Who are you and what are you doing at my twenty-two-million-dollar home?
Or The cutoffs–T-shirt–and–Chuck Taylors look is appropriate if you’re working as a roadie for the Dirty Heads, but you’re a personal concierge—you should be wearing a pencil skirt, heels, pearls.
Or Bull was drunk/just being polite when he offered you the job; neither of us dreamed you’d take it, but you snapped it up like a half-starved tiger with a T-bone, didn’t you?
Or I saw right through your I’m spending the summer on Nantucket too, actually ploy. You’re a scammer, Colleen. You’re a parasite who lives off people who have money and connections.
Or I’m so sorry but we’ve offered the job to someone who knows the island a little better.
But in reality, Leslee radiates serenity. She’s wearing a white tank and white yoga pants; her long chestnut hair is piled on top of her head; her skin is dewy and glowing; her expression is placid. Coco must have caught her just after child’s pose and a green smoothie. “Good morning, Coco, you’re right on time. Just leave your bag on the porch for now. In a little while, we’ll bring it over to the garage apartment where you’ll be staying. But I’ll hang your—dress?—in the hall closet so it won’t get wrinkled.”
Coco steps inside, closes the door behind her. The air-conditioning feels divine; it’s a hot morning already.
And wow—this house.
The foyer is two stories with a sweeping staircase on either side and a view straight through the house to a screened-in porch and the water beyond. The floor is black-and-white checkerboard; the staircases have curved white railings, and the runners are printed with bright pink peonies and green leaves. In the center of the foyer is a round pedestal table that holds a huge arrangement of actual peonies in every shade of pink. Their scent suffuses the air. Coco stands for a moment, taking it all in, and Leslee says, “Welcome to Triple Eight.”
Coco follows Leslee up the left staircase to the famous party room. It looks like the setting for a Slim Aarons photograph; every detail is midcentury perfection. There’s a lounge area with a low serpentine white sofa that’s scattered with throw pillows in candy colors; mirrored cigar tables; gooseneck lamps; an honest-to-god jukebox; and a parquet dance floor. But the showstopper is a fifteen-foot-long Lucite bar backed by bright pink lacquered shelves. The bar seems to float over the chrome-and-pink-leather stools. Behind the bar is a glass-fronted wine fridge filled with Laurent-Perrier sparkling rosé. Coco does a quick tally—there are forty-two bottles of champagne on display. Nice flex.
Wineglasses in a rainbow of colors line the pink shelves. The overall effect is “Willy Wonka after three martinis, but make it tasteful.” Coco laughs. She can’t believe she met these people at the Banana Deck.
Leslee leads Coco out to an octagonal deck that has views across Nantucket Harbor. Sweeping views, Coco supposes one would say. The golden stretch of Great Point is to the right, and the church steeples of town are in the distance. There’s a majestic yacht on a mooring in front of the property’s narrow beach, a sleek motorboat alongside it. Most of the speedboats Coco has seen are white, but this one has a navy hull and a gleaming mahogany deck. “The big one is Hedonism,” Leslee says. “Bull thinks sailing is elite, but I prefer to go fast, so over the weekend, I bought Decadence.” She points to the speedboat. “It’s an Aquariva Super with dual two-fifties.”
Coco nods like it’s totally normal to impulse-buy a speedboat as though it’s a lip balm by the register at Target. “I mean, yeah, you deserve something of your own.”
Leslee swats Coco’s arm. “You get me!” she says. “I knew it would be good for me to have another woman around! Come on, let me show you the rest of the house.”
Off the other side of the deck is the living room, which Coco can only think of as fifty shades of blue. There’s Delft-blue grass cloth on the walls, a blue-and-white rug patterned to resemble the designs on a Chinese vase, a blue-and-white leopard-print bench, throw pillows in a dozen complementary blues, and an unexpected pop of color—an apple-green lacquered coffee table. Adjacent to the living area is a dining-room table big enough to seat thirty people, with a very cool glass-orb chandelier hanging above it. Finally, they enter the kitchen, and Coco jumps.
Sitting on a stool at the kitchen island drinking coffee is Lamont Oakley.
“Hey!” Coco says. She feels herself flush, partly from the surprise and partly because of Lamont himself, who’s looking all hot and captain-ish in a white button-down and navy shorts. Coco loved her hang with Lamont at Great Point, even if she’d turned out to be the world’s worst surf caster. On his final cast of the day, Lamont caught a striped bass. It wasn’t big enough to keep, but it was his first bass of the season, and Coco was happy to witness it. She took twenty-two million pictures on her phone, then offered to send some to him, and he gave her his cell number. On the drive home, instead of appreciating the view like she probably should have, Coco went through the photos and chose the five best, which she texted to him the second she got a signal. He’d responded a while later with Thanks, it was fun hanging out, see you at 888. This had made Coco so happy that even Kacy noticed. “Why all the smiles?” she asked.
Coco had wanted to ask Kacy about Lamont, but she worried that would be insensitive since Kacy was going through a breakup. Kacy had given Lamont’s bass only a cursory glance, then started packing up.
Coco is about to tell Leslee the story of their serendipitous meeting and describe what a lifesaver Lamont was (Thank god he came along or I might still be out at Great Point) when Lamont strides over to her, hand extended, and says, “Lamont Oakley. Nice to meet you.”
Coco stares at him for a second. Is he kidding?
Leslee tells Lamont, “This is Coco, our new personal concierge.”
Coco shakes Lamont’s hand more aggressively than she typically would have. “Yes, hi there. Lovely to meet you, Lamont.”
“Lamont is our boat captain!” Leslee says. She slips her arm around Lamont’s shoulders and squeezes. “I can’t believe how lucky we got!” The tranquil, centered woman who greeted Coco at the door has vanished, and in her place is the person Coco remembers from the Banana Deck. Coco pictures Leslee’s hand resting on the WAPA dude’s thigh.
Lamont widens his eyes to telegraph, she supposes, that she should keep her mouth shut.
Fine, she thinks. Weird, but fine.
“Coco and I have some business to tend to this morning,” Leslee says. “Would you like to get the boat ready?”
“Of course,” Lamont says. “Pleasure meeting you, Coco.”
Coco can’t help rolling her eyes.
As Leslee takes Coco down to the primary suite, Coco lags a few steps behind, afraid that she’s going to come across Bull in his boxer shorts. Leslee shows off the bedroom: It’s bigger than Coco’s entire house in Rosebush and has sliding glass doors that lead outside to the front lawn and the beach beyond. Leslee opens a door that turns out to be a walk-in closet. There are more clothes in this closet than there were in the Lovely. And there’s an entire wall of shoes—sandals and ballet flats, pumps and strappy stilettos. Has Leslee seen the cobblestones on this island, the brick sidewalks, the deck boards that surround her own house?
Leslee opens a door next to the shoe racks and they step into a dressing room with a bench and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. “I haven’t had sex in here yet, but that is definitely happening,” she says breezily, and Coco thinks, I did not need to know that, thanks. On the other side of the dressing room is Bull’s closet. He has so many beautiful colorful shirts, it’s like that scene in Gatsby. “I’m showing you the closets so you’ll know where to put the dry cleaning.”
The last room Leslee shows off in the primary suite is the bathroom, which is as nice as a spa in a hotel. There are dual vanities, a two-person shower, a soaking tub, a water closet, a steam sauna, and a special area for Leslee to do her hair and makeup, on the counter of which are jars, pots, and tubes from La Mer and Valmont and an ornate bottle of Guerlain perfume. The fattest curling iron Coco has ever seen rests in its own ceramic stand; that must be the secret behind Leslee’s impeccable barrel curls.
Out in the hallway, Leslee stops in front of a digital keypad. “This is the alarm system. Fire, flood, and there’s a chime that goes off anytime someone crosses the threshold of the driveway. You can disarm the alarms with the code eight-eight-eight. I’d like you to turn them off whenever we have a party, of course. If the caterers are making cherries jubilee, I don’t want the fire department showing up. Then after our parties, you’ll have to remember to turn them back on.”
“Very important,” Coco says. She makes a mental note to look up cherries jubilee.
Next they poke their heads into Bull’s study, which has a maritime-museum feel; there’s an enormous model ship in a glass case. Coco peeks at the plaque under the ship: J-BOAT SHAMROCK.
“Is this boat special to Mr. Richardson?” Coco asks.
Leslee laughs and waves a hand. “All this stuff was here when we moved in. The only shamrock that’s special to Bull is the one in his Lucky Charms.”
This gives Coco an opening. “Where is he this morning?”
“Indo,” Leslee says.
Indo? Coco thinks.
“Indonesia,” Leslee says.
