by Zoey Dean
Choose the best antonym (pair of words possessing an opposite meaning) for the following set of words:
DIVIDE and CONQUER
(a)invite and party
(b)separate and destroy
(c)highlight and blowout
(d)unify and submit
(e)mani and pedi
Chapter Fourteen
Iwas walking on the now-familiar white pebble path between the main mansion and the twins’ manse, going over the bizarre end to Will’s and my walk, when I heard shouts coming from the pool deck. The twins—I couldn’t yet tell their voices apart—and someone else.
How intriguing.
The expletives were flying as I stepped off the path and hid behind a palm tree just west of the pool deck. From there, I could see across the deck to the cabanas, where the battle royal was taking place. The girls were still in their swimsuits, and the other woman was dressed in a beige pantsuit.
“I can’t fucking believe you, Zenith!” Sage screeched. “You call yourself a fucking manager? You suck!”
Manager? As in the manager who was supposed to be getting the twins all that priceless film, TV, and modeling work?
Zenith took a deep breath, clearly attempting to maintain her composure. “Look, this kind of thing happens all the time—deals fall through when it comes time for people to write checks.”
“You said you were going to get us our own TV series. Our own movie. Our own chain of clubs,” Rose whined. “You said we were going to make the world forget about Paris and Nicole!”
“Look, there is an offer on the table. If you weren’t such spoiled brats, you’d be grabbing at it,” Zenith fumed.
“Golden Glow spray-on tan? And I’m the fucking ‘before’ picture? Sage Baker is never a ‘before’ picture!”
Sage Baker as a “before” picture? Priceless.
“Are you finished?” Zenith asked quietly.
“Get the hell off our property,” Sage responded.
“Nothing would make me happier. Don’t ever call me again.” Zenith started back across the pool deck, thankfully taking a path that wouldn’t cause her to run into me.
“No, you don’t ever call us again!” Sage took off one of her jewel-encrusted sandals and hurled it at her retreating manager. It plunged into the pool. “And you look like shit in beige!” Sage turned back to her sister. “Fuck her. We’ll find another manager. Come on, Rose, let’s go get plastered.”
“No.” Rose looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“No?” Sage echoed, sounding incredulous. I was incredulous, too. I hadn’t known that Rose was capable of saying that word to her sister.
“Everything’s . . . ruined.” Rose dashed across the deck and down the stone steps to the beach, leaving Sage alone. For a brief moment, it seemed like Sage was going to go after her. But then she strode back toward their house, kicking her other sandal into the pool on the way.
Divide and conquer, I told myself. The twins’ house was already divided. All I had to do was conquer.
I took the back way to the beach and tried to look casual, like I merely happened to be going for an afternoon stroll. Almost immediately, I saw Rose taking baby steps along the surf line, dancing away from each oncoming wave and then daring the ocean to soak her feet.
“Out for a walk?” I asked as I approached. Her lower lip was trembling. “Hey, are you okay?”
She shook her head. The tide was on the way in, and a wave came dangerously close to soaking our feet. I jumped back, figuring Marco’s ballet slippers were not waterproof.
“Where’s my sister?” Rose asked, looking concerned.
I shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Rose started up the beach and sat down against the stone seawall. I followed her there, realizing that if Sage looked out at the beach, she couldn’t see us together. That was the point.
“We’re totally fucked,” Rose finally muttered. “Sage and me.”
Well, then. “Fucked how?”
She kept her eyes on the water. “You remember what Sage told you the night you arrived—about our manager out in Los Angeles? All the offers and how we were going to make our own money?”
I nodded and waited for her explanation. And waited some more. Finally, she let it all spill out in a monologue that challenged every law of punctuation and syntax: “Sage said doing Vanity Fair would make us famous, and we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere after a while without television cameras following us, and I mean, that sounded like fun because that’s how famous people are, like, all the time and everything . . . So Sage hired this manager in Los Angeles, and there were going to be all these offers, like for a movie, and our own reality TV show, and, like, makeup companies but not like cheap ones, you know?”
I nodded again. It seemed like the thing to do.
“Well,” Rose went on, “as it turns out, none of those deals worked out, but I don’t know why and, like, there was only this spray-tan thingie? Oh, and maybe this other thing that wasn’t for sure, but it was for a chain of stores in the South that carries, like, Jessica Simpson jeans, which she doesn’t even wear.”
“Wow.”
My sympathy seemed to encourage Rose. She went on, “Anyway, we wouldn’t have made enough to live for, like, a year. But we already said fuck you to Grandma’s money we never should have made you swim naked because now you hate us and you’ll never want to be our tutor but even if you did what good would that even be?” She blinked twice. “Does that make sense?”
In an alternate grammatical universe, maybe. But I got the gist, because the gist seemed like the opening I’d been hoping for. Sage had sold Rose on the notion that they wouldn’t need their grandmother’s money because they were going to make so much of their own. Ergo, they could blow me off. All wrong. Rose was confiding in me because she was scared shitless of being fundless.
There’s nothing like being needed.
“So . . . can you help us?” she asked.
I could tutor her, which would buy me more time in paradise—a good thing. No. A great thing. But could I get her in to Duke? Even if I worked with her night and day for seven and a half weeks, I wasn’t sure she had the IQ of a tennis ball. Plus, both twins had to be accepted, and being the Palm Beach version of Heidi Fleiss was likely Sage’s preference over being tutored by me.
At least I was getting somewhere with one of the twins. Maybe her sister wouldn’t be so far behind.
That night, like any good investigative journalist, I worked on my notes. Between Marco, Keith, Will, and the twins, I had more than enough dirt to bury the Palm Beach privileged.
From Suzanne de Grouchy, after one two many flirtinis at the Red and White ball: A society princess who stabbed her husband with a Wüsthof-Trident classic kitchen knife, after catching him with one of Suzanne’s friends, had received two months of house arrest. The friend was shipped off to the South of France.
From Keith, during another makeup application: Last year a shelter called the Peace Place canceled their usual fund-raising ball for The Season and instead sent out invitations announcing that “guests” could stay home in comfort and send a donation in their place. Peace Place normally received more than a million dollars in donations at their event. The year they canceled, they raised five thousand. “Charity balls during The Season,” Keith decreed, “are Palm Beach’s contribution to society.”
From Rose herself, with a napkin folded in her lap: Sometimes chewing your food and then spitting it out is just as satisfying as, like, eating . . . you know?
Seriously. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
I’d thought I’d be here for only two weeks. But Rose had given me the possibility of a two-month sojourn. To make that work, I had to get Sage on board, too. So the next morning I flatironed my hair, put on one of the more casual outfits Marco had lent me—low-rise Joe’s jeans that had shrunk in the wash, plus a white Petit Bateau T-shirt—and settled myself at the fork of the corridor between our two suites.
>
Around eleven, Sage strode out, wearing dark skinny jeans, a white tank with angel wings on the front, and impossibly high strappy sandals. Save for the shoes, we were similarly dressed.
I took it as a sign. “Sage!”
She looked irritated before I even opened my mouth. “What do you want?”
“Well . . .” I sagged back against the wall and tried to look as forlorn as possible.
“What?” she snapped. “You catch crabs from someone at Bath and Tennis or something?”
I stopped sagging. Evidently, Lily had the acting talent in our family, but it was too late to stop now. “Listen, Sage, I’ll level with you.” True. In a journalist-who’ll-do-anything-to-get-the-story kind of way. “I know you don’t care about studying, but honestly?” Fingers crossed. “I really, really need this job.”
She looked at me with something approaching professional interest. “Because you’re in debt?”
“Exactly.” Totally true.
“Big debt?”
I nodded.
Sage nodded gravely. “I kind of figured. Two years ago Precious had front-row seats during Fashion Week in New York, and the clothes were to die for that year. And she ended up, like, three hundred thousand dollars in debt, and her mom freaked because her credit card only had a hundred-thousand-dollar limit.”
This was amazing. And priceless.
“What did Precious’s parents do?”
Sage leaned forward. “They cut off her allowance,” she whispered, as if imparting a national-security secret. “Precious was so upset, she nearly gave birth. When we Googled you, I sort of figured it must be something like that.”
Ah, the irony. Never in a million years would it have occurred to me that Sage would jump to the conclusion that I had run up a couture debt and not an educational one.
“So you can see why I really need this job,” I said without correcting her misimpression. “To try to whack it down.”
“Make Mommy and Daddy Smith happy, you mean,” she interpreted. “Did they push back the release of your trust? God, it’s just so mean!”
“Right,” I agreed. I’d known a girl at Yale who used to moan all the time that she wouldn’t get her trust until she was thirty, which was, she used to say, like, ancient. “So if we could do a few study things so that I have something to show your grandmother . . . I mean, I can pretty much stay out of your hair. And at some point, if you decide the Hollywood thing isn’t working for you, well . . . at least we’ll have studied a little.”
I could practically see the blank thought bubbles coming from her head. She heaved a very irritated sigh. “Fine.”
Fine? Hot damn.
“Thanks so much,” I gushed. “I really appreciate this.”
“Whatever. When do we start?”’
“This afternoon?” I asked tentatively.
“Okay,” she agreed with an eye roll that emphasized what a huge favor she was doing for me.
She had no idea.
Choose the analogy that best complements the following phrase:
YACHT : SOCIETY PRINCESS
(a)cardboard box : wino
(b)Chihuahua : rock starlet
(c)cocaine : supermodel
(d)Fendi Baguette : Sarah Jessica Parker
(e)drug arrests : Robert Downey, Jr.
Chapter Fifteen
Afundamental truth came clear to me four days later, my seventh day in Palm Beach: There was a reason for all those stories of famous scholars surviving on bread and radishes, sleeping in a garret, using the same water to boil their eggs and wash their armpits—a life of luxury is not an atmosphere conducive to learning. When given the choice between mastering quadratic equations and watching a not-yet-released DVD in a home theater nicer than any multiplex, who wouldn’t opt for the distraction of hot popcorn and Orlando Bloom?
Despite the twins’ ostensible new commitment to studying, they spent a lot more time playing than working. If I’d been an actual tutor, I might have cared. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t. Instead, I did my best to bond with them under the pretext of teaching.
Rose was reasonably pleasant to me, because she was nicer by nature. Sage tolerated me, because with my new Marco wardrobe and look, I was, as he had predicted, an acceptable accessory. Teaching-cum-bonding-cum-research was exactly what I was doing this late afternoon out on Laurel’s hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht, the Heavenly.
As we motored out of the Palm Beach Yacht Club, the new deckhand, Thom, gave me a quick tour. He was skinny, with messy sun-streaked hair and a winning smile. The boat spread out over three levels: one down below that held staterooms; a main level with a huge open rear deck, living room, dining room, and kitchen; plus a helipad upstairs so that guests could be ferried to and from shore without having to contend with the waves.
Post-tour, I found my way to the rear deck, where the girls were already stretched out in their swimsuits. Sage’s tangerine bikini had shirring across the ass that made her backside look like a peach. Rose wore a white one-piece halter with a back so low, it displayed a peek of rear cleavage. I, on the other hand, was wearing Marc Jacobs white stretch cotton pants and a black T-shirt with a giant cross on the back. Marco had worn it during his Cher stage.
“Where’s your suit, Megan?” Rose asked. “Aren’t we going to take a hot tub before we get started?”
Marco could provide me with a lot of things, but a bathing suit wasn’t one of them. I pleaded cramps and enjoyed the ride while the twins lolled. A sauna followed their hot tub, and then they summoned Thom to bring food—caviar, water crackers, chocolate-covered raspberries, and a bottle of Taittinger, their favorite champagne. Since water crackers were actual carbs, they mostly stuck their fingers in the caviar and popped them in their mouths.
After that, they were ready to tackle some math. As they got out pencils, paper, and calculators, I tried to tailor the problems to their interests. “Karen was able to find a classic Chanel dress on sale for two thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Who’s Karen?” Rose asked, flipping onto her stomach.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just a name for the word problem. Just take down the main info.” I pulled my T-shirt sleeves off my shoulders so I could at least get a little sun.
Sage sighed with irritation. She’d been trying—without success—to find another manager to represent them. In the meantime, she had started participating in our study sessions. Participating can be defined very loosely. “Can you start again?”
“Karen was able to find—”
“Hold on,” Sage ordered. She grabbed some SPF 50 and slathered it on her opalescent chest, arms, and legs while Rose waited. “Start again.”
“Karen was able to find a Chanel dress on sale for twenty-six hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I thought you said two thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars?” Rose asked.
I smiled and filed that one away. “Same difference. When that dress was designed and sewn in the forties, it cost eighty percent less. What did it cost back when it was made?”
Rose propped herself up on her elbows and began scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. Sage stared at me blankly.
“Did you need me to repeat the question?” I asked.
“Are we talking actual cost or cost as adjusted by inflation?” she asked coolly.
Huh. Score one for Sage.
“Actual cost,” I said.
“Does Karen have a trust fund or an allowance?” Sage asked.
“Karen doesn’t exist,” I said carefully, thinking that maybe we ought to move on to geometry. “It’s just a made-up problem to—”
“Hold it,” Sage decreed, raising a finger and cupping a hand to her left ear. Then she pointed to the western sky. “Yep, that’s them.”
I could barely make out an approaching helicopter. “That’s who?”
“Suzanne turned eighteen yesterday,” Sage explained. “We’re celebrating tonight. If you’re not into it, you can go hang in my gra
ndmother’s library.”
I was fine with the surprise. A party was a lot more likely to result in Palm Beach dish than Karen and her fucking Chanel dress.
The noise was deafening as the chopper approached and then hovered a hundred feet above the rear deck. I watched helplessly as the workbooks and papers we’d been using were blown out to sea by the backwash from the blades.
The chopper touched down, the doors opened, and three of the twins’ friends hopped out. I recognized Ari and Suzanne, and there was a tall athletic guy I’d never seen before. Next came an orgy of hugging, kissing, and shouting of “Happy birthday!”
As the helicopter went airborne again, I considered how the twins could so blithely risk their fortune by being so unfocused—unless they had the misguided notion that what they were doing with me was being focused. In just over six weeks, they were going to find out how wrong that assessment was.
Sage immediately flounced off with the tall guy to good-natured catcalls from the others. I got an actual hug from Suzanne, who then called for a beer and headed for the hot tub, shedding clothes as she went.
“How goes the work?” Ari asked, offering me a fist bump. He was wearing cutoff Brooks Brothers khakis and an old CBGB T-shirt. He looked like he could have been in my East Village neighborhood instead of on a multimillion-dollar yacht in the middle of the bay.
“They’re . . . making progress. How about you, Ari? What are your plans for next year?”
“MIT. I’ve got better than a four-point GPA and 2400 SATs, so I’m pretty confident.”
I nearly choked on my own spit. One of the twins’ friends was . . . smart?
“I wish you could take the SAT for me, Ari,” Rose said with a helpless sigh.
“What your grandmother did was so—” Ari began, but I didn’t hear the rest, because yet another helicopter was approaching. No. Three helicopters, making the yacht the center of their airborne isosceles triangle. Then I spotted a few powerboats motoring our way, and Thom lowering a ladder that would allow their passengers to climb aboard.
Thirty minutes later, I was in the midst of a full-fledged birthday bash. All the twins’ friends I’d met so far were there, as well as forty or fifty other kids. The only person missing was Will Phillips, whom I hadn’t seen since he’d blown me off on Worth Avenue. Not that I cared.