is so divine as a holder of absolutely anything,” Mrs. Gleeson said.
Caroline twirled around a stand at the counter that had shell key chains with names painted on them. “Mrs. Gleeson, this is not a shagreen type of store; it’s lovely here, but I have your shagreen on hold down the block at . . .”
“I want to put shells everywhere, sofa tables, side tables, in the powder rooms, you know, it’ll make it homey right away!”
Caroline walked slowly to her client. “The point of shells is to bring past experiences with the ocean into your home,” she explained. “I’m happy to get a few things here with you, but also I can walk down to the beach near the inlet later. They have clamshells that are almost four inches wide, and much more natural to this region. I can take a bunch off the beach and put them in a basket and—”
“But why can’t I just buy tons of shells? Why would I have to pay you to walk down a beach? And how much would that cost? Couldn’t be the same hourly rate, you’re hardly creating then!” Mrs. Gleeson snorted ever so slightly, channeling her sensible Pilgrim ancestors. “Or would that be more expensive, and far less efficient? I mean, we’re here. I have my AmEx.”
Caroline considered how to explain the concept of authenticity without patronizing her client. She remembered a lecture in customer satisfaction from design school. It was essential to make people who were paying you believe that you are simply executing their sense of taste and style for them—even if the professionals knew it was often far from the truth. And then, once they felt it was all their idea, you did a little bait and switch with your choices over their tragic ones.
“You can buy anything you want, and I’ll help you place it, but . . . it’s like this,” Caroline said. “You can’t buy memories. You have to live them and then bring physical bits of them home to relive them. You see what I mean?” Mrs. Gleeson looked at Caroline blankly, as if Caroline were explaining the origins of the Pythagorean theorem. She tried another way. “We talked about this when we met last summer: patience in design is very, very important. It’s a layering thing, takes time, not just something an AmEx card can quickly resolve.” Caroline placed her hand on Mrs. Gleeson’s arm. “I promise we’ll get it right, but we can’t buy it right.”
“Why not? I thought that’s what we are doing today?” Mrs. Gleeson said, a tad miffed that an employee was trying to teach her a silly lesson in life.
“For example, take all those wonderful silver cups from your husband’s regattas, the nautical maps on the walls—that’s organic design birthed from your family. Those shells in the bag there are from East Asia anyway—they aren’t even native to the Atlantic.”
“The shells are lovely,” Mrs. Gleeson said. “Besides, who will know if they’re from somewhere else?” She put her hands on her angular hips, getting snippier by the second. The saleswoman at the front desk rolled her eyes at Caroline. “Now, you and I have had this itsy-bitsy problem that keeps rearing up ever since we started work on the powder rooms and sun porch last summer: no stalling on the little touches. If I’m willing to pay for your time, why delay the production for some harebrained idea of authenticity?”
Mrs. Gleeson did not dare say what she was really thinking. Her man from Manhattan, who’d done the big stuff in the house, wouldn’t hem and haw like this: Jeffrey Bilhuber summered in Nantucket, for God’s sake, he got it. The huge conch shells he had bought at an antique store for a few thousand each held the patio doors open and announced the East Coast summer. He hadn’t found those on the beach, for goodness sakes. He couldn’t even lift them . . . that thought made her chuckle, Jeffrey in his Tom Ford version of Nantucket red pants, with those vintage alligator Gucci loafers he lived in, actually doing manual labor for once in his life.
“What’s so funny?” Caroline asked, calmly.
“Oh, nothing you would understand!” And then snatching jars off the shelf, Mrs. Gleeson said, “I want this divine green sea glass lining up my powder room counters. I’m sure you agree.” She felt a little bad about how she’d treated Caroline in public, with this saleswoman hearing. She had good taste in soap and in towels; this project may have been over her head, just a sweet girl who grew up out here. She’d call Jeffrey to come out and save her from this amateur. Trying to skimp on Jeffrey’s eight-hundred-dollar an hour fees, and hiring on local help was a bad idea, after all. You got what you paid for.
Mrs. Gleeson picked up four mesh bags filled with small white shells from Vietnam and turned to Caroline. “I don’t want to hear a word of resistance,” she said. “Please, indulge me! I’m getting late for my bridge game at the club, and I’m sure you’re right, but the thing is, I like these. They match my mantel. See the caramel vein in this lovely shell, here? Brown on brown, see?” She plunked two huge metal baskets filled with goods on the counter and informed the clerk that her driver would be by to pick up her bounty later.
“I’m only here to advise. They are lovely,” Caroline said, knowing it wasn’t worth pushing this anthropoid creature any further.
“Thank you for your time, Caroline. I just love the soaps we got, and the hand towels, and just, well, everything,” she said. “I don’t much agree with your opinions on shells, but we can agree to have a difference of opinion on that. You’re doing a nice job, so don’t fret one bit.” She patted Caroline’s wrist.
Later on the sidewalk, Caroline bid her goodbye, counted up two hours at $150 an hour, and figured she had a pretty good gig going. Whether this fossilized WASP took all her advice or not didn’t much matter. She liked her job, and most of her clients trusted her. She liked helping people figure out what they liked and wanted, just as, on a different scale, she was doing for herself this summer.
Chapter 25
If Only Dogs Could Talk
Late morning, mid-July
Annabelle called Caroline with a proposal: “Let’s celebrate summer. Let’s go to Sag Harbor, have a nice lunch.”
“You don’t even need to say it, I know what’s coming: you want to go to one of your snobby Madison Avenue places that transplants itself out here for three months,” Caroline said.
“You can’t prefer those disgusting fried clams to tuna carpaccio. Le Manoir is so chic: the rosé is flowing, even the butter is to die for. See you in half an hour.”
Arriving early to the new restaurant—a place on the docks that had been taken over by a team of Frenchmen from Saint Tropez—Caroline walked out to the end of the pier. Cruisers whizzed by, and huge yachts backed into slips with the aid of a dozen people guiding them. In the distance, she heard the sound of sails flapping in the wind as they tacked. The sun was bright, the day hot, but good hot.
With ten minutes before Annabelle showed, Caroline sat on her favorite bench and stared out to sea. Her thick hair blowing like mad, she held it back off her face. She studied each boat, just in case she saw that profile again. Caroline felt silly. Joey was gone. So she stopped searching, laid back on the hard, wooden bench, and soaked up the warmth of July.
Placing her sweater over her face to shield it from the sun, she was transported back to Joey’s family’s beach shack. The image of the splintered wood of the window frames and their peeling white paint was so clear in her mind, as were the lace curtains billowing in the wind.
The Whitten family beach shack stood a few hundred yards up a sandy path from the beach. On one side, Joey had painted a large mural of churning waves, now art foretelling his life story. The shack had been passed down through three generations, and, since Joey’s death, they dared not sell it. His father had fought with the town to keep the cottage where it was, mostly because it was his son’s favorite place to bring his girl. It was now surrounded on three sides by a parking lot, holding up against the exhaust fumes and eroding beach. She’d of course seen it over the years, but never dared to go too near.
Whenever she ran into Joey’s father around town, he’d mention Joey and reiterate that his death just didn’t make sense. He’d tell her that the water wouldn’t have overtaken his son the lifeguard. Joey was too smart and too strong to get lost in those angry currents.
Still, that ocean rescue chief came to her door and told her family, “I’m sorry, we can’t look for him anymore.” It was now a search and recover mission for a body, no longer a search and rescue for a living soul bobbing and breathing in the waves.
She had walked Atlantic Beach with Joey the day before he died, forty-eight hours before his twenty-fifth birthday. There were churning currents that day; a torrential storm had left a formidable wake.
On the walk, Joey pointed out the riptides to Caroline, who would have never noticed them on her own. “Over there,” he’d said. “At two o’clock, just to the right. It looks like a school of fish are in a feeding frenzy under the surface. And look at the white water above. If you study the bubbles, you can see the water is moving toward the horizon, not into shore.”
Joey, other lifeguards, and certainly the surfers she knew growing up welcomed those riptides because they would carry the surfers out beyond the sandbar without them having to paddle too hard. Surfers who understood the ocean’s whims called that current an escalator out to sea.
Nothing made sense that day.
Joey used to swim for an hour in the afternoons after work, always with his dog, Lucky. The dog was with him that day too. Ever since, all their friends, even Ryan, had been haunted by the sound of Lucky howling that night, waiting for Joey to return.
If only Labradors could talk.
Chapter 26
That Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi
Standing before the lectern at the entrance to Le Manoir, a smoldering French hostess studied her computer screen. She wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt, skipping the bra for effect. Her perky nipples bounced a little as she typed.
It's Hot in the Hamptons Page 14