8

Darien, Connecticut

The house, like their lives, is surrounded by a hedge.

In many ways, Miranda Havens tells herself, this entire town is. Towering green manicured hedges whose shining oval leaves constitute a unique and proprietary form of currency.

She’s only been to Rick Salvado’s country estate twice. Once for a full-blown corporate family outing and once for a luncheon with “the wives.” It’s hard for her to say which event was more outrageous.

The corporate family gig was all about large-scale excess: a genuine Cirque du Soleil show under a backyard big top, Arabian pony rides, a vintage carousel for the kids, and a private concert by one of that year’s American Idol finalists.

Miranda remembers whispering to Drew in front of a giant ice sculpture replica of the Salvado estate, “What next, an ice sculpture of his manhood?” To which Drew replied, “This entire party is a tribute to his manhood.” They kept telling each other that they’d soon leave, that they should leave. But Erin was with them and she was enjoying it. Miranda was conflicted about the possibility that the little girl might grow accustomed to the excess, but they stayed until the very end, if only to gape at the next exhibit of mercenary extravagance rolled out for their pleasure, and because it made Erin laugh. At one point near the end the three of them walked away from the rides and tents and music. At the far end of an open expanse of lawn just before the outer hedge they stopped past an herb garden and watched an elderly white man pruning an island of clustered roses. Erin pointed and said, “Flowers!” When they approached, the man smiled. “They’re American Beauties,” the man said by way of introduction. “Mr. Salvado’s favorite.” He plucked a bright red rose and gave it to Erin.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You want to see a secret place?” he said to the three of them.

“Okay,” said Erin.

He knelt down and ran his hand along the grass. After a moment he pulled upward and a two – by three-foot rectangular patch of grass rose up, revealing a hatch and passage to a subterranean chamber. “It’s from the Civil War era,” the man said. “Part of the Underground Railroad.”

“Wow,” Havens said as they bent to get a better look inside. “You know what the Underground Railroad is, sweetie?” he asked Erin.

“It was a hiding place to help good people stay away from bad ones,” Miranda explained.

“Our hiding place,” the girl replied.

The luncheon with the wives, on the other hand, was every bit the showcase of passive-aggressive, elitist, post-sorority posturing she’d anticipated. The six women, all spouses of the top earners and players at the fund, passionately discussed schools and restaurants, Pilates instructors and fashion, only deferring to the opinion of the queen, Deborah Salvado. At one point Tommy Rourke’s wife actually asked Miranda, “Who are you wearing?” As if she were Joan Rivers interviewing her on the Academy Awards red carpet. As if Miranda gave a shit. She dreaded the luncheon, but because she’d seen it coming, and because she’d promised Drew that she would behave, she played along. Drew had told her about some of the wives who had preceded her and had not done so well at similar events, and the fates that soon after befell their husbands.

Despite the unnerving fog of pretense that hung over the wives’ luncheon, there was an aspect of it that Miranda, to her surprise, enjoyed: Salvado’s beautiful forty-five-year-old wife, Deborah. They barely exchanged words at the corporate family function, but at the wives’ luncheon, they spoke quite a bit. At one point Miranda commented about how much she enjoyed a quiche recipe, and a moment later she was being led to the kitchen for an audience with the chef. While Miranda asked the chef questions, Deborah Salvado was transfixed by the industrious inquisitiveness of her guest.

Afterward, Deborah looked at Miranda and said, “You know, I’ve become a robot. By giving me so much, he’s taken away everything. I used to love to cook, to make my mother’s and grandmother’s recipes: eggplant, or even something I happened to see on the Food Network. But now . . .”

Miranda tried to make her feel better. “But now you have much more important responsibilities than to—”

“Bullshit. Being Mrs. Rick Salvado may come with its responsibilities, but rarely is it accompanied by, no offense, the least amount of pleasure or fulfillment.”

“Then do it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you really think Rick would stop you from cooking something? Just go ahead and do it.”

Deborah Salvado stared at Miranda for several moments before smiling. She put her arm around Miranda and led her back to the table. En route she said, “You never did say where you really got this jacket.”

Miranda looked down. It was a cream-colored linen blend cut at the waist. Delicately stitched into the lapels in light pink thread were her favorite flowers, lilies. She shrugged. “I made it.”

“I knew it,” Deborah Salvado said, giving her a mock punch in the shoulder. “One more reason to secretly hate you.”

Over the next few years they met several times outside the company circle of wives. Once they visited galleries and had lunch in a small hipster café in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Once they went to a reading by Deborah’s favorite writer at McNally Jackson and had dinner afterward on Mulberry Street. And once they even got drunk on the roof of the Hotel Gansevoort. That was the night that Deborah confided to her about her husband’s chronic indiscretions with prostitutes and hostesses, young employees, and even the wife of a prominent trader at the fund.

“Did I sign up for that?” she asked, raising her cosmopolitan to her lips.

“You did not,” Miranda answered.

“When I confronted him, he said, ‘What did you expect? Everything I give you, would it be so hard to look the other way once in a while? There’s no feeling involved with this other stuff . . .’”

“Purely transactional.”

“Exactly.” Deborah Salvado continued. “So I said, ‘I can look away.’ But only after I laid out the specifics of my end of the transaction. Even so, the more you look away, the less you can look in the mirror.”

Miranda remembers staring out beyond the hotel rooftop that night, toward the Hudson, her own head buzzing with mojitos and selfdoubt, and concern about the behavior of her own absentee hedge fund husband. They were rich by then, too. Not anywhere near as rich as the Salvados, but they had made more money than she’d ever imagined they would, and while she and Drew enjoyed it, it had changed them. They were no longer as comfortable in their own skin, or with each other. As if reading her mind, Deborah Salvado said, “He told me the women meant nothing and that they all did it. Clients. Employees. Traders and quants. And when I said, ‘Even Drew Havens?’ he looked down, then mumbled, ‘Oh, no. Havens is different.’”

Within a month, Deborah Salvado would throw her husband out of the Darien estate, banishing him to the Central Park West co-op, apparently for breaking even the most permissive bonds of their agreement. Soon after that, Erin died, and Miranda stopped having anything to do with anyone from the Rising Fund, including her sometime friend Deborah Salvado and then, of course, Drew.

At the massive iron gates decorated with scenes from American history—the flag raising at Iwo Jima and Washington crossing the Delaware—Miranda reaches out of the driver’s side window of her Prius and pushes call. To her surprise, Deborah Salvado, not a servant or security guard, answers. “Who is it?”

“Deb. It’s Miranda. Miranda . . . Havens.”