The Summer We Read Gatsby Part 6

"Now there's an idea we can use," I said, stacking up my men. "We turn Fool's House into a high-end brothel."

She pondered the idea further. "With the money we make we can renovate the house. Make it super high-end. Hamptons Hookers, what a concept. I can't believe n.o.body's done it yet."

"Okay, stop," I said, somewhat afraid she was considering this an actual plan. "I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night to find I'm being shopped to one of your male friends."

Peck paused, and then burst out into an exaggerated fit of laughter. "You know, you can be funny sometimes." She implied that this was a rare and unusual occurrence, preferring to think of herself as the comic one.

"Momma needs a new pair of shoes," she whispered into the leather cup, blowing on the dice. "Momma likes Manolo, so make it a good one." She kept blowing on the dice, taking her time. "Momma needs a pair of those feathered ones with the jewels on them for evening. The flat sandals are fine for day. Or maybe the crocodile pumps."

"Just roll already," I finally had to say.

"f.u.c.k," she screamed when it was my turn again and I rolled a neat little pair of twos to take it home.

"What's going on up there?" a raspy voice called from the driveway.

Neither of us had noticed Finn Killian pull up in his jeep with the cloth top rolled down and a surfboard hanging out the back. There was a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face Steal Your Face sticker on the back of the car. sticker on the back of the car.

"My so-called sister sister," Peck called out with genuine resentment seeping into her words, "just beat me most ungraciously. The worst part is," she continued as he hopped up the steps to the porch, "she doesn't even care. She's European European."

As Finn strolled over to the table, there seemed to be a bounce in his step. He appeared so affable as he glanced down at our game with curiosity, without any of the arrogance I thought I'd seen in him. How had I remembered him so differently from that first summer? Was it because I'd actually had feelings for him I didn't want to acknowledge and rejected him before he could reject me? Or was it just that I'd been in such a fog of grief over my mother's death that I hadn't been thinking straight?

He stooped over us, checking out the board. He was so tall, his legs endless in his jeans, and he wore his height with a kind of casual elegance.

"What's with the Steal Your Face Steal Your Face?" I asked him, more sharply than I intended. I really wasn't good at this male-female interaction, sounding brusque when I was trying for flirtatious and charming. "Aren't you a little old old for that sort of thing?" for that sort of thing?"

Trimalchio jumped up at Finn's side and he picked the dog up, scratching his neck as Trimalchio eyed him adoringly. His hair was wet and hung over his forehead. "My G.o.dson put that on there," he said. "It's supposed to be ironic."

"So you're ironically not not a Deadhead anymore?" I pulled the last of my men off the board, beating Peck again. a Deadhead anymore?" I pulled the last of my men off the board, beating Peck again.

"I'll take winner," he said. "And it is he, young Connor, who is ironically not not the Deadhead. Calls it old people's music. For aging losers like me who don't know anything about cool rock 'n' roll. Hence the sticker." the Deadhead. Calls it old people's music. For aging losers like me who don't know anything about cool rock 'n' roll. Hence the sticker."

Peck relinquished her spot at the table, saying, "It's c.o.c.ktail hour somewhere, isn't it?"

"I should warn you, kid." Finn took her place, sliding in across from me with Trimalchio on his lap. "I play for money."

I was putting the board back together and I didn't look up. "That's the only way."

"This was on Lydia's list," Peck called out as she headed into the house to mix up a batch of Southsides with the fresh mint Lydia had always grown off the kitchen side of the porch. "Play backgammon for money. And skinny-dip in the ocean, don't forget that one."

He rolled a one and I threw out a six, so I went first. A lucky first move for me. I quickly placed my men and it was his turn. As we talked, Finn was shocked to learn that not only had I never been to a baseball game-"Understandable," he said, "under the circ.u.mstances. Living abroad and all that"-but I'd never even watched one on TV.

"It's sacrilege," he announced. "The New York Yankees are a religion."

"So I hear." I knew Peck was a big Yankees fan because she'd had been threatening to drag me to a game while I was in the States. But she was a fan of everything everything.

"Oh G.o.d," he cried out a few seconds later, after another lucky roll of the dice for me and a terrible roll for him. He smacked himself on the forehead. I thought he was reacting to the dice, but he'd just realized that my lack of education about sports meant I also wouldn't know anything about American football. "Now that's that's a crime," he said. "You didn't watch the Giants win the Super Bowl?" a crime," he said. "You didn't watch the Giants win the Super Bowl?"

"What's the Super Bowl?" I asked, enjoying the look of mock horror that swept over his face. "I'm kidding. Of course I know what the Super Bowl is."

He mimicked me in a comic voice that was actually spot on. "I know what the Super Bowl is. What is it then, smarty pants?" What is it then, smarty pants?"

"It's a big football match," I said, teasing, as he groaned.

He shook his head back and forth. "Match? It's not a match. No match."

"I know," I said, neatly stacking my board. "I just said that to annoy you."

"You like that, do you? To annoy?" I'd flipped the cube, upping the financial stakes of the game, and Finn made a face as he realized I knew what I was doing. "How about some mercy? Didn't I teach you how to play this game?"

"Now who's not remembering?" I said, recalling now a few lively games on the porch, with Lydia loudly cheering for me all those years ago. "I beat the pants off you."

It was a beautiful clear afternoon that grew slightly crisp as the sun moved across the sky, and we fell into an easy sort of teasing banter.

Peck came back through the screen door with mint c.o.c.ktails and fresh potato chips she'd made herself earlier in the day. "I'm famous for my Southsides. Try them, try try them," she insisted. We paused the game to sip the drinks. them," she insisted. We paused the game to sip the drinks.

"Well?" she asked, demanding the compliment before we'd even gotten the stuff down our throats. We both p.r.o.nounced them delicious and she pulled one of the rocking chairs over to the side of the table to watch. The conversation turned, naturally, to the missing painting.

"It's the one that was in the picture of your mom and Lydia," I pointed out to him. "It was hanging there forever."

"Who do you think might have taken it?" he asked.

"We know who took it," Peck said, rocking back and forth. "It was Miles n.o.ble, the first love, she says in a voice laden with irony." She paused to ensure that we appreciated her witty words. "All we have to do is go over there and find it. Or get him to give it back."

"Are you sure about that?" Finn asked her. "Why would this ironic first love, a guy who's apparently made a bucketload of money, come over here and steal a painting from you? It makes no sense. There were a hundred people here that night, all of whom could have taken it. How do you know I I didn't do it, just as an example?" didn't do it, just as an example?"

She looked at him with comic suspicion. "Did you?"

"I did not." He pointed up at the garage. "But have you looked up there?"

"Biggs didn't take it," she scoffed. "He's an artist-why would he take another painter's work? Besides, if he were going to steal anything from us, he could have taken it before we arrived."

Finn shrugged. "Why don't you just take a look? Maybe there's a clue?"

"We're not going to go snooping around in his room," Peck said. She then attempted to claim Finn was being racially biased.

"Racially biased? Biggsy couldn't be more Caucasian," I pointed out.

"He's got some j.a.panese j.a.panese." She set her lips in a thin line, as though there were no arguing with the facts. But I was pretty certain there were no j.a.panese ancestors lurking in his past. Besides, there was nothing even vaguely j.a.panese about his blond, corn-fed looks. But this was the kind of contrarian conversation-the sky is blue, no, it's red-my sister thrived on. Eventually it was always best just to move on. "But I guess it couldn't hurt to look up there. I'm insanely curious about him."

She gestured for us to follow her. "Come on," she said. "He's not there. He took his motorcycle and said he'd be back tomorrow. I didn't ask where he was going."

I glanced at Finn and then we both stood and followed Peck.

The s.p.a.ce above the garage had been carved into two rooms, connected by an arched opening. One side was monastic, with a neatly made up twin bed, a simple wood bedside table, and a tiny refrigerator with one red apple sitting on top. The other side was utter chaos, a riot of colors, sc.r.a.ps of papers, camera equipment, and props. In the middle of the mess sat a small metal stool and a rickety worktable, nicked and covered in paint, piled high with books and pens and scanned images. Pinned to the wall above the table was a piece of handmade paper on which was written in gothic script: RUMORS OF MY DEATH HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED.

Finn pointed to it. "Lydia told me he started those rumors himself."

"Maybe he wanted us to think he he was the ghost," Peck added, nodding her approval. "I really was starting to believe it. He's so pale, you know." was the ghost," Peck added, nodding her approval. "I really was starting to believe it. He's so pale, you know."

We looked around, searching for a potential hiding place for a framed canvas, or a clue that Biggsy might have had something to do with the missing painting, but there was nothing at all like that in either of the two rooms.

I felt slightly uneasy looking around Biggsy's private s.p.a.ce, and there was a part of me that expected to find something. But what?

And then Peck made a discovery. From the photographs spilled on the table, she pulled out several of herself. The one she held up was slightly blurred, a still taken from video, and in it she was smiling at someone in the distance. "Do I have a stalker?" she asked, almost proudly. "I told you, it wasn't him. And I was right, see? There's nothing here. Biggs has a very pure relations.h.i.+p with art. He's always saying we must revere the artists who came before us."

Finn looked around and made a face. "This seems like the kind of thing I could see him having a hand in."

"You're just jealous," Peck teased as we filed back down the stairs. "He's too good-looking for his own good, that's what his problem is. n.o.body trusts a guy who is that pretty."

When we got back to the porch the backgammon game we'd left there had been finished, all the red pieces stacked neatly in the slot along the side of the board. Most of the black ones on Finn's side were still out, as if he'd lost the game.

"This has to be Biggsy," I said, looking around. "He must have known we were up in his room. But where is he?"

"I told you he was a stalker," Peck said, clapping her hands. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," she called in delight. "We're not afraid of you, little ghostie boy!"

But he didn't appear. "Lydia would have enjoyed this," Peck said, pouring herself another drink. "Now, if you'll excuse me. I'm going upstairs with my dressing drink."

Finn's eyes, lit up with amus.e.m.e.nt, met mine. "Dressing drink?"

"I coined that term, you know," Peck called over her shoulder as she headed for the screen door.

"No, you didn't," Finn teased. He leaned back in his chair and I couldn't help but notice as his T-s.h.i.+rt rode up slightly, revealing the flat muscles of his stomach. "There were dressing drinks long before you were born."

Finn and I exchanged another glance as she left us alone on the porch, and then we focused our attentions on setting up the board for a new game. We played a few more games, but with Peck gone it seemed the spell was broken. The magic between us had gone. Or we were tired. After the easy flirting banter of earlier, we grew polite with one another.

"When do you go back?" Finn asked me, in the stiff manner of someone making small talk. He was unfailingly polite, one of those well-brought-up men who'd been trained to stand when a woman entered the room and help with coats and allow ladies to go through doors first. Usually he'd try to be funny, but he would, of course, be nice to anyone who was related to his friend Lydia. I suspected now that what I'd perceived as a spark of something chemical between us was simply good manners. He was probably charming that way with everyone he met, even men.

"Not until the end of the month," I told him, trying not to sound disappointed at the s.h.i.+ft. I was, after all, just saying I would be leaving soon. And then I'd probably never see him again. And clearly my overactive imagination had played tricks on me, a.s.suming he'd come over here for a reason other than simply a pa.s.sion for the game of backgammon or a sense of tradition.

Did I imagine a look of disappointment on his face? Or was he just bored, ready to move on to the rest of his evening like Peck had? "You think the house will be sold by then?"

I shook my head. "I doubt it."

Peck came down in a long pink chiffon gown that dragged on the floor as she swung open the screen door and posed for us. "Vanity Fair, get a load of this one."

"Great dress," Finn said to her.

"Isn't it?" She looked down at herself with pride. "But I don't think it's right for one of Hamilton's Tuesday night suppers. I'm going back to try again."

Finn looked questioningly at me as she headed off. "Vanity Fair?"

"She seems to think she should be on their Best-Dressed List," I explained as I stood and stacked the chip bowl on the drinks tray.

"Can I help you bring this stuff in?" he asked, picking up our gla.s.ses. This aspect of him seemed uniquely American, a healthy ego and brash confidence lurking under the manners. I'd had a few boyfriends (an Italian, two Australians, a Swede who lied about everything) before Jean-Paul, none of them American. Finn Killian was so different from all of them. He insisted on paying me the five dollars he owed me for the game and then he held the door for me. "Sorry," he said as his elbow grazed my arm slightly. "Let me get that."

We brought the dishes into the kitchen. I ran the water in the sink to rinse the gla.s.ses. He was behind me and I felt his presence like an electric jolt, as though there were a force field between us. For a fleeting few seconds I thought-okay, I hoped-he might spin me around and kiss me.

I waited for it. I tensed as I heard him move behind me. But then he sounded farther away and I turned to see he was at the door.

"See you around, kid."

6.

It was all gay, all British on Hamilton's festively lit patio when we arrived next door that evening. (Note that I said British, not English, so as not to offend Scotty, the proud Scotsman.) The men were tan and close-shaven, and all looked like they'd just been styled for a magazine spread in white pants and perfectly draped blazers. Their s.h.i.+rts were pink, pale blue, and bright orange. Some wore fitted T-s.h.i.+rts. They all looked fantastic, every one of them groomed and impossibly elegant, even the ones who weren't as thin. I was totally underdressed in my jeans and top. My wedge sandals now felt clunky and unstylish. I should have listened to Peck, who'd shuddered dramatically at the sight of my shoes when I came into her room earlier in the evening.

"When you socialize with gay men, Stella, you have to make an effort," she'd said, gesturing with her lipstick. She herself had settled on a set of pink-and-green hostess pajamas a stylish housewife in the seventies might have worn to a key party. She'd teased half her hair and pinned it up in the front and applied false eyelashes and glittery green eye shadow. Very Fas.h.i.+onina. "They despise wedges, by the way," she'd added with grandiose authority.

"Finally," Hamilton exclaimed. "Some female company. Look at you." He nodded approvingly as Peck spun around so he could get the full effect.

"I'm sorry about my sister," Peck said, handing him a bottle of the scotch he liked tied with a ribbon. "She thought you really meant casual casual casual. Not Southampton casual." casual. Not Southampton casual."

He ushered us into the center of the patio, where we were swept up in a sea of hugs and cologne. They were so American, all those pink-cheeked men, welcoming and open and sophisticated, but not like any I'd either imagined or known. They weren't like the tourists I occasionally ran across in Lausanne, coming out of the Mc-Donald's across the street from the train station, or waiting for the bus at the Place Saint-Sulpice, loudly and heavily exclaiming about the famous Swiss punctuality. And they weren't like the expats either, the ones who'd made their permanent home overseas for so long they were only half American, the other half nothing, a s.h.i.+fting desert of acquired characteristics.

"These boys were all friends of Lydia's," Hamilton explained to me. "She was quite the f.a.g hag, you know. Oh, don't look so shocked. She loved when we called her that. She was a crusader for gay rights. Wanted all of us to be able to marry. I said, 'Darling, what do I want to get married for? If I wanted a s.e.xless relations.h.i.+p, I'd be better off marrying you you.' "

I laughed while Peck wandered off and found a shy young man in a flowered s.h.i.+rt who, she was thrilled to learn, was interviewing for an interns.h.i.+p at Vanity Fair Vanity Fair magazine. magazine.

Hamilton steered me toward the bar, where a man who looked like an aging soap opera actor was fixing c.o.c.ktails. "Are you having fun in Southampton?" he asked, handing me a gla.s.s of wine. "Lydia would have wanted you to enjoy this while you're here. You should go to the beach. There aren't any beaches more beautiful in all the world."

"That's what Lydia always said. She would tell me to take my notebook and try to capture the way it felt to breathe the ocean air. And then she would add, 'But description can only get you so far.

Plot is a verb. Don't you forget it.' I've been trying to write about my time here. There seems to be so much to figure out."

"You're a clever girl. Don't worry," Hamilton said as the party grew louder around us. "Just relax and let the circus unfold around you."

"Is that what you do?" I asked.

"Darling," he said. "I am am the circus." the circus."

I asked him what he thought of Peck's theory that Miles n.o.ble had taken the painting from above the mantel.

"I suppose anything's anything's possible," he said, indicating with his eyebrows that he didn't really buy it. "I've heard the fellow's house is absolutely dreadful. And he went through four or five architects and designers. He has awful taste. Perhaps he's also a thief." possible," he said, indicating with his eyebrows that he didn't really buy it. "I've heard the fellow's house is absolutely dreadful. And he went through four or five architects and designers. He has awful taste. Perhaps he's also a thief."

"Peck thinks it could be some sort of courts.h.i.+p dance," I added. "But she hasn't heard from him."

"Good heavens," he said. "That's complicated. I wish I had more to tell you about that painting. Lydia didn't go on about her things the way people do now. We weren't all giving each other tours tours of the house and explaining every piece of art and furniture. We just of the house and explaining every piece of art and furniture. We just lived lived, you know. Lived in the s.p.a.ces of our homes and enjoyed each other's company. The only one she really talked about was her dead brother, the brilliant artist."

Someone dimmed the lights on the patio and the crowd seemed to grow more jovial. A platter of brownies was pa.s.sed around. I was about to take one when Hamilton put a hand on my arm. "Maybe you'd better not."

"I'm addicted to sweets," I said, helping myself to a small one. "It's one of my many vices." I popped the brownie into my mouth.