The Hotel Nantucket — Chapter no 9

9. The Cobblestone Telegraph

The summer season is under way on the island and most of us are too busy with our own lives—tracking down the window washer, mulching our gardens, pulling our beach chairs out of storage—to pay attention to the happenings at the Hotel Nantucket. But every once in a while, we’ll drive past and see Zeke English standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel with a pit bull on a leash sniffing the dandelions, and we’ll wonder how things are going.

Blond Sharon is having dinner at the Deck one evening when JJ O’Malley himself pops out to say hello. Blond Sharon does the intrepid thing and asks if he’s heard how Lizbet likes her new job.

“No, I haven’t,” JJ says. “We don’t speak.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s busy,” Blond Sharon says. “Have you eaten at the Blue Bar yet? Everyone’s raving about it. They have a copper disco ball that drops—”

“Out of the ceiling at nine o’clock,” JJ says. “Yes, I know. But from what I’ve heard, you can’t have a proper dinner there, right? He isn’t serving a chop or a rib eye or even a pan roast.”

“Right,” Blond Sharon says. “It’s more like great cocktail-party food, heavy apps that you can share, and then after you’ve finished grazing, someone comes around with shot glasses of whipped cream in flavors like Kahlúa and passion fruit. It’s called the whipped

cream concierge! Have you ever heard of anything so fabulous? And then everyone starts dancing. We went last week and, honestly, I’ve never had more fun in my life.”

JJ O’Malley squares up to his full height and gazes across the creeks, perhaps to remind Blond Sharon that although the Deck doesn’t have a whipped cream concierge, it does have a magnificent view. “The reviews of the hotel on TravelTattler have been underwhelming,” he says.

“Oh,” Blond Sharon says. “Have you been checking?”

Officer Dixon gets a call at four o’clock in the afternoon about a man asleep in his car at Dionis Beach.

“So what?” Dixon says to Sheila in dispatch.

“I guess he’s been sleeping in his car in the parking lot the past three days,” Sheila says. “Some mommy noticed him and thinks he’s a potential predator.”

Dixon takes a breath. A man sleeping in his car is what passes for crime on Nantucket; he supposes he should be glad. He climbs into his cruiser.

When he arrives at Dionis, he sees the man and the car in question—some guy in his early fifties in a 2010 Honda Pilot with Connecticut plates and a WHAT WOULD JIM CALHOUN DO? bumper sticker. The back window sports a decal that says PARENT OF AN AVON MIDDLE SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT.

Threatening stuff. Dixon wonders if he’ll need to call for backup.

He approaches the open car window and sees the guy in the driver’s seat, head slumped back, snoring away. He’s wearing a

white polo shirt and swim trunks; his bifocals have slid down to the end of his nose, and there’s a copy of Lee Child’s Blue Moon splayed open in the console next to an open Red Bull. Dixon backs away because he feels like he’s intruding on the guy in his bedroom —and then he notices the open shaving kit on the passenger seat and a hand towel drying on the dashboard. A peek into the back seat reveals a gaping suitcase.

Is this guy…Dixon glances over at the public bathrooms. Dionis is the only beach on Nantucket that has showers. Is this guy living in his car?

“Excuse me, sir,” Dixon says, jostling the guy’s shoulder. “May I see your license and registration, please?”

Richard Decameron, age fifty-four, of Avon, Connecticut, here on the island to work for the summer at the Hotel Nantucket.

“So you’re not…living in this car?” Dixon asks. “Because that’s what it looks like.”

Decameron tries to laugh this off, but it isn’t quite convincing. “No, no, I live at the hotel.”

“Why are you sleeping here in the parking lot? We’ve had reports that you’ve been here the past three days.”

“I’m enjoying the beach,” Decameron says. “I take an early swim, get a shower, read my book, and sometimes I conk out.” He offers Dixon a friendly smile. “Is that against the law?”

He’s “enjoying the beach” by sleeping in the parking lot?

Something doesn’t add up. “What’s your position at the hotel?” Dixon asks.

“I work the front desk,” Decameron says.

Dixon nods. Nothing about this guy screams predator or even vagrant. He seems like a regular guy—a Huskies basketball fan, the father of an honor student.

“So tell me something,” Dixon says. “Have you seen the ghost?”

“Not yet,” Decameron says. “She’s playing hard to get.”

Dixon chuckles and slaps the roof of the car. “All right, I’m not going to issue a ticket. Tomorrow, though, you’d better find a different beach.”

“Will do, Officer,” Decameron says. “Thank you.”

Lyric Layton is in her kitchen at seven a.m. making a beet-and- blueberry smoothie after doing yoga on her private beach when she hears a light rapping on her front door. Anne Boleyn, Lyric’s chocolate British shorthair, rises and places her paws on Lyric’s shin, which is something she does only when she’s anxious. Lyric scoops up the cat and goes to see who on earth is knocking at this hour.

It’s Heidi Bick from next door. The Laytons and the Bicks have plans to go to Galley Beach for dinner that night. Lyric wonders if Heidi has somehow heard her news; Lyric was planning on telling Heidi at dinner if Heidi didn’t guess when Lyric ordered sparkling water instead of champagne. But then she sees the stricken look on Heidi’s face.

“Are you the only one up?” Heidi whispers. “I need to talk.”

“Yes, of course,” Lyric says. Her husband, Ari, and the three boys would sleep until noon every day of the summer if she’d let them.

“Come on in.”

Lyric leads Heidi into the kitchen, offers her a smoothie—no, thank you, she can’t manage any—and then Lyric opens the slider so they can sit out on the deck. The rising sun spangles the water of Nantucket Sound; the early-morning ferry is gliding past Brant Point Light and out of the harbor.

“I think Michael is having an affair,” Heidi says. She gives a strangled little laugh. “I can’t believe I just said those words. I sound like someone on Netflix. I mean, it’s Michael. We’re Michael and Heidi Bick. This isn’t supposed to happen.”

Well, well, well, Lyric thinks. “Whoa, honey, start at the beginning.

What gives you this idea?”

“I’m so stupid!” Heidi says. “Michael has been living up here since April. He told me he and his coworker Rafe were making moves to splinter off and start their own company. He chose to work remotely so he had the necessary privacy. Did I ask any questions? No! I took him at his word—and I was happy for some time to myself.

Meanwhile, he was up here with someone else!”

To anyone other than Lyric Layton, this news about Michael might have come as a jaw-dropping surprise. Michael and Heidi Bick were widely considered to be “the perfect couple”—everyone said it here on Nantucket and back in Greenwich as well. But Lyric has gotten certain…vibes from Michael. Last summer when Lyric and Ari and Michael and Heidi were at dinner at the Deck, Lyric caught Michael staring at her from across the table. She thought she was imagining it—a lot of rosé had been consumed—but then he touched her leg with his foot. Lyric had quickly tucked her legs under her chair. She said nothing to Ari or to Heidi because she was sure Michael was just being a naughty drunk. Lyric considers herself an excellent

friend—she remembers birthdays, she takes extra carpool shifts, she polishes other queens’ crowns—so she would never, ever entertain the notion of an affair with Michael. But…if she’s painfully honest, she would admit that there have been times when she was practicing yoga on the beach and wondered if Michael Bick was in his master bathroom, fresh out of the shower, watching her from the window.

Lyric arranges her facial expression into one of both skepticism and concern. “Oh, Heidi, I doubt that.”

“So you haven’t heard any rumors about Michael running around the island with some other woman?” Heidi presses the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. “I had this horrible idea that everyone knew but me and everyone was talking about it…”

“I’ve heard nothing,” Lyric says. “And I had lunch with Blond Sharon at the Field and Oar Club yesterday. She didn’t say a word.

What makes you think this?”

Heidi pulls a Chanel eye shadow out of the pocket of her jeans jacket. It’s a half-used cream shadow in Pourpre Brun. “This was in my makeup drawer.”

Lyric takes the eye shadow. “Not your color,” she says. She’s trying to make a joke, but inside, Lyric is shrieking. It’s not Heidi’s color, but it is Lyric’s color—and Lyric wears only Chanel eye shadow, as Heidi well knows. Lyric wonders if Heidi is accusing Lyric of having an affair with Michael. This is getting extremely sticky. Has Michael been sleeping with someone who wears Chanel eye shadow in one of Lyric’s go-to shades? He must be. Why else would the shadow be in Heidi’s makeup drawer? Lyric feels a little jealous herself—which is insane, of course. She’s happily married and

pregnant with her fourth child. “Have you asked Michael about it?”

Lyric says.

“No,” Heidi says. “I’m going to wait and see if I find anything else.”

Lyric agrees this is a good idea. It’s probably nothing; maybe it was the cleaning lady’s (this makes no sense) or it belongs to Colby, Heidi’s daughter (she’s only eleven, but kids are precocious these days). She says she’s certain there’s a reasonable explanation. Lyric shepherds Heidi to the door in something of a rush because she feels morning sickness wash over her (the beet-and-blueberry smoothie, ick; what had made her think that would be a good combo?). “Try to relax, Michael loves you, see you tonight at dinner.”

Lyric might not tell Heidi she’s pregnant tonight, because how awful to share happy news when her friend is suffering.

Lyric shuts the door behind Heidi and runs down the hall to the bathroom, where she vomits up the smoothie. After rinsing her mouth, she goes hunting for her own Chanel cream eye shadow in

Pourpre Brun.

The funny thing is, she can’t find it.

Jasper Monroe of Fisher Island, Florida, wakes up in suite 115 of the Hotel Nantucket to a text from his mother: Where are you??? Did you not come home last night??? You know the rules, Jasper!!!

Jasper groans and rolls over. He kisses Winston on the shoulder and says, “I have to get out of here, man. My mom is kerking.”

“Your mom?” Winston says.

“Yeah,” Jasper says. He feels like he’s twelve years old, and he senses that Winston, who was Jasper’s teaching assistant at Trinity,

wants to remind him that he’s twenty-two, a grown man, and that he can stay out all night if he wants. But the fact remains that Jasper lives under his parents’ roof and he did break a house rule by not telling his mother that he’d be out all night, and beyond that, his parents don’t know he’s gay. Nobody does.

Jasper puts on his Nantucket Reds and his polo, both rumpled and beer-soaked after a late night at the Chicken Box. He decides to get his mother half a dozen of the infamous morning buns from

Wicked Island Bakery as an apology.

“Catch you later, man,” Jasper says.

“When?” Winston asks.

Jasper isn’t sure. Winston came to Nantucket specifically to see Jasper, but Jasper has to be careful. “I’ll snap.”

Winston gets out of bed to see Jasper out, so he can’t be that mad. They do some pretty heavy-duty kissing in the doorway.

“Come back to bed,” Winston murmurs into Jasper’s mouth.

Jasper is actually considering it—his mom isn’t going to be any madder in an hour than she is now—but then he hears a rattling and turns to see the housekeeping cart rounding the corner, and pushing that cart is…Chad Winslow.

What? Chad is wearing khakis and a blue polo, and he’s with some beaten-down-looking chick who smirks at Jasper and shirtless Winston and says, “You gentlemen ready for service?”

“Jasper?” Chad says.

Jasper feels like a coyote with his leg in a trap. “Chad? Are you… working here, man?” Jasper and his buddies Eric and Bryce have all been wondering what’s up with Chad, but him having a job never

crossed their minds. A job cleaning rooms at a hotel? It makes no sense.

Chad shrugs and casts his eyes over Jasper’s shoulder at Winston. “Yeah, I’m a maid,” Chad says. “What are you doing here?”

I’m a maid. It must be a joke, right? Except Jasper can tell it isn’t and Chad doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. It’s like Winston is always saying: There is nothing shameful about who we really are.

“Stayed over with my boyfriend, Winston,” Jasper says. And just like that, he’s out. He grins. He can’t believe how easy that was.

Chad nods. “Cool. Nice to meet you, Winston.”

“Nice to meet you,” Winston says.

“Nice, nice, nice,” the chick with Chad says. “So, are you ready for service or what?”

Nancy Twine passes around the offering basket at the Summer Street Church. She tries not to notice how much a person gives; three dollars for some is as much of a sacrifice as thirty dollars for others. But it does catch her attention when Magda English drops several folded hundred-dollar bills into the basket. (Five hundred- dollar bills, Nancy would come to find out when she counts the money after the service.) Now, where does Magda English, who moved here back in September to care for her poor bereaved brother, William, and her nephew Ezekiel and who is working as head of housekeeping at the haunted hotel on the other side of town, come up with that kind of money? Nancy can’t begin to guess.