680: “Let me . . .”
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 14 concludes
“Let me introduce myself,” he said. He passed the loose-leaf binder and the unruly stack of papers that lay on it to Mr. Murray, without looking at him. Mr. Murray was taken by surprise. He grabbed for the folder, just a moment too late, after the handsome guy had let go of it, and it slipped from his hands, threatened to fall to the floor, clattering, making a mess of things, but Mr. Murray grabbed frantically at it and caught it by one flap of the cover, so that only the loose papers fell to the floor. He squatted and began trying to gather them, and Renée squatted beside him, to help him.
The business couldn’t have been more effective if the handsome guy had planned it. It didn’t occur to anyone on the staff that he had, certainly not to Ariane. The waitresses, busboys, and bartenders watching the slapstick played out against a rear-projection of the shimmering bay were grateful for it—a terrific icebreaker. It allowed them to relax. It allowed them to laugh. This guy was okay—and he had something. Just look at him, standing there, talking so confidently, his hand in his pocket, so cool and so at ease, while Mr. Murray scrambled around on the floor after some crumpled papers. “I’m a guy named Guy,” he said.
He chuckled, and the staff, reading his chuckle as a signal that they were to chuckle too, chuckled too.
“What can you do?” he asked, with that shrug that was so disarming. “Your parents give you a name, and you’re stuck with it.”
Mr. Murray stood up, holding the mess of papers and the binder, now bent backward. He seemed subordinate to Guy. He was shorter, older, fatter, and now, beside the slim and confident Guy, he seemed uncertain about himself. Guy was of another order, cast in another style completely. It was really laughable the way he had suddenly made the others seem so small and clumsy. To most of the staff it seemed impossible to believe that Mr. Murray or Renée might have hired him or might be in control of him. It was far easier to believe that he was their real boss, who had for his own reasons chosen to keep himself hidden all this time, who had only now decided to step out of the shadows and reveal himself to them. They were all impressed—and several of the women were quite smitten. Ariane was among them. She had never seen a man who looked so good—not in real life. This Guy was the stuff of movies. She didn’t know anyone who owned a suit as good as the one he was wearing. She had never seen a tie tied so well. She didn’t know anyone who looked so clean and spotless as this handsome fellow—not even the president of the Bank of Babbington, who had always seemed as pink and scrubbed as a big baby.
When the chuckles had died down, and everyone had gotten over feeling grateful to Guy for giving them that opportunity to let off steam, he turned to the business of inspiring the staff.
“Renée and Mr. Murray have been taking me through everything that’s happened here in the last few weeks, outlining for me everything you’ve done to get this place running, and it’s an impressive job you’ve done here. Amazing. Really impressive. I’ve visited most of the resorts in the Norton family, and I don’t think there is any other that has gotten into basic running condition this quick. Give yourselves a hand.”
He applauded them, vigorously, as if he meant it, and Mr. Murray and Renée joined in, Mr. Murray trying to tuck the loose-leaf binder and loose papers under his arm and in the attempt dropping it on the floor, then bending over to pick it up and trying to clap his hands at the same time, and the workers, self-consciously, pleased with the praise they’d been given but embarrassed by the grade-school ring of all of this, applauded themselves halfheartedly.
“Now,” said Guy, “it’s time to go from running to humming, from doing all right to doing beautifully.” He applauded again. So did the staff. “We’ve got some problems. We have to face that. We’ve got too much bar business, for one thing. You’re asking yourself, ‘How can we have too much bar business?’ Am I right?” He panned his big, bright smile around the room. “We’ve got too many of—let me say, too many of the wrong kind of guy hanging out at the bar.” He smiled, as he always did when he used the word guy, and Ariane could imagine the jokes that had been attached to it, all the years of whispered jokes. “We’re going to have to change that. And we don’t have enough local dinner business, lunch business. We want to see locals using Sunrise Cove as a club. We want to see those fraternal organizations in here. We want family dinners. We want to be the place where the anniversary gets celebrated, the birthday. We have to work on that.” He applauded again, just as vigorously as before. It made no sense to the staff, but they applauded, too. “And another thing—and I get the feeling that this is going to take a lot of work. What’s our theme, ladies and gentlemen?” Silence. “Mr. Murray, what’s our theme here at Sunrise Cove?”
“Tranquility by design,” said Mr. Murray, as if it were something all of them should have known.
“Tranquility,” said Guy, “by design. That’s right. Tranquility by design. But that’s not what I see here. I’ve been hanging around for a few days now. In and out of the shadows. And I haven’t seen tranquility by design. I’ve seen something like a fish house.” He pinched his nose. The staff folded their arms and looked at their shoes. It was going to be a long day.
[to be continued]
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