Elin Hilderbrand: The Beach Club

“Hey, Vance! Good to see you, man! How was your winter?” Here was Mack now, clapping Vance on the back, pumping his hand. Mack ran his palm over Vance’s smooth skull. “You shaved your head…it looks great. You look, I don’t know, intimidating.”

“Thanks,” Vance said. He couldn’t help smiling. He expected Mack to say shaved heads weren’t acceptable at the Beach Club. Vance caught himself and tried to scowl. This was how it happened every year. He spent all winter despising Mack and then when he showed up in the spring, Mack was disarmingly nice, cool even, and Vance was forced to abandon his hatred. But not this year. This year Vance was going to hang on to his hatred with both hands.

“Man, how was your winter?” Mack asked. “How was Thailand? Did you get laid?”

“Of course,” Vance said, and again, he couldn’t help smiling. When he pictured himself on the beach at Koh Samui or under the capable massaging hands of Pan, a nineteen-year-old Thai girl with long, shiny black hair, he wanted to give up every detail. Mack, he knew, had spent all winter on this gloomy rock. “Thailand kicked ass. I rented a bungalow on the beach for six bucks a night.” He nodded toward the hotel. “Closer to the water than room eleven and a hundredth the price. I got massages that lasted well into the night. I ate banana pancakes and grilled fish every day.”

A young guy with dark curly hair holding a shovel approached them. “That sounds like paradise,” he said. “Where were you, California?”

“Thailand,” Mack and Vance said at the same time. Their voices were indistinguishable. Vance shook his head.

“Thailand,” Vance said again, on his own. The familiar acidity of hatred filled his chest, and he popped two Rolaids. In the summer, when Mack was around, Vance ate hundreds of them.

“Vance, this is Jem. I hired Jem yesterday. Jem, Vance Robbins, the head bellman.”

Vance took another look at the kid as he ground the chalk between his molars. He was too handsome but probably impressionable. Easy to boss around.

“Jem, like in To Kill a Mockingbird? ” Vance asked.

Jem nodded. “Not many people get the reference.”

Vance stuck out his hand. “Pleasure,” he said.

Mack ran his palms over Vance’s noggin again. “I missed you, man. How come you didn’t send me a postcard?”

Vance shrugged. Why the hell did Mack like him so much? Why couldn’t he take a hint?

Vance and Jem started digging out the snow fence. The sun was shining and it was actually kind of warm. By noon they would probably be able to work without shirts. Vance liked opening and closing work best because it was quiet work, and honest. He’d started jogging in Thailand, and doing sit-ups and push-ups. He’d swum every afternoon. He was bigger now in the arms and across the shoulders. Sometime this summer he was going to beat up Mack-beat him to a pulp, just once, so that Mack would know Vance hadn’t forgiven him for horning in, for stealing away the job that should rightfully have been his.

Vance and Jem worked side by side peacefully with Jem only looking up once to ask, “Hey, do they buy you lunch around here? I’m starving.”

Vance checked his watch; it was ten-thirty.

“Sometimes the boss will spring for subs,” Vance said. “Bill Elliott, the owner. Have you met him yet?”

“No.”

“It’s always good to remember that Mack isn’t really the boss. Bill is.”

“So Bill buys us subs?” Jem asked.

“If we put in a hard morning he sometimes will,” Vance said. “But not every day.”

“Does this place serve breakfast?” Jem asked.

“Continental breakfast, eight-thirty to ten. You’ll be in charge of setting it up and taking it down when you work the day shift. Didn’t Mack tell you that?” Vance was annoyed; Mack was lax about explaining duties to new workers. It always fell to Vance to explain the whole truth and sometimes the new bellman got bristly, thinking Vance was creating more work for him. But this kid, Jem, just beamed.

“No,” Jem said, “he didn’t say anything about breakfast. That’s great!”

Vance heard his name being called, and Maribel jogged onto the beach. She was wearing shorts and a red sports bra, and she had a windbreaker tied around her waist. Blond hair in a ponytail. She threw her arms around Vance’s neck and kissed him on the cheek. As much as Vance hated Mack, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but dumbstruck infatuation for Maribel.

“You look divine!” she said. “Positively exotic. I love men without hair. You look like Michael Jordan. How was Thailand?”

“Good,” he said. He couldn’t figure out what Maribel saw in him either. Every time she spoke to him he had trouble stringing together a sentence.

“You’ve got this incredible bod. This is the year you get a girl then, huh?”

Vance clenched the handle of his shovel, hoping she would see his forearm muscles ripple. He was glad he’d removed his shirt. Before Vance could answer, Jem said, “We haven’t met. I’m Jem Crandall.”

“Jem?” Maribel said. She shook Jem’s hand and Vance felt a familiar sense of dread. Jem had his shirt off as well, and he was using some lady-killer smile that showed all his teeth. “Jem, like in To Kill a Mockingbird? ”

“Exactly,” Jem said. “Not many people get the reference. Vance did, though.”

Maribel turned to Vance. “Well, of course. Vance is our literary lion.”

Vance shrugged. Maribel called him that because he graduated from FDU with a degree in American lit, and he once had a story entitled “The Downward Spiral” published in a small magazine.

“I’m Maribel Cox. Mack is my boyfriend.” She paused to let this information sink in. It was as though she were telling Jem, I’m important, I’m with Mack .

“Maribel works at the library,” Vance said.

“Explains why you know about books,” Jem said.

“Are you just starting here today?” Maribel asked.

“Yeah,” Jem said. He leaned on his shovel with crossed arms. “They’ve got me digging ditches already.”

Maribel turned back to Vance. “You guys should come over for dinner tonight. I’ll roast a chicken, do those real French pomme frites that you like.”

“I can’t,” Vance said. One of the rules he had set for himself was No More Socializing with Mack.

“I can,” Jem said eagerly, but Maribel ignored him.

“Maybe next week then,” she said. “Is Mack around?”

“Look out back,” Vance said. “Or in the office. He might be in the office with Bill.”

“Okay,” Maribel said. She touched Vance’s flexing forearm. “Hey, you, good to see you.” She jogged toward the hotel. “And nice meeting you, Jem!”

When she was out of earshot, Jem said, “That girl is a knockout. And she cooks!”

“Taken,” Vance said. He spoke in a way that might be construed as protecting Mack. But Vance just wanted Jem Mockingbird to realize that if Vance couldn’t have Maribel, no one else could either.

Love O’Donnell arrived on the island by high-speed ferry. Even though it was mid-May, the weather was gray and drizzly. And cold. Love stood on the bow of the boat, her Polar Fleece wrapped tightly around her. She wanted to watch the ferry approach Nantucket. She wanted to feel sea mist on her face. As it was, she wasn’t sure if the moisture she felt on her face was sea mist or rain, and through the dense blanket of fog she couldn’t see Nantucket at all until just before they reached the harbor. Then she caught a glimpse of the red beam of Brant Point Lighthouse and behind, the gray-shingled buildings of town, and the white steeple of the Congregational church she’d seen in pictures. The Beach Club, where she would be working, was to the west someplace and the cottage she had rented for the season was mid-island, where the locals lived.