Five

____________

PABST
BLUE RIBBON

Fluorescent orange Cheez Doodle crumbs illuminated the soiled rug as I stepped over the threshold of 111 Montauk Highway in Amagansett. Mold and mildew stains were spread across every cushion on the grimy couches, and beer cans, cigarette butts, and empty pizza boxes littered the floors. I ran around the house opening as many windows as I could to let in some fresh air before the stench of mothballs, sweaty gym socks, and stale beer made me faint. My visions of a grand summer hideaway with crisp white linens and oceanfront property were dissolving as quickly as my hair was curling in the muggy heat. I cursed to myself as an hour of work with my hot iron went down the drain.

After my roller-coaster ride through the Hamptons with Martin and Lily, I’d decided I needed a wingman if I was going to survive the scandalous life of an East End bartender. The minute I was safely back in my apartment on Jones Street, I’d called Annie. I was all set with a pitch about how we’d make millions and spend our days luxuriating on the beach, but Annie didn’t need the hard sell.

“Why not?” she laughed. “I always prefer my men with a tan.” I’d given her Teddy’s number, and in less than twenty-four hours she’d worked her charms and secured a job as a server in Spark’s restaurant, with the possibility of being promoted to cocktail waitress if a position opened up.

I’d also recruited Alexis to help us find a place to stay for the duration of the summer. She’d spent the better part of her hundred-hour workweek trolling through her high-society Long Island Rolodex to come up with a spot for us in a summer share house. Initially she’d suggested I take a spot in a house in Bridgehampton with a couple of her Alberta Ferretti–clad girlfriends from high school who all worked for Bragman Nyman Cafarelli PR firm. But it was $7,000 a share for the summer, which we clearly could not afford. So I’d sent out a mass e-mail to all of my friends from Columbia, subject: Homeless in the Hamptons.

The politics of a Hamptons share were as convoluted as the current condition of partisan politics in the United States. Just as politicians start campaigning years in advance for an election, Hamptons share-housers start lobbying for a choice spot for the following summer as early as two weeks after Labor Day. Typically the life cycle of a share-houser in the Hamptons is as follows: the first summer is spent crammed in tenementlike conditions in a house located as far as possible from the beach and town. While you might have spent $2,000 on a full share (which allows you to have access to the house every single weekend), you’ll most likely still be competing with the half shares and quarter shares (who tend to come out to the house more than their allotted weekends) for bedroom and bathroom space. The second summer you graduate to a house with a pool—though you’re still squeezing twenty-plus people into a three-bedroom ranch. Finally, after three consecutive bonuses from Merrill Lynch, you might be lucky enough to land yourself a house on Egypt Lane in East Hampton with beachfront property, tennis courts, and your very own bedroom for the bargain summer rental price of $180,000 per house (which, by the way, is the asking price for an eight-bedroom residence back home in Albany).

It turned out that Alexis’s ex-boyfriend, Walker, had a bunch of friends from high school who had a cheap share house in Amagansett and still needed to fill two of the slots. Walker was a Jack and Coke, blue-button-down-shirt, banker type who’d majored in finance and now only a month out of school was well on his way to making his first million. But I liked him—he was laid-back and generous, with a gift for managing Alexis’s more high-maintenance attributes—so spending a summer with his friends sounded good to me. I picked up the phone to call Travis, his friend who was in charge of managing the shares in the house.

“Hello?” a groggy male voice answered on the eighth ring.

“Hi,” I began. “My name is Cassie. Walker gave me your number. I’m calling about possibly getting a share in your house in Amagansett—”

“What?” The voice on the other end was muffled.

“I’m sorry, maybe I have the wrong number. Is this . . . Travis?”

“Yeah, who did you say you were?”

“My name’s Cassie. I’m a friend of Alexis Levkoff’s. Walker Burke gave me your number. I need a place to stay in the Hamptons.”

“Oh . . . Cassie, right. Walker said you were going to call.”

“Yeah. Is this a bad time?”

“No, not at all. So you’re interested in a share?”

“Yeah, my friend Annie and I are going to be spending the weekends out there bartending and we need a place to stay.”

“Okay. Well, here’s the deal. The house is on 111 Montauk Highway right in the village of Amagansett. We rented the same house last year. It’s awesome. It’s walking distance from the train station and McKendry’s and the Talkhouse—our favorite bars out there. Most of the guys in the house are my buddies from college, but there’s gonna be less people this year because last year it got a little out of hand. We’re trying to keep it pretty mellow.”

“How far is it from the beach?”

“Really close. Maybe a ten-minute walk.”

“Perfect! How much?”

“A thousand.”

“For the whole summer?”

“Yup.”

“That’s not bad at all.”

“So, you’re in?”

“Definitely.”

“Sweet. So why don’t you and your friend just write your checks out to me, Travis Whitter, that’s W-H-I-T-T-E-R, and bring them with you this weekend.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“What time are you planning on coming out?”

“Probably early on Friday. I have a bar meeting at noon for my new job.”

“You’ll be the first one there. But don’t worry, a couple of us went out there last weekend to set the place up. So it’s all ready. Sheets and towels are in the closet at the top of the stairs, and help yourself to the beers in the fridge.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. See you Friday.”

Alexis had walked in the door just minutes later, and I’d trilled with excitement, “I just got off the phone with Walker’s friend—I found a house in the Hamptons!”

“That’s great! Which friend?”

“Travis. I guess Walker knows him from high school.”

“Travis? Travis Whitter?”

“Yeah. I feel bad, I think I might have woken him up from a nap. He was kind of out of it.”

“He was probably stoned. Those guys are always stoned. Why do you think I broke up with Walker? He was always half-baked. His friends from high school are even worse.”

“But I thought you said you liked his friends,” I protested.

“Yeah, they’re nice guys—when they’re sober, which is never. You’ll have fun with them, but I’m just warning you: they’re all total meatheads. The amount of beer they can drink is inhuman.”

Alexis seemed to have selective memory about all the times she had overindulged in booze. “You seem to have forgotten that I’m a bartender,” I reminded her. “If there’s one thing I’m used to, it’s drunk people. Where’d Travis go to school?”

“Boulder, just like all the rest of the frat guys who’ll probably be in your house. Biggest party school in the country. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be very impressed with their keg stands. And Rickman, Travis’s roommate, can shotgun a beer in less than two seconds. Truly an accomplishment.”

“Well, Annie can guzzle an entire bottle of champagne in ten.” I wasn’t going to let her warnings put a dent in my optimism.

“How many people are in this house?” Alexis asked, pulling a bag of ground espresso beans from the freezer.

“I didn’t ask.”

“Oh God,” she groaned. “Last summer Walker went out to visit Travis, and he said there were like a thousand people—mostly Fiji frat guys—passed out everywhere. It was a nightmare.”

“Well,” I said, trying my best to sound dismissive, “Travis explicitly said that last year got out of hand and that this year they were keeping it mellow.”

Alexis raised an eyebrow in a way that let me know I’d been incredibly naïve. “Mellow to Travis Whitter is a night at the Hog Pit with a forty of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a half-dressed stripper on his lap.”

The final obstacle between me and the Hamptons had been perhaps the most daunting of all: I still had to convince Laurel to let me keep my weekday shifts at Finton’s while I spent my weekends working elsewhere. Giving up a weekend shift was a cardinal sin in the bartending world, and I certainly didn’t want to leave Dan in the lurch—especially since I knew all too well that if it wasn’t for him, my unlikely hero, I’d be living at home with my parents in Albany. My fear of being outright fired had caused me to bury my head in the sand, and I put off approaching Laurel even though I was set to start at Spark that weekend. Alexis found me stressing in the kitchen over a bowl of ramen noodles.

“What’s the matter?” she’d asked, sitting down beside me. Over her shoulder, I could see the headline in her In Touch magazine: “Body Language Expert Willow Estrella Says Britney and Kevin’s Body Language Indicates She’s Pregnant with Another Man’s Baby.”

“I have to tell Laurel about the Hamptons,” I said. “And I’m scared she’s going to fire me. I should have told her as soon as I got back, but I’ve been putting it off, and now . . .” I trailed off, my voice wavering.

“Cassie, why are you even thinking about Laurel? You need to call Dan Finton,” Alexis said matter-of-factly.

I rolled my eyes. “What good would that do?”

“Please, Cassie, that man loves you and you know it. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Why do you think you got the job in the first place?” She looked at me pointedly. “Certainly not because of your experience.”

I chewed my bottom lip sullenly. “I don’t know. I feel weird calling Dan.”

“Why?”

“Because as a bartender, I’m supposed to deal with Laurel. That’s the way it goes. Laurel is my boss, and Dan is Laurel’s boss.”

“Oh, give me a break,” she said, cracking open a can of Diet Coke. “You’ll never get anywhere in this world with that kind of attitude. It’s eight-thirty, and I’m the only analyst at Morgan Stanley who’s already at home. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed.

“Because my hairy old managing director fucking loves me, and I mentioned I had a little tension headache. And the next thing I know, he’s sending me home at seven-thirty. I can do no wrong in that office as long as I deal with him. Is he directly over my head? Is he technically the one I’m supposed to answer to? NO! I’m supposed to answer to my VP, Barbara, a fat, gross old woman who wears tacky Liz Claiborne suits and hasn’t gotten laid since before I was born! Now, call Dan.”

However much I hated to admit it, I suspected she was right—and that at the very least, I stood a better chance of winning over Dan than Laurel. I picked up my phone and dialed his number.

“Well, if it isn’t my star bartender!” Dan said when he answered. “Remember last Saturday night when Baby Carmine brought in all of those people to celebrate his birthday?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Well, he called me today to tell me what a great party it was, and it was all thanks to you. He said you played great music, took care of everyone, had infectious energy, and just made the whole night! And I told him, ‘I’m not surprised—Cassie’s my star!’ ”

“Wow,” I said, dumbfounded. “Thanks.”

“So what’s going on?”

“Well,” I began, “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been offered a bartending job in the Hamptons for the summer, and it’s on Friday and Saturday nights. I love working at Finton’s but—”

“The Hamptons? Which bar?”

“Um, it’s a new club called Spark. I know it’s last minute—”

“Listen, Cass. I know how it is, and to tell you the truth, I think it’s a great opportunity for all of us. It’ll be a chance for you to meet a whole new base of customers and lure them into Finton’s. You’ll still keep some shifts here during the week, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, the weight lifting off my shoulders in one fell swoop. “I’d love to keep my shifts during the week, if that’s possible—”

“Of course it’s possible!” he’d exclaimed. “As long as you promise to come back to me full time in the fall.”

I gingerly climbed the rickety stairs of my new share house, stepping over damp beach towels, an oozing bottle of suntan lotion, a chewed-up Frisbee, and a Pro-Kadima set. When I arrived at the top I peeked inside the first room to my right and saw a sunny window looking out into the yard and two small beds.

“As soon as you get out there, Cass, make sure you reserve us some beds so we actually have somewhere to sleep when we get home from work,” Annie had made me promise as we planned the first leg of our adventure over the phone the night before. “Everyone I know who’s done a share house has ended up sleeping on the lawn or something, and that’s the last thing we need after working all night.” As I investigated the rest of the upstairs, which looked like it could comfortably sleep no more than a family of four, I was doubly glad I’d gotten there early.

I dropped one bag on each bed to stake our claim and walked back toward the staircase. My mother’s influence reared its head, and I found a box of garbage bags in the shed and began picking up my housemates’ trash. I harangued them in my head (though I hadn’t even met them yet) as I held my nose against the sour smell of garbage, mold, and the all-too-familiar stench of stale Jack Daniel’s. Clearly Alexis had been right. What kind of people didn’t mind spending the weekend in this kind of filth? Evidently, this was what a grand got you in the Hamptons.

I looked at my watch, which read 11:20, and realized I couldn’t spend any more time trying to clean up the house or I’d miss my bar meeting. In a final effort to make the place presentable, I shoved a damp phone book underneath one of the legs of the dining room table to keep it from wobbling. Then I fished around in my backpack and pulled out the card the cabdriver had given me the weekend before when he’d taken me to—and quickly back from—Martin’s den of iniquity.

I was still trying to fully process what had transpired with Martin and Lily the previous weekend. I’d arrived back in New York half convinced that it had all been a misunderstanding and that the whole scenario hadn’t really been as weird or scandalous as it had seemed. One conversation with Annie, however, convinced me otherwise.

“So you know how I went out to Southampton with Martin Pritchard last weekend to go job hunting?” I’d asked her.

“Yeah . . .”

“Well, after I got the job at Spark, I took a cab back to his house and he was sitting in the living room practically naked with his girlfriend, Lily—who’s like our age by the way—and this other weird couple that they ‘hang out’ with. And I think—and I’m not a hundred percent sure about this—but I think Martin was propositioning me to join them in some kind of group sex thing. I was so creeped out!”

Annie chuckled. “I’m not surprised. He’s a total perv. A couple of months ago he had front-row tickets to see the Alvin Ailey dance company, and he asked me to come with him. I was dying to see the show, so I said yes, and afterward he invited me to go up to his apartment for a nightcap, which I didn’t think was a big deal. I figured, I can handle myself. So, I get up to his penthouse and pour myself a scotch while he goes to the bathroom. Anyway, I’m sitting in his library when he comes back completely naked and then comes over to kiss me! I was so revolted that the scotch came flying out of my nose, which burned like hell by the way, but I hardly noticed because I was so grossed out by his saggy ass. I was like ‘Martin, I think you have the wrong idea here,’ and he was like ‘No woman has ever said no to me before.’ Obviously I said no, and made a beeline for the elevator! The next day when he came into Finton’s, he acted like nothing had happened, even though I was practically scarred for life.”

“You saw him naked?” I’d gasped.

“In all his liver-spotted glory.”

“Well, you could have warned me, for God’s sake!”

“Hey, you’re a big girl, I figured you could hold your own with Grandpa,” she smirked, adding, “you never know who you’ll meet at this job.”

Larry’s Taxi!” mumbled a gruff voice on the other end.

“Hi,” I said, “I was wondering if I could get a taxi to pick me up in Amagansett at 111 Montauk Highway and take me to Spark in Wainscott.”

“Animal House?” the voice asked.

“Excuse me?”

“111 Montauk Highway . . . we call it Animal House because there’s always someone throwing up on the front lawn or passed out in the bushes,” he replied.

“Oh.”

“What time do you need the pickup?” he asked.

“I have to be at Spark by noon.”

“I’ll be there at twenty of.”

I had seventeen minutes to pull myself together. Last night’s makeup remained caked on my eyelids. My eyes looked like two burned holes in a blanket. I tried to shake off my exhaustion, and grabbed some face wash out of my bag. My new summer schedule of working Thursday nights at Finton’s until four in the morning and then rushing to make the 7:25 train to the Hamptons didn’t allow much time for sleeping. I consoled myself with the familiar mantra: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

The same plump middle-aged cabdriver picked me up right on time. I could see him better in the daylight. He had untamed gray hair that curled around his ears and a balding spot on the top of his head that revealed a shiny pink scalp.

“Hi,” I said, climbing into the backseat. “How’s it going?”

“Make sure the door is closed,” he ordered, pulling out of the driveway. He didn’t seem to remember me.

As we traveled west on Montauk Highway, I tried to forget about my small “register ring” problem. On Wednesday night I’d asked Laurel what my average nightly sales at Finton’s were, and it turned out that on my busiest nights I rang somewhere between $1,000 and $1,200. With a sinking feeling, I’d realized that I’d exaggerated my ring to Teddy eight times over. No wonder he’d hired me on the spot without so much as glancing at my résumé: he thought I was the highest-ringing bartender in history. I thanked God Annie was coming out to the Hamptons with me. Things were always easier with a partner in crime.

As if on cue, my cell phone rang. “Cass!” Annie shouted. “I just got off the phone with Teddy, and he said there might be an opening for a cocktail waitress sooner than he thought, which would be soooooooooooo much better than waitressing in the restaurant. He asked me to e-mail him a picture of me, so he can decide if I ‘have what it takes’ to be promoted to cocktail waitstaff. Should I send him one of my headshots? Or I have this really cute shot of me in a bikini in Rio. What do you think?”

“He asked you to e-mail him a picture?” I asked. With every passing day I was developing a thicker skin with regard to the bar industry’s blatantly misogynistic practices. Still, a big part of me was rankled by men like Teddy who didn’t even bother to try to hide it. At least Dan Finton’s preferences masqueraded as flattery.

“Yup, so what do think—headshot or cleavage shot?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s weird that you have to do this.”

“He just wants to make sure I’m not a total dog, you know? That’s how these big clubs are. Maybe I’ll just send him both. Couldn’t hurt, right?”

“I guess not.” I sighed. I was too tired to get on my soapbox and start preaching to her about resisting sexual exploitation. Besides, I’d begun to feel like I was walking a fine line myself. “Are you on your way out here for the meeting?”

“Yeah. I have a separate server meeting, but Teddy told me to swing by the bar meeting afterward, just in case I end up cocktailing.”

Annie had decided not to take the train with me, because she always took a modern dance class at eight on Friday mornings. Instead, she was taking the 10:00 A.M. Jitney—the ubiquitous green tour bus that ran back and forth between Manhattan and all of the Hamptons—which would drop her off in Wainscott right in front of Spark a little after twelve. I hoped she would be on time since her laid-back Brazilian sensibility always provided room for being “fashionably late.” Though after seeing her in a bikini, Teddy would likely let her skip the meeting all together if she wanted.

“So how long have you been coming out to the Hamptons?” my cabdriver asked after I’d hung up.

“Actually this is my first summer out here,” I told him. “I’m going to be bartending at Spark. How about you?”

“I’ve lived here all my life. I was born and raised in the Springs.”

Martin had told me that the Springs was the name given to the northern part of East Hampton, known to the elite as “the other side of the tracks.” The real estate was a lot cheaper there and was considered to be a sizable step down from the rest of East Hampton—south of the highway—which was closer to the ocean and where most Manhattanites had their summer homes.

“So you live here year-round?” I asked, trying to imagine what it was like in February when all of the restaurants and boutiques were closed and the towns were nearly deserted.

“I do,” he said. “I love it out here in the winter. It’s so quiet and peaceful when all you New Yorkers finally go home.”

He said the last part with a playful smile, but I could tell he really meant it. The New York magazines and papers loved to expound on the tension—imagined or otherwise—between the Hamptons locals and the city people. Which is not to say it wasn’t a mutually beneficial relationship. After all, the entire economy of the Hamptons would go under if it wasn’t for the crowd of New Yorkers who flocked to the East End during the three short summer months. But I could understand why he and the rest of the residents who lived out there year-round might get sick of the pushy, Hummer-driving housewives and hordes of drug-addled, drunk-driving nightlifers. The minute Labor Day faded into the first unofficial day of fall, the traffic disappeared, the beaches were no longer crowded, and instead of being Manhattan transported to the ocean, the Hamptons were just a constellation of quaint coastal towns.

We pulled up in front of Spark. “Thanks for the lift,” I said, prolonging my exit by fishing in my bag for an extralarge tip. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

Iam so fucking tired.”

“This meeting better not last too fucking long.”

“I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I’m so fucking hungover I feel like I’m going to die,” bemoaned a chorus of twenty-something girls clustered in one corner of the cavernous main room.

“I know, I never even slept. I got so fucked up blowing lines after-hours at Green Room that I didn’t leave until it was time to start driving out here at around nine,” confided one, a petite blond with a spiky, pixie haircut.

“Well, I was blowing Marcus for what seemed like hours, so I didn’t sleep either,” crowed another. She was tall and skinny without being at all lithe, and had ashy skin and black circles under her eyes. Her stringy blond hair looked like it had fallen victim to too much peroxide, and she wore a microminiskirt, high clunky gold sandals, and a tattered sweatshirt that slid off her shoulder revealing a hot-pink sequined bra strap.

I stood on the periphery of the group, trying to look nonchalant. Annie hadn’t arrived yet. I looked around hoping I would see Jake or Teddy or someone I recognized, but apparently the only people who’d arrived on time were a ragtag herd of strung-out cocktail waitresses with bloodshot eyes and colorless cheeks, shrilly advertising their drinking, drug, and sex habits. They smelled collectively of smoke, stale booze, and dirty hair.

“You are such a fucking slut!” the same skinny blond with the sequined bra strap yelled at one of the other girls. Her voice had a gravelly quality, like she’d just smoked sixty cigarettes in quick succession. “I saw you flirting with that guy Jason last night when his girlfriend went home. You practically gave him a lap dance when he ordered that third bottle of Louis XIII!”

“Whatever, bitch, you do it too!” the other girl replied sleepily, her huge black sunglasses obscuring half of her face. She sat slumped on one of the dining room chairs, wearing jeans so low-cut that they exposed her glaring red thong.

I searched the group, trying to ascertain which one was the least crazy, and if there was anyone I might actually be able to talk to about what to expect from Spark.

“Who are you?” asked the skinny blond with the sequined bra strap, who was obviously their leader, as I warily approached.

“I’m Cassie,” I said, forcing a smile. I felt like the new kid in the lunchroom in junior high.

“I hope you’re not here to cocktail waitress because there are too many of us as it is,” she said defensively.

“No . . . I’m a bartender.”

“Oh!” she said, her tone dramatically brighter. “I’m Elsie.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, stepping forward. A split second later Elsie pulled off her worn blue sweatshirt to reveal nothing more than her hot-pink sequined bra. “It’s so fucking hot in here,” she breathed impatiently. “I can’t wear this.”

Her only other “coverage” besides the outrageous undergarment was a shimmering belly-button ring that glinted in the sunlight.

A few of the girls laughed. “Elsie, put your clothes back on, one of them groaned.”

“Fuck you!” She laughed, throwing her sweatshirt at the girls. “I can do whatever I want, and I’m too hot to wear that fucking thing.”

One by one the girls introduced themselves, but I knew there was no way in hell I’d ever be able to tell them apart. They all looked exactly the same: tall and blond with killer bodies and attractive faces, but they wore too much makeup and were generally overprocessed—as though they’d spent all their hard-earned tips on too much plastic surgery, Garnier hair bleach, and Wet ’n’ Wild makeup. They looked tired and used. Most were wearing tight, cut-off shirts that showed off their chiseled abs and Pam Anderson–size breasts. Their legs seemed to go on forever under their tiny micro-miniskirts, exposing brightly colored tattoos on their ankles and inner thighs. One of the girls, the only brunette among them, had blue streaks woven through her hair and a pink studded nose ring.

“I hope you didn’t think the meeting was going to start on time,” Elsie said. “Teddy’s always late. He doesn’t give a fuck about wasting our time.”

“Oh,” I said, as one of the girls pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag and walked outside.

“Hey, speaking of Teddy.” Elsie leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “How about Meg’s ass-licking last night?” She threw a glance over her shoulder that suggested Meg was the girl by the door with a cigarette. “Yeah, Meg has a little problem with licking the asses of our asshole bosses. She wasn’t even supposed to come out to work in the Hamptons because she doesn’t sell enough bottles in the city, but she went up to Teddy and got down on her hands and knees right in the middle of the club, in front of all the customers and everything, and licked his butt so he couldn’t say no,” Elsie said as she got down on her hands and knees behind one of the girls to mimic the “butt-licking” and started making wild lapping motions like a dog in heat. The rest of the girls all broke into hysterical laughter.

I stood there silently, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. These girls made Annie’s risqué banter look tame. Two of the girls started talking about their shift the previous night back in New York.

“. . . yeah, I did so much blow with those guys at table seven from Croatia, or wherever the fuck they were from, that I thought I was gonna wake up and half my face would be melted off,” one of the girls was reporting to Elsie. “I almost had a fuckin’ heart attack.”

“You should have done some shots then.” Elsie shrugged.

“I couldn’t even fucking see straight,” the girl complained. “How was I supposed to get to the bar?”

“Those guys were drinking Grey Goose. You should’ve fucking taken some. It’s the only way to bring you back down,” Elsie said. “How much did you girls end up making last night, by the way?”

“We walked with about nine.”

“Walked” was a term used to convey how much money the cocktail waitresses ended up with after tipping out the bartender and busboy. Bartenders made all of the drinks for the cocktail waitresses and customarily got 10 percent of what the waitresses made in tips; the bus boys got their own 10 percent for bussing tables and bringing ice, glasses, and mixers.

“Nine hundred dollars?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“That’s nothing,” Elsie said. “At Jet last summer we were walking with at least twelve every Saturday night.”

“Jet East?” I asked, proud of myself for having remembered the name of the Southampton hot spot from one of Alexis’s Hamptons tutorials.

“Yup. Where’d you work last summer?”

I wasn’t about to tell her that last summer I’d been interning for a senior editor at New York magazine, while living in a dorm and going home to Albany most weekends. “I actually didn’t work out here last summer. I stayed in the city.”

“Where do you work in the city?” she asked, twirling her fluorescent green gum around her taloned finger.

“I work at a bar called Finton’s. It’s downtown.”

“Is it a club?”

“No. It’s a restaurant and a bar. But it gets pretty crowded.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, popping her gum back in her truck-driver mouth with a loud smack.

“Where do you work in the city?” I asked, hoping to shift the limelight away from me, which wasn’t too hard with this group of attention-grabbing girls.

“Pink Elephant, Bungalow, Crobar, Ruby Falls, Marquee, Duvet, Gypsy Tea . . . wherever Teddy and his crew are. We follow them to the different clubs they open up either in the Hamptons or in the city. Wherever there’s Teddy, there’s a lot of fucking money. I won’t work anywhere unless I’m making a grand a night.”

I hid my amazement with the most disinterested expression I could muster, but inside I was turning somersaults. I’d thought I was doing well when I made $200 at Finton’s. And now I’d lucked into a gig run by one of the hottest promoters in the area. Just as I was starting to get depressed about wasting a month of my time at a slow downtown bar no one had ever heard of, Annie walked through the door.

“Hey!” I shouted, jumping up and heading over to the door to give her a big hug. Relief coursed through me just at the sight of her. “How was the Jitney?”

“Not bad at all,” she enthused, dropping her bags. “They give you coffee, juice, the paper, and snacks!” She looked around. “This place is amazing. It’s like ten times the size of Finton’s!”

“And this is only half of it, Annie. The VIP room is up those stairs, and then there’s a lot of outdoor seating, and the Club is across the walkway. The dance floor is over there.”

“Ooo, I can’t wait!” she squealed.

Teddy arrived at twelve fifty-seven with an army of other promoters all wearing dark sunglasses and diamond stud earrings. Before he convened the meeting, I whispered to Annie, “Wait until you get a chance to talk to these girls. They’re crazy.” I slid my eyes toward the group, which had descended on Teddy like a flock of seagulls on an abandoned sandwich. Elsie had literally jumped on him, wrapping her spindly legs around his midsection.

“That’s Teddy.” I gestured to Annie.

“Just as I suspected.” She grinned. “Hot as hell. I’ve found my first summer conquest.”

“Hey, everyone,” Teddy began after Jake appeared on the periphery of the group. “As you can see there are a lot of you here. On any given night we’re only going to be able to use six bartenders—maybe seven on holiday weekends or if it gets really slammed—and eight cocktail waitresses. Tonight and tomorrow you’ll all get to work, because we’re setting up extra bars outside on the patio and service bars throughout the club for the cocktail waitresses. This weekend only, you’ll all get a chance, and we’ll decide who we want to keep and who we don’t. If you’re picked, you should consider yourself extremely lucky to have a job here. This place is going to be sick.”

A wave of anxiety washed over me. I hadn’t even entertained the thought that this was an audition and not a done deal.

“I want to introduce you to Shalina,” Teddy continued. “She’s a consultant here and in charge of PR.”

I was debating whether it would be appropriate to ask exactly why a bar needed a consultant, when an attractive brunette in her early thirties, with a slim body strategically peppered with silicone and collagen, appeared at Teddy’s side.

“Hello, everyone,” she addressed the group in a clipped British accent. “Welcome. We all want to make a lot of money this summer, and by following a few simple rules, this can all go smoothly.” She spoke rapidly, glancing down from time to time at the list attached to a clipboard in front of her. “First, there will be no smoking by employees on the premises. There will be no use of profanity. There will be no drinking by the employees. Even if a customer should offer to buy you a drink, I expect you to turn them down politely. You will all be handling a lot of money and holding on to clients’ credit cards. And it’s unacceptable to manage such things while intoxicated. Also, if I see any of you eating behind the bar, you will be immediately dismissed. Obviously, there will be no drug use by employees, and if I hear that anything of that nature is going on, you’ll be fired on the spot. Make sure you don’t drink the bottled water, the tap is perfectly fine for you people. And don’t even think about drinking the Red Bull. We switch from restaurant to nightclub promptly at ten-thirty. Bartenders and cocktail waitresses need to get here at exactly nine-thirty. Do we understand each other?”

We all nodded dumbly. I thought of Laurel and wondered if it was an unwritten rule that all women in charge of managing a bar or restaurant had to behave like drill sergeants. Then I immediately chastised myself for falling into the trap of thinking all women in positions of power were bitches.

“Additionally,” Shalina went on, “we want to let you know that we’ll have spotters here every night.”

“What’s a spotter?” I asked Annie.

Elsie, who had dug a nail file out of her ragged Dior bag and was busy shaping her clawlike nails into perfect ovals, answered me. “Basically a guy who comes up to the bar and acts like a customer, but really he’s a fucking asshole who’s making sure you’re ringing in all your drinks and not stealing money. Usually you can see them a mile away—they stand at the bar by themselves nursing one drink the whole fucking night.”

“Oh.” I wondered if Dan Finton ever hired spotters.

“Don’t plan on giving away any free drinks at all,” Shalina warned. “The cameras are hooked up to the Internet so we can watch you whether we’re at the bar or not, and the spotters will catch everything. We will immediately fire anyone who doesn’t account for every single drink.”

As she continued talking, it occurred to me that no one ever gave their last names in the bartending world: Teddy, Elsie, Shalina—through all of their introductions, not one of them had offered a last name. I felt a strange disconnect from all the people around me as I contemplated the mystery-cloaked bar world. I wracked my brain and couldn’t even think of Billy or Annie’s last names. I wondered if they knew mine.

“Now for the great news,” Shalina said, her perfectly puffed lips breaking into a smile for the first time. “Catherine Malandrino has designed uniforms for you to wear!” All the cocktail waitresses oooooohed and ahhhhhed.

“Who’s Catherine Malandrino?” I asked Annie, whose eyes had lit up just like the rest.

“She’s a designer,” Annie gushed. “She’s amazing. She has a store in Soho and one in the meatpacking district.”

“Catherine is a very dear friend of mine,” Shalina explained. “She’s been working for months designing your outfits. Going with a summer resort theme, she’s created an adorable little miniskirt, all white, with a delicate ruffle along the bottom, and a pastel satin halter top that cuts off a few inches above your belly button.”

Miniskirt? Halter top? Panic gripped my heart. My thighs and lower butt would be exposed, as well as most of my midriff, for all of the Hamptons to see. Scenes of bending down to grab a beer hidden low in a cooler while drunken customers heckled me flashed through my head. Needless to say, I hadn’t gotten around to expanding my workout routine to include five hundred crunches a day. Not to mention that it seemed completely absurd for us to bartend in white satin, when cranberry juice, José Cuervo, and red wine inevitably saturated my clothes by the end of a shift.

“I managed to work out a great deal with Catherine,” Shalina continued, “so your uniforms are very affordable. The skirt is a hundred and eight dollars and the top is ninety-six. Please bring the money tonight when you come in to work. I’d prefer cash.”

“We have to pay for the uniforms?” I asked Annie incredulously.

“Guess so,” Annie said with a shrug. As long as she remained working in the restaurant, she didn’t have to worry—the dinner servers all wore the same black pants and Polo shirt. At first I’d thought they looked dowdy, but after Shalina’s announcement and its $204 price tag, I would’ve given my eyeteeth to wear them.

“I hope I get promoted to cocktail waitress,” Annie said fervently. “I don’t even care about paying for the uniform. I’ll never see any celebrities in the dining room, and Teddy’ll never notice me in that frumpy Polo shirt.”

“Are you crazy? I’d rather die than work with my whole body exposed. These other girls are all like a size negative two.”

Of course, I was in no position to argue. A quick head count showed that there were nine bartenders at the meeting, and as Teddy had pointed out earlier, they only needed six per shift. By my calculations, I had eight and a half hours to figure out a way to ring $8,000 a night. Shalina’s voice interrupted my neuroses.

“This is Chris, the bar manager,” she said unceremoniously, gesturing toward an awkward man with skin so pale it looked liked he had never seen the sun. His beanpole body was at least as tall as Teddy’s, but probably half the weight. “He’ll be in charge of all bartenders, bar backs, and cocktail waitresses. The restaurant has a different manager entirely, but most of you here won’t have to worry about that. You’ll all answer to Chris.”

I thought the chain of command sounded a little convoluted. Annie looked confused as well, so I turned to Elsie.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Is he our boss, or is Teddy or Shalina?”

“Don’t worry, it’s always a fucking nightmare when a million people are involved with opening a new club,” she said. “Don’t bother trying to figure everyone out. Half of these people will be fired after Memorial Day.”

I nodded and smiled grimly, worried that I would be one of those getting the ax after only one weekend. It would be the worst kind of humiliation if I had to crawl back to Laurel and beg her for my weekend shifts.

“Why do so many people get fired?” I ventured.

“Quiet down, girls!” Shalina snarled. “Listen to your manager!”

My face turned red, and I heard Annie stifle a giggle as I turned my attention toward Chris. He looked uncomfortable, and Shalina practically had to give him a push to speak.

“Hi,” he began, almost inaudibly. “Basically, I just need everyone to keep the bar clean. The bar backs need to help with that. If you guys have any questions about where anything is, you can always ask Jake. He helped us open up and he knows what he’s doing. He’s the head bartender for the summer, so you can get help from him.” I strained to hear him. When he finished, he smiled halfheartedly and quickly stepped back behind Shalina.

The meeting finally wrapped up at a little after two o’clock. Since I didn’t have to be back for work until nine-thirty that night, I had the afternoon free. I turned to Annie, who was busily applying Lancôme’s Juicy Tubes in Berry Bold. She was visibly glowing from the brief conversation I saw her have with Teddy.

“Annie, what’s your last name?” I asked.

“Borolo. Why?”

“Just wondering,” I said. “What time do you have to be back?”

“Well, I have to be back at four tonight, because I’m working in the restaurant, which totally sucks. But Teddy said I can start cocktailing as early as tomorrow!”

“That’s great,” I said happily. “That means we’ll be working together.”

“And Teddy told me to call his cell tomorrow afternoon so we can meet at the beach.” She gave a dreamy sigh. “I love the Hamptons!”

“Fast work,” I teased her. “I’m impressed.”

We were about to say good-bye to the girls, who were busy gathering up their things, when I overheard Elsie say to one of them, “I hope I see that guy James again. He was the best fuck I ever had.”

My stomach lurched. “James Edmonton?” I interjected before I could stop myself, my voice sounding like a coloratura soprano’s. Please, please, please, I thought, don’t let James have slept with this raunchy girl. The very thought of having to share him with anyone made me feel nauseated.

“James Edmonton?” Elsie stared at me, confused. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, relieved. “I thought I heard you mention a friend of mine.”

“No, I was talking about James Elliot, that actor from that show on the WB. I hooked up with him the other night.”

“Oh, cool. Well, anyway, nice meeting you guys.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder. “We’ll see you tonight.”

“A little paranoid?” Annie joked as we stepped outside into the brilliant sunshine. I ignored her and flipped open my cell phone to call a cab. Within minutes my favorite driver was pulling into the gravel parking lot.

“Going back to Animal House?” he asked cheerily as we made a left on Montauk Highway.

I forced myself to laugh.

“What’s he talking about?” Annie asked, puzzled.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll see.” I’d decided against telling her about the hellhole that was to be our summer residence. I didn’t want to ruin her mood.

The whole ride home I fantasized about the nap I was going to take before work, knowing full well that I wouldn’t survive an intense night of bartending on just three hours of broken sleep on an overly air-conditioned train. But when we pulled into the driveway, I saw that nine of my housemates had already arrived to start the holiday weekend a little early. They were shotgunning Pabst Blue Ribbon, most of them shirtless, on the porch.

“Is this it?” Annie asked, her eyes wide.

“Um . . . yeah,” I said, cringing. The front lawn was already a disaster with empty beer cans and plastic cups strewn among the overgrown grass and weeds, and a half-assembled volleyball net lay drooping in the middle. It was a frat house, plain and simple, and I felt wholly responsible for getting us involved.

“Oh my God!” Annie gasped. I braced myself. “Those guys are so cute!” she exclaimed, hopping out of the cab. I stared after her, amazed. A cute guy was enough to make Annie see the positive side of every situation.

“Hey, ladies!” one guy called out before stabbing a hole in the side of a PBR can with a key, popping the top, and sucking all the beer out in one gulp.

“Hey, boys!” Annie waved as she sashayed across the lawn toward the house. I paid the driver, then stepped out of the cab to join her.

One of them, an attractive, tall guy with disheveled curly brown hair, came down off the porch and said, “You must be Cassie.”

“No.” Annie giggled. “I’m Annie. This is Cassie.”

“Hi,” I said, coming up behind her. He was wearing a vintage red Coca-Cola T-shirt and worn-in jeans with Reef flip-flops.

“I’m Travis. We spoke on the phone.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “We have our checks. I left mine in my bag upstairs. I’ll go get it now.”

“No rush. You can give them to me whenever. So you went to Columbia with Alexis?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s a great school. I wanted to go there, but the tuition was a little steep. When Boulder offered me a full ride for lax, my parents were pretty excited to save the money, so I went there with the rest of these clowns.” He gestured toward the guys behind him slamming beers on the porch.

“I hear you,” I said sympathetically. “I have so many student loans—that’s why I’m bartending.”

“Yeah, it’s rough. Well, come and have a beer and meet everybody,” he said.

“I was actually thinking about going upstairs to take a quick nap,” I began, trying to telepathize with Annie not to trap us down here.

“Oh, come on, Cassie,” Annie pleaded, “it’s the start of the summer. One beer wouldn’t kill us!”

“Yeah, come on Cassie, one beer won’t kill you!” Travis laughed. He motioned with the football in his hand that I should go out for a pass, and I reluctantly ran backward into the yard, catching the ball easily. I wasn’t about to let a house full of frat boys think I was a wimpy, unathletic girl.

“Nice catch, Jerry Rice,” Travis said, smiling. I couldn’t help but think Alexis’s unflattering summation of him had been unfair at best.

Several hours and ten PBRs later, I was running around the yard playing a rousing game of touch football. Annie had left hours before to make it to Spark for the dinner shift.

“Come on, you loser, catch the ball!” I roared when one of my teammates dropped a pass.

“Um, Cass?” Travis called from his place at the fifty-yard line.

“Yeah?” I yelled, taking a gulp of beer.

“When do you have to be at work?”

“Oh, shit!” I said, looking at my watch. I’d almost entirely blocked out work. “I gotta get going.” I passed the ball nonchalantly one last time with a perfect spiral. “I’ll see you guys when I get home later. Good game!”

Two Stoli tonics, a cosmo, three Jack and Cokes, two Bud Lights, a bottle of water, and do you have champagne by the glass?” an impatient woman barked.

It was only ten-fifteen, and I was already in the weeds. I hadn’t had enough time to acclimate myself to the layout of the bar or the enigmatic computer system, and I was having trouble keeping up with the demands of the insistent, and very thirsty, customers.

Due to my bragging about my imaginary bartending expertise, Teddy had placed me where most of the volume was concentrated, behind the front bar with Jake, who was the fastest and most efficient bartender I’d ever seen in my life. Flustered, I couldn’t remember the ingredients to any drinks. Jake, on the other hand, probably made about twenty drinks, including martinis and cosmos, for every one drink I made. Sweat was pouring out of me, leaving my hair plastered to my face, and I had only been at work for forty-five minutes.

My initial mortification about wearing the designer crop top and miniskirt had disappeared around the same time my sanity and coordination vanished behind the bar. Earlier that night I’d stood in the girls’ bathroom retying the shirt lower and lower in an attempt to cover at least some of my stomach. The problem was, the lower I tied it on the bottom, the lower it fell on top. There just wasn’t enough material to go around. The skirt, I’d already decided, was a lost cause. It was too damn short, and I felt like a trashy cheerleader.

“I can’t wear this!” I’d wailed to Annie, who was busy applying a new coat of mascara in anticipation of the restaurant’s switch to nightclub mode.

“Yes you can. You look amazing.”

“Annie, I’m naked.”

“No you’re not. Now calm down. Maybe if we pull the shirt down a little lower, it will give you a little more coverage.” She slid her fingers under the tiny halter searching for a hem, and with a nail clipper and a pair of tweezers managed to let it down, giving me an extra one and a half inches of iridescent baby blue material.

“Wow,” I’d said. “You’re a genius!”

“I’m not done yet,” she said, stepping back to take critical stock. The bottom of my $96 top was a little frayed, but in the dark of the bar no one would notice. “Okay, now that your stomach is a little more covered, try pulling your skirt down on to your hips so it at least covers your ass. There. Do you feel more comfortable?”

I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. I was still horrified, but it was a vast improvement. I started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Annie had asked.

“I was just thinking. This is the most expensive top I’ve ever owned, and we just butchered it with a nail clipper.”

Now, officially stationed behind the bar, I couldn’t remember any of the drink prices because I kept mixing them up with Finton’s, which were considerably cheaper, and if I kept up like that all night, my ring would be even lower. The computer froze every time I used it, and I couldn’t find the bottle of Ketel One anywhere, which seemed to be the liquor every single person wanted. I kept mixing up which coolers held domestic beers and which ones housed the imports. And to make matters worse, Jake kept abandoning me to go to the bathroom, leaving me alone for a good five minutes every half hour—which behind a slammed bar felt like a lifetime.

“Where are all the bottle openers?” I called to Jake with two unopened Bud Lights in my hand.

He bounded over and twisted the caps off with his bare hands. “The Bud and Bud Lights are twist-offs, babycakes!”

“Oh,” I said sheepishly. “Well, what about the rest of the beer?”

“You didn’t bring a bottle opener?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know I had to. At my job in the city they have them for us and—”

“Rookie!” he chastised, tossing me an extra bottle opener that he just happened to have in his back pocket. Apparently, Jake was the MacGyver of bartending. I stuck my new tool into the waistband of my nearly nonexistent skirt, which I had to keep pulling down every few minutes to keep it from exposing my pink thong.

At Spark things seemed needlessly difficult. Every time you rang in a drink you were first confronted with a sign-in screen where you had to enter your employee number (a four-digit code I kept forgetting). Then you had to choose from a long list of drink genres including liquor, red wine by the glass, white wine by the glass, champagne by the glass, wine and champagne by the bottle, domestic beer, imported beer, ports, shots, miscellaneous. If you picked liquor, you were then presented with a screen that read vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and so on.

Your selection on this screen led to another more specific screen. For example, if you selected vodka, you would then be faced with a screen that listed the most popular brands: Grey Goose, Ketel One, Stoli Raspberry . . . If the vodka you were looking for did not appear on the list, you had to find it alphabetically using the lettered icons on the left of the screen. Once you made that selection, you had to enter in the mixer as well. When you finally selected all of your ingredients, you had to reckon with the payment screen, which to me seemed as cryptic as hieroglyphics—even cash transactions were tedious. By the time I was ready for another customer, the annoyed crowd was ready to hop over the bar and serve themselves.

Jake was like Billy on speed. He bartended with the same ease and grace, only on a much larger scale. His arms seemed to be able to reach any cooler or liquor bottle from wherever he happened to be standing. It was as though he made the cups appear out of nowhere, ten in a row on his bar mat, already filled with ice and a straw. And even though he kept leaving the bar, he always got right back in the mix and caught up immediately. I, on the other hand, had trouble coordinating even the simplest things and kept dropping my bottle opener and knocking over cocktails. My side of the bar looked like a tornado had ripped through it, while Jake’s was still impressively neat and clean. I marveled at his speed, wondering how he managed to turn out what seemed like ten drinks per second. His skillful fingers danced effortlessly across the computer screen pressing all the right icons as he served the masses. Nothing seemed to wear him down, and he didn’t ever lose steam. He was hyper and amped up throughout the entire night. I imagined he must have chugged thirty forbidden Red Bulls.

I watched Jake intently. At Spark, I was learning, it wasn’t enough to ask a customer what they needed, make the drinks, collect money, give change, and then move on to the next person. You needed to ask someone what he wanted, start making his drinks, ask another person what she wanted, start making her drinks, collect money from the first guy, ask a third person what he wanted, give change to the first guy, get money from the girl, start making the third guy’s drinks, open a new bottle of vodka, give change to the girl, give the manager a payout for the door guy, ask the bar back for more ice, and get money from the third guy. In short, bartenders at Spark had to be the ultimate multitaskers.

“Can I buy a bottle at the bar?” a customer asked. He was a short, stocky man with too much gel in his hair, wearing a button-down shirt covered ostentatiously in Burberry plaid. He was surrounded by a throng of attractive platinum blonds who—like me—were wearing next to nothing.

“I don’t know,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let me ask.”

I hurried over to Jake, leaving hundreds of customers screaming drink orders and waving cash. Even though it was only eleven-thirty, the floor behind the bar was already filthy with grubby bev naps, bent stirrers, smashed plastic cups, and discarded beer caps.

“Jake!” I called out. “Is it all right for me to sell a bottle at the bar?”

He wheeled around so fast it startled me. He was sweating, and his eyes looked red and wild. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “Of course it’s okay. The rule is: SELL AS MUCH AS YOU CAN! Just remember to tell him there’s a mandatory gratuity charge of twenty percent on bottles. And don’t forget the owners are watching the bar, so don’t just hand the bottle over to him, make sure you ring it in first, because they synced up the registers with the surveillance. The cameras are right there.” He pointed discreetly to the front of the bar where two small red lights were blinking. I felt naked and watched, like I was in one of those glass snow globes, being shaken up by the invisible hands that owned and operated Spark.

I scampered back over to the Burberry Plaid Man, much faster this time. “Sure,” I said. “What would you like?”

“Give me a bottle of Goose,” he said.

At clubs and lounges in New York City and the Hamptons, people had the option of buying entire bottles of liquor, instead of ordering separate drinks. Each bottle ranged from $200 to $800 or more, and was usually shared by a group of people sitting at a table. (In certain hot spots, agreeing to buy two or three bottles was the only way for some people to make it past the velvet ropes.) The setup came with glasses, ice, mixers, lemons, limes, and stirrer straws—a be-your-own-bartender extravaganza. Usually bottles were ordered through a cocktail waitress, but that night all of the tables were occupied. The great thing about selling a bottle at the bar was it was an easy way to bring up low rings. Tonight it was just what I needed.

After a few torturous seconds staring at the computer screen looking for the price of a bottle of Grey Goose, I rang it in and returned to the man, wiping a sweaty strand of hair from my brow. “It’s $350 plus twenty percent gratuity, so the total is $420.”

He leaned over and handed me a wad of cash.

“Keep the change,” he said with a wink, eyeing my bare midriff. “Just make sure you take care of us.”

I turned around to count the folded bills and was shocked to find he had given me $600—a $250 tip for doing next to nothing! I walked over to the Moët Chandon champagne bucket that we used as a communal tip jar and tossed the bills inside, pressing them down to the bottom of the bucket to make room for more bills, just like I did to the garbage bin in our kitchen when Alexis forgot to take it out. I immediately felt a lot better and, for the first time that night, turned around to face the angry mob of screaming patrons with a confident smile.

At around midnight, I was busy filling glasses with ice trying to keep track of all seven of the drinks I was working on, when I suddenly felt a sharp pain as my head was jerked over the bar. I looked up and realized to my horror that an angry woman wearing a Proenza Schouler top and Paper Denim jeans that looked painted on had climbed halfway over the bar and was pulling my hair.

“Stop it!” I yelled, trying to pry her hand from my head.

“I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last twenty minutes!” she screamed. “And you’ve been ignoring me. I need a drink!”

I succeeded in getting her to release her grip and frantically looked around for a bouncer to help me throw this psychopath out. Jake laughed from his side of the bar. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” I said, rubbing the sore spot on my head. “This is insane! I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m just grabbing the nearest bottle I can get my hands on.”

“That’s the way to do it.” He grinned. “I call it guerrilla bartending.”

During this brief exchange, while I caught my breath, Jake managed to take care of two different customers. He was also talking to two men dressed in dark, expensive-looking suits and open-collared silk shirts. He deftly reached down and pulled out a bottle of Chopin, which he handed to them to go along with a carafe of cranberry juice already sitting on the bar.

I glanced reflexively at the cameras mounted in plain sight above the bar. He had just warned me not to pass a bottle over the bar without ringing it up, yet he himself had done just that. I wondered if, as head bartender, he had some sort of comp privileges.

“Get over here,” he beckoned.

Hesitant to leave my side of the bar and the throngs of thirsty customers, I walked over and saw that he had two shots of Patrón Silver tequila lined up and ready for us.

“But I thought Shalina said we couldn’t drink.”

“Who are you? The fucking Virgin Mary? What’s the point of working at a bar if we can’t do shots?”

The last thing I wanted to do was piss off Shalina, but I knew I had to take the shot—my rite of passage into the Hamptons bartending world. Before doing so, I quickly looked around for any customers who looked like spotters—or what I guessed spotters would look like—and turned my back to the cameras. The coast seemed clear.

“I don’t usually drink tequila, just Jameson,” I said.

“Just shut up and drink it, prima donna.”

“Can I at least have a lime?”

“No training wheels. You’re a bartender. Learn to drink your tequila straight. Salud.”

“Salud.” I slammed the shot, which scorched the entire length of my esophagus.

“Now get back to work.” Jake waved me off.

For the rest of the night, every half hour or so, Jake would call me over and we would do a shot. I was grateful for the five-second break, but I didn’t know how I was going to make it until four in the morning if we kept doing shots so frequently. I’d only just gotten used to Jameson, and tequila was a whole new ball game. It was hard to imagine I had room in my system for tolerance to another type of hard liquor.

By one o’clock we were running out of everything. Like me, the bar was not equipped to handle such heavy volume, and all of the lemons and limes were used up, and we were running dangerously low on ice and cups. My hands were frozen from scraping the corners of the ice bin for slushy remains.

“That’ll be twelve dollars, please,” I said to a guy in a metallic blue Dolce & Gabbana button-down, who had just ordered a vodka tonic.

“How the hell can you charge me twelve dollars when there’s hardly any ice, and no lime—not to mention that I ordered Ketel One, which you don’t have, so you’re using your shitty house vodka?”

“I’m really sorry. It’s not my fault,” I said miserably.

“Forget it,” he said, and walked away from the bar, leaving the drink behind.

I was exhausted. My expensive uniform, once baby blue and white, was now a sickly shade of puke brown. My shoes were soaked in bar muck, and my lower back ached. All the tequila combined with my compulsive water drinking made me desperately need a bathroom break.

“Jake! I have to pee so badly but the line for the bathroom goes all the way around the club,” I said, hopping from foot to foot like a little kid. “What should I do?”

“Relax, rookie, there’s a bathroom upstairs through the VIP room for employees. Go ahead. I got this bar covered.”

On my way to the secret employee bathroom, I pushed through the wall-to-wall crowd of Beautiful People in VIP, all of whom were either dressed to the nines in Rebecca Taylor and Foley & Corrina or purposefully dressed down in the style known as “Hamptons cute”—hundred-dollar glorified metallic flip-flops from Calypso, with ripped-up Juicy Couture jeans skirts. (I’d been in New York long enough to be able to identify designer clothes, even if I couldn’t afford them.) The music pumped at a dangerous decibel level and I could feel the bass thumping in my chest cavity. The room was vibrating with hot, sweaty, drunken revelers. Someone bumped into me and nearly knocked me over.

I was just about to yell “Watch it!” when the words died in my throat. It was James Edmonton.

“Hi,” I said, flustered, self-consciously pulling down on my tiny top. Even in my tequila haze, I was immediately aware of the shortness of my skirt.

“Cassie!” he said, breaking into a smile, his green eyes lighting up. His cheeks were flushed from the heat generated from all the bodies packed into the room, but he looked relaxed, like a polo player who’d just won the world title. “I told you we’d run into each other this weekend,” he said, raising his voice over the volume of the crowd.

Barely twenty-four hours had passed since I’d last seen James. He’d shocked me by suddenly appearing at Finton’s with his father and Martin Pritchard. As soon as I’d spotted him walking in the door, I’d felt like I did in junior high school when my very first crush, Ricky Davy, passed my locker on his way to class—all butterflies and so stupefied by his presence that I barely even managed to get out as much as a “Hello.” I’d never entertained the fantasy that I would actually see James again. I quickly ran my hands through my hair to make sure it was laying straight and glanced at my reflection in the mirrors behind the bar in hopes that my Benefit lip gloss had some staying power. When Martin waved me over, I hurriedly thought of what I could say. What if he didn’t remember me? I didn’t know whether to ask James if he’d finished This Side of Paradise, conjure up another Ivy League football fact, or just say what I normally would to any customer: “Hi, what can I get you to drink?” Thankfully he’d saved me from my decision-making angst.

“Hey, Cassie.”

He remembered my name!

“Hey,” I’d said, with a smile I hoped was both flirtatious and casual.

“Cassie, this is my father. Dad, this is Cassie. I met her last weekend at the Southampton Club.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Edmonton,” I’d said, offering my hand over the bar.

“Macallan 25. Neat,” was his only response.

“Coming right up,” I said, flustered. Had he really just dismissed me as rudely as I thought? Maybe he hadn’t heard his son’s introduction. Or was it because I was a bartender? How humiliating. I stretched up on my tiptoes to reach the highest shelf, where the expensive single-malt scotches lived, and tried as hard as I could to avoid letting it get to me.

“Dad, what’s your problem?” I’d heard James admonish him.

“I need a drink,” his father had replied gruffly.

I returned bearing Mr. Edmonton’s scotch. He didn’t say a word.

“Sorry about my dad,” James said with an apologetic smile. “He doesn’t get out much.” I decided to set the father’s rude behavior aside and focus on the son.

I took a deep breath, smiled back, and asked, “Can I get you a drink?”

“That would be great. I’ll have a Jack and Coke, please.”

Just then James’s cell phone rang. He grimaced when he saw the number on the screen. “I have to take this. Excuse me,” he said, stepping away from the bar and making his way toward the door.

I made his cocktail, and took advantage of the moments he was gone to apply another coat of lip gloss and force my eyelashes upward with my fingers. Just like Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, I fiercely pinched my cheeks to give my face a healthy glow. I did this more for dramatic effect than necessity, since I was pretty sure I blushed naturally when James was near.

He’d walked back into the bar shaking his head. “They need me back at the office,” he said. “I have to work on a model for a presentation on Friday.” He looked down mournfully at the Jack and Coke. “Sorry, Cassie. It was great seeing you again. I’m sure I’ll see you this weekend. You’ll be out in the Hamptons, right?”

“Um . . . yeah.”

“Perfect. Good-bye, Martin. Dad.” And then he was off, more quickly than he’d arrived.

I’d wanted to scream after him “How will I find you?! The Hamptons are a really big place!” It seemed impossible that we’d actually cross paths. And yet now here he was at Spark, right in front of me.

“How are you?” he shouted over the chaos of the club.

“Great!” I shouted back. “How did that presentation end up going?”

“What?”

“Your presentation,” I yelled, making good use of the pauses between the throbbing bass of the hip-hop music.

“Oh, that. Good memory!” He smiled and leaned in closer so his shoulder was almost touching mine. “It went well. Are you having a fun night? This place is insane!”

I wished more than anything that, like him, I was drinking and socializing with my friends in the VIP section of the newest and hottest club around. “Actually,” I said, “I’m bartending here tonight.”

“Oh, that’s awesome! Which bar?”

“I’m at the front bar downstairs in the main room.”

“Well, I’ll have to come down and visit you.”

“I wouldn’t want you to have to leave the security of the VIP scene,” I teased with what I hoped was a sexy smirk.

“Listen, I can hold my own both upstairs and downstairs,” he assured me. “Besides, this whole club is practically VIP. You should see the line to get in.”

My bladder felt like it was about to explode.

“Well, I gotta get back to work,” I said, trying not to hop from one foot to another like a little kid.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you downstairs.” And like that, he dissolved into the mob of elite patrons. I fought the urge to turn around and watch him walk away, and instead made a beeline for the secret bathroom.

When I returned to the bar, my head was spinning, and I couldn’t decide if it was from the shots, the stressful labor, or the fact that I had just run into James. I glanced over at Jake’s end and saw him pouring a round of shots for all of the promoters and cocktail waitresses.

“Cass,” Jake called, “this one’s got your name on it. Try not to gag this time.”

Everyone was there—Teddy, Elsie and the girls, even Annie had stuck around after the dinner shift to soak up the scene. I hardly recognized the cocktail waitresses. They had completely transformed from straggly, strung-out, sleep-deprived girls in sweatpants to glamorous made-up Vegas showgirls in six-inch stilettos.

“To making a shitload of fucking money!” Elsie shrilled. The rest of the girls answered with rounds of high-pitched “woo-hoos!”

The shot didn’t go down easily. It got stuck somewhere in my throat, and I started to gag. I looked up to see Jake laughing at me.

“Jesus Christ, Cassie! Do you realize this is top-shelf tequila? I can’t imagine what would happen if I gave you Cuervo.” He chuckled. “Are you gonna make it, or should I do some mouth-to-mouth on you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, but I was sure my bloodshot eyes told a different story.

I turned my back to Jake and sucked greedily on a lime, which eased the sting of the tequila. I started bartending with a renewed vigor, hoping to look impressive and seasoned when James came down to visit me, and stashed a bottle of Jack, which I knew he liked, under my well. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling when I reflected on our conversation, and I furtively scanned the bar for his arrival.

I was still scanning hopefully at four o’clock in the morning, when, despite the crowd’s objections, Jake yelled, “Last call!” and the bouncers immediately started ushering everyone toward the door. I finally reconciled myself to the fact that James wouldn’t be coming by to see me. I pulled my Columbia sweatshirt over my tequila-stained halter top and stepped into my favorite pair of American Apparel black drawstring pants. As I tried to swallow my disappointment, a very intoxicated Annie staggered toward the bar.

“Cassie, I owe my life to you,” she gushed, slamming both hands on the bar. “I love the Hamptons. I just danced with Fab Moretti of the Strokes! He’s so hot! What time is it in Rio? I’m calling my sister!”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Sounds like you had a pretty fun night.”

“I love this place. I love the Hamptons. I love our share house. I love our housemates. I love Amagansett. I love Spark. Anyway, Jake’s driving us home, right?”

“Yeah, but we have at least another hour of work to do. So you might as well go find Teddy or Fab. I have to clean up and close out my register. I’ll find you when I’m done.”

At least my first night of madness was over. The bar was a war zone of empty bottles, sopping bar rags, and overflowing garbage cans. Jake was nowhere to be seen.

After I’d bundled up all of my money, credit card slips, and tips, I was escorted by a three-hundred-pound bouncer to a locked cinder-block room where I joined the rest of the staff in counting out the money from the registers, filling out the night’s register reports, adjusting credit card tips, and counting out the cash tips. I couldn’t believe how tight the security was at Spark. At Finton’s we didn’t have a bouncer, and we counted our money behind the bar—right in front of the windows for all to see.

The snap of Jake’s lighter set off a chain reaction, and in quick succession every staff member except for me had a lit cigarette dangling between their lips. Quickly the room became hazy with smoke. We spread out our cash on the desk and started counting how many hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives, and ones we had, putting them into piles all facing the same way “like little soldiers,” as Shalina had instructed, and then noting how many of each bill we had on our close-out sheet. I tabulated our credit card tips while Jake wandered off to talk to Elsie. Chris shuffled by, looking sweaty and harried. His eyes were so red they almost looked like they were bleeding.

Jake and I finished closing out quickly. We bundled our money up into two respective piles and sat at a table in the dining room, where we waited for the waitresses to figure out their money so we could get our tip-out and go home. Jake cracked open two Bud Lights and poured out two more shots of Patrón, and handed me one of each.

“How much did you ring?” Jake asked me. We clinked our shot glasses together and simultaneously downed them.

“I don’t know,” I said, chasing the tequila with a swig of beer. The burn wasn’t as bad as it had been earlier that night.

“It’s on the printout from the computer. Next to where it says ‘Sales.’ ”

I unrolled the long, narrow sheet of paper. “Two thousand eight hundred and seven dollars,” I said proudly. According to Laurel’s information, that was almost three times as much as I usually rang at Finton’s.

“That can’t be right,” he said, snatching the paper from me.

“Why? How much did you ring?”

“Six thousand and eighty-two.”

“No way,” I said. He tossed his report over to me, and sure enough, next to ‘Sales’ read the number 6,082. He had more than doubled my sales.

I felt a tinge of fear. Would I be fired for this? So far I’d been proud of myself for my high bartending learning curve—I was ten times the bartender I was when I’d first arrived at Finton’s—but like everything in the Hamptons (money, houses, cars, the “scene”), the bartending was hyperintensified. How could I think I could compete with a career bartender who’d been slinging drinks on the Hamptons club circuit for years?

Two hours later the cocktail waitresses were still counting. Strung out on all kinds of drugs, they were too fried to do even the simplest math.

“If I made two hundred from table seven and three-fifty from table nine, then how much did I make?” one of them asked.

“Five-fifty,” I said.

“Okay, and what’s ten percent of that? I don’t have a calculator.”

“Fifty-five dollars.”

I tried to find Chris, the so-called manager, to help them so we could speed up the process, but he was out back smoking a blunt with a flock of bar backs. The sky was slowly starting to lighten and my eyes were beginning to droop. For the first time I could understand what being “bone-tired” meant. I had already passed the drunk stage and was well on my way to hungover, even though I was still nursing a Light.

I put down my beer and arranged two chairs side by side in the dining room so I could lie down. The sun was now rising, and it peeked through the skylights of Spark’s high ceilings. I closed my eyes to block out the rays that filtered through the cigarette smoke clouding the room. Another day was beginning, and I hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours.

“Here you go,” Elsie finally croaked as she handed me a stack of bills. In her late-night sweatpants, she had once again morphed into the raggedy girl with a hacking smoker’s cough I’d met earlier that day. The waitresses had tipped us out $300—$150 each for Jake and me. In total we had made $487, more than double what I’d made on my busiest night at Finton’s.

“Jake!” I called out. “We made almost five hundred dollars!”

“So what?” he snapped back. He was no longer hyper and fun; he was tired and irritable. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he grumbled. “Where’s your little blond friend?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen her in hours.” I turned to the throng of cocktail waitresses. “Have any of you guys seen my friend Annie?”

“She fucking left with Teddy,” Elsie answered, not bothering to cover up the note of jealousy in her voice.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I guess I’ll see you girls tomorrow night then.”

I followed Jake into the nearly empty parking lot, but before we reached his ’81 Toyota Camry, I heard a familiar voice call out, “Cassie!”

I turned around to see James Edmonton climbing out of a black Range Rover—a white knight descending from his horse. Suddenly I got my fifth wind.

“Hey,” he said, approaching me, his buttery brown Lobb shoes crunching on the gravel in the parking lot. “I realized I’d left my credit card here with one of the waitresses. I was hoping I’d still be able to pick it up.”

“I’ll get it for you,” I volunteered, turning to head back into the bar. Once inside, I seized his black AmEx from Elsie’s hands and hurried back across the parking lot, my J. Crew flip-flops clopping loudly in the early-morning silence. Various customers had been giving me black AmExes all night long to pay their tabs, and I was intrigued because I’d never seen one before I came out to the Hamptons. I made a mental note to ask Alexis, my informant on how the other half lives, what the card was all about.

“You’re the best,” he said. “Do you need a ride home?”

Jake or James? I didn’t need time to think about this one.

“Sure,” I said. “Jake, I’m gonna get a ride home from—”

“Whatever,” Jake mumbled, turning up the Buju Banton on his antiquated stereo system before peeling out of the parking lot.

James opened the passenger door, and helped me into his mammoth vehicle. Maybe chivalry wasn’t dead after all, I mused happily. It had just been hibernating in the Hamptons.

“So, where’s your house?” he asked, after he’d settled himself in the driver’s seat.

“In Amagansett, right on Montauk Highway—111 Main Street,” I answered.

We pulled out of the parking lot and onto Montauk Highway, and the early-morning light dappling through the canopy of pink dogwood trees gave the thoroughfare a dreamy quality that perfectly complemented the way I was feeling inside.

“I live in East Hampton,” he said, “so we’re neighbors.”

“That’s right. Martin mentioned something about that.” The scenery with its vast cornfields and old rambling farmhouses whizzed by my open window. As we passed Jean-Luc and Bamboo—East Hampton dinner staples for the well heeled—I inhaled the blissfully smoke-free seaside air and briefly closed my eyes in contentment. I felt like the whole world was still asleep, a feeling I could never capture in Manhattan.

“He was probably talking about my father’s house,” James said. “I don’t stay with him. He drives me crazy, as you may have gathered from our little exchange at Finton’s the other night.”

“So where do you stay?”

“Last year I bought a house on Further Lane with a couple of buddies of mine from Yale.”

“You own the house?”

“Yeah. We thought it was a good investment. Plus it’s just the three of us, me and my two friends, and we can come out year-round. It’s really beautiful out here in the fall. You’d love it.”

I hoped that was an invitation. I reached across my torso to fasten my seat belt and noticed a Yankee baseball hat on the backseat.

“Are you a Yankee fan?” I asked hopefully.

“Diehard. You?”

“I’m obsessed.” I laughed. “I went to thirty games this year. I’m their biggest fan.”

“You might have some competition in that department,” he challenged with a smile. “I go to Tampa every year for spring training. Have you ever been to Legends Field?”

“No.” I sighed. “But when I was little we had a dog named ‘the Babe,’ and all of our family vacations were trips to the Bronx to see the Yankees.”

“Okay, you win,” he conceded with another winsome smile. “So where’d you grow up?”

“Albany,” I replied. “Did you grow up in the city?”

“Yep, born and bred on the Upper East Side.” He turned on the surround-sound stereo system and Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” wafted through the speakers.

“I love this song,” I commented, resting my head on the supple black leather headrest.

He reached over the console and briefly stroked the top of my hand. “Did you have an okay night?” he asked. My stomach flipped, and I felt the same spark that had shot through me when he leaned in close to me in the VIP room earlier that night.

“Yeah, but I’m a little tired,” I managed. The spot on my hand he’d just touched still tingled. “I couldn’t keep up. Everyone was screaming at me. I don’t think I can ever go back there again.”

He laughed. “I hear you. I’ve been working hundred-hour weeks at Goldman. I’m starting to get burned out.”

“That sucks. A lot of my friends are in banking, so I know how bad the hours can be. But you can’t beat the money, right?”

“Yeah, but money isn’t everything. I’m ready for something else. I’m actually trying to start up my own production company.”

“What do you want to produce?” I asked.

“I’m really interested in independent films.” That was it. I was in love. “I produced my first film when I was a junior at Choate, and then I worked on a couple of documentaries at Yale,” he went on. “It was just a hobby, though. I majored in finance. I’m pretty sure my dad would’ve killed me if I told him I was changing majors to study film. But the problem is, I’m always at work. I don’t have much time for anything else.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I sympathized. “I’m working on a screenplay right now, but by the time I get home from bartending at five in the morning, get some sleep, go to the gym, or run a few errands, it’s already time to go back to work again. I feel so guilty, because I originally decided on bartending so I could free up my days for writing. But truth be told, I haven’t been getting any writing done at all lately. Especially after nights like this.”

“I think you just need to make yourself sit down and do it,” he said. “At least that’s what I try to tell myself—not that I always follow my own advice.” He glanced over at me and smiled. “You should just try to write a little every day, even if you’re not always feeling inspired, you know?” At that moment, as I watched his profile glowing in the amber light of the Hamptons sunrise, I was very inspired indeed.

“I know.” I sighed. “It’s just so hard to force it, so I end up reading the paper or checking my e-mail.”

He laughed and then, in the blink of a moment, reached over and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. I wanted to turn my head and press my lips into his palm. I could feel the electric current humming between us. I’d never felt so violently attracted to anyone in my life.

We drove on through the town of East Hampton past the Windmill, and, all too soon, we were pulling into my driveway. He put the car in park and turned off the engine. We sat in silence for a moment, and I could hear the seagulls crying in the distance. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked.

“Working,” I said. “I work Friday and Saturday nights out here.”

“Oh. I was going to ask you if you wanted to have dinner with me at Pacific East. Have you ever been there?”

I shook my head, raw disappointment coursing through me.

“Well, another time then. Come on, I’ll walk you to your door. Amagansett’s a pretty rough neighborhood,” he joked. “I have to make sure you get there safely.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s very dangerous.” I laughed as I climbed out of the Range Rover. “I could get mugged by a socialite.”

He offered me his hand, which I readily accepted, and we walked up to the old wrap-around porch of Animal House. In the early-morning quiet, without the added decoration of nine frat guys grunting on the porch, I saw the house with new eyes. It had a lot of character and with a little work could be a beautiful historic hideaway.

When we reached the door, James released my hand and turned to face me. “Good night, Cassie,” he said, cupping my face in his hands and kissing me softly on the lips. I felt my heart slide down into my toes and a whole flock of butterflies fluttered inside me. He brushed the hair away from my eyes and kissed me one more time before turning to walk back to his car.

When I saw that his Range Rover was a safe distance away, I let out a giddy squeal and pounded my feet on the old wooden planks of the porch. I loved this porch. I loved this house. I loved the Hamptons, just like Annie did. I didn’t care if I had to bartend for the rest of my life. I had kissed James Edmonton.

Once inside, I looked around and was shocked to find people I’d never met strewn across every imaginable surface. Someone was sprawled in the bathtub, a couple was passed out in the kitchen curled up under the table, and the hallways were littered with sleeping bodies, many of whom were still holding their beer cans. One guy I didn’t recognize had passed out with his face halfway into a bag of Doritos. Worried he would die of asphyxiation, I removed the bag and placed it beside his limp body. I climbed the stairs one by one, trying to be as quiet as I could. Relieved, and ready to crawl into bed, I opened the door to my room.

I blinked, then almost had a heart attack. There was a naked guy sprawled out on top of the covers on my bed and a couple entwined on Annie’s bed. I looked around frantically and saw my bag tossed into the corner, my clothes scattered around the room. I debated what to do; clearly I couldn’t move the ogre on my bed—the guy was at least two hundred pounds. My lower back aching, I gathered up all of my belongings and shoved them back into my bag, all the while cursing the ugly, sweaty shape on the bed. I then yanked the room’s only blanket and pillow out from underneath his snoring mass; the idiot didn’t even stir. I crept out of the room and wandered down the hall, looking for a place to lie down.

I finally walked outside into the cool ocean breeze and settled uncomfortably into one of the chaise lounges on the porch, but not before first spreading the blanket over its dirty surface. I pulled the sleeves of my hooded sweatshirt over my hands and curled up into a ball on my side, shivering. As I finally drifted off to sleep, visions of James’s kisses dancing in my head, I felt another blanket being placed over me. I cracked my eyes open, expecting to see Annie, and was surprised to see a sleepy, smiling Travis covering my cold feet.