Pineapple Street(54)
“Finally,” the man to her right grinned hugely, sticking out his hand, “I get to meet Cord’s better half.”
“Oh, hello.” Sasha laughed uncertainly. It always struck her as sort of funny when a man described a woman as his “better half.” It was said in a joking way, in the same way they might say, “My wife is the boss,” and you knew they didn’t really mean it. The phrase somehow inherently raised the prospect of status in a marriage: one half was better, one half was worse. Sasha knew that to most of Cord’s family he was unequivocally the better half.
“I was so sorry to miss your wedding,” the man continued. He was slightly older than Cord, but had his same exact nose, and Sasha found herself staring at it, hypnotized as he spoke. “I wanted to come, but my wife was nine months pregnant with our fourth and I was too afraid of missing the big moment.”
“Oh, so you have a new baby! Congratulations.” Sasha smiled.
“Thank you. It’s a hole-punch thing like at the coffee shop—tenth one free, so I’m almost halfway there.”
“Noah, stop flirting with my wife,” Cord said, leaning over.
“Cord, stop interrupting me while I flirt.” The man waved Cord away. “Sasha, I hear you’re an entrepreneur and you started your own business. Tell me about it.”
Sasha rarely thought of herself as an entrepreneur, but it was true that she worked for herself. After she graduated from art school she took as job as a designer at a boutique media agency. She designed book jackets and advertisements, corporate annual reports and catalogs. After moving up the ranks at the agency she set up her own design firm, realizing she could earn more money and focus on the kinds of projects she enjoyed, looking at a brand as a whole, coming up with an entire look and visual story. She leased a small office down in Dumbo where she kept a computer and where she could send and receive packages, and at thirty-five she was making more money than either of her parents ever had. She was, by her own definition, a success.
It wasn’t the sort of success that meant much to other people. Her parents and her brothers knew she ran her own business, knew she did design work for brands they had heard of—the Transit Museum, Brooklinen, Sixpoint Brewery, the New York Philharmonic—but her work was abstract enough that nobody wanted to really spend time talking about it. Her in-laws were perhaps even less impressed, if that were possible. Sometimes it seemed that everyone in their orbit worked in finance, law, or real estate, and any field beyond that was irrelevant or possibly déclassé. Sure, Sasha wanted to be an artist. Yes, she would rather spend her days drawing and painting. But she had her drink and draw sessions and meanwhile had found a way to fold art into her life, to use her talents to make money.
It turned out that Cord’s cousin was an avid art collector, that he knew one of her professors at Cooper Union, and that he was actually really fascinated to hear about the way she took her classical training and used it to create brand identities. They talked about their favorite photographers, their favorite Chelsea galleries, and he so completely charmed her that the entire dinner passed in a happy blur of easy conversation.
After dinner there was dancing, and Sasha found herself gamely following Cord out to the floor. It seemed to her that all the men in his family were so scarred by the ballroom dance classes they had been forced into as adolescents that none of them ever learned to dance like normal people, and just hid by the bar drinking at all the weddings. Cord was the exception to the rule: never one to miss the opportunity to look like a jackass, he dragged her around, dipping her theatrically and pretending to bury his face in her breasts while she laughed and acted like she was using his tie as a leash. Out of the corner of her eye Sasha saw Darley dancing with Malcolm and even Chip and Tilda making a brief appearance for a song by the Beatles.
When the cake was cut the older guests began to make their exits in a flurry of kisses and drunken embraces. The band finished and the younger cousins drifted out of the tent and into the club, where the bar was still open, and the caterers brought out trays of small hamburgers and cones of fries. Georgiana was curled up on a leather couch, her shoes long abandoned, with her cousin Bubbles splayed out inelegantly next to her. Darley and Malcolm joined them, looking flushed and happy. Malcolm had taken off his tie and stuffed it into the pocket of his suit jacket.
Archie and his new wife came in to cheers and hollers, and soon he started telling everyone his favorite story about the house on Spyglass Lane. Sasha had heard the story half a dozen times, but it never got old. Archie and his wife had been on vacation in Telluride and after a long day skiing they had some wine and decided to watch a porn in the hotel room. Five minutes into the thing, Archie realized why everything looked so familiar: the actors were having sex on the chaise longue on Spyglass Lane. It was unmistakably the Stockton home—you could see the hedge maze and the tennis courts in the background. Archie highly doubted Uncle Chip and Auntie Tilda had been so short on cash that they had started renting the place out to filmmakers, so he called up Cord to tell him. This put Cord in the wildly awkward position of having to tell his parents that their country house was featured in a porn and no, he hadn’t seen it, but he knew someone who had, and they probably needed to call their lawyer.
It turned out the weekday landscapers had been using various vacation homes for years without getting caught, but you had to wonder how many people had seen the movies and been too embarrassed to ever try to solve the mystery. Tilda had the caretaker chuck the chaise longues at the transfer station, bought new ones with nicer cushions, had the place deep cleaned, and dumped enough chemicals in the pool to kill chlamydia and any neighboring wildlife.