Heidi’s eyes widen. “You mean to tell me you haven’t heard the rumors?”
“I have no one to hear rumors from,” Lizbet admits. “I’m always at work. I never see anyone from my old life.”
“Well, I heard you were dating Mario Subiaco,” Heidi says. “Someone saw the two of you at the Pearl.”
Their drinks arrive and Lizbet raises her sake glass to Heidi’s highball. “I’m glad we did this.”
They touch glasses and drink. Heidi inhales nearly half her cocktail in one gulp.
“The thing with Mario didn’t work out,” Lizbet says.
“It was a good rebound, though, right?” Heidi says. “He’s so hot. And such a legend.”
Lizbet doesn’t want to talk about how hot or legendary Mario is. “So tell me about the rumors,” she says. “I’m ready.”
But as it turns out, Lizbet is not ready.
“You remember how I told you Michael was up here all spring by himself working on a project? He and this guy from his office, Rafe, want to splinter off and start their own company.”
Lizbet definitely remembers that Michael was here alone. Oh, does she.
“Well, when I showed up in June, I found an eye shadow in my makeup drawer that wasn’t mine.”
“Oh,” Lizbet says. She already doesn’t like where this story is going.
“Then I found a pair of René Caovilla stilettos in my closet. Size six.”
What? Lizbet thinks. There’s only one woman brave enough to wear René Caovilla stilettos here on Nantucket: Lyric Layton, Heidi’s best friend. In her life before husband, children, and yoga, Lyric was a shoe model in New York.
“Lyric?” she says.
“And then I found a positive pregnancy test tucked into the pages of the book on my nightstand.”
“You did not,” Lizbet says.
“As I’m sure you’ve heard, Lyric is newly pregnant with her fourth.”
Lizbet has not heard. The hotel really is a fortress. “So you think there was something going on between Michael and…Lyric?” This is smoking-hot scandalous news. No wonder Heidi is drinking tequila! Along with curiosity, Lizbet feels relief that the mistress wasn’t Alessandra.
“That’s what I thought, yes. That’s how someone wanted to make it look.”
“So it wasn’t Lyric?”
“Lyric swears not. She said if she and Michael were having an affair, there would be no way she would leave those things behind for me to find.”
Right, Lizbet thinks. No way.
Heidi throws back another healthy swallow of her drink. “We have a key to the Laytons’ house labeled on a hook in our mudroom. Michael thinks someone from his company found out that he and Rafe were planning on leaving and set out to sabotage him.”
Lizbet blinks.
“Michael thinks the guy he called to fix our Wi-Fi was actually a spy who saw the key—because, you know, the router is in our mudroom—and this guy burgled the Layton house while they were out and then planted those things in our house.”
“Michael thinks the cable guy did it?”
“Internet guy.”
“Wow,” Lizbet says. She brings her sake to her lips; her guard is back up. There’s no chance a man would know to plant an eye shadow, shoes, and a pregnancy test. “Well, I guess you’re relieved it has nothing to do with Lyric.”
“Yes, definitely,” Heidi says. “Though it did real damage to our friendship. She’s angry that I suspected her.” Heidi leans in. “But you have to admit, it’s a hard story to swallow, that the internet guy set Michael up.”
Lizbet nods. Very hard to swallow, she thinks. Like, a handful-of-steel-screws hard to swallow.
Heidi sighs. “But Michael is in the world of petroleum and you know how ruthless that is.”
Is it the kind of ruthless that would stick someone else’s pregnancy test inside a book on Heidi’s nightstand? Lizbet wonders. Or plant a different brand of eye shadow, a different type of shoe?
No, Lizbet thinks. It wasn’t the internet guy and it wasn’t Lyric. It could have been some woman that Michael was sleeping with, a woman he met on the ferry and decided to let stay awhile because it was raw, chilly spring on Nantucket and he was always up for a little action with a beautiful woman and because Michael essentially gambled for a living and because this other woman was wily and had no morals. Alessandra saw the key to the Laytons’ house and she’d probably gathered through eavesdropping or casual conversation that the Laytons next door were close friends, and she burgled the Laytons’ house so that when she vacated the premises, Heidi would think Michael was sleeping with Lyric.
“I’m having the ramen,” Heidi says. “What about you?”
“I haven’t even looked. I want sushi.” But Lizbet can’t think about sushi. She isn’t sure what to do. Should she tell Heidi what Alessandra said about meeting a “friend” on the Hy-Line back in April and staying with him on Hulbert Avenue? Should she describe following Alessandra by bike and being caught by Alessandra right in front of Heidi’s house? Should she then mention how Alessandra is a casual liar who showed up with sketchy references (all of them European, like she’s the Talented Ms. Ripley)? Should she tell Heidi how Alessandra is so startlingly beautiful that she’s managed to overwhelm the hotel’s male guests?
It’s a proper quandary, one meant for an advice column. If I suspect a friend’s husband was cheating on her with someone I know, do I tell her? Or do I let her believe that it wasn’t a mistress but rather a revenge plotted by her husband’s nefarious work colleagues?
The affair, Lizbet reasons, is over. Heidi and Michael are settling back into their summertime routine of beach and tennis and driving the kids to camp and going out to dinner. Who is Lizbet to disrupt their lives on a hunch? She has no actual proof it was Alessandra.
But one thing is for sure: Lizbet is going to start watching Alessandra more closely.
“The spicy tuna roll looks good,” Lizbet says. “And let’s get some sashimi.”
August 8, 2022
From: Xavier Darling ([email protected])
To: Employees of the Hotel Nantucket
Good morning, all—
This week on TravelTattler I noted a lovely review of our hotel that expressly mentioned bellman Ezekiel English. This guest praised Ezekiel’s intimate knowledge of the island, including the recommendation of Stubby’s to satisfy our guest’s late-night case of the “munchies.” Outstanding job, Ezekiel!
XD
Edie and Zeke are, once again, eating ice cream together in the break room when Raoul pops his head in and says, “Congrats, Zeke. You won the bonus this week.”
“I did?” Zeke says, and Edie thinks, He did?
They check their phones, and sure enough, there’s the letter from Xavier.
Zeke laughs. “Those guests were plastered; they’d just gotten back from the Chicken Box and the dude was starving. I guess he assumed there would be chicken at the Chicken Box—”
Edie offers a lame smile that Zeke doesn’t seem to notice.
“But since we all know there is not one piece of chicken at the Chicken Box, I sent them to Stubby’s. And he wrote about it. Ha!”
Ha, Edie thinks. Her crush on Zeke has only grown more excruciating with each passing day, but that doesn’t stop her from feeling bitter that he won the money for recommending Stubby’s, which is essentially Nantucket’s version of a McDonald’s drive-through.
“Why were you even working night bell?” she asks. “Where was Adam?”
“It was the night he and Raoul went to the White Heron to see that play,” Zeke says. “I covered Adam’s shift.”
He deserves the money, Edie thinks. He worked a double so Adam and Raoul could have a date night. She feels resentful that she can’t even be properly resentful.
Zeke tosses his nearly full bowl of ice cream into the trash. “I’m going to run to Indian Summer and see about a new longboard,” he says. He gives Edie’s shoulders a squeeze. “Your boy is hyped!”
Edie would normally be glowing from the half-hug and the use of the term your boy, but once Zeke leaves, Edie feels bereft.
Then something on her phone catches her attention.
August 8, 2022
Abigail Rashishe—Cornell School of Hotel Administration Alumni Facebook Page