The High Season(25)
When she had to leave Miami, she needed to go far and fast. She took off with a surfer boyfriend to the Hamptons. He left for Costa Rica but she stayed, broke and freezing in Montauk in November. She walked the streets of East Hampton, took a look at the houses, some visible now, behind the wind-burned twenty-foot hedges. She saw a place to launch herself again. She found her way to the cheaper apartments on the North Fork and lucked into Tim and Kim’s garage apartment.
Turned out she liked it here. She liked the quiet cold winters and the summers of opportunity. She had come to ground, she was digging in for a while, catching her breath and making plans. She invented a prep school past and a degree from Reed College—elite, but small and far away enough that she most likely wouldn’t run into any alumni—and talked herself into a part-time job at the Belfry. She knew after ten minutes that Ruthie would check her references but not her degree.
When she first got to the North Fork she spent most of her time on tedious ferry rides to the Hamptons. She cultivated tipsters because she knew how to find them, just by hanging at bars in the off-season, making friends, and sleeping around: a manicurist, a waiter for the biggest society caterer, a dog walker, a party planner, some willing to part with information. If she read the local rags and tabloids and stayed alert, she could get lucky at least a few times a weekend with a good shot. There were so many outlets now on the Web, most not offering much, but seekrit-hamptons kept doubling and tripling followers.
She folded up the bike and stashed it, pushing it into a thick hedge. Then she took the usual route to get to the beach, racing across a lawn and gardens of a house that she’d heard was tied up in some sort of litigation. No security and no one was ever there. In minutes she was off down the beach, swinging her sandals. She’d learned how to walk like she belonged.
Nobody ever noticed her in the Hamptons. There were legions of tall blondes to ogle. She was small and could be mistaken for a twelve-year-old if you didn’t look very hard, and people at these parties rarely did.
There would be security guys, but you could always count on a few people leaving the party to drink on the beach. That’s why she always arrived late. The house was behind the dunes, blindingly white with enormous squares of glass. She could glimpse the serene flat plane of the pool in the middle of green grass. The patio was crowded, and people had spilled out onto the lawn. Some people had already walked down onto the beach, but she could see the muscular boys in white pants and tight white Lacoste shirts keeping an eye out.
She stopped to take a wineglass out of her purse. She swung it by its stem and walked toward the people on the beach. When she was a few yards away she waved.
A small clot of young people turned to look at her as she strode toward them.
“Hey, great party,” she said, ignoring the eye-roll of one of the girls, clearly not happy at being interrupted. “I came out here with Spencer and I lost my earring! Can you believe it?”
“It happens,” one of the blondes said. She turned her back on Doe.
But the gym rat security boys had seen her talking to the group by now, so she stepped back and trilled, “See you up there!”
She climbed up the steps to the patio. A long bench had been set up with a galvanized steel trench full of ice in which pitchers of water and lemon were continually replenished. For feet. She poured the cool water on her feet and an attendant handed her a fluffy white hand towel. Doe dried her toes and slipped back into her sandals. After that Sultan-of-Brunei-ish operation, she simply walked into the party.
She picked a virgin mojito off a tray and wandered across the lawn, scanning for celebs. It never failed to amaze her how uniformly fit and good-looking the people at these parties were. Good genes plus good doctors. Ugly men made sure to marry beautiful women, and their daughters turned out fine. Orthodontia and Botox, a twice-weekly hair appointment, clothes tailored to your body. They owned the world, and they looked that way. Sometimes she took the Long Island Rail Road to the city, and in just the walk from the train track to the subway in Penn Station she saw a variety of features—misshapen noses, shades of skin, moles, crooked teeth—that marked plainness or ugliness or hotness, didn’t matter, but it added up to something coarse and alive. Maybe that was why she had to work so hard to navigate this pretty world—there were no obvious physical clues. Character had been smoothed out. The codes were all word choices and accessories.
The gigantic white house rising next to her looked barely tethered and ready to sail. A wall of glass faced her, and a cloud moved behind the sun. She could just see inside. In an almost empty room, a man sat with his back to her, cross-legged on a white leather bench. He wore a sweatshirt with the hood up. Now that she’d noticed him she couldn’t look at anything else.
“You’re blocking my view.”
Doe turned. A tall, bony girl a little older than she was stood looking at her. The sun was behind her, sparking her blond highlights. Doe recognized her immediately. Lark Mantis, Daniel’s daughter. Pretty, not beautiful, but dude, those legs. That style.
“Sorry.” Doe didn’t move out of the way.
“His hood is up,” Lark said. She gestured with a hand holding her cocktail glass. The other hand held a silver flask.
“Yeah.”
“When the hood is up, no one can interrupt him. It’s his Bat-Signal.”
“So why does he sit where everyone can see him?”