Amie Denman - Under The Boardwalk

Dorothea waited for him outside his office door. Her desk straddled the space between his office and the one that was formerly his father’s. No one used Ford Hamilton’s office now, leaving Dorothea half-adrift.

“One of the vendors stopped in to see you while you were out on the Sea Devil.”

“Which one?”

“Augusta Murphy.”

Jack considered Dorothea for a moment. She had to be in her late fifties and had worked for Starlight Point for decades. Maybe if he asked her advice? Maybe she knew all the things his father hadn’t told his own son about the way he was doing business. Doubtful.

“Very tall and very pretty.”

Jack smiled for the first time in hours.

“She also seemed very mad.”

His smile vanished.

“Is she coming back?”

“Wants you to come to her bakery in the hotel. Seems to think she can tell you what to do with your time,” Dorothea said. She grinned at Jack. “I thought that was my job.”

“I planned to stop by the Lake Breeze this afternoon anyway. I want to see if it’s close to being ready for opening weekend. Guess it wouldn’t be much out of my way to see what she wants.”

“I told her not to count on it.”

“Thank you, Dorothea. I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

WHEN JACK ZIPPED over to the hotel on one of the many loaner employee bicycles they kept all over the Point, he hoped to have a chance to talk to Gus alone. He’d been up late worrying about the vendor contracts. His father had always negotiated those, giving Jack only a vague idea of where that income fit into the general scheme of things. He hadn’t even known Aunt Augusta’s was replacing the retired baker until he’d grilled his mother over lunch downtown. Sadly, he was beginning to realize his mother had only a cursory idea of how Starlight Point ran.

Looking in from the outside, everyone probably figured he was privy to all his father’s business decisions. If they only knew. To write up the formal contracts, Jack had researched some boilerplate industry standards, pulled out five years’ worth of Starlight Point contracts and run the ideas past the foods manager. Jimmy Henry had raised his eyebrows when Jack wanted to review the fees and profit share from the vendors.

“Never looked at those before,” he’d said. “Your father only asked me when he thought one of them might cut into our sales. Generally, we get the sit-down business and the vendors get the stand-up. Full-service restaurants are ours, snack and drink stands are theirs. Worked that way for years.”

“I know, but what do you think of the rent and the percent of the profits we charge? Could we get away with raising them?”

“Search me. Can’t speak for any of them and haven’t seen their returns. Maybe they’ve been making out like bandits all these years. Maybe you’ll break ’em if you raise the rent and they’ll all pull out. Wish I could help you, but I run our sit-downs and only get involved if someone competes with my restaurants,” he’d repeated, as if washing his hands of the issue.

“Worried about any of these vendors competing with us?”

“Are they the same ones as last year?”

“All except for the three bakeries. New owner.”

Jimmy had shrugged. “Bakers are bakers.”

When Jack entered the hotel lobby, he wondered if Jimmy had ever met Gus. Perched on the check-in counter addressing a group of twenty or so people, Gus did not look like an average baker.

The room shifted in his direction when he entered the lobby. His tie was loose, his suit coat flapped and he had a rubber band securing his right pant leg. Like his father, he always wore a suit at work, but getting his pants caught in the bicycle chain two summers ago had been enough to teach him a lesson.

He sat in a plush lobby chair, pulled off his black dress shoe and jerked off the rubber band. Everyone watched him. It was as if the guest of honor had entered a surprise birthday party half an hour before anyone expected him.

Gus strode across the lobby, the group right behind her, and stood so close Jack couldn’t get up without looking really awkward. He hadn’t gotten his shoe back on, and now he felt exposed, trapped. Please don’t let there be a hole in my sock. At five foot eleven, Gus was already imposing. And gorgeous. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, hair a little wild.

“Thank you for coming to our meeting,” she said tersely. Each word dripped with ice.

Jack relaxed in the chair, draped an arm across the back and crossed one leg over the other. His black dress shoe knocked against Gus’s shin but neither of them gave an inch. If she wanted to unleash some kind of righteous fury on him about the contract, he wasn’t backing down in front of a lobby of vendors.

“Didn’t know it was a formal meeting,” he said.

“It is now. We want to talk about these terms.” She waved the contract at him. The twenty or so other vendors behind her had similar white papers clutched in their fingers. No one looked happy. Even the ones who’d been here for years. Maybe he’d gone too far. But now he was stuck.

“Go ahead,” Jack said coolly, his glance returning to Gus’s face. “Talk.”

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. Jack would’ve liked to tell her she was beautiful when she was angry, but the last thing he wanted was to look flushed in front of a group of ticked-off vendors. Why did Gus have this effect on him and why the heck had she set him up like this? He would have liked a private conversation with her about the lease terms. But this felt more like a sneak attack than a negotiation.

“Twenty thousand for the space and twenty percent of the profits is not the deal I negotiated with Ford Hamilton last fall,” she said.

Other vendors fanned out behind her so they formed a half circle. They nodded in agreement, entrapping Jack in a back-down-or-be-a-butthead situation.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he said slowly, “Ford Hamilton is dead. His verbal contracts are null and void.”

Several of the vendors—Bernie from Bernie’s Famous Boardwalk Fries and Tosha from Tosha’s Homemade Ice Cream—gasped and shook their heads. They’d known him since he was a little boy climbing on their counters and begging for free samples. They’d worked with his father for two decades or more. Maybe he was making a mistake...

“So...?” Gus prodded. “You really plan to renege on the deal we all thought we had—ten thousand and ten percent—on a technicality?” The hard lines of her mouth showed no signs of softening. She plucked the rubber band from the arm of his chair and started snapping it with her fingers.

Jack felt her words like a punch to his chest, knocking his breath away and spiking adrenaline through his veins. “My father’s death is a lot more than a technicality. If you don’t like the deal, don’t take it. Nobody’s forcing you to sign.”

Her mouth dropped open a little and she stepped back. Only a small step, but enough to give him room to stand. He topped her by only four inches, and together they looked like giants in front of a pack of smaller villagers, all angry. Seeing the accusatory faces of the vendors didn’t do a thing for Jack’s mood. He knew he should save face, make a graceful exit, schedule an actual meeting to discuss the situation. But not now. Hard retreat was the only way his tenuous grasp on his emotions wouldn’t crack.

He stared at the lobby wall behind the group, anger, pain and frustration tightening his jaw and spine. He couldn’t look them in the eye. Wouldn’t. It was going to be a season, maybe several, of tough choices. He’d have to get used to it.

“I’ll give you until tomorrow afternoon to sign the new contracts and return them to my office. You are under no obligation to lease space at Starlight Point. If you don’t return the signed contracts by this time tomorrow, I’ll assume you’re backing out and replace you immediately.”