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 fruit rave. 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 with Dom. 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 a Let me take you to bed look 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 of bet, sneaky link, bop, dip, bussin’, and full 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 out yesterday, 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 for cleaning 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 wants this job. 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?”
“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 no I in team. 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 per week! And it isn’t a participation trophy! The same employee might win all eighteen weeks of the season!