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"Originally. We've got a place over in Sag. But I've got the cross-country commute. I'm still on Malibu time."
She smiled, letting him yap while her mind was elsewhere. She wondered where this was headed. In Sao Paulo she was so accustomed to being hit on by older men that figuring out how much she could get away with was a favorite pastime. As a salesgirl at Daslu, the most fashionable store in Brazil, she had zipped the country's richest women into handmade Parisian ball gowns. She was no mere wage slave, either, more like a glorified stylist, as
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the store only employed girls from roughly the same social class as its customers. Jacqui's family wasn't rich, but her grandmother sent her to a prestigious convent school in the city, where Jacqui was a middling student. At Daslu she was adept at conducting ongoing flirtations with many of her patrons' husbands. Keep him entertained while the missus spent most of his paycheck on Versace leather pants and she picked up that sweet commission. It was all part of doing business.
And it came naturally to Jacqui: ever since she'd started filling out her C-cup bikini top, men had noticed her. Their eyes lingered on her chest, her hips, her long black hair, and Jacqui came to believe that being beautiful was the only thing she was really good at. It was certainly the only thing anyone ever paid attention to.
But her life changed when she met Luca. Sweet, earnest Luca. The American boy she met in Rio during Carnaval. Luca, with his goofy grin and his omnipresent backpack. He was the first guy she ever met who didn't hit on her immediately. Like many revelers, she was masked at the time, but unlike most of her friends, who were staggering on the cobblestone streets trying to hold their liquor, Jacqui had been content to stand on the sidelines. After all, every year was the same wild frenzy. She didn't know it then, but she was dying for a change. She found it when Luca, an American high- school senior, asked her for directions and then walked away, even when Jacqui gave him her warmest smile. They'd only exchanged a few words,
but when he turned to leave, something in Jacqui wanted to follow him. And she'd certainly never felt like that before.
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Unlike the overly obnoxious wolf-whistling boys from her hometown, or the salacious older men from the city, Luca didn't even seem attracted to her at first--which certainly piqued her interest. Jacqui had no false modesty about her looks. Her black hair fell in long, inky waves down her sun-kissed shoulders, and as for her body, let's just say Gisele would have wept.
Luca was spending his spring break backpacking through South America--hiking Machu Picchu and the Aztec trail--and seemed totally unimpressed by Jacqui's glamour. He listened to Jacqui like he really cared what she thought, and she was quickly charmed by his lazy smile and enormous backpack. They spent a wonderful two weeks together--hitting the samba clubs, downing liters of cachaca, climbing the peak of the Corcovado, sunbathing in Ipanema. He had even convinced her to go camping with him in Tijuca one weekend. They had snuggled in his sleeping bag, kissing under the night sky.
Luca had told her the sexiest thing about her was her brain. It was like he was the first guy to even notice she had one. Their first night together, Jacqui couldn't go to sleep. She kept smiling to herself, not believing her luck. She tossed and turned, clutching at her stomach, feeling happy and frightened at the same time. So this was what love was like.
Then, after an amazing week, he just disappeared. He left without so much as a good-bye or a note with his e-mail address. She didn't even know his last name. Jacqui was crushed. For the first time in her life, Jacqui was in love. The only key to his
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whereabouts was that he had once mentioned his family normally spent the summer in someplace called "the Hamptons."
It had been only two days ago that Jacqui logged on to the store computer and googled "the Hamptons" yet again. But this time she found something new: Kevin Perry's classified ad for "the summer of her life" in East Hampton. She heard back from him almost instantly. (Jacqui's head shot had that effect on people.) It was urgent; could she hop on a plane tomorrow to arrive in town by July 4? Clara que sim! She was convinced she'd find her Luca in the Hamptons somewhere. And if not, she could always fly back home. It wasn't as if she really needed the job.
Rupert consulted his watch, breaking her reverie. "If we leave now, we'll still have time to hit the beach before sunset. My car is waiting outside," he said, pointing to the curb, where a stretch Hummer was waiting.
"Sure." Jacqui shrugged. She hadn't had any concrete plans on how to get to the Hamptons. She just figured something would turn up like it always did.
Jacqui gave him her flashiest megawatt smile. The one that always led men to promise chinchilla furs and hand over platinum AmEx cards. "Lead the way."
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eliza tells a couple of not-so-white lies
The cab dropped Eliza off in front of her former building, an imposing prewar high-rise that was one of the city's most sought-after addresses. Its bronze gilt doors shone in the bright sun. How she missed it. In Buffalo her family occupied the first floor of a row house. The bathroom had never been renovated, and Eliza swore there was mold behind the tub. Every time she showered, she felt dirtier than when she'd started.
Her old bathroom boasted a panoramic view of Central Park and a gleaming eggshell-white tub that Eliza had personally picked out from the Boffi showroom with her mother's decorator. Original paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning hung in the hallways, heirlooms from Eliza's maternal grandmother, a former debutante who kept company with the abstract expressionists in the fifties. Woody Allen had once scouted their living room as a possible location for one of his movies. The only movie Eliza could ever imagine being filmed
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in her new home was something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Okay, so she was exaggerating. Slightly.
Cracking linoleum tile in the kitchen. Rusted aluminum siding. Wall-to-wall putrid avocado shag carpeting. A cramped six hundred square feet! Even their former servants had lived better. Her parents kept reminding her it could have been worse. Much, much worse. Dad could have ended up in--but Eliza couldn't go there. Bad enough that it had even been a possibility.
The weekend doorman opened the cab door and recognized her immediately.
"Miss Eliza!"
"Hi, Duke."
He tipped his cap. "Been a long time."
"You're telling me."
