“Hey, Delilah, it’s Naomi,” I said in my high-pitched phone squeak. “Naomi Rye.”
“Well, of coooourse it is,” she said in her breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “You’re the only Naomi I know. The number one Naomi!” She giggled through a yawn. “Sorry. I get a little loopy when I sleep late.”
“I was wondering if you’d like to come by today,” I said. “My mother’s gone to the city, and I thought you could meet my neighbor, Jacinta Trimalchio. She threw this amazing party the other night.”
“Ooh,” Delilah said. “Oooooooooh. Jacinta Trimalchio. I would love to meet her. Was her party as fabulous as everyone said?”
“It was really fun,” I said, thinking of Jeff and the Ferris wheel.
“Well, of course for you it was, you naughty thing,” Delilah said. “By the way, have you talked to Jeff?”
“Not since the night before last,” I said.
“That’s no way for a gentleman to act!” she said, sounding playfully indignant. “You don’t make out with a girl and then not at least text her the next day. I must speak to him about this immediately.”
“No, no—it’s no big deal,” I said quickly. And at that exact moment, my phone buzzed with an incoming text from Jeff.
Want to come to the beach? it read. No Ferris wheels, but I’ll buy you a lobster roll. They sold lobster rolls at the beach snack shack in East Hampton for, like, sixteen dollars a pop, but it was at the public beach. I guessed Jeff’s rented house didn’t come with access to a private stretch of beach. “You’ll never guess who just texted me,” I told Delilah.
“Shut up,” she said. “Is he psychic?”
“Maybe he’s . . . magical,” I said dramatically. We giggled together, just like Skags and I did when something cracked us up. Well, almost like that.
“So it’s what, ten?” I said. “You want to come over for lunch at, like, one o’clock?”
“That should give me enough time to pick out something fabulous to wear,” Delilah said. “And to get myself together.”
After we hung up, I texted Jeff that I couldn’t do the beach but might be able to hang out later in the day.
I demand to know why you shall not be accompanying me on a sunbathing excursion, he wrote.
I shall be otherwise occupied with a ladies’ lunch, I texted back.
Which ladies, Madame?
Madame Jacinta and Madame Delilah, sir.
Well, should your schedule permit, please do contact me later, dear lady.
Perhaps I shall. Perhaps I shall.
Despite the good looks and the money, he was really kind of a dork. I liked that about him. I don’t feel comfortable with guys who aren’t at least a little bit weird.
Not even two minutes after I stopped texting Jeff, which was not even three minutes after I stopped talking with Delilah, which was not even ten minutes after I got off the phone with Jacinta, the doorbell rang. Even though I was still wearing my dress from the previous day and obviously hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth, I decided to answer the door. I figured there was probably only a 1 percent chance it was Jeff, anyway.
Outside my mother’s front door, I found a very jittery Jacinta standing and shifting her weight from one leg to the other, like a little kid waiting in line to see Santa. She was wearing some kind of old-fashioned white peignoir with a long white silk nightgown underneath, and her white-blond bob was all messy and unkempt. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed in 1962 or something. I opened the door and grinned at her.
“She’s coming over at one,” I said.
Jacinta let out a whoop and actually danced a little jig. I laughed out loud—she was so unself-conscious in her delight. I mean, the girl was wearing white fluffy bunny slippers on someone’s front lawn in the Hamptons in the blazing midmorning sun, and she clearly couldn’t have cared less if anyone saw her.
Then Jacinta rushed past me into the house and started going over everything with a critical eye, as if she were investigating a murder scene.
“Mm-hmm,” she’d say while examining a set of family photographs hanging on the wall. Or “ah” when glancing over the decor in the dining room.
“Uh, Jacinta,” I said tentatively. “What are you doing?”
“Just getting a feel for the place, love,” she said distractedly. “You won’t mind if I have flowers brought over, will you?”
“No, I mean, flowers are always nice,” I said, confused. “Are they for my mom or something?”
“Oh no,” Jacinta said, as if the very idea were unimaginable. “Oh no, they’re for Delilah. She loves red and white roses.”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course.” I didn’t ask how Jacinta knew what kind of flowers a total stranger loved. I assumed she’d seen it on Facebook or something.
She whipped her cell phone out from the pocket of her peignoir and called up a florist to order six dozen roses—three dozen white, three dozen red. There was a feverish look in her eye.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m perfectly fine!” she said unconvincingly. “Just want to make sure everything’s right. You wouldn’t mind if I had my housekeeper bring over cookies, would you? She’s over today, and she usually cooks a few days’ worth of meals for me. . . . It wouldn’t be any trouble to have her bake cookies—I ask for them all the time anyway.”
“Just as long as she doesn’t bake them in my mother’s kitchen,” I said. “Anne Rye is a territorial animal when it comes to anyone else touching her stove, unless she’s hired them herself.”
“She’ll do them at my house,” Jacinta said. “I’ll have her run them over just as soon as they’re done. You said Delilah’s coming at one, yes? I suppose I ought to have the housekeeper bake them so that they’re out of the oven at twelve thirty, and they’ll be just the right temperature at one. But what if Delilah is early? If it’s twelve forty-five, the cookies might still be too hot. And if she’s late, they might start to cool off too much.”
She was pacing, talking to herself almost as if I weren’t even there. I had never seen a girl so nervous about meeting another girl.
“I have to go home and get ready,” she said suddenly. “Oh, Naomi, thank you so much!” She threw her arms around me and hugged me close. I hoped I didn’t smell too bad, pre-shower.
“Hey, Jacinta?” I asked before she could leave.
“Yes?”
“Where’s 813?”
She cocked her head and looked at me curiously. “Why do you ask?”
I was a little taken aback. “Um, I don’t know, I was just wondering when I saw your phone number.”
“Oh, my phone number,” she said, chuckling. “When I was fourteen, my parents thought I should get a dose of real American living. So they sent me to boarding school in Florida. It was awful. I was back with them in Europe after three months! But I kept the cell phone, and I use it whenever I’m in the States.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking that I’d never heard of anyone being sent to boarding school in Florida.
And then, as quickly as she’d come over, she was gone. I watched her dash across the lawn, practically accosting a woman who was carrying cleaning supplies from a humble-looking car into the house.
I showered and put on another one of the dresses Mom had gotten me at Marc Jacobs. This one was a simple black shift, and my mother probably would have told me it was too dark and sophisticated for daytime entertaining, but thankfully she was still stuck in New York having her company emergency. I went into the kitchen and put on one of the prototype aprons my mother’s company was considering releasing after “evaluating the success of our inaugural product line launch” or something similar my mother had babbled at me when showing me the aprons. It was made of some kind of super-fabulous organic white cotton and had a line drawing of my mother’s smiling face emblazoned on the front.