The Summer We Read Gatsby (20 page)

“What? She’s nice. They’ve gone out a few times. She’s mad about him. Thinks he’s a
genius
.” She was goading me. “Men like to be appreciated. And he always was a leg man.”

“He was not,” I said.

“How would you know?
You
didn’t even remember him.” She refilled our wine glasses. “All I’m saying is, you should give him another chance. I think you scared him. He was so blown away by how you looked in that dress he didn’t know how to act.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Anyway, there’s no need for another chance. I probably won’t see him again. And I think you’re right: he should stick with the Rockette. They could have tall children together.”

We stayed up until the sun rose, talking about everything and nothing. Not since university days had I spent this kind of late-night time with women, and I’d forgotten how much fun it was. I was falling in love with my eccentric half sister.

9

 

 

 

 

I
t was a scene straight out of Hitchcock, the wide sky filled with black birds, hovering above us like crows over a carcass. The birds were mostly of the Sikorsky variety, enormous helicopters flown by not one but two pilots, seating six or eight passengers, and they waited their turn to land on a tiny square patch of asphalt with a white painted H in the center, perched right up against the edge of Shinnecock Bay.

The small square hardly seemed big enough for the black chopper that landed in a froth of whitecaps and wind. As we watched, supposedly taking a break from a casual afternoon ride on ancient high-handled and rusted bicycles we’d found in Lydia’s garage, one of the pilots came around and opened the passenger door. We weren’t the only gawkers. The helipad on a Friday afternoon appeared to attract an audience. There were four or five cars of spectators in the parking lot and more than a few cyclists and walkers and older women with strollers watching the choppers maneuver into a landing. A black Mercedes with tinted windows rolled forward to pick up a dapper bald gentleman in a blue blazer emerging from the helicopter with a vase containing a fresh white flower arrangement in his hands and an attaché over his shoulder.

Behind him was an elegant woman in white holding a brown-paper-wrapped parcel under one arm and a purse on the other. She wore a straw hat she had to hold awkwardly to her head as she hurried to the waiting car, while the little man in a suit and a red tie who’d picked them up passed her to unload the rest of their things. The rest of their things included bags of groceries, a big red cooler, garment bags, golf clubs, endless small shopping bags, and four enormous matching suitcases that must have been heavy, for the little man could hardly drag them. They were the Hamptons version of the Beverly Hillbillies, and it took a very long time for them to get all their belongings loaded into the car. You could almost hear the people in the sky cursing down at them.

“Now that?” Peck shouted at me over the whir of the helicopter as she gestured toward the people overstaying their welcome on the helipad. “That’s bad manners.”

Finally the parade of weekend necessities was over and that bird was free to soar back up, allowing another one to buzz down. The landing looked terribly precarious, the copter tipping from side to side before touching down in a rush of wind and noise and rippling waves. This one took less time to unload, spilling out four golfers and their bags of clubs, each with one small overnight bag. These four didn’t have a ride, a fact that seemed to incense each of them, and they stood in the middle of the parking lot with the bags all around them, all four of them in the same pose, clutching one ear and screaming into the cell phones that were smacked up against the other.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I shouted at Peck as we waited for the helicopter that would dispense Miles Noble. “Some people don’t like surprises.”

“We’re not surprising anyone. We’re simply out for our afternoon bicycle ride. If we
happen
to bump into someone we know, well, that’s normal. Everyone is always bumping into people at the helipad.”

Three more helicopters landed and took off before Miles emerged from one of them with a phone to his ear. He wore a striped dress shirt with the tails loose over jeans. Just as Peck was about to sail forward on her bike to greet him, he turned and gave a hand to a woman stepping out behind him. She was tall and gorgeous and preposterously chic.

“Fuck,” Peck mouthed in my direction. “Let’s just go.” She looked around frantically. The only way out of the parking lot was in the direction of Miles and his lady friend, who were headed straight toward us as they made their way to an idling car, this one with the license plate MAN3.

“Pecksland Moriarty,” he called out by way of greeting, as if he had been expecting to encounter her there, on her bicycle. The helicopter took off in a rush of gravel behind him and he had to shout to be heard. “Waiting for me?”

“I’ve been waiting for you for seven years, buddy,” Peck cried out in a jocular tone as the helicopter flew away.

The girl—she looked familiar, as if maybe we’d seen her in a Ralph Lauren ad—at his side was checking her BlackBerry, a device my Belgian boss always referred to as “ze Crackleberry,” and seemed unfazed by this revelation. Miles too appeared unfazed. “Hey, I thought you were going to stop by,” he said, still talking loudly to be heard. “Why don’t you come now?”

The woman with Miles went around to the other side of the car and hopped into the backseat without saying hello as Peck explained that we were just out for a ride but we were also checking on the helicopter arrival of some friends.

“Really?
Who
?” Miles asked Peck.

“Houseguests,” she answered quickly, shouting over the noise. “My friend Nacho. Do you know him?”

“The polo player?”

She smiled indulgently. “Another Nacho. And two of his friends.”

“There’s another Nacho?” he asked, glancing down at the BlackBerry that appeared fused to his hand.

“This place is
infested
with them.” At that moment, I adored my half sister. She seemed so brave, her spine erect, shoulders thrust back like an army cadet’s, chest magnificently on display, as she leaned against the old bicycle. Her acting skills might not be developed enough for a career in the movies, but they certainly could be put to enough good use in her everyday life. I could see Miles being drawn in by her. “They’re
wild
, those Argentines.”

“Well, if you want to come by now, I’ll be home in a little while.” He looked almost childishly disappointed at the thought that Peck and I were going to be entertaining some crazy party boys from Argentina, but he tossed this invitation out casually.

“Maybe we will,” Peck called out as another chopper hovered above us, making it difficult to hear anything.

He paused on the running board of the car, seeming reluctant to go, despite the Ralph Lauren model waiting in the backseat. “I can give you a ride right now.”

Peck shook her head. “No, no. We’re getting our exercise. But we’ll go home and then take a drive over, ourselves.”

The Escalade pulled out of the parking lot in a roar of dust and Peck turned to me, shouting, “I told you we should get some houseguests.”

 

The fictional Miles Noble, the well-read, well-traveled, well-off version that existed in Peck’s imagination, would have known there was an F. Scott Fitzgerald suite at the Ritz hotel in Paris. He would have been there. Many times. He would have sipped cocktails at the Bar Hemingway and known that it was there that the Bloody Mary was rumored to have been invented. But the real Miles Noble, Peck was surprised to learn, had never stayed at the Ritz.

She brought it up as we set out on what was to be a lengthy and detailed tour of the thirty or forty rooms in the house Miles Noble had built for himself. To hear her tell it, she’d practically grown up at the Ritz, but Miles misread his audience.

“The Ritz is for tourists,” he declared, after making sure we’d been handed flutes of champagne by a man with dyed blond hair and a serious stare. And then he must have noticed that this was not what Peck wanted to hear, because he quickly added, “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. I usually stay at my friend Jamie’s apartment.”

He was wearing another version of the collarless jacket that seemed to be his signature style, and he’d gotten too much sun on his unfortunate nose, so it was peeling. He’d appeared genuinely pleased to see Peck and me at his door when we arrived and immediately suggested a tour. It was that sort of house, the kind that was built for showing. Now he looked mystified as he listened to Peck explain how writers could receive mail at the Ritz hotel, just as Scott and Zelda had when they lived there. People often looked this way around my sister. Miles stared at her as though she were speaking a language he’d never heard before.

The layout of the house was that of a traditional colonial, but one gone berserk on cheap rum and wanton sex. There was the center hall, in the colonial tradition, but this one was a soaring two-story space with an immense staircase. And then there were other halls, which seem to run in all different directions, with extra alcoves, unnecessary rooms, and odd seating arrangements popping up at strange junctures. It seemed to go on forever. Some parts of it were “upside down” to take advantage of the field views, so the kitchen and the dining room were on the second floor, and there were living rooms on every floor. The woman who’d been on the helicopter was nowhere to be seen as Miles led us through hallways that seemed to go on and on, proudly pointing out details he wanted us to notice: hand-hewn beams flown in from France; floors that were battered and treated in Tuscany; plaster walls that took thirty men more than a year to finish properly; pewter doorknobs the size of footballs.

The color scheme seemed to be “multi”—lots of purple and orange and patterned greens mixed with striped yellows—and chosen to be as jarring to the eye as possible. Really, I’d never seen anything less conducive to comfort. It was all layers upon layers of silks and velvets and mirrors and a mix of spindly coffee tables and squat chairs and expensive-looking pieces that served no purpose. The art seemed to have been chosen by four or five different people, all with competing tastes. None of it went together, or with the house. Or with Miles, who, despite the contrived clothing, was more appealing than I would have expected. He was self-deprecating in a charming way and seemed almost childishly eager to impress both Peck and me.

Peck didn’t feel the need to ooh and aah. She acted like she toured forty-room palaces every other day. Somehow she managed to sound both imperious and seductive and, in a pretty sun-dress that highlighted her tan and her figure to great advantage, she was definitely having an effect on Miles as she chided him for not remembering that he’d given her
The Great Gatsby
in the first place.

I was surprised to see petulance used effectively—it so rarely works—but Peck was an expert at it. Miles was practically melting under her haughty glare. I felt like the third wheel as he kept gazing at her in wonder, but he made sure I was included in the conversation, touching my arm as he pointed at a detail—the bullet hinges on the doors, for example—I might not have noticed on my own.

“You were good too, like a lit major,” she went on, airily amused, as though the memory was just coming back to her now in the vaguest way. “I remember staying up all night talking about that damn book.”

Miles raised his shoulders to his ears with a sheepish look. “I wanted to go to bed with you, babe.”

We’d been slowly moving through the house, and Peck stopped to give him an exasperated look. “That’s ridiculous. It probably took you as long to read the CliffsNotes as it would have to read the whole book.”

“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded like he wasn’t in the habit of having to be sorry but knew it was the right thing to say. “A guy’ll say anything to get a girl to go to bed with him. Haven’t you heard that about us?”

“But you knew so much about it.” She had her arms folded over her chest in the classic pose of a woman discontented with male behavior. “You could’ve written a thesis on Gatsby and the American dream.”

He shrugged again, looking pleased with himself. He seemed absolutely delighted by her, as though she’d gone on to become the famous actor she’d always intended to be, and was now a celebrity who’d deigned to visit his humble abode.

“And then,” she continued, as we started walking again (at the rate we were going, it would take the whole evening just to see the house), “you didn’t even remember that you gave it to me.” Here she looked at me. “What is it with you people and your faulty memories?”

“What people?” Miles glanced over at me for explanation.

“Stella here doesn’t remember a thing,” she said, gesturing at me. “Her brain is a sieve.”

“Sorry,” he said again. He wore a look that indicated he might once again say anything at all to get her to go to bed with him. For all his braggadocio, there was something very sweet about the way he seemed so enamored of Peck, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the explanation he’d given Peck for how she ended up at his house on the Fourth of July in a white dress and a hat for a Gatsby-themed party. He had told her that both the theme and the guest list, as well as the menu, décor, and music, were the work of an overzealous party planner who took it upon herself to invite everyone in his address book. But the kind of guy who just told us he chose every single doorknob in this house of his would not have left details like the theme and the guest list for his first party at this house to chance, would he?

“Some house, huh?” he said, trying to prompt a response from Peck, who thus far had not offered one word of praise about the house. He led us into the living room—or the largest of the many rooms that might have been designed for such a purpose,
living
, which, in this extravagantly unattractive house, meant displaying far too much presumably expensive but ill-chosen furniture, art, and decorative objects. He gave Peck an eager look. In his gaze, I could see a glimmer of what she’d said about men who build their own house and then look to fill it with a wife. He was like a film producer, both auditioning and wooing a reluctant leading lady for what he believed, whether she knew it or not, would be the juiciest part of her acting career.