Chapter 31
October 10
Up the On-Ramp to the Road to Riches
THIS WAS A BUSY DAY for all of us. After writing, I spent most of the day at the dock, repairing and patching and reinforcing, and chatting with Tony T, who was working on the launch, trying to find the source of a gas leak that might have been useful to someone who wanted to fake an accidental death so that his wife could collect on his insurance policies, if his wife had not allowed his insurance policies to lapse. Albertine, in addition to all her other duties, spent nearly an hour on the phone trying to get the washing-machine repair service to send a different washing-machine repairman to repair the damage done by yesterday’s washing-machine repairman, but trying to do it without actually saying that he seemed to be incompetent, because she didn’t want to be the cause of the poor guy’s losing the only job he could get, even if it was a job he couldn’t do. Elaine returned with piles of documents for Lou to review, and the two of them spent the day closeted in the library, reviewing the documents and making decisions and, I suppose, money. Cutie, who had taken to wearing a Small’s Hotel T-shirt, pearls, and very pink pumps as her indoor outfit, energetically pursued what had become her preoccupation: the development of a complete line of Small’s Hotel paraphernalia, reaching far beyond T-shirts to include luggage, swimwear, prepared foods, and a radio-controlled model of the triple-cockpit runabout that was used to shuttle guests to and from the hotel, now by Tony T, formerly by me. Nancy was her collaborator in this effort, but she concentrated on marketing, rather than design; she was laying out a mockup of a catalog and creating a Small’s Hotel Web site, where she had already begun to advertise the items that Cutie had envisioned, even though they were only visions, not the sort of goods that the Federal Communications Commission or whatever government agency surfed the Web with an eye out for offshore scams would consider tangible enough to qualify as legitimate. Alice spent most of the day in her room, of course, redecorating it. Artie, master of arrangements, spent the day moving briskly from one project to the next, phone in one hand, walkie-talkie in the other, overseeing the construction of the new cistern and the redistribution of the stillborn island to the bottom of the bay, where it belonged, a job that kept Dexter Burke and his dredge — make that Lou’s dredge — occupied at a good distance from our island. Nancy had apprenticed herself to Albertine and was learning the hotel business by clucking over the books while Albertine was occupied with the washing-machine repair service. Clark nailed shingles to the roof and fiddled with the boiler, singing all the while. Suki cooked. Louise and Miranda peeled, chopped, sliced, and diced. And in the afternoon Manuel Pedrera hunkered down beside me on the dock and asked me to teach him to write.
“What?” I said.
“I want to write my memoirs — ”
“I know.”
“What?”
“Well — I mean — who doesn’t?”
“Oh. I see. I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t read much. Never seem to have the time. That’s why I think I need some instruction, if you see what I mean. I’ve always prided myself on doing good work, so I want to do this well, too, and — ”
“Look,” I said, “I think you should know that I have no insurance.”
“Insurance? You mean like libel insurance?”
“No, I mean life insurance.”
“Interesting,” he said, and then, to his credit, he modified it with, “I guess.”
I handed him my hammer and a handful of nails. “Writing a memoir,” I said, “is a lot like repairing a dilapidated dock. Get into the water and I’ll explain what I mean.”
“What? Into the water?”
“If you want to write a memoir, you need memorable experiences — and this is going to be one of them. Into the water.”
He let himself into the water and spent some time cursing in what sounded to me like a phony Spanish accent.
I said, “You see that the pilings — the uprights — are not in very good condition, right?”
“Right.”
“And you see that there are crosspieces that tie the pilings together so that the weak ones are strengthened by association with the strong ones?”
“Yeah.”
“Our problem is that some of the crosspieces that ought to be there are there, but some are missing, and some are rotten, and some are just dangling there, connected to nothing.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re going to pry those useless old pieces off and replace them with these nice solid timbers I’ve got here.” I handed him one.
“Are you sure this has instructional value?” he asked, shivering.
“Far more than the recommended daily allotment,” I said.
[to be continued]
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