That’s it, she thinks. He didn’t show the slightest interest. He didn’t flirt, didn’t wink, didn’t smile; his eyes didn’t linger. He wasn’t intrigued, wasn’t attracted. He didn’t even get her name right.
When Alessandra gets back to the desk, she isn’t thinking straight. Edie is on the phone, so there’s no immediate follow-up questioning about how it went, although Alessandra is tempted to confide in Edie because she needs a friend. But what would she say? I’ve been trying to find a suitable man all summer, someone who will make my life easier. Edie would be appalled! Edie is idealistic, not only about marrying for love but also about women making their own way in the world. What kind of dinosaur pursues a sugar daddy? I can’t meet a regular guy and lead a normal middle-class life, I’m not programmed that way. I need someone of Xavier’s caliber and there are only a certain number of straight, unattached billionaire men, Edie.
Just as she is about to admit defeat—she’ll be a hotel desk clerk forever; her beauty will wash out like an Old Masters painting left in direct sunlight; she’ll die alone with her broken dreams—she remembers that she has a rip cord. She slips into the break room and pulls out her phone. She feels a sharp stab of guilt because she’s standing at the very counter where she and Edie fought back against exactly the kind of blackmail that Alessandra is about to initiate.
But, sorry, she’s desperate.
She finds the pictures of herself in the Bicks’ house on Hulbert Avenue and sends them in separate text messages to Michael Bick.
I need fifty thousand more, she types. Otherwise, these go to your wife.
She’d like to claim cramps and go home, but there’s only an hour left in her shift and she’s dependent on Raoul for a ride because of her Jeep’s crapped-out transmission, so she decides to show some grit and finish the day. She feels she’s made the right decision and is, perhaps, being rewarded when a good-looking, broad-shouldered gentleman pulling a roller bag and carrying an attaché case steps into the lobby. He glances from Edie to Alessandra, and although Alessandra has stopped treating the front desk like a beauty pageant or a popularity contest, she smiles at the gentleman and he grins and strolls right over to her.
Good boy, Alessandra thinks. In seconds, he’ll be eating out of her hand. “Good afternoon, welcome to the Hotel Nantucket,” she says. “Checking in?” Screw you, Xavier Darling, she thinks. You lost out.
The gentleman pulls out his driver’s license—Robert Ianucci from Holliston, Massachusetts—and a gold American Express.
“Bob Ianucci,” he says. “Here for two nights.” He winks at her. “Your name tag is upside down.”
“Ah, you noticed! I’m Alessandra, the front-desk manager. What a pleasure to meet you.”
Bob Ianucci—Italian; she likes it—isn’t wearing a wedding ring. Alessandra gets him checked in, thinking, Gold card, not platinum card, a room, not a suite, and Holliston is a Boston suburb—a nice suburb, but a suburb just the same. Bob Ianucci isn’t worth going after but Alessandra needs an ego boost—oh, does she—and so when she slides Bob Ianucci his key cards, she attaches a yellow sticky note with her number on it and says, “If you need any help with dinner reservations, just let me know. That’s my personal cell phone. I’m here for whatever you need.”
Bob Ianucci peels the sticky note off the key-card envelope and regards it with a bemused expression. “Are you soliciting me?” he asks.
Alessandra runs her gaze over Bob Ianucci and notices things she overlooked in her haste: His blandly corporate look—gray suit pants, white shirt, navy striped tie, Seiko watch—his tight, military-style haircut, his close shave, his square jaw, and his direct gaze and she thinks, Oh God. She can’t believe she didn’t notice it right off the bat. This guy is a cop. Or, worse, a detective.
“What?” she says. “No!” She laughs and Bob Ianucci laughs and says, “Oh, too bad,” and the whole thing becomes a joke and Bob Ianucci rolls his bag onto the elevator, and when the doors close, Alessandra turns to Edie and says, “I feel like the green-puke emoji, I’m sorry.”
Edie says, “Go home, girl, I got this.”
Alessandra wants to hug Edie, she is so grateful, but she “doesn’t want to get Edie sick,” and so she just collects her bag and scoots out the doors into the bright and newly confusing world.
23. Full Send
The Brant Point Grill is the restaurant at the White Elephant Hotel and Resort, the Hotel Nantucket’s rival, so it seems like an odd choice for drinks—but Ms. English picked it and who is Chad to argue? The spacious bar has a lot of dark wood and big mirrors and the clientele is older and more sophisticated than in the places Chad frequents (or frequented, in his past life). There’s a jazz combo playing in the corner—piano, drums, stand-up bass. Past the bar, Chad can see the elegant dining room, where enormous windows offer a vista of the flat blue sheet of Nantucket harbor, dotted with boats.
Chad has been to the restaurant before with his parents, an Easter brunch one year when Paul and Whitney thought it would be “fun” to visit the island in the off-season, but Chad remembers that he and Leith had been disenchanted by the whole experience—it was cold enough for them to need winter parkas on April 9 and everything was still closed downtown, including the Juice Bar and their yacht club, which was how they’d ended up at the Brant Point Grill.
Ms. English leads Chad to two seats at the long bar, ones that are in front of a mirror, which means that Chad is confronted with the reflection of himself sitting next to his now-fancy boss in a bar.
“What would you like, Long Shot?” Ms. English asks. “Drinks are on me.”
“I can pay,” Chad says.
Ms. English laughs. She motions for the bartender, who hurries over to take their order. “The usual, neat, for me, Brian.”
“Appleton Estate Twenty-One, Magda, you got it,” Brian says with a wink.
They know each other, Chad thinks. Ms. English comes here, to the rival hotel’s restaurant. He supposes it’s better than getting a drink at the Blue Bar, where Ms. English is still sort of at work and where everyone knows her. Another good thing about the Brant Point Grill, he realizes, is that they’re anonymous, surrounded by another hotel’s guests.
“I’ll have a…” Chad is hesitant to order his usual, a vodka soda, because that’s the stereotypical Chad drink. At the long-ago brunch, his parents ordered Bloody Marys, which came extravagantly garnished—one with a lobster tail on a skewer and one with a cheeseburger slider—but Chad doesn’t want to inflate Ms. English’s bar tab with an expensive drink. “A beer,” he says. “Whale’s Tale, if you have it on draft?”
“We do,” Brian says. He sidles away to make the drinks. Although Chad is dying to ask Ms. English the question that’s reverberating through his mind, he knows enough to wait until their drinks have been set before them and they’ve raised their glasses to each other.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Chad says.
“Thank you for coming, Long Shot. This is way overdue.”
Is it? Chad thinks. There’s no time to consider how long Ms. English has been wanting to invite him for drinks, because the urge to know what happened to Bibi is overwhelming.
“So, what…”
“Barbara gave her notice at the beginning of last week,” Ms. English says. “She was accepted at UMass Dartmouth with a scholarship and she’s going to pursue a degree in criminal justice.”
“What?” Chad says. “She is?”
“Yes, how about that! She forwarded me her acceptance e-mail—I fear because she thought I wouldn’t believe her. Her first day of classes was today.”
Bibi wasn’t fired. She didn’t go on the lam looking for Johnny Quarter. She wasn’t bullied by Octavia and Neves (that was a crazy theory). She was going to college on a scholarship! Chad is embarrassed to find tears gathering in his eyes—he’s so proud of her!