“Uh, von Tattenbach, please?” Annabelle said, in that mildly entitled manner she never particularly wanted to hide. She was wearing a flowing ARossGirl silk georgette Amanda dress in pale blue that matched her eyes, and carrying a little coordinating Gloria bag in leopard satin with a blue handle.
The woman continued to peck away, not deigning to look up. “Do you have a reservation?”
“I don’t, no, and there are twenty empty tables. It’s a weekday,” replied Annabelle, rolling her eyes at Caroline. She whispered to her friend, “You’re so right; they can be total assholes for no reason here. Just lemme . . .”
“In July, at Le Manoir, a reservation is required,” the hostess said. She stared Annabelle down, knowing she had her trumped on sex appeal if not liquid assets.
This particular hostess wouldn’t last the summer; she didn’t know the faces of the powerful. The von Tattenbach name carried serious weight in Hamptons establishments, and Caroline knew this young woman was about to get her ass handed to her when the owner intervened. Despite the ingenue’s hideous demeanor, Caroline felt sorry for her. She probably needed the job she was about to lose.
Just then, Jean-Claude Perrier, a rugged Frenchman raised near the beach in Antibes, dashed over. He was wearing a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt and looked as if he was about to drag a fishing net out of the Mediterranean. He air-kissed Annabelle four times with his eyebrows raised, and his eyes closed. He led Caroline and Annabelle to a center table under the awning with a spectacular view of the bay. The suction of a cork pulling out of a bottle sounded, and chilled rosé poured forth before they’d even settled into their seats.
“It’s on me, Annabelle,” Jean-Claude pleaded. “So sorry she didn’t know you. She has identification photos of all . . .”
“J.C., it’s fine,” said Annabelle, swirling the wine around her glass, sniffing it, and then sloshing it a bit around with her tongue. “The wine is lovely, thanks.”
Caroline said to her, “Oh, you like the tannins, do you?” They’d agreed they hated when people who had no idea what they were doing went through those wine-tasting machinations.
Annabelle shot her the middle finger playfully, and out of J.C.’s sight. She turned to him. “Don’t fire the poor girl, but do tell her that her attitude makes the town unpleasant for all of us.”
Caroline watched an older couple, in Mephisto sandals and fanny packs, ask the same hostess why they couldn’t have a table if there were twenty free ones. She chimed in, “Hey, sorry, but look, she’s doing it again to that poor couple.”
“Please, J.C.,” Annabelle said. “Obviously those poor day tourists don’t know the rules of the lions’ den. How can she say she needs a moment to find a table? Give back a teeny bit to the community, would you, please?”
“Of course,” he said before bowing and backing away. Then he whisked the tragically Midwestern couple to undesirable seats near the kitchen.
“You know, on some level, it fascinates me,” Caroline admitted, smiling. “I protest coming here, but to watch you defend stupid shit in life is so entertaining. So go ahead, swirl away, and pontificate on that wine you know so much about.”
“It’s tasty on a hot summer day, is what it is,” Annabelle said. “The salmon tartar is perfect, the Cajun chicken stellar, plus it’s so fun and festive on weekends. Your own husband loves it here. He flips hundred-dollar bills at every waiter.”
“Eddie and I used to do tequila shots here in high school with our fake IDs when this was The Amazon,” Caroline said. “We’d throw darts in the back, and dance to music they don’t play anymore.” Caroline took a gulp of the pink wine she found way too sweet. “We loved it here.”
“Well, it has evolved,” Annabelle said. “We all still feel pretty special here—it’s like I’m transported to Le Club Cinquante-Cinq in Saint-Tropez. Your husband rolls over to his primo table all handsome and cool. There’s no one more fun than Eddie Clarkson when he’s in one of his big, happy moods, table hopping, buying people he barely knows a bottle of good champs just for kicks. It’s simple why we come: to feel part of something special in the Hamptons, instead of going to a juice bar and another spin class.”
“I get that wanting to be included in everything,” Caroline said, nibbling on a radish from a glorious basket of vegetables that had blossomed on their table. She dipped it in butter and sprinkled it with sea salt from a tiny clay pot. “It’s just not for me on a weekend with all the loud music and social mongering. I’m too shy to handle places like this. This has the same vibe as that chichi espresso place, Sant Ambroeus in Southampton, where all the horse moms never invite me,” Caroline said, as she studied the overpriced menu. “I mean, I wouldn’t go, but an invite once a year from those snobby bitches would be nice.”
An unusual and uncomfortable silence overtook the table. “So,” Annabelle said finally. “Are we . . . you and that Ryan Mr. Architect what’s-his-name . . . you want to . . .”
Caroline shook her head and said, “It’s just . . . not yet, not ready to.”
“Fine, avoid the elephant, and concentrate on the creamy French milkmaid butter,” Annabelle said and smiled. She was happy to discontinue this line of questioning if only because Annabelle wasn’t in the mood to admit that during the girls’ lessons earlier, rather than focus on their equitation position, she’d been fantasizing about being plied into some twisted, constricted, ecstasy-enhancing French position against Philippe’s headboard. It had to happen soon. But when? And how? “And, by the way, you’ll only be able to avoid it for so long. When you hit forty, you hit your sexual freak show moment.”
“Please explain. Immediately.”
“You got a few years, but you’ll see, you get beyond horny. You know what I did? If you don’t want to talk about Mr. Architect, fine, but I’m going to tell you something I know I never told you that I did once.”
“What did you do?” Caroline waited, knowing Annabelle’s outrageous antics had a way of successively topping each other, one reason she was such good company.
“This May, I was so hot for Liza’s cello teacher, he’s a guitarist actually, but anyway, so beyond horny for him, I literally played with myself in the Diller-Quaile music school bathroom.” Annabelle nodded, quite pleased with her efficiency. “Thank God it was a single powder room with a locked door! But I had to handle business right then.”
Caroline laughed and said, “I don’t care what Bunny Digby predicts, I won’t ever do that.”
“You’ll see, give yourself a few years. You’ll be doing it in strange places. I’m sure I wasn’t the only Diller-Quaile mom who’s gotten busy in that room,” Annabelle said, considering that concept. “Actually, those uptight Diller-Quaile moms are more in a strictly missionary no orgasm zone, but still.” She paused again, thinking it was so sad to go through life that way.
“Still, I’m not like you, but I won’t close the door to my inner freak coming out at some point,” Caroline said, surveying the swanky new restaurant, while crunching on a yeasty baguette, raising her eyebrows to signal that indeed the butter was delicious. “I can so imagine Eddie in heaven here, ordering wine for strangers, over-tipping every busboy. In the old days, he was the guy on the dance floor here twirling the girls around, ordering a dozen tequila shots he couldn’t afford even when they were cheap. I’m happy he still has his fun, of course.”
Annabelle listened as Caroline buttered another morsel. “I came here with Joey too for drinks sometimes,” Caroline said. “And with my grandmother for the special lunch we used to have there every month. Right over there, in that corner, a few weeks after Joey’s funeral, she said a really sad thing to me: Sometimes you can’t be with the person you love the most.”
Annabelle sipped her wine and said, “Well, fuck, that’s depressing.”
“She just knew, and I knew, that nothing would ever be the same. It was just, you know, a maternal warning on life—life after Joey.”
Annabelle threw her napkin smack into
Caroline’s face. “Can we please not talk about that ghost again?” she said playfully, hoping to bring Caroline out of this strange Joey Whitten abyss. “It’s not healthy. And even though Eddie is a colossally selfish person, he adores you, and is fabulously outrageous at just the right moments. Your clients are piling up, your kids are doing well. You don’t want to tell me, but your rosy glow tells me that the architect is getting you seriously laid. Let’s just see how we end up on Labor Day without talking about Joey until then. Deal?”
“Deal,” Caroline said, folding Annabelle’s napkin and placing it back on her side.
Another unusual silence followed before Annabelle said, “Look, I said I didn’t want to hear about Joey, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk. I can tell something’s wrong.”
“I went to the barn, and hung out at Eddie’s desk in his office for a bit,” Caroline said.
“Snooping again.”
Caroline nodded. “He’s put us in a position where I have to snoop.”
Annabelle swayed her head left and right. “You could ignore it. I basically do that with Arthur and his wanderings.”
“And in a file,” Caroline powered on, not interested in comparing marriage survival tactics right now, “I found these records of payments that Eddie made, extremely strange ones, suspicious ones.”
“To women?”
“No. To Thierry that went back, like, ten years. All in one ledger, under stuff in a bottom drawer.”
“Well, that’s weird.”
“Very.”
Annabelle counted in her head and said, “Gigi has only been riding for four years, and if Thierry was the manager at Rose Patch before, then why would Eddie be paying him for six years before that? Did they even know each other?”
“Not only that, but Maryanne does all the accounting, so why was that ledger in his desk? Hidden? And then this Philippe guy, he’s into something with Thierry and . . .”
“He’s hot as fuck is what he is,” Annabelle said, waving her impossibly toned arm in the air to get the waiter’s attention. “You think Philippe and Thierry knew each other back then? Or that Eddie and Thierry and Philippe all did?”
“I don’t know,” said Caroline. “And I’m not going to tell you to stay away from Philippe because I know what you’re going to do, if you haven’t.”
At that, Annabelle could not help but smile. “I haven’t. I swear. But you have no fucking idea what the meaning of hot is once I do, is all I’m going to say. Go on.”
“I will, actually,” Caroline shook her head, not wanting to add that suave and sleazy wasn’t her thing. “I’m just saying, I think Philippe has somehow scooped Thierry into something not entirely right. And I don’t know if Eddie’s clueless or what, or if he’s been paying both of them for years and acting now like they are simple barn employees. It’s just . . . it’s not right.”
“You’re crazy, honey. Maryanne and Eddie are on top of everything. Nothing gets by those two,” Annabelle announced, smacking her lips from the sweet and tart rosé. “Enough with your conspiracy theories. Clearly, you need a break from this July humidity. I’m taking the girls to Jackson Hole next weekend. We’ve got to get you away from sad memories of that water out there too. Do you want to come? You could bring the kids.”
“They’re fine, we’re good,” Caroline said, before informing the waiter that she’d have the fifty-eight-dollar black sea bass.
Annabelle pulled the top of Caroline’s menu down, and loud enough for any nearby diners to hear, said, “We’re NetJetting straight from Westhampton to Jackson. The plane holds twelve, no airport security lines, you could just stuff a bunch of tote bags and pop on and . . .”
“Annabelle,” Caroline said sternly. “NetJetting is not a verb. NetJet is a noun: a company that you pay to fly you on an eighty-thousand-dollar private plane trip.”
“More like a hundred, since you mentioned it,” Annabelle said, which made Caroline laugh out loud.
Annabelle smiled, squeezing lemon onto salmon tartar on toast points with an edible purple flower on top of each that had appeared out of nowhere. “Eric, you’re kind to remember my favorite.” The handsome man nodded, then looked at Caroline as if he might sleep with her one day if she were lucky.
“I can’t believe you get service like this. I’m sure they aren’t charging us,” Caroline said, biting into the delicate raw fish flecked with tiny cubes of purple onion.
“Nope,” said Annabelle. “Maybe for the entrées, but the rest will be on J.C.”
“Eddie calls it the rich person discount: the people who need it least get the most shit for free,” Caroline said as she looked over at the hundreds of six-hundred-dollar bottles of pink Cristal champagne lining the shelves like books in a row, waiting to be lapped up by the celebrity-seeking wolves. “I can see Eddie buying those bottles for strangers at the next table, or for someone he met once. He can be too generous. That’s one side of him I hate and love.”
“You know better than anyone what Eddie says: ‘Don’t ask what the party can do for you, but what you can do for the party.’ I could do without his lavender shoes that match his linen lavender shirt, but whatever. He’s adorable. Here, try the Aperol spritz J.C. brought us,” Annabelle said, pushing a fresh glass over.
Caroline made a face signaling it didn’t look good.
Annabelle pushed more. “You’re so stubborn, always need to be the contrarian. It’s a nice day, you’re on a gorgeous deck, and the best-grilled bass and crispy Brussels sprouts you ever had are about to be served to you. None of those horse mom bitches are here being mean to you. Now, go ahead, just sip the Aperol and cool off. And please, cast Joey Whitten and those ledgers out of your head.”
Caroline took a sip of the bright-orange eighteen-dollar concoction and squeezed her eyes shut. “It tastes like cough syrup.”
“I knew you were going to say something like that.”
When she opened her eyes, Caroline looked out at the bay, just to see if, by chance, that Boston Whaler might motor by.
Maybe she was losing her mind.
Chapter 27
Fight or Flight?
A week later, Saturday, late July
Annabelle’s Maserati purred like a sleeping leopard. She let the car run a little and dialed the climate bar down a notch to sixty-eight degrees. Oh, for the Italians’ masterful control of climate: no noise, no blasts of supercool air, just a calm flow peacefully keeping the temperature moderate.
She’d parked to the right of the entry to her home and laid her head back on the neck rest. Her hands lay heavy on her thighs as if cinder blocks were weighing them down. She couldn’t turn the engine off if she had wanted to.
Maybe she should try meditation again, it might help her cool off. Closing her eyes helped.
Tah-leem, tah-leem.
As usual, she could not repeat her mantra for more than thirty seconds at a time. A tornado twisted and contorted too violently in her brain.
Earlier that morning, she was sitting on a high director’s chair by the side of a ring at Sea Crest. Philippe was barking commands at her two younger daughters, Lily and Liza, aged eight and ten, who were riding in the same ring, jumping rails on One Hot Pepper and Mouse. As the girls got off their ponies and started to walk them out to the paddocks, Lily turned back and asked Annabelle, “Can Liza and I go to Katia’s house to go tubing? Her mom said it was okay.”
Philippe yelled to Annabelle, “They are such elegant riders! Graceful, strong bodies from their mother . . .”
Annabelle interrupted him to answer her daughter, “Okay, there are swimsuits in your tote bags. Ghislaine will get you before lunch, though. Daddy’s home.”
Before she could turn back around to talk to Philippe, he struck like a cobra right beside her: “We have time now.”
“For what, Philippe?” Annabelle said, placing her arm casually around the back of her chair, knowing three hours was more than enough time to get busy and still be home for lunch.
“Let me show you the polo field for the international tour this weekend, you haven’t seen it,” Philippe said. “I took you and the girls only to the training area last week. The main part is all dressed up and ready with sponsor booths, lemonade stands, all kinds of . . .”
“I don’t like sugary drinks,” Annabelle said.
“Well, then, I’ll find something else you might like,” he said, smirking. “It’s only a little bit away, on the far side of Bridgehampton, near the train. And not too far from my house, come to think of it.”
“Come to think of it? You’re taking me to a polo field that I’ve already seen, that is also near your house,” Annabelle pointed out.
“I meant, it’s . . . Yes, it’s near my house,” Philippe said, raising his left eyebrow, going for the kill. “I was being coy. Of course, I have some wine and cheese. That’s a little more direct, which I gather you prefer. We could have a little . . .”
“A little what, Philippe?” she pushed.
“A little of you showing me how it’s done, and a little of me showing you I’m good at many things,” Philippe said, shaking his hair out of his face the way young boys do after they surface in a pool. His fingers yanked his bangs to the side, and his arms bulged against the sleeves of his polo shirt. He shook the constant pain a little out of his right arm.
Annabelle considered his more adult proposal, rubbing both of her earlobes as if that would help her to decide. Like a potential buyer examining a prize stallion, she studied Philippe: there was a patch from the Argentine Open World Polo Tour on one sleeve, and a navy number 35 on his chest. White breeches with a nice, healthy package behind the zipper, secured by a woven belt with colorful squares from Central America. There were a lot of men wearing colorful polo shirts in the Hamptons, but very few had actually played polo.
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