Page 14 of The Hotel Nantucket
“I should probably get upstairs,” Lizbet says.
“I lied to him, you know,” Mario says.
“Excuse me?”
“I told him I’d never heard of the Deck. I’ve been away from the island, sure, but I haven’t been living on Mars. You two did some real stuff at that place, huh? A rosé fountain? Wish I’d thought of that seventeen years ago. And I heard the food was banging.”
“‘Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end,’” Lizbet says. “Oh, but end they did. I left the Deck and I left him. We’ll see what happens this summer.”
Mario smirks. “This summer, I steal all his customers.”
God, you’re cocky,Lizbet thinks—or maybe in her caffeine mania she actually whispers it, because Mario bursts out laughing. “I know you need to be upstairs to start your very important general managing, but can I ask your quick opinion on something?” He waves her into the gleaming white-and-stainless-steel kitchen of the Blue Bar. Lizbet watches him for a second, thinking she’d like to put her stiletto right up his ass. It’s only seven thirty in the morning and she’s already had enough of chefs for one day.
But she follows him anyway.
“I was just back here doing a little mixology,” Mario says. “Come see.” He leads Lizbet over to a wide butcher block made of zebrawood—they spared no expense down here—that’s crowded with fruit. There are tiny wild strawberries, kaffir limes, watermelons, blood oranges, kiwis, dragon fruits, rambutans, mangoes, two kinds of cherries (bing and golden Rainier), guavas, blackberries, coconuts, grapefruits, and something that looks like—yes, it is—a pink pineapple. It’s a fruit festival, a fruit jamboree, a fruitrave. Down the counter is the alcohol, all top-shelf: Plymouth gin, Finlandia vodka, Casa Dragones tequila. Lizbet is impressed from a cost standpoint alone.
“I just need one more cocktail for my list. What do you think of this?” Mario reaches for a beaker filled with a liquid the color of a deep red sunset. He pours it into a stemless wineglass and tops it with champagne. It’s Dom Pérignon, Lizbet realizes. Mario is doing his mixology experiments withDom. That’s quite a flex.
She shouldn’t drink before eight a.m. on her first day of work, but Lizbet’s focus is stretched out like a Slinky and she needs something to combat the aggressiveness of the espresso.
She takes a sip.Gah!So good. Another sip, in the interest of figuring out what’s in the drink. Vodka. Strawberries. Ginger? Yes, there’s a knob of ginger on the board. And some of the blood-orange juice.
She shrugs. “It’s fine, I guess.”
A slow smile crosses Mario’s face and Lizbet takes a close look at him. In the magazine picture that hangs on JJ’s office wall, Mario is much younger: smooth olive skin, thick dark hair, and aLet me take you to bedlook in his eyes. He’s older now; his hair and goatee are flecked with silver. He has lines cut deep into his forehead and radiating from the corners of his eyes. But he still has the swagger—and he knows this cocktail is the best thing Lizbet has ever tasted, that she would swim in it if she could.
“Well, then,” he says. “We’ll name that one for you. The Heartbreaker.”
Magda English might be middle-aged, but her nephew Zeke has taught her some things. She knows that the rapper Pop Smoke is dead and that Wednesdays are called “Woo Back Wednesdays” in his honor. She knows about Polo G, House of Highlights, the Shade Room, and all things Barstool. She knows the modern meanings ofbet, sneaky link, bop, dip, bussin’,andfull send. And Magda knows what a Chad is—it’s a young man who embodies a certain stereotype of wealth and privilege: boarding school, college, trust fund, pastel polo shirts worn with the collar flipped up, golf, ski house, summer house, “vodka soda close it,” and a river of money flowing from his adoring parents.
Therefore, Magda finds it amusing that the young man she’s about to interview is actually named Chad.Chadwick Winslow of Radnor, Pennsylvania,the résumé on fine ivory stock announces. His appearance doesn’t disappoint: He has shown up to the housekeeping office in khakis, pink shirt, a tie printed with starfish holding martinis, and a navy blazer. Boat shoes without socks. He has thick blond hair and the smooth cheeks of a child. His résumé also tells Magda that he’s twenty-two, graduated from Bucknell with a major in “general humanities,” and was in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. His previous work experience was as a counselor at a golf camp.
Although Magda has no idea what this child is doing in her office, she’s not unhappy to see him. One of her four staff cleaners called to back outyesterday,the day before the hotel opened. When Magda informed Lizbet of this, Lizbet pulled young Master Winslow’s résumé out of a folder that she jokingly (or maybe not) called “the Last Resort file.”
“This kid stopped by the other day, insisting he wanted to clean. Honestly, I thought it was a prank. But feel free to call him and see if he was serious.”
When Magda called, Chad sounded eager to come for an interview, and he showed up on time today—first hurdle cleared. But it could still be a prank, a bet, a dare, or a simple misunderstanding.
Magda says, “You realize, son, that I’m looking forcleaning staff?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re twenty-two, a college graduate. I could see you wanting to work the bell stand. But I don’t understand why you’d want to clean hotel rooms.”
Chad clears his throat. “I messed up. Badly.”
“You won’t get rich cleaning rooms,” Magda says. “Have you asked about a job at the Blue Bar?”
“I want to clean rooms, ma’am.”
But why?Magda thinks.This makes no sense.“Do you have any cleaning experience?” she asks.
“I help my mom around the house from time to time. And I was the social chair for my fraternity, so I was in charge of setting up for parties and cleaning up afterward.”
Magda shakes her head, perplexed; she thought for sure he’d applied for the wrong job. From the looks of his clothes, he has plenty of money. And yet, she can see the earnestness on his face; for some reason, he wantsthisjob. She studies the résumé. The local address he gave is Eel Point Road, which Magda has recently learned is high-roller real estate.
“Did your parents make you apply for this job? Are they trying to teach you some kind of lesson?”
