Olga found this both funny and sad. She wished her family felt the need to use luxurious real estate to draw her presence. Instead she was lured by nothing more than the promise of a pastel, the timeless power of guilt, and, of course, love. She’d wondered if it was the money or the divorce that had degenerated Dick’s family so. Where Dick seemed so lost and lonely, her Tío Richie, also divorced, now remarried, had ended up with more than ever. Always surrounded by his kids and, whether he liked it or not, both his current and former wives. The sum total of the Hamptons house, and Dick’s place in it, made Olga feel a vacuousness that not even sex that night—as she expected, on the kitchen counter—could shake. Indeed, if anything, the sex only succeeded in bathing her in a strange wave of melancholy. The evening left her feeling genuinely sorry for Dick, and nothing was less arousing than pity.
By the next morning, the feeling had not abated. If anything, overnight, it had strengthened and mutated into something more pointed and nagging: guilt. It surprised her. It was her first time sleeping with Dick since she had begun fucking Matteo. It was not the sex that evoked the guilt as much as the stark contrast in how she felt about the before and after. In the moment, she hadn’t noticed this with Matteo, but once back in bed with Dick, it crystallized for her: it had been pleasant, a relief really, to fuck someone without the aura of mutual condescension surrounding the act. For the first time, certainly with Dick, but possibly in recent memory, it occurred to her that sex without disdain might be a good thing.
She needed to end things with Dick. Sooner rather than later, and ideally, nicely.
Overwhelmed by the sadness of the house, she asked Dick’s driver to take her out at noon, though the benefit didn’t start until two. Dick, who had signed up for back-to-back SoulCycle classes, wasn’t there to notice. She sat at a bar in town nursing a glass of wine and Googling guests she wanted to meet at the Blumenthal party until her brother picked her up and off they headed to Southampton.
* * *
IT WAS A perfect day and the party was centered around the estate’s vast swimming pool, which the hostess, or more likely the housekeeper, had decorated with large red and white floating peonies. The cocktail tables had been covered in denim tablecloths with little white vases filled with more red peonies atop them. The entire affair had a casual Americana vibe, assuming that Americana’s backdrop was a $20 million beachfront estate. Two of her past clients were there, and Olga was genuinely surprised by how many other people recognized her from Good Morning, Later. But, make no mistake, the star of the show was her brother, whom Olga had always envied for his ability, when with his donors or on television, to transform into a person who was white palatable while still remaining very much himself. He wasn’t quite code-switching so much as he managed, miraculously, to speak several languages simultaneously, creating a linguistic creole of hip-hop, academia, contemporary slang, and high-level policy points that made Olga marvel. More astounding, he knew exactly when and with whom to finesse which aspect of himself, which proved, as Olga observed her brother, remarkably counterintuitive. He gave one of his older white male supporters a fist dap and slapped his back, and as he walked away Olga heard the man tell his wife that Prieto could be the Latino Obama. He called the hostess of the event Ma, which Olga was certain would offend, if not confuse her, but instead she blushed and kissed his cheek. Yet he was deft enough to know that, when greeting two of his older Black supporters—Prieto’s events almost always brought out monied people of color—to call them sir and ma’am, and ask after their children, which inevitably led to the retrieval of a phone and, remarkably, a FaceTime call to their adult children traveling out of state. Her brother had staff for these events, but used no handler, remembering details—from profound to minuscule—about his supporters and constituents.
Olga herself had never learned this linguistic mezcla that her brother had perfected, this ability to be all facets of herself at once. She always had to choose which Olga she would be in any given situation, in any given moment. Indeed, as she watched him work the room, she wondered why he had ever felt that he needed to have her there in the first place; Prieto’s “scene” was anywhere Prieto was.
The official program began with her brother speaking impassionedly about bipartisan efforts at criminal justice reform （mild applause）， his work to secure more funding and transparency from the EPA to protect New York’s coastlines （stronger applause）， marijuana legalization （mischievous cheers; a surprisingly salient issue, Olga thought）， and finally, the pièce de résistance, his work developing and supporting a wave of mid-term candidates to help secure a majority in the next Congress and keep this administration in check （audible whoops）。 He opened it up to Q & A, which was relatively benign, if perhaps revealing of the conflicted interests of the socially liberal financial elite: feelings on deregulation, the dangers of socialists among us, concerns about big pharma being legally culpable for the opioid epidemic. Then, from the back came a baritone voice Olga recognized immediately and she felt her body tense.