The Beach Club (4 page)

Mack pinched his lips together in a line, as if he were trying not to laugh. “What about a place to live?”

“I have a place to live,” Jem said. Jem rented a room through a college friend’s aunt who had a house on North Liberty Street. The room was fine, but it didn’t have kitchen privileges. When Jem asked the friend’s aunt how he was going to eat, she said, “I usually rent to people in the restaurant business.” Jem’s father owned a bar in Falls Church—an English-style pub called the Locked Tower; if he’d wanted to wait tables, he would have stayed at home. “The room’s decent,” he told Mack. “But it doesn’t have a kitchen. And I need to save money to go to California.” He straightened his spine. “I’m on the lookout for free food in a big way. What I really need is a girlfriend who likes to cook.”

“My girlfriend likes to cook,” Mack said. “And look what it got me.” He patted his gut. “Love handles.”

Jem smiled politely.

“Are you handy?” Mack asked. “Can you change a lightbulb? Set an alarm clock? Do you know what a circuit breaker is? If a guest calls the front desk and says his electricity is out, could you fix it?”

“Probably. I can change a lightbulb and set an alarm clock. I know my way around a fuse box.”

“You’d be surprised how many people can’t set an alarm clock,” Mack said.

“Well, I can,” Jem said. “Like I said, I just graduated from college.” He laughed. Mack scribbled down something else.

“Hopefully, you’ll remember to set your own,” Mack said. “The day bellman needs to be here at eight
A.M.
”

“Do I have the job, then?”

“I need someone for three day shifts and three night shifts, one day off. There isn’t a lot of sitting around. If you’re not stripping the rooms for the chambermaids or helping a guest with bags, then you’ll be doing projects, assigned by me. Small maintenance jobs, watering the plants, cleaning the exercise room, sweeping up shells in the parking lot. And part of the deal is helping to open the place, from now until Memorial Day. That’s eight to four every day but Sunday. I can offer you ten bucks an hour, plus tips. Do you
want
the job?”

Tips. A world-class beach resort. Contacts waiting to be made. Jem could have kissed the guy. “Yes, I do. Absolutely.”

Mack offered his hand and Jem tried for a nice, firm handshake that showed he meant what he said.

“You have the job,” Mack said. “Welcome to the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel. You’ll work with a bellman named Vance Robbins who’s been here twelve years, just as long as I have. Vance will show you the ropes. Come tomorrow at eight, ready to shovel.”

Jem jumped to his feet. “I’ll be here,” he said. He probably sounded way too eager, but it was exciting—getting a job, spending the summer on this island. He couldn’t wait to write to his parents and tell them. But first he had to find a grocery store and buy some bread and a jar of peanut butter and hope it didn’t draw ants.

Mack led him to the front porch of the lobby. “We’ll see you tomorrow,” Mack said.

“Do you own this place?” Jem asked. A seagull dropped a shell onto the asphalt of the parking lot and then swooped down to eat whatever was inside.

“No,” Mack said. He tugged at his vest defensively.

“Oh,” Jem said. “Well, it is gorgeous.”

“Fucking gorgeous,” Mack said. “You’re right. It is.”

Vance Robbins stood six feet and one half inch tall, which was the same height as Mack Petersen. He turned thirty years old on March 22, and so did Mack Petersen. They were exactly the same height and exactly the same age.

“Like twins,” Maribel once made the mistake of saying. Vance and Mack were not twins. First of all, Vance was black and Mack was white. Secondly, Vance was a bellman and Mack was the manager.

Vance had hated Mack for twelve years. Twelve years ago, Vance was a high school graduate on his way to Fairleigh Dickinson in the fall, and he lined up a summer managerial position at the Beach Club with Bill Elliott over the phone. Bill was supposed to be waiting when Vance got off the ferry, but Mack cut in and replaced him. It was pure dumb luck—Mack got off the boat first and he was the right age, he had the right look, and Bill took him to the hotel instead of Vance. It wasn’t until an hour later that Bill returned to the wharf to get Vance—and by then Mack had infiltrated the joint. Bill claimed Mack had better experience because he’d worked on a farm—a
farm
, for God’s sake—and he wasn’t leaving for school in September, and so Mack got the manager’s job. Vance was Mack’s equal in height and age, but returning to the Beach Club in the spring and seeing Mack made Vance only too aware of how they weren’t equal. Vance was a black sheep, an evil twin, a kid who got off the boat thirty seconds too late. A bellman.

“Hey, Vance! Good to see you, man! How was your winter?” Here was Mack now, clapping Vance on the back, pumping his hand. Mack ran his palm over Vance’s smooth skull. “You shaved your head…it looks great. You look, I don’t know, intimidating.”

“Thanks,” Vance said. He couldn’t help smiling. He expected Mack to say shaved heads weren’t acceptable at the Beach Club. Vance caught himself and tried to scowl. This was how it happened every year. He spent all winter despising Mack and then when he showed up in the spring, Mack was disarmingly nice,
cool
even, and Vance was forced to abandon his hatred. But not this year. This year Vance was going to hang on to his hatred with both hands.

“Man, how was your winter?” Mack asked. “How was Thailand? Did you get laid?”

“Of course,” Vance said, and again, he couldn’t help smiling. When he pictured himself on the beach at Koh Samui or under the capable massaging hands of Pan, a nineteen-year-old Thai girl with long, shiny black hair, he wanted to give up every detail. Mack, he knew, had spent all winter on this gloomy rock. “Thailand kicked ass. I rented a bungalow on the beach for six bucks a night.” He nodded toward the hotel. “Closer to the water than room eleven and a hundredth the price. I got massages that lasted well into the night. I ate banana pancakes and grilled fish every day.”

A young guy with dark curly hair holding a shovel approached them. “That sounds like paradise,” he said. “Where were you, California?”

“Thailand,” Mack and Vance said at the same time. Their voices were indistinguishable. Vance shook his head.

“Thailand,” Vance said again, on his own. The familiar acidity of hatred filled his chest, and he popped two Rolaids. In the summer, when Mack was around, Vance ate hundreds of them.

“Vance, this is Jem. I hired Jem yesterday. Jem, Vance Robbins, the head bellman.”

Vance took another look at the kid as he ground the chalk between his molars. He was too handsome but probably impressionable. Easy to boss around.

“Jem, like in
To Kill a Mockingbird?
” Vance asked.

Jem nodded. “Not many people get the reference.”

Vance stuck out his hand. “Pleasure,” he said.

Mack ran his palms over Vance’s noggin again. “I missed you, man. How come you didn’t send me a postcard?”

Vance shrugged. Why the hell did Mack like him so much? Why couldn’t he take a hint?

Vance and Jem started digging out the snow fence. The sun was shining and it was actually kind of warm. By noon they would probably be able to work without shirts. Vance liked opening and closing work best because it was quiet work, and honest. He’d started jogging in Thailand, and doing sit-ups and push-ups. He’d swum every afternoon. He was bigger now in the arms and across the shoulders. Sometime this summer he was going to beat up Mack—beat him to a pulp, just once, so that Mack would know Vance hadn’t forgiven him for horning in, for stealing away the job that should rightfully have been his.

Vance and Jem worked side by side peacefully with Jem only looking up once to ask, “Hey, do they buy you lunch around here? I’m starving.”

Vance checked his watch; it was ten-thirty.

“Sometimes the boss will spring for subs,” Vance said. “Bill Elliott, the owner. Have you met him yet?”

“No.”

“It’s always good to remember that Mack isn’t
really
the boss. Bill is.”

“So Bill buys us subs?” Jem asked.

“If we put in a hard morning he sometimes will,” Vance said. “But not every day.”

“Does this place serve breakfast?” Jem asked.

“Continental breakfast, eight-thirty to ten. You’ll be in charge of setting it up and taking it down when you work the day shift. Didn’t Mack tell you that?” Vance was annoyed; Mack was lax about explaining duties to new workers. It always fell to Vance to explain the whole truth and sometimes the new bellman got bristly, thinking Vance was creating more work for him. But this kid, Jem, just beamed.

“No,” Jem said, “he didn’t say anything about breakfast. That’s great!”

Vance heard his name being called, and Maribel jogged onto the beach. She was wearing shorts and a red sports bra, and she had a windbreaker tied around her waist. Blond hair in a ponytail. She threw her arms around Vance’s neck and kissed him on the cheek. As much as Vance hated Mack, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but dumbstruck infatuation for Maribel.

“You look divine!” she said. “Positively exotic. I love men without hair. You look like Michael Jordan. How was Thailand?”

“Good,” he said. He couldn’t figure out what Maribel saw in him either. Every time she spoke to him he had trouble stringing together a sentence.

“You’ve got this incredible bod. This is the year you get a girl then, huh?”

Vance clenched the handle of his shovel, hoping she would see his forearm muscles ripple. He was glad he’d removed his shirt. Before Vance could answer, Jem said, “We haven’t met. I’m Jem Crandall.”

“Jem?” Maribel said. She shook Jem’s hand and Vance felt a familiar sense of dread. Jem had his shirt off as well, and he was using some lady-killer smile that showed all his teeth. “Jem, like in
To Kill a Mockingbird?
”

“Exactly,” Jem said. “Not many people get the reference. Vance did, though.”

Maribel turned to Vance. “Well, of course. Vance is our literary lion.”

Vance shrugged. Maribel called him that because he graduated from FDU with a degree in American lit, and he once had a story entitled “The Downward Spiral” published in a small magazine.

“I’m Maribel Cox. Mack is my boyfriend.” She paused to let this information sink in. It was as though she were telling Jem,
I’m important, I’m with Mack
.

“Maribel works at the library,” Vance said.

“Explains why you know about books,” Jem said.

“Are you just starting here today?” Maribel asked.

“Yeah,” Jem said. He leaned on his shovel with crossed arms. “They’ve got me digging ditches already.”

Maribel turned back to Vance. “You guys should come over for dinner tonight. I’ll roast a chicken, do those real French
pomme frites
that you like.”

“I can’t,” Vance said. One of the rules he had set for himself was No More Socializing with Mack.

“I can,” Jem said eagerly, but Maribel ignored him.

“Maybe next week then,” she said. “Is Mack around?”

“Look out back,” Vance said. “Or in the office. He might be in the office with Bill.”

“Okay,” Maribel said. She touched Vance’s flexing forearm. “Hey, you, good to see you.” She jogged toward the hotel. “And nice meeting you, Jem!”

When she was out of earshot, Jem said, “That girl is a knockout. And she cooks!”

“Taken,” Vance said. He spoke in a way that might be construed as protecting Mack. But Vance just wanted Jem Mockingbird to realize that if Vance couldn’t have Maribel, no one else could either.

Love O’Donnell arrived on the island by high-speed ferry. Even though it was mid-May, the weather was gray and drizzly. And cold. Love stood on the bow of the boat, her Polar Fleece wrapped tightly around her. She wanted to watch the ferry approach Nantucket. She wanted to feel sea mist on her face. As it was, she wasn’t sure if the moisture she felt on her face was sea mist or rain, and through the dense blanket of fog she couldn’t see Nantucket at all until just before they reached the harbor. Then she caught a glimpse of the red beam of Brant Point Lighthouse and behind, the gray-shingled buildings of town, and the white steeple of the Congregational church she’d seen in pictures. The Beach Club, where she would be working, was to the west someplace and the cottage she had rented for the season was mid-island, where the locals lived.

Love wasn’t a person who went places on impulse. This trip qualified as the most impulsive thing she’d ever done. She’d lived in Aspen for the past seven years working at a popular outdoor magazine. But then she met Bill Elliott at the gym. They were lying side by side on the mats, using the Abdominizers. Love sneaked a look at Bill in the mirror, because that was what one did at gyms in Aspen—inspected the opposite sex. Especially Love. Ever since her fortieth birthday, Love had been looking for a man to father her baby.

She smiled at Bill in the mirror. “Sometimes I wonder if these things actually work,” she said, indicating the Abdominizer.

Bill laughed. “I figure everyone using them looks pretty good.”

Love crunched twice more, then said, “Do you live here in Aspen?”

“Just for the winter,” Bill said. “How about you?”

“Local,” Love said. “Where do you live in the summer?”

“Nantucket,” Bill said. He finished with his Abdominizer and stood up. Love stood as well and followed Bill to the StairMasters. An out-of-towner was a requirement in Love’s search for a father for her baby, because she wanted a baby but absolutely did not want a husband.

“What do you do in Nantucket?” Love asked. She punched her weight, one hundred pounds even, into the console of the StairMaster.

“My wife and I own a hotel,” he said.

“Oh, you’re married,” Love said. This was not necessarily an obstacle; after seven years in Aspen, Love knew he could still be thinking of an affair.

“Yes, and I have an eighteen-year-old daughter at boarding school. Finishing up.” Love pumped up and down on the stairs. She was so delighted to hear that Bill already had a child that she felt almost guilty. Out of town, previous reproductive success, a business owner—Love ran down her mental checklist, and glanced around the gym. There were two noticeably pregnant women using free weights, and who knew how many others not yet showing. Many of Love’s friends, co-workers, and acquaintances were now, in their late thirties and early forties, starting families. In the past eighteen months, Love had taken a crash course on new millennium parenthood: seven-grain zwieback crackers, strollers with allterrain mountain bike tires. She saw women in the gym and on the cross-country paths with healthy, swollen bellies. Love’s desire to be a mother was a physical, painful hunger. Since her fortieth birthday, she could think of nothing else. Love wanted a baby, flesh and blood that would be connected to her for the rest of her life, and she wanted to raise her child alone. There was a group in Aspen called Single Mothers by Choice; Love saw their flyer posted in the health food store. When she finally got pregnant, she would join.