Four Blondes

Twenty minutes later, a Range Rover came roaring up Further Lane. The driver bypassed the driveway, and drove across the lawn, scattering bits of the croquet set. The Rover stopped in front of the house and Harold got out. He kept the car door open. “Your ride is here,” he said.

Zack ran out of the house with a towel around his waist. “You really fucked it up,” he said to Janey. “You had a chance. We could have spent the whole summer together. You blew it.”

“Get away from her,” Harold said.

Zack ignored him, following Janey as she limped to the car. “Go back to your little Jew boys. Where you feel safe.”

Harold took a step forward. “Hey. Listen here, asshole. Take it easy. This is America. You can’t talk like that.”

“Oh yeah?” Zack laughed. He took a drag on his cigarette. “I’ll say whatever I damn please.”

“When my lawyers get finished with you, you won’t be out of court for years,” Harold said calmly. He got into the car and slammed the door.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘course you will,” Zack shouted. “You Yanks. Take all the fun out of everything with your damn lawyers.” He hiked the towel up around his waist and walked back into the house.

Harold backed the car across the lawn. “Jesus Christ, Janey,” he said.

“Harold,” Janey said. She put her hands over her eyes. “I can’t really take any lectures right now, okay?”

“I’m not going to lecture you, baby. I just want to make sure you’re all right. He didn’t . . .”

“No,” she said.

“Who is that creep?”

“Zack Manners,” Janey said. “The English record producer.”

“Goddamn Brits,” Harold said. “Why don’t they go back to England where they belong? Don’t worry,” he said, patting Janey’s hand, “I’ll see to it that he’s persona non grata on the East End. He won’t be able to get a reservation anywhere.”

“You’re wonderful, Harold. You really are,” Janey said.

“I know,” Harold said.

“I just wanted to have a good summer,” Janey said an hour later, lying in a bed in a private room in Southampton Hospital. “Like when I was sixteen.”

“Shhhh,” said the nurse. “Everyone wants to be sixteen again. Count backwards from a hundred and go to sleep.”

Sixteen. That was the summer when Janey had gone from ugly to beautiful. Until then, she’d been the pudgy, funny-faced kid in a family of beauties. Her father was six foot two, all-American, the town’s local doctor. He wanted Janey to be a nurse, so she’d find a decent husband. Her mother was French and perfect. Janey was the middle child, sandwiched between a boy and a girl who could do no wrong. While the rest of the family ate veal with a mushroom cream sauce, Janey’s mother served her half a head of iceberg lettuce. “If you don’t lose weight, you won’t find a man. Then you’ll have to work. There is nothing more unattractive than a woman who works,” she’d say.

“I want to be a vet,” Janey said.

Every summer, spent at the country club, was agony. Janey’s mother, thin, tanned, in a Pucci bathing suit, was constantly drinking iced tea and flirting with the lifeguards, and later, with her son’s friends, who adored her. Janey’s brother and sister, both on the swim team, were state champs. Janey, who had a fat belly and fat thighs, was never able to distinguish herself. At fourteen, when she got her period, her mother said, “Janey, you must be very careful with boys. Boys like to take advantage of girls who are not pretty because the boys know the girl is, how you say, desperate. For attention.”

Then Janey turned sixteen. She grew four inches. When she walked into the country club that summer, no one recognized her. She took to wearing her mother’s Pucci bathing suits. She stole her lipstick. She smoked cigarettes behind the clubhouse. Boys flocked around. Her mother caught her kissing a boy under a picnic table. She slapped Janey across the face. That was when Janey knew she’d won. “I’ll show you,” Janey said. “I’ll do better than you.”

“You cannot do better than me,” said her mother.

“Oh yes I can,” Janey said.

The Saturday after Janey jumped from Zack’s roof, she showed up at Media Beach in Sagaponic with Redmon Richardly. Her foot was in a cast, and Redmon helped her, limping, across the sand. He settled her on a beach towel, then he went to take a swim. Allison came running over. “Is it true?” she asked breathlessly.

“Which part?” Janey asked. She leaned back on her elbows, in order to better display her magnificent body. “You mean about Redmon and me being together?”

“No. About last night.”

“Don’t say anything to Redmon. Especially don’t mention Zack’s name,” Janey said.

The night before, Janey and Redmon had stopped at the club Twenty-Seven on their way out to the Hamptons. Zack was there. He walked by Redmon and said, “Another sucker born every minute. I