The Sitter (10 page)

24

I
s that Christie Brinkley?”

Teresa spun around. “Where?”

“The one in the shimmery red thing. See? Way too tight for her?” I pointed to the other end of the long, curved bar.

“Yeah. She looks great, doesn’t she? I mean, for her age.”

Teresa tossed her hair off her bare shoulders. She wore a silvery low-cut top over straight-legged black slacks. She had a small, temporary, red-and-blue heart tattoo on each shoulder and large silver earrings that dangled down over her cheeks and kept getting tangled in her hair.

I was dressed for our big club night, too, in a new outfit Teresa had picked out for me in Southampton. I had on a tight, pink-and-blue tie-dyed midriff top over a short denim skirt, and clog-type shoes that made me walk about a foot off the floor.

I had even teased and tortured my hair, trying to make it look like a do Nicole Kidman wore in a photo in
People
magazine.

It had all been Teresa’s idea, and I couldn’t say that I was quite comfortable with the look yet.

“Is my hair okay?” I asked Teresa. “Do I look like Raggedy Ann or something?”

She tugged a tangled strand off my face. “The waif look,” she said. “Guys love it, Ellie. Seriously. You’re Winona Ryder without the criminal record.”

“Ha ha.”

We were at Pulsations, a new club on the beach in a little town past Easthampton called Amagansett. It didn’t look like much from the outside—a high, boxlike structure, like an airplane hangar, painted gray, without any decoration, not even a name sign. We stood in line for about twenty minutes, which Teresa said wasn’t bad, and watched limos and expensive new cars pull up, and all these tanned, well-dressed guys and girls climbing out.

Music throbbed out every time the door was opened. An unhappy-looking crowd of ten or twelve had gathered across from the line. They were pleading with the guy at the door, gesturing wildly.

“They’ve got New Jersey written all over them,” Teresa said. “They’ll never get in.”

A hot, humid night, and I knew my eye makeup was starting to run and my hair was frizzing up like crazy. I motioned to the guy at the door. “Think he’ll let
us
in?”

And before Teresa could answer, he was giving us the big wave, holding the rope aside, and we were hurrying into the club, my shoes clonking on the concrete walk.

We stepped into a narrow, mirrored entry hall where we paid our admission and a music cover charge—thirty-five dollars before we even entered the club—and then into a cavernous room. My eyes adjusted to the low lights, the blue spotlights sweeping pale light over a crowded dance floor, the blue walls, the endless blue bar curving along one wall.

“I’m beginning to get the color scheme,” I said, keeping close to Teresa, who was surveying the room, her eyes moving from face to face at the bar.

“See, it’s cool, not hot,” she said.

“Don’t we want to be hot?” But she didn’t hear me.

The deejay was fading a Mary J. Blige song I recognized into some dance hall reggae. The dancers seemed hesitant, then found the beat.

I saw a girl dancing with a cigarette in one hand and a martini glass in the other. A lanky guy in a sweat-drenched T-shirt with
ABERCROMBIE
blazing across the front waved his arms wildly, singing loudly, seemingly dancing by himself. Despite the fast beat of the music, a couple danced slowly, faces pressed together, his hands gripping her ass as they swayed.

On the other side of the dance floor, at the far end of the club, I saw tables, tall blue booths—a restaurant. “Do we want to eat?” Teresa asked.

“I think we just want to drink,” I replied.

We pushed up to the bar. Two guys holding bottles of Red Stripe beer were arguing about the Mets. A really tanned guy with black hair slicked straight back was trying to impress a girl: “No, for real. I know
two
Baldwin brothers.”

I heard snatches of conversations.

“I traded in the Hummer. Too hard to park.”

“My wife is at Jet East tonight. We don’t always go out together.”

“Steven was at the next table. He eats there all the time. He had the smoked salmon, but he sent it back.”

“Sure, he’s a cokehead, but at least he can afford it.”

The bartender was tall and drop-dead gorgeous—and he knew it. Women practically crawled over the bar to get his attention. I was going to order my usual—a glass of chardonnay. But then I thought, Get out of the rut, Ellie. Try to be different tonight. So I ordered a Hennessy sidecar, same as Teresa.

She lit a cigarette and gazed around. I took a long sip of my drink. I felt a little overwhelmed—the pounding music, the voices, the energy, the tension.

All this talk, all this dancing and moving and all this frantic, noisy, sweaty activity—just to get drunk and go home with somebody.

“See those two young blond women?” Teresa poked my shoulder with her glass. “No. Not those. The ones over there, the trampy-looking ones.”

“They’re not trampy. They’re kinda attractive,” I said. “Who are they?”

“They’re the famous Hilton sisters, Nicky and Paris.”

“Huh?” I squint into the blue light at them.

“Don’t you ever read the ‘Styles’ section in the
Times
? They’re in every week.”

“Yeah, I read it. Well, okay, sometimes. But why are the Hilton sisters in every week?”

“Because they’re rich and beautiful, and they go everywhere. They’re at every party. Every charity event. Every dance club, every restaurant. They’re
everywhere
. They’re even here tonight. You can’t go anywhere without seeing them. And they get their pictures taken wherever they go.”

“And what do they do?”

“Do? They don’t do anything. How could they do anything? They have to
be
everywhere!” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Hey, okay! I see two guys from my house. Come on.”

She pulled me over to the two guys at the edge of the dance floor. They looked like they could be brothers. They were both short but had pumped-up bodies—big shoulders and muscled arms, as if they worked out all the time. They both had wavy, light brown hair. One of them wore a green-and-yellow T-shirt with a martini glass on the front under the name
DEWAR’S
. The other had a silky, shiny red sport shirt, unbuttoned nearly to his waist, gold chains hanging to his chest.

Teresa introduced them. I think their names were Bob and Ronnie. I couldn’t really hear. We were already practically on the dance floor, so it was pretty easy to start dancing. I danced with the one in the T-shirt, and then Teresa and I traded, and I danced with the open shirt, who turned out to have fabulous rhythm.

It felt good to dance again. It had been so long.

I danced with Bob or Ronnie or whatever his name was under the blue lights. And then Teresa found some other people from her share house, and I danced with some other guys, had another sidecar or maybe two, danced some more, feeling light again, moving to the steady, booming beat, feeling lighter than ever under the blue lights, so blue and cool.

Then I fell out of one of my shoes.

I knew I would. They were just too high and clunky for dancing. I started to fall—and someone caught me. A dark-haired guy in a collarless black shirt and black denim jeans.

I saw his brown eyes, his slender, smiling face, glistening with sweat, so close to mine. He steadied me and then dropped away. I stood on one shoed foot, my bare foot dangling in the air.

He bent, picked up the loose shoe, lifted it to his ear, and spoke into it. “Hello? Who’s calling?” He handed me the shoe. “It’s for you.”

I took it from him, raised it to my ear, and listened. I said, “They hung up.”

I leaned on him as I tugged the shoe back on my foot. He felt solid. He smelled nice, of cologne and sweat, something lemony.

It took me a while to realize I was still leaning on him. “Oh, sorry.” I took an unsteady step back. How many sidecars had I had?

I glanced over his shoulder for Teresa. Was she still dancing? I stared into a haze of blue, the dancers suddenly shadows moving up and down in the haze.

I grabbed his arm again. “Is it hot in here? I thought it was supposed to be cool. Isn’t this supposed to be a
cool
place?”

“I’m sweating, too.” He had a tiny scar under his chin and tiny dimples, just specks, when he smiled. He had a nice face, I thought. His eyes were warm and seemed to be laughing. I’ve always liked laughing eyes, people who saw the joke in things. I haven’t known too many guys like that.

“Follow me.” He took my hand and started to lead me around the crowded blue dance floor to the back door. “Want to cool off on the beach?”

“No, wait.” I pulled free. The floor tilted a bit around me. “My friend. I can’t leave my friend.”

And then I spotted Teresa at one end of the dance floor, dancing with Bob or Ronnie—or was it both of them? I saw a jumble of arms and bodies and legs, moving as if they were underwater.

Yes, I’d definitely had a few sidecars too many. The problem is, you just think you’re drinking fruit juice. You don’t realize . . .

Well, Teresa was having fun and wouldn’t miss me if I ducked out for a short while to get some air. I took the tall guy’s hand and let him lead me out the back door, past a girl who was dancing in what looked like a red bra and panties, a swooping bird tattooed across her back. Past a table where I jumped, startled, thinking I heard the explosion of gunfire, but then saw it was only a group of guys slamming empty shot glasses down.

He pushed open the back door, and we stepped outside. A restaurant terrace faced the beach, tables jammed with people drinking pitchers of beer, downing big plates of chicken wings. The ocean looked like a wide black stripe under the purple night sky.

I took a deep breath. The air was cool and fresh and salty. Wooden steps led to the beach. I felt dazed, as if I had stepped out of myself, into a different life, allowing this stranger to pull me down to the sand.

“Hey, stranger, what’s your name?” I blurted out.

He turned. His eyes were as dark as the ocean. “Jackson. Jackson Milner.”

“Hi, Jackson. I’m Ellie Saks.”

He took my hand and shook it formally. “Nice to meet you, Ellie. Want to walk?”

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see other couples walking slowly along the shore. I kicked off my shoes and left them beside the steps. “Sure.”

We made our way closer to the water. The wet sand felt good under my bare feet. The cool air, sweeping off the ocean, helped clear my head.

Music floated faintly from the club far behind us. “Are you out here for the summer?” I asked. I slipped in the sand, and we bumped shoulders.

“Yeah, I’m staying with a guy from school. How about you?”

I nodded. “I have a nanny job. I’m living with a family in Watermill.”

His eyes studied me. “You like kids?”

“Probably not after
this
job!”

I liked his laugh. I liked the solid way he felt when I bumped into him. “Are you working, too, or just hanging out?”

He kicked a stone into the water. “I’m mostly hanging out. But I’m working part-time at a bicycle store in Southampton. It’s called Spokes. Have you seen it? On Jobs Lane? But I’m kinda taking the summer off. Fall is going to be tough.”

“How come?”

“Law school. I’m starting end of August.”

“Where?”

“Cardozo.” He sighed. “I thought I was a lock for NYU, but I didn’t get in. I think they get like sixty thousand applications for about six hundred places.”

“Well, Cardozo is supposed to be good,” I said. As if I knew anything about law schools.

We stepped into wide circles of light. I turned and saw that they were spotlights from another club above us on a high dune.

Jackson grabbed my hand suddenly and slid his arm around my waist. He started to dance, spinning me with him. “I can’t resist being in the spotlight,” he shouted.

I tossed my head back and laughed as we danced in the circle of light.

Danced. Yes, danced.

I was dancing again, feeling so light and giddy and . . . free. I hadn’t felt so happy in a long time, and I knew it wasn’t just the drinks.

We stepped out of the spotlight and walked, hand in hand now, along the shore. As we talked, I realized I felt really comfortable. Jackson had an easy sense of humor. He didn’t seem to take himself so seriously. He didn’t seem aimless. You know, not a beach bum type. But he wasn’t crazy intense, either.

He was solid.

Did he like me? I couldn’t tell for sure, but he seemed to.

I told him some stories about my first days in New York, how confusing and foreign it was after Madison. I mean, when I went into a coffee shop, I had no idea what a bagel with a
shmear
was! And was a
regular
coffee with milk or without milk?

Was I talking too much? He seemed interested in me, but was it for real? Did he just want to get laid tonight? Who knows?

I’m always amazed at how you can keep two conversations going at once: one with the other person, one with yourself.

Finally, he started doing the talking. He grew up on the East Side of Manhattan. He went to Riverdale High School in the Bronx, then graduated from Wesleyan two summers ago with a degree in Comp Lit. “A worthless degree,” he joked. “You can’t go out and get a job doing Comp Lit.”

He spent most of last year with Habitat for Humanity, helping to build houses for poor and homeless people. “And the next exciting chapter will be law school. Stop yawning, Ellie.”

“I’m not yawning!” I protested. “I’m just a little out of breath.”

“Want to turn back?”

Actually, I wanted to keep walking with him all night.

But we turned and slowly strolled back toward the club. After a while, the yellow circles of light on the sand came into view. I wondered if Jackson would want to dance again.

But to my surprise, he stopped while we were in darkness, the world so dark and still except for the steady low wash of the waves. He stopped and pulled me close and said, “I’m sorry. But I’ve wanted to do this since I first saw you.”

He held my chin in his hand, so gently—no one had ever done that before—and brought my lips up to his.