“The Hamptons?” Swish said. “You’re not still caught up in that, are you? Darling,” he said, “the Hamptons are over.”
“I’
m looking for my own house this year,” Janey said. She kissed him on the cheek and went out the door and got into the freight elevator. It was already early April. She was fat. And she still didn’t have a house for the summer.
When she came out onto the street, she banged her hand against the building in frustration.
Her nail broke painfully below the quick. She stuck her finger in her mouth. A couple of tourists wandered by. “Are you a model?” one of them asked. They were foreign, maybe from Denmark.
“Yes,” Janey said.
“Do you mind if we take your picture?”
“I don’t give a shit what you do,” Janey said.
Two days later, she met Comstock Dibble.
His first words to her were: “They used to make fun of me in school. What did they do to you?”
“They stole my bicycle,” Janey said.
He was smoking a cigar. He took a puff and held out his hand, clenching the cigar between his teeth. “Comstock Dibble,” he said.
“The man who’s going to save the movies,” Janey said.
“Oh. So you read that shit, huh?” he said.
“Who didn’t?” Janey said. “It was only on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine.”
They were standing in the middle of the VIP room in the nightclub Float, at the premiere for Comstock Dibble’s new movie, Watches. It was crowded and smoky and loud. He shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“I like you,” he said. “I want to get to know you better. Do you want to get to know me?”
Janey leaned toward him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Yes,” she whispered.
The next day, a brand-new bicycle arrived at her apartment.
Janey ripped open the attached card with glee. It read:
Dear Janey:
If anyone tries to steal this bicycle, they’ll have to deal with me.
Regards, Comstock Dibble.
VI
Memorial Day weekend again. The grass and trees were beginning to turn a deep green, reminding Janey of every summer she’d had in the Hamptons and, she thought happily, was going to have again. The cottage she’d rented was only a converted carriage house in the back of a Victorian house in the town of Bridgehampton, but it was hers. It had a tiny kitchen, a living room with built-in cupboards that contained mismatched glassware, and two attic bedrooms that were furnished with old photographs and down comforters and feather pillows. It was charming. A steal, the real estate agent said, adding that the only reason it had been available was that the couple who usually rented it had decided to get divorced the week before, and couldn’t agree on which one should get the house.
“My luck,” Janey said, as her cell phone rang.
“Is it great?” the male voice asked.
“It is great.” Janey giggled. She walked toward a little garden framed by hedges that contained white wicker tables and chairs, where she imagined she would hostess small but important dinners that summer. . . . She’d invite Comstock, and Harold Vane . . . hell, she might even invite Redmon. After all, Redmon was a best-selling author no matter what you thought about the rest of him.
“I told you it would happen, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Janey said happily.