*
When Ariel left the city, she didn’t secede quietly, she rejected all of it loudly, and she burned the bridge—she blew it the fuck up—on her way out of town. For a while she kept in touch with a tiny handful of people; within months that dwindled to no one. Now a decade and a half later, one of the last of those friends was advancing on Ariel, mouth wide in amazement, arms wide in affection, adorned with a twenty-thousand-dollar handbag, and a massive engagement diamond stacked with diamond-encrusted wedding band, and a perfect manicure; you could see this woman’s whole life in her hand décor.
This sort of encounter had nearly happened to Ariel a few times before. At the farmstand where a master-of-the-universe type climbed out of his tank of an SUV to peel a fifty from a money clip to buy corn; he accused Ariel of being her old self, but she denied it, and fled in her beat-up pickup. At the oyster bar where people can arrive by boat from pricier enclaves, an adventure in rusticating, and Ariel spotted that couple first—she’s always on the lookout for such people, and they’re not remotely thinking of her—and dodged any interaction completely.
Her town is not a place where rich people live, nor own weekend houses. There’s some typical small-town prosperity—business owners, professionals, retired whatevers, you could tell by their S-Classes, their Rolexes, by the gaps between the thighs of the PTA wives, same as everywhere. But no celebrities, no mega-yachts, no private jets, no billionaires. No people like this woman here.
“It’s been. So. Long. My God!”
Air-kisses on both cheeks. Ariel was still holding an armful of heavy books, couldn’t really hug, tried to indicate so with a shrug. She glanced over to see if Persephone had witnessed this customer using her old name. Oh yes she had.
No one in this town kisses on both cheeks. Absolutely no one. Ariel had once done this as a matter of course, back when she was someone else, double-air-kissing her way through life. There are worse things.
“How are you?”
“I’m great, Tory. How are you?”
“Awesome!”
For a while Ariel used to see Tory Wasserman all the time, during those few years when Ariel Pryce had been named Laurel Turner. The two women were on the same circuits in the same neighborhood, the same private-club luncheons and black-tie benefits, the same exercise fads, trading in kickboxing for spinning for Pilates for yoga, swapping outfits and accessories and instructors, the rhythms of their days tapped out in beats of self-care, packs of women roving their neighborhood in taxis and town cars—this was before everyone was using Uber as a verb—between gym and studio and salon and school and the very occasional grocery store. In their households, most of the food was carried in through the service entrance by housekeepers.
Tory had once worked in fashion publicity, but quit when planning her wedding became a full-time occupation. That was also when Tory started employing a stylist to come over regularly to prepare her hair for the evening.
“I pay for three appointments per week, though sometimes I use only two, when I just need to, like, chill at home. To re-center. But I always pay for all three as a, like, retainer.”
This was explained while nibbling at a thirty-four-dollar salad in a café attached to a museum. The other full-time homemakers around the table all nodded, agreeing that this was a terrific idea, jealous that they hadn’t thought of it themselves, this point scored in the competitive sport of spending money, who can play more cleverly, more originally, more impressively—Bentley golf carts, Antarctic expeditions, Old Master oils, radiant floor heating. Trying to come ever closer to the perfect life, amazed and disappointed that it apparently can’t be bought.
Tory was now looking around the bookshop, as if searching for evidence of Ariel’s role here. Tory’s phone was already open to a social-media app, she had obviously become a woman who’s always ready to post, always performing, arching her eyebrows and fluffing her hair, exclaiming loudly and laughing louder, the never-ending ad campaign of herself, posing, scrolling, editing, posting, revising posts to comment and adore and wallow in validations—OMG U R SO PRETTY, I CAN’T EVEN—then reciprocating, all the while listening to Taylor Swift or Lizzo or maybe Adele, they’re all advising the same thing: Love yourself, that’s what really matters. But you knew that already, didn’t you? Tory certainly did.
There was a time when Ariel had admired Tory’s sort of impudence, this shameless self-affirmation, self-promotion. She’d been in awe of Tory, of her friend’s willingness to be unattractive in her quest to be attractive. Ariel had never been able to do this, to be this. It was one of the things that had held her back from being a successful actor; it was something she hadn’t liked about herself, before it became something she was proud of.
“Omigod, do you, like, work here?” Tory asked in a low, conspiratorial voice.
Ariel felt the urge to answer I’m the owner, but reconsidered. “Yes, I do work here.”
Tory’s face was filled with the unmistakable glee of someone else’s misfortune. A job.
“That’s so, um, awesome.” Tory spent thirty thousand dollars per year on her hair. “You remember my cousin Madison? We’re both in East.”
This meant that both Tory and Madison spent their summers in East Hampton.
“Do you live around here?” Tory asked. “Is this where you came when you left the city?”
Ariel answered with nothing more than a smile. She didn’t want to confirm or deny, she didn’t want to explain, she didn’t want to start apologizing for not returning Tory’s calls, for dropping off the face of the earth. There had definitely been a time when Tory might have been the one person she’d have confided in, but Ariel had never explained the whole of her situation to any of her old friends, and she couldn’t start here and now.
The door tinkled again to admit a square-jawed man wearing a golf shirt under a fleece vest breast-emblazoned with EXCALIBUR CAPITAL, a crimson HBS baseball cap, and a big gleaming wristwatch, making sure everyone could see in one glance who he was—mega-successful finance bro. It was ninety degrees out; the guy was really dedicated to that vest.
“Laurel, you remember my husband Slade?”
Of course Ariel did, Slade Wasserman was impossible to not remember, a platinum-level jackass who sprayed venom like a lawn sprinkler, drenching everything in his toxic masculinity.
“Hi Slade,” Ariel said. Fifteen years ago, Ariel’s first husband Bucky had been one of the early adopters of the zip-front-vest-over-dress-shirt look. Now it’s practically a uniform for men across every sect of the capitalist religion.
“Oh, hey,” he said, managing with his intonation and body language to communicate his complete lack of interest in Ariel. There was almost a beauty in it.
“Where are my babies?” Tory asked.