35. Cruel Summer
When Coco steps in the door from Meat and Fish with a pink drink for Leslee and a container of sesame noodles for Bull, she hears Leslee screaming for Bull, and not just screaming but crying.
Someone is dead,Coco thinks, and her stomach drops even though the last thing she wants to do is feel sorry for the Richardsons. Who could it be? Neither Bull nor Leslee has ever mentioned brothers, sisters, or cousins. Coco has mentally placed Leslee’s family members on some dusty acres in Nevada with the sound of machine-gun fire reverberating in a tin building. Bull’s family she pictures in a similarly dusty Australian outback, two elderly parents waiting for the tour bus to pass through. They don’t talk about friends they grew up with, college roommates, work colleagues, people they’ve met on vacation. They’ve had no houseguests. The Richardsons seem to exist in a bubble, the here and the now, this house, the connections they’ve made this summer.
Has something happened to someone Coco knows? She moves to the plate-glass window and sees Lamont bent over the stern of Hedonism; he’s fiddling with the back gate, which he complains is janky. He ordered a replacement but it won’t arrive for six weeks. The broken gate technically makes the boat unsafe, though Bull told Lamont not to worry about it. When Lamont told Coco that he was indeed worried about it, Coco said, “I know I should be a good girlfriend and commiserate. How about this—the Meat and Fish Market is once again out of Bull’s favorite pretzels. They won’t have more until Tuesday.”
Lamont stared at her. “You just called yourself my girlfriend.”
Coco tucked her hair behind her ears; it was finally long enough to do that. What she nearly said was that she liked him so much, she felt like more than a girlfriend. But because their relationship was secret, she also felt like less than a girlfriend. She almost wanted to get caught by Bull and Leslee. Would they really fire them? Coco doubted it. Bull and Leslee and Lamont and Coco were like a family, one no more dysfunctional than the family Coco grew up in.
Coco checks the Nantucket Current to see if there’s any breaking news about an untimely death or accident—nope. She heads downstairs—she has books to switch out in the library—and hears Leslee sobbing and Bull murmuring, then Leslee lets out a blood-freezing shriek and Coco thinks, I will not get pulled into their drama.
In the library, she replaces Life After Life by Kate Atkinson and takes May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes, geniuses both, in her humble opinion. When she’s back in the hall, she hears a door close. She turns around to see Bull leaving the primary suite.
“Everything okay?” Coco asks.
He shakes his head. “We didn’t get into the Field and Oar Club.”
That’s why the world is ending?Coco thinks. Spare me.
Leslee doesn’t come out of her room at all on Thursday; Coco reads on the curvy white sofa in the party room, listening for signs of life downstairs. She gets a text from Kacy asking if Coco can go to the Chief’s retirement dinner. Coco is surprised at how happy the text makes her. Time is a miracle worker; Coco’s feelings about the selfies have mellowed. But before Coco can say she’ll go, she has to check with Leslee. Can I let you know? she texts back. It’s crazy around here right now.
Friday, Bull leaves the house in the G-Wagon, and when he gets home, Coco is unpacking yet another wooden crate stuffed with straw that cushions yet another dozen Amalfi lemons.
“Those should cheer Leslee up,” he says and Coco checks to see if he’s kidding. “Listen, will you keep an eye on her, please? I have to travel for the next few days—a car is coming to get me in a minute.”
Coco wants to tell him he can’t just pawn his pathetic excuse for a wife off on her while he gets a hot-stone massage in Ubud. “When will you be back?”
“Tuesday night,” he says. “I’m sorry. This situation in Indo is proving to be a sticky wicket.” He claps Coco on the shoulder like they’re best mates.
Leslee doesn’t emerge from her room on Friday. What is she doing about food? Coco wonders. When Lamont sneaks up to her apartment early Saturday, Coco fully expects him to tell her that he’s taking Leslee out on the boat. Coco steels herself for this news, but he says he hasn’t heard from her.
Coco waits until noon and then taps on Leslee’s door. “Hey,” she calls into the dark bedroom. “Can I bring you anything?”
“Go away,” Leslee says.
Oh, how Coco would love to take these words to heart so she can go out onto the beach and read, but she can’t let Leslee continue her hunger strike. She thinks back to her own worst story: the time she stole money from the diner in Rosebush. Coco arrived in the pinkish-gray light before sunrise, let herself in with the keys Garth had entrusted her with, opened the register, and took what was there. She was pulling money out of the safe when Garth walked in and caught her. He could have called the police or fired her, but instead, he said, “Are you really that desperate to get out of this town?” And when she nodded, tears of shame rolling down her face, he made her breakfast.
Coco preheats the oven, lines a baking sheet with tinfoil, pulls out the waffle iron and gets it smoking hot, beats eggs with some heavy cream. She melts butter in a pan.
Twenty minutes later, she has scrambled eggs, a tray of bacon, and—thanks to some wizard on Instagram—golden hash-brown waffles. She’s about to take a plate down to the primary suite when she hears a shuffling on the stairs. It’s Leslee—or, maybe more accurately, the woman who used to be Leslee. Her skin is the color of putty; her hair is straight and frizzled at the ends; she’s wearing a pair of hideous purple drawstring shorts and one of Bull’s undershirts.
“I smelled bacon,” she says.
Coco sets the plate down at the kitchen island. She pours Leslee a cup of black coffee and a glass of ice water.
Leslee digs into the food with such naked appetite that it feels almost indecent to watch her. She shoves a bite of one of the hash-brown waffles in her mouth, then mumbles something, and Coco pulls ketchup from the fridge. As Leslee is shoveling in the eggs, Coco toasts two pieces of sourdough, butters them, then replenishes Leslee’s eggs. Half a pound of bacon is consumed in seconds. Leslee eats every bite of food down to the bread crusts, which she swipes through the remaining ketchup. She finishes the coffee and the water and burps.
Leslee’s eyes, which resemble small dull pebbles in their swollen sockets, fill with tears. “Thank you.”
“Bull told me about the Field and Oar. I’m sorry, I know how much you wanted to join.”
“I can’t believe we didn’t get in,” Leslee says. “I just don’t understand it.”
You don’t?Coco thinks. Leslee masterminded all the debauchery at Triple Eight this summer; she shamelessly flirted with Lamont, with Benton Coe, with Romeo, and with the freaking chief of police! Everyone has been keeping receipts.
“Busy explained what happened at the membership meeting,” Leslee says. “Sharon voted against me. People told me to watch out for her, you know. And then Phoebe voted against me.”
“Phoebe?” Coco says with genuine surprise.
“I told her I’d donated a hundred thousand dollars to Tiffin Academy so they’d let in her son. I chose her as my pickleball partner even though she sucks so bad she shouldn’t even be let on the court. I invited her boring friends to all my parties—except for Delilah at the end.”
Coco thinks about the check to Tiffin Academy that Leslee ripped up and threw away. She told Phoebe she’d donated, but had she actually donated?
“We did everything right,” Leslee says. “But everywhere we go, we fit in for a little while and then people shun us. Why?”
Because you aren’t genuine?Coco thinks. Because everything with you is transactional? Because you’re an egregious social climber?
“Bull tells me I shouldn’t care. Easy for him to say—he’s consumed with his work. He’s always traveling, trying to keep his business from going down the toilet.” Leslee taps her phone. “Come look.”
Reluctantly, Coco positions herself behind Leslee’s shoulder so she can see the screen. There’s an article in the New York Times with the headline “Indonesia to Ban Single-Use Plastics (But Is It Too Late?).”
Leslee shows Coco the photographs that accompany the article. In a simple wooden hut on stilts over murky green water, a brown child pokes his head out a glassless window. Below the house, in the water, is—Coco enlarges the image because she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing—trash. Plastic bottles, hundreds, thousands of them. Leslee scrolls through picture after picture: flotillas of plastic bottles on rivers, clogging up canals, washing up on beaches. One picture shows a mountain of plastic bottles against a backdrop of verdant rice paddies. In another, a majestic white long-legged bird—an egret or a heron—picks its way among bottles floating in the reeds.
“I’ve been with Bull on his trips overseas,” Leslee says. “It made me sick, seeing all the pollution. These new regulations are good for the Earth, but they’ll ruin us.”
“Ruin?” Coco says, thinking, What does that mean, exactly?
Leslee winds her hair around her forearm. “Bull’s doing battle with the IRS now. They claim he owes millions in back taxes, which he’s fighting since he makes most of his money overseas, but I think he hired a disreputable accountant, someone who tries to work the loopholes, which is fine until you get hanged.”
“What about the movies he invests in?” Coco asks. “Do they make you money?”
“Ha!” Leslee says. “They’ve all lost money. The production business is a sinkhole for cash.” She sniffs. “But Bull loves seeing his name in the credits. Whatever. We were still okay, since Bull’s bev company has always been gangbusters—Indonesia has a population of two hundred and seventy million, not to mention all the tourists—but now it won’t be legal for Bull to do business there. He’s talking about pivoting to aluminum or paper containers, but we own plastics factories, Coco. Bottling plants.”
This, Coco thinks, is what Bull meant by a sticky wicket.
“He has some real estate venture cooking that he claims will bring in some cash, but who knows how long that will take? Bull is a flagrant risk-taker, a shark jumper. And you know what? Every gambler loses at some point. I’ve only been with Bull when he’s winning. I don’t know what I’ll do if he loses everything.” She turns off her phone and the offensive images disappear. “Maybe I’ll kill him. Switch out a cyanide pill for his Viagra. He’s color-blind, you know”—Coco thinks of standing with Bull in the laundry room during the Pink and White Party: Would you please help me pick something out?—“so he’d never be able to tell.” Leslee holds Coco’s gaze for a second, then bursts out laughing. “I’m kidding!” She hugs Coco, then starts crying in her arms. Leslee’s words are muffled by Coco’s shoulder but she hears “So nice having another woman around” and “Didn’t want to belong to that la-di-da club anyway.”
When Leslee finally pulls away, Coco rips some paper towels off the roll so Leslee can mop her face.
“Thank you for listening,” Leslee says.
Coco nods. Leslee isn’t going to kill Bull. She’s just really sad. For perhaps the first time, Coco sees Leslee Richardson as a human being with a point of view. They’re having a moment, Coco thinks, and no one is more surprised than she is.
The new closeness with Leslee is thrilling and scary, like a toboggan ride down a steep hill. On Sunday, Leslee invites Coco to lunch at Cru and when Coco asks if she should wear her uniform, Leslee says, “Absolutely not. We’re going as friends.”
Friends?Coco thinks—and yet this is what it feels like once they’re seated at a table by one of the open windows that overlook the boat basin. They order a bottle of rosé, oysters, beautiful salads topped with pan-roasted halibut.
“So how did you and Bull meet?” Coco asks. “I don’t think I’ve heard the story.”
Leslee cocks her head. “Oh. Well… it was many moons ago. I was bartending at a place called the Peppermill in Vegas and Bull came in.”
“You were a bartender too?” Coco says. Lamont told her this, but she didn’t quite believe it or believe Leslee would ever admit to it.
“I was.”
Coco flashes back to her first day of work, sitting in the library with Leslee: You remind me of myself when I was your age.
“What made you notice him?” Coco asks.
“He sat down in front of me, middle of the day, the place was empty, and ordered all the appetizers.” Leslee sips her wine and smiles. “Hard to ignore a man like that.”
Their server comes by at the end of the meal with two coupe glasses of Pol Roger champagne. “Compliments of Shawn, the bartender.”
“Who?” Leslee says. They look over at the bar to see the guy Coco met the night she was out with Kacy. Coco feels herself flush. She forgot all about Shawn.
“Oh god.”
“Is he a love interest?” Leslee says. “I have to say, I’ve wondered about your romantic life. I thought maybe you and Kacy…”
“No,” Coco says. She is now definitely bright red. “I’m straight.”
“Well, Shawn certainly hopes so,” Leslee says, and she waggles her fingers in his direction. “He’s cute. I wonder if he’ll come join us.”
“He’s working,” Coco says. Although she’s on the verge of complete mortification, she’s relieved that Leslee has no idea about her and Lamont.
“I’m going over to say thank you,” Leslee says. She walks over and takes a seat at the bar, probably assuming Coco will follow, but Coco is doing no such thing.
All three restrooms are occupied, so Coco waits in the alcove. A woman with short dark hair and cute glasses pops out of one of the doors and gasps when she sees Coco. She comes over, takes Coco’s arm. Does Coco know this woman? Was she a guest at one of the parties? Coco isn’t sure.
“My name is Blythe Buchanan,” she says. “Did I see that you’re having lunch with Leslee Richardson?” She makes it sound like Leslee Richardson is a celebrity and, well, isn’t she, sort of?
“Yes,” Coco says.
Blythe takes a breath. “I feel like I should warn you about her.”
Oh no,Coco thinks. That kind of celebrity.
“We met Bull and Leslee in Palm Beach last winter. They were very eager to join the Bath and Tennis Club and we said we’d sponsor them, but Leslee made a spectacle of herself at the Coconuts New Year’s Eve party. She lured our friend’s husband into a dark gallery at the museum…”
Coco considers jumping in and saying, That doesn’t sound like Leslee at all. But she couldn’t pull it off.
“And that was the end of the Richardsons and Palm Beach, needless to say. How long have you two been friends?”
Coco would like to dart into the restroom, lock the door, and never come out.
“Friends?” she says. “Not that long. This is the first time we’ve had lunch together.”
“This is what she does,” Blythe says. “She finds new, unsuspecting people to seduce. I know she may seem great now, but trust me, you should run as far away from her as you can before she burns you.”
Coco nods. “Thanks for the warning.”
Blythe Buchanan smiles kindly and leans in to whisper. “Also? She cheats at pickleball.”
Coco finds Leslee leaning over the bar, close enough to Shawn to take a bite out of him. She seems to have paid the bill in cash—good, they can make a clean getaway.
“Leslee,” Coco says. “We have to go.”
“Shawn just poured me another glass of champagne,” Leslee says. “Sit down, we’ll get you some as well.”
“Hey, Coco,” Shawn says.
“No,” Coco says. She pulls Leslee to her feet and gives Shawn a close-lipped smile. “Thanks anyway. We’re leaving.”
On Monday, Leslee takes Coco to barre class at Forme on Amelia Drive. Coco doesn’t like group exercise and, after being approached by Blythe Buchanan, the last place she wants to be is in a roomful of strangers—however, Leslee is in her element. She introduces herself around to the other women with their enormous diamond rings, their Cartier Love bracelets, their impeccable highlights. “I’m Leslee Richardson,” she says. “And this is my friend Coco.”
The woman on the mat next to Leslee says, “I’m Celadon Morse. Aren’t you the woman who throws the swanky parties?”
Coco waits to see how Leslee will react to the word swanky. Favorably, it turns out. “I am!” Leslee says. “Give me your number and I’ll invite you to the next one.”
Later that afternoon, Leslee treats Coco to a pedicure at RJ Miller. She takes the number of the woman who’s seated in the chair next to her, Marla.
“There are a lot of people on this island,” Leslee says once they’re back in the car with foam separators between their toes. “I don’t need Phoebe or Delilah or Blond freaking Sharon.”
Coco gets a text from Kacy. Have you asked if you can come todinner on Thursday night? My dad chose Ventuno and my mom wants to make a reservation so she needs to know how many people.
They’re driving down the Polpis Road toward home. Leslee taps the steering wheel as Taylor Swift sings, I’m drunk in the back of the car, and I cried like a baby coming home from the bar. It’s been a cruel summer for Leslee, but right now she seems relaxed. Should Coco broach the topic? It’s just dinner, and Coco so rarely ventures out at night, this won’t be a big deal.
“Kacy invited me to dinner on Thursday with her parents,” Coco says. “It’s her dad’s retirement celebration at Ventuno. Is it all right if I go?”
The car veers ever so slightly toward the center line, but Leslee straightens it out. “The Chief’s retirement celebration?”
“It’s just dinner,” Coco says. Why the hell did she use the word celebration? “He’s retiring. It’s only family, I think.”
“And yet you were invited.”
“Family and close friends, I guess.”
“Like Delilah and Phoebe, of course. And insufferable Addison and that overcooked potato Delilah is married to, I can never remember his name.”
“Jeffrey,” Coco whispers. She wants to stick up for Jeffrey—he’s a steady, thoughtful, measured person—but she senses that now is not the time.
“I’ll tell you who wasn’t invited,” Leslee says. “The Richardsons. Which is insulting. The Chief and his wife owe us, we’ve invited them to everything, all summer long.”
Oh, dear,Coco thinks. She should never have said where she was going. Out, she should have said. I’d like to go out.
“But we’re pariahs now,” Leslee says. “Nobody wants us around.”
She hits the gas, and the G-Wagon goes flying down the road so fast that the split-rail fence, the ponds, the cottages with their green lawns and snapping flags, become a blur out the window. Coco watches the speedometer needle: sixty, seventy, eighty-five. She grips the armrest, reminding herself that Mercedes builds cars for the autobahn, that going eighty-five, even on a winding road, is nothing, Coco is wearing her seat belt, the car certainly has excellent airbags. But Leslee shows no sign of slowing down. Coco thinks of how Leslee casually threatened to switch Bull’s pills. Then she thinks of Leslee as a teenager, an AR-15 strapped across her chest, raining bullets into a target. They’re going ninety. Coco hears a high-pitched whining in her ears—it’s the sound of her own fear. This is the end of the toboggan ride, the part where they’re going too fast to stop at the bottom of the hill so they’ll either crash into a tree or go sailing off an unexpected ledge.
At the last minute, Leslee hits the brakes, puts on her signal, and turns left onto the Wauwinet Road as the tires squeal. They’ve slowed down but Coco’s heart is still hammering in anticipation of her untimely death.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to make the Chief’s dinner,” Leslee says. “Because we’re having a sunset sail that same night and I need you to work it.”
“A sunset sail?” Coco says. She takes a moment to reset now that they’re cruising along at a more leisurely pace. She texts Kacy: I can’t make the dinner. When I asked, Leslee tried to kill me. Literally nearly crashed us both in the car.
Kacy texts back: WTF?!!? Are you okay?
Coco isn’t sure how to respond. There isn’t an emoji that will express how lucky she is to be alive.
“Yes,” Leslee says. “It’s a special occasion. Bull and I are renewing our vows.”
Did Coco hear that right? “Renewing your vows?” she says.
“I’m going to invite all my new friends,” Leslee says. “It’s going to be so much fun.”