The Perfect Manhattan

by Leanne Shear

  Ever since she’d put the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker in my Easter basket one year, my mom had instilled in me the importance of following my instincts—which I’d now been ignoring long enough. These people were certifiable. I needed to get out of this house, get on the train, and get back to my safe little converted two-bedroom where my worries about bills and Alexis’s dirty dishes now seemed comfortably benign. But as soon as I turned to go, Martin blocked my path. He placed a wrinkled paw on my shoulder. “Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable and come and join us?”

  My words tumbled out, as I flinched and pulled away. “My roommate actually just called, and she’s really upset about . . . I have to get on the nine o’clock train. My cab’s still waiting outside.”

  I backed out of the room and quickly started making my way down the hallway and toward the front door. “I got a job at that new club, Spark, so that’s actually great,” I called in their general direction without looking back. “Thanks again!”

  I clicked the door shut over their protests, and, fearful that Martin might actually follow me and try to entice me to stay, I hurried down the long, spooky driveway. Crickets and tree frogs croaked a dirge in the dark. Once I’d arrived at the street, I sat down on my backpack, pulled the cabdriver’s number out of my wallet, and opened my cell phone. For the first time since I’d arrived in the Hamptons, I was getting a clear signal.

  Five

  ____________

  PABST

  BLUE RIBBON

  Fluorescent orange Cheez Doodle crumbs illuminated the soiled rug as I stepped over the threshold of 111 Montauk Highway in Amagansett. Mold and mildew stains were spread across every cushion on the grimy couches, and beer cans, cigarette butts, and empty pizza boxes littered the floors. I ran around the house opening as many windows as I could to let in some fresh air before the stench of mothballs, sweaty gym socks, and stale beer made me faint. My visions of a grand summer hideaway with crisp white linens and oceanfront property were dissolving as quickly as my hair was curling in the muggy heat. I cursed to myself as an hour of work with my hot iron went down the drain.

  After my roller-coaster ride through the Hamptons with Martin and Lily, I’d decided I needed a wingman if I was going to survive the scandalous life of an East End bartender. The minute I was safely back in my apartment on Jones Street, I’d called Annie. I was all set with a pitch about how we’d make millions and spend our days luxuriating on the beach, but Annie didn’t need the hard sell.

  “Why not?” she laughed. “I always prefer my men with a tan.” I’d given her Teddy’s number, and in less than twenty-four hours she’d worked her charms and secured a job as a server in Spark’s restaurant, with the possibility of being promoted to cocktail waitress if a position opened up.

  I’d also recruited Alexis to help us find a place to stay for the duration of the summer. She’d spent the better part of her hundred-hour workweek trolling through her high-society Long Island Rolodex to come up with a spot for us in a summer share house. Initially she’d suggested I take a spot in a house in Bridgehampton with a couple of her Alberta Ferretti–clad girlfriends from high school who all worked for Bragman Nyman Cafarelli PR firm. But it was $7,000 a share for the summer, which we clearly could not afford. So I’d sent out a mass e-mail to all of my friends from Columbia, subject: Homeless in the Hamptons.

  The politics of a Hamptons share were as convoluted as the current condition of partisan politics in the United States. Just as politicians start campaigning years in advance for an election, Hamptons share-housers start lobbying for a choice spot for the following summer as early as two weeks after Labor Day. Typically the life cycle of a share-houser in the Hamptons is as follows: the first summer is spent crammed in tenementlike conditions in a house located as far as possible from the beach and town. While you might have spent $2,000 on a full share (which allows you to have access to the house every single weekend), you’ll most likely still be competing with the half shares and quarter shares (who tend to come out to the house more than their allotted weekends) for bedroom and bathroom space. The second summer you graduate to a house with a pool—though you’re still squeezing twenty-plus people into a three-bedroom ranch. Finally, after three consecutive bonuses from Merrill Lynch, you might be lucky enough to land yourself a house on Egypt Lane in East Hampton with beachfront property, tennis courts, and your very own bedroom for the bargain summer rental price of $180,000 per house (which, by the way, is the asking price for an eight-bedroom residence back home in Albany).

  It turned out that Alexis’s ex-boyfriend, Walker, had a bunch of friends from high school who had a cheap share house in Amagansett and still needed to fill two of the slots. Walker was a Jack and Coke, blue-button-down-shirt, banker type who’d majored in finance and now only a month out of school was well on his way to making his first million. But I liked him—he was laid-back and generous, with a gift for managing Alexis’s more high-maintenance attributes—so spending a summer with his friends sounded good to me. I picked up the phone to call Travis, his friend who was in charge of managing the shares in the house.

  “Hello?” a groggy male voice answered on the eighth ring.

  “Hi,” I began. “My name is Cassie. Walker gave me your number. I’m calling about possibly getting a share in your house in Amagansett—”

  “What?” The voice on the other end was muffled.

  “I’m sorry, maybe I have the wrong number. Is this . . . Travis?”

  “Yeah, who did you say you were?”

  “My name’s Cassie. I’m a friend of Alexis Levkoff’s. Walker Burke gave me your number. I need a place to stay in the Hamptons.”

  “Oh . . . Cassie, right. Walker said you were going to call.”

  “Yeah. Is this a bad time?”

  “No, not at all. So you’re interested in a share?”

  “Yeah, my friend Annie and I are going to be spending the weekends out there bartending and we need a place to stay.”

  “Okay. Well, here’s the deal. The house is on 111 Montauk Highway right in the village of Amagansett. We rented the same house last year. It’s awesome. It’s walking distance from the train station and McKendry’s and the Talkhouse—our favorite bars out there. Most of the guys in the house are my buddies from college, but there’s gonna be less people this year because last year it got a little out of hand. We’re trying to keep it pretty mellow.”

  “How far is it from the beach?”

  “Really close. Maybe a ten-minute walk.”

  “Perfect! How much?”

  “A thousand.”

  “For the whole summer?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s not bad at all.”

  “So, you’re in?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Sweet. So why don’t you and your friend just write your checks out to me, Travis Whitter, that’s W-H-I-T-T-E-R, and bring them with you this weekend.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “What time are you planning on coming out?”

  “Probably early on Friday. I have a bar meeting at noon for my new job.”

  “You’ll be the first one there. But don’t worry, a couple of us went out there last weekend to set the place up. So it’s all ready. Sheets and towels are in the closet at the top of the stairs, and help yourself to the beers in the fridge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. See you Friday.”

  Alexis had walked in the door just minutes later, and I’d trilled with excitement, “I just got off the phone with Walker’s friend—I found a house in the Hamptons!”

  “That’s great! Which friend?”

  “Travis. I guess Walker knows him from high school.”

  “Travis? Travis Whitter?”

  “Yeah. I feel bad, I think I might have woken him up from a nap. He was kind of out of it.”

  “He was probably stoned. Those guys are always stoned. Why do you think I broke up with Walker? H
e was always half-baked. His friends from high school are even worse.”

  “But I thought you said you liked his friends,” I protested.

  “Yeah, they’re nice guys—when they’re sober, which is never. You’ll have fun with them, but I’m just warning you: they’re all total meatheads. The amount of beer they can drink is inhuman.”

  Alexis seemed to have selective memory about all the times she had overindulged in booze. “You seem to have forgotten that I’m a bartender,” I reminded her. “If there’s one thing I’m used to, it’s drunk people. Where’d Travis go to school?”

  “Boulder, just like all the rest of the frat guys who’ll probably be in your house. Biggest party school in the country. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be very impressed with their keg stands. And Rickman, Travis’s roommate, can shotgun a beer in less than two seconds. Truly an accomplishment.”

  “Well, Annie can guzzle an entire bottle of champagne in ten.” I wasn’t going to let her warnings put a dent in my optimism.

  “How many people are in this house?” Alexis asked, pulling a bag of ground espresso beans from the freezer.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Oh God,” she groaned. “Last summer Walker went out to visit Travis, and he said there were like a thousand people—mostly Fiji frat guys—passed out everywhere. It was a nightmare.”

  “Well,” I said, trying my best to sound dismissive, “Travis explicitly said that last year got out of hand and that this year they were keeping it mellow.”

  Alexis raised an eyebrow in a way that let me know I’d been incredibly naïve. “Mellow to Travis Whitter is a night at the Hog Pit with a forty of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a half-dressed stripper on his lap.”

  The final obstacle between me and the Hamptons had been perhaps the most daunting of all: I still had to convince Laurel to let me keep my weekday shifts at Finton’s while I spent my weekends working elsewhere. Giving up a weekend shift was a cardinal sin in the bartending world, and I certainly didn’t want to leave Dan in the lurch—especially since I knew all too well that if it wasn’t for him, my unlikely hero, I’d be living at home with my parents in Albany. My fear of being outright fired had caused me to bury my head in the sand, and I put off approaching Laurel even though I was set to start at Spark that weekend. Alexis found me stressing in the kitchen over a bowl of ramen noodles.

  “What’s the matter?” she’d asked, sitting down beside me. Over her shoulder, I could see the headline in her In Touch magazine: “Body Language Expert Willow Estrella Says Britney and Kevin’s Body Language Indicates She’s Pregnant with Another Man’s Baby.”

  “I have to tell Laurel about the Hamptons,” I said. “And I’m scared she’s going to fire me. I should have told her as soon as I got back, but I’ve been putting it off, and now . . .” I trailed off, my voice wavering.

  “Cassie, why are you even thinking about Laurel? You need to call Dan Finton,” Alexis said matter-of-factly.

  I rolled my eyes. “What good would that do?”

  “Please, Cassie, that man loves you and you know it. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Why do you think you got the job in the first place?” She looked at me pointedly. “Certainly not because of your experience.”

  I chewed my bottom lip sullenly. “I don’t know. I feel weird calling Dan.”

  “Why?”

  “Because as a bartender, I’m supposed to deal with Laurel. That’s the way it goes. Laurel is my boss, and Dan is Laurel’s boss.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” she said, cracking open a can of Diet Coke. “You’ll never get anywhere in this world with that kind of attitude. It’s eight-thirty, and I’m the only analyst at Morgan Stanley who’s already at home. Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed.

  “Because my hairy old managing director fucking loves me, and I mentioned I had a little tension headache. And the next thing I know, he’s sending me home at seven-thirty. I can do no wrong in that office as long as I deal with him. Is he directly over my head? Is he technically the one I’m supposed to answer to? NO! I’m supposed to answer to my VP, Barbara, a fat, gross old woman who wears tacky Liz Claiborne suits and hasn’t gotten laid since before I was born! Now, call Dan.”

  However much I hated to admit it, I suspected she was right—and that at the very least, I stood a better chance of winning over Dan than Laurel. I picked up my phone and dialed his number.

  “Well, if it isn’t my star bartender!” Dan said when he answered. “Remember last Saturday night when Baby Carmine brought in all of those people to celebrate his birthday?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Well, he called me today to tell me what a great party it was, and it was all thanks to you. He said you played great music, took care of everyone, had infectious energy, and just made the whole night! And I told him, ‘I’m not surprised—Cassie’s my star!’ ”

  “Wow,” I said, dumbfounded. “Thanks.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “Well,” I began, “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been offered a bartending job in the Hamptons for the summer, and it’s on Friday and Saturday nights. I love working at Finton’s but—”

  “The Hamptons? Which bar?”

  “Um, it’s a new club called Spark. I know it’s last minute—”

  “Listen, Cass. I know how it is, and to tell you the truth, I think it’s a great opportunity for all of us. It’ll be a chance for you to meet a whole new base of customers and lure them into Finton’s. You’ll still keep some shifts here during the week, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, the weight lifting off my shoulders in one fell swoop. “I’d love to keep my shifts during the week, if that’s possible—”

  “Of course it’s possible!” he’d exclaimed. “As long as you promise to come back to me full time in the fall.”

  I gingerly climbed the rickety stairs of my new share house, stepping over damp beach towels, an oozing bottle of suntan lotion, a chewed-up Frisbee, and a Pro-Kadima set. When I arrived at the top I peeked inside the first room to my right and saw a sunny window looking out into the yard and two small beds.

  “As soon as you get out there, Cass, make sure you reserve us some beds so we actually have somewhere to sleep when we get home from work,” Annie had made me promise as we planned the first leg of our adventure over the phone the night before. “Everyone I know who’s done a share house has ended up sleeping on the lawn or something, and that’s the last thing we need after working all night.” As I investigated the rest of the upstairs, which looked like it could comfortably sleep no more than a family of four, I was doubly glad I’d gotten there early.

  I dropped one bag on each bed to stake our claim and walked back toward the staircase. My mother’s influence reared its head, and I found a box of garbage bags in the shed and began picking up my housemates’ trash. I harangued them in my head (though I hadn’t even met them yet) as I held my nose against the sour smell of garbage, mold, and the all-too-familiar stench of stale Jack Daniel’s. Clearly Alexis had been right. What kind of people didn’t mind spending the weekend in this kind of filth? Evidently, this was what a grand got you in the Hamptons.

  I looked at my watch, which read 11:20, and realized I couldn’t spend any more time trying to clean up the house or I’d miss my bar meeting. In a final effort to make the place presentable, I shoved a damp phone book underneath one of the legs of the dining room table to keep it from wobbling. Then I fished around in my backpack and pulled out the card the cabdriver had given me the weekend before when he’d taken me to—and quickly back from—Martin’s den of iniquity.

  I was still trying to fully process what had transpired with Martin and Lily the previous weekend. I’d arrived back in New York half convinced that it had all been a misunderstanding and that the whole scenario hadn’t really been as weird or scandalous as it had seemed. One conversation with Annie, however, convinced me otherwise.

&nb
sp; “So you know how I went out to Southampton with Martin Pritchard last weekend to go job hunting?” I’d asked her.

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Well, after I got the job at Spark, I took a cab back to his house and he was sitting in the living room practically naked with his girlfriend, Lily—who’s like our age by the way—and this other weird couple that they ‘hang out’ with. And I think—and I’m not a hundred percent sure about this—but I think Martin was propositioning me to join them in some kind of group sex thing. I was so creeped out!”

  Annie chuckled. “I’m not surprised. He’s a total perv. A couple of months ago he had front-row tickets to see the Alvin Ailey dance company, and he asked me to come with him. I was dying to see the show, so I said yes, and afterward he invited me to go up to his apartment for a nightcap, which I didn’t think was a big deal. I figured, I can handle myself. So, I get up to his penthouse and pour myself a scotch while he goes to the bathroom. Anyway, I’m sitting in his library when he comes back completely naked and then comes over to kiss me! I was so revolted that the scotch came flying out of my nose, which burned like hell by the way, but I hardly noticed because I was so grossed out by his saggy ass. I was like ‘Martin, I think you have the wrong idea here,’ and he was like ‘No woman has ever said no to me before.’ Obviously I said no, and made a beeline for the elevator! The next day when he came into Finton’s, he acted like nothing had happened, even though I was practically scarred for life.”

  “You saw him naked?” I’d gasped.

  “In all his liver-spotted glory.”

  “Well, you could have warned me, for God’s sake!”

  “Hey, you’re a big girl, I figured you could hold your own with Grandpa,” she smirked, adding, “you never know who you’ll meet at this job.”

  Larry’s Taxi!” mumbled a gruff voice on the other end.

  “Hi,” I said, “I was wondering if I could get a taxi to pick me up in Amagansett at 111 Montauk Highway and take me to Spark in Wainscott.”