Happy Hour

by Marlowe Granados

The Hamptons, a beachy little series of townships on the far reaches of Long Island’s south shore, has a complex and sprawling history that winds its way through eras as disparate as commercial seaside, artists’ enclave, and bohemian retreat. But in contemporary popular culture they are nothing more than an easy allusion to NYC wealth on holiday: little dogs in handbags; oversized D&G accoutrements; bellinis; some number of other equally dated references to NYC cosplaying as a Connecticut bedroom community.

When Isa heads off the Hamptons about two-thirds through Happy Hour, I braced for the worst. Not the worst for Isa; I was sure she’d be ok because she’s scrappy and it would be a big swerve to plow toward a Streetcar-style collapse into madness with no foreshadowing, but the worst because when young NYC protagonists of a certain ilk (party girls trying to make good, for example) are transported to the Hamptons they struggle against the symbology of the place. The restrictions inherent to the Hamptons, such as the claustrophobic reliance on a host’s grace—and his-or-her car—to access anything makes an easy contrast to NYC’s freedoms. What makes NYC NYC is the appearance of cross-class mingling at bars and clubs, the autonomy of movement through the always-available subway, the ability to just show up. The Hamptons is not a place to appear without an invite: what doors would one even line up at in that salt-and-sand epitome of secluded, invite-only social stratification?

If comedies end in marriage and tragedies in death, Happy Hour is the comedic antidote to the tragic tale of a “pretty young thing” who, while living hand-to-mouth in New York, flounces around on Page Six and drink for free at clubs while they bring the scene with them. In the standard morality play, the good-time girl walks the line between seducing ever-wealthier men in an attempt to scramble up-and-out of poverty, but somewhere along the way they overreach and “succumb” to their urchin-origins, collapsing backwards into the gutter. Usually the misstep happens in beachwear, somewhere out in the Hamptons; juxtaposition of natural landscapes with hard times, and all that.

I didn’t worry about Happy Hour following this path because Isa isn’t Scott Pilgriming her way through fintech boys until she reaches the opposition to the inheritance tax personified. In fact, Isa pairs with a rising movie star almost instantly and she basically wiggles the hang-loose shaka at him and wanders off to continue to be a person and not an ornament in her own story:

“What is your history? Where are you from? Your parents, I mean.” Sage looked at me shyly. Having heard that line before, I turned my shoulder at him and lowered my eyes in a move my mother would have called “coquettish.” I said, “Are you asking why I’m so pretty? If you are, just ask me that.” Did you know it is possible to push back without anyone even noticing?

Isa is comically insightful, putting literary, architectural, and aesthetic cultural references to the scenarios in which she finds herself. People who “belong” might view her as just another amenity—“I needed you to make an impression. What about my bringing you up here did you not understand?”—but it is clear she understands many and more of the whys and wherefores than most of the socially “appropriate” guests:

It looked like a frat boy’s Times Square dream of Edith Wharton. In this way the hotel was very New York. People are always nostalgic about the New York they’ve read about. They are always trying to recreate those feelings, that mystique. It always ends up cheap, garish, and the worst crime of all, inauthentic. How can anything be true if it’s all an impersonation?

Happy Hour is a little bit of House of Mirth, it has a little cheek (this book is recreating the NYC of a very type of specific literature!), but Isa does not suffer under a misery of her own creation. No, Isa comes to New York in the grand style of the big-city bildungsroman and wrings enjoyment out of each scenario, never losing herself in the froth no matter how treacherous things become. One of the weird things about youth-in-NY novels is that, in broad strokes, when a girl comes to New York it is to exist and clutch at some semblance of freedom and when a boy does it it is to find financial success. I don’t really care about bootstrap wealth culture, so give me a girl-living-in-Bushwick-and-figuring-out-a-way-to-wash-her-party-clothes-without-a-steady-income vibe over boy-builds-a-business-to-impress-a-girl-and-makes-enough-money-to-buy-a-loft any day. The one book I can think of that sort of muddled this convention was The Stalker, and the less said about its good-time “gal,” the better.

Back to the Hamptons, though. Returning to the city when you’re not the one with a car is, both on the page and in my lived experience, always a nightmare. The feeling of limited mobility—both in time and in space—and the restriction of closed doors and inaccessible adventures are the things that compel certain social-adventuresome types to toward NYC in the first place. I’ll repeat that this is what the Hamptons represents in these types of novels: a not-NYC; a routine; a might-have-been life of structure. At least here, Isa gets a bike: 

The only thing I could think of making was French toast. It was simple and quick. I had seen a loaf of brioche in the pantry, and at least that would add a little class to the meal. There were some berries we got from the grocery store the day before and some whipping cream. I asked if there was any butter around, and Coop straightened himself and said, “Isa, if you don’t see it, why don’t you take a spirited bike ride into town to get some?”

It’s how you know she’s going to to be okay. But, also:

I took the brick of unsalted country butter and walked to the cashier, counting the change in my pocket. I’d scrounged around my bags for coins and one-dollar bills and then discreetly looked around the house for any loose quarters. I had the exact amount, $5.30. The cashier smiled at me and put the lone stick of butter in a bag.

One cannot hide in the Hamptons. Thanks, I hate it. At least in Happy Hour the Hamptons is not a scene of unraveling, nor are we stuck there for the rest of the book; it is, in fact, the locus of growth, when the Hamptons-inviter finds her diary and sets her down the path to publishing the account we are reading right now. For this trouble, she steals his ride back to the city:

Coop was always crumbling under the burden of being a regular rich person who had to uphold standards, appearances, and customs. Deep down he was a bit of a saboteur, and that part of him was what made him fond of people like me. Some people know they deserve to be taken advantage of and that’s what makes them so fun to be around.

Isa always comes out on top, even when she doesn’t, which I attribute to her attitude and not necessarily to the preternatural luck of being a novel’s protagonist. Nor will I entertain the unremarkable possibility that this reproduction of her diary is unreliable, that she is glazing herself in retrospect: Isa simply doesn’t seem the type. She also has a sidekick, which is actually not the right word at all for Gala but the idea of calling her a sidekick would get a drink splashed in one’s face and so it must be said:

I’ll bet Gala is the only person alive who can get two strangers to blindly defend her when she is so clearly the delinquent.

Two sides of different coins that just happen to be in the same purse, Isa and Gala have such fantastic interactions that I would probably read a spin-off novel from Gala’s perspective. Though I suspect it would be a novella, if that. Perhaps a brochure. Gala simply has different interests than our narrator, is all. 

I have a sense of urgency in everything I do; being without one is unattractive. My urgency is what gives me character. I am always rushing in and out of doors. To think everything is available to you each day is foolish.

Often I’m left wondering why books about women in their twenties trying to scrape it out in NYC feel relatable to me. Isa doesn’t impact the city, her victories aren’t the core of Happy Hour. I wonder, honestly, if it is the struggle against internalized powerlessness, the absurdist nature of slotting into the machinery of culture and expectation, and the attempt at maintaining an identity outside of “work-product” or “output” that feel validating to me. Whatever it is I am looking for when I’m reading about New York—the difficulty in regularly doing laundry, say, or the odd jobs and reliance on kismet to squeak out another month of rent—Happy Hour has it. It has the small apartments, the untethered freedom that is the envy (or horror) of the rest of the U.S.

Plus, it has Isa. She is funny and I like her.