Celeste joins Shooter in the “casual” dining room off the kitchen, where they watch the glass cube of the wine cellar glow like a spaceship. Shooter opens the box of bread sticks and the butter.
“Prepare yourself,” he says. “This is going to be memorable. Have you ever had truffle butter?”
“No?” Celeste says. She knows that truffles are mushrooms—pigs dig them out of the ground in France and Italy—but she can’t get too excited about mushroom butter. Nothing about it sounds appetizing. Still, she is hungry enough to eat just about anything—the lobster dinner seems like days ago—so she accepts a reed-thin bread stick with a dollop of butter on the end.
She bites off the bottom of the bread stick and the flavor explodes in her mouth. She whimpers with ecstasy.
“Pretty good, huh?” Shooter says.
Celeste closes her eyes, savoring the taste, which is unlike anything she has ever eaten. It’s rich, complex, earthy, sexy. She swallows. “I can’t believe how… good… that is.”
Here are Shooter and Celeste eating rosemary bread sticks with truffle butter until the butter is gone and only a few bread-stick stubs rattle around in the box. It was a deceptively simple snack but Celeste will never, ever forget it.
Here are Celeste and Shooter wandering upstairs. Celeste is sleeping in “Benji’s room,” which is decorated in white, beige, and taupe, and Shooter is sleeping at the far end of the hallway in “guest room 3,” which is done in white, navy, and taupe. Celeste checks the other guest rooms; they’re nearly identical and she wonders if people new to the house like herself ever wander into the wrong room accidentally. She gives Shooter a feeble wave.
“I guess I’ll call it a night.”
“You sure about that?” Shooter says.
Celeste thinks for a second. Is she sure about that? They have pressed to the edge of a platonic relationship; there’s nothing left they can do while maintaining their innocence other than maybe go down to the game room and play Scrabble.
“I’m sure about that,” she says.
“Sunshine,” Shooter says.
She looks at him. His eyes hold her hostage; she can’t look away. He’s asking her without saying anything. They are the only ones here. No one would ever know.
Amid the battle going on in her mind—her fervent desire versus her sense of right and wrong—she thinks of the age-old philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it, does it still make a sound? That question, Celeste realizes, isn’t about a tree at all. It’s about what’s happening right here, right now. If she sleeps with Shooter and it remains unknown to anyone but the two of them, did it even really happen?
Yes, she thinks. She would never be the same. And she hopes that Shooter wouldn’t be the same either.
“Good night,” she says. She kisses him on the cheek and retreats down the hall.
Here are Shooter and Celeste the next morning riding two bikes from the Winburys’ fleet of Schwinns into town to the Petticoat Row Bakery, where they get giant iced coffees and two ham and Gruyère croissants, which ooze nutty melted cheese and butter as they pick them apart on a bench on Centre Street. Here is Shooter buying Celeste a bouquet of wildflowers from a farm truck on Main Street, a pointless, extravagant gesture because Tag and Greer’s house is set among lush gardens and the house is filled with fresh flowers. Celeste reminds him of this and he says, “Yes, but none of those flowers are from me. I want you to look at this bouquet and know just how besotted I am with you.”
Besotted, she thinks. It’s a peculiar word, old-fashioned and British-sounding. But Benji is the British one, not Shooter. Somewhere in all the sharing of last night, Celeste learned that Shooter is from Palm Beach, Florida. Shooter was shipped off to summer camp at age eight and to boarding school a few years after that. Shooter’s father died when Shooter was a junior at St. George’s.
“And that was when the wheels fell off the bus,” Shooter said. “My father had been married twice before and had other kids and those other Uxleys swooped in and claimed everything. My one brother, Mitch, agreed to pay my final year of tuition at St. George’s but I had no discretionary income so I started running a dice game at school. There was no money for college so I moved to DC, where I worked as a bartender. Eventually I found a high-stakes poker game where I met diplomats, lobbyists, and a bunch of foreign businessmen. Which led me to my present venture.”
“What happened to your mother?” Celeste asked.
“She died,” Shooter said. Then he shook his head and Celeste knew not to ask anything further.
Besotted. What does he mean by that, exactly? There’s no time to ponder because he’s leading her down the street toward the Bartlett’s Farm truck. He buys three hothouse tomatoes and a loaf of Portuguese bread.
“Tomatoes, mayonnaise, good white bread,” he says. “My favorite summer sandwich.”
Celeste raises a skeptical eyebrow. She was raised on cold cuts—turkey, ham, salami, roast beef. Her parents may have struggled with money but there was always meat piled high on her sandwiches.
Celeste changes her tune, however, when she is sitting poolside in one of her new bikinis and Shooter brings her his favorite sandwich. The bread has been toasted golden brown; the slices of tomato are thick and juicy, seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground pepper, and there is exactly the right amount of mayonnaise to make the sandwich tangy and luscious.
“What do you think?” he asks. “Pretty good, huh?”
She shrugs and takes another bite.
They are lying side by side on chaises in the afternoon sun, the pool cool and dark before them. The pool has a subtle waterfall feature at one end that makes what Celeste thinks of as water music, a lullaby that threatens to put her to sleep in the middle of a very important conversation. She and Shooter are picking the best song by every classic rock performer they can think of.
“Rolling Stones,” Shooter says. “‘Ruby Tuesday.’”
“‘Beast of Burden,’” Celeste says.
“Ooooooh,” Shooter says. “Good call.”
“David Bowie,” Celeste says. “‘Changes.’”
“I’m a ‘Modern Love’ guy,” Shooter says.
Celeste shakes her head. “Can’t stand it.”
“Dire Straits,” Shooter says. “‘Romeo and Juliet.’” He reaches his foot over to nudge her leg. “Wake up. Dire Straits.”
She likes the song about roller girl. She’s making movies on location, she don’t know what it means. Celeste is sinking behind her closed eyelids. Sinking down. What is the name of that song? She can’t… remember.
Celeste wakes up to someone calling her name.
Celeste! Earth to Celeste!
She opens her eyes and looks at the chaise next to hers. Empty. She squints. Across the pool she sees a man in half a suit—pants, shirt, tie. It’s Benji. Benji is here. Celeste sits up. She straightens her bikini top.
