“Wait! Can you get someone to put me plus two on the list there? There is no way I’m paying to go to Pink Elephant just because it’s where our house manager wants to take us.”
Jamie whispered this last part, but it was no secret that each share house manager doubled as a nightclub promoter; the majority actually were nightclub promoters who’d decided to run a share house. For delivering up cover-paying heads at set parties each week, Mark walked away with a small percentage of the profit (say, seven bucks each time anyone dropped his name at the door). It was usually a win-win situation: His list entitled partygoers to pay a reduced admission price (maybe twenty bucks instead of twenty-five), assume a no-hassle group plan (making a decision like this among forty people would be impossible), and receive preferential treatment upon arrival—like bypassing the line. To people like Jamie, however—who not only never paid cover due to her myriad PR connections but also came equipped with her own “it” party agenda—not having input threatened continual conflict.
But tonight, she’d decided to suck it up. Her friends were right: straying from the house the very first night wouldn’t be very social, and more important, they had absolutely no idea how to transport themselves anywhere. And so, once her co-worker confirmed they were on the list at Pink Elephant, Jamie vowed to dismiss the matter entirely.
This left her thoughts wide open to return to Jeff, the only guy she could recall who hadn’t asked for her phone number afterward. The whole thing just didn’t make any sense. Why, she’d put on one hell of a show, if she said so herself. And she hadn’t even burdened him by staying the night. Of course, he clearly assumed he’d see her this weekend...a mystery unto itself. She couldn’t help wondering where he could possibly be at this moment, and—if he had been here—how he would have factored into everything. Would he have made the getting-ready process somehow less irritating (and given her somewhat more of an incentive)? Would he be keeping her company at this very moment? Or would he have instead opted to join in the flip cup game (which, to Jamie’s delight, finally appeared to be dissipating)?
When the last “Ohh!” had been shouted, the last drop of beer guzzled, and the last person with a dry T-shirt drenched, the cups were abandoned so everyone could change their tops.
And just as Jamie slipped away to reapply her lipstick for a final time (in the bathroom that was becoming like her second home), she heard a most unusual battle cry from the outside.
“Everyone to the front! The party vans are here!”
Hurrying out of the bathroom, she found the formerly tame pack running amok in a million directions, buttoning shirts, hunting down purses, downing shots, and pouring that final drink that would hopefully last them an entire car ride.
“The what?” Jamie asked, alarmed at the sudden pandemonium and scanning the room hastily for her friends.
Craig halted between bellows. “The party vans.”
Jamie looked at him like he had six heads. “What,” she reluctantly asked, “is a party van?”
“Go outside and find out,” he said, ushering her along with the rest of the stragglers.
To her horror, a “party van” was exactly as frightening as it sounded. Stepping outside, Jamie discovered two mini school-bus-looking things consuming their entire driveway, with people flocking to board like an airplane. Perfect, she thought, cynically observing the scene. Rather than arrive via chauffeured car, or at the very least in a cab, she’d be showing up at a nightclub doorstep looking like a member of a traveling circus act. This night was getting better by the minute.
Allison reached out and yanked her down the front steps just in time for the mass announcement.
“Hello, Ten Eighty-eight Montauk!” sang the driver, whom Jamie could only hope was sober.
“Chuck! How’d the winter treat you?” Mark saluted, slapping him five. Then he addressed the crowd. “Everyone, this is Chuck, the best cabdriver in all of the Hamptons.”
Carefully wading through the pebbles in her stilettos (which cost more than a night in this sharehouse, pro-rated), Jamie stopped before him. “Why is that?” she challenged, half sarcastically, and half because challenging guys was an unconscious reflex. Though unlike any guy she normally challenged, Chuck (or “Fingers,” as he was later called) had huge arms protruding from the T-shirt he wore (despite the brisk night temperatures), a head of gray-tinged hair straying off in different directions, and only four fingers on his right hand (Jamie counted twice). She didn’t know exactly what had happened to create a stump of his fifth, but since the injury could have been incurred in the line of duty, she preferred to be ignorant.
“You kiddin’? I’ve been driving Ten Eighty-eight Montauk since before yous was born,” he said, from which Jamie gathered he was a local. And while everyone she knew wanted to have a house in the Hamptons, she’d never actually met anyone who was from the Hamptons. It was oddly unnerving. “Best rates around,” he continued. “Seven bucks a head to Pink Elephant, ten to Star Room. You try and beat that! Here, take a card,” he said, distributing them.
It was a cabdrivers’ conspiracy that group fares in the Hamptons were calculated on a per-head basis, rather than the flat rate found in the city. In the latter case, more people splitting a cab amounted to a cheaper fare all around; here large parties were penalized. Penalized, and smushed.
“How many are you?” Chuck asked, attempting a head count.
Mark beat him to it. “Forty-six.” Jamie had no idea how they’d grown so exponentially in a few hours’ time, but attributed it to the many friends of friends (of friends) who’d come over to pre-game.
“Two should do it,” Chuck radioed over some dilapidated walkie-talkie. Then he turned to the group. “Squeeze in as many as you can to a row, and girls need to sit on guys’ laps,” he instructed.
Jamie’s jaw dropped. “Is he serious?” she muttered aloud, failing to believe a registered driver could order such a dangerous-sounding thing. Why, in the city, sitting on people’s laps was illegal. Not to mention that if you had any more than the four-person-per-cab limit, you were immediately kicked to the curb. However, it was now abundantly clear exactly how Chuck managed to offer the best rates in the Hamptons.
“Don’t worry, you can sit on my lap,” Dave volunteered with a devious gleam in his eye. Which was all well and good, but Jamie didn’t feel like sitting on anyone’s lap. And she certainly didn’t feel like doing so inside a party van. Before she could object, though, Dave climbed in and pulled her after him. Sitting down so she was barely resting any weight on him, she adjusted her new Diane von Furstenberg dress, hoping he could balance both her and his beer cup. That, and that he wasn’t deriving a single ounce of sexual pleasure from this.
Behind her, Rachel pounced on top of Dan, who looked less than thrilled, and Allison sat beside her on Brian’s lap while he whispered something in her ear. Nevertheless, Jamie caught a twinge of discomfort on her friend’s face upon discovering Ilana’s friend Tara—or was it Jocelyn?—sitting on Josh’s lap two rows back. Ilana of course sat perfectly comfortably up in the front with Mark—whom Jamie couldn’t help but feel annoyed at for initiating this whole outing with its ridiculous means of transport.
No sooner did everyone pile in than concentrations of ice-cold air burst from the vents and an eruption of foreign techno music blared from the speakers. Still, it paled in comparison with the people screaming (coming off a flip cup high), the buzz of conversation, and the animated storytelling of Chuck—who, given such a captive audience, could clearly talk for days.
Staring out the window into the utter blackness, Jamie held on tightly to the seat in front of her as they bumped along, swerving down winding roads and through forests as if they’d entered some alternate universe—one devoid of streetlights and seat belts and manners precluding guys’ hands from inching up your thigh. Fortunately, she knew the journey couldn’t last too long, as Pink Elephant was fairly close by in Southampton (of course, so was Dune—not that she was dwelling on
it). But even an abbreviated trip provided Dave ample opportunities to assert himself.
“Want some?” he asked, offering her his cup in a grand gesture that would similarly gauge her fear of his saliva. “You seem too sober.”
You can say that again, Jamie thought. Glaring at the beer (a substance she’d renounced right after freshman-year frat parties), but deciding it was better than arriving asleep, she put out her hand. At that opportune moment Chuck hit a bump, causing the contents of the cup to spill straight down her chest.
“My dress!” she squealed.
“My beer!” Dave countered, equally (if not more) upset.
Now that they were thoroughly soaked, they couldn’t arrive at the undesirable destination fast enough. As soon as they did, it was evident from the obscene crowd of cars and cops and clubgoers canvassing the outside that sitting in a party van wasn’t so horrible an alternative.
“This is insane,” Jamie gasped, her eyes peeled to the nightmarish scene at the door, with a line extending from the big blowup pink elephant at the entrance all the way through the parking lot.
“It’s Memorial Day weekend,” Mark reminded her. “But don’t worry, I’ve got it covered.”
I should hope you do—it’s your party, Jamie thought.
“Here we are,” Chuck announced unnecessarily, halting directly in front of the entrance, and entreating all to debark. Which they did, with all the subtlety of an arriving jetliner.
They’d calculated the van money beforehand, but in the midst of the commotion they were now a good deal short anyway. And after everyone was asked a hundred times over “Did you pay?” “Did you pay?” the mathematicians in the front realized they’d forgotten to add on a tip.
Pushed around by the mobs, people scattered every which way, but Mark quickly took control. He gestured for his party to follow him, and though Jamie felt absolutely ridiculous arriving somewhere with forty people, given all the confusion she followed suit. The Pied Piper led them straight up to the doorman—a stylishly dressed guy with a shaved head, who seemed unnecessarily harsh yet still overwhelmed—who greeted Mark tersely and asked him to gather everyone off to the side. Again, Jamie obliged. And a few minutes later, as promised, the doorman lifted up the rope so Mark could wave in the colossal group, handing everyone a tiny orange movie-theater-style ticket that entitled them to pay the “reduced” price (he handed Ilana a blue one, which Jamie supposed was a comp).
When their turn approached, she rejected Mark’s offer of a ticket (at which he raised an eyebrow) and spoke directly to the door guy.
“Hi, Alex? We should be on the comp list. Jamie Kessler plus two,” she stated, addressing him by the name she’d been given.
Alex’s hardened face moved from Jamie, to Mark and the share house crew, then back to Jamie. “There’s no comp list tonight, it’s a holiday,” he said sternly, not even consulting the list. Apparently he wasn’t impressed in the slightest that Jamie addressed him by name, but the crowd assembled before him now happily ingested this new piece of information, as cries of “Alex” ricocheted from the line. “I can give you reduced,” he declared to Jamie, with an air of finality, then turned his back.
And in that moment, she could hear it. The sound of her world going flip.
Jamie sighed. Though she’d never expected this, she imagined it was probably easy to be hassled out here. Unlike in the city, where at the slightest list problem you could simply walk a few blocks to a new destination, this doorman knew well that no one who’d just traveled half an hour to the middle of nowhere would hop in a cab, pay twice as much, and travel to possibly a different town to go to a different club—especially when there were no guarantees the same thing wouldn’t happen all over again.
But Jamie wasn’t easily bullied. Waiting until he lifted the rope for two girls too tall to be anything but models (with a suddenly accommodating attitude, she thought), Jamie tried again. “I am on the list. I work for Spotlight PR and my co-worker just put us on Rocco’s list.”
Her impatience (not to mention her self-righteousness) only made him more adamant. “Look, Rocco’s an owner. Everyone’s on Rocco’s list. If you’re not going to take the reduced, then please move aside.” His eyes at that point dismissed her; even though she remained physically in front of him, he looked right through her.
Not for long, though, as she was soon accosted by the clichéd security guard dressed all in black, who looked so inflated you could pop him with a pin. “Please move off the line,” he ordered, extending his arm.
Jamie satisfied him minimally by taking a few steps back, retreating once again into the throngs of people pushing every which way, who probably would have paid generously for the opportunity to go in without waiting. She pulled out her cell phone, then realized it was after midnight, and there was no one to call. But above all else, she refused to make eye contact with Mark, whom she knew was lingering just beyond the doorman.
“Look, twenty dollars isn’t that much,” Rachel offered, aware of her roommate’s headstrong personality, and also that they didn’t have much choice in the matter.
“Yeah, let’s just go in,” Allison agreed. She turned to Jamie. “If you don’t have enough money I can lend you.”
“That’s not the point,” huffed Jamie, a girl who’d happily drop two hundred on a shirt yet not a dime on cover, if only out of pride. Jamie glared back at that jerk of a doorman. Didn’t he realize who she was? She didn’t wait on lines, she didn’t fight through crowds, and she most certainly didn’t pay cover (no comp list, her ass!). And a part of her believed this wouldn’t have even happened had they not arrived via the circusmobile and instead been three hot girls stepping out of a cab like they usually were. In the city Jamie always knew the door people, she always was on the list, and she always got her way. But of course she wasn’t in the city anymore. She—along with forty negotiable composites—was in the Hamptons. Frat-Hamptons.
And she was hating every minute of it.
Opening her wallet, which usually functioned solely as an accessory when she went out, Jamie realized this was going to be one hell of an expensive summer. (Just not for Mark, whom she saw tell Alex to tally them as in his group.)
Trudging through the crowd, Jamie discovered on the inside exactly what you’d expect from a club that looked like that on the outside: an overwhelming, sweaty, chaotic mess. Sure, the recent million-dollar renovations the venue had undergone looked great, if only there had been two hundred fewer people in there enjoying them. Add to the mix assaultingly loud hip-hop, hordes of gyrating bodies, and public displays of intoxication, and Jamie was ready to make a run for it. As her feet were pounded upon, she directed what no longer felt like her body behind the conga line formed by their share house, deeper and deeper through the masses. To Jamie’s dismay, the group migrated to a section buried far in the back, way past the VIP tables (where she spotted Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Tinsley Mortimer, Rachel Hunter, and a slew of socialites in dresses—she knew they were socialites, because only socialites wore couture dresses to nightclubs). In the city Jamie always knew someone (who knew someone) who invited them to join one of these tables—exactly the opposite of tonight, where she not only did not get the VIP treatment but barely made it inside the club at all. Why, Jamie hadn’t felt this subpar since those rare occasions she’d been negged with a fake ID before she turned twenty-one. And like those nights, she wanted desperately to leave. She wanted to go home.
And just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, the darnedest thing happened.
It didn’t.
The host (Jamie hadn’t even noticed they’d been following anyone) led them to a huge round table, apparently comped for Mark because he was “running a list.” Instantly a busboy produced a giant tin of ice, dozens of glasses, and carafes of tonic, orange juice, cranberry juice, and soda. Taking a seat on the rim of the booth, Mark entreated them to follow his lead, so Jamie and her friends climbed up next to him. When the waitress returned with a bottle
of Grey Goose, Jamie hardly objected when Mark offered to mix her a drink. And three strongly poured concoctions later, that twenty-dollar cover seemed an insignificant (and quickly recovered) loss.
And in that moment, she could hear it. The sound of her night going flip.
From her new vantage point, Jamie could actually enjoy the club. Listening to the sounds of the skillful DJ, their entire group was soon moved to dance. Like actually dance. Like not just bop to the music or sit around and sway, but get-down-and-sweaty dance. Like she hadn’t done since spring break in Cancun. And it wasn’t cheesy or out of place. And Jamie remembered how much she liked it.
Surprisingly, in addition to being an adept spiller, Dave was actually a really fun dancer. And willing to get right up there on the booth with her were the two girls (delightfully) lacking New York–bred inhibitions. And while Ilana and her friends tried, they couldn’t seem to hold a beat, which Jamie found secretly amusing. But most amusing of all were the guys, who were quickly becoming their best friends. Dave kept pulling her out on the dance floor, everything out of Rob’s mouth was totally hysterical, and Brian tended to them like a brother, continually refilling their drinks. And continually ordering up rounds of tequila shots, which added to the mood nicely.
Why, Jamie had to admit, she’d wildly underestimated this party. When you go somewhere with forty people, though, you pretty much are the party. For it’s impossible to do a lap or walk anywhere without running into someone you know—which Jamie was actually now finding preferable to being a few girls inside a VIP section where they hardly knew anyone. Besides, she could sit around and look cool anytime. Tonight she was enjoying dancing with her friends and looking ridiculous. So as the night wore on, every song the DJ played was her “favorite song ever,” everyone sang and clapped to the lyrics, and the energy in the group grew stronger by the minute. In fact, Jamie paused only to use the restroom, at which point she was in awe of how fast the hours flew.
When the clock struck two, she recalled, inebriated, that she’d usually be picking her target now. She could tell Dave liked her, and suspected a number of other willing participants if she so chose.
How the Other Half Hamptons Page 6