It's Hot in the Hamptons Page 6

  Weeks later, Annabelle would remind her over lunch, “You could have whispered ‘no thanks,’ and gotten your own bottle of water.” She then poured a little more rosé for Caroline and prodded her to take a sip, as if coaxing acknowledgment from her would take a little alcohol. “Yes, your husband’s behavior warrants you having a dozen boyfriends, simultaneously. But I’m just saying, it didn’t just happen. When you saw Ryan Miller in the tent, the descent was fast and slippery; you didn’t fall into the rabbit hole, you jumped into it.”

  So, when Caroline agreed to move on from that bottle of water to a frosty Corona and lime with Ryan at yet another drinks tent, she hadn’t tripped into a hole. It was a deliberate cannonball, an explosive splash echoing its intent.

  Chapter 10

  That Briefest Little Touch of a Finger . . .

  “They’ve got a dozen food and drink tents here, and we picked the most crowded one.” These were the first words Ryan said to Caroline at the barn party.

  As he handed her the cold water bottle, his finger touched her hand and she pulled it away too quickly. “I didn’t mean to stare. I do that when I can’t place someone. My kids say I do it too much . . . my name’s Caroline.” She didn’t include her last name on purpose.

  “Ryan Miller. I think we were in school together, must have been. I know it’s been a very long time. Maybe you were in my younger sister Katherine’s grade?”

  Caroline pulled her hair into a ponytail and let it fall down again just to have something to do. It was a tick of hers when she got nervous. An image from the past flew around in her mind: an art class from way back. “I was a Henderson back then. And, you know,” she said, smiling a little. “I just remembered: I was in East Hampton middle school. You were in high school, and your class had our art class in to view senior-year projects. We were studying something Latin- or Greek-oriented, and I’d made a Parthenon type of structure that was listing sideways. You had this group of buildings you presented us with, they were so well done, and so high school-y.”

  “My senior-year architecture project: a beach stand, a complex or sorts,” he said, laughing. “That was my career pinnacle, I imagined it built on a cliff. Or on a dune, actually.”

  “I’m just recalling your sister as well now. She was always so intimidating. She scared all the girls in my grade,” Caroline said.

  Ryan now recognized more about Caroline’s face, her very dark hair against her porcelain skin. On weekend nights during high school he would often wait for his sister by the curb outside some house where a party was emitting deafening sounds of revelry. Caroline might have stumbled by his car after too many beers, or clung onto some crush’s arm to steal away alone. “Katherine was cool from birth. I wasn’t cool. I was a nerdy artist,” he offered.

  “Can’t believe that.”

  “Yeah, I had three friends all through school. They were all science geeks. When we weren’t blowing up soda bottles with Mentos in one of our basements, we’d build model houses out of balsa wood.” He smiled. “Your face is familiar too. But I can’t say I remember talking to you about my project, or the Henderson name just yet.”

  “Well, you kind of lectured us one day. But we all looked up to Katherine Miller, and then, I guess you were the older brother, so cool, by extension possibly?”

  “Never. You just got a false impression.” He smiled.

  Silence followed. Both of them fiddled with the caps on their bottles. A gentle smile parted Ryan’s lips, maybe one he didn’t even intend, and Caroline decided he was one of those people whose face came to rest naturally in a slight grin. She didn’t know what to say to restart the conversation. Annabelle could talk to anyone, but she froze up in situations like this.

  Ryan pulled back hard on his blond-gray curls and started rubbing the back of his neck. He wanted to relax a little, and he wondered if there was a place to get a beer instead of waiting in line for kale juice. More people had gathered at the bar, which meant more hands thrusting in the air around him trying to get the servers’ attention. He finally said, “These city people in line are stressing me out. I don’t usually drink alcohol at noon, but Jesus, I could use a beer. Look at them, so competitive about getting their juice. Their nerves are contagious.”

  Again, Ryan and Caroline took a few silent sips of water. The two stood side by side, a bit awkwardly in that way people do who’ve come together by chance in a crowd. She scanned the crowd around them, and though she didn’t recognize a soul, she almost moved on, albeit she didn’t want to. It felt funny to stand there and not talk.

  They spoke on top of each other next. Caroline offered, “Okay, then, nice to meet you.”

  At the same time, Ryan asked, “Do you know where the real bar is?”

  “Over there,” Caroline told him. “Go ahead, sorry to keep you.” Now she was embarrassed; it seemed like he was looking for an exit strategy. Now she wished she’d taken her husband up on his offer to introduce her around. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be wandering around on her own in a hot tent with men trying to find a polite way to stop talking to her.

  But for now, she decided, it wasn’t her job to wait in this hot tent to get Eddie a smoothie, with a turmeric boost. She should be greeting the guests and new clients alongside him, instead of serving him.

  Eddie could be the most doting husband, or the most self-centered. Often, he’d initiate some gallantry, but then get distracted. Today, the lure of the European horseman and her floating the concept of a pink shake sidetracked him. Her marriage was the reason to keep at her therapy twice a week; she’d be full of rage at his selfish, thoughtless antics, then she’d remember how much he loved her, and how much, deep down, he cared. How, with those parents having raised him, he really couldn’t help but want too much attention in adulthood, to get his way for once. The push and pull got very confusing.

  As for Ryan, he and this woman before him were only old school acquaintances, one he still couldn’t quite pinpoint, but a dash of melancholy entered his mood at the thought that he might not see her for another twenty years.

  “I don’t mean to appear too forward, but . . .” Ryan smiled, trying not to sound all lecherous. “My wife is . . . over there in the sushi tent with friends, and my son is hating that I’m even here. My mere existence on the planet embarrasses him. So I’m just . . .” Ryan paused before he added, “You want a beer? Or, you want to just stay here while I get us two?” He’d mentioned his wife, so he figured that gave Caroline some clue he wasn’t trying to get into her pants.

  Once Caroline realized he was not trying to escape, she pushed her sunglasses back on her head so he could see her face better. He now saw how pretty she was, wisps of hair flying back in the breeze, revealing crystalline eyes. She was short, but cute and round short. He liked her white jeans and loose blue blouse that matched her eyes, the bottom side seam moving a bit in the wind and showing an inch of hip flesh. Good hip flesh, not all boney like the skeleton women around him from Manhattan.

  Caroline couldn’t entirely ignore the tug to stay near him either, his posture so solid, and a man much taller than Eddie. She considered what it would be like to sleep with Ryan for the briefest moment, but rather than let a harmless fantasy float around her mind, the thought entered her brain with a thud and got stuck there. It made her anxious. She breathed in deeply and patted the back of her head twice as if to dislodge the thought.

  Annabelle was too flippant about the ramifications of straying this summer. Infidelity had to be like a pebble thrown into a pond, creating ripples that went on and on. Besides, Ryan grew up in East Hampton. There were too many connections, too many possibilities to get caught. Ryan probably had hung out with Eddie at some point in their youth. Annabelle was indeed nuts.

  “You know what?” she answered, deciding that just talking to Ryan was innocent enough. “I would like a beer. I’m not one for huge crowds and big social events. My husband is busy too,” she added, wanting, even though she wore a ring, to relay that s
he too was married. “And yeah, I kind of hate horses, and the horse moms from the city even more. But my daughter loves it all, so she, well, she rides here, or will this summer.”

  “Wait, what’s your last name now?”

  “Clarkson.” Caroline rolled her lips tightly together. Busted. Now he’d know she was the owner’s wife. This would change everything.

  “Wow.” Ryan nodded. And then, very slowly, he added, “Eddie Clarkson is your husband . . . yep . . . all coming together.”

  “Yes. Well, yes, that Eddie Clarkson is my husband.” They walked in silence to the other tent. Once again, Caroline wished she could just gracefully leap from topic to topic with new people she’d met. Not liking that she felt funny, not liking that the Eddie acknowledgment came out as if she were embarrassed about his newfound wealth or even his boorish personality, she added, “I mean, Eddie’s done a great job here, seen it through, no doubt.”

  “No one could say otherwise,” Ryan confirmed. “I knew him from way back. We used to surf the same local break. Out at Turtles. I’m an architect now, more a restorer . . . I . . . was curious about his barn complex here from a design angle. Let me get us a beer. How about you try for a table?”

  Ryan’s stilted way of talking about her husband dismayed her, but she wasn’t surprised. Everyone who grew up out here knew Eddie Clarkson.

  Chapter 11

  When You Marry for Money, You Work for It Every Day

  Under the bar and wine-tasting tent, Ryan returned with two cold Coronas with limes stuck in the neck of the bottles. Caroline had planted herself in a cluster of small cocktail tables in a far corner. After Ryan sat, she noticed he then pulled his chair back a few feet away from the table, a safer distance somehow. He crossed his ankle on his knee and clasped his arms behind his head, studying her.

  As she took a sip of beer, Caroline discreetly noticed his plentiful midsection, and thick arms. He was wearing flip-flops, jeans, a tan belt, and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up. He didn’t look like a guy who worked out in a gym, more like a healthy man who swam a lot, or surfed every day like so many of the people she’d grown up with who lived and worked outside. He could lose ten pounds, but so what? He wasn’t eighteen anymore, and he was in good enough shape. The structure of his face not chiseled like a model, yet handsome, he carried himself as if he’d never much considered his own looks. And that permanent slight smile made her comfortable now, as did his soft greenish eyes, deep crinkles lining out from their edges. Ryan’s blond-gray hair was a little messy, curling out where a barber should clip, a little long in the back, but she liked that, thinking that unkempt hair in men signified rebellion somehow.

  She now reminded herself no one could contend she was flirting, only analyzing the impression this man projected, or how it differed from city folk. Besides, she could sit here a bit, it wasn’t as if anyone else at the party was dying to talk to her. Far from it, the horse moms would be either dismissive or unable to hide their envy of the barn with an aside.

  “Oh, so Eddie must have really needed to raise capital to get this done. Right?” they’d ask with a bullshit smile, and then contort their lips as if they’d bitten into a lemon. Rich New Yorkers were constantly taking the daily temperature of each other’s net worth. Always pretending to be discreet, but painfully obvious in their need to know how much something cost, or to reveal how much they themselves spent. Quiet Caroline was an expert in these techniques to show off, and she’d often listen, appalled, and collect the best zingers. Joey would have died laughing at their pretensions. Her all-time favorite? “Oh, it’s wheels up at three p.m.,” something women at drop-off said, in pilot’s lingo, to denote they were flying private, just to make sure everyone knew the whole deal. Ryan was simply better company than the spoiled brats from Manhattan swarming around her like killer bees.

  Next to them, a portly middle-aged man in a blinding purple Ralph Lauren polo shirt, khakis, and Loro Piana $935 “running” shoes barked at his wife. He looked like someone who considered sports to be a punishing round of golf with his clients. His jowls shook a little just from snorting his impatience at pretty much everything around him. His wife gingerly placed a bottle of beer before him, and stepped back an inch like a pet that had just peed on the kitchen floor. He scratched the top of his thinning hair hard, marveling at the annoying injustices perpetrated on him 24-7.

  It was a hot day for May, and the man’s cotton shirt had dark lines of sweat where it had gotten stuck into his rolls of belly. Caroline figured he had to be someone who had inherited daddy’s business and nearly run it into the ground. Ryan shot her a glance that said, He’s probably going to abuse her verbally about now.

  On cue, the man said, “Honey, sorry, but what the hell?” feigning kindness and patience. “You know I find Corona so watery. I asked for one of those Pilsners they serve at the club. Am I mistaken? If I am, please inform me.”

  The wife squinted, as if that might help her come up with a logical reason she’d married him. The corners of her mouth tensed up. To anyone but her husband, she looked like she might impale him on a tent pole.

  Ryan dragged his chair closer to the table so he could whisper to Caroline. He explained, “Let me tell you something that I always think about when summer rolls around and these people invade our territory: When you marry for money, you work for it every day.”

  Caroline laughed out loud and pinged her bottle against Ryan’s. “Yep. I’ve never had it articulated to me like that exactly, but that is so true.”

  “Isn’t it?” He smiled, more excited that he’d made her laugh than he expected.

  “The diamond studs the size of headlights on those women don’t come cheap,” she whispered, grabbing her ear and motioning for Ryan to check out the rocks weighing down the wife’s earlobes. “There has to be a ton of soulless work involved in getting those ‘for free,’” she added, making air quotes around the last two words. Her remark wasn’t as clever as his and she hoped she’d come up with a snappier riposte next time he made a joke.

  “It looks like a friggin’ miserable existence to me.” He shook his head. “So, you’re in the city, but I’m gonna guess you spend every free moment out here?” Ryan asked, wiping some beer off his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “In the beginning we were going to stay for just a few years,” Caroline replied, nodding. “We got married and moved to Manhattan, Chinatown actually, the next day. But Eddie’s work has changed everything, made it impossible to leave. Like you maybe, I spent my whole childhood in a normal smallish house, a few streets from the beach on Bluff Road, where I could hear the waves when I went to sleep every night. I miss it. All the time. It still feels like real home out here.”

  “I get it: I can only take the city in small doses. I wouldn’t know how to live without the beach,” Ryan said. He would go into Manhattan for meetings or for a show, but he’d always be relieved when he was driving down the Long Island Expressway on his way home. He edged the sliver of lime out of the neck of the bottle and bit into it, wincing and blinking hard. “Where did you live in Chinatown? In architecture school, we studied those Lower East Side buildings. I worked on a small apartment once on Forsyth and Grand.”

  “That’s very near where we were as newlyweds,” Caroline said. “We lived above a noodle shop in Chinatown our first few years. I remember trudging up those dusty steps in our building and smelling the boiled pork from the restaurant on the ground floor.” The restaurant exhaust would invade her nostrils, often waking her when they started cooking at four in the morning. Eddie could always snore through the city’s sensory overload, but noxious fumes and the fiery tirades of taxi drivers outside rattled her night after night.

  “I bet Eddie loved it. I mean, look at where he is now.” Ryan shook his head.

  She wanted to change the focus away from Eddie’s wealth. “And back then, living in that crappy building, I would lie awake wondering if my job greeting clients at a furniture gallery would e
ver get me ahead.”

  “You still work in the art world?”

  “Nope, it was half gallery, half design firm, but I wasn’t moving up at all. New York is so brutal that way. So I moved into full interior design, got a degree in a year, and landed some clients pretty fast after that. They’ve been smaller projects ever since—doing a few rooms at a time for people, mostly, which is fine with me. It lets me still spend time with my kids.”

  “Show me,” he said. “Show me some things you did.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled.

  She took out her phone and showed Ryan her inspiration boards for the seven client jobs she had going. One by one, he asked questions about color, fabrics, and materials. They agreed that rafters and beams repurposed from old churches and installed in new ceilings was their favorite way to finish off a beach house. Caroline had recently found a very inexpensive source in Pittsford, Vermont, where an old Methodist church was being demolished. They had birch wood they’d salvaged in excellent condition.

  Ryan asked that she send him the link.

  She asked for his number without looking at him.

  He gave it to her.

  She sent the link.

  “Again,” Caroline continued nonchalantly, careful not to acknowledge that they now had each other’s phone number. “I don’t do much architecture work, but sometimes a ceiling needs help. So the guys in Vermont, about fifteen miles from Killington, send it in any amount you need, no minimums. My commissions are the normal trade rate, and I charge an hourly fee, so I’m not raking it in, but it’s gratifying when the rooms are done.”

  “The work I do in architectural restoration earns a small percentage of the money I could make elsewhere,” he said. “Can you imagine if I designed those monstrous ten-thousand-square-foot McMansions out here that pop up on potato fields like mushrooms? Fifteen percent on the construction costs, over and over again, like so many of my colleagues?”