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On July Fourth weekend, Patty announced that she and Digger were getting married. The papers were full of the news. Over on Parsonage Lane, where Patty’s house was, Janey sat in Patty’s antique-style kitchen, poring over the clippings and trying not to be jealous. Patty and Digger had immediately been proclaimed “The New New Couple” of the Millennium. They were good-looking (that was really pushing it on Digger’s part, Janey thought), creative, successful and rich. They weren’t from conventional “society” backgrounds. And they were under thirty.
“Look at this,” Janey said, turning over the pages of The New York Times style section, which featured a two-page story (with color pictures) about Patty and Digger, their careers, lifestyle, and who they hung out with and where. “You’d think they’d never heard of anyone getting married before.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it,” Patty said. “Especially considering that Digger’s such a goof.” She looked out the window affectionately at Digger, who was pacing around the pool, wearing black sunglasses and what appeared to be a dish towel wrapped around his waist. As usual, he was talking on his cell phone and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. He looked, Janey thought, like he had cold sores, although she had never actually seen one. He usually had bits of tobacco in his teeth, however. “I mean,” Patty said, “he can’t even swim.”
“He can’t?” Janey said, thinking, What a waste. In fact, she couldn’t help thinking the whole house was wasted on Digger, who, she’d found out, had grown up in a tiny ranch house in Des Moines, Iowa. Every time she pedaled up to the house, she felt nearly dizzy with envy. How had Patty managed to get it right, while she was still struggling? Patty’s house was one of the nicest in Sagaponack—a big, lazy shingled farmhouse with charming outbuildings, a long gunnite pool, and a huge green lawn that opened out into a field of wildflowers.
“Oh yes,” Patty said. “You know his best friend drowned in a quarry when he was a kid. He named his first album after him. You remember? Dead Blue Best Friend?”
“Hey!” Digger said, coming into the kitchen. He leaned over and wrapped his skinny arms around Patty; he stuck his tongue in her ear. “Don’t I have the most beautiful chick in the world?” he asked Janey, and Patty giggled and pushed him away. He pointed a long, bony index finger at her. “Just wait till our wedding night, ba-a-a-a-by,” he said.
“Haven’t you had sex yet?” Janey asked primly. This prompted Digger to make a humping motion with his hips, which was disgusting since he had one of those stomachs that looks like it contains a small melon, like a starving child’s in Africa. Then he got a beer out of the fridge.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of . . . weird . . . the way you and Digger come from such different backgrounds?” Janey asked after he’d left.
“No,” Patty said. “We don’t, anyway. We’re both middle-class.”
“Patty,” Janey said patiently. “Digger is white trash. I mean, just that name: Digger.”
“He made it up,” Patty said.
“Why would anyone make up a name like Digger?”
Patty looked up from her list-making. “He used to dig a lot in the dirt when he was a kid.” She chewed on the end of her pen. “Anyway, who cares? He’s a genius and the voice of his generation.”
“Patty,” Janey asked. “Has anything bad ever happened to you?”
“Well,” she said, “there was that time you went to the Mick Jagger concert when you were sixteen and didn’t come home all night and Mom and Dad interrogated me for three hours, but other than that, no.”
“Th
at’s what I thought,” Janey said.
“I thought you were so cool back then,” Patty said. “I wanted to be just like you.”
Janey had taken up with Bill Westacott again. She had promised herself she wouldn’t, but it was a meaningless protest. She wondered how could she be with Bill when she was in love with Comstock, and justified it by telling herself that both men flattered her in different ways. Comstock believed that she could do anything, while Bill seemed surprised that she could do anything at all—which was, in itself, a sort of triumph. Comstock would ask her how many pages she had written and encourage her to write more; with Bill, she would tell him how many pages she’d written to rub it in. He had been so lofty when she’d met him, she loved pulling him down and pointing out that really, he was no better (if not worse) than she was.
“You see, Bill,” she said. “I’m just like you. I’m going to make a million dollars and buy a big house.”
“You damn women!” Bill said grumpily, sitting on her couch in his boxer shorts, smoking a joint, and leaning back to display his still nearly-washboard stomach. “You all think you’re just as good as men. You think you deserve everything that men have but that you should get it without working for it. Christ, Janey. Do you know how long I’ve been writing?”
“Twenty years?”
“That’s fucking right. Twenty years of hard fucking labor. And after fifteen years they maybe stop jerking you around and start taking you seriously.”
“You’re saying that I shouldn’t even try just because I haven’t been doing it for fifteen years.”
“No. I’m not saying that. Why don’t you fucking listen? I’m saying that if you think you’re going to do this and you think it’s going to be a success, you’re out of your fucking mind.”
“You’re jealous,” she said. “You can’t stand the fact that I could do this and it could be a success, because then where does that leave you, Bill?”
They would banter like this almost every time they saw each other, but one day it got out of hand.
“Janey,” Bill said. “Why the fuck do you want to write a screenplay? It’s an impossible business, and even if you do succeed, you’ll end up making a lot less money than you thought you would, because it’ll be spread out over five years.”
“I don’t need to hear this,” Janey said.
“Yeah? Well, you do. Because you’ve been hearing a lot of drivel from Comstock Dibble. Jesus, Janey. The guy wants to fuck you. You’re a smart girl, or at least you pretend you are. You know men will say anything to get laid.”
