Nantucket Red (Nantucket Blue) (5 page)

Twelve

“
CALM DOWN MISSY
, you’ll make the two o’clock,” the Santa Claus look-alike at the ticket counter said as he slid me my change and added, “but you’ll have to step lively. The heavens are about to open.”

“Thanks.” I stuffed the bills in my pocket, grabbed my roller bag, and pivoted toward the door. The rain slicked the pavement as I darted to the boat, handed my ticket over, and clambered up the metal ramp, the last one aboard. As I yanked my bag over the gap between the ramp and the deck, my lacrosse stick slipped out of the loop on my backpack.

I bent down to pick it up and my purse slammed against the cold, wet deck. My picture of Nina, I thought. I slid to my shins. My hood fell off just as the rain escalated from shower to downpour. I shoved the purse inside my raincoat, gathered my stuff as best I could, and pushed my way through the heavy door to the inside part of the ferry, where the air-conditioning, set to arctic frost, sent a chill down my back like a zipper.

The knees of my jeans were soaked through to the skin. Water dripped from my ponytail and the hem of my raincoat. I looked around for a seat, or at least a corner to shove my bags in while I tried to rescue the picture. As the steam whistle blew and we pulled away from the dock, the people who had missed the heavy rain settled in. Dry and comfortable, they removed their moisture-wicking jackets and opened hardcover books and well-respected newspapers. Kids stared into their iPads or lined up to order hot dogs while their parents typed into their phones. Chocolate Labs and golden retrievers curled on cozy fleece beds. I stood dripping in my own private puddle.

“Is someone sitting here?” I asked a guy whose guitar was taking up a seat.

He looked up, blinking, like I’d just startled him out of a dream. He was older than me, but not by much. He had messy dark blond hair with a few strands of gold and lines that went from the corners of his bright blue eyes to his cheeks. He was cute and he knew it. He smiled up at me, pulled out his earbuds, and asked, “What’s that?”

“Is this seat taken? I mean, by anyone besides your guitar?”

“Oh, no,” he said, laughing a little as he stood up to get his guitar. He was wearing a gray wool sweater with a hole in the elbow. There was paint on his jeans and a little in his hair. As he leaned over to place his guitar under the seat, his T-shirt lifted, exposing a tan, muscular back. Was he doing that on purpose? “Looks like you’re headed to the island for a while.”

“Yeah,” I said, arranging my stuff in an awkward pile.

“Me, too,” he said. “What are you going to be doing?”

“Working,” I said, peeling my dripping jacket off. “You?”

“Working, yeah, but also just taking it all in. Surfing. Writing music. Resetting, you know? There’s nothing like a summer on Nantucket to shake things up.”

“That’s true,” I said, thinking about how last summer had completely changed my life. “Um, can you watch my stuf
f
?
”

He patted my suitcase. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

A little girl sucking on a Popsicle watched with interest as I held the picture over the trash can and freed it from its ruined case. I brushed it off with the soft, dry sleeve of my sweatshirt. The photo looked so small and vulnerable without the frame, but except for a tiny corner piece that had torn off with an apple-seed of glass, it had survived. I turned it over to check the back and gasped. Written in faint ballpoint pen was a list.

Nina’s Life List

1. Visit Rodin Museum in Paris.

2. Learn to drive and then drive Route 1 to Big Sur.

3. Drink Campari on Amalfi Coast with Alison.

4. Be in a Woody Allen movie.

5. See St. Francis from altar.

I traced my finger over her familiar architect’s handwriting. I felt Nina’s presence for the first time since her death. It was like she was leaning on the counter wearing brown duck boots and a Fair Isle sweater, her hair down and her brown eyes laughing at my discovery.

I’d never heard of this list before, and I wondered where and when she’d made it. Since it was on the back of her graduation picture, it must’ve been right after she’d finished Brown. They all had a check mark next to them except that last one:
See St. Francis from altar.
Maybe it was the faintness of the ink, or the small, girlish hearts drawn in each corner, or the checks next to the first four items on the list, each marked by a different pen, but I had a feeling that no one else knew about it. It was her secret, and now it was mine.

I stepped outside. The air was balmy compared to the dank, clammy cabin, and the rain was now a hesitant drizzle. I stood under the overhang and studied the list again, considering the first item.
Visit Rodin Museum in Paris
. Nina had spent a year in Paris after college graduation. I Googled it on my phone. The museum itself seemed grand but human-size, with ivy-covered walls, wooden-floored galleries, and huge, arched windows that opened. There were gardens divided by neat, leafy pathways and a reflecting pool. I scrolled through the collection. There was one sculpture called
The Walking Man
. It was a headless body of a man, well, walking. The body was so exquisitely defined, so muscular, so alive.
The Walking Man
is a hottie, I thought.

Then I saw the sculpture called
The Kiss
. My breath caught. The way the man was holding the woman’s hip, how they leaned back, the tilt of her head. It reminded me of Zack. It reminded me of what it was like to want someone so badly you feel every cell in your body turn to face him like a field of sunflowers. That’s what we felt, I thought. No matter whom he was going out with now or the high-five crime, he had touched me like that. He had leaned like that. I knew it and he knew it.
Don’t do it, don’t do it,
I told myself.
Don’t think about Zack.
I shut my eyes and started counting backward from one hundred by twos until the feeling passed, a trick I’d learned sometime after Christmas.

Thirteen

“THERE YOU ARE,” A VOICE SAID.
“Better grab your stuff, we’re almost here.”

“Huh?” I said, opening my eyes to bright sunshine. Guitar Guy was standing over me. How long had I been asleep? Two hours? Twenty minutes? I looked around to get my bearings. The deck was crowded, and we were almost at Brant Point. The lighthouse greeted us in its snappy white jacket and black top hat.

“We’re almost to Nantucket. And you got a sunburn.”

“Where?” I asked, blinking awake. My lips were dry. I needed some water.

“There,” he said and gently touched the tip of my nose.

“Oh,” I said, covering my nose with my hand. “Oh.”

He didn’t seem to think anything of it. He tipped his face to the sun and said, “Don’t you love how the weather on Nantucket is almost always the opposite of the mainland?” When I didn’t respond he turned to me, grinned, and bit his lip as if trying not to laugh.

“What?”

“You’re adorable.”

“Thanks for waking me up,” I said, standing and straightening my sweatshirt, which had twisted during my nap. “But you really shouldn’t go around touching people’s faces.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you—” He was trying not to laugh.

“It’s actually really rude.”

“You’re right,” he said, giggling.

“I’m going to Brown University in the fall.” I’m not sure why I said this except I wanted him to know that I was a serious person, an
Ivy League woman
. But now he was laughing harder.

“Excuse me,” I said and went back inside to get my stuff.

The ferry pulled in to the harbor and I strapped on my backpack, secured my lacrosse stick, and dragged my bag out from the spot I’d wedged it into. As I stood in the line of people impatient to get off the boat, I used the camera on my phone to check my sunburn. That’s when I saw that my nose wasn’t just red. Oh, no. Its tip was bright blue.
Of course.
The eight my mom had drawn was smudged and running and I had rubbed it off on my face. As I tried to wipe off the perfect circle of blue on the tip of my nose, my face burned red around it. Had I really needed to brag about Brown?

“Cricket!” I heard Liz call, and I searched the crowd for her. The dock was now a beehive of sherbet-colored pants as people reunited with friends, relatives, and luggage. I was almost the last one off the boat. Even though I’d wiped every trace of blue off my nose with the help of a brown paper towel and some pink industrial soap in the bathroom, I didn’t want to run into Guitar Guy again.

“Cricket, over here!” Liz’s voice seemed to rise above the others and lift me an inch off the ramp, but I still didn’t see her. What a difference this was from last year when no one was there to meet me.

“Liz!” I called when I finally spotted her, arms waving overhead like a drowning woman. I darted through the crowd and hugged her. She smelled exactly the same, like rose perfume and cookies, but she was dressed like a different girl. Gone were the jean shorts and neon-colored bra straps. Liz had gone business casual in a navy knee-length skirt and a white button-down blouse. At least her jewelry was still Liz-style. Big red earrings and matching plastic bracelets.

“You look so proper,” I said.

“Well, I’m the manager now, aren’t I? I need to look responsible. And what about you? Turn ’round.”

“What? Why?”

She motioned for me to hand her some luggage. I gave her my backpack.

“Panty-line check. Go on. I want to know how my pupil has fared without my guidance.” I sighed and did a little turn for her. “Well done.” She put on my backpack, handling my lacrosse stick like it was a strange artifact. “And is this a weapon? Gavin left his rain stick in the cupboard. We can have a battle!”

“It’s my lacrosse stick,” I said, taking it back. “I need to practice, like, a lot.”

“I’m kidding. You don’t think I could live on Nantucket and not know what lacrosse is, do you?”

“I never know what you know or don’t know.” Liz could explain the rules of American baseball with absolute clarity and knew certain Nantucket billionaires on a first-name basis and three good ways to create a smoky eye, but she didn’t know how to ride a bike or why, exactly, we celebrated Thanksgiving.

“Someone’s got to keep you on your toes. Come on now,” she said, linking her arm through mine. “We’ve got to get back to the inn. I have a couple coming in on a flight from New York, and I need to be there when they arrive. The Nutsaks.”

“That’s not their name,” I said, laughing.

“N-U-T-S-A-K, from the eastern bloc, perhaps? And I’ve got to have the balls to look them in the eye and welcome them.” We laughed as we wove through the SUVs driving off the boat and walked into town. The scent of waffle cones wafted from the Juice Bar. I drifted toward it, but Liz pulled me back.

“But there’s hardly a line,” I said. “And there’s
always
a line.”

“I have to get you stowed away before the guests arrive.”

“But chocolate peanut butter cup in a waffle cone…”

“Soon enough,” she said, steering me onward. “I haven’t even heard about your love life yet.”

“Nothing to tell,” I said. “Zack is going out with Parker Carmichael.”

“Bastard!”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Very well.”

I was grateful for her British reserve as we headed up Broad Street and the old sights came into focus. It was busy, though not nearly as busy as it was going to be in July and August. I saw the bench where I’d eaten pizza alone my first week here. I hadn’t known what else to do for dinner. There was the corner where Jules had pretended not to see me, her hair flying from the passenger side of a Jeep blaring a hip-hop song I hadn’t recognized.

My heart sped up when I saw the tiny, hidden-in-plain-sight park where Zack had first held my hand in public. The very late-afternoon June light was as yellow as lemon cake, and green leaves and small blooms were climbing the gazebo, creating a woody, magical frame for kissing. The memories were flying in like slanted raindrops through an open window, and I was powerless to stop them. How was I going to make it through this summer knowing Zack was here in our paradise but no longer mine? How was I going to make it to the inn? We hadn’t even hit Main Street yet.

Just as we were rounding the corner of Centre Street, I caught a glimpse of Guitar Guy stepping out of a bakery with a coffee. He seemed to be smiling at nothing in particular as he removed the lid of his coffee cup to blow into it. He sat on a shady bench and tapped something into his phone.

“Turn back,” I said under my breath.

Liz followed me back down Broad Street. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I met that guy on the ferry,” I whispered.

“The bloke with the coffee? He’s quite fit.”

I shushed her, but that only made her louder.

“Okay, what’s the story? Did you leave your knickers on the ferry? Is that why you have no panty line? Please say yes. Then the pupil will have surpassed the master, like in the movies.”

“No, no. It was nothing.”

“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” she said, and pinched my butt. Where was her British reserve now?

“What about you, sex goddess?” I asked, changing the subject. “How’s your love life?” Liz and her Irish boyfriend, Shane, had practically been living together when I left Nantucket last summer. During our mornings of scrubbing bathrooms and making beds, I’d endured endless stories of their cinematic sex, his intense understanding of great poetry, and his taste for complex whiskey. They were so into each other they’d decided to stay on Nantucket together through the winter instead of returning to the UK, so I was surprised when the briefest shadow crossed her face before she answered, “Ace.”

Fourteen

“GET UP!” LIZ SAID THE NEXT DAY.
She handed me a cup of coffee with cream and no sugar, remembering just how I liked it, and a cranberry walnut muffin. It took me a minute to register that I was on the sofa in the manager’s apartment. It was still weird to me that this was where Liz lived now. Last year, this was the boss’s apartment and we lived in tiny single rooms with a shared bathroom. “For a girl who needs a job you’ve certainly had a lazy morning,” Liz said. I sipped the coffee and glanced at the clock. It was almost ten thirty.

“Oh, shit!”

“Oh, shit, is right,” she said. “You have a job interview this morning at one of the island’s most expensive and popular restaurants. So eat up. We can’t have your energy flagging.”

“What?” I almost choked on a walnut. “Where?”

“Three Ships.”

“Liz!” I gasped, spilling a bit of the coffee down my new Brown Women’s Lacrosse T-shirt. Three Ships was on the wharf and had amazing views of the waterfront. It was almost impossible to get a reservation.

“Waitresses make three hundred dollars a night,” she said and I gasped again, “And the position comes with housing.”

“You’re the best. Thank you! How did you do this?” I asked as I stuffed the muffin in my mouth. A job at Three Ships was the best-case scenario.

“I just ran into Charlie, the manager, at the pharmacy. I told him to look out for an athletic blond named for an insect. He said to come by at eleven a.m.”

I glanced at the clock above the TV. “Jesus. That’s in, like, twenty minutes. I’ve got to get changed. I haven’t even showered yet.”

“No time for a shower. A whore’s bath, maybe.”

“A horse bath?”

“
Whore’s
bath. The bath of a whore. You know, prostitute? Sex for money?”

“Yes, I’m familiar with the term
whore
, but…” I threw the covers off, hopped into the bathroom, and turned on the water. “Never mind.”

“One little thing,” Liz said as I stepped into the shower. “I kind of told him you worked in New York for a year.”

“What?” I grabbed the shampoo.

“Oh, now, don’t say it like that. He said he wanted someone with experience. What was I supposed to do?”

“Where did you tell him I worked?”

“The Russian Tea Room,” Liz said. “I was really thinking on my feet.”

“What’s that?” I pictured furry hats and elaborate porcelain teapots as I rinsed my hair. No time for conditioner. I quickly washed my pits and shut off the water. “Can I have a towel?”

“It’s legendary, a really excellent place to have worked,” she said, opening the curtain and handing me a towel. “Nice tits, by the way.”

“Um, thanks.” I grabbed the towel and covered myself. “But, Liz? I’ve never even been to the Russian Tea Room. I’ve only been to New York once. For the day.”

“Improvise! Do you want to get the job or not?” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, you’d better hurry. And a little mascara never hurts, yeah?”

I made it to Three Ships by ten fifty-nine, in my neatest-looking shirt and skirt, combed, damp hair, and a little mascara.

“You must be Cricket,” said a handsome man who looked like he’d just stepped off of a sailboat.

“And you must be Charlie,” I said. We shook hands and he led me to a table by a window.

“So, tell me all about the Russian Tea Room,” he said.

“It’s an extraordinary place,” I said, doing my best not to lie. I’d Googled it on the way there and memorized a few details. “It’s so centrally located. So opulent. So famous.”

He smiled, tapped his pencil on the table. “What was your favorite dish?”

“The chicken Kiev,” I said, maintaining cheerful eye contact.

“The Kiev, huh? How would you describe it?”

“I would describe it as delicious.” I closed my eyes as if imagining the experience. “Just so, so delicious.”

“How many tables were in your section?”

“Twenty?”

“You must be some waitress.” He smiled, leaned forward, drummed the table. “Did you really work at the Russian Tea Room? The
opulent, famous, centrally located
Russian Tea Room?”

“I’ve never even been there,” I said. He laughed, so I did, too.

“Do you have
any
restaurant experience?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I’m going to Brown in the fall. So I’m a really quick study.”

“Impressive.”

“And I’m on the lacrosse team, so I’m quick on my feet, too.”

“But that also means you’d take off before Labor Day.” I shrugged. “I can’t hire you. For what people spend here, I need a professional staff. We get slammed. Tonight we have almost two hundred covers and…”—he paused, tilted his head—“You don’t even know what that means, do you? Yeah. I’m not looking for someone to train from scratch.”

“Do you know anyone who might be?” I asked. “Because the thing is, I really need a job this summer.”

“Have you thought about retail? A lot of girls like you do that in the summer.”

“Girls like me?”

“You know, Ivy League, blond, Daddy’s got a place in town.”

“You’ve got me all wrong. Girls like me need to make real money,” I said and sat up a little straighter. “I may not have a lot of waitressing experience, but I worked at the Cranberry Inn last summer six days a week. I served breakfast every morning at seven a.m. sharp and cleaned rooms all day after that. I wasn’t late once, and when a guest asked me for something, I always did my best to make sure I got them what they needed. I even ended up with an internship with one of them, a famous writer. And I’m not afraid to clean a bathroom. I’d rather not. But I will.” I wrote my name and number on a napkin and handed it to him. “If you hear of anything, please pass on my number.”

I walked toward the door, but Charlie’s voice stopped me. “Well, I feel like a first-rate asshole. You look the part, but I shouldn’t have assumed.” He grabbed two bottles of fancy carbonated lemonade from behind the bar, uncapped them with some unseen device, and handed one to me. “I still can’t hire a waitress without fine-dining experience, but my buddy Karla is still looking for someone and she’s a little more open-minded.” He wrote
Breezes
,
Jefferson Road
on a cocktail napkin. “Tell her I sent you.”

“Thanks.” I was going to mention that I’d already had a phone interview with Karla and she’d rejected me, but I changed my mind. Sometimes you have to take a few shots on goal before you score.

Breezes was about a mile outside of town, right on the sand. From the outside it looked like a beach house. I could smell the ocean from the wooden-planked pathway. The restaurant name was etched in gold above a bright blue door. It was the restaurant attached to the island’s most exclusive beach club, the Wampanoag Club, or the Wamp, as everyone who knew better called it. People were on the waitlist for twenty-five years or more to get in, and I could see why. With its graceful shingles, welcoming porch, combed beach, and cozy cabanas, it was the perfect picture of a classic New England summer. Even from the outside there was a casual elegance that filled you with a sense that this could be your home in some alternate universe where you were so rich you could fling fistfuls of money at the sunset as part of your evening prayers.

The inside was pure Nantucket. The opposite of the Russian Tea Room, there was nothing opulent about this place, unless you counted the ruby-pink beach roses on every table, or the sapphire-bright hydrangea blooms on the hostess stand. The wooden floors were white. Brightly painted oars hung on the pale blue-gray walls. In the middle of the room was a smooth, gleaming bar, and beyond that a giant wraparound porch, protected from the elements by sheets of canvas-trimmed plastic, secured to the frame like sails to a mast. There was a jar on the hostess’s stand labeled
OPERATION SMILE. PLEASE DONATE
. I picked up a menu. The least expensive thing was a twenty-three-dollar artisanal grilled cheese.

“Hello?” I asked, and when no one answered, I stepped out on the porch, which faced the Nantucket sound in three directions. It couldn’t be denied that it was a beautiful place, even on a foggy day like today. With the exception of perfectly spaced-out yellow and blue beach umbrellas, all slanted at the same angle, the view was identical to the one at Steps Beach, where Zack and I had spent so much time together last summer.
Don’t think of Zack,
I told myself.
Don’t. He doesn’t deserve it.

“A million-dollar view, right?” I turned to see a small, sinewy woman my mom’s age with bright blue hair framing eyes so brown they were black. Bright blue hair is not something you see every day on Nantucket. “What can I do for you? We aren’t open until noon.”

“Actually, I’m looking for a job. My name is Cricket Thompson.” I winced. I was hoping she wouldn’t be able to place me, but people don’t forget a name like mine.

“I already interviewed you, didn’t I? Yeah, I remember. You bombed the wine test. Like”—she made explosion sounds with the accompanying hand gestures—“bombed.”

“Charlie from Three Ships sent me,” I said. “He thought I’d be a good fit.”

“Is that so?” She pushed her glasses up on her head like a headband. “You didn’t tell me you knew Charlie.”

“And I’ve been studying. Ask me anything.”
Please, make it easy.

“Okay. What would you recommend with a lobster roll?”

“Pinot grigio, to cut through the richness.” I was ready for that one. On Nantucket, lobster rolls were as ubiquitous as sand.

“Good.” She drummed her fingers on the bar. “How about the roasted-pig confit?”

“A French pinot.” According to
Wine Made Simple
, French pinot was almost always a good choice.

“Well done. You have been studying. One more.”
Don’t let me down, Wine Made Simple.
“Hamachi crudo, our most popular dish this summer.”

What the hell was hamachi crudo? I swallowed, and remembered that the book said that when in doubt, the best wine to order was simply one you enjoyed, no matter the dish. The best drink I’d ever had was champagne, last summer, on the Fourth of July, in a little rowboat with Zack.

“Dom Perignon,” I said.

Karla’s face opened up in a smile. “Best answer yet.”

“I know I can do this. I really think you should give me a chance. I’m an athlete, so I’m used to working under pressure.”

“An athlete, huh?”

“I’m playing lacrosse at Brown in the fall.”

“All right, Cricket Thompson, I’ll give you a shot.”

“Yay!” I actually jumped.

“Calm down. We’ll give it a week. See how it goes.”

“Thank you so much!”

“Staff dinner is at four. See you then.”

“Tonight?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” I said, though I still needed to go for a run and practice stick drills. She ducked behind the bar and tossed me a T-shirt the same shade as the famous Nantucket Red pants. “The first shirt is on the house. After that they’re twenty bucks. You got a pair of khakis?”

“I can find some,” I said.

“Four o’clock,” she said. Her phone rang.

“Oh, and um, I need housing, too. That’s what the original ad said?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” She saw the number on the caller ID, muttered something under her breath, picked it up, and spoke into the phone in rapid-fire Spanish. She handed me employment forms and gestured at the door.

It’s just nine weeks,
I told myself as I pulled on the last of several pairs of khakis in the Nantucket Hospital Thrift Store dressing room.
And then I’ll be at Brown.
I sighed at my reflection in the mirror. Nothing could make these pants look good. The waist was high, and not in a cool retro way, and they were a little too short. But they basically fit otherwise and would have to do until Mom could send me a better pair from home. I’d tried Murray’s first, the store famous for Nantucket Reds. I’d found a pair that were actually almost flattering, but they were a hundred dollars.

I wandered over to the thrift store, where secondhand khakis seemed to grow like weeds. I found at least six pairs in my size, four of which didn’t have stains, and two of which were from this century. “Those are half off,” the elderly thrift store volunteer said when I set them on the card table with the cash box and old-fashioned adding machine, the same one I’d seen Rosemary use to balance her checkbook. “All ladies’ trousers are.”

“I guess I’ll get them both,” I said.

“You sure you don’t want to check out the books? Hardcovers are a dollar today. I can put these aside for you,” she said, checking the labels as she folded the pants. “Oh, Talbots. You’re lucky. The good brands go quick. I’ll put these out of sight so no one snags them.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, not having the heart to tell her that the Talbots pants would probably have been safe even if they had been displayed on their one mannequin. I ducked into the book room and spotted a display of oversize art books. Even though they varied in size and style, I could tell they’d inhabited the same space for a long period of time. I imagined they had all been donated from one person’s collection, some very dedicated museum lover. One was from the Getty in Los Angeles, one from the Frick in New York, and another was from the Rodin Museum in Paris. I pulled out the Rodin book. The cover was torn, there was a coffee ring on it, and when I cracked it open, the slippery pages smelled faintly like cigarettes.

I sat on the floor and thumbed through it. It was written in French. I could only understand bits of it, but the writing wasn’t the point. The pictures were.
Don’t think of Zack,
I told myself as I searched frantically for
The Kiss
. I found it and snapped the book shut, biting my lip. I bought it. It was a sign of some sort. I wasn’t sure what it meant exactly, but I felt Nina next to me again, whispering about something I needed to understand, a place I needed to go and see, even if I had to wear Talbots khakis to get there.

A few hours later, I was twenty-seven minutes early for my first day of training, which was somehow worse than being late. I’d left the inn with plenty of time to spare in case something came up. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, but if I wanted to train for lacrosse and make eight thousand dollars in nine weeks, I had to stick to a schedule and not screw up. Every day I was going to eat three healthy meals, run five miles, and get eight hours of sleep. The busier I was, the less time I had to think about Zack and Parker.