They walked down a sandy path that led into the woods. Hayes took deep breaths, trying to calm his slamming heart. They were on Nantucket. It was a fairy-tale summerland where nothing bad ever happened.

Hayes strained his ears for the sound of a party. He had been thinking of a large, finely appointed beach house with a young, polished crowd and pyramids of very fine cocaine. Or possibly a bonfire where a bunch of overprivileged kids in $300 jeans and Rip Curl T-shirts would be smoking Nepalese hash. But the woods were quiet.

Suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows. He was huge, a Goliath. Hayes thought briefly of the guy he’d bought heroin from in Venice Beach. This guy made that guy look like the Little Mermaid.

Pirate put a hand on Hayes’s shoulder. “Hayes Thorpe, I’d like you to meet…”

But Hayes didn’t hear the Goliath’s name, because at that second, the Goliath’s fist, which was the size of a brick, met with Hayes’s face. Hayes’s head snapped back, and he thought, Broken jaw. Pirate pinned Hayes’s arms behind his back with one hand and emptied Hayes’s pockets with his other hand. Three hundred and fifty bucks, Hayes knew.

“Please,” Hayes managed to say. He wished he had considered his present circumstances as a possibility; he would have brought a weapon. In his duffel bag was a kris knife, presented to him by Sula before he left Nusa Lembongan. It had once belonged to her grandfather and was invested with some kind of mystical energy, which was the reason Sula’s family had become so wealthy and powerful, she said. Hayes would have loved to have pulled out the kris knife, with its wavy blade, and stuck it in Pirate’s good eye.

“Junkie,” the Goliath said. He drew his fist back and delivered the knockout punch square in the face, shattering Hayes’s nose. His face was warm and wet with blood. Hayes hit the ground, taking in a mouthful of sandy dirt. Someone was kicking Hayes in the leg, but honestly, he could barely feel it. He was just going to lie here and drown in his own blood.

“How much?” Hayes heard the Goliath ask.

“Few hundred,” Pirate said.

“I thought you said he was rich,” the Goliath said.

“I figured he’d have more,” Pirate said. “I told you who his father is, right? His father is Deacon Thorpe, the chef.”

Was, Hayes thought, before he lost consciousness. Was.


Sunday, June 19


BUCK

He woke up in the middle of the night and, again, didn’t know where he was. Then he remembered: he was living the life on Nantucket, in Deacon’s house, but Deacon was dead.

Pain like a stab to the heart. Buck had awakened to this same pain every day for the past six weeks. He had hoped that coming to Nantucket would make him feel better, but the opposite was true. Being on the island Deacon loved so much, in the house that was so dear to him, surrounded by his wives and his children, only made Buck believe that Deacon might walk through the door any second. It was easy to imagine that Deacon had gone to run an errand and was very, very late in getting home.

Buck’s bed was two feet too short for him and had an unforgiving footboard.

Buck rose to use the bathroom. The house was old and creaky; the plumbing was loud. He was probably waking everybody up just by taking a leak.

He noticed a light on under the door of Laurel’s room. Was she awake? He didn’t think twice about it; he knocked.

“Come in,” she said.

Buck slipped in and shut the door behind him. Laurel was sitting up in bed. Her covers were white, smooth, and as neatly folded as origami paper; he loved Laurel’s calm, orderly perfection. Buck’s second wife, Mae, had never once made their bed. Every night it had been like sleeping in a pile of dirty laundry, and that, Buck supposed, had been their undoing-his desire for shipshape, hers for chaos.

Laurel was wearing a dove-gray scoop-necked pajama top and a pair of narrow, black-framed glasses. She was reading a book called… Buck strained his neck, trying to see, hoping it was one of the two novels he’d had time to read in the past three years… but no, it was Euphoria, by someone named Lily King. Buck had never heard of it, but the title seemed promising.

Euphoria.

“Am I interrupting?” Buck asked.

Laurel looked up and smiled. The glasses were incredibly sexy. “Not at all,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Buck said. He looked around the room for a place to sit. The only chair in the room was a cane-bottomed rocker that would most definitely collapse under his weight.

Laurel patted the side of the bed. “It’s okay,” she said.

Buck perched on the edge of the bed next to her. She set the book down on the nightstand. “I’m devastated about the house,” she said. “I wasn’t even expecting a part of it to go to me. I just hate that the family is losing it. The kids…”

“I’m sorry I brought it up at dinner,” Buck said. “I didn’t know when I would have everyone all together.”

“I wasn’t angry at you,” Laurel said. “I was angry at Belinda. I don’t want her to pay for the house. I will not spend my life indebted to her.”

“I’ll state the obvious,” Buck said. “She’s the only one of us with that kind of money. You don’t have a spare hundred and fifty grand, do you? And then five grand per month after that?”

“No,” Laurel said. She peered at Buck over the tops of her glasses. “What did Belinda mean when she said the two of you had a run-in?”

His breath caught. Belinda. News of their awful interlude had nearly leaked before dinner, like a noxious gas. He considered lying. But Buck had gone to Catholic school and been educated by nuns; even now, his conscience spoke to him in the voice of Sister Mary Agatha. He heard her saying, The truth always comes out. She had been referring to Richard Nixon and Watergate, but it applied across the board. The truth always came out.

“I’ve been half in love with you since the first second I saw you,” Buck said. “You realize this, right? Since way back-when you and Hayes came to that first meeting with me at the restaurant.”

He thought back to those earliest days: Buck had been interning at William Morris during the day, and to pay the bills, he worked as the maître d’ at Solo, in the Flatiron District, where Deacon Thorpe had just been named chef de cuisine. Buck was desperate for a client to call his own. As the maître d’, he had handed out his card to every pretty potential-model face, thinking maybe he could transform beauty into talent, but it had yet to work out that way.

Buck’s direct boss at work, an agent named Gus, suggested Buck break out of the usual mold. “Find an ice skater,” he said. “Or a tennis player.”

Or a chef, Buck thought. Deacon.

He thought of the potential fortune he could earn by turning shaggy-haired, foul-mouthed, twenty-two-times-tattooed, brilliantly named Deacon Thorpe into a star. Celebrity chefs weren’t a phenomenon yet-but Buck sensed that they could be.

He’d set up a “meeting” in the hour before staff meal. Both Laurel and Hayes always came to staff meal-it was a deal that Deacon had set up with the restaurant owners-and so they also came to the meeting.

Deacon had said, “I’m not sure what you’re after, man. I hope you’re not thinking about me doing a cookbook, because I nearly flunked English in high school.”

“Not a cookbook,” Buck said. “I was thinking maybe… TV?”

“TV?” Deacon said. “You mean, like Julia Child?”

“And the other guy…,” Laurel said. “The Frugal Gourmet.” She smiled at Buck, and he felt his face grow hot. “Deacon could do for cooking what Bob Ross has done for painting. Just a little indication of a tree over here… I think it’s a great idea.” She leaned across the table and slapped her hand down. Her fingernails were filed but not painted. Buck could have peeked down the front of her white sundress, but there was nothing to see; she was flat chested. And lightly tanned, with long, sandy-colored hair. Laurel Thorpe was a natural, unvarnished beauty. “Can you make it happen?”

He had made it happen-for her. This many years later, John Buckley could admit, he had worked his ass off cold-calling and making a nuisance of himself with his superiors, all for Laurel. Deacon got a screen test at ABC, where the execs were looking for late-night material to launch opposite Johnny Carson. Deacon was offered a half-hour slot called Day to Night to Day with Deacon. Deacon had been young and savage in those days, real and hungry.