“If I was lucky, I went to the boardwalk in Atlantic City when I was a kid.”

“Have you lived here a long time?” she asked as they walked to the front door.

“Bought it last summer. I got sick of the Hamptons. Too many investment bankers and best-selling authors. And the Vineyard isn’t any better. You get all the Hollywood people plus the fuckin’ Clintons.”

“I thought you liked the Clintons.” Samantha looked at him.

“Hey, I like everybody. But I’m a Republican. Plus I want my privacy. I don’t need to be going to parties every fifteen minutes. This house is just for me and my kids. And now it’s for you, too.”

There was a specific fragrance to the spring roses that grew on Nantucket fences that Samantha remembered from her childhood. The scent mixed in the air with the salty undertow of the sea. She remembered clambakes on this very beach and her mother dressed in baggy chinos and a pink Lacoste top and carrying one of those handwoven Nantucket baskets with the ebony whale figure on top. At those clambakes, Samantha met boys and girls from the “good” families who came to Nantucket every summer. By the time the sun set and the grown-ups were distracted with their vodka tonics and conversation, the children of the “good” families would sneak into the dunes to get stoned.

There was no one like Barry at any of those clambakes, so it struck Samantha almost ironically that walking into Barry’s house she felt that she was finally home. Maybe there was some dialectic of money, and it took someone like Barry, unpolished, abrupt, who had summered in South Philly, to bring her back.

“Wanna get some breakfast and take a walk on the beach?” Barry asked as they walked into the kitchen.

“Sure.”

Barry’s housekeeper had laid out a spread of bagels, smoked salmon, muffins, fruit, and yogurt that could have served fifteen.

“How did you do this?” she asked him.

“Oh come on. You’re the Fashionable Samantha Acton. You call ahead.”

“When did you know we were coming here?”

“Same time you did.” He grinned.

“But how did they do it so quickly?”

“Honey, you sound like a girl from the burbs. I’m a producer. I make things happen. You wanna bagel?”

“No. A muffin is fine.” Samantha took a large blueberry pastry.

“I love that you eat. None of those other East Side girls eat. What’s her name, that one who threw the party for you?”

“You mean Judy Tremont?”

“That’s not a body. That’s a coat hanger. How does your husband deal with women like that? Each one wants to be skinnier than the next one. And they all want to look twelve years old. I swear, actresses are a day at the beach compared to these people. They’re obsessed. But I guess that’s what keeps your husband in business.”