"I see you're doing a fine job. Keep it up."
"I doin' everything just like Thor," said Gilbert. "I can work de cash register."
"Splendid." Paperman raced out on the lawn again, straight to a man whom he had observed clipping a hedge near the pier. When the people across the water saw Paperman they began shouting.
"Hello," Paperman said to the gardener, a stout Negro in khaki work clothes, all buttoned up against the sun. "I'm the new owner of this club, you know."
"Yes please." The man touched his hand to his headgear, a brown paper bag folded like an overseas cap; smiled in a mournful, kindly way, and went on clipping.
"What's your name?"
"Millard."
"Millard, I'd like you to row that boat for a while. Just take the people back and forth, you know?"
"Mistress Ball she said clip de hedges Torsdays."
"Yes, well, this is just for now. It's an emergency. You can let the hedge go."
Millard looked at him in perplexity. "I de gardener, please."
"Of course. But I'm making you the gondolier. Just for now. Here's your gondolier's hat."
He offered Millard the shallow yellow-and red-ribboned straw. The gardener hesitantly took it, removed his paper hat, and set the straw on his head. A look of bashful delight crept over his face.
"I row de boat good, suh."
Millard went to the boat and cast off, smiling proudly all the while at Paperman. He rowed with clumsy strength, and closed the other shore fast. Paperman was watching him help passengers into the gondola, when the arrival of another vessel at the pier cut off his view. This was a battered old power boat gasping up from the waterfront, with Tex Akers in the bow, at the head of a phalanx of perhaps twenty-five tool-carrying workmen.
"Hi, there," Akers called. "Ready or not, here we come."
He jumped from the moving boat across eight feet of water, his long bare legs taking him easily to Paperman's side.
"Quite a work force you've got there," Paperman said. The boat bumped to a stop and the men streamed off.
"Sure do, but that's my lookout," said Akers, grinning down at Norman in the friendliest way. He was about a head and a half the taller of the two. "I've got a payroll to keep going. This is the whole Cove outfit. You'll just get your job done three times as fast. Actually with this all-out kind of operation I'm hoping to wrap it up in less than a week. I figure to work Sunday, but the overtime will cost me, not you.
All right, fellows, this way." He led the battalion of workers-there were about two Negroes to each white man-across the lawn toward the main house.
The old power boat snorted away, and Millard came rowing alongside, with the gondola so crowded that its gunwales were level with the water. He helped everyone out without mishap, still wreathed in dignified smiles under the ribboned hat. Paperman told him to carry up to the main house the bags accumulating on the pier, and to take fewer people in the boat next time.
Millard said, "I can row de boat all full."
"Yes, but we don't want you drowning them."
"No please," said Millard, roaring with laughter. He loaded himself with an astonishing number of bags and strode up the lawn.
For the first time since Sheila had awakened him with her pounding, Paperman now drew a couple of quiet long breaths, standing in the sunshine on the pier. The upsetting withdrawal of Thor seemed to be contained. Norman had to get the accountant in to keep the books, until he could take them over; he had to start to work on the reservations, answer the letters and telegrams, and so forth. Perhaps he would even have to double as a bartender for a while. But he would survive. Tom Tilson had put the matter fairly; the new manager's name was Paperman.
He had sweated right through all his clothes. His new yellow shirt hung in black wet blotches, and he could feel trickles running down his nose and his neck, and under his arms. He returned to the White Cottage, and put on trunks. As he walked down the path to the water, he saw a blond masked head break the surface, far out. Iris came streaking in toward him, swimming with loose neat arm strokes. "Hi! Welcome, Norm! Or should I say, mine host? What's the good word?"
"The good word is, I'm doubling your rent."
"Oh, you Americans. What know-how!" She took off her mask, shaking back her heavy streaming hair. "Gad, things must be well in hand, if you're swimming at noon. I hear Henny didn't come with you."
"She'll be along in a few days." He dived into the sweetly cool water and floated beside her. "I've had a hell of a morning."
Iris was astonished by the news of Thor's defection. She said she had slept until noon, and hadn't seen the yacht arrive or leave. "Of course I heard Amy talk off and on about buying Moonglow, but I never thought she would. Amy's a close girl with a shilling, but she was mad for Thor, all right. She's bought herself a package, believe me."
They came out of the water. Lying beside Iris on her Indian blanket, in the shade of high oleanders heavy with pink blossoms, Norman told her about Henny's ailment.
"Oh, Lord, what a time for that to happen. Everything's hit you at once." Iris shook her head. "This place needs a man and a woman, Norm. Or two faggots, like before, same difference. The man looks after the upkeep, the driving, the money, and all that. The woman's in the office, and watches the service, and makes pretty noises at the people. Amy and Thor were very good."
Norman said, "There's nothing really wrong with Henny. She often shows up with odd aches and pains when she's tense. She'll be down in a week or two. I just have to get through until then."
Iris sat up. "Look here, let me help."
"Nonsense. I'll manage."
She said, getting to her feet, "I'll just get the salt out of my hair and spiff up. Honestly, it'll be fun. I'm bored to death anyway."
"Iris, the worst is over. I'm all right."
"You don't know that. Somebody should check the books and receipts, for instance. Gilbert's just a boy. I'll see you up in the office in an hour." She bounded up the embankment, waving off his protests.
As she did so, Norman heard a distant crash, and then continuing loud noises of demolition-hammerings, smashings, the fall of stones, the yelling of men, the shattering of glass. He was planning a short nap, but this sound could only be the Akers crew getting to work. He wanted to see that. He dressed quickly and hurried toward the main house, where at the rear, clouds of plaster dust were rising above the roof into the sunshine.
In the lobby, a gigantic greasy brown tarpaulin billowed in the breeze, masking the doorway of the old game room. The sounds of breakage and collapse were coming from behind this tarpaulin, and wisps of plaster dust floated through holes in the heavy cloth, like smoke from a fire. Fortunately it was the lunch hour. The lobby was deserted.
Paperman lifted an end of the tarpaulin and slipped behind it, into a scene of sad ruin. Half of the back wall of the room lay in rubble on the floor. A ragged egg-shaped hole was open to the sea and to the sun, which blazed into the room through tumbling eddies of dust. Even as Paperman arrived, a ringing smash of many sledge hammers at once sent another great chunk of the thick cement wall crumbling inward, unveiling more blue sky, grass, and sea.
"Hold everything!" bawled Paperman, half blinded by the dust boiling up at him.
"Easy, fellows," he heard Akers say. "Here's the boss."
His arms before his eyes, Paperman groped and stumbled to the hole in the wall, and climbed through into the sunshine.
"What's all this?" he said. "The job's just inside construction. Why are you knocking down the wall?"
The contractor said he had two reasons. There was the problem of getting men and materials in and out of the room. This way, the entire job would be done behind the tarpaulin. The heavy noise would be over today, and then the guests would have undisturbed use of the lobby. Otherwise workmen would be passing through the hotel with construction materials and rubbish for a week. Moreover the wide dining-room window, which they had already demolished, would have been unusable for the new small rooms. It was cheaper to knock the wall down and put up a new one than to break it partially and then rebuild it.
"This thing's looking real good," he said. "We came on a couple of one-inch pipes under the floor, from the days when they had a kitchen back here. We just hook in our hot and cold water, flush out the rust, and I reckon that'll cut the plumbing cost maybe in half."
He drew Paperman a little away from the men. The six who had been smashing the wall were leaning on their sledge hammers. The rest of the workers, a very large group, were lying around on the grass, drinking fruit nectar out of cans, listening to Calypso songs on portable radios, and making loud incomprehensible jokes, with bursts of jolly laughter.
"If it's convenient," Akers said, "can you let me have an advance on the job now?"
"I suppose so. How much?"
"Well, the usual thing is a week's costs, but that's the whole price in this case. How's about half?"
"Two thousand dollars?" Norman said dubiously.
Akers' lantern-jawed face, with dust caked on the reddish bristles of his chin, broke into a gentle, engaging smile.
"I'd much rather bill you at the end, but these local suppliers don't give credit, you see, they've had too much trouble with a few fly-by-night characters who've come and gone since I've been here. The responsible contractors are left holding the bag. I've ordered all the materials for the job from Amerigo Supply, and the stuff'll be here in the morning, provided I get a check over there before bank closing time today. That's how things work here. Call Chunky Collins, and ask him."
Paperman was embarrassed at the suggestion. "It's quite all right," he said. "You're entitled to an advance, of course. Would you like the check now?"
"I'd sure appreciate it."
"Well, fine. Let's go to the office."
Lorna said as Paperman went by the desk with Akers, "De afternoon plane just came in wit five guests. Ain't nobody to meet dem."
"Well? Those people this morning got in all right."
"Dey come very mad. It says in our brochure we meet dem. Thor he always met dem." She held out some keys on a chain. "Dese are for de Rover. Thor said for me give dem to you."
Norman took the keys with a shrug, went into the office, and wrote the check for Akers. The contractor said, blowing on the check, "Thanks. If you're going to the beach now, I'll come along."
"Don't you have to stay with the men?"
"All they have to do is finish off that wall. I told them to stop there and quit, so I don't reckon they'll knock down the rest of your hotel." Akers giggled, tucking the check in a dusty khaki pocket.
The new gondolier, exerting himself to put on a show for his employer, drove the boat to the shore with a dozen strokes, his ribbons a-flutter in the wind. "Millard, I think maybe you've got yourself a new job," Paperman said. The man's ebony face glistened with elation.
Akers showed Paperman how to start the Land Rover, an oversized British machine like an enclosed jeep. "They're great machines. I've got one," he said. "The only thing is, if you need a spare part it comes by slow boat from England. See you in the morning. Those rooms are going to start sprouting up tomorrow like mushrooms after a rain."
4
Seven angry tourists with a high heap of luggage awaited Norman at the airport. Their anger was directed equally at the Gull Reef Club and at a cab driver asleep at the wheel of a taxi parked close by: a Buick of about 1938 vintage, newly painted bright yellow, with patches of rust eating through the paint, and half of one door rotted away. When they had asked the driver to take them to the Gull Reef Club, he had said that he was busy, though there was no other visible business for him at the dead terminal. He had then slumped in a doze.
Paperman saw that without this taxi he would have to make two trips. The Land Rover couldn't hold seven people and the great pile of luggage. He went and rapped at the cab window. The driver opened one eye, then both, and sat up with a spry grin. "Yes, suh, whah to1?" He reached for the rear door handle.
"Gull Reef Club."
"Sorry," said the driver. "I busy." He slouched back and closed his eyes.
There was no time to probe this puzzling outrage. Drawing on his vast experience with New York cab drivers, he rapped again, this time with a hand holding a ten-dollar bill. "Are you very busy?" he said.
The driver contemplated the ten and swallowed. "I got to leave dem off by de post office. Den dey got to walk."
"All right. Take the people, and I'll take the luggage."
Nobody offered to help him load the Rover, and of course there was no porter. So Paperman, who was not supposed to carry heavy weights or otherwise overexert himself, piled seventeen large suitcases into the car, with the western sun frying his back. He was not expert at this kind of thing, and when he started to drive off, the first stiff lurch of the Land Rover sent nine of the bags slithering out on the sticky tar road. He got out, repacked the bags, and tied them with a rope he found on the floor, mopping his streaming face with a sleeve, and easing his spirit by roaring at the waving sugar cane all the obscenities he could think of. He climbed into the Rover, jammed the accelerator to the board, and held it there. He was distinctly lightheaded by now. Rocking and swooping like a roller coaster, the machine tore along the highway, whistling past the decayed Buick about halfway to town.
