How the Other Half Hamptons
Page 3
But just as Allison felt that knot in her stomach beginning to resurface, Rachel grabbed the phone back.
“Don’t listen to her—she doesn’t know a thing about share houses. It’s not like we’re staying at The Estate.” After some brief squabbling in the background, Rachel added, “Oh, but she was right about the shoes. Only bring one nicer pair and one going-out bag, to minimize losses. And on that note, don’t bring anything you’d cry if you lost, like really nice jewelry or anything.”
Allison paused. “I thought the Hamptons was like a fashion show, and everyone wore their money out there.”
“Some people do...just not the same people who are doing share houses,” Rachel explained.
This was somewhat reassuring. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, don’t forget blankets and pillows and stuff—they’re not provided—and take two towels in colors you’ll remember, one to shower with and one to use at the pool...Also, bring a sweatshirt in case the house is freezing at night...And your phone charger, ’cause not having that would just be annoying...And we’re bringing all the weird stuff.”
“Weird stuff?” This should be good, Allison thought.
“Yeah...you’re going to think I’m neurotic.”
“I already do,” Allison assured her.
“Okay, I’ll read you the list my sister gave me. A full-length mirror—so you can get ready even if the bathrooms are occupied—big bottles of water for when you wake up in the morning and feel like crap, aspirin, hair powder, nail glue, magazines, pretzels, that Hamptons directory Jodi’s Shortcuts, the Intermix BlackBook nightlife guide, and...hey!”
“One more thing.” Jamie’s voice burst over the line again.
“Sounds like you guys already have everything covered,” Allison said.
“Wear only sexy underwear, even to sleep.”
Allison waited for the just kidding that never came. “Are we still on rules for the Hamptons, or have we progressed to your rules of sexual enlightenment?”
“Ha. Anyway, stop worrying. If worse comes to worse, I can always lend you something,” Jamie offered, although Allison could think of nothing worse than donning the kind of ostentatious stuff Jamie wore. Then she added, “I’ll pick you up as soon as Rachel gets out of work tomorrow, figure like five.” Jamie’s PR office had summer Fridays, so she got out at three, and Allison was teaching summer school on the Upper East Side and finished at that time normally. “Get excited!” Jamie sang as she hung up the phone.
And maybe Allison would have been excited if her thoughts weren’t now so preoccupied by baggage (as in, the kind she was bringing to the Hamptons).
At promptly five twenty (Allison had learned to add an extra twenty minutes onto any estimate Jamie ever gave), Jamie screeched her mother’s white Lexus SUV to a halt on the corner of Thirty-fourth and Third. At least Allison thought it was Jamie. She could barely spot her friend’s head among all of the luggage.
“Are you moving?” Allison asked when Jamie got out of the car to give her a hand.
Jamie flashed her a guilty grin. “I know, I’m a really bad overpacker. I have a bag this size that’s my makeup alone,” she said, demonstrating with her arms. Allison knew this, though, from having once taken a ski trip with Jamie to Hunter Mountain. Jamie was probably MAC Cosmetics’ single biggest source of revenue, and never went anywhere without her entire collection. So much for minimizing losses...
Popping open the trunk, Jamie threw what Allison had moments ago believed was a reasonable-size rolling suitcase on top of her twenty or so items and Rachel’s large, patterned Vera Bradley duffel. Then she slammed the door. It didn’t shut.
Then she tried again.
After about ten minutes of rearranging (all the while holding up northbound Third Avenue traffic), a nearby doorman surrendered his post to help them negotiate it all in. And then they were off.
And on. And off. And on, and then back off again. Which is pretty much the sensation Allison felt each time Jamie slammed on the brakes, then accelerated at exaggerated speed.
“I thought you said you’d gotten better,” Rachel remarked.
Jamie spun around, sending her dark mane flying, and Allison only hoped she still had an eye on the road. “What’s that? You want to be dropped back off at the apartment?” Because she was from New York City, Jamie was the only one who had a car readily accessible. Which, as Allison was learning, didn’t mean that she knew how to drive it.
“I am never raising my kids in the city,” Rachel remarked as Jamie flew down Thirty-sixth Street. The statement was unnecessary. Everyone in the car knew Rachel intended to raise her children in the exact Long Island town in which she’d grown up.
“So do you think we should try the LIE?” Jamie asked, ignoring the dig. “It’s going to be the biggest nightmare, but it’s the only way I know how to go.”
“No, here. My sister told me about a shortcut,” Rachel said, pulling out a printout. This was unsurprising: She never did anything spontaneously. Or without first conferring with her sister. “Get on here...slow, slow!...and take the Midtown Tunnel to the Northern State,” she directed.
It was the only time Allison had ever seen Jamie listen to Rachel—or anyone else, for that matter.
“So now that we have some time to kill, care to elaborate on what happened to you Wednesday night?” Rachel asked Jamie once they were safely on a highway.
“It was fun,” Jamie said. “He was pretty cute, right? Oh, and don’t worry, we didn’t have sex,” she added, turning to Rachel.
“I didn’t say anything about...what you did,” Rachel replied. Rachel hated talking about sex. Mostly because she believed sex was something only to be shared with a boyfriend, and, well, it’d been a while since she had a boyfriend.
“I just hope he doesn’t get attached to me,” Jamie continued, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. “These guys nearing thirty always have total commitment issues.” Jamie was the only person Allison knew who defined commitment issue as actually wanting one.
“The problems you have,” Rachel teased.
“So what happened with that guy you were talking to, the investment banker?” Jamie mocked.
“Nothing,” Rachel said. “Well, he text-messaged me last night at like two AM, but I ignored it. I mean, granted, it was a Thursday, but you know how I feel about late-night text messages,” she exclaimed, pronouncing the words with distaste. “Plus, he said he used to work at Goldman with my sister, and I can just tell...I can just tell he’s a tool.”
“I could have told you that,” Jamie said. Then she glanced through the mirror at Allison, sitting quietly in the back, who often preferred to be a listener rather than a talker. “I think Allison should just hook up with anyone tonight, to get the ball rolling,” she proposed with a wink. But what began rolling was the car, nearly into the next lane.
“I think you should focus your attention on the road,” Allison replied.
“Fine,” she huffed, scrolling through the radio stations. “Rach, you’re going to have to help me with everyone’s names today. Really, don’t assume I remember anything.”
“Sure...You know, in this day and age of technology, you are the only person I know who still listens to the radio,” Rachel said.
Jamie laughed so hard she threw her head back. (Is it too much to watch the road? Allison thought.) “Radio will become the most obsolete thing in the world, and I’ll still listen to it.”
“Why?” asked Allison, who was never without her iPod.
Jamie’s eyes met hers in the mirror once again. “Because I don’t like knowing what’s going to come next.”
Funny, because at that moment Allison would have killed to. In fact, all she wanted was a crystal ball to tell her when her life would return to normal (and by normal, she meant not single). Why, not even a month ago, her biggest idea of adventure was sampling a restaurant not listed in Zagat, and here she was doing a share with forty or so strangers in the Hamptons.
After switching highways what felt like a gazillion times (Allison knew little about the interworkings of Long Island roads), they finally found themselves on infamous Route 27. Creeping east along the one road that spanned the entire Hamptons, they passed through Westhampton, Quogue, and Hampton Bays, in turn. That’s where the traffic hit, though, as 27 merged into one inadequate lane—which was frustrating, but according to their directions was a sign that they were practically there. Realizing this, her friends grew giddy with excitement, but as they turned off the highway at the indicated Texaco, what Allison grew was desperate to prolong this state of limbo. The car had become her comfort zone, and more than anything she didn’t want to get out.
After making a few swift turns and veering down a few interminable winding roads, they eventually came upon the last step in their directions. (How they didn’t get lost was a mystery to Allison, as they’d been following obscure instructions like “make a right at the white picket fence,” and, well, Jamie had been driving.)
“There it is!” Jamie squealed, after inching so slowly along the highway that she’d received half a dozen honks (“better I piss them off than hit something,” she’d argued). “Ten Eighty-eight Montauk Highway!”
Jamie crunched on pebbles as she swerved into the extended stone driveway, then threw everyone forward as she jerked to a halt. And despite any previous apprehension, when Jamie silenced the ignition what Allison felt most was relief.
“It’s beautiful!” Jamie exclaimed of the grand two-level white house.
Timidly stepping out onto the pebbled path, Allison peered around, struggling to orient herself. She noticed a handful of other cars parked in the driveway (all shiny new two-seaters and SUVs, of course), and heard a flurry of voices that simultaneously hushed.
“Let’s take all our stuff in now,” Jamie decided, unloading the trunk. Since Allison had half as much as her friends, she found herself unintentionally taking the lead. Lugging her things up the steps, she then turned to discover her friends still a good distance away.
She really didn’t want to go in first. But since people were already watching her through the windows, she realized she had no choice. And so, grabbing her luggage, she bravely pried open the door, inched warily inside, and found herself face-to-face with...her other baggage.
Chapter Four
Sun Tzu believed “The art of war is of vital importance to the state.” But what Rachel believed most important to the share house was the art of conversation.
Which, at the moment, was lacking. For when you find yourself in a house with forty or so strangers, and your only common ground is the hefty deposit you’ve all paid, you become increasingly desperate for an icebreaker.
Naturally, Rachel and her friends (along with everyone else who first walked in) had already exhausted the obvious course of action.
They took a tour and raved over how amazing the house was (having never seen another share house, they knew it might not have been, but for two grand they would certainly convince themselves it was).
They dumped their stuff into the room they were assigned, which was indicated by a sheet of loose-leaf paper tacked to the door (and sneaked glances at the names written on each neighboring door). They then casually observed how every other room had a closer bathroom/more mirrors/stronger air-conditioning and was in some way preferable to theirs. They didn’t put their sheets on the beds just yet, but would later realize they should have, as stuff is easily displaced by tired drunken bedless people (a category that was never lacking, according to Rachel’s sister).
Finally, they regrouped in the main room to watch as others filtered in, feeling highly relieved to be the ones sitting on the couch rather than the ones entering—as in The Real World—to instantly become the subject of collective scrutiny.
At first glance Rachel recognized a lot of the shareholders from their profiles on Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, which she perused daily, and also from seeing them out and about in Murray Hill. Though of course she didn’t say anything—no one ever said anything. Still, she wondered how many people were simultaneously recognizing her. But any recognition, at least among the girls, was instantly dwarfed in the face of competition. And here’s where the art came in.
Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient. (Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Section 6.24)
Almost immediately (and in many cases, unconsciously) the girls sized one another up, assessing how they ranked aesthetically. In fact, even Ilana, the girl who had earlier been gushing about Rachel’s sister, seemed to have resumed her unfriendly persona, perhaps because of her dislike of Jamie. Jamie was often a girl other girls initially disliked. She didn’t seem to notice, though—or if she did, didn’t pay it any mind—and proceeded to assert her gregarious personality, which irritated the girls even more. Watching Ilana whisper to her two dark-haired friends (who were all, coincidentally, wearing black Juicy velour and Gucci sunglasses functioning indoors as headbands), Rachel could sense a full-fledged war in the making. Or at the very least an uncomfortable summer. But having grown up with Ilanas her entire life, she knew exactly how to handle them.
Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength. (The Art of War, Section 4.6)
“Hey, how are you?” Rachel asked, boldly approaching the huddled clan, thereby disrupting their Juicy-Gucci homogeneity.
“Oh...hey,” Ilana said, smiling perhaps because Rachel’s friendliness surprised her. Or because Rachel was Dana’s sister. Funny, even though Rachel was standing right there, Ilana’s eyes were fixed on Jamie.
“My sister wanted me to tell you she says hi,” Rachel began, smiling sweetly.
Ilana finally surrendered her attention. “Oh, that’s so nice,” she said, with about as much emotion as Jamie’s That’s so funny.
Rachel chose to ignore it. “Did you go to Penn, too?” she asked, turning to address the clones. Who told her that no, they went to Florida, but had, in fact, both grown up with Ilana in Great Neck, and, who would have thought, lived next door to a guy Rachel had taken to her sorority formal.
“Have you guys done this house before?” Rachel asked, inching closer to them.
They all looked at one another silently before one of the clones responded. “Well, it wasn’t this exact house, but we all did shares with Mark last year.”
“What was it like?” Rachel said. “Was that the Quogue—”
“I miss our old house!” Ilana whined.
Rachel disregarded the fact that she’d just been interrupted. “Was it nicer than this one?”
“Well...no,” Ilana admitted, flipping her hair. “We just had, like, a really good group.”
“Yeah, I don’t even know any of these people,” a clone complained, more to her friends than to Rachel.
“There are, like, no guys here,” the second added. “I don’t see one person I’m attracted to.”
Ilana did a quick survey of the room. “Seriously,” she said, though Rachel couldn’t help but notice her eyes wander back to Jamie.
Satisfied she’d exchanged just enough small talk to break down any silent boundaries (which, in a share house, can prove more vicious than words), Rachel excused herself and eagerly retreated.
What she returned to surprised her. The blob of awkward people in the common room had quadrupled in size, just as a bar goes from being empty to packed with no stage in between. At least once every five minutes as new shareholders surfaced, everyone went around and attempted to introduce themselves (
an activity that was pointless at best, as everyone promptly forgot each of the forty new names as soon as it was offered). Still, it proved remarkably easy to retain the name of the one person who struck your fancy (Rachel had her eye on Dan, a guy with a buzzed haircut and an NYU LAW shirt in the corner), or in Allison’s case, the one person who’s fancy you’d already stricken.
In a horrid stroke of misfortune, Allison had walked in to discover her ex-boyfriend Josh and his best friend, Rich, among the guys who’d signed on at the last minute to do the share. Apparently Rich knew the house manager Mark from home, yada yada. And while she imagined inside it was killing her, Rachel believed Allison had handled everything quite well. For after the original shock of seeing Josh had set in, she’d taken to avoiding him completely.
“So how was your ride out here?” she overheard Allison ask Brian the moment they arrived, striking up a conversation with very un-Allison-like assertion. Though she was far from flirting, Allison looked relieved to have spotted one of the few familiar faces they recognized from the meet and greet.
Which Rachel was glad they attended, even if they’d only met what now seemed a mere fraction of the people occupying the living room. She hadn’t thought to factor in those who decided to sign on last-minute, those who deemed themselves too cool for a cheesy party, and those who were there, yet had fallen under the radar (and would all too soon fall under it again).
“Are you quarter or half share?” was the question everyone asked, and “Whose guests are you?” was the one that often followed. For, according to Rachel’s sister, there was a second factor rendering many of these introductions unnecessary. As new shareholders would quickly learn, you’d never see the exact same people on any given weekend, and you might never see some of these people ever again. This was due to the variety of shareholder categories: half shareholders (who only came out on alternating A weekends or B weekends—or any off-weekend they wanted, though they weren’t guaranteed a bed), quarter shareholders (who were assigned four weekends in total—A1, A2, B1, or B2), guests of shareholders (who paid seventy-five dollars a night to sleep on the floor, and were supposedly allotted two visits max—yet were rarely refused, especially when the house manager was trying to recoup financial losses), weekend swappers (due to weddings, vacations, and personal scheduling conflicts), or freeloaders (people from neighboring houses or no house at all, who came merely to hang by the pool and take up a lounge chair or pre-game before going out and to deplete the vodka supply). In short, only those people you saw more than once had names worth committing to memory.