Summer and the City

to slip it to Teensie. But that might be too obvious. Instead, I have another idea.

“Hey,” I say, holding up the manuscript. “ You should read my play.”

“Me?” Miranda asks, taken aback.

“Why not?”

“Didn’t Bernard read it? I thought he liked it. He’s the expert.”

“But you’re the audience. And you’re smart. If you like it, it means other people will too.”

“Oh, Carrie,” she says, pulling at her lip. “I don’t know anything about plays.”

“Don’t you want to read it?”

“I’m going to hear you read it on Thursday. At Bobby’s.”

“But I want you to read it, first.”

“Why?” She looks hard at me, but then relents. Perhaps she can see how, underneath the bravado, I’m a nervous wreck. She holds out her hand for the manuscript. “If you really want me to-”

“I do,” I say firmly. “You can read it this weekend and give it back to me on Monday. And sweetie? If you don’t like it, can you please pretend you do?”

Bernard went out to the Hamptons on Friday, so I take the Jitney by myself.

I don’t mind. From the sound of it, I kept picturing the Jitney as some kind of old-fashioned cable car, but it turns out to be a regular bus.

It chugs along a crowded highway until eventually we turn off and start going through little beach towns. At first they’re tacky, with bars and clam shacks and car dealerships, but then everything becomes more green and marshy, and when we cross a bridge and drive past a log cabin with totem poles on the front and a sign reading CIGARETTES $2 CARTON, the landscape changes completely. Old oaks and manicured hedges line the street, behind which I glimpse enormous shingled mansions.

The bus snakes into a picture-perfect town. Neatly painted white shops with green awnings populate the streets. There’s a bookstore, a tobacconist, Lilly Pulitzer, a jewelry store, and an old-fashioned movie theater where the bus pulls over.

“Southampton,” the driver announces. I pick up my carpenter’s bag and get out.

Bernard is waiting for me, leaning against the hood of a small bronze Mercedes, his smooth bare feet pushed into Gucci loafers. Miranda was right: the plastic dress and Fiorucci boots that were perfect for the city feel out of place in this quaint little town. But Bernard doesn’t care. He takes my bag, pausing for a kiss. His mouth is sublimely familiar. I love the way I can feel one of his incisors under his top lip.

“How was the trip?” he asks, smoothing my hair.

“Great,” I say breathlessly, thinking about how much fun we’re going to have.

He holds open the door and I slide onto the front seat. The car is old, from the 1960s, with a polished wooden steering wheel and shiny nickel dials. “This your car?” I ask, teasingly.

“It’s Peter’s.”

“Peter?”

“Teensie’s husband.” He starts the engine, puts the car into gear, and pulls away from the curb with a jolt.

“Sorry,” he laughs. “I’m a tad distracted. Don’t take this the wrong way, but Teensie’s insisted on giving you your own room.”

“Why?” I frown in annoyance, but secretly, I’m relieved.

“She kept asking me how old you were. I told her it was none of her damn business, and that’s when she got suspicious. You are over eighteen, aren’t you?” he asks, half jokingly.

I sigh, as if the question is beyond ridiculous. “I told you. I’m a sophomore in college.”

“Just checking, kitten,” he says, giving me a wink. “And don’t be afraid to stand up to Teensie, okay? She can be a bully, but she’s got an enormous heart.”

In other words, she’s an absolute bitch.

We swing into a long gravel drive and park in front of a shingled house. It’s not quite as large as I imagined, given the enormity of the houses I saw along the way, but it’s still big. What was once a regular-sized house is attached to a soaring barnlike structure.

“Nice, huh?” Bernard says, gazing up at the house from behind the windshield. “I wrote my first play here.”

“Really?” I ask, getting out of the car.

“Rewrote it, actually. I’d written the first draft during the day when I was working the night shift at the bottling plant.”

“That’s so romantic.”

“It wasn’t at the time. But in hindsight, yeah, it does sound romantic.”

“With a touch of cliche?” I ask, razzing him.

“I went to Manhattan one night with my buddies,” he continues, opening the trunk. “Stumbled across Teensie at a club. She insisted I send her my play, said she was an agent. I didn’t even know what an agent was back then. But I sent her my play anyway, and the next thing I know, she opened her house to me for the summer. So I could write. Undisturbed.”

“And were you?” I ask, trying to keep the apprehension out of my voice. “Undisturbed?”

He laughs. “When I was disturbed, it wasn’t unpleasant.”

Crap. Does that mean he slept with Teensie? And if he did, why didn’t he tell me? He could have warned me, at least. I hope I won’t discover any other unpleasant facts this weekend.

“Don’t know where I’d be without Teensie,” he says, slinging his arm across my shoulders.

We’re almost at the house when Teensie herself appears, strolling briskly up a flagstone path. She’s wearing tennis whites, and while I can’t speak for her heart, there’s no mistaking the fact that her breasts are enormous. They strain against the cloth of her polo shirt like two boulders struggling to erupt from a volcano. “There you are!” she exclaims pleasantly, shielding her eyes from the sun.

She plants herself in front of me, and in a rush, says, “I’d shake hands but I’m sweaty. Peter’s inside somewhere, but if you want a drink, ask Alice.” She turns around and trots back to the courts, waggling her fingers in the air.

“She seems nice,” I say, in an effort to like her. “And she has really big breasts,” I add, wondering if Bernard has seen them in the flesh.

Bernard hoots. “They’re fake.”

“ Fake? ”

“Silicone.”

So he has seen them. How else would he know all about them? “What else is plastic?”

“Her nose, of course. She likes to think of herself as Brenda. In Goodbye, Columbus . I always tell her she’s more Mrs. Robinson than Miss Patimkin.”

“What does her husband think?”

Bernard grins. “Pretty much whatever she tells him to, I imagine.”

“I mean about the silicone .”

“Oh,” he says. “I don’t know. He spends a lot of his time hopping.”

“Like a bunny?”

“More like the White Rabbit. All he’s missing is the pocket watch.” Bernard opens the front door and calls out, “Alice,” like he owns the place.

Which, given his history with Teensie, I suppose he does.

We’ve entered the barn part of the house, which has been fashioned into a gigantic living room filled with couches and stuffed chairs. There’s a stone fireplace and several doors that lead to unseen corridors. One of the doors flies open and out pops a small man with longish hair and what was likely once a girlishly pretty face. He’s on his way to another door when he spots us and beetles over.

“Anyone seen my wife?” he inquires, in an English accent.