The brochure had described the place not as a town, but as a “luxe, master-planned community.” A description that seems very apt as we cross through the gates and into the neighborhood streets. Marta allows me to roll down my window once the gates are behind us. I want to see as much of everything as I can, even if it’s dark out. The streetlights illuminate houses that are twice the size of any home in Ellis Fields. “Holy crap.”
“These are the smaller homes,” Marta says. “There’s a lake at the center of the community. The houses get progressively more impressive, the closer their proximity to the lake. Joe’s new house is right across the street from the shore, of course.”
“Of course,” I say, and watch as the houses grow larger and larger until we turn onto the road that circles the lake. I lean out my window, trying to get a better view of the water. We didn’t have a lake in Ellis, so this is another first for me. One I’d been excited for since perusing the Olympus Hills brochure. It had said that the lake is shaped like a figure eight, with two islands in the middle. Everything is supposed to be connected by walking paths and footbridges. I can’t see much in the dark except the lights from the building on one of the islands reflecting on the water. That must be the school. The brochure had said Olympus Hills High is on the larger island.
I may not be able to see much of the lake, but there is plenty to hear. The calming flow of the water; the happy, pulsing beats of insects skittering across the surface; the rhythmic swell of the wind through the reeds. As we pass the smaller island of the figure eight–shaped lake, all the subtle sounds are drowned out by a song that reminds me of a mother’s lullaby. Well, a lullaby sung by a mother, not my mother—who might possibly be tone-deaf. I point at the tree-covered island and ask, “What’s there?”
“The grove,” Marta says. She shivers and indicates that she wants me to roll up the window. “Nobody goes there.”
“Why?” I ask.
She picks up her glossy briefcase. “We’re here,” she says as we pull into the crescent-shaped driveway of a building that resembles more a gargantuan Grecian temple than a home.
During the drive, I’d noticed that most of the homes resemble an interesting mixture of modern architecture meets ancient Greece. “I guess they take the Olympus part of Olympus Hills seriously around here?” I say when we get out of the limo.
“You could say that,” Joe slurs. They’re the first words he’s said directly to me since leaving Utah.
Marta unlocks the front door and then ushers us inside a grand entryway, the likes of which I have seen only in the movies at Ellis’s single-screen cinema on Main Street. White marble floors lead to a pair of twisting staircases that fill the foyer, which is big enough alone to hold my mother’s two-bedroom bungalow. A crystal chandelier drips from the center of the high vaulted ceiling. Little rainbows from the prisms reflect onto the tall white walls.
“Wow,” I say.
“This place is smaller than Joe’s homes in Malibu and Paris, but it’ll do for now,” Marta says. “Real estate in the area is hard to come by. I had to twist a few arms, didn’t I, Joe?”
Joe grunts. He drops his leather jacket on the white marble floor and then disappears into one of the rooms off the west wing.
“Never mind him. Joe always needs a little alone time after we travel,” Marta says. She checks her watch. “I have a few minutes to spare, if you would like a tour?”
I nod.
Marta explains, as we tour the house, that the first floor of the west wing is the main living quarters, with the kitchen, family room, a movie theatre—which includes what she claims will be a “fully operational concessions stand” once the house is completely unpacked and stocked—a “playroom,” filled with Joe’s collection of retro arcade games, and a ballroom for throwing parties.
She also informs me that the east wing of the first floor is her private living area, with its own smaller kitchen and a few guest bedrooms … but I don’t get a tour of that. The second floor of the west wing holds Joe’s master bedroom—a master bathroom that could put any spa to shame—a private rehearsal studio that seems especially lived in, considering Joe has been here for only a week, and a private office that looks like it’s never been touched.
It strikes me how white everything is here. White walls, white marble columns and floors, white furniture, white carpet in the bedrooms, and even a painting taller than I am that is a canvas filled with globs of white paint. With the amount of dust that gets tracked into our bungalow back in Ellis, we’d never owned anything remotely white. Because it wouldn’t have stayed white for very long.
“Does Joe have, like, a staff of thirty people to keep this place clean and running?”
“Your father employs a full live-in staff at his two other homes, but besides myself, Joe has insisted that he doesn’t want any other live-ins here. A cleaning staff will come in once a week, but I am hoping he will reconsider bringing in his personal chef from the Malibu house, as cooking is not in my job description. I don’t suppose you know how?”