Beach Wedding(11)

I tore my eyes off it just long enough to follow Nick in the van into a huge parking area they’d roped off on the perfect grass to the south of the house. We drove into the lot’s corner beside the 18-wheeler where a half dozen huge white tents and a dozen portable generators and porta-potties were arranged in a semicircle on a Central Park Sheep Meadow–sized lawn facing the ocean.

As we were disembarking, another massive security guy in Armani appeared and told Nick to set up in the tent closest to the parking lot. My eyes went wide yet again as we arrived and saw that there was a bar inside of it, an actual real pinewood bar with red leather trim and beer taps and a varnished bar top that was about the length of a bowling alley.

There was a second bar tent adjacent to ours where another crew was setting up.

“Wait here,” Nick said as he went over to talk to them.

When Nick came back, we started bringing in the boxes from the parking lot. I noticed for the first time that most of them were filled with the same thing, something called Charles Heidsieck Rosé.

“Hey, is this stuff any good?” I asked Nick as I bumped four cases of it on a hand truck over the grass.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Nick said.

“How much per bottle?” I said.

“Oh, about seventy-five bucks.”

“Seventy-five bucks a bottle! What? That means—”

“Nine hundred bucks a box,” Nick said.

“Wait,” I said, immediately slowing down. “How many boxes all together?”

“Thirty-three,” Nick said.

“No way! We’ve just delivered like thirty grand in champagne?”

Nick laughed at me.

“Welcome to the bigs, high school,” he said.

As we started breaking out the boxes of pink champagne and stacking them in some coolers below the bar, I began to see what the 18-wheeler was all about.

Some scraggly long-haired white guys had arrived from somewhere, and they were taking scaffolding and equipment out of the back of it. In a few minutes, they got a huge tower of a speaker set up, and they started testing one-two-three on it.

“What’s up with the roadies?” I said over to Nick, who was lining up champagne glasses on the bar top. “There’s going to be a concert or something?”

“What do you think happens on Meadow Lane? Hot dogs and six-packs? Get with it,” Nick said.

“Do you know who’s going to be playing? Someone big?”

Nick made a shushing gesture.

“Silence, kid. The universe awaits you,” he said.



14

By the time we unpacked all the boxes, the huge stage was set up, and the roadies were dropping bass lines so loud it made the glasses chime. After we got the kegs clicked into place beneath the bar, Nick showed me how to open a champagne bottle without taking people’s eyes out and how to pour with a little twist on the end to minimize the spillage.

When I looked up from my lesson, I saw some movement on the stage and watched as the roadies set up some huge swings beside the massive speakers. A couple of minutes later, some girls showed up, good-looking blonde girls in jeans and T-shirts, who sat and stood on the swings like they were testing them.

“You should be paying me for this,” Nick said, watching my eyes, which had grown to the size of bread plates.

The guests started arriving around six. I looked out as down the slope rolled shining BMWs and Mercedes and Range Rovers. It looked like a car show was about to start.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said to Nick as three Ferraris glided down the slope, one red, one white, one blue.

“It’s the Fourth of July, dude,” Nick said, smiling. “Have to be patriotic.”

The people exiting the cars looked pretty incredible, as well. Out of the shining luxury vehicles stepped tall and serene beautiful people with glowing tans and perfect hair and hard white perfect smiles.

Nick and I stood there watching.

“See, that’s the famous director Tony Milo,” Nick said as the owners of the globe stopped to air-kiss each other in the golden light of the setting sun.

“And that’s his wife, the supermodel Bixenta. There’s the gazillionaire investment banker Karl Anselm. And Jeremy Creeve, the abstract impressionist from his studio in Montauk with his little buddy. And next to him is the writer Xavier Kelsey.”

“No way! Kelsey?” I said, looking at the bow tie–wearing dandy who’d recently won the Pulitzer. “I just read his book, dude. Red Diamonds. He’s the best true-crime writer there is.”

“He’s the best all right.”

“What, you read Red Diamonds, too?”

“Shit, no,” Nick said. “I see him at all these parties. He’s a lush, and he tips like crazy.”

“Where’s the man of the hour? Noah and his hot wife? What’s her name?”

“Hailey. I don’t see them yet. But don’t worry. They’ll be around.”



15

There was no more time for chitchat or celebrity-spotting as the beautiful crowd converged upon us. Once the tent filled, the pink champagne bottles I’d already opened began to disappear about as quickly as their nose-tickling bubbles.

Nick was a pouring machine, but we almost immediately started getting backed up. After about half an hour of doing nothing but opening bottles, I looked up and saw we were still four-deep at the bar as more and more luxury vehicles just kept coming down the now darkening slope from Meadow Lane.