Page 55 of The Hotel Nantucket
Kimber puts a finger to his lips. “I’m probably not the person you think I am either,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s summertime and we’re on an island thirty miles out to sea.”
Richie gazes at Kimber. He seems to be deliberating, and Grace, quite frankly, is on the edge of her seat. Finally, Richie puts his arms around Kimber and pulls her close. Kimber raises her face, Richie takes his glasses off and sets them on the desk—a nice touch, Grace thinks; things are about to get steamy—and kisses her.
Grace cheers silently, even though she fears the relationship won’t last. But who doesn’t love a little summer romance? She just hopes they don’t forget about that article. If they solve her murder case, she’ll finally be able to get some much needed rest. It has been an exhausting century.
It’s Friday, a day that used to mean only one thing for Chad: slightly more raucous partying than his usual weeknight partying. Chad hasn’t heard from Bryce or Eric in weeks, though he did get a text from Jasper thanking him forbeing cool about me and Winston. Chad responded,Hey, man, I’m happy for you. If you ever want to grab a bite, hit me up. Jasper hasn’t reached out yet, but he might somewhere down the road. Chad feels only relief at the disbanding of his group of friends; the solitude has turned out to be kind of nice.
However, Chad is still desperately hoping for an e-mail from Paddy.
When Chad logs into his Yahoo! account first thing in the morning, he sees an alert that someone has hacked into the operating software of both the Steamship Authority and Hy-Line Cruises. All ferry service to and from Nantucket is halted. When he goes downstairs, his mother has the local news on television.
“They’d better get this fixed, pronto,” Whitney says. “Dad is coming tonight.”
Chad snaps to attention. “He’s comingtonight?”
“Yes, silly. His deal closed; he’s driving up with the car for the rest of the summer,” Whitney says. “Can I make you an English muffin? Or…would you like a peach? They’re ripe.”
“I have to get to work,” Chad says. His mother still hasn’t quite acknowledged the fact that Chad has a job. Whitney Winslow is an expert at ignoring the things that make her uncomfortable. She obviouslyknowsthat Chad works every day at the Hotel Nantucket, but that doesn’t mean she has to talk about it. Chad wonders if she’s told his father.
Chad picks a peach out of the two dozen peaches piled in the fruit bowl; his mother has over-shopped again, and half of these will rot. Chad grabs two more. He’ll give them to Bibi, and she can take them home and make baby food or whatever.
But when Chad gets to work, Bibi isn’t there, and neither are Octavia and Neves. Because…there is no ferry service.
Ms. English accepts Chad’s offer of the two peaches with a bemused expression on her face and then pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. “It’s just you and me today, Long Shot.”
“You’regoing to clean the rooms?” Chad asks.
“Who else is going to do it?” she asks. “The cleaning fairies?”
Chad assumes that he and Ms. English will split the rooms, but when Ms. English follows him to room 209, he understands they’re going to deal with all the rooms together. They’ll inspect the check-ins first (these rooms are clean, but they need to fill the minibars and run through the hundred-point checklist anyway). Chad is nervous. What if he makes a mistake or forgets something and she fires him? He tries to pay extra attention and soon realizes that he has already been paying extra attention, because every single day, he not only does his own job but also keeps an eye on Bibi to make sure she doesn’t steal anything. The work goes quickly. Ms. English sings softly—she has a beautiful voice—and sends Chad down to the Blue Bar kitchen to get the goodies for the minibars. Down there, Chad bumps into Yolanda, the super-hot wellness guru. She’s leaning up against one of the prep tables, eating an acai bowl topped with perfect circles of banana and strawberries and talking to Beatriz, who’s over by the ovens.
“Hey, Chad,” Yolanda says, and Chad nearly drops to his knees. Hot Yolanda knows his name!
“Hey,” Chad says as casually as he can. He goes to the walk-in for the bluefish pâté, then to the pantry for the crackers, then to a special fridge for the beer and wine. He has to write down exactly what he takes in the log, for obvious reasons. When he comes out with everything in his blue plastic handbasket (it’s hard to be sexy while carrying a handbasket but Chad tries anyway), Beatriz is slicing into one of the baguettes that she just pulled out of the oven.
“Stick around,” she says to Chad. “I’m going to blow your mind.”
Yolanda giggles. “Don’t tease him, Bea.”
“Not teasing,” Beatriz says. She slathers two slices of the warm bread with butter from a crock (“Churned this myself”), lays pieces of paper-thin watermelon radish (“These were picked this morning at Pumpkin Pond Farm”) across the top, and sprinkles the radish with sea salt. Beatriz hands one piece to Chad and one to Yolanda.
“Thank you,” Chad says, and he takes a bite. The bread with the crunchy crust and the sweet, creamy butter and the peppery zing of the radish combine in a way that nearly brings Chad to tears.
Yolanda makes a loud, uninhibited moaning noise that sounds sexual and Chad feels a stirring in his pants. Theyareteasing him, but Chad doesn’t mind. It’s the first semi-normal response he’s had to anything since May.
Chad and Ms. English make their way briskly through the check-ins, but the checkouts are another story. Chad and Bibi always rate the rooms on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a room that looks like it’s barely been occupied (Bibi is amused by people who go to the trouble of making the bed before they leave) and 10 being an apocalyptic disaster. Most rooms fall between a 4 and a 6, but naturally on the day that Chad and Ms. English work alone, all five checkouts are a 10.
When they walk into room 308, Chad nearly gags. Not only is the place a horrendous mess, but it reeks. Chad vaguely remembers a pleasant-looking young couple with infant twins being in this room. There are two cribs shoehorned into the far corner, and in one crib is a dirty diaper lying wide open. Chad hurries to roll it up and throw it away, but the trash can is overflowing with dirty diapers as well as empty bottles of formula that smell like rancid milk. This couple left food all over the desk and dresser—granola bars, scattered almonds, a container of tuna salad that has, unfortunately, been sitting in the sun. There are antseverywhere. Most of the bed linens are in a heap on the floor, and the fitted sheet is stained with something brown. Chad finds half a melted Mounds bar under a pillow (that the stain is probably chocolate comes as a relief). Someone must have showered with the door open because the bathroom floor is a lake, and two of the thick Turkish towels are floating in it like islands. The father shaved in the sink and didn’t bother to clean out his whiskers, which for some reason is the thing that grosses out Chad the most.
He turns to Ms. English, aghast. He can’t believe people aren’t more considerate. He has a hazy understanding that twins are a lot of work, but don’t the parents realize someone has to clean this up? A human being? He feels like he should apologize to Ms. English, like the state of the room is somehow his fault. He realizes how much he misses working with Bibi. If she saw this, she would call the guests every profane word she knows (and she knows a bunch), and they would both feel better.
Ms. English merely snaps on a new pair of gloves. “Okay, Long Shot,” she says. “Let’s get to work.”
Thirty minutes later, the room is sparkling clean. There are fresh sheets on the bed; the cribs have been broken down and stored; the rug has been vacuumed; the food remnants have been thrown away and the ants along with them; the puddle in the bathroom is mopped up; the towels have been replaced; the sink, tub, and toilet are scrubbed. The minibar has been emptied, cleaned, and restocked. The hangers have been counted, the robes placed on the back of the bathroom door, the blow-dryer checked, the bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion refilled. It’s so satisfying, Chad thinks, restoring this room to glory. He’s almost glad he’s no longer friends with Bryce and Eric, because they wouldn’t understand this feeling.
Paddy might understand. In the summers, he ran a lawn-mowing business in his hometown of Grimesland, North Carolina. He kept a push mower in the back of his Ford Ranger and drove to his clients’ homes—most of them ranches or saltboxes that would fit into Chad’s living room—and cut the grass, fifteen bucks for front and back. He did five or six lawns a day and put all his money in the bank so he’d have it to spend at Bucknell, but even then he had to be careful and sometimes he stayed home rather than go out to Bull Run, although Chad always offered to spot him.
Chad closes his eyes. The best part about working with Bibi is that he never has time to think about Paddy or wonder if Paddy is healed enough to go back to mowing lawns and look over the grass, striped with diagonal lines, and feel proud of his handiwork.
