LOU AND HIS CREW spread sketches and drawings and charts and graphs along the bar to show Al and me what they intended to do with Small’s. Artie gave the presentation.
“To begin with,” he said, pointing to a map of the island, “over here, just this side of the wildlife sanctuary, we’re going to be building accommodations for the staff. This whole compound will be pretty well concealed by the bamboo, so the guests in the hotel will never really see it. The rooms will be quite comfortable, luxurious, on the level of a world-class resort. We haven’t set the rates for them yet, but we figure—”
“The rates?” asked Albertine.
“Yeah, we haven’t quite decided what to charge for the whole package, you know?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s been such an intense time, with so many conversations going on at once, I forgot that you don’t even know the concept.”
Albertine and I shrugged to indicate that he was right about our not knowing the concept, and he dropped back to the beginning.
“You see, we’re going to market the pleasure that we’ve found here, the concept of losing your cares in somebody else’s problems.”
“You mean — ”
“I mean that people will come here to work here — to fix the roof, cook the meals, tinker with the boiler, pilot the launch — ”
I was on the verge of saying “Why didn’t I think of that?” but I never got the chance because everyone began talking at once, each of them explaining a pet part of the scheme. My personal favorite was Nancy and Elaine’s specialty. They had turned the shortage of actual hotel guests into a virtue. Some of the paying staff would get to set their worries aside by finding ways to lure guests to “The Little Hotel Without a Clientele.” They had to have some guests, so that the work of the people who were paying for the privilege of working wouldn’t seem pointless, so they’d have to have an advertising department, although if worse came to worst they were prepared to fill the place with people on complementary passes, actual guests.
“Amazing,” I said, when they had finished laying it all out for us.
“There’s something we want to ask of you,” said Lou, “a favor.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’d like to use your saucer-detector slogan, ‘No Worries, No Kidding’ — but we’re willing to pay handsomely for it.”
“How handsomely?” asked Albertine.
Lou handed her a slip of paper.
“It’s a deal,” she said.
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