“This is what I love to do!” she exclaimed, her eyes glowing with excitement beneath her voluminous hat that spread like a flaming mushroom top over her. I could tell it was true. The idea of initially earning three or four thousand dollars a month, which Flo dismissed as negligible, was huge for me. It was at least double what I would have made working at the Hole if I had worked forty hours a week.
We talked for hours while dozens of houseguests milled about the house. They were swimming in the pool, sleeping sunburned on the sectional in the living room, watching the US Open on the flat-screen, and driving quads across the lawn, ripping up the manicured grounds for the gardeners to repair. Tabitha had all the toys—a ten-seat theater, skateboard half-pipe, sunken tennis court, and a complete spa facility. I’d heard there was even a two-lane bowling alley somewhere.
Soon my head was swimming and I needed a rest. Zoya showed me to the guest cottage, which would have been a complete house for some people. After she insisted on hanging up my clothes in the massive walk-in closet, I flopped down on the bed and crashed.
* * *
“Are you going to sleep all night?” Tabitha asked and shook my arm as if I were dead.
“Night?” I said groggily, trying to sit up. “Really? I thought it was afternoon.”
“It was about four hours ago,” she said and took a sip of some chilled mixed alcohol concoction she was holding. “Now it’s night. That’s the way it always happens. First the afternoon and then the night,” she said. “Now it’s time to play.” She handed me a drink, something with tequila in it.
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I’m sure there’s a difference between an “event,” “a benefit,” and a flat-out party but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what it is. We drove up to an enormous Bridgehampton beachfront house made of wood and glass, parked Tabitha’s limo with the valet, and stumbled in with our entourage. Everyone in our group was already hammered.
The entire ocean side of the house was made from oversize mahogany-framed glass sliding walls, which were fully opened to the outdoors. We witnessed the last orange and purple rays of sunshine setting over the nearby bay. A glass bridge crossed the infinity-edged pool reflecting the sunset. Tabitha seemed to know everyone, and it didn’t take long for her to be scary drunk. Every direction you turned, there was sushi or a grill or a bar and always lots of people.
The strange thing was that I couldn’t tell who was giving the party and whether just anyone could come. There was no hostess or activity that seemed to be the focus, and I suspected Tabitha didn’t really know these people as much as they knew her in that celebrity way.
I found myself waving, air kissing, and making empty-headed conversation with a long procession of people I didn’t know and who had no idea who I was or wasn’t, which didn’t seem to bother anyone but was exhausting. I wondered, was this how the other half parties? Eating fabulous food at enormous mansions with people they don’t know?
Tabitha couldn’t even tell me whose party it was. I developed my own pet theory that the owner was a plastic surgeon, because this particular group seemed to be filled with so many women who had enhanced surgical recontouring. Even the young women had bodies that were anatomically impossible. I felt positively flat, not for the first time, but this was extreme. At least I wouldn’t have to contend with random injectables in my body for the rest of my life.
I commented to Tabitha about the over-the-top bodies, and she laughed. She proposed a drinking game where we’d each have to throw back a shot every time we saw a woman with a breast augmentation and two for a Brazilian butt lift. But that was a bad idea because there were too many. She told me about a package deal one cosmetic surgeon she knew in the city offered with unlimited plastic surgical procedures (“within reason,” his offer stated), including a Hamptons luxury home rental and a full-time nurse for your recovery, as well as a chauffeur, invites to VIP and celebrity parties (more parties, I assumed, with people you didn’t know), and a budget for a new wardrobe (because your new body would need new, slimmer clothes, I assumed). I just hoped that whoever bought the package didn’t worry about looking puffy.
We left Bridgehampton for another party in Amagansett not far from Tabitha’s. It was a birthday bash for a sixteen-year-old girl who was the daughter of a friend of hers. But you’d never know it was a party for kids.
The adults easily outnumbered the kids and the teenagers were scary. They ran around with a total sense of entitlement and confidence that I assumed only Daddy’s trust fund could provide. Watching them intimidated me. The girls, many of them a mere thirteen or fourteen years old, wore tons of makeup, the tightest skin-tight Lycra tube dresses, and high heels just to look older.
It didn’t take Tabitha long to nab a teenage boy, Maxwell, and that was the beginning of our problems.
As the evening grew later and later, Tabitha decided to take him along. I wondered whether his mother would be panicked, searching for him. Walking the parking lot, we glided through car porn—Lambos, Masers, Ferraris, Bentleys, Aston Martins—until we reached Tabitha’s stretch.
“Where to now?” Maxwell asked, almost giddy arm in arm with Tabitha. You could tell he figured he had lucked out. Drunk pop star, stretch limo, and adults who didn’t care about the drinking age or corrupting a minor. How old was he really? Like fifteen?
“Let’s stop by the Talkhouse,” Tabitha slurred. “It should be picking up about now.”
Mocha pulled up in front of a bar and live music joint in Amagansett, Stephen Talkhouse, which resembled somebody’s rundown summer cottage. Even though it was almost two in the morning, people were pouring in and out of the club and it seemed like another hot new band was about to go on.
53
Tabitha took the door of the Talkhouse by storm—the big Asian bouncer seemed familiar with her and waved us in. There were too many of us, so they stamped our hands without even counting to get us out of the way. The bartender knew Tabitha and her taste for tequila, so he set up a margarita for her and lined up drinks for us immediately.
A great variety of people were pouring into the club for the next show—some arrived in limos, some on foot. One couple, looking like they just came from a wedding reception, were toasting others in their wedding party, which included the best man and three bridesmaids in identical hideous purple dresses. Others wore sandals and cutoff jeans. It was a totally eclectic mix.
I was surprised to find Chase drinking at the bar across the room. I hadn’t seen him since the paparazzi disaster at D&G and his last-minute rescue. He waved, I smiled, and he sauntered over.
Before he reached me, everything fell apart.
Tabitha was already on her second margarita when the Big Asian guy from the door walked over. Someone at the bar must have alerted him, because he headed straight for Maxwell, our noticeably underage stowaway. Maxwell was taking a sip of his drink when the bouncer grabbed his hand to stop him. Maxwell had the guilty expression of someone waiting to be caught. Being a kid of fifteen, he was totally willing to walk away. But Tabitha wasn’t.
When the bouncer asked Maxwell for his ID, she went ballistic. Maybe she had forgotten that he was only fifteen, maybe she was just so drunk on the parade of drinks that made a wet, dizzy trail through every party we had attended that she didn’t know where she was, or maybe the Princess of Pop was so insecure she needed to impress the little entitled rich kid. Whatever it was, she was indignant.
The Asian guy seemed perfectly capable of handling Tabitha, and it would have just been a drunken rant if a woman at the bar, no less drunk than Tabitha, hadn’t thrown her two cents in. It was all too loud, too crowded, and happened too quickly for me to try to calm Tabitha down.