Golden Girl(32)

“I can’t eat.”

Rip holds his wife’s hand. “Do you want to leave?” he asks. “We can go home and you can lie down in the air-conditioning.”

“I need to make sure Carson and Leo are okay,” Willa says.



Marshall the bartender notes that Carson Quinboro is on her fifth Tom Collins. He knows that Carson is slinging drinks at the Oystercatcher and he tries to strike up a conversation with her about the business, but she shuts him down, and he can’t really blame her. Her mother just died. She thrusts the glass in his face and says, “Stronger, please, bruh.” Marshall believes a Tom Collins should be light to medium strength; it’s supposed to be refreshing enough that you can drink several of them over the course of an afternoon and not get drunk. But the customer is always right. He hands her a cocktail that’s practically all gin.

Carson avoids her father, avoids her grandmother and Penny, avoids Leo, avoids Dennis. She uses Savannah as a touchstone, checking in, then spiraling out. After cocktail number four, she heads to the water and pulls out her cell phone and her vape pen. She starts sending off a string of texts and takes a few quick puffs off her Juul, but before she can even exhale, the assistant GM is striding across the lawn toward her.

She tucks both her phone and her Juul into her mother’s clutch and leans over to unbuckle her mother’s Louboutins. She has done a fine job of aerating the club’s lawn with the stilettos. She smirks at the assistant GM, and when he opens his mouth to remind her that bare feet, cell phones, and vaping are not allowed on club premises, she discreetly flips him off. Although this is unbecoming behavior, it’s the assistant GM who feels he’s made a faux pas. The young woman has, after all, just lost her mother.



Leo Quinboro is still in his blazer despite the sweltering heat and despite the fact that the ranking member—former commodore Chas Bonham—has taken his jacket off. Like his sister Willa, Leo has always followed the rules.

Leo’s school friends Christopher and Mitch pull him aside to ask if it’s true that Cruz was the one who hit Vivi.

“That’s what Marissa said.” This from Mitch.

“Yeah,” Christopher says. “Alexis told her that one of the officers saw Cruz blow through a stop sign and take off speeding a few minutes before your mom was hit.”

“Marissa should keep her mouth shut,” Leo says, and Christopher figures the rumors he’s heard about Leo and Marissa breaking up are true, even though they were voted Cutest Couple in the senior-class superlatives. Marissa was at the service, but she sat with her mom and Alexis, and she’s not here at the reception.

Even stranger, Christopher thinks, is that Cruz isn’t here, though Mitch said he saw Cruz at the church, standing in the back. Joe DeSantis isn’t here either. Christopher wonders if they aren’t comfortable at the club—it’s not exactly a diverse place; every single person here is white—or if there’s more to it. Was Cruz DeSantis the one to hit Vivian Howe? The rumor about him running the stop sign and speeding is pretty damning, and Christopher can’t think of any other reason why Cruz would not show up for Leo. His absence is…conspicuous.



As with any party where alcohol and heavy emotions mix, things eventually come to a head. None of us has really been paying attention to Dennis Letty, Vivi’s former boyfriend, but he has been circling JP Quinboro like a shark. Unlike Leo, Dennis shed his jacket long ago (before Chas Bonham removed his, a few of us noticed) and loosened his tie, and he’s sweated through his white dress shirt. We can’t say we’re surprised. When he’s drinking bourbon like he is today, Dennis can be a bit of a wild card. Does anyone remember Willa and Rip’s wedding?

Dennis steps right up to JP; he’s a few inches shorter but he has at least forty pounds on JP. “I hope you know, you broke Vivi’s heart. You had a good thing and you wrecked it.”

JP nods thoughtfully. “What happened between Vivi and me is none of your business, Dennis. You should probably think about heading home. I can call you a cab if you like.”

“If I like?” Dennis says. He might not have grown up on Hulbert Avenue, he might not know a sloop from a cutter, but he knows when he’s being talked down to and he also knows that over the past three years, Vivi forked over half a million dollars of her hard-earned money to this clown. JP can act like Richie Rich—all well-bred and knowing which fork to use and his loafers-without-socks and his Wayfarers perched in his Kennedy-thick hair—but the fact is, JP Quinboro is unfamiliar with an honest day’s work.

Dennis had tried to persuade Vivi to drag JP back to court just on principle—it wasn’t right that the guy cheated on her and she was paying him—but Vivi said she was too busy with deadlines and that a prolonged court battle would be too distracting.

“I know you’re standing up for me,” Vivi said. “And I love you for it, but that crusade ended long ago. It’s over, Denny. Let it be.”

The thing is, JP wasn’t even grateful. He acted like the money was his due.

Dennis pulls his arm back and, without warning, punches JP in the jaw just as he’s bringing his Mount Gay and tonic to his mouth, so the glass goes flying and smashes against the brick walk. JP is taken by surprise, and Dennis has such a long history of bar fighting that he crosses with his left and hits JP in the nose. There’s blood everywhere.