‘You mean, how big a place would I need. Yes, of course, I’d have guests, I’d want room to spread out.’
‘Not a condo, then,’ she said.
He already knew that much about Palm Beach. ‘Lesley,’ he said, ‘the condos aren’t Palm Beach. They’re south on the island, their own thing, little places for retired accountants. I’d want something well, you tell me. What’s the neighborhood I want?’
She opened a desk drawer, pulled out a map, and laid it in front of him. With a gold pen, she made marks on the upside-down map as she described the territory. ‘The most sought-after section, of course,’ she told him, ‘is what we call between-the-clubs, because realPalm Beachers want to belong to both of the important clubs, so to have a place between them is very convenient.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘The Everglades Club, at the north, is here on Golf Road. Then the area of County Road and Ocean Boulevard here is the section I’m talking about, down to the Bath and Tennis Club, here where Ocean Boulevard turns inland at the Southern Boulevard Bridge.’
‘These are all oceanfront?’
‘Well, they’re both,’ she said. ‘Lake Worth runs along here, on the mainland side of the island. Here, just below Bath and Tennis, where Ocean Boulevard curves in away from the sea, we have estates with ocean frontage, but some of them have tunnels under Ocean Boulevard to the beach on Lake Worth, so the property actually extends through from ocean to lake.’
‘And the lake is more protected than the ocean.’
‘Exactly.’ Then she smiled and said, ‘One of our ladies, some years ago, to keep from being served papers in a divorce, ran through the tunnel to escape. Unfortunately, they were waiting on the other side.’
He saw that that was gossip that was supposed to make them more comfortable with one another, and that he was supposed to laugh now, so he laughed and said, ‘Too many people know about the tunnels. I guess.’
‘Not that they aren’t secure,’ she assured him. ‘No one you don’t want could get in.’
‘But if you go out,’ he said, ‘they’ll be waiting for you.’
She smiled, a bit doubtfully. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘But this area,’ he said, running his finger along it on the map, ‘isn’t between the clubs, it’s south of them.’
‘But very close,’ she said. ‘It would be in the same range.’
‘And what is that range? What are we talking about along there?’
‘Whensomething’s available, and nothing is at the moment, you could expect to pay fourteen or fifteen.’ Parker shook his head, looking solemn. ‘My bank wouldn’t let me do that,’ he said. ‘For a month a year? No. I wouldn’t even raise the issue.’
‘Then you’re not going to be between the clubs,’ she said. She was very sympathetic about it.
‘I understand that,’ he assured her. ‘But there’s got to be something that’s not all the way up to these places but not all the way down to the condos.’
‘But with ocean frontage, you mean.’
‘Naturally.’ He shrugged. ‘You don’t come to Palm Beach notfor the water.’
‘Well, you can go south of Bath and Tennis,’ she said. ‘For quite a ways along there, you’ll find some verynice estates, mostly neo-Regency, on the sea, or some facing it across the road. Of course, the farther south you go, the closer you are to the condos.’ As though to say, the closer you are to the Minotaur.
‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘Take half an hour, show me these neighborhoods, give me some idea what’s out there.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ she agreed, and pulled her purse out of the bottom drawer of her desk. ‘We’ll take my car.’
‘Fine.’
It took more than half an hour; they spent almost two hours driving up and down the long narrow island in bright sunshine. Her car was a pale blue Lexus, heavily air-conditioned, its back seat full of loose-leaf ledgers and stacks of house-description sheets, many with color photos.
She drove well, but didn’t give it much attention; mostly, she talked. She talked about the neighborhoods they were going through, about the history of Palm Beach, the famous people connected with the place, who mostly weren’t famous to Parker, and the ‘style’ of the ‘community.’ Styleand communitywere apparently big words around here, but both words, when they were distilled, came down to money.
But not just any money, not for those who wanted to ‘belong’ another big word that also meant money. Inherited money was best, which almost went without saying, though Lesley did say it, indirectly, more than once. Married money was okay, second best, which was why people here didn’t inquire too much into new spouses’ pasts. Earned money was barely acceptable, and then only if it acknowledged its inferiority, and absolutely only if it wasn’t being earned anymore. ‘Donald Trump never fit in here,’ Lesley said, having pointed out Mar-a-Lago, which for many years had belonged to Mrs Merriweather Post, who definitively didfit in here, and which after her death had been for years a white elephant on the market nobody’s inherited money, no matter how much of it there was, could afford the upkeep of the huge sprawling place until Trump had grabbed it up, expecting it to be his entree to Palm Beach, misunderstanding the place, believing Palm Beach was about real estate, like New. York, never getting it that Palm Beach was about money you hadn’t earned.
‘I should be pleased Mr Trump took over Mar-a-Lago,’ Lesley said, ‘I think we should all be pleased, because we certainly didn’t want it to turn into Miss Havisham’s wedding cake out there, but to be honest with you, I think a place must be just a littled?lasse if Donald Trump has even heard of it.’
Parker let all this wash over him, responding from time to time with his Daniel Parmitt imitation, looking out the windshield at the bright sunny day, looking at the big blocky mansions of the unemployed rich. Neo-Regency style in architecture, when it was pointed out to him, seemed mostly inspired by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: molded plaster wreaths on the outside walls, marching balustrades, outsize Grecian urns dotted around like game pieces.
