by Robyn Sisman
Suze said she didn’t care who he was as long as they could go swimming the second they arrived. She didn’t dare admit that she’d never heard of Herb Damon.
Dumping their bags in the “cottage”—actually a luxurious bedsit with bathroom, kitchenette and small, private patio—they had pulled on their bathing suits and chased each other into the sea. It was cold enough to make Suze squeal, and soon they had retreated to the beach to exchange salty kisses and let the sun melt their bones into delicious laziness. Sandy and glowing, they returned to the cottage to test the bed. It was absolutely fine.
Eerily, their clothes had transported themselves into drawers and onto hangers, though Suze had seen no one. She blushed when Nick pulled something from the wardrobe and turned to her, swinging the hanger from one fingertip. “What,” he asked, with a lascivious grin, “is this?”
It was a sexy little black basque that Suze had bought at the last moment, anxious in case Nick got bored with her. Neatly folded on its hanger, criss-cross laces dangling, it looked absurd. She hated the thought that some servant had sniggered over it. “It was supposed to be a surprise,” she mumbled, “for later.”
“Well, well,” he said, “I look forward to later.”
While they showered and changed, Nick outlined the program for the weekend. “Cocktail party tonight, dinner at the new Italian seafood place, then a pool party. Tomorrow, after everyone gets back from the gym—”
“The gym? There’s a party at the gym?”
“Of course not. But people have to keep in shape, you know.”
“Can’t they go for a walk? I thought this was ‘the country.’ ”
Nick rolled his eyes. “After we get back from the gym—”
“Not me.”
“OK, after everyone else gets back from the gym, there’ll be a barbecue, then we’ll ride motorcycles on to another cocktail party—”
“But we haven’t got a motorcycle.”
“You hire them, dummy.” Nick’s tone made her feel naive. “Then dinner, a firework party farther up the point, maybe a nightclub.”
“Won’t we be too drunk to ride the bikes home?”
“The help comes and picks them up in a truck.”
“Oh.” Of course.
“Then on Sunday we’ll sail over to another house for brunch, maybe play some tennis, then head back to the city. Think you can stand it?”
“It sounds like a very complicated way of having fun.”
Nick laughed. “Suze, believe me, this is going to be the most fun you ever had.”
Suze smiled to herself as she watched Nick’s little rituals of shaving and perfect cuff adjustment. He was in rock-star mode tonight, dressed all in black with a fancy gold watch to match his hair.
They heard a car pull up and Nick walked swiftly to the window. “Look who’s here!” He waved Suze over.
A man of about fifty, with slicked-back dark hair and wrap-around sunglasses, was walking up the path to the next-door cottage.
“That,” Nick said, with a note of triumph, “is Manfred Zarg, the Hollywood producer. Shrine’s got him on the hook to make a movie. He wants to close the deal this weekend.”
Now, standing on the porch, Suze self-consciously smoothed the skirt of the dress Nick had sent her in compensation for the rubber ruin. It was a halter-necked black thing by Donna Karan. Suze wasn’t sure it was quite her, but Nick had expressly asked her to bring it, saying it would be “right.” She would have worn a tea towel to please him.
Suddenly she caught sight of him at the heart of a small group, telling a story, making them laugh. Even from here she could see his eager smile. He looked across toward Suze and signaled to her to come over. Delighted, she descended the steps of the balcony. When she joined the group Nick introduced her to a woman of about her own age, wearing granny glasses and what looked like pink silk pajamas.
“You two have got to meet.” Nick sounded thoroughly over-revved. “Laura’s into advertising too. She’s totally brilliant.”
Suze gave her a friendly look. “Are you a designer as well?”
The woman twitched her glasses. “I prefer to call myself an artist.”
“Don’t we all?” Suze laughed. “But one has to live. What sort of clients do you work with?”
“Actually, I’m not into that commercial scene. My work is subversive, more like a parody of the genre.”
“Ah.”
“I like to take images from the conventional advertising spectrum and construct my own iconography.”
Suze was trying to understand. “And—what?—people buy your work and hang it on their walls, is that it?”
There was a small pause. “Right now, I’m refining my style. I don’t want to peak too soon. Excuse me, I’ve just seen my dealer.”
“What does she live on?” Suze asked Nick when the woman had moved on.
“She doesn’t need to work. She’s a Peabody.”
“Peabrain, more like.”
Nick chuckled. “I love English girls,” he told her, putting an arm around her and squeezing her tight.
Together they cruised the party. Nick pointed out literary agents, entertainment lawyers, fashion editors, clothes designers, architects and several men with names like Raleigh and Todd who mysteriously “ran their own funds.”
These were, he told her, la crème de la crème.
“That’s Chester Delaware, the writer.” Nick waved a hand. “He’s still not married—you should see the women fighting over him. Shrine’s bought movie rights to one of his pieces for Esquire. And look, there’s Shrine himself.”
Shrine Wackfest turned out to be a plump man of about forty who could have been an accountant, except for his tremendous air of self-importance, evident even at a distance.
“Shouldn’t we go and say hello?” Suze asked. “I’d like to thank him, at the very least.”
Nick looked at her as if she had said something quaint. “Shrine just likes to have the right people here. He doesn’t need to meet them.”
Suze wanted to laugh, but at that moment she was distracted by a horrifying sight. “Look!” She tugged at Nick’s jacket. “That plane’s about to crash.”
“That’s the seaplane, you dope. Probably some celeb. Let’s go see.”
He took her glass and placed it with his own on a passing tray. Hand in hand, they walked to the terrace overlooking the shore and watched as the tiny plane splashed into the sea and glided right up to the end of the dock. The door opened and a girlish leg appeared, followed by the remainder of a woman in her sixties. She wore a tiny black dress with spaghetti straps and had strange orange hair cropped close.
“Hey, it’s Lois!” Nick stood up to wave energetically and was eventually rewarded by a kiss blown from scarlet fingertips. “You must know Lois Trout, the fashion queen. She had a brain tumor, but they operated just in time. Now everyone’s copying her hairstyle.” He looked at his watch. “Will you be OK for a few minutes? I’ll be right back.”
“Not more calls?” Suze pouted.
Nick took her by the arm. “Come over and meet Melissa and the gang. They’ll take care of you.”
He led her back toward the house, introducing her as “my friend from London” to a group of knockout blondes, who made Suze feel like an overweight dwarf.
“I love Nick, don’t you?” sighed Melissa, watching him go. “He’s so cute. When I first came to the city he was soooo nice to me.”
The others joined the chorus—a little too enthusiastically, Suze thought. “But none of you actually went out with him,” she suggested, looking around the circle of faces.
“You mean, like his girlfriend?” Melissa gave a hoot of laughter. “How can you date a guy who’s always partying? Besides, he’s married to his mobile phone.”
Their talk turned to the new crocheted tops from Galliano and Suze drifted away, unnoticed. Suddenly tired of all the chitter-chatter, she scooped up another cocktail and passed through an opening in the hedge. The pool was
quiet and empty, a tempting blue. Suze thought how much fun it would be to stay behind with Nick when the others went to dinner. But she knew he would think that impossible. She began to understand the tension she had sensed in him from the moment he picked her up outside Schneider Fox. He’s on duty, she thought.
In the stillness she became aware of a repetitive tapping noise which she traced to the Italian-style loggia at one end of the pool. She could hear somebody counting: “Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven . . .”
Inside, bouncing a ping-pong ball on a bat, was a girl of perhaps fifteen, wearing a simple white dress. She smiled at Suze, but went on counting until she missed. “Fifty-one!” she said breathlessly. “That’s my best so far. I was trying to see if I could get to a hundred.”
“Don’t you like the party?”
“Sure.” The girl shrugged. “It’s just I don’t know anybody.”
“Join the club.” Suze smiled.
The girl was astoundingly pretty, long-legged and athletic-looking with shiny dark hair to her shoulders and turquoise eyes fringed with black. She didn’t look like a New Yorker, and her accent sounded Southern.
“Are you here with your parents?” Suze asked.
“No.” The girl’s disparaging tone gave the word about six separate syllables. She accompanied it by a screwball grin that made Suze laugh out loud. “I’m with some other girls—you know, models? My booker said I had to come, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” She waggled her bat. “You want to play ping-pong?”
They played three games. Suze learned that she was in fact seventeen, that she had five brothers and sisters and a dog called Chummy, and that it was her dream to own a house with an upstairs. Until two months ago she had been working in a tobacco factory somewhere in North Carolina. Now she was signed to a big New York agency, who had decreed she should be called Pierre. Her real name was Jodie. It was clear that she was desperately homesick.
“My boyfriend’s got a mobile phone,” Suze offered. “I’m sure he’d let you ring your family if you wanted to.”
“They all go bowling Friday night. But thanks.”
Now it was almost dark. Suze became aware of a stir of social panic, as people began discussing where to eat. She saw them jabbing their phone buttons, frantic for a reservation. Over the whine of mosquitoes came the sound of cars beginning to rev. “Shall we go back to the party? I think we’re all supposed to be going out to dinner.”
“Finally,” cried Jodie. “I could eat a horse.”
The restaurant was outrageously overcrowded. At the entrance was a huge aquarium where you could look your dinner in the eye before dispatching it for slaughter. Nick took command of their group, cajoling the waitresses, arranging for tables to be put together, organizing the seating. Suze found herself at the other end of the table from him, next to a tubby man who seemed somewhat overdressed in a three-piece suit. Suze recognized him as Chester Delaware, “the writer.”
“Sowah,” he drawled, turning to her, “what do you make of this event?”
“It seems very impressive.”
“Impressive . . .” He considered the word carefully. “Yes. I think it’s meant to impress, don’t you?”
“Well, I’m impressed.”
“Good. Tell me, what line of work are you in? Or are you just famous for being famous?”
“I’m a designer.”
“Clothes, magazines, software?”
“I’m in advertising. Schneider Fox, if that means anything to you.”
“Aha. So you’re one of those people who try to persuade us to buy things we don’t really want or need, is that it?”
“Something like that.” Suze wasn’t sure if she was enjoying this conversation, but it was less vacuous than some of the snippets she had picked up from around the table.
“Fiber is the secret of my life, totally.”
“She’s a Virgo, so what can you expect?”
“I’ve become so spiritual since my surgery.”
“Now don’t take this the wrong way,” said Delaware, waving a crab claw to illustrate the point, “but don’t you think that advertising is almost always a form of lying? And if so, what does that say about the people who work in the business?”
Suze gave him a straight look. “It certainly can be a form of lying,” she said, “just like journalism, or politics, or movies, or investment banking or practically anything else. I know that there are some corrupt people working in advertising, as there are everywhere. It’s up to the individual to maintain his or her integrity, isn’t it?”
The writer gave a supercilious smile. “How adorably naive.” Then he turned to talk to his neighbor on the other side. Suze finished her meal in silence, stealing looks at Nick.
At last dinner was over. They shared a car with a group of others. Back at the house, a band was playing on the balcony; the pool was lit up. An immaculately dressed black man explained that, if they preferred, guests could watch a screening of Manfred’s latest film in Shrine’s private movie theater in the basement.
Suze danced with Nick, trying to recapture the magic of their first date, but his eyes were elsewhere, seeing who was with whom, checking out the scene. At around two in the morning he disappeared once again to phone Australia. Suze found a lounge chair near the pool and sat at the edge of a group, wondering if anyone would talk to her. Eventually one of the men turned around. He stared at her, then leaned over confidingly. “The last time I was here, Bliss Bogardo was sitting right where you are now. My God, she was beautiful.” He gave a deep sigh of regret, and stood up. “Time for a refill.”
Suze decided to see if the film was on, and was just approaching the house when she noticed a figure walking purposefully toward the parking area. She started to run, wobbling in her party shoes, calling out, “Nick? Wait for me.”
He turned and gave her a tight smile. “I won’t be long. I said I’d go get some stuff for Shrine.” He jangled a key-ring.
“You’re going in the car?” An image rose in Suze’s mind of the two of them racing through the night with the top down, like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, wind in their hair and moonlight on the ocean. “Great!” She put her arm through his. “I’ll come with you.”
Nick shook his head. “You don’t want to come. Stay and enjoy the party.”
“Honestly, I’d like to come. I’ve hardly seen you.” She leaned into him coaxingly. “It’s no fun partying without you.”
Gently he disengaged himself. “Really, I have to go alone.”
Suze searched his face. He looked guilty. She couldn’t help glancing over at the car, wondering if he had another woman stashed in there. It was empty. “Where are you going?” she persisted. “Why can’t I come?”
Nick looked away impatiently. “I told you. I have to get something. It’s . . . private.”
In the silence between them, sounds of the party came floating up from the shore—bursts of laughter, a girlish scream, a splash. Suze’s perceptions sharpened. She could feel the gravel through the thin soles of her shoes. Watching Nick’s troubled, handsome profile, she suddenly understood. “Oh, I get it.”
Nick stared at the ground, saying nothing.
“Nick, why you?” Suze caught his hand, trying to make him look at her. “What if the police stopped you?”
“I just said I would.” He stood stiff and unresponsive. “As a favor.”
“Oh, really?” It seemed he was willing to do favors for anybody and everybody, except herself. She dropped his hand and folded her arms. “So you’re a drug dealer now, is that it?”
“Don’t be stupid.” His head jerked up and they stared at each other for a tense moment. Then, almost as if he were pleading with her, he added, “It’s not a crime to want to make people happy.”
He stepped close and cupped her face in his hands. All the fight went out of her. Automatically she twisted her head to caress his fingers with her cheek.
“Listen,” he said persuasively, “why don’
t you go back to the cottage and put on that black lacy thing and wait for me?”
She watched him drive off, waiting until the taillights had disappeared around the curving driveway and the roar of the engine had faded to nothing. A movement caught her eye and she saw that two of the maids were chatting with a man from the kitchens, sharing a smoke under the trees by the edge of the parking area. They were all still in uniform. The maids were Filipinos; the man looked Mexican. For the first time it occurred to Suze that every single one of the people she had met today was white.
Reluctant to go straight back to the cottage, Suze decided on one last walk along the beach. At the poolside, the party was getting frisky. Some of the women had discarded their swimsuits. She could hear rustlings and suppressed laughter in the hedges. Suze took off her shoes and wandered down the sand until she was alone with the stars and the moonlight and her own liquid shadow. The ocean whispered at her feet and Suze paused for a long while, letting it lap her toes. Then she turned back. The house was lit up like a historic monument. Architecturally, she now realized, it was a dog’s breakfast. How Lawrence would have howled with pain at its jumble of Doric columns, faux Palladian pediments and Dutch window gabling. The thought made her smile sadly. “Did you love him?” Jay had asked. Suze sighed. Whatever she had felt, she knew now it wasn’t the sort of love she wanted.
Back in the cottage again, Suze showered, perfumed and laced herself into her corset contraption. It looked great, but somehow she felt more sordid than naughty. She pulled on one of the guest dressing gowns and went out on the patio for a cigarette. Nick didn’t like her smoking.
A few minutes later she heard laughter and peered out of the darkness to see a couple weaving their way down the lighted path. She recognized Manfred Zarg. To Suze’s surprise, the girl with him was Jodie. She almost called a greeting, but thought better of it. None of these people were what they seemed. The man opened the door of the cottage next to Suze’s and the two of them entered.
When Nick came back she was sitting in a low armchair, with Vanity Fair positioned discreetly across her lap and the table lamp on the dimmest setting. She felt the pose a little contrived, but it seemed to have the desired effect. Nick gave her a long, hard stare and growled, “Come here.”