Southampton Spectacular (21 page)

Just in case the scene became
a
scene.

Devon wondered why he was out. She hoped he was coming to talk to her about something, though she couldn’t imagine what would be so important that he couldn’t wait until after his laps were done. Now he was stepping over Florin’s towel, between hers and Nina’s bag, and now much closer, so close that she thought he might trip over the end of the chaise and land on her. But instead he stopped, leaned over carefully, and gave her a long, slow kiss. The cheerful, brightly insouciant “Hi, there” she had been planning to give him for the benefit of her friends – to show them that she was fond of him, very fond, but not
overly
fond, not fond in any way that would invite scrutiny or interest – caught in her throat, and she discovered that she was holding tightly onto one of the armrests of the chaise she was lying in. Holding it as if she might otherwise go rolling onto the ground accidentally, like a child who has not yet learned to sleep in a bed without side rails. Austin finished kissing her and stood up straight again, sighed, and smiled broadly at her.

“There,” he said. “Thank you. I was having some trouble breathing in there, but now I’m okay. Distracted for some reason. See you in a while.” He turned and walked back carefully the way he had come, acknowledging Nina and Florin and James and Barnes – and little Frankie, whom he nudged affectionately in the belly – as he passed them, and each of them, with the exception of Frankie, said, “Hey” back to him in a way that said, very clearly to Devon’s ears: “
Hey, good to see you, Austin. We’re just going to wait until you jump back in the pool, and then we’re going to make fun of Devon for, oh, maybe three or four hours, and then you can have her back. Enjoy the rest of your swim
.”

He jumped back into the pool and resumed his laps, and Devon’s friends turned to her. Each of them was grinning from ear to ear.

Barnes was first. He turned to ten-month-old Frankie with a grave expression, as if about to scold him, or to explain a serious matter of dirty diaper etiquette. “
That
,” Barnes said slowly, staring Frankie dead in the face, “was awesome. Do you understand?”

Frankie studied Barnes carefully. Then he said, “
Boh
!”

“Right!” Barnes said, as if Frankie had not only agreed, but had added his own essential opinion to the discussion. Barnes turned to Nina and Florin. “Do you realize how awesome that was? Do you know what he just did?”

Florin and Nina were still grinning at Devon. Neither of them seemed interested in what Barnes was saying, but Barnes was undeterred. He turned to Devon. “He just
marked
you. Like an alpha wolf. Like a
bull walrus
.”

Devon only smiled at him. She was prepared to endure ribbing of all kinds for a while, and this was simply Barnes’s style.

“No one in this club is allowed to go anywhere near you right now,” Barnes went on. He took a step backward, as if making sure he wasn’t standing too close. “Nobody. That was an overt, public display of affection. Our man just threw down.” He looked at Frankie again. “Austin just
threw down
, Frankie boy. If anyone tries to talk to auntie Devon, they’re looking for a fight.”

“It was just a kiss,” Florin said, though she was still smiling gleefully at Devon. “A very
nice
kiss, but just a kiss all the same.”

Barnes shook his head. “No, my friend. That was a declaration. A
warning
. No one is safe, not even us. If James or I talked to Devon too close up right now, if we got inside that radius – ” Barnes paused for dramatic effect. “ – then Austin would have to take us down.”

“Whatever,” Nina said. She seemed to be growing annoyed, as if she could handle only so much discussion of Austin and Devon’s growing relationship.

Barnes looked insulted. He stared at Nina indignantly, as though she were trying to deny that dark clouds begat rain. “These are the
rules
,” he said. “I’m not just making this stuff up. It’s not even up to him anymore. He would
have
to fight us.” He looked to James for support. “Wouldn’t he?”

James took a moment to consider, and then he nodded thoughtfully. “It’s true,” he said, and shrugged as if he were being forced to explain that some men were simply predisposed, in a genetic sense, to commit staggering acts of violence. “He wouldn’t have a choice.”

“Like with that gang of neo-Nazis he beat the crap out of at the carnival a few days ago,” Barnes added.

“It wasn’t a gang,” Devon said, “and there weren’t any neo – ”

“It’s not Austin’s fault if a huge swarm of Nazi sympathizers try to kidnap and sodomize his girlfriend,” Barnes went on, “because a man can’t let that kind of thing stand.”

“He can’t let it stand,” James said, shaking his head.

“
Boh!
” said Frankie.

Nina and Florin were still ignoring them. But they had things to say, too. Florin raised her eyebrows. “Good second date, then?”

Devon nodded, but she didn’t add anything.

Nina and Florin were silent. They studied her. And then they both decided not to ask anything else. Because Barnes and James would have a field day either way –
another
field day, in addition to the one they were already having – and the girls would be able to ask Devon as much as they wanted soon enough. In a more discrete setting.

So instead they settled for the regular stuff. The kidding stuff. Nina said, “Does this mean he’s going to ask you to the Dartmouth freshman prom?”

“I doubt there’s any such thing,” Devon said, taking her medicine dutifully. “But if there is one, then sure. I’d like to go.”

“What about Niagara Falls? Quick trip up to the falls? Honeymoon suite?”

“Probably not.”

Florin joined in. “How about a promise ring? Or a purity ring?”

Nina rolled her eyes at this, and she answered for Devon. “Doubtful.”

“But you’ll be going to the talent show together, right?” Florin said.

Devon paused. “Maybe,” she said, with a little smile. “I’m not sure, but I think he might be doing something for it.”

“Austin might be?” Barnes said.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“He better not try to follow Florin and the amazing Jasper,” Barnes warned.

“That’s true,” Florin said, turning serious. “It’s suicide to try to perform after Jasper. No matter what you do, it’s bound to be a letdown.”

“Honestly?” Nina said, turning to her. “Again?”

Florin looked hurt. “The talent show would be
nothing
without my sweet boy,” she said. “Anyway, he loves doing it.”

Nina sighed. “Anyone else doing something? Barnes? James?”

“I could do a little dance with Frankie,
” Barnes said.
“B
ut I worry there’d be crowd-control problems. My fans and so on.”

“Idiot,” Nina said, turning away. “James?”

James shook his head. “No, but maybe Ned.”

They all turned to him, and Devon grinned. Partly because she was glad the conversation had officially shifted away from her and Austin, but mostly because it was good to hear that Ned might be returning to public life. He had been in hiding since Frankie’s Big Ride. Which was understandable. He had almost killed his little brother and, by extension, Devon’s father. He was not feeling good about himself. “That would be good,” Devon said. “We miss him.”

James turned to her and nodded with a little smile on his face, as though they were discussing a long-lost friend. He looked as if he was going to try to explain something, but then he shook his head and smiled again.

“Just wait,” he said.

1

Southampton was a place that could make you forget. You could forget, as you walked among the clubs and the cars and the mansions and the perfectly manicured lawns and hedges, that all of these things required money to exist, and that someone had to
earn
this money. The problem was that Southampton, like many places of luxury, was filled with people who seemed wholly incapable of generating any money at all. Many of the older children, for instance, were significant liabilities in the traditional accounting sense; they had grown up so surrounded and padded by deep, down-filled cushions of cash that they filled their days with nothing at all. They sprawled. They cavorted. They devised imaginative ways to show anyone who cared to watch that they were skilled only at
losing
money.

Often the parents were no better. Sometimes the money in a given family was so old that there was no one left who could truly carry the torch of productivity. The spoiled scions had become the parents of the next generation, and the new heads of family were only echoes, shells of the economic dynamos who had generated the fortunes now being slowly whittled away.

A visitor to the Meadow Club or the Beach Club, then, could become not only forgetful, but confused. Confused at so much luxury mixed with so little intelligence and discipline. Because to see these people lounge about, to see them playing and drinking and using up the days with such abandon, was to wonder why
everyone
didn’t simply move to Southampton. Coming here, after all, didn’t seem to require any particular ambition. Or drive. Or talent.

But someone was making all that money.

And yes: every once in a while, after clearing away all the obvious types – the bankers and the real estate moguls and the outlet-store-chain owners – it was possible to find someone worth considering. The architect who designed the AT&T building on Madison. The woman who conceived four of the last five North American apparel marketing campaigns for Nike. The vascular surgeon who, using a technique he invented on the spot, helped sew Mrs. Tripp’s legs back together after she was pinned under a collapsed scaffold on 72nd street.

These were people who were creating. Making. Doing.

Theo R. Mahlmann had been coming to Southampton for over two decades, but he had grown up poor. A self-taught Minnesota boy for the first thirteen years of his life, he began to plan his escape early on. He tested his way into a good public exam high school and then moved quickly onto an arts scholarship at Brown. Next, a paid fellowship at RISD for his masters in design. Immediately after RISD he moved to New York, where he started a turn-key event-design business of his own using three maxed-out credit cards and the single big-ticket contact he had held onto from his years at Brown. He had his name legally changed to Theodore Robert Mahlmann (from Bruce Steinberg), and now he had a pretty blond wife and three beautiful blond children, two girls and a boy, all of whom enjoyed the privilege of Southampton summer life thanks to Theo’s gift for design and his eye for extravagance at weddings and parties and boutique openings all over New York. At work in the city he was Theo, or Robert, or, with certain very close associates, Big Teddy. But in Southampton he was known as maybe-gay Mr. Mahlmann.

Not to his face, of course.

The standard, base-line-level price for an event conceived and arranged by Mahlmann Group Events in New York was $10,000, but most events ended up costing far, far more. In addition to innumerable weddings and birthday parties and promotions handled by his company, Theo Mahlmann had personally overseen the production of two Kennedy weddings, the opening of every Ralph Lauren store in New York since 1983, Chelsea Clinton’s 21st birthday party, and the funeral of John Lennon. Mr. Mahlmann had also been single-handedly responsible for the production of the Meadow Club talent show for the last ten years. He had never charged the club a cent. Theo considered it a rare and precious annual opportunity to be able to design with impunity; to not have to worry, even for a second, about his client’s ego or opinions or hang-ups; to experiment, and to find the delight in his job all over again. One year he made the room up to look like the opera theater at Lincoln center, but glitzier. More fun. Complete with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and, at the perimeter of the room, groups of chairs enclosed in wood-and-velvet to make them look like box seats. Another year he went the other way, turning the hall into a shantytown playhouse, so that the audience felt as though the performance were taking place in the middle of a barn on a Nebraska farm. Still another year, he made the room up to look like a massive, Tony-night awards ceremony, with lights and signs and a Lazy Susan up on the stage for quick scene changes.

Everyone always loved what Mr. Mahlmann created. The parents were impressed, the children were delighted, and Theo got to come onto the stage at the end of the show each year, to strut out and pause under the lights and wave, like a menswear designer making a triumphant appearance on the runway after the models had come and gone.

That year, the year when Ned Dunn brought the house down, Mr. Mahlmann was in a quiet mood, taste-wise. He decided on an old-Hollywood theme, which meant placing orders for yards and yards of heavy, white and silver cloth to hang everywhere, and huge, powerful lights to hide behind these billowing curtains in random spots along the floor. And then the floor itself: at higher-than-usual personal expense, Theo Mahlmann brought in a team of workers to lay down a thin layer of faux-stone tile, which he had painted in white and mother-of-pearl and veins of black and gold, so that the entire room seemed to be covered in marble.