Southampton Spectacular (5 page)

There was a small commotion near the halfway point of the pool, and the lifeguard looked briefly interested. Then Austin appeared at the surface and hoisted himself back onto the side. He kept his head down and let the water drip off of him. He looked embarrassed.

Nina was suddenly confused. “What just happened?” she whispered.

“I think he might have fallen in,” Devon said.

“Fallen
in
?” Nina looked around as if someone were trying to trick her.

Devon shrugged and walked toward the staircase leading up to the mezzanine. Reliably, Nina and Florin followed. She told herself that she was trying to avoid an awkward situation. That the new boy wouldn’t have wanted to try explaining himself, or that Nina would have been flustered to have him come upon them so suddenly. She tried to ignore the idea that she might have been trying to avoid letting Austin and Nina finally have their first talk.

That would have been petty.

“I still don’t understand,” Nina was saying as they walked up the wide staircase. “When did he get out?”

“When Pauly-Girl swooped in, I think,” Florin said.

Nina shook her head and said nothing. Over the years, she and Devon and Florin – and sometimes even Barnes – had discussed the disturbing aura of the Dunn babysitter in such overwrought detail that they no longer wanted to broach the subject. The woman had been an employee of the Dunn family for seven years – since she was sixteen, and the three of them were nine – and she had radiated
danger
almost before the girls had even been able to vocalize the idea. Pauline seemed to combine anger and beauty and aggression and sexuality into one fierce, frighteningly unstable package.

She was to be avoided.

The girls came to the top of the stairs, silently agreeing to say no more on the subject. Which had been their unofficial policy for the last two years, after all.

Here on the mezzanine level, they had the Atlantic stretched out before them. And despite years of coming upon exactly this view, in exactly this place, all three paused. It was impossible not to appreciate the sight. The south shore of Long Island stretched out to either side, creating a beach so broad and long that the idea of overcrowding was laughable. Sometimes Devon’s parents would have summer guests to the house, and often these guests would eagerly talk about wanting to get to the beach early. “To beat the rush,” they would say. At which Peter and Cynthia Hall would smile politely, and respond that they could all get to the beach whenever their guests would like, even if that meant getting up at the crack of dawn. “There’s quite a bit of room,” Peter would say gently.

“But it
is
beautiful in the morning,” Cynthia Hall would finish, in her southern-born, diplomatic way.

For her part, Devon never grew tired of the beach at Southampton, no matter the time. She had been to Hawaii and to St. Thomas and to Costa Rica, and even to places like Necker Island, where only the daughter of a man who owns a fleet of airline jets would ever go, but this place remained her favorite.

It is possible that the two girls standing beside her now were part of the reason.

“I need water,” Devon said, and they diverted to the snack bar, where they each picked up a small bottle of Evian. The man at the little desk smiled at each of them and made three quick marks with his pencil. “Hall, Westcott, Bean, thank you,” he said quietly.

They walked to the edge of the wide brick patio and down the miniature set of stairs to the beach. Then they were on the hot sand, grimacing with delight and pain as they tiptoed frantically closer to the water, until the heat under their feet became bearable. They moved even closer to the ocean, until the spray brought the air temperature down to a more reasonable level, and then they turned right, heading west toward New York, and began their walk along the cool sand.

Nina wasted no time. She demanded to know when Florin planned to finally start dating James. Or at least hooking up with him on some level. With the clear implication that the one did not necessarily precede the other.

Florin blushed and looked down. “Maybe when he’s not talking care of two children,” she said finally.

Nina huffed. “That’s going to be never,” she said. “Get moving. You’re cute, he’s cute, and there it is. Plus, he’s
so
into you.”

Florin kicked at the sand, clearly enjoying the conversation. “You should talk,” she said to Nina. “You haven’t said a single word to the new boy.”

“Don’t question the master,” Nina said, narrowing her eyes. “You’ll see.”

Devon gave Florin a concerned look. “Is James okay, do you think?”

Florin glanced up at her. This question was dangerously close to the edge of their self-imposed ban on discussions about Pauline; but it was really about James, so that was okay. “He’s fine,” Florin said. She considered for a moment. “He’s tired, and she doesn’t help. He gets grumpy a lot. I think Frankie wakes him up at night, and she doesn’t pitch in.”

Devon and Nina both nodded. True and true. And nothing to be done.

“I don’t think he’d mind messing around with you,” Nina said, getting back to the heart of the matter as she saw it. “You’re a sex-pot, as anyone can see. I’d take a taste of you myself, but I’m too busy wooing the new kid. You understand.”

Florin nodded slowly at this, as if Nina had observed that James enjoyed eating French Fries. She did her best to shrug off the faux-lesbian remark, which was simply the way Nina liked to give compliments “Right, thanks for that,” Florin said. “But he’s got a lot going on. I don’t want to – ”

“Bullshit,” Devon said suddenly. They looked at her with surprise. Devon never cursed. “That boy needs a break. He’s been our friend since forever. Barnes’s, too, but Barnes can only do so much. He can punch James in the arm and take him out to parties and tell him he’s the man, but let’s not put it all on him. James could use your help, and this is something you could do. He’d like to be with you.”

They were all silent for a minute. This was a new dynamic between them: discussing physical intimacy as though it were currency, or a simple favor. Maybe it was because they were all about to be juniors in high school. Attitudes were changing.
They
were changing.

Devon stopped and turned neatly on her heels, and the other two fell in line next to her. They had walked to their customary turnaround spot opposite the house they all loved, the one on Dune Road that looked as though it had been designed to blend in and move with the sand dunes around it. It was called the Cross House, and the story they had all heard was that Mr. Cross, who was not a member of the Beach Club but was definitely a part of Southampton society, had been suicidal as a younger man. He had come out here and met a girl, and then built the house for her after knowing her for only a day. That girl was now Mrs. Cross, and the two of them still lived in that beautiful, perfect house. Devon thought it was a sweet story, if a little too dramatic to be believable.

The girls took a minute to look at the house and wonder if a strange man would ever appear out of nowhere and build
them
a house, and then they looked back to where they had come from. They were a half-mile away from the Beach Club, which was now only a small, brick-red shape in the distance. It could have been just another large house on the edge of the sand.

They moved a few paces closer to the ocean, where the beach was smoother and easier to walk on, and they began heading back toward the club.

“Do you think he’ll get weird?” Florin asked, sounding philosophical.

Devon looked at her. “James? After?”

“Before. During. After.” Florin shook her head hopelessly. “Anytime. I don’t want him to stop giving me ice cream kisses on my cheek.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “It’s weird
now
,” she said. “You two already act like a married couple. He takes care of those kids basically on his own, and you do little favors for each other like a pair of Secret Santas.”

Florin laughed at this. “Please,” she said. “I’m not the one constantly bickering and flirting all day long. If anyone’s a married couple here, it’s you and Barnes.”

Nina shrugged. “I’ll do it with Barnes, if that’s what you want. But only if you do it with James first.”

Devon put her hands up. “Settle down. We’re not setting up a competition here – ”

“Away from that rope, you idiot!”

It was Kenny.

They stopped talking and looked ahead. The Beach Club was less than a hundred yards away now, and they were coming up to the ocean lifeguard stand. The man who usually sat up on the perch there, a Beach Club veteran named Kenny Vaughn, was down on the sand, jogging toward the water and shouting at the top of his lungs. “
That
way,” Kenny barked, jabbing the air with his finger. “
Away
from the lines! Christ!”

Kenny and the other two ocean lifeguards – they rotated duty in shifts, like firefighters or nurses – were unlike any of the other staff at the club, in that they were not courteous at all. Devon had asked her father about this once. About why, when every other person she encountered in this town was so perfectly sweet and helpful, the ocean lifeguards had to be so nasty all the time. Devon’s father sat her down at the huge table in their kitchen and tried to explain. He told her first that the test for becoming an ocean lifeguard was nothing like the one for becoming a pool lifeguard, that swim-team members routinely failed the test over and over, and that Kenny and his group were among the highest paid hourly staff in the club.

Twelve years old at the time of this conversation, Devon objected out of a sense of fairness. “They just sit there most of the time,” she said. “Soaking up the sun and looking at girls.”

Peter Hall smiled at his daughter, and he nodded slowly. “But the rest of the time, at maybe two or three critical moments every week, they’re saving somebody’s life.” He reached across the table and took her hand, which he held for a minute, firm and warm. He turned it over once, then nodded and released her. “There’s a good chance Kenny will save
you
one of these days,” he said slowly, “and I like his pay scale just fine. Because when it’s your moment, I want him and his men on the job. I want them there with enthusiasm.”

Devon frowned. “Okay, but none of that means they have to be grouchy all day.”

“Maybe not,” her father said. “But they’re under a lot of stress. And if being grouchy helps them blow off steam, that’s good by me.”

Devon was not convinced. Maybe all that waiting around could make someone moody, but the idea that Kenny – or any of the beach lifeguards – would need to save people two or three times a week seemed like a stretch. And then, one day in late August just one year later, when Devon had been thirteen, there had been a series of summer storms off the coast of Florida. Nina and Florin had both been gone for the week, off with their families taking vacations from
this
vacation, which was the kind of thing Southamptonites liked to do, and Devon had contented herself with sitting on the beach, watching the fearsome power of the waves generated by those far-off storms. On the Saturday of that week, with the sky showing a deep, cloudless blue that could lull you into ignoring the still-angry power of the ocean, Devon watched Kenny make eight saves in the space of three hours. From eleven in the morning to two in the afternoon.

It was the lunch crowd. It didn’t matter that Kenny had raised the red flag on the 30-foot club pole to warn members that the ocean was suitable only for expert swimmers. It didn’t matter that he growled and hurled peremptory insults at those he knew would need saving – “Don’t go in there, Mr. Gellman, you’re way too slow, I’m going to end up pulling your fat ass out on a rope” – or that he had a special notice posted on the front desk board near the club entrance, encouraging members to stick with the pool that day. Because folks in Southampton were accustomed to doing what they wanted. It was a hot, beautiful Saturday, and they wanted to go into the ocean. They didn’t expect to need saving, but that didn’t matter; many of them
did
need it.

And Kenny was there. Every time.

Her father was right.

Each time, Kenny appeared next to the struggling man or woman as if he had been holding his breath underwater all this time, waiting until the last minute to make his entrance. Devon never even saw him jump off his chair. Once she managed to catch sight of him diving into the water, but then he was already twenty yards to the right, so incredibly fast. Then one arm was across the chest of the woman he was saving at the time, her modesty gone as her flimsy bikini, so ill-suited for surf like this, was torn away by the next wave. Devon had heard Kenny himself comment to the woman as she walked toward the ocean five minutes earlier, more to himself this time: “Great. This isn’t the way I want to get a look at those knockers, honey. Son of a bitch. What’s the point of an outfit like that? To get tied around your neck when I’m pulling you out?”