The Boiling Season (18 page)

“She didn't believe me when I said I knew the guy who ran this place,” Paul said, winking at me when Claudette looked away.

“Paul,” she said sharply, “the food is getting cold.”

“Let it,” Paul burbled, signaling to Georges, one of the waiters. “More champagne. And another glass.”

“No, no,” I said. I managed to catch Georges by the sleeve and gesture that he should forget the glass. I immediately wished I had vetoed the champagne, too.

“This is my oldest and dearest friend,” Paul said, grasping Claudette's shoulder. She shrugged him off. “We've known each other since we were kids.”

“A long time,” I said. A time that I had lately found it increasingly easy to forget.

He grinned. “A
very
long time. How have you been? It's cruel of you not to keep in touch with your friends.” His voice kept rising, and the people at the neighboring tables were eyeing us again.

“Don't go,” Paul said, seeing me begin to back away. “Let's get you a chair.” He was looking around for an empty seat, and finally he found one, a few tables away. I saw him reach into his pocket. The roll of bills he produced was so thick he had trouble getting it out. But once he did, he proceeded to snap several off the top. As he reached out for the chair, he let the two fingers holding the folded bills stray in the direction of one of the men sitting at the table.

Even in the dim light I could see the man's face redden. He was a regular customer, an official of some kind. “Take the chair,” he said through clenched teeth, careful to enunciate every syllable, “and sit down.”

Paul waved the bills once more, but the man had already turned away.

“I can't sit,” I said, pulling Paul away from the empty chair.

Claudette was gone from the table. I spotted her across the restaurant, making her hurried way toward the restroom.

As I helped Paul to his seat, I saw M. Gadds watching from the doorway.

“Promise me you'll come visit,” Paul said. “Promise.” Perhaps it was just an effect of the champagne, but the way he looked up at me, his eyes red and glistening, I could not possibly say no.

In the kitchen, I met M. Gadds's scowl with one in kind.

“We cannot afford this kind of embarrassment,” I said, nearly shaking as I passed. How could I ever have imagined such a friendship could endure?

“We must make sure,” I said, “that he never be allowed to come back.”

Chapter Thirteen

A
s with everything else, the idea had been Madame's. I first learned about it the day we received the airmailed carton full of crisp, shiny brochures printed on heavy stock. “The Wedding of Your Dreams,” it said in elegant script on the front panel, above a black-and-white photo of the manor house front-lit by the setting sun. And inside, the orchid and the rose gardens, the pavilion done up in flowers and silk. On the back were the packages, the most decadent of which delivered bride and groom by horseback to the altar. We would provide everything: the minister, the banquet and champagne, the string quartet, the floral arrangements, the children bearing baskets of petals, even—if one wished—the handmade dress. Nowhere was there any mention of price.

Almost immediately, the dates began to fill. M. Gadds would permit only a single wedding each month. We could have managed more, but I think he enjoyed being able to turn people away. So desperate were so many couples for one of the few available slots they were willing to sign onto a waiting list in the faint hope that ill fortune might strike someone ahead of them. I remember it happening just once, a young couple flying across the ocean on two days' notice to step into the plans someone else had already set in motion.

In the spring of our second year, a musician from the States famous enough to be known even here rented out the entire estate for his wedding party.

“It's what everyone will be talking about,” Madame wrote elatedly from back home. “If he leaves happy, we'll have more business than we ever dreamed of.”

In truth, it was difficult to imagine how we could accommodate any more business than we had already, but even still I could not help sharing in her excitement.

“We will not let you down, Madame,” I wrote in return. “We will see to it that everything is perfect.”

The next afternoon, I went to speak with M. Gadds.

“We should call a meeting of all the staff,” I said, standing before his desk. “We need to make it clear how important this is. They should know our expectations will be higher than ever before.”

M. Gadds could barely be bothered to glance at me over the top of his glasses. “We shall do no such thing.” He turned back to the document he had been reading. “The staff don't need to be told to do their jobs.”

“But Madame—”

“Need I remind you,” he said, snapping off his glasses, “that I am the one running this hotel? Not you.”

He may have been the one running the hotel, but it was clear to me that I was the one who truly cared about Habitation Louvois. For M. Gadds, it was just another job. For Mme Freeman and me, it was the most important thing of all.

D
uring the few days remaining until the guests arrived, I stayed out of M. Gadds's way. If he wanted to do everything himself, who was I to argue? But even if he was willing to ignore the importance of the occasion, I was taking no chances. I had my reputation to be concerned with; the hotel might have been his, but the estate was mine. I personally went through each villa myself, making sure there was nothing in need of repair. And I walked every inch of the grounds with the gardeners in tow, pointing out every twig and leaf that needed to be clipped.

D
espite his optimism, the first sign appeared early on that things might not go as smoothly as M. Gadds had hoped.

The arrival of the wedding party passed without incident—no small feat, considering its size and the fact that they all came at once. But as the taxis pulled away and the guests crowded into the lobby to collect their keys, I watched the blood drain from M. Gadds's face.

He had made a gross miscalculation.

Even without taking the time to count, I could see there were more than two of them for every bed.

The musician was tall and thin, with deep-set eyes of mossy green. Propped against the front desk, he looked like an ivory statue of some ancient nobleman, radiating a warm, placid glow.

M. Gadds threw back his shoulders and took a deep breath. “I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid there are far more of you than we expected.” He looked from one to the next, as if hoping someone among them might be prepared to accept the blame. “Had we known,” he said, shaking his head with regret, “this could have been avoided. What I would propose, as a courtesy—”

“What's he saying?”

Without even turning to see who had spoken, the musician lifted his hand for silence.

M. Gadds raised his voice so everyone would be able to hear. “I will personally make the arrangements at the Hotel Erdrich for those of you we cannot accommodate here.”

I recall the musician smiling as he ran a finger over the contours of his chin. He had not shaved in days.

“We don't mind sharing,” he said in a tired baritone, reaching out for the key.

The other members of the wedding party, draped over each other on the lobby furniture, began to stir. With their identical long hair and denims, it was hard even to tell the men and the women apart. I had no idea which one might be the bride.

N
ever had I seen a wedding party in which everyone was so young. I doubted there was anyone among them a day over thirty. At the time I remember thinking it strange that someone would choose to exclude his family from so important an occasion. I quickly came to see, however, that this was the least of the conventions they were intent on breaking.

Less than an hour after the musician and his friends checked in, a maid sent to deliver extra towels returned to the manor house in a state of distress. I found her in the kitchen, chewing on her thumbnail.

“What is it?” I asked. “What's wrong?”

She would not speak until we had reached the privacy of my office and I had closed the door.

“They're not wearing bathing suits,” she whispered. It was not clear who she thought might overhear.

I turned to the window. “Surely that can't be.” Did I expect proof to be sitting out on the front lawn? Did part of me hope it was? “Perhaps someone forgot to bring one.”

She grimaced and shook her head. “Not one. All of them.”

Somehow word had already reached M. Gadds. I heard footsteps rushing down the corridor. He burst in without knocking.

He could not have heard a word we had said, yet he immediately grabbed the maid by the arm, pulling her out of her seat.

“This is not your concern,” he said to me.

“Nor do I wish it to be.”

When they reached the door, he turned back. “I don't ever want to catch you meddling in my business again.”

“There is nothing I would like more,” I said, “than to be able to do my job without having to do yours as well.”

There was rage in his eyes, but I knew I could not be blamed for putting it there.

A
n hour later, as I sat on my balcony minding my own business, a topless young woman showed up at the front desk wanting an aspirin.

H
owever much they may have adored his music, the maids complained the loudest. Soon they flatly refused to go to the villas. The rumors appeared to have the opposite effect on some of the younger waiters and houseboys, who showed uncharacteristic dedication to their work. That first night, half of them continued to volunteer their services even hours after their shifts were supposed to have ended.

It had long been Madame's motto that luxury meant catering to every conceivable need and whim—and doing so with gusto—but by the second day of the wedding party's stay it became clear by the smiles on the houseboys' faces that we were satisfying some desires she had never intended.

Being unwilling to reprimand the guests and too weak to properly discipline the staff, M. Gadds resorted to reassigning as many of the young men as he could to the kitchen and the stables. I had to put the rest to work on the grounds. And so by default my regular crew of gardeners were promoted to houseboys and waiters. But of course they had no experience with the work, and no idea how to properly interact with guests. As anyone but M. Gadds could have predicted, they wasted no time in displaying the same proclivities as the others. Hardened by their labor on the grounds, they were perhaps even more popular. From the moment they started their new positions, they were constantly disappearing, abandoning even the pretense of doing what we asked of them. It was no mystery where I would find them. But much like the maids, I could not bring myself to look.

On the morning of the third day, having reached the limits of my patience, I called them all together. Looking into their bleary eyes, I could see at least half of them had not slept at all the night before.

“Have you no decency?” I asked as they tottered like reeds, barely able to stand erect. “Have you no self-respect?”

I could hear snickering in the back. Even the men right in front of me seemed to be struggling to suppress smiles. No, it was clear they were quite pleased with themselves. These were not men, they were feral dogs in heat.

“Prude,” one of them whispered.

“If you want a boss who approves,” I said, “go find yourself a pimp. This is a hotel, not a brothel.”

They were silent.

I looked them over once more in disgust. “You're fired,” I said. “All of you.”

They eyed one another then, unable to believe what they had heard.

“Let's go,” I said. “Now.”

They were too surprised to resist. I had not expected such an orderly march to the gate. They must have believed I would change my mind, give them another chance. But then we arrived, and I ordered the guards to let them through. When the first of the men hesitated, I took the automatic rifle from one of the guards' shoulders and aimed.

With the men on the other side and the gate once again closed, I sent the weaponless guard to collect their belongings.

“Dump it all in the street,” I said. “That's where they'll be working from now on.”

As for the men themselves, I had nothing more to say, nothing to prove.

T
hat same night, one of the fired gardeners tried to sneak back onto the grounds. But this time he had something other than himself to sell: vials and pouches of powder stuffed in his pockets.

When the guards brought him to me, I told them how pleased I was to see this uncharacteristic display of competence. Then I picked up the phone and called the police. He was their problem now.

By then, a little more than two years since our opening, it was beginning to become clear how difficult it was going to be to entirely seal off the estate from the less savory aspects of life on the island. Even with the violence and unrest kept in check, there were always new problems. Lately it was drugs. The island had become a way station between the two hemispheres, and so far President Duphay had proven unable to do anything about it.

And then there were also the difficulties that in all fairness M. Duphay could not be expected to control. Foremost among them was the drought we had been suffering through for months. The effect on the grounds was bad enough, as everything green inevitably began turning brown, but the lack of rain also meant the newly constructed dam was failing to keep up with demand. Large swaths of the island had already experienced blackouts, and more were guaranteed. Although we had our own generators, it was nevertheless a worrisome reminder of the fragility of things. And the reports I had been hearing of failing crops and the resulting rise in prices and hunger across the countryside were familiar signs of trouble to come. The exposure of most of our guests to the outside world was limited to the time it took to drive from the airport to the hotel and back, but no one could say how long we could keep them isolated.

As worrying as all of that was, however, I was far more concerned with our immediate troubles. By the day of the musician's wedding, the interactions between the guests and staff had grown so unacceptable that M. Gadds and I were running from villa to villa ourselves, serving everyone at once, while the head housekeeper saw to it that no one among the staff left the manor house. Neither of us got more than a few minutes' sleep.

Much to our surprise, the ceremony itself turned out to be a subdued affair, the bride in white and the groom in a fine black suit. Although there were secular options as well, they had requested a minister to perform the ceremony, which their friends attended in quiet reverence, fully dressed and genuinely sober.

And when the bride and groom exchanged their vows and kissed, there were even more tears than usual, including among the men, many of whom were as carefully jeweled and beflowered as the bridesmaids.

* * *

After what we had been through together leading up to the wedding, it seemed to me that M. Gadds and I should have been able to make peace. For days we had been so busy that we had no choice but to set our arguments aside. But with the return to normal business following the musician's departure, M. Gadds resumed his usual antagonisms. If anything, they increased. Rarely did a day pass in which I was not accused of transgressing some supposed protocol. Not satisfied with insisting that I leave to him all matters relating to guests, he similarly decreed—despite lacking the authority to do so—that the same be true of any business involving the staff. He felt only the gardeners and occasional repairmen—about whose work he preferred to remain ignorant—should remain within my jurisdiction.

As best I could, I kept my distance. Let him think what he wished. Madame had been correct, and so, by extension, had I. Our success handling the wedding party had raised our profile even higher than it had been before. Demand surged, even though there was little we could do to meet it. We had already been filled to capacity.

Madame, it seemed, was busy, too. Nearly six months had passed since she was here last. Her letters had also grown less frequent. I could only assume it was business back home that kept her from attending to what was happening at Habitation Louvois.