Slave.
Addict.
Dope fiend.
Deacon’s death should have been Hayes’s wake-up call. Get clean! Take care of yourself! We are given only one body per lifetime, and Hayes was systematically poisoning his. He should be eating more green vegetables, practicing vinyasa yoga; he should quit all controlled substances and limit his alcohol intake to a glass of red wine on Saturday nights. After all, Hayes had a life that most people would murder for. He traveled the globe reporting on the world’s finest hotels. He had arrived at the Six Senses in Oman via hang glider; he’d taken high tea at the Mount Nelson in Cape Town at a table next to Nelson Mandela; he had breakfasted on fried rice and fresh watermelon juice on the banks of the Chao Phraya River at the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok. He’d written features about the Palácio Belmonte in Lisbon, the Gritti Palace in Venice, La Mamounia in Marrakech, Hotel D’Angleterre in Copenhagen. Hayes could one-up just about anyone anywhere. That should have been a high in and of itself.
He had to be so, so careful. If he was careful, he’d be okay. This was the rationalization of an addict. Hayes recognized this even as he used the words to reassure himself.
He was functioning, or sort of. He could go six or seven hours without, until the itching started. He had scratched himself so fiercely on the left shoulder blade that he broke the skin. All of the bespoke shirts that Hayes had tailored in London were now speckled with blood.
Sula rose from the bed. She went to the kitchen to prepare the fish that her brothers had speared; she would serve it with satay sauce for dinner. Hayes wrapped a batik sarong around his waist and ventured outside to smoke a hand-rolled cigarette. (He should, absolutely, quit smoking. He and Angie agreed on that.) Hayes watched the Australian surfers loping down the shore toward him, their wet suits hanging off their torsos like shed skin. They looked exhilarated as they checked their GoPros.
“Hey, mate!” one of the surfers, a kid named Macka, called up to Hayes. “Epic day, man. You should have joined us.”
Hayes felt a pang of regret. He should have gone out today. Or he should have fished with Wayan and Ketut so that he could have claimed a contribution to dinner; the smell of ginger and sesame oil from the kitchen where Sula was cooking was insane.
But Hayes had preferred to float along the cloud ridge and gaze down on the world from above—the green water, the swaying palm trees, the ghost crabs scuttling across the sand.
High.
Higher.
Sula served Hayes, her brothers, her father, and the Aussies at a communal table in the courtyard, where they could enjoy the reflecting pond and the fountains. Sula’s father was so wealthy that he hired a three-man gamelan band to play each night at dinner. The band sat atop silk pillows on a raised platform in a corner of the courtyard; sounds of the flute and marimba floated through the air.
The fish was steamed in banana leaves, then smothered in peanut sauce and served over jasmine rice. Heroin eradicated hunger except for that of more heroin, but even Hayes found himself gorging on this meal. The fish was moist, the peanut sauce hot and pungent.
Richard, sidekick of Macka, said to Hayes, “So you leave us tomorrow, then, mate?” He cast a hungry, sidelong glance at Sula as she set out dessert—a platter of fresh papaya, mango, rambutans, watermelon, and baby bananas.
Hayes could see what would happen. He would leave, Richard would move in on Sula. It was disturbing enough to make Hayes reconsider his plans. He could come up with any number of legitimate-sounding excuses: impassable swells made it impossible for Hayes to catch a longboat back to mainland Bali; there was political unrest in Jakarta aimed at American journalists; he had made a booking mistake with his flight from Singapore to Heathrow (he should have had his assistant, Mallory, double-check), but now he couldn’t make it back to the States in time for the weekend on Nantucket. He was sorry to miss it. He would catch up with everyone later in the summer.
They would simply have to understand. Hayes was at the mercy of unpredictable circumstances.
Scarlett wasn’t going, and she was Deacon’s wife.
But could Hayes miss Nantucket? Really?
He thought about his father. Deacon hadn’t been perfect. He had left Hayes and Hayes’s mother for a flashier life with Belinda in Hollywood, but as Hayes grew older, Deacon had become more comfortable as a father, more available—both emotionally and financially.
A year or so earlier, when Hayes’s using became a serious issue—every spare dollar Hayes made went to his dealer, Kermit—he had fallen behind on the payments of his loft in Soho. The loft had been a stretch as it was, and with so much of his discretionary income going to his habit, Hayes had to approach Deacon for help. Four thousand dollars a month. Deacon had written the checks without blinking an eye or making Hayes feel bad about it. Deacon had said, “You’re an up-and-coming tastemaker, man. We can’t have you living in an efficiency in Hell’s Kitchen.” Then he’d said, “I’m always here for you, whatever you need. Only when you’re a father yourself will you realize how good it feels to help out your children.”
Deacon’s own father had left when Deacon was thirteen and had never returned.
My parents didn’t want me, Deacon used to tell Hayes. It was like they were waiting for me to get old enough to take care of myself so they could move on.
And then often—always, if Deacon was drinking—he would take Hayes’s face in his hands and say, But I want you. Always remember that. You’re my son and I love you and I am so, so proud of everything you do.
Deacon had said this the last time Hayes had seen him—at Easter dinner at the restaurant. When they all said good-bye out on Madison Avenue in the chilly spring nighttime air, Deacon had grabbed his thirty-four-year-old son’s face and said, I love you, Hayes, and I am so, so proud of everything you do. He had kissed Hayes on the forehead, which had always been his thing—as a teenager, Hayes had found it embarrassing, but now, well, what Hayes wouldn’t give to feel his father’s embrace, his father’s lips alighting on his brow.
“Yes,” Hayes said to Richard. “I leave tomorrow.” And with that, Hayes stood up from the table and strode across the courtyard. Sula bowed to her father, her brothers, and the Australians, and then she followed him.
BELINDA
Her phone didn’t ring until seven thirty, which in L.A. constituted sleeping in. When the East Coast got up and moving, the West Coast had to follow suit or be left behind.
Belinda rolled over to check the display. It was her husband, Bob. It was ten thirty in Kentucky and a Friday, which was when Bob did speed work with the yearlings. If he was calling now, then something was wrong. Belinda wasn’t sure she could handle any more bad news. Had something happened to one of the girls? Had Beetle, the skittish Appaloosa, gotten spooked by the farm tractor again and thrown Laura to the ground or dragged her, foot caught in the stirrup, around the ring? Had Mary sustained a kick to the head?
The news about Deacon six weeks earlier had come as such a calamitous shock that even now, Belinda could barely think about anything else. She obsessed about horrible, random acts of God befalling the other people in her life that she loved.
Her phone continued to quack like a duck. Maybe Bob was calling to say he was leaving her for Stella.
Or maybe he was just calling to tell Belinda he loved her, he missed her, he couldn’t live without her.
Belinda answered, but she had waited too long; the quacking ended. Before she could decide what to do, Bob called back. This was very bad, Belinda decided. Bob Percil was the most sought-after Thoroughbred trainer in the world; he didn’t waste time pursuing anyone.
“Hello?” Belinda said, trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice. She willed herself not to revisit the phone call of six weeks earlier, but it intruded anyway: John Buckley calling to say Deacon had had a heart attack. When Belinda had said, What do you mean, he had a heart attack? Buck had said, Deacon is dead, Belinda. And then Buck had broken down crying, but Belinda still hadn’t quite been able to process what he’d told her. It was too ghastly.
To Bob, Belinda said, “Darling, how are you?”
“Did I wake you?” Bob’s voice had an accusatory edge, she thought, or maybe she was just being sensitive. Bob rose at four o’clock every morning; that was how he was wired. If Belinda had thought that marrying her, a famous actress, would change him, she was wrong. And yet his refusal to compromise his way of life was one of the things she loved most about him. Bob didn’t kowtow. He loved her, but he wasn’t impressed with anything as ephemeral as fame.