“Thrifty was how I was brought up,” she used to tell him. “Excess is anathema to an old WASP household.”
Fifteen years, four girls, four homes, a personal NetJet account for Mother’s Day this spring (for trips with her girlfriends), and one big, fat summer affair later, Annabelle had readjusted her outlook. She didn’t have that much showy designer clothing that screamed, my husband has a fortune! But she could see the value in spending for convenience and comfort. Today, for instance, what’s eighty dollars when her ass would be cool on the drive home? It was a convertible, after all. Not her fault.
As she walked across the parking lot, Annabelle saw Caroline sitting on a small bench before the pond, two peach iced teas beside her, both dripping with condensation. They had fifteen minutes before the one exercise class of the summer they took together, and Caroline, by the look on her face, was already regretting it in the midday humidity.
“I just checked—the exhale class is with Fred DeVito. You knew that, didn’t you?” Caroline announced, without saying hello.
“He’s the best.” She picked up Caroline’s iced tea and moved it further away down the bench.
“What the hell?”
“Too much caffeine gives your wrinkles.” She twisted open a second bottle of Ginger Kombucha and handed it to Caroline. “Drink.”
“Nope, I’ve tried it once, tastes like rotten scraps that have been in a disposal for days.”
“Fermented, not rotten. Fred knows, he drinks it. And you should make your life goal to have a body like his wife, Elisabeth,” said Annabelle. “She’s sixty, by the way. Besides, I have gory details that are more interesting than your whining.”
“Fred is a tyrant. You could have picked some easier teacher. But yes, you have piqued my interest. Gory?” Caroline smelled the Kombucha, made a face like she’d been given smelling salts, and put the cap back on, nudging her friend’s shoulder with hers. The women sat silently for a few moments.
“It’s amazing we’ve both done what we’ve done,” Annabelle said, without looking at her friend. “And I know you have and you know I have. What’s even more incredible is we haven’t sat and talked about it.”
“I think that’s because I still have to remind myself that our affair pact is not illegal. But it feels like it to me,” Caroline remarked.
“The one thing I didn’t predict is that once I indulged, I wouldn’t want to admit it, even to you.”
“Me too! Eddie did it, and he doesn’t feel guilty. But, you know, narcissists are attention junkies, I know he feels that he somehow deserves his affairs. I’m telling you, all because he lacked parental love, mostly because of his drunk, mean dad,” Caroline said, rubbing her head to help search for a reason she actually agreed to exercise. She grabbed her iced tea and took a sip.
“Don’t defend Eddie,” Annabelle said, yanking her leggings down her legs to reveal tight yoga shorts underneath that generally didn’t look good on anyone older than fourteen.
“My point is that both our husbands have reasons they’ve done it multiple times: Eddie because he was unloved in childhood, and Arthur because, I don’t know, he’s European and entitled?” Caroline said. “Men just do it and move on. Still, I don’t love villainizing men.”
“Villainizing isn’t the right word. It’s vilify,” Annabelle said, stretching both her arms in the air and tilting sideways.
“Sorry, Miss Ivy League,” Caroline said, pinching her iced tea between her thighs and adding another packet of brown sugar.
“That sugar is literally oozing from packet to cup into your inner thigh flesh, you know that, right?” Annabelle stood, starting to stretch her right leg against the tree trunk next to them.
“Forget my thighs, let’s discuss your expression when you walked over here screaming panic; it’s what you might as well have tattooed on your forehead right now.”
“Panic?”
“Here’s the thing, Annabelle: you’re cool almost all the time, but sometimes, you’re just not. And that’s why I love you. You’re kind of a mess under all that beauty. I can tell you’re super nervous about something now. Philippe didn’t spill it, did he?”
“The problem is not Philippe. The problem is this: I’m sure Arthur already suspects.”
“Oh, God,” Caroline said softly. “Let’s just sit out here and talk instead of going to some stupid class.”
“Nope,” Annabelle said. “We’re going to class in three minutes.” She fidgeted with the seam of her yoga shorts and rubbed her thighs hard. “That’s an understatement, actually—Arthur’s not just suspicious. I would relish suspicion at this point.”
“You said you deleted all your texts with Philippe.”
“Arthur’s sixth sense for picking stocks apparently applies to his cheating spouse, as well. He just knows.”
Caroline grabbed the branch of a bush and picked the leaves off one by one, just to stem her own sudden anxiety. “You’re doing the exact same thing that Arthur has done: you having a thing, you were naked with another person . . . only, for you, it’s not just a little thing,” Caroline said. “It’s just not.” She threw the branch as far as she could into the water. “I’m certainly less freaked by Ryan, and yes, we’ve done it a few times, and it’s been so nice. But, just for starters, it’s very interesting that I’m the cooler one here. You’re the one who’s not scared of anything.”
“Never have been, until now,” Annabelle said. “Look, Philippe was good, and worth it, you have no idea of that man’s talent in bed, I can’t even remember half the things he did, but still, I feel uneasy.”
“Don’t think I don’t feel uneasy too. It’s adultery. Let’s just call it what it is.”
“I prefer ‘adventure.’ Adultery sounds like we should be wearing a scarlet A,” Annabelle said. “I just hope Arthur has the same elegant reaction to this that I’ve had to his affairs.” She said this forcefully, revealing some resentment, and even hurt. “He won’t ask me, I know that. He knows I suspected and didn’t push him. I remained silent after overhearing his phone calls, and . . .” now Annabelle’s facial muscles contracted in a way Caroline had rarely seen. “When he came home late with a lame excuse, I’d sarcastically say, ‘Really?’ Once, I saw him look at this masseuse he’s obsessed with, who I’m convinced jerks him off. This masseuse comes . . .”
“Marjina. I know,” Caroline said and smiled. She knew all about Marjina’s strong hands. Annabelle had told her how Arthur had said he “strangely” never needed sex a day or two after a session with her. However, Caroline settled in to hear it all again; a big part of friendship is powering through redundancy.
“Maybe end the Marjina thing?” Caroline suggested. “Tell him you don’t like the way she looks at him. Leave it at that if you want to be all subtle. I, on the other hand, would say, ‘Stop with the masseuse jerk-off sessions, Eddie.’ But you guys, you and Arthur . . . you’re all formal and European, you do it your way.”
Chapter 30
Miserable Motions
A few moments later, as a disco version of Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” blared out of the speakers, Fred DeVito bellowed, “Right foot on the bar in front of you. Reach for your toes, ladies.” Annabelle swung her leg up and touched her nose to her knee, while Caroline had to stand on tiptoe just to get her foot to the bar. Her hamstrings ached already. She looked at the clock: only fifty-seven minutes to go.
As Annabelle gracefully cradled her foot with both hands, she turned her head to the right, and whispered to Caroline, “I couldn’t even say it before, but Arthur knows.”
“Oh, no!” Caroline said out loud.
Hearing the cry from the newcomer, Fred, an elegant man with a shaved head and a dancer’s gait, came over to assist that unfortunate newcomer with her short legs. He tugged on Caroline’s hips a little, adjusted the curve of her back, and rubbed her neck. “You can do it, honey, but you’re going to need to come every day,” he said. “Your flexibility is going to be a summer project
of mine.”
“No project!” Caroline groaned as he pushed her left ankle down to the ground with the tips of his toes. “Not coming back for a year!” Then she whispered to Annabelle, “I hate you for this. You’re sure about Arthur?”
“Left leg up now!”
Annabelle nodded and switched legs like a Rockette. “Positive.”
With her hands clasped behind her knee, Caroline worked on raising her other leg to the bar. It wasn’t that she was out of shape, she told herself; it was genetic—her legs were shorter than Annabelle’s. She said, “It wasn’t a text he saw, was it?”
“Nope, deleted each conversation every time,” Annabelle said.
“Okay, ladies, sideways plié. Left hand on the bar, heels together and up on your toes, knees apart like a butterfly, now bounce, bounce . . . lower, lower, touch your butt to your heels and rise. Right now is that moment we all seek. It is why we have gathered today. This is how your body changes.”
“What if I don’t want to change anything?” Caroline whispered. “Remember, you sent me a screenshot of texting between you and Philippe? Did you delete the photo of the conversation? Tell me you deleted that too.”
“I don’t think so!” Annabelle whispered. “Fuck! Let’s take a break!”
The women walked into the hall where the clients’ forty designer bags hung on hooks. Gucci, Prada, Stella McCartney, another Gucci, another Prada . . . Figuring about two thousand to four thousand dollars each, Caroline calculated the total value at over a hundred grand.
Annabelle pulled her phone out of her purse and searched for the photo of Philippe’s suggestive texts. “Deleted now!”
Caroline shook her head disapprovingly. “Now empty the deleted photo folder.”
“The what?”
“Oh my God. Hand me your phone.” Before Annabelle could, Caroline grabbed it from her, emptied the deleted photos folder in the photo app, and tossed the phone back into her friend’s bag. “You had like a hundred photos in there you thought you’d deleted over the past month. They’re still on your phone until you actually empty the deleted folder, which is like emptying the trash on your computer. Basically, you have to delete photos twice to get rid of them.” Caroline put her head in her hands. “Does he ever check your phone?”
Fred’s wife, Elisabeth, peeked into the hallway area. “You ladies returning? Remember how fabulous you feel after class!”
“I feel my thighs are killing me, is how I feel,” Caroline told Annabelle. “Is Arthur ever on your phone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right, let’s assume he never checked your photos. You do know your photos migrate between iPads, computers, and even Apple TV, right?”
“Ladies? You having a martini in here?” Fred asked, poking his nose into the hallway while “All the Single Ladies” blasted in the room behind him. “C’mon, I’m not babysitting. This is hard work—it’s bikini season! Get back in class.”
“One minute, Fred. Promise,” Annabelle said. Her face white, she turned back to Caroline. “My photos do tend to stream across my TVs when Apple TV is on. I have no idea when I said ‘Okay’ to that function, but my photos do that. I mean, those Apple engineers should really ask you, really clearly, if you want your entire photo library streaming on every TV in all four of your houses all the time, don’t you think?”
“I do,” answered Caroline softly. “Though, for most people it isn’t four homes, just pointing that out. But I do take your point.”
“Fuck!”
Caroline added, “Look, in this digital age, at least one of us is bound to get found out. I wish I could publish a list of the Top Ten Reasons Apple Engineers Want You to Get Caught Cheating. That’s what I was saying when you proposed this pact.”
“My mother always said, I told you so is bad manners,” Annabelle said, dragging her friend back into class.
The group was in Annabelle’s favorite position: water-skiing. Fred glided over to the pair, pointing his toes with each stride just to show off his glorious calf muscles to all these desperate housewives who had the hots for him. (He’d never partake, why would he, with Elisabeth’s epic bottom in his bed each night?) “No leaving class again, ladies. Now Caroline, face the bar, hold on tight, pretend as if the bar is the rope behind a speedboat and you’re water-skiing. Toes under the bar, heels touching in a V, and lean waaaay back. Now, bounce, one, two . . .”
“I don’t care what your mother taught you. I did tell you so,” Caroline whispered. “Technology will bite you in the ass these days—especially if your ass is naked in another man’s bed.”
Annabelle leaned back and assumed the water-ski position like Esther Williams. She whispered to Caroline, “Technology might have led Arthur to suspect, but the clincher was a pretty ancient technique.”
“He didn’t walk in on . . .”
“Ladies! Hit the mats, stomach down, two-minute plank,” Fred shouted. “Does everyone know Ruth Bader Ginsberg can do two minutes? Let’s see who in here can last . . .”
On the floor, Annabelle whispered to her friend as she lifted herself into a plank position. “Arthur literally smelled my hands after I’d just had massive sex with Philippe.”
“You didn’t shower?” Caroline said, also in a plank, her abdomen and back feeling like they were in a vice. “You went home all smelly from sex? How reckless and completely stupid are you? No Summer’s Eve even?”
“Philippe’s shower was gross. It had all these cobwebs . . . I was worried about athlete’s foot and . . .”
“Jesus, Annabelle! Listen to yourself! You had sex with him, and you’re worried about catching something from his feet?”
“I would love to hear the whole foot story, but I won’t even ask,” Fred said as he walked over to them. He yanked Caroline to the other side of the room, these girls needed to be separated. When Caroline complained that the plank position had hurt her lower back, he helped her to hang from a high bar to loosen it up, supporting her from the waist in case she slipped. After stretching out, Caroline lasted the remaining forty minutes of class, giving Annabelle dirty looks from across the room the entire time.
Afterward, on the sidewalk outside, Annabelle told Caroline, “I want to take a mulligan.”
“That was our one exercise class together this summer,” Caroline said. “You are not getting me into one of those torture chambers again until next year.” She fished around in her bag for her keys and braced herself to hear the end of Annabelle’s saga.
“I didn’t mean another class, which, by the way, I will get you into. I meant another man.”
“You say you’re worried about Arthur knowing, and you’re already thinking about round two?” Caroline shook her head in disbelief. “Annabelle the Enigma. You make zero sense. You say you’re in crisis because Arthur smelled your hands. But now you want more? You’re an adrenaline junkie, I’m telling you. That’s why you ski race.”
“Maybe. But it’s no longer about trying to even the score with Arthur. I’ve done that.” She bit her lower lip. “Philippe was one kind of lay, now I want someone more real, more American. I don’t know, more something.”
“Maybe he made you feel like just one of many,” Caroline said. “You want special. Not just hot sex, but something to remember, right?”
“Uh, no,” Annabelle said. “I’m not into slobbering gush like I bet you have with Mr. Architect. Just, this is my summer for variety, and I have a finite deadline, and well, keeping score, Arthur’s done it a few times. Same deal for me. And on Mr. Architect, I mean I don’t know the details yet, but I’m assuming he’s just a more normal guy to interact with and you’re . . .”
“Yeah,” Caroline said, biting her lower lip. “He’s a gem all around.”
“You’re falling for him, aren’t you?”
Caroline shook her head. “I refuse. But it’s something very solid and meaningful to both of us. It’s in a very safe zone where transactional meets trust.”
“Wel
l, then cheers to us for getting what we want in life, and on our terms,” Annabelle said, smiling. “Leave it to two determined women not to fuck around when we agree to fuck around!”
Part III
Summer Storm
Chapter 31
Doomed at Duryea’s
“August is the best time to be celebrating the barn, everyone’s well settled into summer and needs a little break,” Eddie said boisterously, driving his family up the dusty road to Duryea’s for lunch near the tip of Montauk. “Mom thinks I’m crazy to have a barn party here, today, but who wants lobster?” He winked at Caroline and blew her a kiss.
“Go, Fun Daddy!” Theo yelled, slamming the back of Caroline’s seat over and over with his feet.
“Honey, please stop kicking me back there,” Caroline said to Theo. “I love every day of August, Eddie. And I loved your idea of taking everyone out, but it’s going to be a madhouse here on any Saturday of late summer. I don’t see how they’re going to fit one table for all the grooms, and all our kids, and Thierry and Annabelle and Arthur, you and I, that’s what, sixteen?”
Eddie patted his wife’s thigh, ignoring her silly concerns. “I got it, baby. Steven Jauffrineau is a cool guy, and he runs stuff perfectly at all of his spots. Here, Lulu’s in Sag. I send him great Burgundy all the time. He knows who’s who!” Eddie yelled looking back in the rearview mirror. “Right, kids?”
“Yes, Daddy!” Theo kicked more. “Lobster with lots of butter!”
“We’ll cut in front of anyone waiting, Steven will let us,” Eddie said.
“Honey, stop. That’s not a lesson to pass on, cutting. C’mon. We’ll wait in line.”
Eddie shook his head and silently mouthed, No way, then added, “Besides, the great Philippe de Montaigne is there, handling it all. You know, frog on frog. He got there half an hour ago. A great-looking Frenchman who speaks their language helps. One reason I hired him.”
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