Happy Couples, chapter 23 of Lady Slipper Farm And The Summer People

3.

  HAPPY COUPLES

In previous chapters: 23 year-old pop star Fiona Neal, who is renting a McTajMahal in Aquinnah, writes hit songs about her numerous heart-breaks although, just between us, she’s a virgin. But meanwhile she has tracked down her first love from high school in West Virginia, and plans to marry him in August, right there on the beach across from her on Moshup Trail . . .

29 year-old Becca Van Nordon, freshly divorced, was avid to jump back into the island’s high-profile social scene. In the midst of spying on Priscilla and Titus Lyttons’ big summer solstice bash, she got shot out of a tree by reclusive (and famous) children’s author, Duncan Toomey, who mistook her for a sniper . . . 

Mandy Pease, the 28 year-old chatelaine of Lady Slipper Farm, hsas tried to resist the advances of swashbucking movie idol, Nick Diehl. He in turn is smitten by her beauty and unaffected charm, after a lifetime surrounded by show biz phonies. One of these phonies is a semi-psychotic actress named Chichi Taten who, we happen to know, has recently hired a private detective to track him down. 

“Justin Bieber is coming tomorrow.”

Fiona Neal’s assistant, Teddy Zizik, stood in the doorway of the pop star’s master bedroom where she sat on a window seat strumming her guitar, her eyes locked dreamily on the silver-blue sweep of ocean.

The chamber was high and wide, with a sharply steepled roof-line whose skylights picked up the subtle green tints of the walls, reinforcing an impression of an indoor Shangri-la.

Fiona’s long fingers froze over the guitar strings, her gaze still out to sea. “Did you know, Teddy, that it was right out there that JFK Jr.’s plane went down?”

Teddy ignored this train-of-thought, and instead snapped, “Justin will be staying in the downstairs master bedroom, and even though your ridiculous Milo is stashed away in the guest house, he’s been packing the place with his Neanderthal buddies. I think they should all clear off the property – Milo included -- until the shoot is finished.”

Fiona turned her head, unable to focus and yet knowing somehow, she really ought to.

“What?”

“JUSTIN BEIBER’S COMING TOMORROW!”

Teddy’s statement forced a blink out of her.

“Well, you’re taking care of everything, aren’t you, Teddy? You always do.”

“That is correct, I always do. And if you could tell me how you’d survive without me, you’re welcome to present a case for it.” He went on to debrief her on which of Justin’s people were already installed at The Outermost Inn, a couple of miles away. His manager and three of the cronies from his entourage would be staying here on Moshup Trail, at Bieber’s insistence.

“I like Justin,” she said, her eyes still on the sea. “We had a sandwich together in Atlanta when we performed at – “

“Of course you had a sandwich!” he nearly shouted at her. “We’ve based your whole preposterous romance around that! Only, please pay attention: the screenwriter we got to develop the story turned it into the two of you running away to his uncle’s cabin on Stone Mountain, and later you thought you might be pregnant – “

Fiona was suddenly alarmed. “You won’t tell Milo about this, will you?!”

“Girlfriend, in two weeks the story will be splashed across all the gossip magazines!”

She was staunchly unwilling to contemplate this. Instead she brightened as she asked, “Did you set up tomorrow’s fishing excursion for Milo and his friends with that guy, Captain Buddy? They loved yesterday’s trip! And they want to have a keg party down on the beach this Saturday.”

“Fiona, can’t you see he’s using you?”

She looked shocked at Teddy for thinking this. “He’s my old sweetheart!”

“How much time have you spent together since you rediscovered him a few days ago?”

“He’s giving me space to arrange the wedding and do this whole silly photo-shoot with Justin!”

Teddy threw up his hands, and stomped from the room. Fiona turned back to the water, folding the guitar tenderly to her chest as she sang an old ballad from her granny’s tape of old Kingston Trio songs:

‘So fare thee well, my own true love / We’ll meet another day, another time. It’s not the leaving that’s grieving me, but my true love who’s bound to stay behind . . . “

 *  *

“You’re a horrible woman, you know that?”

Becca woke up to see her host – if he deserved so grand a title – standing over her with a cup of coffee. For the five days running that she’d forced herself on him, he’d awakened her with this gracious gesture, set it on the bed table, then stalked out of the house to spend all his daylight hours elsewhere.

Not that she cared. She passed her time rambling the cliffs, pretending to be interested in the flora and fauna on the off-chance that Priscilla Lytton from the adjoining property, might spot her and make an effort to join her on a nature walk.

The reality was that neither woman appreciated any more scenery than they might see painted on the wall of a Manhattan bistro.

Still, she lived in hope of reconnecting with Priscilla. In the meantime, she’d picked up a bunch of romance novels from the Chilmark library. Nothing on Duncan’s shelves interested her. He had some O.C.D. thing going on with 19th century authors.

But now the raggedy author was actually speaking to her, albeit disparagingly.

She responded, “I’m horrible? You’re the one who fired at rifle at a defenseless woman.”

He placed the brown ceramic coffee mug on the bed table. She scrunched herself up into a sitting position, took the mug, blew on the contents. He’d learned she took her morning java with half-and-half, and the surface was appropriately beige.

“Yes, I shot you, but I’m beginning to think you deserved it.”

“How so?” she asked, taking her first swallow. Nice.

“You, Ms. Becca, have shallow interests, no self-awareness, and you don’t even like your children.”

“Yes,” she agreed without taking offense. “I realize I can be horrible, but I don’t seem to know any better. . . Are you acquainted with a woman, Mandy Pease? She catered the Lyttons’ party? She has a place called Lady Slipper Farm?”

His lips pursed in his scruffy black beard. “No, I do not know her.”

“Years ago, she and I shared a summer rental in Katama. I stole her fiancé away. Well, not really stole him in a permanent way. But I seduced him.”

“Why did you do that?”

She shrugged. “Mandy’s gorgeous and I’m not. I wanted to see if I could put one over on someone who looks like her.” She shrugged again. “It was a, um, whatchamacallit? A social experiment.”

He nodded. “Horrible is the word”

“Mandy has this friend, Thorn Dixon. He was sort of big into TV writing at the time, but then he got all up into Mandy’s farm, started drinking. Anyway, after I nailed Mandy’s fiancé, Thorn phoned me and told me I was a sociopath.”

He raked his hands through his hair. “This is why I avoid people! It’s all Peyton Place, all the time, no community is spared!”

“What’s Peyton Place?”

He sighed deeply. “Think of it as Beverly Hills 90210.”

“I loved that show!”

“I’m sure you did! So how can I get rid of you?”

She glanced around with a shudder at the faux pine-board panels, the paper window shades, the yellow chenille bedspread (another Dumptique item?!).

She gulped the coffee, and it started to wake her up. “Get me back in good with Priscilla. Can you do that? If she’ll put me up, it’s Sayonara, baby! You will never hear from me again, which should make both of us very happy.”

 * *

This was Mandy’s third picnic with Nick. She ignored him the rest of the time that he labored around the farm, but a nice lunch break? Why not?

Now she sat on another gingham picnic blanket that he’d provided. She held a sliced brioche spread with caramelized tomatoes and sprinkled with fresh basil. She felt like a character in a romance novel. Birds twittered all around her. The pond sparkled, its normal copper color charged with a bluish-green light under the midday sun.

And now Nick was telling her, “It’s never really clicked for me, the Hollywood world. You feel a closeness to people that you know isn’t real, and then, abruptly, it’s over, completely dissipated once the last scene is wrapped. You’ll hear from these best buds again when they want you to do a new picture with them.”

Nick cast an affectionate glance over Albert, the teacup pig, whose dark, wide-set eyes locked on the actor’s face. “Young Al here looks like he’s waiting for me to recite a Shakespeare sonnet!”

Mandy laughed. “How did you know he loves the bard?”

Nick paused a moment, closed, then opened his eyes, and performed for the pig in a lavish English accent reminiscent of Sir Laurence Olivier: “’When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble Heaven with my bootless cries . . . ‘”

Albert emitted one of his rare high-pitched squeals, making both the humans laugh.

Mandy jeered playfully, “Oh, sure, Nick Diehl, you’re a man of bootless cries!” and at the same time she was thinking, My God, what a wonderful man he is, but oh no, Mandy meathead, do not go there, remember your own bootless cries?!

But still the brioche and caramelized tomatoes tasted divine on her tongue. Those birds kept on singing. She gazed at this man’s tanned, chiseled features, his designer-buff biceps under the worn grey tee-shirt, and she thought, would it really be so bad to break her vow of chastity?

She would need to tell him what had happened to her, that mystical experience that had given her so much, and then he himself would probably choose to back away.

And that would be that.