It Happens in the Hamptons(9)

“You mean those in the window? The Townies?” Roger asked.

“Is that what they’re called?” She snorted. “Oh, that’s so funny. Like, yeah, we’re townies. Helloooo?! If you could see two of my houseguests who are gay designers, definitely not townies, definitely very chic city people, but okay! That’s funny, I like it.”

Margaux marched back over toward the window near Katie and the owner, banging Huck’s head with her Celine bucket “it” bag on the way. “Oh, so sorry, sweetie!” she said as if she didn’t mean it at all, and kept moving. “I really like it when houseguests match. My friends do that. They get bright printed sweatshirts with something like team carroll july 4th, 2017 waiting on their beds, and I always think to myself, I have to do that! Can I get like ten Townies or so? Maybe call it an even dozen?” She widened her eyes like a four-year-old wanting her way in a toy store.

Katie pondered getting on the next flight back to her Hood River hamlet before her landlord rented out her old apartment. She watched Margaux fish into the bottom of her purse, her toned upper arms exhibiting the hours she’d spent all winter in power Ashtanga yoga. She whipped out her black American Express card, a metallic, thick, heavy purchasing machine with a credit line of over five hundred thousand dollars. Roger reached for it.

“Just, can you just please write down the card number,” she demanded. “Could you actually, just, file it? Then I never have to wait for the little machine that takes forever?”

Roger nodded. He knew summer lady invaders wanted total capitulation from shop people, cementing their serf-to-empress relationship.

“Good. You sound like you can handle this,” Margaux said, as if Roger had an I.Q. of fifty-five. “My home is 325 Pridwin Lane. It’s got a really long driveway, I mean really long, you’ll get to the house eventually. I have to tell everyone that. The house is called Sailor’s Way.”

Roger nodded. “Sailor’s Way?” He shot Harry a glance.

“Yes. My daughter took a few sailing lessons the summer before we built it. Of course she stopped. But the name stuck,” explained Margaux. “And, oh . . . can I have these bike racks?”

Roger had to pause. “Well they are part of the store display. We need them for . . .”

“I need them all next to each other outside. Without the racks, they’ll tip over in the wind and . . .”

“Harry?” Roger gave up all sense of reasoning to the boss.

Harry walked from his less wealthy client, Katie. He had bought the racks in a retail supply catalogue for forty-nine dollars. “Mrs. Carroll, they do belong to the store. But I’ll give you a deal, you can have three for three-hundred dollars each.”

“You’re the best!” Margaux pumped her arms hard as she stormed back into the middle of the store. “I need baskets. Those cute white ones . . . that hold, say, a towel and bottle of rosé? And you have orange plastic wineglasses? The kind everyone has around the pool?”

“Mrs. Carroll, we are a bike store. Most don’t carry glassware. And I’d bet you would not like the plastic bottles the athletes use . . .”

“Hideous. Never.”

“Halsey Hardware has the plastic wineglasses in all colors. My buddy runs the store. I know they have them, aisle right off the counter.”

“Do you think you could go get, say, twenty of them and throw them in the baskets when you deliver everything? I would really appreciate it.”

Harry shook his head NO back at Roger, as he returned to Katie and found a small bike for Huck. He whispered to Katie, “You have to treat these women like toddlers and at some point draw a line.”

Katie resolved to do the same should she ever encounter one at close range.

Roger explained to Margaux, “I can’t go to another store and purchase glasses for you, that’s just—” He shook his head at her sternly as if she should know at some point not to ask certain things of her subjects. “That’s too much.”

The cash register pinged. “Just so you know, the charge will be $13,843.53.”

“Look, I’m not an idiot,” Margaux said. “I went to Dartmouth. How much of a markup are you making on the bike stands alone? Or should we calculate your commission on a fourteen-thousand-dollar sale, done in eight minutes of your time . . . and you can’t get me sixteen plastic glasses? Really?” Then she added, making quotation marks with her fingers, “From your ‘buddy’?”

Roger wanted to smack this woman. But, on some deeply demented level, he knew she had a point.

Margaux relented. “It’s fine. I’ll send my guy.” Then, her mood brightened with a brilliant inspiration. “Maybe I’ll tell him to get a dozen orange beach towels at that little Aerin Lauder store, one for each guest. It’ll be so cute when we get to the beach. Like a little orange sunset army announcing summer! We’ll just, you know, take off!”