Nantucket Red (Nantucket Blue) (6 page)

When I arrived at the restaurant I had a nasty blister from my flats. I’d always thought of them as comfortable shoes. I’d considered wearing the Easy Spirits Mom had forced on me. I’d taken them out of my suitcase and tried them on and everything, but I couldn’t. Not with the Talbots khakis. Liz told me I looked like I’d mugged a granny and run off with her trousers and trainers. The idea of pairing my granny pants with the Easy Spirits was too awful to think about, but as I hobbled into Breezes I knew I’d been wrong to prioritize beauty.

A bartender was checking bottle levels and making notes. He was facing the Nantucket Sound, jotting something on a form. The clouds had burned off and the late afternoon light was hazy gold. The plastic sheeting that had covered the windows was rolled up. A cool breeze rustled the pages of his notebook.

“Hey,” I said. “Do you have any Band-Aids?”

He turned around as if to speak, but instead of telling me where the first-aid kit was, he let the moment hang in the air, waiting long enough for the blush on my cheeks to deepen to a fevered, stinging glow. It was Guitar Guy, leaning on the bar like he owned the place.

“Nice pants,” he said with a wicked grin.

Fifteen

“SO YOU’RE THE NEW WAITRESS
I’ve been hearing about,” Guitar Guy said as he showed me through the bustling kitchen, alive with knives chopping and Spanish chatter, to a little locker room.

“I guess so,” I said, wondering if one of these lockers was going to be mine, and if so, what I was supposed to keep in it. Guitar Guy opened a drawer in a metal cabinet, pulled out a first-aid kit, and handed me the Band-Aids. I took a few, sat down on the bench, and peeled one open. He sat next to me, leaning forward, forearms on knees. He smelled like herbs and spices, in a good way. I slipped off my shoes and applied the Band-Aids, oddly self-conscious.

“Hey, Ben, glad to see you’re showing Cricket around,” Karla said, appearing from around the corner. “Is the inventory done?”

“Sí, el jefe,”
he said, and turned to me. “Cricket. Cool name.”

“Nice to meet you, Ben.”

This would have been the appropriate place to shake hands, but for some reason neither of us made a move, until at last, he tapped my elbow with his. I tapped his back reflexively. He smiled and tapped again, and so did I. What were we doing? A deep pink punished my cheeks. Karla tossed me an apron. I caught it and held it to my hot face for a second, hiding my blush.

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about you being a
brown
-noser,” he said.

“Oh, you should worry,” I said, peeking out from behind the apron. “Blue-nosers are the ones you have to watch out for.”

I met the rest of the employees at the staff meal—chicken curry over rice. I sat at the communal table, determined to be my most charming self. There were three busboys, Hector, Steve, and Kevin; a few line cooks whose names I didn’t catch; a tattooed dishwasher who grabbed some food and returned to the kitchen before I could introduce myself; and three other servers: Nicky, who spent winters skiing in Colorado and summers hanging out in Nantucket; James, a senior at Middlebury College; and Amy, who was tiny and beautiful, like a living doll. She had a thin tattoo—a simple line that encircled her arm like a bracelet—bright red lipstick, and long, mascaraed eyelashes under which her dark eyes flickered with intelligence.

“Do you know her?” Amy asked Ben, without acknowledging that the
her
was right there, sitting next to him.

“We met on the ferry,” I said. “He touched my nose, like, out of nowhere!”

“That’s weird,” Amy said and stabbed a bit of chicken.

“Well, look at that nose,” Ben said, gesturing to me. “It’s a great nose.” Amy reddened, her face almost matching her lipstick. I covered my nose with my hand as Ben’s knee knocked mine.

“Cricket you’ll be shadowing Amy,” Karla said. “Stick to her like glue.”

“Okay,” I said. Amy pushed her chair from the table, grabbed her plate, walked away, and kicked open the kitchen door. I looked to Ben for help, but he was texting under the table.

“Get back here, Amy,” Karla called. “We’re about to go over the specials,
mija
!”

It didn’t take long to learn my first lesson: following someone who doesn’t want to be followed sucks.

“What are you doing?” I asked Amy as she punched a number into the computer.

“Uh, clocking in,” she said.

“Do I clock in?”

“Not for training,” Amy said, checking her text messages.

I didn’t know if I was getting paid for the training and I didn’t dare ask. About a half hour later, after Amy had prepped the coffee and tea station, checked the desserts, and memorized the specials, we got our first table. Our second was ten minutes later. And then our third, fourth, and fifth were sat all at once. Before I knew it, our whole section was full. I stood behind Amy as she greeted people, offered drinks, recited specials, answered questions, and took orders, all without writing anything down. I followed her as she wove through customers and staff, hustling back and forth from the bar, the tables, the kitchen, and the computer stations, never once checking to see if she’d lost me.

By around seven thirty p.m., our first tables were finishing their desserts, three others were working their way through their entrees, and the other two were relaxing over cocktails. Amy leaned against the computer stand and I hovered. She sighed and headed toward what I thought was the kitchen, so I followed.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Amy said. “Get lost!”

“Sorry,” I said and slinked back out to what I now had learned was the “floor.”

Ben laughed at me from behind the bar.

“I’m supposed to follow her everywhere,” I said and shrugged.

“She’s in a bad mood,” Ben said with a smile as he poured a glass of chardonnay, two red wines, and a gin and tonic.

“Do you have anything to do with that?” I asked, and for the first time he looked a little sad.

“Just drop these on table five for her, okay?”

“Um, which one is that?”

“The fifth one in from the door on the left.”

“Hey, do you know if I get paid for tonight?” I asked, picking up the tray with both hands. I wasn’t ready for a one-handed carry. Would I ever be?

“Minimum wage. Unless Amy decides to share her tips.”

Minimum wage, I thought, and counted aloud to find table number five.

Right after I delivered the drinks, Karla told me I could go home for the night. “Same thing tomorrow. Wednesday you’ll learn how to close.”

“So I did okay?”

“You did great.”

“Um, did you find out about the housing?”

“We’ll put you out on Surfside Road. I’m sure we can squeeze another bed in there somehow. I think Amy has the double bed. She’ll roll over for you.”

“Oh, okay.” Was she serious? The idea of sharing a bed with Amy sent the taste of chicken curry to the back of my throat. Amy was leaning on the bar, one foot kicking up behind her, whispering something to Ben. What sort of lipstick did she use that stayed on so perfectly like that?

“And it’s a hundred and fifty each week out of your paycheck,” Karla said. “For the housing.”

“Sounds good,” I said, though that seemed like a lot if I was going to be sharing a bed with someone who hated me.

“Cricket,” Amy called. I turned. It was the first time she’d said my name even though we’d been tethered by an invisible rope for several hours. She draped a proprietary arm around Ben and pointed to my apron. “Are you taking that home for a souvenir?”

“Oh, whoops,” I said. As I unknotted the coffee-stained apron and headed to the locker room I heard her say to Ben, “What kind of a name is Cricket, anyway?”

I practically crawled out of the restaurant. Several hours of waitressing had tired me out more than a whole lacrosse tournament. My blistered feet hurt even as I walked on the outside of the folded-in heels of my flats. My neck felt like it’d been stepped on, and I knew that I smelled like onion rings. I paused on Main Street, about to head into the pharmacy for an ice-cream sandwich, when I decided to go to Mitchell’s Book Corner instead. Seeing my name in George Gust’s book never failed to give me a little boost, and it was even better if I saw it in the actual store rather than in my own personal copy. I had one foot in the store when I spotted Zack straight ahead.
Zack!

Don’t care,
I commanded myself as I silently stepped back to the sidewalk and slinked behind a tree. I steadied myself, tilted my head, breathed bark. There was the boy I knew in a baseball cap, bent over a book, turning the pages with care. He shifted his weight and turned ninety degrees, revealing the cover of the book. It was the reissued edition of her collected works, the one with the bright blue cover that my English teacher constantly praised. Emily Dickinson was what I had been reading on the beach last summer when we spent our first day alone together. Emily Dickinson was the book that held open the window he climbed into to find me. “Emily Dickinson was an American genius,” I’d told him once, and we’d both burst into laughter because I’d sounded so serious. Emily Dickinson!

It was a sign. He was thinking about me. This Parker relationship was some kind of misguided illusion, some terrible strain of boarding school amnesia. I couldn’t see him now, not in my Talbots khakis, not when I smelled like garlic and onions, with coffee grounds under my fingernails. I stepped out of my shoes and ran back to the inn barefoot, this new information filling me with lightness and speed.

When I got back to the manager’s apartment, I took a long shower. The food smell lifted from my hair and skin after the third scrubbing. I slathered myself with lotion, put on my Brown lacrosse T-shirt, and climbed into my makeshift bed on the sofa. I heard mumbles from Liz’s room. She was probably on the phone with Shane, who was out on the Cape for at least another few days.

From the window, sounds of kids laughing drifted up with the scent of honeysuckle and freshly mowed grass. I pulled out the
Musée de Rodin
book and looked at
The Kiss
. I closed my eyes and let myself slip, remembering the first time Zack and I had spent the whole night together. I gave myself the dream like a gift, like a stolen bar of chocolate.

Sixteen

“DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT’S YOUR LITTLE,
um, corner?” Liz asked and pointed to a bare twin-size mattress with a tiny pillow on it on the floor. Liz said it was the kind that you got on an airplane for international flights. The mattress was one of five in a room meant for two, three of which were on actual bed frames and two of which lay on the stained carpet. The one without the sheets on it was definitely meant for me. I just knew it. “At least you won’t be sharing a bed with Amy,” Liz said.

It was four days later and even though I’d been prepared, I had yet to run into Zack or Jules. I certainly wasn’t going to run into them out here. Liz and I were at the staff house out on Surfside Road. It was a tiny one-bedroom, one-bathroom shack that I was going to be sharing with six girls, one of whom was snoring in a thong and T-shirt, facedown on the futon in the living room in front of a TV tuned to a daytime talk show, advising as to how to “shop your own closet.” The box of wine on the coffee table indicated she’d spent the previous night like this, too. I didn’t recognize her, at least not from this angle, so she must have been one of the girls from the Wamp.

Inside the bedroom, only one of the beds was made. It was probably the one belonging to Nicky, the career waitress. The other beds, littered with magazines, with sheets and clothes strewn everywhere, made it look as if zombies had attacked without warning.

“And at least you’re near the window?” Liz said.

“Yeah.” I stepped over an empty beer bottle and an open bag of hot Cheetos and looked out the window. It was open a crack, but needed to be up all the way all the time. It smelled like a mixture of old cheese and socks in there. There was a tang to the odor that was more taste than smell. People think girls are neat and clean and boys are the messy ones, but this house was living proof that that wasn’t true. I opened the screenless window and stuck my head out. Amy was in the yard reading the
New York Times.
No lipstick.

In the last few days she’d learned to tolerate having me follow her around, as long as I didn’t talk too much, and I’d learned to pick up whatever I could through observation alone, since she was not about to provide instruction. If I had any questions, Nicky was the one who’d give answers. I’d also learned not to talk to Ben in front of Amy; whatever they had going on was complicated and semisecret, and she did her best to limit my time at the bar. If there were drinks to pick up, she sent me to fold napkins, wipe up the dessert station, or check on appetizers in the kitchen.

“It’s not so terrible,” Liz said, peering out the window to the patch of dry grass behind the house where Amy was now lighting a cigarette. “Look, there’s a backyard for lacrosse practice.”

“Yeah,” I said, imagining practicing shots on goal over a smoking, sunbathing Amy. So far, I’d kept up with my running, but I hadn’t done my stick drills at all. Amy turned around and squinted at the sound of our voices.

“Hi,” I smiled too big and waved too cheerfully.

“Oh,” she muttered, turned back to her newspaper, and crossed her legs. Amy had the toned legs of a dancer. She really was beautiful.

“Twat,” Liz said too loudly. She pulled back from the window, and took another look around. “I’m just going to use the loo, and then I’ll leave you to get settled.”

I pursed my lips and nodded. I wanted to throw myself at her feet, cling to her, and beg her not to leave me there. I sat on the lumpy mattress and tried not to cry. A line of ants crawled up the wall and toward the window. If Zack and I did get back together, there was no way I wanted him climbing through this window.

I took a deep breath and searched for some empty space in a closet, but the one in the bedroom was claimed. The bar was bending under the weight of crowded, overloaded hangers. On the floor were a jumble of shoes, and two full hampers. This was one closet I did not want to shop. I shut the door as if the organisms living in the teeming piles of dirty laundry might attack.

Maybe there was another closet in the living room? Doing my best not to disturb Thonged Snoring Girl, I grasped at the first doorknob I found, but it was on the door to the bathroom. Liz was standing in front of the sink washing her hands with a vigor I’d never seen.

“It’s awful,” I said.

“A hovel!” Liz said. “Look.” She gestured at the toilet with its nasty, rust-colored ring. Pinching together her thumb and forefinger, she opened the flimsy, ripped shower curtain to reveal a plastic stall with blackish mold blossoming in all the corners. Liz washed her hands again and then looked around for something to dry them on. She paused centimeters shy of the mildewed towels that were piled on top of one another on a single hook. Holding her breath, she dried her hands on her jeans.

“I’ll scrub it myself,” I said. “I’ll just get some rubber gloves and some Ajax and roll up my sleeves and do it.”

“Have you seen the kitchen yet?”

I shook my head.

Liz swallowed. “You can stay with me for one more night, two maximum, but you have to make yourself very scarce. It’s the first night Shane is back from the Cape, and I do not want to be disturbed.”

“I’ll hang out in the kitchen until you text me that the coast is clear.”

“It might not be until very, very late. We’re sexually adventurous.”

“I know. I don’t care. I’ll sleep outdoors in the hammock if you want.”

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Quick, before we contract athlete’s foot.” She pointed to a stagnant puddle in the shower where a mosquito hovered lasciviously. “Or dengue fever.”

We grabbed my stuff.

“Who are you?” Thonged Snoring Girl asked, groggy, wiping her crusty eyes with clumsy hands.

“Figments of your imagination,” Liz said as we flew out the door. “Mere shadows.”

“Hey, can you drop these on table nine?” Ben asked that night as I passed by the bar on my way to see how the customers at table sixteen were doing with their appetizers. It was my last night of training and I was pretty much a free girl. I’d managed five tables on my own, from the Lillet aperitifs to the beach plum sorbet. It killed me that Amy was going to get all the tips. Ben was chilling martini glasses, lining up highballs, and tearing off tickets all at the same time, but with such laid-back summer style, he didn’t even look like he was working. “Amy’s in the weeds.”

“Sure,” I said, noticing the appealing line of his side as he reached for a wineglass. He opened a fresh bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, ran a blade below the lower ridge to remove the wrapper, twisted the corkscrew with a confident wrist, and poured two cool, pale, straw-colored glasses with the kind of relaxed competence that made watching him so easy. “And I know exactly where table nine is.”

“I’m starting to see why you got into Brown,” he said, and, without breaking eye contact, placed the drinks on a tray. “You should come by the brewery tomorrow, I’m playing some new songs. I’ve been meaning to ask you for a few days, but it’s hard to get you alone.”

“Oh,” I said.
Was he asking me out?

“Everyone’s invited,” he said.

“Fuck,” Amy said under her breath as she punched an order into a nearby computer and messed up. “Fuck me.” She canceled the order, blinked her long, luxurious lashes, and started again. “Hey, are you moving into the Surfside house, or what?”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“Just so you know, I get the first shower in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said, too cheerful, as always. I was probably always going to be too cheerful for grumpy alternative girls. I sighed. She marched off.

Ben waited until Amy was in the kitchen, and then he leaned a little closer. He smelled like a man. Herbs and spices. Gin and lime. Summer and salt. “Before the show I’m going surfing. Want to come?”

“I don’t surf,” I said. Not only was I certain that Amy would suffocate me with my own pillow in my sleep if I went surfing with Ben, I was so focused on seeing Zack I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on another activity. It had been almost a week since I’d seen him at Mitchell’s Book Corner, and even though I’d been hanging out in town on my mornings off, always ready, always in cute outfits, I had yet to run into him again.

“I can teach you,” he said.

“I think I have plans,” I said.

“Okay,” Ben said, biting his lip. “You sure about that?”

I nodded, turning away. Again with the blushing! I was going to have to start wearing ski masks to work so I could hide, even as my cheeks betrayed me. It was like my face had its own relationship with him.

“Okay, no pressure.” He seemed to mean it, like he wasn’t disappointed at all, and I was considering changing my mind as he handed me the tray of drinks. It was heavier than I’d expected. “If you look at them, you’ll spill. Don’t look.”

“I got it,” I said. I steadied my gaze on my destination: table nine. I knew Ben was watching, and I was determined to deliver the drinks without spilling a drop. But when I stepped out on the porch and their faces came into view, I almost lost the drinks, my footing, my breath, and my mind.

It was the Claytons.