Page 23 of The Hotel Nantucket
A text comes in. Edie hopes it’s her mother saying the Tater Tot Hotdish is ready. But when Edie checks, she sees the text is from Graydon: an emoji of a movie camera.
She has to pay him.
But she can’t. She has a student-loan payment due on June 15 that’s nearly half of her first paycheck.
Shewon’tpay him! Who will he send the videos to? She’s not famous; theNational Enquirerdoesn’t care about her. And their mutual friends are woke enough that they’ll realize Graydon is using his white-male privilege to get back at Edie for breaking up with him. They’ll delete the videos without watching them (she hopes) and cancel Graydon.
But what if Graydon sends the videos to hermother?Can Edie riskthat?Love had had Edie when she was forty. Now she’s sixty-two years old, and although she tries to stay current—she knows who Billie Eilish and Doja Cat are—she doesn’t quite understand the new sexual norms or the ways that Gen Z live their lives on their phones. Love probably doesn’t think that Edie’s still a virgin, but as close as they are, they never discuss sex. Nooooooo! (Edie binged the second season ofEuphoriawith her bedroom door not only closed but locked.) If Love saw Edie in the videos that Edie had allowed Graydon to take, she would die inside. Edie is Love’s pride and joy, her prize and treasure, and her obsession with Edie has grown only more intense since Vance died. The worst thing would be if Love blamedherselffor those videos, thinking that she didn’t raise Edie right or set a good example.
Edie Venmos Graydon the five hundred dollars, which is most of what she has in her bank account—it’s her graduation money. She wants to scream into the beautiful June afternoon, but she’s afraid one of her neighbors on Sunset Hill will hear her.
She gets another text. From Graydon, of course.Ty!it says. With the thumbs-up emoji.
The last person to leave the break room is the one Grace most wants to see leave: Alessandra Powell. Grace hovers above as Alessandra drops four quarters into the jukebox (these are quarters that Grace watched Alessandra lift from petty cash) and picks songs—all of them the devil-worshipping heavy metal of the 1980s. Wow, Grace hasn’t missed this music at all. She tries to spook Alessandra, positioning herself so that her figure in the white robe and Minnesota Twins cap might be reflected in the Plexiglas of the pinball machine that Alessandra has started playing. Grace does a little headbanging dance to amuse herself and get Alessandra’s attention. Does Alessandra see her? No; she remains wholly focused on keeping the silver ball in play. Grace blows cold air down the back of Alessandra’s neck, but she doesn’t seem to notice that either. This can mean only one thing—the girl has demons inside her. Grace can practically hear their taunts:You can’t scare us! Nothing scares us!
A second later, Grace realizes she’s not the only one suspicious of Alessandra. There’s someone else lurking just inside the door.
Lizbet isn’t worried about the private life of Zeke or Adam or Chad or Edie, and she certainly isn’t worried about Magda.
Alessandra is another story.
Right before the staff meeting, Mack Petersen from the Nantucket Beach Club called to congratulate Lizbet on opening day and ask how things were going. Mack did this in good faith despite the fact that they’re direct competitors—Lizbet knows Mack from her days at the Deck. She couldn’t keep herself from bragging, “I have Sweet Edie on my desk.”
“You know I’m envious. She’s my godchild.”
“And I ended up hiring that woman Alessandra? The one who had been working in Italy?”
Mack said, “I’m not sure who you mean.”
“Wasn’t she supposed to interview with you? Alessandra Powell? For your front desk?”
Mack said, “I didn’t have any front-desk positions open this year. The only position I hired someone for was night bell. I got lucky and nearly my entire staff from last year returned.”
“Oh,” Lizbet said. She was stymied for a second. Hadn’t Alessandra said she was interviewing with Mack at the Beach Club? She had. She told Lizbet that Mack had basically offered her a position on the desk! “Well, let’s hope I get that lucky next year.”
Alessandra had lied, and that didn’t feel great. Lizbet should have been more guarded during their interview, but Alessandra had charmed her—bringing Lizbet a sandwich when she knew she was interviewing right before lunch. How canny! How clever! (How manipulative!) And then she’d dodged the questions about her references. This manager retired, this one died, there is no one in all of Europe who can vouch for my performance. Lizbet had called all four of the hotels listed on the résumé, and only at one hotel—the Grand Hotel Tremezzo—had she found someone who could verify that yes, Alessandra Powell had worked there for two years, but no, nobody was around at that moment who had known Alessandra personally. Lizbet left messages at the other three hotels and is waiting for them to call back—though what is she going to do now? Fire Alessandra? The woman is exceedingly professional on the desk, and she’s stunning to look at. She’s beautiful enough to get away with murder.
Lizbet is about to start her shift on the night desk (theyneeda night auditor!) when she realizes she saw everyone on her staff leave the hotel except Alessandra.
Lizbet cracks open the door to the break room. Alessandra is standing at the pinball machine gyrating her hips like she’s making love to the thing, and the machine is dinging and flashing its lights like it’s enjoying it. The jukebox is playing “Same Old Situation” by Mötley Crüe, which Lizbet hasn’t heard since she listened to 92 KQRS back in the Twin Cities growing up.
When the game is over—Alessandra must be pretty good, because it lasts longer than half the men Lizbet has been with—and the song changes to “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC (nearly every song on the jukebox is from the previous century), Alessandra steps up to the soft-serve ice cream machine and swirls herself a gigantic bowl of chocolate. She digs in like she hasn’t eaten in days.
“Hey,” Lizbet says, stepping into the room.
Alessandra blinks. Her wavy apricot-colored hair falls over one shoulder.
“We haven’t really had a chance to chat,” Lizbet says.
“Chat?” Alessandra says. Her spoon hovers over the peak of ice cream.
Lizbet considers confronting Alessandra with her lie about Mack and the Beach Club, but she doesn’t, because the fact is, she can’t afford for Alessandra to get defensive and quit. “I thought maybe we could get to know each other a little?” Lizbet hears how hokey this sounds, even pandering, as though she’s sucking up to the most popular girl at school.Can we please be friends?She changes tacks. “Would you like me to call you an Uber? Where are you living?”
“I don’t need an Uber, I can walk. I’m living on Hulbert Avenue.”
Hulbert Avenue?Lizbet thinks. That’s the most exclusive address in town; all of those homes front the harbor. “Nice,” Lizbet says. “Are yourentingon Hulbert?”
“I have a friend with a house,” Alessandra says.
