He catches a brief glimpse of the friend on Friday evening when she and Celeste and Abby arrive from the city for the bachelorette weekend that Greer has arranged. Tag sees the friend from the back—long dark hair and a sweet little behind put on display in a tight sequined miniskirt. When she turns, he’s treated to her profile. Pretty. Then she pivots at the hip, notices Tag checking her out, waggles her fingers at him, and offers a half smile.
“What’s the friend’s name?” Tag asks his wife later.
“Merritt Monaco,” Greer says. “She’s a brunette. Not your type.”
Tag gathers his wife up in his arms, and as usual, she places both palms on his chest as if to push him away, but he holds her tight. Tag maintains—untruthfully—that he has no interest in brunettes. “You’re my type,” he says.
“Yeah, right,” she says in an American accent, which she knows he can’t resist. He kisses her neck. He’ll introduce himself to the friend later.
The introduction comes the next morning. Tag is in the kitchen reading the weekend Journal and enjoying coffee and grapefruit and a poached egg on whole-grain toast after having gone for a five-mile run and then taken a soak in the hot tub. He feels clean and virtuous, nearly relaxed. His wife and future daughter-in-law left a short while ago to meet with the wedding caterers. He has forgotten all about the friend until she comes wandering into the kitchen. She’s barefoot, wearing a tiny pair of cotton sleep shorts and a threadbare T-shirt. No bra. Tag can see the two pellets of her nipples through the material.
“Good morning,” he says brightly.
She jumps, startled. Or maybe she’s just pretending. She’s too pretty to be an innocent. Her hand flies to her chest as she turns to him. Her hair is mussed.
“Good morning,” she says, her voice froggy with sleep. Or maybe it’s naturally gravelly. She collects herself and offers a hand. “You must be Mr. Winbury. How are you? I’m Merritt, as in the parkway.”
“Call me Tag, please,” he says. “As in hash.”
This earns him a smile. Oh, the Millennials!
“Thank you for hosting us this weekend,” she says. “It’s a surprise luxury. Your house is sublime.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Tag says. “What did you girls get up to last night?”
“Dinner at Cru,” she says. “Great oysters there.”
“Agreed,” Tag says.
“Then we went to the Afterhouse for caviar,” Merritt says.
“Well, well,” Tag says. Oysters and caviar. He assumes he was footing the bill.
“Then we went to Proprietors. Then to the Boarding House. Then to the Chicken Box. Then to Steamboat for pizza, since we were all starving. Then we caught an Uber home. Around two, I think? Early night.”
Tag laughs. In New York, she’s probably out every night until four. If she’s anywhere close to Celeste’s age, then she’s still in her twenties.
“Is there coffee?” she asks.
Tag rises. He’s wearing a waffle-knit cotton robe he snagged from the pool house to put on over his wet bathing suit, but now he wishes for regular clothes. The robe feels too feminine; it feels like a dress. “I’ll get it for you,” he says. “Please, sit and relax. How do you take it?”
“Black,” she says.
Girl after his own heart. Tag pours her a cup of coffee. She takes the seat next to his chair and folds her legs up under herself. Cozy. If Greer saw this, she would not be amused, even considering Merritt is a brunette and therefore theoretically not Tag’s type. But imagining Greer’s reaction turns Tag on. He is most certainly going to hell.
He sits down and considers his half-eaten breakfast. “Can I fix you something to eat?” He is startled by his own offer of hospitality. If this were anyone but a desirable woman, he would go back to his newspaper.
She holds up a hand. “No, thank you.”
“So, are there any stories you can share from last night?” he asks.
Merritt tilts her head and gives him a wry smile. “We were perfect angels,” she says. “It was rather disappointing.”
He laughs.
“Abby threw up on the way home,” Merritt says. “Our Uber driver had to pull over on Orange Street.”
“She overdid it?” Tag says. “Good for her.”
“If you ask me, she’s pregnant,” Merritt says. “I got that vibe.”
“Well,” Tag says. “That would be good news.” And it would. Thomas and Abby have been trying for a baby ever since they got married four years earlier. Conception isn’t a problem. Abby has been pregnant four times that Tag knows of, but each time ended in a miscarriage and one of them necessitated a D and C at Lenox Hill Hospital. However, Tag feels more disloyal discussing Abby’s potential pregnancy than he does looking at Merritt’s breasts. He changes the subject.
“So what do you do for work, Merritt-as-in-the-Parkway?” he asks.
She takes a deliberate sip of her coffee. “Officially, I handle PR for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages all four city zoos and the aquarium. That’s how I met Celeste. The Bronx Zoo has the biggest chunk of our budget so I do all of their press releases and whatnot. And Celeste, you know, is a rising star at the zoo. It’s not every day you see a woman as young as Celeste named assistant zoo director.”
“Right,” Tag says. He’s very fond of Celeste and thinks her career is magnificent. Greer has been less enthusiastic. Why does she have to run a zoo? she said. Why not a museum or a charitable foundation? Something ladylike? However, Greer far prefers Celeste to Benji’s former girlfriend, Jules. Jules Briar lived on Park Avenue, which was good, but the apartment and the money and the daughter, Miranda, were all from the first husband, Andy Briar, a director at Goldman Sachs, which was bad. Greer wanted Benji to find someone without quite that much baggage—and Celeste offers a clean slate. It’s almost as though she spent her first twenty-six years in a convent. Benji is the only serious boyfriend she’s ever had.
“And unofficially,” Merritt says with a bit of a tease in her voice, snapping Tag back to the present conversation—Unofficially, he thinks, she’s a stripper. Or a high-end escort—“I’m an influencer.”
“I do work on the side to promote certain brands and events,” Merritt says. “So some of my clothes and shoes and bags are by designers I can’t afford, but I get them for free as long as I post about them on my social media platforms. I stump for nineteen companies.”
“That’s impressive,” Tag says. He can see how she would succeed as an influencer: She’s young, beautiful, cool, sexy. And edgy. She’s an interesting match for Celeste, who doesn’t have an edgy thing about her.
“What do you do for work?” Merritt asks.
Tag laughs; he likes her directness. “I own a hedge fund,” he says.
“Note the look of surprise on my face,” Merritt says.
“It’s terribly boring, I know,” he says. “I started my career at Barclays in London but when the boys finished with primary school, we decided it would be best to move to New York.” He does not mention that the majority of their wealth comes from Greer’s family. The Garrisons owned the mills that produced over half the gin in Great Britain. And Greer’s book royalties are nothing to sniff at either, although sales are steadily declining and Tag has been tempted to suggest she retire before she becomes a parody of herself. Her fan base is nearly down to no one but the devoted cat ladies.
It’s as Tag is thinking about the typical cat lady—tucked away in her Cotswold cottage fixing a cup of tea and preparing to spend a rainy afternoon in an armchair with a tabby spread across her lap as she cracks open the latest exotically located Greer Garrison mystery—that he feels something touch his leg. It’s Merritt’s foot. She is running her toes up his shin as she sips her coffee and pretends to be gazing out the window at Nantucket Sound. Tag immediately gets an erection. He thinks about lifting up her flimsy T-shirt or, better still, tearing the damn thing in half so he can lick the hard points of her nipples until she groans in his ear. Where can he take her? Maybe if he opens his robe and shows her what she’s done to him, she’ll get down on her knees in front of him. Right here in the kitchen. Could they be that brazen?
As he starts to reach for the belt of his robe, Abby comes limping into the kitchen, one hand on her stomach and one on the back of her neck as though she’s trying to hold herself together. When she sees Tag and Merritt, a startled look crosses her face, then something darker flickers through her expression. What must this look like? Tag wonders.
Abby has been raised right. She smiles. “Good morning,” she says. “Sorry I slept so late. I am not feeling well at all.”
“Coffee?” Tag asks.
Merritt stands up. “I’m going to try the outdoor shower,” she says.
When Greer and Celeste return, the girls all head out to the pool in their bikinis. Tag would like to join them but he can’t possibly do so without seeming like a perverted and pathetic old man. He decides instead to go out in the kayak. He waves as he strolls past the pool, taking one long, appreciative look at Merritt, who is wearing a black bikini with a complicated web of straps across the back. The bikini is possibly meant to reference bondage and inspire any man who looks upon the suit to wish for a pair of sharp scissors to snip the straps and get to the luscious body underneath. However, the suit, with its web, also reminds Tag of a spider. A black widow, he thinks. Merritt is dangerous. He needs to stay away.
Tag paddles out to the Monomoy Creeks, a series of waterways that meander through reeds and eelgrass, around floating islands and sandbars. It’s peaceful here. The only sound is the plashing of his paddle against the surface of the water. Up above, an osprey soars, and in the distance, Tag spies sailboats, an approaching ferry, and Commercial Wharf. The sun is unseasonably warm for May. He is tempted to take his shirt off so he can get something vaguely resembling a suntan. He must be bewitched, he thinks, because he hasn’t given two thoughts to a suntan since he lifeguarded at Blackpool Sands in the summer of 1981. He’s fifty-seven years old, likely more than twice the girl’s age. He tries to banish her from his mind and instead focus on everything he already has—a satisfying, if stodgy, career; a beautiful, accomplished wife; and two healthy sons, both of whom are finally starting to get the hang of adulthood. Tag has a five-bedroom prewar apartment on Park Avenue, a flat in London, and this spread on Nantucket. He and Greer first visited Nantucket in the summer of 1997, and with the trust that Greer inherited on her thirty-fifth birthday, they bought the land. It had been quite expensive even then, this remote island of fishermen and free spirits, but Greer had loved it and Tag had loved making Greer happy.
He has grown quite fond of this island, even though his life here now is more fraught. There’s always something happening—a festival, a benefit, houseguests, a cocktail party, a new restaurant Greer insists they have to try, and, in a few weeks, a wedding for which they will host 170 people. But Tag’s favorite way to experience the island is like this, right now—on the water, in his kayak. Nantucket’s charm is most easily found offshore. Tag paddles all the way to the Great Harbor Yacht Club, then he turns around and heads for home. He wills himself to be strong enough for what awaits him there.
He has never quite mastered the art of getting out of the kayak and nearly always dunks himself in the process. This gives Greer much joy and himself a much-needed cooling-off so he is half guilty of facilitating the mishap. After he pulls the kayak up on the shore, he towels himself dry and checks his phone. There’s a voice mail from his friend Sergio Ramone.
Tag finds Greer arranging flowers on the sunporch.
“Sergio called,” he says. “He has two tickets to the Dujac Grand Cru wine-festival dinner tonight. The chef from Nautilus is doing the food and it’s at some swanky house out on Quaise Pasture Road. I told him we’d take them. They’re ridiculously expensive, but we deserve it.”
“I can’t go,” Greer says.
“What?” Tag says. “Why not? You love Dujac. It’s bluechip terroir. Not Sonoma, not South Africa. These wines will be once-in-a-lifetime. You know how these French vintners are. If you show the proper appreciation, they can’t help themselves—they open up the bottles they aren’t supposed to, the really, really good stuff, the rare vintages that we’ll never have the opportunity to taste again.”
“I have to stay home and write tonight,” Greer says. “My deadline is in thirty days and I’m dreadfully behind because of the wedding. Also, I had an idea while Celeste and I were out and I want to get it down before I forget.”
“The dinner isn’t until seven,” he says. “Go write now and you’ll be finished by six, in time for a shower and a dressing drink.”
“I can’t now,” Greer says. “I’m busy.”
“I’ll arrange the flowers,” Tag says. “You go write.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that, darling,” she says.
He wants to strangle her. He should never have expected his wife to suddenly display a penchant for spontaneity. He knows it doesn’t work like that; he knows Greer can’t be prodded to write, that she has to listen to her internal muse, and the muse prefers the nighttime hours, a quiet, dark house, a glass of wine (ordinary wine, a fifteen-dollar bottle of chardonnay, for example, which will have nothing in common with the wine that will be served with this dinner).
“What the hell am I going to do?” Tag says. “I promised Sergio I’d take the tickets off his hands.” If it were anyone else, Tag would call and renege, but Sergio is an esteemed criminal-defense attorney and he’s also the friend who got Thomas into law school at NYU when there was no prayer of Thomas getting in on his own. And then Sergio angled to get Thomas a job at Skadden, Arps, the law firm where Thomas now works. Thomas, Tag has to admit, isn’t the achiever the rest of them are; Tag suspects he’ll quit law before he makes partner. But even so, Tag and Greer owe Sergio Ramone a lifelong debt of gratitude. Tag can’t back out on these tickets. He can pay the $3,500 apiece and just not go, he supposes, but what a waste that would be. “Please, darling.”
Greer stabs a peony into the vase. The peony is deep pink and resembles a human heart unfurling in desperation. Or possibly he’s projecting. “Take one of the girls,” she says.
Tag scoffs.
“I’m serious,” Greer says. “Don’t be a martyr for me. I won’t like that one bit. Ask one of the girls.”
“But isn’t this supposed to be a bachelorette weekend?” Tag says.
“They partied last night,” Greer says. “Unless I’m mistaken, they’re planning on staying home tonight. But I’m sure you can talk one of them into it.”
The girls, as Greer calls them, are in the casual dining area, reading magazines, snacking on chips and salsa. Merritt-as-in-the-Parkway, Tag is relieved to see, has covered herself properly, in white jeans and a navy cashmere sweater. Abby is resting her head on her arms on the table.
“Hello, ladies,” Tag says. His stomach feels leaden; it’s nerves. He knows how this is going to end. Greer too must know how this is going to end. She is the one he will hold responsible. She has suspected him of cheating for the entirety of their marriage, he knows, and now it feels like she is pushing him toward it. “I have an extra ticket to a very fancy wine dinner tonight and my wife feels she needs to stay home and write. Would any of you three like to go with me?”
“God, no.” Abby groans.
“No, thank you,” Celeste says sweetly. “I’m exhausted.”
Merritt raises her face and looks him dead in the eye. His heart skips a beat.
Tag wears a jacket but no tie. Merritt wears a lavender dress with thin straps that crisscross her back and a pair of silver stiletto heels. It’s the heels Greer chooses to comment on.
“You’ll break your neck in those,” she says.
“I’ll be fine,” Merritt says. “Years of practice.”
“Well,” Greer says in Tag’s ear as she kisses him good-bye, “I believe Quaise Pasture is in for quite a shock.”
Once they’re in the Land Rover headed out the Polpis Road, Tag worries that Merritt will reach over and put her hand on his leg. Then he worries she won’t. He has an erection simply from smelling her perfume and listening to her rummage through her clutch purse in the dark. He can’t go inside in this state; he needs to talk himself down. He takes a deep breath. He worries there will be someone he knows at this dinner—and how will he explain who Merritt is? My future daughter-in-law’s best friend. It sounds sleazy. It is sleazy. What will people think? They’ll think… well, they’ll think the obvious.
But then Tag calls upon one of his favorite sayings: Perception is reality. This situation can be translated in more than one way. Tonight, Tag will perceive this outing as innocent and fun and that is what it will become. He relaxes a little.
“Is this your first time on Nantucket?” he asks.
“Not at all,” she says. “I’ve come with friends over the years, in college and then as a so-called adult.”
“Where was college?” he asks.
“Trinity,” she says. “In glamorous Hartford.”
He has friends whose children went to Trinity but he doesn’t dare ask if Merritt knows any of them; he’s already self-conscious enough about how young she is. Or how old he is.
“Do you have siblings?” Tag asks.
“A brother,” she says. “Married with kids and a mortgage.”
“And where did you grow up?” Tag asks.
“On Long Island,” she says. “Commack.”
Tag nods. He and Greer have successfully avoided Long Island, though he does have a client with a house in Oyster Bay whom he visits on occasion and there was one long-ago rainy weekend in Montauk when the boys were small. He has never heard of Commack. “I always wanted a daughter,” he says. “But Greer didn’t. She’s happy with the boys.”
“Greer is lovely,” Merritt says.
“Isn’t she?” he says. “Anyway, now we have a daughter-in-law. Abby. And soon, Celeste.”
“Celeste is a treasure,” Merritt says. “I met her at a difficult time in my life. She saved me.”
This statement seems to warrant a follow-up question, but it’s too late. They’ve arrived. The house is, in fact, grand—it’s all lit up from within, overlooking the sound but from a more dramatic vantage point than Tag’s house. There are two unfamiliar cars in the driveway.
Tag parks, then smiles at Merritt. This is going to be innocent and fun. “Shall we?” he says.
The evening unfolds easily. There are ten diners, plus the French gentleman from the esteemed Dujac vineyard plus one of the sous-chefs from Nautilus plus two kitchen staff and two waitstaff. Tag doesn’t know a soul. The other eight diners are all one group. They tell Tag it’s their first time to Nantucket. They live in Texas.
“Where in Texas?” Merritt asks.
Tag steels himself to hear that they’re from Austin and then to find out that they are best friends or business partners of Abby’s parents, the Freemans.
“San Antonio,” they say. “Remember the Alamo.”
It quickly becomes obvious that Merritt knows nothing about wine, not even the basics. She doesn’t know that cabernet sauvignons are from Bordeaux and that pinot noirs and chardonnays are from Burgundy. She doesn’t know what terroir is. She has never heard of pinot franc; she has never heard of the Loire Valley. How can she be an influencer of culture when she doesn’t have even a basic vocabulary of wine? What does she drink when she goes out?
“Cocktails,” she says. “Gin, bourbon, vodka, tequila. Skinny margaritas are my go-to.” She must see him grimace because she adds, “There used to be a place downtown, Pearl and Ash, that made a cocktail called Teenage Jesus, which was my particular favorite. Plus, the name.”
Tag can’t imagine drinking something called a Teenage Jesus. “What about when you have oysters? When you have caviar? Surely you must drink champagne.”
“Prosecco,” she says. “But only if someone presses it on me. It gives me a headache.”
After his starter glass, a 2013 Chambolle-Musigny, goes down, he decides that Merritt’s ignorance is fortuitous. She isn’t the jaded, worldly woman he thought she was. He had convinced himself over the past few hours that she was at least thirty but now he fears she’s closer to twenty-five. More than thirty years younger than he is.
After his second glass, a 2009 Morey Saint-Denis, he is loose. He will teach Merritt about wine. He will teach her how to roll the wine over her tongue. He will teach her how to identify black-cherry and tobacco notes in pinots, and lemon, mint, and clover in sauvignon blancs. He’s excited by this mission, although her palate will be exposed to some of the finest wines in the world tonight, and this worries him. When you start with the best, the future offers only disappointment.
They stumble out of the house well past midnight, hand in hand. At one extremely saturated point during the evening, one of the Texas ladies turned to Merritt and said, “So how long have y’all been married?”
Without hesitation, Merritt said, “We’re newlyweds.”
“Congratulations!” the woman said. “Second marriage?”
Merritt winked. “How’d you guess?”
So when they leave, they are a couple, married by the incredible wine, the extraordinary food, the camaraderie of complete strangers. It’s as if they have stepped out of their lives into another life where everything is new and anything is possible. When Tag opens the passenger door for Merritt, she turns to him and raises her face.
He kisses her once, chastely, on the lips.
“That’s all I get?” she says.
Say yes, Tag thinks. Be strong. Be true to Greer and the boys. Show some integrity, for God’s sake.
But.
Even that faintest touch of her lips sent a surge of electricity through him. Tag is pulsing with desire for her. He won’t be able to stop himself from driving Merritt to the beach and making love to her, maybe more than once.
He is, ultimately, only a man.