Trading Up (12 page)

“Do you think he
will
give us an autograph?” Jack asked nervously, wiggling a loose tooth with his finger. His teeth were a source of consternation for him—they 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 63

t r a d i n g u p

63

always seemed to be falling out these days, and even though everyone said they would grow back, he wasn’t sure. “What if we ask him for an autograph and he says no?”

“Let’s ask Patty, just to make sure,” Janey said kindly. She leaned across to Patty, who was seated on the other side of Jack, and said, “Jack’s afraid Digger won’t give him an autograph.”

Patty tore her eyes away from Digger—when she was around him at these kinds of events, she always feared for his safety, afraid that a photographer wouldn’t really be a photographer but some kind of crazed fan who was out to get him—and rumpled Jack’s hair. “If he doesn’t give you an autograph, you come right to me,” she said. Both Janey and Patty were extremely nice to children, having, as young teenagers, earned money in the time-honored tradition of baby-sitting, but in the Hamptons, where child care was mostly left to professionals, not every young woman was as kind.

From the bleacher above them, Roditzy Deardrum regarded this little scene with a disgust that was coupled with jealousy. She prided herself on “knowing everyone”—the celebrities and the spectators, both of whom could attend only by invitation—and could have seated herself with anyone, yet she had decided to grace Janey and Patty with her presence. Granted, her actions
were
partly motivated by a desire to claim a closer acquaintance with Digger. Nevertheless, she hadn’t expected to be upstaged by . . .
children.

And the worst thing about them, Roditzy thought, was that they didn’t even fit the basic requirement for children—or anyway, for children one brought out in public—and that was cuteness. The little one shook like a Chihuahua, while the bigger one was, well, just so
big
! Roditzy hadn’t been around many children, but she had no idea they came in so large a size these days. The kid had a beer belly the size of a middle-aged man’s—shouldn’t he be off at a spa or something, losing weight and being fed a restricted diet of lettuce and wheat-grass juice? Giving Georgie a dirty look, she leaned over him and, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation, said to Janey, “Well, he’s definitely going to jail.”

“Who?” Janey asked, having ceased to pay attention to her minutes before.

“Peter Cannon!” Roditzy said. “My father’s a lawyer and he says they’ve just been waiting to get him on something . . . Of course, he didn’t pay his taxes, either.” Patty sighed audibly and rolled her eyes at Janey. Janey ignored her. Not wanting to be unpleasant to Roditzy, whom she considered “useful,” Janey said to Roditzy, “What I can’t understand is why so many movie stars trusted him.”

“Ha. Movie stars are not exactly known for being the sharpest tools in the shed,” Roditzy said. “And besides, he got them all early on in their careers. Before they made money,” she said, with a glance toward Patty.

18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 64

64

c a n d a c e b u s h n e l l

“How much longer are people going to talk about this?” Patty demanded.

“Oh, until the next scandal comes along. Then they’ll forget all about it,” Roditzy said knowingly.

Back on the field, a formerly A-list movie star named Jason Bean threw a speed ball at Digger, who was now up at home plate. According to the gossip columns, Jason Bean had descended to C list when he tried to run for public office. It wasn’t his politics that were the problem, but his lack of imagination—he’d gotten the idea to become a politician from the fact that he had played one in a movie. Digger took a swing at the ball and missed, while several photographers took his picture.

“Isn’t there anything that isn’t documented by the paparazzi?” Patty asked.

“Patty, it’s for
charity,
” Janey said.

“Who is that
girl
?” Roditzy, who had the attention span of a gnat, asked. “She’s been staring at Patty for, like, half an hour.”

“What girl?”

“That girl,” Roditzy said, nodding toward the edge of the crowd. A young, dark-haired woman, dressed in a denim halter top, denim miniskirt, and cheap black spike-heeled shoes, was staring in their direction; when they looked at her, she quickly turned away.

“I have no idea,” Patty said.

“She’s so Jersey!” Roditzy said, outraged. “I mean, how the hell did she get in?

The Hamptons are
really
going downhill!” Janey laughed, noting with irony that some people had said the same thing of Roditzy, and, glancing into the crowd, her eyes narrowed and her stomach gave a sickening lurch, the way it always did when she unexpectedly caught sight of Zizi.

Sure enough, in a scenario that had now become annoyingly familiar, he was with Mimi, and they appeared to be caught up in an amusingly intimate conversation.

Janey would have been suspicious, but Mimi had a tendency to be superficially intimate with everyone, and Janey couldn’t imagine that Zizi found Mimi attractive, especially as she was at least fifteen years older than he. Besides, all they ever seemed to talk about was horses. Nevertheless, this brought its own frustrations: As Janey had already declared her complete lack of interest in the beasts, it was impossible to insert herself into their conversations without appearing like she was desperately vying for Zizi’s attention.

“Can we go to the Maidstone after this?” Georgie asked eagerly. “I’ve got a new card trick I want to show you.”

“Oh, Georgie, how sweet,” Janey said, watching as Zizi and Mimi made their way toward the bleachers. “But I can’t today. Maybe Mimi will take you.” At the name Mimi, Jack’s face drooped like a spaniel’s, and Georgie looked down, concentrating on the tip of his sneaker. There wasn’t much love lost between 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 65

t r a d i n g u p

65

Mimi and George’s boys: Mimi thought Jack was “too clingy” and with Georgie it was worse—she could barely bring herself to look at him, and whenever he entered the room, she would make an excuse to send him out with the maid.

Janey had befriended the boys because she knew all too well what it was like to be a child and an outsider, to be constantly uncertain of what was going to happen to you. But lately the boys seemed to have fallen a little too much under her care. At first, she’d been thrilled when Mimi had invited her to accompany them to the Maidstone Country Club, which was the most exclusive club in the Hamptons, but in the past two weeks, on more than one occasion, Mimi had disappeared for an hour or more, leaving Janey to entertain the boys by herself. Each time Mimi had returned claiming that there was an emergency at the house, but Janey wondered why, with a live-in staff of four, there was so much at home that needed Mimi’s personal attention.

And now, with the queasiness that often accompanies an unwelcome insight, Janey wondered if that “crisis” was Zizi. But that, she thought, trying to reassure herself, was impossible. Nevertheless, there was Zizi below her, helping Mimi up onto the first bleacher, his kind, handsome face concentrated in delight at something Mimi was saying. Why didn’t he look at
her
like that anymore, Janey thought with frustration, remembering that that was exactly how he
had
looked at her the first time they’d met. But since then, every time he saw her, he treated her with a vague, jovial heartiness, as if he were the high school football star and she one of a legion of giggly, mousy girls who were in love with him. Of course, his behavior only fanned the flames of her desire, and she felt as if she were reduced to a puddle when she was around him.

She would get him, she thought, if only she could figure out how! In the past few weeks, Zizi had quickly become a star on the Hamptons social scene—with his looks and charisma, he was naturally invited everywhere—and his desirability had only increased due to his refusal to, as yet, fall prey to any woman’s charms. He could have easily run through a bevy of beauties by now, but the fact that he hadn’t, and that he always showed up alone, seemed to indicate that he was a man who was serious about finding the right woman—and true love.

And what she wouldn’t give for that kind of love, Janey thought, staring intently at his long back, with those broad shoulders that tapered down to a beautifully narrow waist. Why, she would easily give up all this, she would travel with him, they could live in Argentina—she wouldn’t even mind if they were
poor
.

She felt a blinding flash of jealousy as Mimi put her hand in his and let him pull her up onto the second bleacher. For a second, Mimi wobbled on a loose board, and Zizi grabbed her arm to steady her. They laughed and Janey wondered for the hundredth time what it was that Mimi had that she didn’t. Money, certainly, and social 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 66

66

c a n d a c e b u s h n e l l

status—undoubtedly Zizi was impressed with the idea that Mimi was “America’s Princess.” She tore at a hangnail with her teeth in irritation, reminded, once again, that no matter what she might do, she could never change the fact that she came from an ordinary, middle-class family. But still,
she
was in the spotlight, not Mimi;
she
was the one who was on TV and in magazines and on billboards, and if that wasn’t enough to capture a man’s interest, she didn’t know what was. Meanwhile, Mimi was really nothing more than a society hostess . . . and on top of it, she was married!

But maybe that was the key, Janey thought, rearranging her hair under a baseball cap as she watched Zizi and Mimi with lowered eyes. Maybe the fact that Mimi
was
unavailable made Zizi feel safe. In the eyes of the Hamptons social set, it appeared that Zizi was Mimi’s protégé, whom she had taken up and was now squiring around like a pampered pooch, to be petted and fed bits of lobster from the table. For that matter, one might say that Mimi had taken her up as well. Surely Mimi could see that there would be nothing more perfect than if Janey and Zizi were to become an item, and yet, she’d been no help in that department at all.

Digger took another swing at the ball and missed, as next to Janey, the two boys groaned in disappointment. Well, Janey thought. She was certainly familiar with the type of man who was only interested when he thought a woman wasn’t, and if that’s what it took to get Zizi, she was perfectly capable of making herself unavailable. She would start dating someone—anyone—maybe even, she thought with a bitter laugh, that damn Selden Rose!

Selden
. . . Ever since that first polo game, when she’d gone for a ride with him afterward in his car (she could have resisted him, but not that car), he’d been following her around like a puppy. It was a shame, really, because for a minute or two, when she first got into the car, marveling at its beauty, she had actually considered him a possibility. The car indicated that he had position and money and taste . . .

But then he’d gone on and on about the details of the car—how he’d tracked down the original leather-makers for the seats and the special chrome they’d used on the spokes—and after fifteen minutes, her eyes had glazed over in boredom. Being Selden, though, he hadn’t seemed to notice, nor had his interest flagged, despite her constant refusals to go on an actual date with him. She knew she had only to crook her little finger and he would come running, and watching Mimi and Zizi take a seat in the bleachers in front of her, she decided that that was exactly what she just might do.

Mimi and Zizi turned and waved, and little Jack looked up, his eyes widening in fear. There were tons of people who came to his father’s house every weekend, and he and his brother, Georgie, couldn’t be bothered to remember them, but he did remember the polo player. He’d come to the house twice when only Mimi was there, and each time had threatened to put Jack on a horse, saying they’d make a lit-18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 67

t r a d i n g u p

67

tle jockey out of him yet—as if that were something anyone would ever want to do.

Sensing Jack’s discomfort, Janey tore her eyes away from Zizi and pulled Jack close to her. She was undecided about having children herself (if she were to have them, she would definitely have nannies, unlike Patty, who seemed to think there was some kind of moral superiority in taking care of your own children), but there was one point about children on which she was clear: She knew that, for the right kind of man, there is no more compelling image than that of a young woman in affec-tionate congress with children.

Digger finally got a hit and the crowd erupted in loud cheers.

“Okay, so they now have a twenty-seven percent chance of winning,” Georgie said solemnly.

“What do you think, Jack?” Janey asked.

“I dunno. I don’t like math,” Jack said.

“You know what? Neither do I,” Janey said. She smiled and ruffled his hair, and as he buried his face in her arm, she prayed fervently that Zizi was watching.

Unfortunately, as so often happens when humans try to direct Cupid’s arrow, the missile hit the wrong mark, and it was Selden Rose instead of Zizi who was struck down.

Minutes before, as Selden Rose parked his car at the end of a long line of cars parked on an obscure back street in East Hampton, he had vowed that this would be the very last time he would degrade himself by attending a Hamptons event. (He had gotten lost again, it was impossible to get decent directions out of anyone in the Hamptons; they gave vague instructions like “It’s behind the A&P,” assuming, of course, one knew where the A&P was in the first place.) As he followed the line of cars back to its source (he still wasn’t exactly sure where the baseball diamond was), he reflected on the overall pointlessness of his summer so far. Nearly every minute of every weekend had been taken up with some party or event or opening (from stores to movies to pathetic displays of art), and each one of these happenings was deemed “the” place to be, as if being there bestowed a special identity on the attendees. But the people at these parties were always the same, and after one had seen the same people at six different events over the weekend, the conversations became painfully banal, and Selden had now decided that these Hamptons people were like rich children sent to expensive summer camp, where they were constantly in need of silly distractions.