So Pretty It Hurts

“Really?” I said. “That’s fascinating. Anyone else of interest?”

“Scott says he usually likes to put together an eclectic mix, but Devon apparently insisted on bringing her own entourage. Her manager is coming, and one of her model friends. I’m just glad you could come. Beau didn’t mind, did he?”

“He didn’t sound overjoyed. But then . . . oh God, never mind.”

“Tell me,” she urged.

“I’m just feeling a little weird about his trip to Sedona.”

“What do you mean? You don’t think . . . ?”

“That he went down there to hook up with some retiree? No, I don’t get any sense he’s cheating. I just worry that he’s not—I don’t know, not ready to fully commit, I guess. I keep sensing that he talked himself into a relationship because he’s attracted to me, and likes going to bed with me.”

“Do you feel ready?”

“For a relationship, yeah. And maybe even more at some point. I’m not staring thirty-five in the face just yet so I’m okay being single. But I care more about Beau than anyone I’ve met up until now, and in the back of my head is the thought that if I were going to get married again, I’d like it to be him.”

“This all sounds like David—remember him, the guy I told you about?” Jessie said ruefully. “He seemed to love me but then finally dumped me because he said he didn’t want to make a long-term commitment to anyone. A year later he married someone else. You know how the porn industry has fluffers, women who keep the male stars hot before they perform? I felt like I’d been a husband fluffer with this guy.”

I felt myself cringing as she spoke. Was that what I was for Beau—a husband fluffer?

We took the Taconic State Parkway north and after an hour and a half, exited onto rural roads. We stopped chatting while I focused on the GPS directions. Many of the scattered houses we passed had their doors and windows and even their roofs rimmed with Christmas lights. We found Scott’s driveway and turned onto it. Suddenly we were engulfed in darkness.

“He told me the driveway’s really more of a road,” Jessie said, “a mile and a half long.”

“Hold on,” I said, as I hit the brakes. Five or six deer bounded across the road directly in front of the Jeep, their eyes unblinking in the headlights.

“Gosh, they scared the hell out of me,” Jessie said. “Do you think there’s a lot of other animals around here? Like wolves?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “There aren’t wolves in this area. Just jaguars and cougars.”

“Very funny. Now you’ve really spooked me.”

It was kind of spooky, and I was relieved when finally a few lights twinkled through the massive fir trees. And then a few seconds later there were more lights. The house looked huge, like a cruise ship steaming across a jet-black ocean.

“Wow,” Jessie exclaimed. “Big.”

“All of this could be yours,” I said, “if you play your cards right.”

As we drew closer, we saw that it wasn’t a house at all, but rather a huge gray barn—or actually two large barns positioned parallel to each other. There was a scattering of small outbuildings just beyond.

“Not what I was expecting at all,” said Jessie. “I hope we’re not bunking down with a herd of cows.”

As we stepped out of the Jeep into the crisp, clear night, a woman came up behind us, dressed in a dark barn jacket, khaki pants, and short gum-bottomed shoe boots, the kind you see in an L.L.Bean catalogue. She was fiftyish, with cropped blond-gray hair and a doughy face. She smiled at us, but there was no crinkling by the eyes. It was the kind of expression you offered when you were forced to make nice.

“Sorry we’re so late,” Jessie announced. “We got a late start from the city. I’m Jessie, by the way. And this is Bailey.”

“Not a problem,” the woman said, revealing a huge snaggletooth. “I’m Sandy, Mr. Cohen’s housekeeper. Why don’t I show you to your rooms first, and then you can join Scott. Have you eaten dinner?”

“Not unless you count a bag of tortilla chips,” Jessie said.

“Well, there’s plenty of pork ragout left over.”

After we grabbed our duffel bags from the back of the Jeep, we followed Sandy in the direction of the smaller of the two barns, which she explained contained all the bedrooms—except Mr. Cohen’s. Although we were only two hours north of the city, we might as well have been at an Adirondack logging camp. The place was ringed entirely by thick, dark woods. I glanced up. A bright white half-moon hung in the sky, surrounded by a zillion twinkling stars and the haunting film of the Milky Way.

The silence was suddenly cut by a howling from deep within the woods. Jessie nearly jumped into my arms.

“I thought you said there were no wolves around here,” she whispered anxiously, grabbing my arm.

“That’s not a wolf. It’s a coyote. They’re pretty common in these parts. But unless you’re a chicken or a Pomeranian, you don’t have any reason to worry.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, glancing all around us. “I grew up in Orange County, California, and I generally don’t do woods. I didn’t think it was going to be this creepy.”

We were almost at the barn, lagging a bit behind Sandy. I could see now that the two structures were connected by a simple one-story passageway, made totally of glass. And suddenly a heavyset woman in jeans and bulky sweater came barreling down that passageway, her curly black hair bouncing with each stride and her face pinched in annoyance.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” Jessie whispered.

“Maybe she didn’t like the ragout,” I said.

Sandy had reached the door to the building and turned around, her expression slightly impatient, as if we were naughty schoolgirls who’d fallen out of line. We hurried and caught up with her. We entered a foyer with a large wooden bench and brightly colored kilim rug. The walls and floors were all made of old, pumpkin-colored barn wood. On the floor above I heard a door slam. I figured the noise came from the young woman we’d spotted barreling down the passageway.

“There are a few guest rooms down here, but you’re both upstairs,” Sandy said, nodding her head toward the stairs. “I think you’ll find it nice and private.”

What was that supposed to mean? I wondered. By the hushed way she said it, you would have thought we were here to negotiate something top-secret with Scott, like a Journey reunion album. Jessie flashed me a mock grimace.

Our rooms, side by side, were extremely spacious. Mine was filled with quirky old antiques, black-and-white- checked fabric and splashes of lemon yellow. Sandy explained that if we needed anything during our stay and she wasn’t around, we should just dial extension seven on the landlines in our rooms. She added that when we were done freshening up, we should take the glass passageway to the main barn, where everyone was gathered.

I kicked off the shoes I’d been wearing in the car and tugged on a pair of gray suede boots over my jeans. I also swapped my top for a scoop-necked gray-blue sweater that matched my eyes. I’d been growing my blondish hair out for months, and it was long enough finally for me to put up on my head. I twisted it into a sloppy knot, adding a pair of dangling silver earrings. Tarty but not too tarty, I thought. Still, I felt a tiny twinge of guilt.

Jessie opened her door just as I was about to rap on it. She had changed too, into a tight, tight orange sweater that looked great with her eyes. After making our way along the glass passageway, we stepped into a warm, double-storied entrance space aglow in honey-colored light. There were old hayrack ladders and rusty farm tools mounted on the wall. Directly in front of us was a plank-wood staircase that rose to another level. Music, conversation, and the sound of clanging dishes all emanated from above.

Just as we headed over to mount the stairs, a man, dressed in black pants and a black V-neck sweater, came bounding down them. I knew it had to be Scott Cohen, and though there was a boyish quality to his face and he wore his dark hair longish, it was clear he was a good ten years older than Jessie—about forty, it looked.

“Hey, I’m so glad you finally made it,” he exclaimed.

“Hi there,” Jessie said, and accepted a kiss on the cheek. When she introduced me, Scott reached out and shook my hand, grasping it for an extra beat, like you’d expect from a politician or car salesman. His nearly coal black eyes held mine for an extra beat, too.

“You’ve got an amazing place,” Jessie said. “What were these barns doing back in the woods?”

“I actually had them transported on flatbed trucks from Vermont.”