The High Season(63)

“Where are your people from?”

“My people? I have a cousin in Boca, if that’s what you mean.”

“You look mixed, that’s all. Miami is a cosmopolitan city. South American? Don’t look at me that way, I’m just asking. Come on, help me out here. You’ve got an exotic look. It’s a compliment, okay?”

“Is that what it is?”

“No judgment here,” Daniel said. “Where you’re from has nothing to do with anything. America is about the now. The past is just a path. That’s all.” He drained his cup. “And I need another espresso.” He looked down at his bare feet. “Tell you what. I’ll drive you to work if you’ll hold the espresso cups.”

“My car is here.”

“Don’t worry about your car. I want to see it.”

“You want to see the Belfry.”

He dinged her nose, lightly, with an index finger. “I asked you to stop repeating everything I say.”

    She wanted to smack his hand away. He knew it, and only grinned. “You can tell me about platforms.” He turned and walked away, knowing she’d wait.

Fuck this, she thought. I don’t have to wait.

She waited. He reemerged with two espresso cups. She climbed into his car, a hybrid Porsche (selling at somewhere near one hundred grand, she looked it up, “Daddy brings all the toy cars to the Hamptons,” Lark had said), and balanced the two cups. He would shift, hold out his hand for the cup, as though she were a waitress. Doe retaliated by kicking off her flats and crossing her legs. Her goal was to make him look. He did. So maybe it was sex, then. She did not want to sleep with Lark’s father. There would have been a time when she would have done it, but that time had passed. She liked to think she was getting smarter.

“If I drive up to the Belfry with you in this car people will talk,” she said.

“And do you care?”

“No.” Not true. She’d have to go through a tedious debrief with Catha.

“Good girl.”

She hated his condescension but she wanted his approval, a condition she often found herself in with older men. At Sag Harbor she directed him to the ferry that would take them to Shelter Island, then drove across the island to the ferry that would take them to the North Fork.

“This is a stupid system,” he said. “Incredibly inefficient.”

“Two different ferry companies.”

“So you wait on a line, take a ferry for five minutes, drive across an island, wait again, another five minutes across the water. It takes an hour to get to a place when it should take ten minutes. Insane.”

“That’s the point. Keeps it the way it is.”

“Yeah, well, even hellholes on the planet know about bridges.”

He drove through Greenport, looking at everything.

“What a dump,” he said.

    “We actually like not living in a Madison Avenue facsimile.”

“Hey, I’m not criticizing. I like the country. It has so much room for development.” He grinned at her eye-roll. “No, seriously, this place has what I like. Vineyards. Nice views. When it comes to water, you just need the view, maybe a dock if you’ve got a boat, right? Nobody goes in the ocean in East Hampton. We just look at it. We’re packed with women who don’t want to get their hair wet.”

“That’s so sexist.”

“Darling, all men are sexist. Women, too.”

“Sure. But women being sexist about men is just complaining. Men being sexist about women gets them places.”

“Everybody has an equal shot in this country.”

“Do you really believe that? Didn’t your father finance your first business?”

“Father’s money, a loan from a bank, what’s the difference? I made the rest.” They were driving out of Greenport now, heading toward East Marion. “This is a town? Obviously this place isn’t maximized.”

“I’m telling you, most people don’t want maximized here.”

“Everybody wants to make money. You think these people don’t want their houses to appreciate? They all want to retire to the Carolinas, send their kids to good schools.”

They hit the causeway. “This is a decent view,” he said. “You need a hotel here.”

She pointed to the Belfry ahead, visible from the main road, and he slowed down. “Excellent visibility,” he said. “And up on a rise, like a church. Is it walkable from the village?”

“Easy walk.”

When he pulled into the parking lot, he unbuckled his seatbelt but didn’t move. He looked at the building for a while. “Not bad,” he said. “Good bones. Farm vernacular. I like that. Is that the barn? Potential for sure. Dodge’s show was great, not enough people came.”

Wait. She hadn’t told him about Dodge’s show.

    “Now that the median price is shooting up, the town is changing. Dodge’s show, that one with May Werlin, shows like that—they need an audience. What’s the most expensive house for sale here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Ten million. You know Nate Billows? He just bought it. Hedge fund guy. It’s just starting.”

Things fell into place. “You knew all the answers about the Belfry last night,” Doe said. “You just wanted me to say them in front of Lark.”