Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty
In a remarkable forty-two minutes, they had landed in Shelter Island.
Had they gone by car, on a summer Friday with typical traffic, it could’ve taken up to six hours.
But now they deplaned on a breezy heliport and were seamlessly received by a pair of black Cadillac Escalades with professional drivers and security personnel sitting up front.
Iris had lived in New York City for over a decade, but she still felt intimidated by the Hamptons.
The Long Island beaches were so different from the Jersey Shore and Delaware beaches she had grown up going to, and even then, Iris went mainly for day trips or the rare long weekend with a friend’s family.
Those misty memories were of casual holidays in tightly packed townhomes with alternating Italian and Irish flags, kid-friendly boardwalks selling novelty tees, pet hermit crabs, gooey pizza that scorched the roof of your mouth, and frozen custard that cooled it down.
Days that moved as slow as saltwater taffy, and a dress code that allowed for powdered sugar from a funnel cake.
She had acclimated to a different sort of beach vacation with Ben, whose family had an old clapboard house on Cape Cod that had a distinctly New England humility and a persistent whiff of mold, even if it was worth north of five million.
If Cape Cod was old money with Puritanical restraint, then the Hamptons were coastal elite wish fulfillment.
A place where stressed and demanding New Yorkers could let their hair down without relaxing a single other standard or expectation, and they were willing to pay for it.
Where a seven-dollar oat milk latte and twenty-dollar avocado toast arrived with an edible pansy, and fifty-dollar day parking and six-hundred-dollar beach tags were de rigueur.
You could buy old-money class and indulge in new-money decadence.
For someone in the field of architecture and design, the Hamptons meant something else: making money.
The cash-flush clientele created constant demand for rebuilds, renovation, redesign, and decor.
It was a place to sell out, get rich, and settle down.
Her peers’ occasional snark decrying the cookie-cutter design deployed up and down Route 27 was laced with more sour grapes than the vineyards of Water Mill.
Any architect or designer being honest, Iris included, would gladly install trio after trio of geometric lanterns over a thousand kitchen islands if it paid for a vacation home here.
Iris anticipated that Jonathan would own one of the typical Hamptons trophy homes.
You saw them all over, frequently with a contractor’s sign posted in front of the manicured box hedges and resplendent hydrangea.
The preppy palace consisted of a boxy mansion in the traditional style, with bloated proportions fit for today’s excess, enrobed in cedar shakes weathered to stately silver—but just as many fresh and blond, telling on their owners—and peaked white pointing, crisp as a collared shirt.
Or maybe he’d have one of the beachfront modern megahomes—a vast and character-free glass box overlooking the ocean, a structure whose size and minimalist aesthetic would be as at home in the Hollywood Hills as it would as a luxury car dealership.
But in that case it was the outer beauty, not inner, you were paying for: the unobstructed ocean view and private beach access, not the polished concrete flooring and track lighting.
But nothing about Jonathan was so basic, and Iris should have known his beach house would be no exception.
The first clue was that they had landed on Shelter Island, a quieter and more grounded, if still ultra-exclusive, outpost. As the Escalade turned down a long gravel driveway, Iris recognized his home’s architect instantly: Norman Jaffe.
A disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright and a lifelong Hamptons resident, Norman Jaffe shared Wright’s modernism, clean lines, multilevel structure, and integration with nature.
Jaffe’s work utilized local materials and sculptural, horizontal projection so that the home echoed the rocky bluffs.
The crown jewels of his Hamptons oeuvre was a triptych of three homes facing Gardiners Bay, and Iris now realized they were pulling up to the finest among them.
They were greeted at the door by two members of the house staff offering them refreshments from silver trays, Arnold Palmer highballs garnished with a sprig of mint and, Iris noticed upon first sip, spiked with whiskey; Allegra’s nonalcoholic one was flagged with a floating purple orchid.
Once everyone had a cold glass in hand, Jonathan got their attention.
“Welcome, everyone. I want to thank you all for spending your weekend with me at my new home. Tyrell and Bobby will take your luggage to your rooms. And in the meantime, allow me to show off the latest acquisition in my portfolio, this little gem of a midcentury masterpiece.”
“Little?” Gabe whispered to Iris.
Jonathan led them down a long glass-paneled hallway that looked onto the lovely pool and patio area, into a sunken yet spacious living and dining space.
Although the interior colors were dark and natural, light poured in from glass walls and windows on all sides, and the entire first floor faced a panorama of the sparkling bay and cloudless sky.
There was even a skylight. Iris couldn’t imagine how she would improve the lighting in daytime, and at night, she might simply do candlelight.
The floors and walls alike were done in rugged flagstone.
The living room featured an enormous stone fireplace and a cowhide rug, and every piece of furniture was a lived-in icon of midcentury design—an Eames lounge chair in black leather with a gleaming patina; a Mario Bellini modular sofa in buttoned cream linen, plump and inviting as a cloud; a Noguchi glass coffee table reflecting the blues outside.
It was like the Design Within Reach catalog died and went to heaven.
“The home is so well preserved because it was retained by the original owners, who commissioned it in sixty-nine, and they were wonderful stewards of the property. Jaffe even did the expansion in the eighties. Jaffe called this living area his ‘wolf den’ aesthetic. I mean, how could I resist?”
“It’s incredible,” said Iris, meaning it.
“It’s like a time capsule,” Gabe whispered to Iris. Iris shot him a look of admonishment, to which he grinned and did a little shimmy. “What? I mean it’s groovy.” She was not amused.
Bill asked, “Don’t you get the best ROI with new builds?”
“It’s not an investment property. This home is personal to me. And besides, there’s so much faceless new construction these days, aping the traditional. Tradition is nothing without history. And this house has stories.”
Jonathan led them into the dining room, the other half of the massive open concept living space. “Like this dining table. An enormous piece of solid granite, it’s so heavy that it had to be lifted inside via crane, and the house was built around it.”
Iris ran her hand over one of the sculptural chairbacks; it featured a beautiful design of inlaid palisander and ebony wood in concentric circles, such that the burl crisscrossed the back like tribal lines. “Are these Afra and—?”
“Afra and Tobia Scarpa, yes! Their ‘Africa’ chairs from 1975. I love their work, and their whole story, power couple of midcentury Italian design, co-visionaries defining an era…”
“True partners in love and artistic passion. We studied their iconic lighting in grad school. But I’ve never seen an original piece of their furniture in person, much less eight.”
Jonathan raked his fingers through his hair. “Ten. I have two in the basement. But yes, finding a full set in this condition was a challenge.”
The rest of the house tour was similarly impressive and impeccably curated, if not without its quirks.
The kitchen, for one, was done in head-to-toe black lacquer cabinetry.
And with all the flooring in natural stone and the ceilings done in hardwood, it was like a house turned upside down.
The layout especially was unusual, roughly a square with an open center for the pool and patio, plus lots of demi-floors separated by only a few steps up or down, and mazelike hallways whose sharp corners were impossible to see around.
Just when you were beginning to feel lost, a glass wall would appear to provide reorientation, a view of the bay, pool, or tennis court—or a voyeuristic peek into a room across the way.
When they somehow emerged back into the living room, two other uniformed members of the house staff were waiting to meet them.
Jonathan spoke first. “I’d like to introduce Pilar, my ‘chief of staff’ as I call her, who is available to help you with anything you may need, whether that be a dinner or tee time reservation, or simply a drink refill by our pool.
Likewise, Chef René is available anytime, including for a midnight snack, but he’s really going to wow us at tonight’s dinner.
” Jonathan gave a slight bow to the chef before readdressing his guests.
“My only request is that you not take any photos and especially not post any pictures on social media. This house is simply too recognizable, and my family’s privacy is paramount to me. ”
Lindsay raised a hand. “Can we post on Instagram without tagging the location? I’m a content creator.”
“Not this weekend.” Jonathan smiled.
Marilyn raised her glass. “A toast to our most gracious host.”
The entire group raised their glasses to him, but Jonathan made his own toast: “To the Wolff pack!”
Everyone cheered, clinking glasses, and Iris caught the beginnings of a smirk on Gabe’s cheek.
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