It Happens in the Hamptons Read online

  “Our camp is literally the only area where locals and city people hang together, having fun in the same waves. I’m gonna hit Jake with that too, get him all amped on chilling with us.”

  The door opened.

  “Yes?” The housekeeper Edviane glared. She didn’t work hard to clean this house for guests who presented themselves like this.

  “Kona and Luke?” Kona said. “Uh, Jake invited us . . . he asked us . . . to come?”

  She reluctantly led them into the entry hall, a glassed-in cavern. The dark mahogany floor lay largely barren except for a small field of Takashi Murakami mushroom stools, about a dozen of them, two feet high, painted in psychedelic, swirly colors.

  Kona muttered to Luke under his breath, “Is that an area where little kids are supposed to play, or we wait here and sit on these mushrooms? Or, are they art they bought to make the house look cool?”

  “No idea.”

  “You can say what you want about Jake Chase and call him an out-for-himself poser, but his house is kind of dope,” Kona said to Luke as he knelt to sit on the nearest mushroom. He decided against it once Edviane shook her head at him as if he’d put his elbows on the dining table with the queen. She asked them to take two steps into the living room, then left them standing alone.

  After they’d waited many more minutes than was comfortable, Luke asked, “You sure these clothes are okay? I don’t want to have another problem.” They had managed to throw on some T-shirts they found mildewing in the back cab area of Luke’s Ford F-250 van for a decade or so.

  “Fuck these people,” said Kona. “We surf, we drive boats. It’s 1:00 p.m. on a workday, we got afternoon privates. They can get us as we are. We gotta talk to Jake, we gotta look authentic. And Julia is so horny, she’ll take me in anything I wear.”

  On the entry walls, they stared at two eight-by-ten foot Marilyn Minter photographs: huge shiny, red sparkly lips dripping with liquid that, though golden in color, clearly signified recently ejaculated semen.

  “Those lips are hot, but strange what too much money can buy and even stranger what parents are willing to put in a house with kids,” whispered Luke back at Kona.

  Beside them, Lucite floating stairs led to the second floor where presumably the family slept. The blinding noonday sun poured through skylights, making it impossible for the curious men to decipher the upstairs layout. The entryway opened upon a two-level living room that looked like a spectacular greenhouse. Out the ceiling-length windows that encased the room, they could see a black infinity pool lined with five modern sun beds on each side. Beyond that, stretches of Long Island sea grass, and ultimately, the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

  The white living room couches were centered with a tennis court amount of space between the furniture and walls, an architectural study in scarcity and geometric precision. In the middle, a liquid glacial table by Zaha Hadid slanted and curved every which way, not the most useful coffee table to place a drink on.

  “Check out this shark. Super freaky,” said Luke, motioning to a life-size shark floating in formaldehyde in a large rectangular vitrine. “You think someone caught this? Or is this a fake?”

  “No idea.”

  “Let’s Google it,” said Kona, who grabbed his cracked phone out of his surf trunks. After one minute trying to decipher words through the humidity that had seeped through when he’d dropped it last summer, he declared, “Sold once for eight million dollars more than ten years ago. Damien Hirst made it. I’ve heard of him. I think. Another site says it was twelve mill.”

  “We could make one,” said Luke. “We get Kenny to get his shark fishing buddies out at 4:00 a.m., we get my dad’s friends to make the case. We buy tubs of formaldehyde from the same place my school gets it for the biology department.” He studied its dorsal fin. “It’s actually a tiger shark, genus Galeocerdo.”

  “Quit it with the boring teacher bullshit. Who cares what kind of shark we get? Let’s just do this.”

  Luke peered in. “It’s known as the Sea Tiger, a relatively large macro-predator . . . found in subtropical waters.”

  “I say, we catch a Mako off Montauk. This weekend, 4:00 a.m. like you said. We’d just have to be gentle with the tackle so we didn’t destroy the mouth; that would decrease the price,” Kona surmised, looking through the glass on the opposite side. “These people are nuts. And their kids surf. Doesn’t this give them nightmares about Jaws?” Luke softly touched the glass with the tips of his fingers.

  “What on earth?” A forty-something butler with very short, neat, gelled-back hair walked in. Like every member of the daytime staff, he had the Chase estate emblem “Pine Manor” stitched on his chest, and Italian Superga white sneakers on his feet with navy laces. “Sir, it’s not a toy, it’s extremely valuable.”

  “I was just looking . . .”

  “It’s a very expensive work of art. No touching.” The employee wagged his finger and walked out of the room.

  On the right wall, words painted onto a canvas with stenciled huge block letters read,

  IFYOUCANTTAKEAJOKEGETTHEFUCKOUTOFMYHOUSE

  And then another that read,

  FOOL

  “Are we the fools for looking at it, or is the artist the fool for painting it? I don’t even care how much that costs,” said Kona, pointing to the words, defeated by all the money around him. He was aiming to earn thirty grand after tax in a whole summer of twelve-hour days in rough surf. “I do know, though, I could paint that in an hour.”

  “I could order stencils from the school system and say it was for . . .” Luke offered, considering the possibilities for an easier way to earn an income.

  Kona cut him off. “How about, YOUARERICHBUTYOURDICKISLITTLE?”

  The Chase décor had the intimacy of an airline hangar, and differed in every way from the shag carpet and corduroy-covered, mismatched couches filling the small houses they grew up in. “On one hand, I kind of like it,” said Luke. “On the other hand, the fact that a real family lives in here is so weird.”

  “‘Real’ family is not entirely accurate,” Kona answered.

  “Well, real enough,” said Luke. “When exactly are you going to bring up the summons, the notice to appear, the bay constable after us, Bucky and the pole so far up his ass it’s coming out of his mouth? Don’t do it too early, or he’s going to think that’s the only reason we came. We planned you start, say like a quarter of the way through, and you mention Jake’s high property taxes, right? Get him a little fired up on how he’s got power he doesn’t even realize. He’ll like hearing that, he’ll be into saving camp.”

  Edviane walked by and said without stopping, “I told Mr. and Mrs. Chase you were here, but they didn’t come down. Maybe later.”

  With that ringing endorsement of their social heft, Edviane left them stranded there and returned to the kitchen. The door swung open behind her, revealing a colossal kitchen lined with stainless steel appliances and an army of identically dressed Brazilians.

  On the pool deck out front, twenty-year-old Evan Chase, shirtless and wearing Orlebar Brown $275 swim trunks he’d bought in a cliffside boutique in Capri last summer, made the enormous effort to lumber to his elbows to see who had arrived. When he saw the leeches from the local water sports camp stranded in the living room, he plugged his headphones back in, Enrique Iglesias blaring, and turned his sweaty face back at the blazing sun. Betsy, the Chase bulldog, jumped into the lounger and snuggled next to him.

  Evan considered cooling himself down in the pool. All of the natural elements—sand, salt water, even wind—didn’t work for his refined composition. The few times he did step into his family’s pool over the summer, he swam breaststroke with his head above water like an elderly lady protecting her fragile coiffure.

  “This is fucking whack,” Luke yelled in a tense whisper, his neck muscles constricting. “It’s been ten minutes. We can call Jake later after lessons. That Evan out there knows we’re here, he saw us. He doesn’t come see what up. He’s
got those Beats by Dre headphones I want, he’s probably listening to Pit Bull.”

  “You’re forgetting,” said Kona. “He’s got a vagina and it’s gotta be Adele.”

  “Maybe Jake doesn’t remember he invited us,” Luke said. “Or maybe he’s just banging Julia now in one of her ten closets.”

  “This is the way rich people run shit: the butler announces you and you sit your ass and wait on a fucking mushroom field,” Kona explained as if he were an old hand at seaside luncheons. “We’re not going anywhere, this is too important.” Kona was always hungrier—with women, with access to a scene he wasn’t part of—and thus, more willing than Luke to power through moments of humiliation like this.

  “Yooooooo!” Jake yelled from the top of the staircase, as he eagerly ran down to them. “Dudes! I was on a call, shit’s hitting the fan with this deal I’m sunk into like quicksand. It’s like 2007 all over again today. What the fuck, you guys want a brew or what?”

  “Just a Coke, no problem . . .” Kona answered as if they’d just then strolled in.

  Jake blew past the guys and out to the pool deck where he threw his hands in the air and yelled to no one in particular, “What the hell?” Next, he roared back into his house and pushed open the swinging kitchen door, yelling at the servants, “Hello? Lunch? Edviane? Claudio? Why isn’t the table set outside? Where’s the goddamn food? I’m hungry, we got guests out there . . .”

  “No, no, sir,” a man’s voice answered. “Mrs. Chase told us you were having lunch at the golf club today.”

  “But I don’t want to go out anymore!”

  There was more muffled screaming from the kitchen that the guys couldn’t quite make out. It wasn’t quite Amnesty International level labor abuse, but it sounded close. Jake swung open the door with the chef Claudio trailing behind him.

  “Well, then, Mr. Chase, we have food here . . . certainly we can whip up . . .”

  “Sorry, Claudio. My temper got to me,” Jake apologized. Claudio nodded with exquisite calm, used to these tirades. Jake was the third self-made C.E.O. he’d worked for in his thirty-year career as a chef. “The guys will have, what . . . hey, dudes, what do you want? Anything. Lobster salad rolls? Crab cakes? Prosciutto paninis? Oysters?”

  “Uh,” Luke answered. “Anything, cheeseburger, B.L.T., whatever . . .”

  Jake cut him off. “Well, I’m having a quail egg sandwich on brioche bread. It’s really tasty when they toast it with truffle butter.”

  “Never honestly ate a quail egg and I’ve got wakeboard lessons this afternoon, so just anything to fill us up. We kind of wanted to talk to you today about a legal problem.”

  “Claudio, grill him one of those wagyu beef burgers you got from Japan, but also make a quail egg sandwich on the side . . . Kona, what’ll it be?” the tone-deaf titan asked, profoundly in love with his own generosity, conjecturing how great it must be for these local guys on the receiving side. It would make them like him better to see all his success in the flesh, to experience a piece of it today. “Lobster roll? I mean, trust me, they’re great. I’m talking a fuckin’ stuffed with way too much lobster meat roll. I know you never had one like this. Let me . . .”

  Little did the guys know the Loaves and Fishes lobster salad cost one hundred dollars a pound, and untold articles in the Hampton and Manhattan society media had already commented on this outrageous Hampton offering. (The moment Jake read the clamor about the cost, he’d instructed Claudio to keep the fridge stocked with it and to offer it to every guest.) The guys were also not aware that it had taken the kitchen staff two hours to boil and peel the grape-sized quail eggs for the egg salad sandwiches that Luke would soon gag over and stuff in his napkin.

  “Well, uh . . . sure, the lobster salad sounds great. And like you said before. You and I, Jake, we have so much in common, growing up the same way,” said Kona. “I hope that means we are on same trajectory, so when I’m forty-seven I’m complaining about clumps of lobster in my sandwich that are too big.”

  “Anything’s possible,” Jake answered, hitting the back of Luke’s head too hard.

  Luke nudged Kona. “And, like Luke said, we need to talk about a problem we’re having. It’s a legal problem, right, Luke?”

  “Well, business,” agreed Luke, anxiously, wondering why Kona said “legal” when Jake Chase owned Laundromats. His fingers had been playing with his cleft chin for minutes now. They had to get Jake on their side. It was dead in winter here, and there was no way as a teacher, just doing the marine biology elective for now, to earn enough to sustain himself. “You’ve been very successful in starting businesses, the laundry services every hotel in the country uses, the malls you created, so we thought you are the exact person who can . . . well, we got a big problem and we need your help.”

  “Hey, come to the table, guys. I’ll hear anything you got. I’m two-fifty an hour, plus 20 percent take!” This time he smacked Kona’s ass and said, “Mokey, pokey wokey, man!” mocking Kona’s Hawaiian roots and lingo. Kona had to breathe in deep not to throttle him.

  They sat down as Claudio and waiters brought out appetizers.

  Kona started right in before Jake got distracted with showing off something else about his fabulous lifestyle. “So, there’s town trustees. They have always said no businesses can exist where money changes hands on town beaches . . . but we’ve always gotten around that.”

  Luke witnessed Jake’s eyes glaze over on the third sentence, so he elbowed Kona. “The short version is you got immense power because of the high taxes you pay.”

  “You think I got power? I just got a fuckin’ house. I never heard of trustees, except I know they gave me hell about the staircase to the beach, some old ladies.”

  “Yeah, them. Exactly,” answered Kona. “Those old ladies preserve environmental stuff and old houses. All good most of the time because they prevent taking down historic cottages and they keep the bays clean. But, in our case, they’ve overstepped.”

  “They always fuckin’ overstep.” Jake nodded. “Party poopers, my architect calls them.”

  “Exactly, so they don’t overstep and shut down camp, we need some big support from landowners who pay high taxes and have some sway, and since . . . well, you love camp, I mean your kids do. You want us to thrive, and then we thought you care about . . .”

  “You guys get a lot of pussy online, right? That Tinder, Bumble, stuff like that?” Jake interrupted, motor-mouthing at the guys. “Actually, Kona, you’re probably more in the Grinder camp. Heh!”

  Luke pretended to laugh at his lame joke. “We, uh, were talking about camp closing? Not apps?”

  “But I really need your input for this investment that I fucked up on.”

  Luke and Kona looked at each other and hit each other’s knees under the table, signaling, we need a different approach here.

  “I lost a shit ton of cash in a dating app, some idiot made me invest. It’s not my space. I know bricks and mortar. And washing machines. Not pussy. Well, not online pussy.” He slurped down his iced freshly made watermelon juice. “Listen to this. Instead of Tinder where you swipe left to right to like or dislike a date, it was a new clever app that . . .” The guys nodded their heads, waiting for the part when Jake would ask them what they thought. Or go back to the topic of their livelihood in peril. But once Jake got going like a steam engine, the guys had to suck it up and crunch on the Parmesan crisps just toasted in the oven.

  As another servant poured ginger iced tea, and Jake yelled at his son Evan, still stewing in the sun thirty yards down the deck, “Evan. Come join us for lunch. We’re talking business here, you could learn something, They got a problem I’m going to help with.”

  Kona hit Luke’s shoulder with his and whispered, “Progress. Psyched.”

  “No, thanks. I ate,” Evan called back, hoping his playlist would shuffle to some really good Ariana Grande to help drown out his disgust. Wasn’t it enough to tip these local moochers? Did his father have to invite them into the house? The
only thing Evan despised more than these guys gorging on expensive lobster salad was witnessing his father pathetically try to act cool with them. As if they were cool in the first place.

  “Well, why don’t you get off your ass and take a wakeboard lesson with the guys, or even a Jet Ski rental? I’ll go with you . . . c’mon, get over your fear of the sand, kid, and come with us after lunch.”

  Evan ignored his father, pointing to the Bruno Mars now blaring in his headphones. He didn’t want to admit his father was right. He honestly didn’t like the way sand felt on his over-lotioned feet. It stuck between the toes and then rubbed against his new Tom Ford leather sandals in a way that gave him the chills like screeches on a chalkboard. And then you had to wipe it off again with a wet towel. It was all just too much. If you want to check out the ocean, why not just do it from your parents’ deck?

  Everyone at that table was making Evan sick. His insatiable father always chasing something new, pretending he was more relaxed and less neurotic than he really was. And these idiot surfers: gobbling free fried oysters, working just as hard at portraying themselves as hard bodies who get laid, whacked the lip of the wave, and cared a lot less about things than they actually did.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Meanwhile Back at the WASP Fortress . . .

  A mile and a quarter down that same Beachwood Lane, George Porter put his BMW into park, turned off the key and then ran around to open Katie Doyle’s car door.

  “Really. I’m fine.” She smiled. “I can get out of an automobile on my own, you know. I’m not wearing a petticoat and this isn’t a horse carriage.”

  “They called it the Age of Enlightenment for a reason. I see no need to change manners that worked in the past.” He bowed. Huck smirked from the backseat at how stupid grown-ups were. George then opened the back door. “And for you, young man, you don’t get that kind of fancy treatment, you’re just a little sack of potatoes to be . . .” George crawled onto the backseat, yanked a giggling Huck out, and threw him over his shoulder, holding tight as the child wriggled to get away. Huck thought this guy could be annoying, but sometimes a little fun, too. He was good with Legos if you didn’t have to answer his dumb questions.