Four Blondes

“Why not?” Janey stamped her foot.

Redmon put his arms around her like he was going to kiss her. He could do things like that and get away with it. “Come home with me tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because it’d be fun.”

“I’m not interested in fun.”

“Ditch that geek you’re with and come home with me. What are you doing with a geek like that, anyway? I don’t care if he’s famous. He’s still a geek.”

“Yeah, well, being with a geek like that makes men like you more interested in me.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I want to have a good summer,” Janey said. “With Zack.”

Janey and Alan left half an hour later, after Alan accidentally spilled two martinis. On their way out, they passed Redmon’s table. Janey casually slipped her hand into the back pocket of Alan’s jeans. Then she looked over her shoulder at Zack.

“Call me later,” Redmon said loudly.

II

Janey Wilcox heard about Harold Vane, the billionaire, in the bathroom of a club. That was two years ago, and even though Harold had turned out to be a little squeaker of a man, with his shiny round head and his ever-shiny shoes (he made the servants polish his Docksiders to a high sheen), he was one of the best summers. “I’ve got to find a man for the summer,” Janey was complaining to her friend Allison when a voice from one of the stalls shouted out, “Harold Vane.”

Harold had a stucco mansion on Gin Lane in Southampton. There was a long green lawn in front of the house, and a shorter green lawn in the back, edging down to the dunes and the beach. There was a sit-down lunch with wine and two courses on both Saturday and Sunday, a cook, and a man called Skaaden who mixed cocktails and discreetly served the food from silver platters. The grounds could be entered only through a wrought-iron gate with the letter “H” on one side and “V” on the other. Harold had a security man who dressed like a gardener but carried a gun.

“Don’t you worry that one of these guys is going to figure out what you’re up to?” Allison asked. This was at the beginning of the Harold summer, when Janey had invited Allison (who had a share in a tiny house in Bridgehampton) over for the day.

“What do you mean?” Janey asked, thinking about the gardener.

“Using them. For their summer houses.”

“I’m a feminist,” Janey said. “It’s about the redistribution of wealth.” They were lying on chaises by the pool, and Skaaden kept bringing them glasses of iced tea.

“Where is Harold, anyway?” Allison asked. She had bulging gray eyes—no matter how you made her up, she would never be pretty, Janey thought. She had been waiting for Allison to ask the question. Allison was a sort of professional best friend to the rich and famous; as soon as she left, she’d probably call up everybody and tell them she’d been lunching at Harold Vane’s house, and that they were now good friends. In fact, Janey expected that after she and Harold broke up at the end of the summer, Allison would continue to pursue his friendship. She’d invite him for drinks, and when she saw him at parties, she’d put her hand on his arm and whisper jokes in his ear to make him laugh.

“Harold’s on the crapper,” Janey said. She had a soft, girlish voice, and despite her stunning face and figure, she knew her voice was really her secret weapon—it allowed her to say anything and get away with it. “He spends an hour on the crapper every evening before he goes out, and on weekends, an hour in the morning and an hour in the late afternoon. It really cuts into the day. Last weekend we basically missed a book party because he wouldn’t get off the can.”

“What does he do in there?”

Janey shrugged. “I don’t know. Shits. Reads. Although how it can take a person an hour to shit, I don’t know. I keep telling him it’s not good for his intestines.”

“It’s probably the only time he can get away from everything.”

“Oh, no,” Janey said. “He has a phone and e-mail in there.” She looked at Allison. “Forget I said that, okay?” She could just imagine Allison going around to dinners telling people that Harold Vane spent an hour on the crapper while he talked on the phone and sent e-mails, and it made her feel guilty. After all, Harold had never done or said anything even remotely unpleasant to her, and she was actually a little bit in love with him.

That was the surprising thing about Harold. She couldn’t bring herself to have sex with him at first—but after they’d finally done it, the second Saturday after Memorial Day, she’d wondered why she’d waited so long. Harold was commanding in bed. He told her what he wanted her to do and how to position herself (later on in the summer, he shaved off all her pubic hair and told her to sunbathe naked), and he had a huge penis.

His unmentionable was so large, in fact, that all during that summer, when other women came up to her to ask her if it was true she was really dating Harold (this seemed to happen most in the ladies’ rooms at the various trendy Hamptons restaurants they frequented), Janey would roll up her lipstick and say confidentially that his willy was so enormous, the first time she saw it she told him there was no way he was going to put that thing in her. Then she would go back to lipsticking her open mouth. It might have been a little off color to talk about Howard’s willy, but on the other hand, Janey felt she was doing him a favor—when she broke up with him, it would make it easier for him to get other women.

Not that he seemed to have any trouble. Harold was like everybody’s Santa Claus. Old girlfriends were constantly calling, offering to fix him up with their friends, and Harold was always doling out advice, and sending these women little gifts to help them get through their crises—cell phones and computers and even paying for private nursery school for the child of a woman who’d had the kid out of wedlock. On Janey’s first Hamptons weekend, he had pulled her by the hand out to his garage. “I want you to have your freedom this summer,” he said. “I can tell that you’re a girl who likes her freedom.”

“You’re right,” Janey said.

“Otherwise, you’d be married by now,” he said. He opened the side door to the garage and they went down three steps. He was behind her, and when she was at the bottom, he jerked her around and fastened his lips on hers and stuck his tongue in her mouth. It took Janey by surprise, and she sort of remembered flailing her arms around like a live insect impaled by a pin. But the kiss wasn’t bad.

“Just a little something to get your motor running,” he said. Then he pushed past her and turned on the light. “Pick the car you want to drive this summer,” he said. There was a Range Rover and two Mercedeses, one a 550 coupe and the other an SL convertible. “There’s only one rule. You can’t change your mind in the middle of the summer. I don’t want you coming to me and saying, ‘I want to drive the Rover’ when you’ve already chosen the Mercedes.”