“What?” Rachel humored her, restoring the word’s monosyllabic correctness, and all the while holding her breath. It wasn’t so much that she disliked hearing from Dana as the fact that Dana only called her when she needed something.
“Guess where we’re going for my non-bachelorette partyyy?” her song continued.
Rachel, regretfully, interrupted the melody. “What are you talking about? We already had your bachelorette party.” It was true—they (in fact, she) had orchestrated an elaborate night out in the city weeks back, complete with dinner at Le Souk besides belly dancers, tickets to the drag-queen-themed Donkey Show, and late-night dancing at Tenjune. And Rachel didn’t want to be petty, but belly dancers and donkeys these days didn’t come cheap.
“You’re not listening. I said my non-bachelorette party!”
Rachel gave in. “What,” she asked calmly, “is a non-bachelorette party?”
“Weeell,” Dana drew out, as if getting Rachel to ask hadn’t been her objective all along, “this is the weekend Gregg’s going to Vegas with like ten guys for his bachelor party, and they’re going all-out. They’re staying at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, hired a limo, and already have reservations at Tao, Pure, Tryst, all the best clubs. Obviously I can’t let him have more fun than me!”
Obviously. But Rachel still wasn’t following. “So?”
“So...I planned this little weekend excursion for just the bridal party, to keep myself occupied. But come on, you haven’t guessed where!”
Rachel didn’t want to guess. And she most certainly didn’t want to go. “Montreal?” she tried.
“To the Hamptons!”
Oddly, Rachel was not expecting this. “Seriously?”
“Seriously! What could be more perfect? It’s where Gregg and I met, and no one’s been back there in ages.” No one meant none of Dana’s friends, which in her mind constituted the entire population.
“I guess,” Rachel said. Though once she’d mentally digested the idea, she decided that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad...it was her weekend to be out there anyway. And it might actually be fun to sneak away from the house and seek refuge at whatever swanky hotel they’d be staying in.
“Good, it’s already a done deal,” Dana continued. “I just got off the phone with Mark, and he practically insisted that me, Amy, Shari, and Danielle take his room in the house this weekend.”
“Wait, you’re coming to my house?” Rachel was glad Dana couldn’t see her jaw drop.
“How quickly we forget,” Dana said, the first of her words she didn’t sing. “It was my house first.”
And it was merely a means to an end, Rachel concluded, after spending the bulk of the night dissecting why this prospect was even remotely appealing to Dana. Surely it had to be about the money! Didn’t hotels out there rape you for something like three or four hundred dollars a night, with two-night minimums? (Not that she’d ever before known her sister to act in the interest of finances.) Still, even Rachel had to admit (to herself, not out loud) that she was beyond impressed to see Mark let her sister and three friends stay for free (a favor she had yet to see him bestow upon anyone else), and in his room no less (an unprecedented second). But then again, never in her life had Dana been “just anyone.”
Yet she did want to know about everyone—as did each of her friends. And so, during the lengthy drive out on Saturday morning, Rachel (smushed in the back with two of the zeros and the entire Louis Vuitton luggage collection) was thoroughly interrogated for share house gossip. They wanted to know every detail about the house, about the people, about their hookup statuses, and most uncomfortably, about Rachel’s own love life.
“So who have you been hooking up with?” Dana asked her nonchalantly after Rachel had just finished outlining the romantic links among everyone else.
Rachel peered distractedly out the window, like the prominent red deer sculpture along the route was suddenly fascinating to her. “No one.”
Just as she feared, though, Dana wouldn’t let it drop. “Oh, come on! Why won’t you ever tell me anything?”
If only that were the problem! “No honestly, no one,” Rachel pronounced again, less certainly but with more volume.
Despite the fact that she was driving, Dana twisted her whole body around. She pushed her Fendi aviators on top of her head and looked Rachel right in the eye. “Let me get this straight. You’re out there practically every weekend, and there’s not one guy you’ve been involved with?”
Rachel felt herself blush. Why was her nonpromiscuity so hard to believe? And why did Dana always make her feel so inferior, so subpar? Under the familiar scrutiny of her sister’s similarly crafted yet somehow perfected face, Rachel experienced painful flashbacks to the dorky teenager she was in high school: the one with braces and untweezed eyebrows and unstraightened hair, who wasn’t selected for Dana’s old cheerleading squad despite having been a legacy, and who instead was forced to join the math team by her calculus teacher. Years later Rachel hated that Dana had the power to instantly turn her back into this girl—a girl she’d hoped would forever lie dormant inside her—with one judgmental look.
Dana finally turned to face forward, but gazed back at her through the rearview mirror. “Okay, what about a guy you have your sights set on, at least? Just give us something!”
Rachel’s resolve finally broke. “Fine, there’s this one guy.” And, picturing Aaron, Rachel actually cheered up a bit.
“Who?” The zeros pounced with a hunger they’d never shown for food.
“No one that you—that any of you—probably know,” she answered. Then, since she didn’t want to mislead them, she added, “And nothing’s really happened yet. I just mean, I think he has potential.”
“Well, if you’re thinking wedding date potential, you realize I have to meet him first,” Dana said, raising a dainty eyebrow she’d never had to wax.
“You’ll definitely meet him,” Rachel said, definitely hoping it wouldn’t come to this. But, working up the nerve to disclose her crush (and the fact he and Dana were already acquainted) became a less immediate concern the moment they arrived and lugged their things up the steps, because Craig was apparently worked up enough for them all.
“I need you to move your car. Stat!” came the recognizable sound of his gruff voice from inside. Rachel, Dana, and the zeros paused on the front steps by the window to see what the drama was. Seconds later they heard him add, “You’re going to throw out that Slurpee cup, right?”—as if at any minute the cup in question would spontaneously combust.
“Just chill out!” Rob’s agitated voice hollered back. But no sooner had they cracked open the door, causing each head in the common room to reflexively turn, than was it clear that no one (particularly no one male) was still thinking about a Slurpee cup. “Well, well, well!” Rob said, verbalizing the unspoken sentiment.
There is nothing like fresh meat in a Hamptons share house. And it isn’t just a one-sided scenario—there is nothing like being fresh meat. All at once every guy made a beeline to help the girls with their luggage (a chivalrous gesture they’d aborted with the other girls after pretty much the first weekend), while Dana stepped into the house so boldly you’d have suspected she owned it.
“Levy!” she cried, hugging Rob as if she knew him better than anyone else. This had once intimidated Rachel—until she’d realized that Dana always acted like she knew someone better than everyone else, be it friend, family member, or mailman.
But as Ilana and Jeff and Craig and lots of randoms (whom Rachel didn’t even know) rushed forward to greet her, there was no denying Dana really did know a lot of people—or at least knew someone who knew someone who did. Even the few people Dana didn’t know seemed magnetically drawn to her. And for the second time that day, for the umpteenth time in her life, Rachel could have been in high school.
Sadly, though she’d tried to observe and learn in her youth, Rachel simply couldn’t command a room the way her older sister could; it just wasn’t a formula that
could be taught. No matter how friendly or forthcoming her presence, Rachel knew she lacked the same high-on-life magnetism, the same confidence, the same allure. But it hit closest to home when Dana stood overshadowingly beside her. Rachel believed it begged people to compare them.
“You guys look so much alike,” Jamie noted, as she previously had, even though Rachel was certain it was only their similar coloring. In fact, observing them in a room together, Rachel supposed Jamie and her sister to be a lot more alike—not so much in appearance as in overall effect. They were beautiful in different ways: Jamie had a more urban, New York City trendiness to her, and with her funky, model-like outfits emanated glamour from every pore. But Dana could have stepped out of a Cover Girl ad, with her iridescent blue eyes and perfect hair and skin, always appearing impeccably polished, department-store friendly, and expensive. Still, both girls carried themselves with a sense of entitlement you believed in mostly because of how much they did, and summoned attention in a way they always expected yet seldom seemed conscious of.
It would have made much more sense if Jamie were Dana’s sister, Rachel thought, supposing what everyone in the room must really be thinking: that in relation to her sister, in the family of Bursteins, Rachel stuck out like an outcast.
She was almost grateful for the distraction of Craig. Minutes later he bothered them again, about a pile of duffel bags someone had left a considerable distance from the stairwell. He’d decided they were a life-endangering obstacle.
“Whose stuff is this? I can’t have it out here,” he sputtered, his focus shifting nonsensically to random points about the common room. Perhaps because he juggled so much, it always seemed to Rachel like his eyes were one step ahead of his brain.
“Oh, that’s mine,” Dave called, taking a swig from a Heineken bottle out of the family of them multiplying on the coffee table. “I’ll get it later.”
“No! I need you to get it now,” Craig barked. “I’m the one responsible for the house this weekend, and I’m not rushing someone to the hospital if they trip and break their ankle!”
After this unwarranted frenzy, silence uncharacteristically overcame the room, and for a moment Rachel wondered if Dave would argue back. For a moment, it seemed like Dave was wondering this same thing. But, rolling his eyes, he took a long swig from his beer, then placed the bottle back down on the coffee table. Hard. “I’ll move it. But I’m telling you, you better relax.” He lifted his finger in admonition. “Just because Mark leaves one weekend, you don’t have to treat us like we’re infants.”
“Just get it out of my sight,” Craig snapped, opting to ignore the second part of what Dave said. With that, he sped off on another rampage, like a windup doll that had been wound too many times.
Similarly eager to escape the drama, Rachel decided to lead Dana and her friends on a grand tour of the house—which was impressive at the weekend’s start, and incrementally less so each day it was further trashed. Just as Rachel had been anxiously expecting, in the course of their rounds she came upon Aaron stationed around the kitchen table with Steve and the Dud.
“Hey,” she said, returning the smile he instantly flashed her. Though just as she was about to initiate introductions, Dana brushed past the trio as if the kitchen were otherwise empty.
“So, Rach, is your guy here?” she blurted out, with a typical lack of discretion.
Everyone (including “her guy”) glanced up at her.
“No,” Rachel muttered softly, both horrified and irritated—that Dana had unconsciously filtered Aaron out through her “important person” radar. If there were ever a moment to ’fess up to her feelings, it was so far from this one. “I’m sure that—everyone—will be at Star Room tonight,” she answered instead. Determinedly, she turned back toward the guys. “Dana, I think you know Aaron, right? And this is Steve, and Evan.”
“Hi,” Dana said, smiling politically. Her sister could turn her charm on and off like a light switch. She turned to face her friends. “Let’s go bring our stuff upstairs.” This replacing a farewell, they marched right up the steps.
Predictably, the girls gushed over Mark’s gargantuan room, beyond ecstatic he’d gone away for the weekend. However, everyone else in the house was considerably less ecstatic, as their list of grievances against Craig began to grow.
Some of his requests were actually reasonable (and had they not been accustomed to doing things Mark’s way, they might never have been the wiser). And everyone did try to appease him...at first. Moving the cars the moment they walked in was utterly loathsome, but something they knew had to be done. Cleaning up every trace of their food and confining all their belongings to their rooms wasn’t exactly the norm, but it was a reasonable enough request. Though when Craig announced they’d be leaving for the club at 10 PM sharp (rather than post-flip-cup at around eleven), and that every single beer bottle had to be removed prior to departure (this was always done afterward—if at all), people couldn’t take it anymore. They couldn’t take him anymore. So what they took was him, down.
“Now!” Rob cried.
Evidently previously orchestrated, on this cue all the guys in the house charged at Craig at once. And sure, Craig was a hefty guy, but what is one guy compared with twenty (riled-up) ones? Standing back to avoid the shuffle—the way you did in a bar when a fight broke out—Rachel watched them lift him up off his feet and high into the air, like a float in a parade. She supposed they were merely going to throw him in the pool (always the default solution in a share house). Instead the throng of guys clamored toward the front door.
They stopped slightly short of it, threw open the adjacent door to the hall closet, and dumped Craig inside. Then, before he could resist, they slammed the door shut and twisted the lock. At first Craig began pounding his fists and spouting obscenities, but he gave this up shortly, perhaps wary he might be in there for the long haul.
Though it was a tempting prospect, no one really intended to hold him captive beyond an initial scare. So after twenty or so minutes, Rob graciously unlocked the closet (it then took another ten for Craig to realize this and open the door). But to everyone’s amazement, when Craig stepped out, he didn’t try to avenge himself. He didn’t seize his offenders in fury. What he did—what he said—was absolutely nothing at all. As if he’d retreated into the closet of his own volition, he wore a solemn, poker-like expression from the instant of his liberation, all the way to Star Room, where the night proceeded in a similarly atypical way.
By this point in the summer, two weeks shy of Labor Day, Rachel had been to Star Room countless times. But truth be told (and to her sister, it never would), Rachel had never seen Star Room like this.
In the way she always did, Dana knew everyone. And not just everyone—Dana knew everyone who mattered. Within minutes of their arrival, the doormen Pete and Tony comped her entire party and whisked them in ahead of the masses. Once inside, barely inches beyond the door, front man Charles Ferri and the longtime owners (two jovial men both named Scott) came over to bid their hellos, and photographer extraordinaire Rob Rich instantly accosted them for a cameo. Then, when the beret-adorned bottle-service host Bey learned it was Dana’s “non-bachelorette” party, he set Dana up with a free bottle inside the celeb-filled Hip Hop room (which Rachel usually just passed in laps—the crew of people most like her were mostly stationed outside this VIP area). There, lining the rim of a central table with Heather Graham across from them, the Gottis to their left, and Macy Gray to their right, they could relish the ambiance a comfortable distance from the bustling crowd below—the crowd of which, until now, Rachel had always been a member.
They still took intermittent strolls through this crowd, Dana insisting on leading the line so as to toss out over-enthusiastic salutations (to casual acquaintances, no doubt). And despite her engagement ring (or more likely, because of it), Dana flounced about and basked in being the center of attention—making Rachel, at least in her mind, the object of comparison. Of course, the sisterly comments were alw
ays laudatory, but people’s true sentiments were transparent: Why could Dana throw back the shots while Rachel nursed just one drink? Why was Dana’s wardrobe so stylish and colorful, Rachel’s so muted and black? How was it that Dana was such an exceptional dancer while Rachel could barely sway to the beat? And most conclusively: Wasn’t Dana simply the life of the party—and Rachel the death of it? It was no wonder Dana was the one getting married!
If this was Dana’s “non-bachelorette” party, you couldn’t get any more “non-Dana” than Rachel.
Strangely, despite the night she was having (the kind of night Dana felt entitled to, but that Rachel always considered as beyond her means), the Hamptons still weren’t good enough for Dana. Like the prom dress you rewear only to discover it can never live up to that original night, the reality of the East End just couldn’t measure up to her memories of it.
“This sucks. The Hamptons have gone so downhill,” Dana complained at one point to the zeros. (Rachel opted not to confess this had been one of the most impressive nights she’d ever had.) “I remember things so differently.”
“Me too! We had the best summer of our lives here,” one of her friends agreed. “Now it feels like everything’s changed.”
As if a testament to exactly how much, Dana jumped down off their table. “I’m going to go call Gregg,” she said, leaving the pumping hip-hop music and thriving party be-hind her.
Also slipping away, on her way to the bathroom, Rachel spotted Craig’s frenzied figure through the crowd. In his usual manner, he was huffing around as if charged with executing something exceedingly important. As she approached him, his rage erupted, like the air from a punctured balloon.
“Why should I put up with this shit?” he bellowed, a rhetorical question Rachel imagined was directed at the guys. “I’ve been running this house for five years, and they think they know better than me?”
Rachel didn’t say anything. Instead, she merely watched as Craig’s eyes flared angrily around the room—as if debating exactly what belligerent move should come next. Then, surprisingly, he gazed at her in a timid, almost vulnerable way she’d have never thought him capable of. “Do you think I was bossy?”
How the Other Half Hamptons Page 23