14
THE NEXT DAY, the staff was summoned for a meeting. Ariane was the first to arrive. She hesitated at the entrance to the dining room. At the far edge of the room, with their backs to the bay—the bay behind them as a backdrop, like a rear-projection scene in a low-budget movie—stood Mr. Murray, Renée, and someone new, a young man, tall, in a dark double-breasted suit. He stood with such relaxed ease, listening patiently while Renée and Mr. Murray pushed papers at him and made points and gesticulated, that he made them seem rumpled, nervous, flustered, and incompetent. The shimmering light of the sun on the rippling water of the bay was mesmerizing—and blinding. The face of the tall young man was in darkness, his expression invisible. If he had looked up, Ariane would have been able to tell what he looked like, but he probably would have caught her studying him, and that would have embarrassed her, for he would have seen the softening around her mouth, the little smile, the faraway look in her narrowed eyes, and he would have understood that she admired the way he held himself and that she was daydreaming about him and speculating about his looks, and he would have understood that she was very easy picking.
The rest of the staff began drifting into the room and taking positions among the tables, waiting for something to happen. They found the moment awkward, since they stood squinting into the sunlight at the silhouettes of people who were going to give them their orders, but none of the important trio was taking any notice of them. They didn’t want to talk or joke among themselves because that might turn out to be the wrong thing to do, as it always had been in school, so they stood in their awkwardness, feeling foolish and bored, with their arms crossed, or shifting from foot to foot, uncertain just what was expected of them or what they ought to be doing. Ariane composed herself and put on a blank face.
At last, the newcomer himself looked up from the loose-leaf binder they were all examining and said, “Well! Hello there! Forgive us—we’ve been so wrapped up in these charts and so on—”
From that moment, the moment when the handsome guy looked up at them, it was apparent to everyone on the staff that things had changed. The atmosphere, style, and tone of Sunrise Cove would be different. He shrugged, as if all the awkwardness in the room were his personal responsibility, as if to say that he was a clumsy oaf in situations like this and they would have to forgive him. He was good-looking, as Ariane had hoped, but he wore none of the faces she had imagined for him. She recognized him. He was the handsome guy she had waited on the night before, the one with the I-want-a-steak look. As soon as she recognized him, she wondered why she hadn’t guessed that it would be he (since we expect something like symmetry in our lives, even something like a plot).
[to be continued]
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