“We’ll race,” Jaime says. “Whoever finishes first snorts what’s left of his opponent’s line.”

“You’re on,” Deacon says, confident he will win. And he does.

Maybe Jaime is angry about being bested in his own home, because he turns to Deacon and says, “You know I used to bang Belinda, right?”

Cocaine turns Deacon into a monster under the best of circumstances. Upon hearing Jaime say the words “bang Belinda,” Deacon punches Jaime right in the face and knocks him to the ground, where Deacon starts kicking the living shit out of him. Someone in the other room hears breaking glass and comes rushing in to save Jaime’s life.

The police take Deacon off the property in handcuffs. Belinda is crying. She isn’t allowed in the cruiser, but she follows Deacon to the police station in her Jaguar. She is famous enough and beautiful enough, he supposes, that he is only charged with drunk and disorderly, and not with assault and battery.

“He told me he’d banged my girl,” Deacon says to the arresting officer. “What was I supposed to do?”


Belinda had said she would get Deacon his own restaurant so that he could be his own boss, but after his arrest and the attendant humiliation, Deacon can’t bring himself to ask. Eventually, Belinda forgives him; she decides he was being gallant, defending her honor. She buys Deacon a Porsche 911-his own freaking Porsche. He should be the happiest man in L.A., and yet somehow, he’s not.

It’s always sunny, which depresses Deacon. He starts to long for the gloomy, overcast days of New York in November. He yearns for a thunderstorm, something to match his temperament. He calls Laurel and Hayes every single day, sometimes more than once a day, but more and more often, Laurel doesn’t answer. One weekend a month, Deacon flies back to New York to see Hayes, and every time, he considers staying. He and Laurel talk about getting back together, conversations that always end with Laurel saying, “You won’t leave her. I know you won’t. She’s too strong, and you’re not strong enough.”

Deacon fears she’s right.


A popular pastime in California is finding oneself, and Deacon gets swept along. He needs to find himself. He needs a job. Deacon and Belinda eat at Spago. They eat at the Ivy. Deacon toys with getting a job in the kitchen of one or the other, but how can he work as a line cook when he’s dating the most sought-after actress in Hollywood?

When summer rolls around, Deacon persuades Belinda to go to Nantucket, although the second she agrees, he starts to worry. As much as he loves the house, when he looks at it through her eyes, he sees only what’s wrong with it: a peeling linoleum floor in the kitchen, rooms that haven’t been painted in twenty-five years, sand permanently embedded between the floorboards.

Matters are made worse when they arrive in the middle of a nor’easter-driving rain and wind gusts up to fifty miles an hour. Nantucket is the greatest place on earth on a sunny summer day, but in the rain, it’s worthless. They’ve been in the house less than an hour-just enough time for Belinda to perfect her “brave face”-when the power goes out. Deacon figures this is either the best-case scenario or the worst. He lights a fire, he brings pillows and a blanket down from the bedroom, he makes a nest. He finds a bag of marshmallows in the cabinet-bingo!

“Cozy, right?” he says to her. He’s afraid she’s going to turn her nose up at him or start screaming, because in this kind of wind, the house feels like a cup of dice God is shaking. Life with Belinda, he’s realized, is a prison of high expectations.

She surprises him by snuggling up and resting her head against his heart. “Right,” she says.


It’s in the rudimentary kitchen of the Nantucket house that Deacon starts to develop recipes. Belinda has a sweet tooth, so he makes a fluffy white champagne cake with champagne icing and champagne-candied strawberries.

When she tastes it, she swoons.

“Oh my God,” she says. She says that she has never been as in love with anyone or anything as much as him… and that cake. “Let’s make a baby.”


It’s six months later, and, although sex is now Deacon’s cool second job, he can’t get Belinda pregnant. She goes to the doctor and gets checked out and insists he do the same. He jerks off in a cup so that they can check the sperm count. His sperm count is fine. He already knew this, he tells Belinda, because he got Laurel pregnant without even trying. This sets Belinda crying. She feels like a failure, she says. She feels like she’s less of a woman. With his own money, Deacon books a suite at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara. He plies her with vodka martinis and gets to work.

Later that month, she gets her period.

Now he feels like a failure. But then, out of the blue, he gets a call from Luther Davey, owner of the TruBlue Entertainment Group, saying he wants to open tricoastal restaurants called Raindance, one in L.A., one in Chicago, one in New York, and he wants Deacon to be the executive chef of all three.

Yes, Deacon says right away. He doesn’t ask Belinda her opinion, which is a mistake. She becomes hysterical when he tells her. She takes the clamshell that Deacon got so many years ago with his father on Nantucket, and which sits in a hallowed place on the mantel, and she throws it into the swimming pool. Deacon is so livid that he grabs Belinda by the forearm. Her arm is delicate; he could easily break it with just one hand. He could throw her into the pool and watch her drown. But then he comes to his senses. He lets Belinda go, and he dives to the bottom of the pool to rescue his shell.


He takes the job at Raindance.

He signs a forty-page prenup, after which he and Belinda are married by her yogi on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Buck is the only other person in attendance.

Belinda decides she wants to adopt a baby. She somehow finds a newborn in an orphanage in the Australian outback, and the next thing Deacon knows, Belinda is flying to Perth to pick up their new daughter, Angela. They will call her Angie, after the Rolling Stones song that is their favorite.


When Angie is five years old and ready for kindergarten, Deacon lobbies to move back to New York. He is there half-time anyway, and he doesn’t want L.A. to be all Angie experiences. She deserves better. She is the coolest kid that Deacon has ever known, and, despite the fact that Los Angeles is the second-largest metropolis in the country, it’s not as racially integrated as New York. Look at Rodney King!

It’s impossible for Belinda to argue about Rodney King. It’s impossible for Belinda to argue that California is not, at its essence, a dominion of blond girls. Angie might not be discriminated against, but she could easily be ignored or overlooked.

Belinda succumbs. She will allow a move to New York. They will get an apartment in the Waldorf Towers. Angie will go to private school-at Chapin, Spence, or Nightingale-Bamford.

But… Belinda won’t be around as much as she was in L.A. (Was she around in L.A.? Deacon spent all his days off with Angie, teaching her how to squeeze the juice out of a lemon, crack an egg, measure flour.) Belinda is in negotiations to play Mai Hanh in The Delta-a role she wants more than she wants to breathe-but this will mean three to six months of filming in Vietnam. It won’t matter where Deacon and Angie are, because Belinda won’t be home either way.

We have to get a proper nanny, Belinda says. Not a Mexican housekeeper, like they had in L.A., but someone professional and organized and whimsical and kind. A Mary Poppins.


Belinda interviews thirty girls. There are fat girls, Goth girls, British girls; there is a woman with a mustache who scares Deacon with her list of rules. There is a woman who has a graduate degree in molecular biology; there is a girl with red, chafed nostrils who clearly likes to party downtown.

And then, number thirty-one: Scarlett Oliver, from Savannah, Georgia.

Deacon happens to be in the apartment when Scarlett arrives. She is tall and slender, with dark hair to her waist and a pearly-white smile. Too pretty, Deacon thinks right away. Belinda will never hire her.

Scarlett reveals that she is a debutante from Savannah. Belinda will never hire her. This will be one of those interviews that lasts four minutes.

Belinda says, “What exactly does that mean, ‘a debutante’?”

“Well,” Scarlett says. “It means I had a debut. It’s a ball where one is presented to society.”

“I was presented to society half-naked in Brilliant Disguise,” Belinda says, then she laughs at herself. “Have you ever seen it?”

“Only about forty times,” Scarlett says. “It’s my favorite movie.”

Oh boy, Deacon thinks. To a one, all the nanny candidates have been gushing fans. To a one, all have asked Belinda for her autograph, even the Goth girl.

“Let me introduce you to Angie,” Belinda says.

What? Deacon thinks. Meeting Angie means Scarlett made it through the first gate. Is that possible? Deacon pokes his head out of the kitchen and sees Scarlett’s lovely long legs in denim shorts. He doesn’t know whether to pray that she gets hired or pray that she doesn’t.


She gets hired. Frankly, Deacon can’t believe it. She is way too beautiful, and Belinda, as famous as she is, finds other beautiful women threatening.

“What made you hire Scarlett?” Deacon asks.

“Gut feeling,” Belinda says. “She was so good with Angie. Angie hung on to her neck when it was time for her to go. She hasn’t done that with anyone else. I feel like she’s meant to be in our lives.”


What Belinda says, goes. Scarlett is around 24-7 in the apartment, wearing shorts and halter tops and half shirts that show off her perfectly flat, pale stomach. Deacon tries to make himself immune to her beauty and her innocence. And her Southern accent. She teaches Angie the phrase “Gimme some sugar.” When Scarlett says this, Angie purses her lips and gives Scarlett a kiss. Then Scarlett says, “Now, give Daddy some sugar.” And Angie gives Deacon a kiss while Deacon looks at Scarlett.