Sharon is tempted to whip out her phone and take a video for TikTok, but she won’t be that person. (Someone who is that person, however, is Dr. Andy’s wife, Rachel. She has her phone out and is narrating: “A rare peek inside Triple Eight Pocomo.”) Sharon and Romeo move around Rachel, enter the octagonal screened-in porch, go down a hallway with a black-and-white floor, and walk up one side of a grand double staircase.
The party room is bathed in pink light. Glass canisters filled with pink candy are lined up along the Lucite bar. There’s a pink-chocolate fountain with strawberries for dipping, and servers pass cones of pink cotton candy.
Sharon notices there are fewer guests; the people still here are those who like to have fun. DJ Billy Voss has set up in the corner and he’s brought his drummer, Joe, with him; Joe will play along with every song, making it feel like there’s a live band in the room. The first song is “Crazy in Love,” and all the women—and Romeo—hit the dance floor. Sharon loves that Romeo is secure enough in his masculinity to dance to Beyoncé.
Just then, Sharon’s watch sounds an alert. It’s her Dexcom app, which monitors her son Robert’s glucose levels. Robert’s blood sugar is spiking.
No! Sharon thinks. Robert is, unfortunately, spending the night at Baxter Morse’s house, and although Robert knows better, he’s probably had not only soda but candy. Baxter’s mother, Celadon, keeps baskets of Snickers and Twix around the house as though every day is Halloween.
Sharon sends Robert a text: Your sugar! He may have to give himself an insulin shot, something he hates doing.
“I have to call my son!” Sharon shouts to Romeo over the music. She twirls her finger. “I’ll be right back!”
Romeo follows Sharon outside to the octagonal deck. It’s quiet here, and cool, with a breeze coming in off the water. There’s a crescent moon in the sky. It would be the most romantic spot on earth if Sharon’s son weren’t in the middle of an urgent health situation.
When she calls Robert, it goes straight to voice mail. Next, she calls Celadon. Voice mail. Robert’s blood sugar is at 280; Sharon won’t be able to relax until she talks to him.
“I’m afraid I have to go,” she tells Romeo. “My son has type one diabetes, he’s at a sleepover, his blood sugar is through the roof—”
“I’ll go with you,” Romeo says. “Let me drive. I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
Sharon knows she should decline this offer. Surely Romeo wants to stay—this is the party of the summer and it’s just getting started! But he looks at her earnestly, and before she can say, It’s fine, I’ll go alone, he’s made a decision. “We’re leaving right now.”
On the other side of the deck, Sharon sees Kacy Kapenash, Lamont Oakley, and that girl, Coco, who works for the Richardsons. Sharon approaches them and tells Coco, “Would you please tell the Richardsons that Sharon and Romeo had to leave but that we loved every second of this grand soirée and we’re so grateful to have been included.”
“I’ll tell them,” Coco says. “And don’t worry. There will be a lot of parties this summer.”
A few of us notice Sharon and Romeo leaving and we think, Sharon, what are you doing? The best is yet to come! Sharon bumps into Rachel McMann on the stairs and explains about Robert’s blood sugar. Of course we understand, and we think how sweet it is that Romeo is going with her. We’ve never thought of him as a lover before—but then again, his name is Romeo.
When DJ Billy Voss plays “Hot in Herre,” Leslee makes her entrance. She’s wearing a new outfit: a skintight metallic-pink jumpsuit and a pink wig. We all scream our delight, then notice Leslee’s personal concierge, Coco, handing out pink wigs. In the next moment, Coco steps behind the bar and starts mixing up shots of something called tickled pink. Those of us who throw the shots back wonder if there’s something in them other than alcohol because suddenly we’re at an eleven on the dance floor. “Stacy’s Mom” comes on, and Busy Ambrose, the Field and Oar’s commodore and one of the most staid and proper women we know, is in the center of the dance floor, pink wig atop her matronly bob, shaking her booty because she has a daughter named Stacy and she has always secretly believed this song to be about her.
Fast Eddie throws back not one but two tickled pink shots and he doesn’t protest when Grace fits a pink wig over his head, not even when he sees Rachel McMann taking videos of everyone on the dance floor. Eddie and Grace sing out to Icona Pop, “I don’t care! I love it!” They’re pogoing around like a couple of crazy kids in a mosh pit. This is exactly what their marriage needed and they didn’t even know it.
The Chief lets Andrea pull him onto the dance floor when Billy Voss switches to an ’80s medley, though he turns down the offer of a tickled pink shot (he’s the chief of police, after all) and he will not wear a wig. Addison is wearing a wig; he’s always been the life of the party. Jeffrey, however, is stuck to the curvy white sofa like a straight pin in a cushion; he’s drinking ice water and probably thinking of how he has to get up in six hours and tend the fields. Phoebe is smack in the middle of the dance floor, her long pink wig swaying as she dances with Leslee Richardson. The Chief blinks—Phoebe is wearing a new outfit as well, a white leather minidress. When did she change? Billy Voss plays “American Girl” by Tom Petty. Phoebe and Leslee shriek and throw their arms around each other. Another woman in a pink wig—the Chief belatedly realizes it’s Delilah—storms off the dance floor. Or maybe she needs the ladies’ room.
Delilah rips off her wig and tosses it down the stairwell. Her head instantly cools (wigs aren’t meant for people with as much hair as she has) but her temper is still blazing. She slams into the Richardsons’ powder room, irate at how fabulous it is (dove-gray wallpaper patterned with pussy willows; a silver glass column sink that glows from within), and collapses on the toilet.
She’s drunk, yes, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that Phoebe has become Leslee Richardson’s… groupie! At dinner, Delilah, Andrea, and Phoebe were looking for a place to sit, but then Phoebe peeled off and took the open seat next to Leslee. When everyone else went upstairs to the party room to dance, Leslee invited Phoebe—and only Phoebe—downstairs to the primary suite to, she said, “change.” When Phoebe reappeared, she was wearing a dress she’d borrowed from Leslee and she stank of weed.
“Were you smoking down there?” Delilah sounded judgy, but in reality, she was jealous.
Phoebe giggled and followed Leslee onto the dance floor.
Then “American Girl” came on, and, while it might sound juvenile, that had long been Phoebe and Delilah’s song. Delilah went looking for Phoebe so they could dance and found her basically making out with Leslee.
As Delilah sits on the toilet with her face in her hands, there’s a knock on the door. She hears Jeffrey say, “Delilah, let’s just go home.”
But Delilah doesn’t want to go home. This is, hands down, the best party she’s ever been to.
She exits the powder room, sidesteps Jeffrey, says, “Let’s stay for one more quick drink, babe,” and heads to the bar. Coco is nowhere to be found, so Delilah fills a rocks glass with club soda. She pours the entire thing into the pot holding a pink-and-white orchid in the dining room. It’s a silent revenge; the worst thing you can do to orchids is overwater them. Delilah feels a little better.
“Okay,” she says when she finds Jeffrey morosely skulking in the doorway, watching Dr. Andy and Rachel McMann bump and grind. “We can go.”
Billy Voss ends his set at one in the morning with “Last Dance” by Donna Summer.
The room is still pretty full and Coco is impressed—these old people can hang!—though she’s relieved it’s over. Everyone will go home now, right?
She’s a little confused because there are still delicious aromas coming from the kitchen, Zoe Alistair’s staff are somehow still here, and at that moment, a gentleman in a tuxedo comes walking up the stairs. His hair is slicked back; he has blue eyes.
“Party room?” he asks.
“Who are you?” Coco asks.
“Frank Sinatra,” he says.
The Chief and Andrea are back out on the dance floor swaying to “You Make Me Feel So Young.” The Chief realizes he must be either dreaming or drunk because it appears to be Frank Sinatra who’s singing. Ol’ Blue Eyes! He’s not only still alive, he’s here at Triple Eight!
Whose idea is it to go skinny-dipping? Some might say it’s a natural next step. The after-party singer finishes; the caterers pass around cheeseburger sliders and paper cones of hot, crispy French fries that we scarf down like we’re drunk high-schoolers at the McDonald’s drive-through.
It’s nearly three in the morning. Coco has been on the clock for nineteen hours and this, she decides, is enough. She follows everyone else down the stairs and out the doors of the screened-in porch. People are stripping off their clothes all over the lawn, and because Coco is still in concierge mode, she pulls a stack of beach towels from the porch closet.
She reaches the beach in time to see Leslee, naked, dive into the water, followed by her new sidekick, Phoebe, also naked. Eddie the real estate dude is there; he goes into the water in his boxers, but his wife goes in naked, and so does Benton Coe the landscaper, still in his pink wig. Coco averts her eyes.
Kacy comes up behind her. “Come on, let’s go in.” She’s fiddling with the side zip of her dress.
Coco was already planning on it. She shucks off her polo and her shorts—it feels good to be out of her uniform—then her bra and her underwear, and she and Kacy charge into the water. This is far from the first time Coco has gone skinny-dipping—it was a full-moon tradition at Hawksnest Beach on St. John—but it’s the first time she’s done it sober. The water shocks her weary brain and bones into alertness, clarity. The crescent moon vamps above them.
“Thanks for everything tonight,” Coco says. Kacy had helped clear the abandoned drinks; she collected the crumpled napkins, replenished the strawberries for the chocolate fountain, and fetched more tequila for the tickled pink shots. She took a selfie of the two of them on the deck with the Richardsons’ yacht behind them and one of the two of them in the kitchen stuffing leftover lobster rolls into their mouths.
