How the Other Half Hamptons

by Jasmin Rosemberg

  Rachel thought bossy was an understatement! “Well, yeah,” she admitted quickly. “You were definitely bossier than usual. Like, with the beer bottles, and wanting to go out at ten.”

  She stopped, expecting the expulsion of more hot air. But rather than get defensive, Craig sounded deflated. “Did you know that last week, this guy Parry’s share house got here at eleven, and Star Room was so packed they couldn’t get in? He had to take his entire house to the Foggy Goggle!” He chuckled a bit at the image. “Can you picture your sister at some dive bar?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “And how two weeks ago, these other share house managers, the Zinns, had to rush some girl to the hospital because glass from a beer bottle went into her foot?”

  Um, ow! Rachel shook her head again.

  “This house is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and this weekend, it’s my lawsuit. If you don’t put your foot down, people will walk all over you.” Fiddling with his hands, Craig suddenly paused, his harsh demeanor melting further. And with finally stationary eyes, eyes whose fervor had disappeared, he added, “Mark has it easy—he just rents the house and hires a sucker like me to do all the grunt work. Well, you know what? They like the way Mark runs things so much? They can have him. I’m done.”

  Oddly, as annoying and scary and control-freakish as Craig could sometimes be, Rachel couldn’t seem to picture the house without his colorful presence. And, maybe in light of these new realizations, maybe in light of the sensitivity surprisingly hiding behind his coarse exterior, Rachel now saw Craig for what he really was: a big guy carrying an ever-bigger responsibility on his shoulders, and doing so in the only way he knew how. A way that just didn’t happen to be Mark’s.

  At that moment all Rachel could feel was pity. “Honestly, who cares if you run the house a different way than Mark? I think you’re doing a great job,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t later regret these words. She went one further, now seeing Craig as not just the house outcast but someone who was constantly living in another person’s shadow—something to which Rachel could wholeheartedly relate. “If other people don’t like how you do things, it’s not your problem.”

  Nor, did she realize, was it her problem if her sister wasn’t Aaron’s biggest fan. Besides, all it was at this point was a crush. Thus, even though her sister had paid Aaron as much mind tonight as, say, the cement, Rachel decided to satisfy her curiosity.

  “Okay, so, remember how I told you there’s a guy I like?” she began, when they were all gathered together on the patio, waiting for the group to depart.

  “Yeah?” Despite her moments-ago tiredness, Dana whirled around curiously. “Is he here?”

  Rachel directed her body toward Aaron. “Actually, he’s right there. By that table.”

  Dana followed her gaze and, despite the 2 AM darkness, squinted. “You mean next to that guy Aaron?”

  Rachel clenched the muscles in her stomach. “It sort of is that guy Aaron.”

  Awaiting the punch line that never followed, her sister looked back at her in horror. “Aaron Nash? You can’t mean Aaron Nash!”

  “Well, I already told you, nothing’s happened yet,” Rachel said. “But he’s a really great guy. And I know you two were never friends, but—”

  “Never friends?” Dana pronounced the term like it was suddenly pejorative. “No offense, but he is hands-down the biggest dork I know.”

  Why would Rachel possibly take offense?

  Getting increasingly worked up, her sister continued. “And just so you know, Aaron Nash is not coming to my wedding. So I hope that’s not what you were thinking.”

  Rachel wasn’t, but of course she certainly was now.

  Interrupting the silence, one of the zeros standing next to them conveniently chimed in. “You know, I actually grew up with Aaron—in Livingston, New Jersey.”

  Rachel turned, wondering if the girl might come to her defense. “And?”

  The girl narrowed her eyes. “And he hasn’t existed since the fourth grade.”

  Rachel couldn’t even see how this was possible! But she did see how naive she’d been for thinking anyone would dare defy her sister, who kept going on and on.

  “Rach, just trust me, you can do so much better. Please, for all our sakes!” She peered around frantically. “Not that I blame you—none of the guys here can even hold a candle to Gregg! How about when we get back to the city, I’ll set you up with one of Gregg’s friends...” Dana continued rambling, but Rachel had already stopped listening.

  Was Aaron really not up to par? Was it like those times Rachel tried on a shirt she liked, but Dana convinced her to leave it at the department store, claiming it was nothing special? Just because Aaron wasn’t some carbon copy of Gregg didn’t mean he wasn’t good enough! Rachel was sick of everything in life being measured against Dana’s ideal—she was sick of being measured against Dana herself.

  Her sister’s dismissal of Aaron as not measuring up was perhaps intended to be helpful. It was—though Rachel had yet to determine this for herself—perhaps even accurate. But accurate or well intended, either way, it was just...mean.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Take two rats of the opposite sex, confine them in a box together, and sooner or later they will mate.

  This trapped-in-a-box theory has been used to explain why men and women confined in houses together for shows like The Real World eventually become intimate. Can’t be with the one you love? Simple! Learn to love the one you’re with.

  As the summer drew to an end, Allison thus began to wonder exactly how much of her romance was share-house-stimulated.

  However, her reservations might never have surfaced had it not been for the rain.

  Now, an unpromising forecast from the Internet weather sites (which the group religiously consulted, despite the fact they were frequently incorrect) was nothing new. The response to typing in “Southampton, NY” was invariably a 60 percent chance of precipitation. But by some miracle, in the Hamptons, the sun always seemed to shine.

  Until now.

  Allison knew they were in for a rude awakening that last weekend in August when a thundercloud seemed to have planted itself in Manhattan for two weeks. These perpetual downpours induced the kind of all-encompassing depression that painted the town gray, that zapped your zeal for everything from working out to going out, and that made you forget what the sun even felt like.

  Rain in a share house wasn’t something Allison imagined to be much different. Foreseeing a whole weekend of lying around in sweats, dozing intermittently, downing junk food, and replaying the same movie over and over again until they could recite every word—in short, doing the same “nothing” they usually did, only more of it, and for longer stretches—she was all for staying in the city and cutting their losses.

  But the thing about rain—or rather, the thing about guys and rain—is that they just don’t give a damn.

  Isn’t it just as easy to get hammered and get laid in torrential thunderstorms as it is in brilliant sunshine? they seemed to think. But the truth was, deep down, no one honestly believed it would rain. Rain in the Hamptons seemed about as unlikely as, say, sobriety in the Hamptons. And so, against any reasonable logic, everyone was still expecting to find the Hamptons as sunny and idyllic as ever.

  What they found instead was themselves, trapped in a box.

  And boy, did it get old quick.

  Allison didn’t just feel this way because Brian had yet to arrive (he, Rob, and Dave had made a stop at his house on Long Island). She felt this way because, honestly, there wasn’t a single constructive thing to do.

  Dinner might have been an option, had they not just consumed half of 7-Eleven (with junk-food wrappers littering each countertop to prove it). Going out might have been a second one, were the girls willing to wear T-shirts and flip-flops to someplace like Surf Club and just “slum it” (a phrase Jamie claimed she’d never before even heard). And the movie idea had actually gone over quite well—until they called
Southampton’s sole theater to reserve a block of seats. Apparently some drunken driver had plowed into it the night before, forcing them to shut the entire place down.

  Only in the Hamptons, kids. Only in the Hamptons.

  Fortunately, just as the normally productive lawyers and bankers and movers and shakers were lying around in boredom, it was Brian, Dave, and Rob (and their endless stream of shopping bags) to the rescue.

  Allison realized something right then: An unmarried thirtysomething man with a senior-rank salary and a teenage mentality is a dangerous thing. Or—maybe that was unfair. The unmarried thirtysomething men with senior-rank salaries and teenage mentalities residing at 1088 Montauk were dangerous things. For, having finally earned their place in the sun, rather than contribute their impressive incomes toward the typical priorities of their same-age counterparts (such as graduate school, real estate, or racking up interest for future families), the guys in the share house discovered a much more practical place to invest their paychecks: KB Toys.

  And—as with most of their profligate splurges—when it rained, it poured.

  “You guys are insane!” numerous girls cried out, but they gathered around and observed the spectacle anyway.

  Unloading bag after bag bearing the toy-store emblem, the guys confessed to making a “minor” (read: thousand-dollar) pit stop, and, well, time flies when you’re playing with toys. Watching them pull out everything from childhood board games to talking stuffed animals, Allison could vividly picture the trio running around the toy store like children. It was the kind of thing that was so utterly juvenile, you couldn’t not smile. Which was sort of how Allison thought of Brian himself. Though when they afterward arranged a group tournament in a charades-type game called Gestures (doubly entertaining when accompanied by alcohol), Allison had to applaud the guys’ efforts to think outside the box.

  But the game proved harder than it looked, and gesture-ability was apparently not one of Dave’s strong suits. So after describing at least three different clues by flapping his arms wildly with the same bird-like motion and being officially declared worst player of the bunch, he rose indignantly to his feet and resigned from Gestures.

  Then, ironically, using nothing but gestures, he opened up a Connect Four game and jerked his head invitingly toward Turtle Girl—perched on the couch arm only inches from him. Because she wasn’t participating in the game, either (which was just as well, for Allison feared someone would yell Turtle? the moment she stood up to enact a clue), she turned to face him. And with still no verbal exchange whatsoever, the two began silently placing chips into the plastic yellow game board.

  Allison was surprised to discover herself a decently good Gestures player (due to her fear of public forums, she was also perhaps taking the game more seriously than most). Though as the alcohol took effect, both the guessing and the gesturing grew that much more ridiculous. Ridiculous, and sexual.

  But oddly, as X-rated as the Gestures game quickly became, the playful innuendos thrown about were no match for the bona fide sexual tension mounting across the Connect Four board. Allison wasn’t exactly sure how or when this came about, but judging from their hungry looks, each chip dropped seemed to be about a whole lot more than simply winning a game. Maybe it was because Dave and Turtle Girl had clearly reached the state of drunkenness (was that his ninth beer he was pounding? No, it had to be his tenth!). Maybe it was because they’d secretly harbored feelings for each other all along (doubtful!). Or maybe (and this was what Allison’s money was on) it was merely the product of two people with raging hormones sitting conveniently across from each other. Brushing each other’s hands. Trapped inside a box.

  Watching her flirty, forthright motions, his propositioning glare, the color rushing helplessly to her (turtle-like) face, Allison could feel the moment happening. The moment you knew—in the pit of your stomach, you just knew—things were going to happen.

  And sure enough, they did. One minute the two of them were sitting there thrusting black and red circular chips into empty spaces, and the next the spaces they’d been occupying themselves were suspiciously empty. It was a logical move on the part of Dave—surely uneager to broadcast the fact that he was hooking up with the girl whose resemblance to a reptile was something of a house joke. Earlier in the summer (back before she’d learned the share house mantra, Ugly ass trumps no ass), Allison might have been surprised by his lack of discretion. But now the only thing that surprised her about this particular scenario was the guys’ cruel reaction to it. The guys’ cruelty, in general.

  Following Rob’s head as he belatedly registered the couple’s disappearance, Allison knew he was about to make this discovery public. Especially since Turtle Girl’s friends weren’t present to defend her. And so, grabbing the talking stuffed parrot they’d just purchased, he spoke into it in his best cartoon voice, “I’m a tuuurtle!”

  Recording his sentence, the animal chirped back, “I’m a tuuurtle!”

  Again. And again.

  And in response to this infantile stunt, the entire room erupted with sudden laughter—Brian’s louder than anyone else’s. But beneath her forced smile, Allison felt as if she’d been laughing at these immature stunts for too long.

  Still, these reservations might never have surfaced had it not been for the rain.

  When the storm showed no signs of letting up, the guys retreated to the kitchen for a single-sex game of poker, adopting such brutal concentration that even a Playboy model wouldn’t have distracted them.

  Left downstairs in the face of this isolation, Allison’s friends joined in the assembling Twister game. But having already worked up the nerve to participate in one thirty-person group activity, she felt safe in concluding she’d done her part to be social. Thus, positioning herself on the circle’s outskirts to (at least pretend to) watch the game, she also realized herself the kind of drunk where you’re strangely contented just sitting and staring.

  Which was probably why she was so startled when Steve broke her intoxicated trance. He did so with a tap on her shoulder that was so light, she wondered if she had imagined it even as she turned around.

  Though she had to admit, she was pleased she hadn’t.

  “Want to play?” he asked, holding out a deck of cards, then flipping them around in some elaborate shuffling move.

  “Sure,” she said, mostly because she was flattered he’d asked. “What game?”

  He stared at her intently for a moment, as if she hadn’t been speaking English (or maybe she had something stuck on her face?). Then he suddenly snapped into comprehension, the way you do when you’re caught staring at someone on the subway, and smiled faintly. “Your call.”

  Of course, under the hasty pressure of being asked, Allison instantly forgot every card game she ever knew. Then, in a move that was surprisingly bold for her (her default response was typically Whatever you want), she sat up on her knees and recalled her favorite childhood card game. “Spit?”

  Just as she was wondering if guys even played Spit, he grinned. “I have to warn you, I’m a kick-ass Spit player.”

  She smiled gratefully (if only because he actually knew the game). “You’re on.”

  As it turned out, Steve really was a kick-ass Spit player. They played three times, and he beat her easily every one. Embarrassed, Allison suspected the fact that she was drunk wasn’t helping matters. Though as she watched his hands flying and his mind turning (an unfamiliar observer with nothing else to go by might have deemed Spit a match of wits), Allison imagined Steve probably brought an intelligent approach to most things.

  What Brian brought, on the other hand, was the complete opposite.

  In the midst of their second session (well, Allison’s second ass whupping), he reappeared from his poker game looking far from thrilled with Steve—and more than satiated with Patrón. Kneeling beside Allison, he began massaging her shoulders territorially.

  We’re playing Spit, not swapping Spit! she wanted to say. But before she could open
that Pandora’s box, they were doused with a shower of poker chips.

  “Ass!” Brian yelled at Rob’s sprinting back.

  Then, grabbing a handful of chips from the Connect Four game, Brian darted off after him.

  Finding themselves alone again, Allison and Steve exchanged a glance, tacitly scolding such childish behavior. She immediately felt guilty. However, there was no denying that Brian was far too immature for her—that this immaturity had plagued their relationship from Day One, back when he’d called dibs on her at DIP like love was some kind of schoolyard game. By knowing this and staying with him, all she was doing was allowing herself to remain trapped.

  Still, after all the games had finished (or so Allison had then believed), she passed out next to Brian in his room as she usually did. She wasn’t at first sure what woke her up again. But it didn’t take long to figure it out.

  Judging from the light coming through the window, it was definitely five or six in the morning. And judging from the sound in the room, Dave and Turtle Girl were definitely having sex. Loudly. Uninhibitedly. In the bed directly next to her. But this wasn’t even the shocking part.

  When she glanced to her left, she was surprised to discover that Brian was also awake.

  Not just awake, but lucid, captivated, and reaching for his cell phone.

  Watching him unplug it from the nightstand, she held her breath, hoping he wasn’t about to do the thing she was dreading he would. As if she could stop him, she honestly held it tight.

  But he nevertheless flipped it open and, using the video feature, began to record the action.

  Turtle Girl was on top, facing down, and for this reason wasn’t the wiser. But when Dave discovered he was in the spotlight (and his sexual escapades would later be subject to share-house-wide scrutiny), he did the only thing an unmarried thirty-year-old guy with a teenage mentality could do.