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 for being 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 coming tonight?”
“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 obviously knows that 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’re going 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 paté, 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. They are teasing 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 ants everywhere. 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.”