Page 15 of The Hotel Nantucket
“No, ma’am, it was my idea.”
Young Chadwick Winslow sounds like he’s telling the truth. Magda is intrigued.
“You would be the fourth and final member of our cleaning team, and as…the lacrosse coach at the Episcopal School might have informed you, there is noIinteam. You won’t get special treatment because you’re male or because you have a college degree, and there will be no exceptions made because you went to the Chicken Box and are feeling too hungover to clean toilets. I need you here on time and ready to work. This isn’t golf camp, Chadwick. It’s stripping sheets and picking up wet towels and scrubbing shower stalls until they gleam. It’s dealing with other people’s excrement and urine and vomit and blood and semen and hair. I hope you have a strong stomach.”
“I do.”
Well, let’s hope so,Magda thinks,because I need someone today.“I’m going to gamble and offer you the job,” she says. She can’t believe she’s doing this. There’s a 99 percent chance the kid won’t last two weeks. He might not even last two days.
But Magda loves a long shot.
“Thank you,” Chad says. “I won’t let you down.”
“You’ll start right now,” Magda says. “It’s opening day, the rooms are all clean, and that will give me a chance to train you.”
“Now is great!” Chad says. He has at least enough sense to take his blazer off and roll up his sleeves.
“So what did you do?” she asks. “When you messed up?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not say.”
“It’s none of my business,” Magda says. “I was just curious. I happen to believe, Chadwick, that even the biggest disasters can be cleaned up, and I’ll teach you to believe it too.”
Edie Robbins wakes up on the morning of her first day of work on the front desk, checks her phone, and sees the e-mail from Xavier Darling.Yes!she thinks.Yes-yes-yes!Xavier is offering a thousand-dollar bonus perweek!And it isn’t a participation trophy! The same employee might win all eighteen weeks of the season!
Edie smells bacon frying. Just like every year on Edie’s first day of school, there will be bacon and eggs for breakfast and Tater Tot Hotdish for dinner. Edie’s mother, Love, is trying to keep everything in their lives the same—even though nothing has been the same since Edie’s father, Vance Robbins, died of a heart attack. Although Love says she’s “doing okay”—she has taken a full-time job at Flowers on Chestnut to “keep busy”—Edie can sense she’s still grieving. This is why Edie decided to spend the summer at home. Also, she had to get away from her ex-boyfriend Graydon.
Edie’s plan is to save as much money as she can over the summer and apply for a job out in the “real world”—New York, São Paulo, London, Sydney, Shanghai—in the fall. She has a crippling student-loan payment (the Ivy League wasn’t cheap), so although her hourly pay is more than she anticipated, an extra thousand dollars would really help.
She will win it, she decides. She’ll win it every week. She is ready to slay!
Edie’s fiercest competition for the prize money will be her partner on the front desk, Alessandra Powell. When Edie arrives at work—nearly ten minutes early—Alessandra is already there, and she has nabbed the more desirable computer, the one closest to the open end of the desk (Edie will have to scoot by Alessandra every time she comes or goes).
“Good morning, Alessandra!” Edie says brightly.
Alessandra does an oh-so-quick-but-still-noticeable up-and-down of Edie, presses her lips together, and says in a tone that is not cold but also not warm, “Good morning.”
Edie wills herself not to take offense; from what Edie observed at training and during the first staff meeting, Alessandra is standoffish. (Maybe not a mean girl, but maybe notnota mean girl.) That, Edie can deal with. She has a harder time accepting that Alessandra is the front-desk manager. Edie doesn’t understand why there has to be a front-desk manager when there are only two desk people hired so far. Edie realizes that Alessandra is older and has more practical job experience and speaks four languages. But something about Alessandra having the title feels wrong. She just walked in off the street; it’s her first summer on Nantucket; Lizbet doesn’t know her and neither does anyone else on this island.
The night before, at dinner, Edie complained about the situation to her mother. Love worked for years as the front-desk manager at the Nantucket Beach Club, and Edie’s father, Vance, had been the night manager.
Love sipped her wine. “I bet the two of you will be best friends by the end of the summer.”
“That’s such a mom thing to say.”
“Sorry,” Love said. “I bet the two of you are going to have a tumultuous summer marked by incidents of envious backstabbing.”
Envious, yes,Edie thinks now. Not only is Alessandra gorgeous and multilingual but she’s a walking, talking Pinterest board. Edie and Alessandra are wearing the same uniform—white pants and a silky hydrangea-blue button-down blouse. Alessandra has accessorized her uniform with a Johnnie-O canvas color-block belt that probably belongs to her boyfriend (but looksso cute!), a pair of taupe wedge sandals, and a collection of gold bangles—among which is a Cartier love bracelet—that make bright jangly sounds every time Alessandra moves her left arm. Her reddish-blond hair is long, tousled, and beachy, yet not a strand is out of place (how is that possible?). She’s wearing white eyeliner and has a tiny crystal pressed under her right eye. (At college, Edie thought eye crystals were trashy, but on Alessandra it looks chic. How is that possible?) Her name tag is upside down, which Edie thinks is a mistake but then realizes must be intentional—a conversation starter—because she can tell that Alessandra doesn’t make mistakes.
Edie, by contrast, has her hair held back in a headband, no belt (she didn’t think to wear a belt), and Skechers on her feet because she was worried about being comfortable. Her name tag is right side up.
“Thank you for setting up the coffee,” Edie says as she logs onto the computer next to the wall. She tries not to feel hemmed in or trapped (she feels both). Alessandra’s bracelets chatter in response and Edie thinks,Fine, whatever.The coffee smells rich and delicious and Edie wonders if she can pour herself a cup; Lizbet didn’t say one way or the other.
But at that moment, Edie sees her mother’s coworker Joan, from Flowers on Chestnut, rolling in a cart laden with the bouquets for the rooms. They have guests for eleven rooms checking in today and they’ve ordered a dozen Surfside Spring arrangements—enormous blue hydrangeas, pink starburst lilies, flame-orange snapdragons, and blush peonies curled up into tight little balls. Joan also has a supersize version of this arrangement for the pedestal table in the lobby.
“Sweet Edie!” Joan cries out. “Look at you on yourfirst day of work!Your mom is so proud of you.”
“Good morning, Joan,” Edie says. She hears Alessandra murmur, “Sweet Edie?” and Edie feels herself flush. That’s the thing about working on your home island, she thinks. Everyone knows you, and they all call you by your mortifying nickname. She has been Sweet Edie since she was small, her father’s fault.
