One Fifth Avenue

An hour later, after they were shown the two pools (one Olympic, one shaped like a pond with a waterfall), the guesthouse, the private zoo and aviary, the greenhouse where Sandy oversaw the cultivation of rare species of tulips, the miniature horse and goat barn, the three tennis courts complete with bleachers, the baseball diamond and basketball court, the children’s Victorian summerhouse, the indoor squash court, the winery with state-of-the-art concrete casks, the five-acre vineyard, the orchard and vegetable garden and koi pond, Sandy ushered them into the house. Two grand staircases flanked the foyer. Paul went off with Sandy to talk business. A Guatemalan woman motioned for Annalisa to follow her up the stairs. They passed an upstairs sitting room and several closed doors. Annalisa was led into a room with an enormous four-poster bed and two bathrooms. French windows opened onto a balcony overlooking the lawn and the ocean. Her suitcase had been unpacked; her paltry supply of clothing for the weekend looked incongruous in the enormous cedar closet. Annalisa stepped inside, inhaling the odor of the wood. I’ve got to tell Paul about this, she thought, and went downstairs to find him.

Instead, she discovered Connie, Sandy’s wife, and Billy Litchfield in a sunroom done up with pink silk chaises. “I’m sure you feel horrible,” Connie was saying to Billy.

“Excuse me,” Annalisa said, realizing she’d interrupted a tête-à-tête.

Connie sprang up. She was once a famous ballerina and wore her blond hair long and straight, hanging nearly to her tailbone. She had enormous blue eyes and a tiny nose and was as slim as a fairy. “I was about to check on you,” she said. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Our room is wonderful, thank you. I was just looking for Paul.”

“He’s gone off with Sandy. They might be up to anything, but they’re probably plotting how to take over the world. Come sit with us,” Connie said. “We’ve heard you were a lawyer. Sandy said you had a very important job. Working for the attorney general.”

“I clerked for him when I finished law school.”

“You’ll probably find us very boring then,” Connie responded. “All the men ever talk about is business. And all we women talk about is children.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Billy said to Annalisa. “Connie’s an expert on contemporary art.”

“Only because you taught me everything I know, Billy,” Connie said. “My real love is jewelry. I love glittery things. I can’t help myself. Do you have any passions you’re ashamed of, Annalisa?”

Annalisa smiled. “My problem is that I’m probably too serious.”

Connie rearranged herself on the chaise and said dramatically, “And mine is that I’m frivolous. I’m rich and silly. But I have a good time.”

Billy stood up. “Shall we dress for dinner?” he asked. Annalisa walked with him to the stairs. “Connie is frivolous,” Billy went on, “but they’ve only had their money for seven years. On the other hand, she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. If you become friends with her, you’ll find her a useful ally.”

“Am I going to need allies?”

“One always does,” Billy said, and smiled.

He left Annalisa at the top of the landing. “I’ll see you at cocktails. They start at eight on the veranda.”

What a funny man, Annalisa thought, returning to her room. He was like someone out of the nineteenth century.

Paul came back while she was in a shower stall the size of a small room. She opened the glass door. “It’s a steam shower,” she called out to him. “Do you want to come in?” He got in, and she soaped his chest. “Did you see the cedar closet? And the towel warmers? And what about that bed?”

“Should we get a place like this?” Paul asked, tilting his head back to get the lather out of his hair.

“You mean our own ten-million-dollar Peter Cook house with pink stone and a little man like Billy Litchfield to teach us manners and art?” She jumped out of the shower and dried herself. Paul came out and stood dripping on the mat. She handed him a thick towel.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

“Paul,” she said. “Is that what we’re doing? Becoming Connie and Sandy Brewer? Are we going to be just like them but with newer money?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“How old is our money, anyway? Six months? Maybe when it’s a year old, we can have a birthday party to celebrate.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was just something odd that Billy Litchfield said. It’s not important.”

In a nearly identical room down the hall, Billy Litchfield lay on his back, arms folded carefully across his chest in order not to wrinkle his shirt. He closed his eyes, hoping to nap. Lately, he’d been tired all the time and yet found he couldn’t sleep. For months, he’d felt psychically off; perhaps, he thought, he should try seeing an astrologer instead of a psychopharmacologist. After several more minutes of jangly exhaustion, he gave up and took a prescription bottle from his bag. Inside were several small orange pills. Billy broke one in half, swallowed it, and lay back down on the bed.

Within minutes, he relaxed and fell asleep. He napped longer than he’d planned, waking at ten minutes past eight.

Hurrying downstairs, he found Annalisa in the middle of a small clump of men. She was wearing a simple black shift that showed off her lanky, boyish figure, and her auburn hair swung free around her shoulders. Once again, she was without makeup, her only adornment the diamond-studded watch. As Billy passed by on his way to greet Connie, he overheard a snippet of the conversation. “Please don’t tell me you’re a Republican,” Annalisa was saying to one of Sandy’s associates. “If you have money and youth, it’s your moral imperative to become a Democrat.”

Billy paused and turned back to the group. Effortlessly inserting himself, he took Annalisa’s arm. “Do you mind if I borrow you for a second?” he asked. “Have you met Connie’s friends?”