“And your head chef, he recently retired, correct?”
“Retired?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair. “He’s not here anymore, but I’m not sure he really retired.”
“Do we need to hash this out again?” Archie sighed.
“It’s not hashing it out if she asks,” Mrs. Toomey quipped back, smiling broadly at me as though encouraging me to please yes, dig a little deeper here. But I’d already stepped in it with Archie enough as it was, so I decided to hedge my bet a bit.
“You know what, let’s table that for now and move on to overall bookings. Mr. Bryant was kind enough to send me figures for the last two seasons, as well as projected bookings for this summer,” I said, turning toward the senior Mr. Bryant.
He smiled warmly at me. “You’ll have to start calling me Jonathan, everyone does.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I—”
“You should call him Jonathan, really. He’ll insist,” Archie interrupted, a resigned expression on his face.
“What can I say, I love Walt Disney.” Jonathan laughed.
I shook my head. “I don’t follow.”
“Walt Disney had his first name, and first name only, put on his name tag, no one was ever allowed to call him Mr. Disney. He felt it separated himself from his team too much, he wanted everyone to feel like they had an equal stake in the outcome.”
“I love this idea,” I said, agreeing instantly with where he was coming from. A few of the others were chuckling, including Archie. “You don’t feel the same?”
“It’s not that I don’t want everyone to feel like they’re on the same team, but—”
“Archie takes a more formal approach than I do when we’re at work, always has. Much more like my father in that respect, I suppose,” Jonathan said, not without some pride.
“Grandfather took a formal approach to everything, Dad. He’d have hemorrhaged if he saw men in shorts at the breakfast service.”
“Shorts?” I asked.
“We relaxed the dress code several years ago,” Archie explained.
“Twenty, it was twenty years ago.” His father laughed. “I’ll never forget because you walked into your graduation brunch in the main dining hall in Bermuda shorts and your grandmother whispered to me that it was a good thing he’d died the year before because the sight of bare knees in the dining hall would’ve put your grandfather in an early grave.”
Someone at the end of the table remarked that he certainly didn’t have a problem when miniskirts were all the rage in the ’60s and the conversation was lost at that point. Stories about days gone by, tall tales and laughter and memories and traditions. As I sat back and watched this family, by blood or by proxy, I was reminded once more that the stories this family had in their back pockets alone could stack a library ten feet high. This is what I needed them to remember when the changes began. I decided not to circle back and bring up the projected bookings for this summer. Why bring the room down when they seemed to be having so much fun reminiscing? They could go back to worrying later on, and worry they would. If the metrics were correct, they were due for their worst summer ever.
As talk wound down, I waded back in. “Thank you, everyone, for this impromptu meeting this morning. I know some of you may question my methods, up to and including the reason I checked in yesterday under a different name.” I lifted my bagel in Archie’s direction, and he lifted his coffee cup in return. “But I really am here to help. And I want to hear these stories, all of your stories, to get a better idea of who you all are, and what the inherent DNA is of this place. So please, hold nothing back, share whatever you feel comfortable sharing, and I promise you, I’ll work my tail off in return. Agreed?”
Voices echoed back from around the table. “Agreed.”
I was about to stand up when Jonathan spoke.
“You were checked in under Melanie Bixby for two nights, correct?”
“I was,” I replied, a you-got-me look on my face.
“Well then, you’re still Melanie Bixby as far as I’m concerned. Which means you’re still on vacation. So no shop talk for the rest of today, I want you to relax and enjoy yourself. Make yourself at home. We’ll start, what did you say, working our tail off tomorrow, got it?”
Surprised, and pleased, I nodded.
“And as a special treat, Archie will be your personal tour guide today.”
“Wait, what?” we both said, making Jonathan smile bigger than I’d seen him smile all day. He sat back in his chair, hands steepled together and looking back and forth between us.
“Yes, I think a tour is definitely in order.”
The meeting now over, everyone filed out, chatting companionably, giving me their own welcome and thank you and excited to get started as they passed by. Jonathan was the last to leave, giving me a broad smile and a strong handshake on his way out.
And then it was just me and Archie. Staring each other down.
I nodded, resigned to it. “Um, okay, well, I’ll just go put my bag in my room and—”
“If you want a tour, you might want to consider changing into more comfortable shoes,” Archie interrupted, looking down at my heels. A habit I’d picked up from Natalie, I was obsessed with stilettos, the taller the better. I noticed he looked at my shoes, but then his eyes lingered on my legs. My eyes narrowed.
“Oh, I think I can keep up.”
And that’s how I got my own personal tour of Bryant Mountain House.
“So, where should we start?” I asked, as we left the conference room.
He regarded me coolly. “There’s a tour every morning of the resort, led by a different member of the staff. Mr. Phelps is leading it today, and he’s a great guide, very informative. It’ll get started in a few minutes, leaving from the Lakeside Lounge. Should give you a good idea of what it is you’re working with.” He started to walk away, but I called out after him.
“I thought you were going to give me my tour?”
“Ms. Morgan, I have many things to do this morning, many things. The last thing I have time for is a walk around the grounds.”
I gritted my teeth. “And the last thing I want to do is to spend my morning with a cranky owner’s son disguised as a bellman who says he can move mountains for his guests except manage to get a television into a hotel room, but I took this job, and your father hired me, so I’m going to do whatever it is your father wants. And he wanted you to give me the tour, not pawn it off on poor Mr. Phelps.” Like it or not, he was going to be my tour guide. “So, where do we start?”
He turned back toward me, looking more irritated than he had all morning. “Are you this much of a wrecking ball on all your projects?”
“Funny you should mention wrecking balls, Mr. Bryant, as that’s exactly what I make sure doesn’t happen on any of my projects.”
He flinched. “That’ll never happen here. I won’t allow that to happen here.”
“And that’s exactly why you need my help,” I reminded him.