Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

“Listen,” the clerk was saying, “what you do is your own business, young lady, but we don’t want any druggies in here. This is a family resort.”

“What are you talking about?” I wanted to laugh. “It’s a motel. And I was just tired.”

“Like I said.” He cleared his throat. “We don’t want any tired people in here. You owe me thirty more dollars, tonight included. Then you be on your way.”

There was no point in arguing. I counted out the money from my purse. Joe had given me an extra fifty to help me get home. All told, I had a little over a hundred dollars left-money I had planned to spend in Boston on Christmas presents for my parents, but had not gotten around to using.

As I was leaving the office, the realization hit me all at once, like a gust of wind. I turned at the door; the clerk had already gone back to watching his game.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what day is it?”

“Today?” He looked at me and laughed. “It’s Christmas Day. You almost missed it.”

I couldn’t have said why I did what I did, not exactly. It was as if a hidden door had opened, like a passage in a castle wall. Joe, my parents, the whole kit and kaboodle that I called my life: all I had to do was go through the door, and I could leave everything behind. I thought of the girl I had seen in the restaurant in Cambridge, so confident and smart, holding the attention of the men at her table like a spell. I knew that her life-a life of money and good schools and all the choices such things buy-could never be mine. I wasn’t going to be a lawyer, or even go to college. But I wanted to know, even for a moment, what it felt like to be someone like her.

I rented a room the next day at the YWCA on Spring Street. Seven dollars a night, and another five to eat, perhaps three more for incidentals: by these calculations, I needed to find a job in five days. There were fourteen restaurants going four or five blocks in each direction from the Y, everything from greasy-spoon diners to chowder houses with big open tanks of lobsters for the tourists. It was the slow season, I figured, but people still had to eat, and I didn’t care what kind of place it was, so long as I had work. By now my parents would be wondering what had happened to me-my lie about visiting high school friends in Boston would have long since fallen apart with just a few phone calls-but I didn’t want to tell them where I was until I had gotten myself settled. I was twenty-four years old, and never in my life had I done anything so purely on my own.

By the third day I was beginning to panic. Everyplace the story was the same: not hiring, try back in a few weeks. But I didn’t have a few weeks. I was down to just thirty dollars, plus the eleven dollars I had to keep aside for bus fare home in case nothing worked out. I had a tidy nest egg sitting in a passbook savings account back in Sagonick-a little over three thousand dollars I’d managed to put away-but I would have had to go home to get it, or ask my parents to wire me the money. I vowed I wouldn’t touch it, unless I got truly desperate.

I had one solid lead: a chowder house down on Commercial, just a few hundred yards from the dock where the Jenny-Smith had been berthed. I’d visited it the first day, and the manager told me that he might be needing a waitress; one of his girls was pregnant and likely going to quit. I’d been hoping for a job as a line cook, but waitressing or even busing would be fine, I told him. Check back in a couple of days, he said. Maybe he’d know something by then.

I waited until noon on the fourth day before I returned. The weather was a sullen, dispiriting gray, and a steady ten-knot wind whipped up the waters of the harbor, making me think of Joe, now far out to sea. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how angry I was with him. I was wearing the bracelet he’d given me-I hadn’t taken it off since our first night together-and, feeling its jangling presence against my wrist, I remembered his words: There’s a woman in town who makes these. Even as he’d spoken, I’d felt a little chill of suspicion unsnake inside me. We’d been apart for three years. I’d never asked about other women, and he’d never mentioned any, except for someone named Abby, whom I gathered was his boss’s wife and an old friend of his father’s-a nurse who had taken care of Joe Sr. when he was injured in the war. Apart from that, Joe’s descriptions of life in LeMaitre made it sound like a frontier outpost from some novel of the old West, everyone spitting and pissing where they liked. But of course, even in such a place there would be women.

Feeling suddenly determined, I marched through slushy snow up to the front door of the restaurant and stepped inside. Only a few people were eating-mostly men in suits and ties, no doubt the usual lunch crowd from the law firms and government offices over on State, hunched over bowls of chowder and pints of Bass. At the bar I asked for the manager, and a minute later he came striding out of the kitchen.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. He was an older man, maybe fifty-five, with square glasses that made his eyes seem large and a comb-over of wispy hair that flapped a little when he walked. “I’m sorry. Maybe in a few more weeks.”

The news hit me like a blow. “I don’t have a few weeks,” I said, and heard the tears pressing on my voice. “I only have another day.”

“Did you try O’Neil’s? They sometimes need people.” O’Neil’s was another seafood place, further down Commercial.

“I’ve tried everywhere.” A fat tear spilled onto my cheek, and when I tried to wipe it away, I found I was still wearing my mittens. I removed them and grabbed a cocktail napkin off the bar and blew my nose. “I’m sorry. I don’t have to waitress. Just let me sweep up or something. Please. I’m down to my last thirty dollars.”

He regarded me another moment. The restaurant seemed to have fallen suddenly quiet. Beyond the windows, the gray sky over the harbor roiled with cold and snow.

“Aw, hell,” he said, and scratched the back of his head. “I really shouldn’t be doing this. To tell the truth, I had pretty much decided not to hire anybody, with business being so slow. But maybe we can squeeze you in.”

“You mean it?”

He seemed about to laugh. “You want the job or not?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“You won’t get rich in here. I know you know that, but I’m just saying. We only pay the minimum, a buck forty an hour. That and tips, of course. And I can’t give you the dinner shift until you’ve been on awhile.”

“Anything is fine. Really.”

He took a peppermint from a wicker basket on the hostess station and popped it into his mouth. Then he leveled his gaze at me. “Listen,” he said quietly, sucking on the candy, “I’ve got to ask. There isn’t anything I should know about you, is there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong. But not many girls come in and say they’re down to their last thirty dollars, or whatever it was. There wouldn’t be… anyone looking for you, would there? Like, say, a husband or boyfriend, something like that? You can tell me if there is.”

“No, sir. I just want to work.”

He looked at me another moment, deciding what to believe, and finally ended our negotiation with a crisp nod. “Okay, then. But it’s Deck, all right? Like the deck of a boat.”

“Deck. Got it.”

“Ten thirty sharp, tomorrow. Black pants if you have ’em, or else you can pick up a cheap pair at the army-navy down the street. The white shirt you have on should do fine.”

I felt myself smiling. “You won’t be sorry.”

“I’m guessing not.” He turned on his heel to go. “Sorry. Stupid of me, but I forgot to ask your name.”