Chapter 5
September 14
A Case of the Family Illness
ALBERTINE generally spends an hour or so reading in bed after she wakes up, then gets out of bed, pulls her workout wear on, runs seven circuits of the island, lifts her weights, showers, eats a light breakfast (a banana and an English muffin, for example) in the dining room, takes her dishes to the kitchen and discusses the day’s menu with Suki, and then carries her second mug of coffee to the reception desk. I gave her enough time to get through all of that and then came down the front stairs to the entrance hall, where I found her behind the reception desk, drinking her second mug of coffee and looking through the reservation book. The phone rang.
“Good morning,” she said, hopefully. “Small’s Hotel.” She listened for a moment, then flipped a page of the reservation book and said, “Yes, I have you down for two cottages for two weeks, beginning — How many what? Jet skis? How many jet skis do we have? Let me check.”
She held the phone at arm’s length and shouted in my direction, “Peeeter! How many jet skis do we have now?”
“None!” I shouted back.
Into the phone, she said, “I just checked with my assistant, Mrs. Biddle, and I’m happy to be able to report that we don’t have any of those damned jet skis. . . . Hmm? No, we have no plans to buy any jet skis in the foreseeable future. In fact, it’s one of those over-my-dead-body situations. . . . Ah, I see. . . . Well, of course, how could the little darlings possibly enjoy a vacation without unlimited access to jet skis? Mrs. Biddle . . . Mrs. Biddle . . . I have a suggestion. Perhaps you and your family would be happier at someplace other than Small’s Hotel. Oh, I agree. . . . Of course! Enjoy!” She smiled the smile she smiles when she doesn’t want her picture taken and tore a page from the reservation book.
“Al,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about our selling the place, and I just want to ask you something.”
“Ask me,” she said without looking up from her work.
“Doesn’t it bother you that we’re going to be selling at a loss?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Not at all.” She put her pencil down, put her hand on her hip, and looked at me. “The way I see it, Peter, the possibility of our turning a profit on this place vanished years ago. By selling now, we’re going to be cutting our losses. Every day we stay, we slide deeper into a hole. I’d like to see us scramble out while we can still get out. Before we disappear. Cut our losses. Cut and run. It’s all we can hope for.”
“What are we going to live on?”
“We’ll get jobs, regular jobs.”
“We will?”
“Yes, we will. Maybe.”
THE TWO SURVIVING TINKERS showed up in the afternoon to take a look at the roof. Al and I gave them our condolences, and Al gave them each a hug.
“The memorial service will be Wednesday.”
“We’ll be there,” said Al.
“Hey, we’re not going to get this job done if we stand around here,” said Marty, formerly the middle-sized tinker, now stepping uncomfortably into the shoes of the defunct big tinker. He and his little sidekick shouldered their tools and started off to look at the boiler. As I watched them walk away, I was suddenly struck by the fact that they had somehow made their way to the island without my ferrying them.
“Hey — how did you guys get out here?” I called after them.
“Your bartender brought us — Lou.”
“Lou?”
“Yeah — we ran into him on the other side. We weren’t going to come out until Monday, but he talked us into taking a look at things today. Oh — you know, you might want to give him a hand. He’s down at the dock with quite a load of booze. Wouldn’t let us help him. He’s a fiend for work, that guy. I never saw anybody who likes his work so much. Except for — ” He paused, removed his derby, and held it over his heart. “ — Big Tink.” He put his hat back on. “Anyway, I think you might want to give Lou a hand.”
I found Lou struggling up the path, trying to pull two of the red wagons, each of them overloaded with cartons.
“Let me take one of those,” I said.
“Gladly!”
“You’ve been shopping.”
“Yeah. I took the launch. Al said it was okay.”
“If Al says it’s okay, it’s okay. It didn’t sink, I take it.”
“I kept it pumped dry, just the way you did when you brought us over the other day.”
“Good for you. What are we hauling here? What is all this stuff?”
“I had to get a few things for the bar — ”
“Things for the bar?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you were running low — but ‘running low’ is hardly the way to put it. I mean, you really didn’t have any of the top-shelf brands in stock at all, and it doesn’t look good to have nothing that is good, you know what I’m saying? You were down to Brand X and only the dregs of that.”
“Well, things have been slow — ”
“You’ve got to keep up appearances,” he said, shaking his head. “Even if you don’t move them, you want to make sure you’ve got a nice display of your cognacs, you know, a nice selection of sherries, your single-malt Scotches — ”
“That’s what you bought? You — how — ? They gave you credit?”
“Huh? Oh. No. No, no, no. Nah, nah. I bought it.”
“You paid for this? But what do we owe — ?”
“Nothing. Forget it. You know, I enjoy extending a little hospitality, being behind the bar, talking to people, making their drinks. It’s fun for me. Forget about it.”
[to be continued]
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