ONE HUNDRED AND fifty white wooden folding chairs stood empty on the eastern lawn, formed into two groups with an aisle down the middle leading to a rose arbor. The wind had carried red, pink, and yellow petals everywhere, some clinging to the plastic windows of the reception tents like thumbprints.
Wedding pace was about five notches faster than dining room pace, and Pearl had almost collided with another server twice already. There was a schedule to keep, speeches to be made, hokey traditions to be carried out, and nobody wanted to be the server who photobombed the wedding party because they couldn’t keep up.
At this point, guests were winding down on entrées and speculating about the cake. Pearl cleared her own tables—busboys were catch-as-catch-can in the tents—and hefted her tray through the open patio doors, almost slamming into Indigo coming out of the kitchen.
Indigo stopped short, blew a stray curl out of her eye, and threaded around her, saying nothing. Fine by Pearl. She dumped her dirty dishes and returned to the dining room, which had the gilded Closed for Special Event sign propped in the lobby entrance.
Somebody said, “Pssst.” She looked around, saw no one, kept going.
“For chrissake, I said pssst.” As she approached the bar, abandoned by Chas for a table under one of the tents, the top of Reese’s head appeared, then sank again.
She tucked herself in beside him, glancing back to make sure no one could see them from where they sat. “They’re going to cut the cake in a minute.”
“Cool. Save me a piece.” He flicked her cowlick. “Where were you last night? You didn’t pick up.” He propped the toes of his vintage wingtips against the back bar. “I called, like, once.”
“With a guy.” A little surprised at herself, she didn’t look away from the mirrored shelves of liquor bottles.
“Oh. Your dad again. Hey, you ever need help with that, you call me, okay? Doesn’t matter how late.”
She shut her eyes. Right. Not only was he throwing her an undeserved pity party, but he apparently couldn’t conceive of Pearl Haskins having Friday night plans with any man who wasn’t her father. “You’ll jump right on your white horse, huh.”
“You know it. I got a cape and some tights, too.”
She smiled. “Come on. Our tables probably think we died.”
“They wish. Salud.” As she watched, Reese reached down, picked up a shot glass, and tossed back the contents, wincing.
“Do you want to get fired?”
“Ooh, now there’s a question for the Magic Eight Ball.” Reese stood, rinsed the glass, then paused, fixing her with a look, one eyebrow raised. “Pearl, relax. Nobody’s going to get close enough to smell it.”
“I can.”
“That’s because you’ve got a nose for it.” She didn’t flinch; she didn’t have to. He was quiet a second. “Sorry. That was shitty.” He popped a couple of olives into his mouth as he passed her, gesturing to the room at large. “There. Virtually undetectable.”
She followed on his heels into the afternoon sunlight, where Indigo was being death-marched back inside by Meriwether.
The assistant manager was a small woman in her early thirties, her lips thin and colorless, her fine hair twisted into a chignon. As always, her look was one of grim focus, her hushed tone that of someone who’d spent her entire life operating behind the scenes. “You and you. Come.” Her gaze flicked between Pearl and Reese, lingering on him, perhaps detecting the junipery smell of whiskey as Reese looked blandly back at her and did what he was told.
Meriwether steered them into the kitchen, where the wedding cake sat on a lace-draped cart, five massive tiers covered in ivory fondant, piping, and sugar flowers. “I need you to take it straight through to the doors to the center of the main tent.” She crossed her arms. “Do not jiggle the cart. Do not fraternize. This is a major photo op. Nobody wants to see your mouths moving.”
Somehow, it made perfect sense that Pearl ended up steering, gripping the edges of the cart while Indigo and Reese walked point. With painstaking care, they rolled the cart out of the kitchen and through the dining room, Meriwether following. They hit the slope of the lawn, and their trio closed in, close enough to share breath.
“Slow down.” Indigo’s lips barely moved.
“I am.” Pearl.
“People.” Meriwether.
One of the cart’s wheels snagged on a rut—Pearl thought divots and had to bite the inside of her cheek—and the cake trembled. Indigo swore. “It’s slipping.”
“If Pearl says she’s got it, she’s got it.” Reese’s voice was flat. “Relax.”
Indigo glanced at him, a sharp, private look, then away. A warm feeling—was it schadenfreude?—spread through Pearl as the shadow of the tent fell over them, oohs and aahs and camera flashes erupting from the crowd.
Once the cart was parked, the three of them broke in opposite directions, Pearl ending up in the far corner of the tent by the member lot. A flash of St. James Red caught her eye, and she watched the Bentley Continental GT pull in and claim one of the last open spots. Tristan got out, slung a sports bag over his shoulder, and went into the fitness center entrance.
The sight of him stayed with her as she served paper-thin slices of cake and poured coffee from silver pots, moving on autopilot until a woman said, “Hello, Pearl.”
Beth Zimmitti, resident of Millionaires’ Row. Her slightly protuberant eyes were wide, and she fiddled with her bracelets as she looked at Pearl.
“Hi.” Pearl’s voice was faint.
“I hadn’t seen you yet. Around the club, I mean. So I wondered . . .”
What? If the Haskins had been exiled to Siberia? Much less awkward for the Zimmittis, no doubt, who, after seven years employing Dad as their caretaker, had fired him in a one-paragraph letter, simply stating that his services would no longer be required at 112 Cove Road, though they wished him much luck in his future endeavors. And Beth was one of the few who’d always gone out of her way to ask after Pearl, to send a Christmas card with a little bonus in it each year. Pearl heard the click in her throat as she swallowed. “Would you like more coffee?”
“Oh—please.” Another pause; then, in a lower tone, “How is Win doing?”
Pearl thought Beth might actually reach out and squeeze her hand, at which point she’d be forced to dump the coffee into her lap. “Fine.” What was she supposed to say? You know, he really had the drinking in hand until you people got through with him. Thanks for that.
Beth nodded in the increasingly painful silence; the cup seemed bottomless, like some nightclub magic trick.
“Young lady?” The Texas accent was unmistakable. Mimi Montgomery-Hines hallooed from five tables away, flapping her napkin in Pearl’s direction. “SOS, honey.”
Pearl felt her body unlock, and she left Beth Zimmitti with a brief “Thank you.” Even that tasted bitter.
“Oh, hell’s bells, I’m a mess, aren’t I?” Mimi, smelling powerfully of Chanel Misia, dabbed at a spill on the tablecloth. Mineral water, by the look. “You’d think a lady my age would be able to drink from a glass, but you’d be wrong.”
“Told you we should’ve kept her away from the bar,” one of her friends said.
“Hush.” Mimi gave Pearl a nudge in the ribs as she helped Pearl dry the spot. “How they treatin’ you around here, dumpling?”
Pearl flushed slightly. “Not bad.”
“Not so good, either, I bet. Any time you need somebody to throw their weight around for you, let me know. Weight I got, and plenty of it.” She dropped Pearl a wink. “Tell your daddy I said hello. My roses are gonna be prizewinners again this year, I just know it, and it’s thanks to him.”
Emotion sealed Pearl’s throat; she smiled, nodded, and took her leave.
Not long after, the guests migrated to the ballroom for music and dancing. Servers started tearing things down: linens were balled and carted to laundry, furniture was carried inside, the PA system was dismantled.
After Pearl dropped the last stray table number into the trash, she slipped through the dining room into the lobby. If the rumors were true about how Tristan worked out, he might still be in the fitness center. She passed the front desk, the stone fireplace, the overstuffed chairs. Photos taken at the club over the decades hung in the corridor: men in antiquated golfing garb, couples in costume dress. There was a recent group shot from a fund-raiser; Sloane Garrison smiled down from the upper-left corner, blond and sleek in a white linen shift and wide-brimmed hat.
The fitness center was in the renovated ell, decked out with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and TVs flashing muted CNN.
Tristan was using the treadmill in the far-right corner, facing the mirrors. The center, otherwise deserted on a Saturday evening, was consumed by the pounding of his steps.
He had an erect running stance, but at just shy of the two-and-a-half-hour mark, he was losing form, a dark V streaming down the back of his T-shirt to the band of his shorts. His breath sobbed out of him.
Pearl edged to the doorway, watching until he finally fell, landing heavily on one knee. The safety key clipped to his shirt popped free of the machine, cutting the power. He knelt there, gasping, head hanging down. Finally, like an act of prayer, he touched his brow to the track and sat back, tossing his drenched hair out of his face.
She let Tristan find her there, deep down in the mirror. Their reflections watched each other. It wasn’t clear if he recognized her at first—puke or pass out was still in question—but then his gaze sharpened. With effort, he gripped the railing and pulled himself up, turning to face her. His legs were trembling.
Pearl went to him. No thought, all instinct. She held out her hand.
The tableau held for a moment, Tristan looking down at her hand as if it were something foreign and unreliable, as if he’d never seen the gesture before.
“Do you need help?” It was the wrong question; his expression was remote, unyielding. She tried again: “Where do you want to go?”
He hesitated, looked like he might throw up. “The locker room.”
She held his arm as he stepped down from the treadmill. They crossed the room together. Once they entered the men’s locker room, their balance was dependent on each other.
Inside, everything was ecru tile and stainless steel. Tristan led her straight to the open shower area and twisted a knob, bracing one hand against the wall as the spray came down on him. Pearl moved back, watching as he slid to the floor and sat with his head hanging, letting the water soak through his workout clothes. She felt like a voyeur staying, yet she didn’t dare leave, instead standing back by the sinks until he finally lifted his head.
She brought him a towel from the shelf. “Are you going to be sick? I can get the trash can.”
Eventually: “No.”
“You need water.”
“I have some.” He swallowed, nodded over his shoulder to the lockers, closed his eyes. “Seventy-eight.”
Pearl went to his locker, unsurprised to find it was one of the only ones without a padlock. She reached into his gym bag, touched folded clothes, travel-size toiletries, a bottle of water. When she gave it to him, he drank half without stopping, downed the rest a moment later. He was still pale, with faint, shocked shadows beneath his eyes, but when he looked at her, the keen focus was back, the sensation of being under a 400x microscope lens.
“You should eat something.” She suddenly felt very wrong being here, where the air smelled like men’s soaps and acrid cleanser, where anyone could walk in and find them together.
He stood, now with only the slightest sign of weakness, and went around the corner. Pearl took a step forward, stopping abruptly when she saw, over the chest-high partition, that he was getting undressed.
His voice caught her at the door. “Nobody ever said your name. Last night, on the boat.”
She didn’t turn. “It’s Pearl.”
Tristan remained silent so long she had to look back. He now stood at the partition, watching her. His shoulders and pectoral muscles were chiseled, not an ounce of extra flesh on his frame. His skin gleamed damply under the fluorescents. “Thank you.”
He said it without inflection. She barely nodded, lifting her gaze from his body a moment too late, knowing he’d seen. She left the fitness center quickly, not slowing her step as the desk attendant came out of the women’s locker room pushing a cleaning cart and stopped to stare after her.