Margot watches Alphonso talking to the administrative staff in his office—the higher-ups who run his hotel resort when he’s not around. Alphonso is pacing as he gives orders, looking like a boy balancing a crown on his head while walking a tight rope. Through the tilted louver windows with curtains that separate the front desk from the conference room, she can hear and see a few things—Dwight, the branch manager, clutching his pen in his tight fist as Alphonso paces before him; Simon, the activities coordinator, who is in charge of all the in-house entertainment at the hotel; Boris, the head of hotel security and a former police sergeant; Camille, Dwight’s assistant, who struggles to write down every sentence coming out of the four gentlemen’s mouths during the meeting; and Blacka, the accountant and Alphonso’s right-hand man, looking like a pharaoh sitting with his arms folded and chest puffed, silently observing.
“Yuh t’ink I’m running a farm here? Yuh t’ink is chump-change people paying to stay at my resort?” Alphonso barks. “You are all incompetent!”
Dwight sits forward, dropping his pen. “Is who yuh t’ink yuh talking to dat way? If it wasn’t fah all of us in here, this hotel wouldn’t be open! Yuh father never intended fah you to take ovah . . . It was yuh brother. If Joseph never died in that car accident yuh wouldn’t be no god dat you is now! He knew yuh was a disgrace! So don’t you come in here now, telling us you’re dissatisfied. We’re not the fault why di hotel losing money!”
Alphonso pounces at Dwight and grabs him by the collar. Boris and Simon jump up to pull them apart. When he’s free, Dwight fixes his tie and adjusts the collar of his pin-striped shirt as Alphonso calms himself. The other men, excluding Blacka, give Alphonso a look that reminds Margot of the way the other hotel employees look at her, when they whisper within earshot, “Who does that Margot think she is? She act like she is some big s’maddy. Yuh see di way she walk around here like she own di place?”
But Margot is somebody. She knows, for example, that she can do a better job than Dwight, who is a buffoon. Because of him the hotel isn’t doing well. His fancy degree, expensive suits, and luxury cars don’t hide the fact that he’s incompetent. What makes Dwight favorable is the fact that he’s Alphonso’s second cousin and went to private school with him at Ridley College in Canada. Margot knows deep down that no hotel would’ve hired Dwight had it not been for his Wellington family name—Dwight, who shows up late, flashing his watch and telling others to be on time; Dwight, who overlooks complaints and any details having to do with the comfort of the guests; Dwight, who leaves the majority of the work to his assistant, Camille—who in Margot’s opinion wastes her time every evening sitting on his lap. Poor girl chose the wrong Wellington to screw.
Margot returns to her seat at the front desk with Kensington. She can barely concentrate on checking people into the hotel.
“What yuh t’ink dey saying?” Kensington asks her. She’s whispering.
“It’s none of our business,” Margot snaps.
“You an’ him not friend?” Kensington asks.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Margot whips around to face a brazened Kensington. The girl shrugs. “You know . . . him laugh up, laugh up wid yuh sometimes. So I thought oonuh was friends.”
The girl looks down at the surface of the desk in front of her, drawing heart-shaped patterns with her finger. She’s rail-thin with a height on her, always fidgeting with the waistband of her uniform skirt, which is too wide, though it hangs well above her knees. Had it not been for her high color, Kensington wouldn’t be considered beautiful. Or even be considered for the job. The girl was hired as a part-time secretary last summer after graduating from high school, but ended up staying longer. Now she thinks she has a right to make assessments about Margot and Alphonso’s relationship.
“Just continue to do yuh work, Kensington,” Margot says, in the authoritative voice she uses when wielding her seniority.
“How do you do it?” Kensington’s tiny voice pierces the uncomfortable silence that follows Margot’s order.
“How do I do what?” Margot asks.
Behind Kensington’s head the palm trees blow wavelike in a breeze that brings the smell of the sea inside the open lobby. Margot is grateful for this breeze, for it cools her boiling blood as she watches Kensington stringing her words together.
“People are talking. Russ, Gretta, an’ all ah dem.”
Margot cuts her off before she can list every one of the lower staff—the maids, the cooks, the groundsmen—people who begrudge her because she sends Kensington to buy her patty and cocoa-bread at lunchtime from Stitch so that she doesn’t have to pass by them and get into their idle gossip about management.