Elin Hilderbrand - The Beach Club

Bill had lost his hope. He didn’t have the stuff in him; beneath his skin and bones and cartilage, he was dry, an empty gourd. He managed to close the hatch door, spurred on by what was now his hatred of this storm. Once the hatch was closed and locked, Bill followed Therese into the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet. He vomited up the Brazilian boys with their razor blades, and Cecily screaming with fear. He vomited up S.B.T. taking the Beach Club from him. He vomited up Dead and Missing. He vomited until it was all gone, and the inside of his mouth was puckered and sour.

Therese drew him a bath, and he gingerly lowered himself into the warm water. Therese sat next to him on the floor. He was the owner of a beach hotel waiting out a hurricane. Helpless. He was the father of a teenage daughter. Hopeless.

Maribel was on the phone with Tina when the power went out and the phone died in her hand. Maybe it was just as well. Tina had started to cry almost as soon as Maribel spoke.

“Mama, I’m going to break the engagement.”

“What?”

“It’s not meant to be, Mama. It’s not going to work.” Maribel had replayed the night before a hundred times in her mind. Something had broken inside her, and she lost control. She’d hurt Mack, she made him bleed. And he’d nearly snapped her hands off. They were finding new ways to hurt each other. It had to stop.

Tina hit full-blown snuffles, sobs. “You’re just angry, Mari. You’re angry at Mack now and you’ve been angry at him before. You’ll get past it.”

“I’m not angry anymore, Mama. I’m beyond angry. We don’t make each other happy. We don’t want the same things.”

“Why are you giving up?” Tina said. “Why after so long?”

Maribel heard the desperate note in her mother’s voice and she squeezed her eyes shut against it. I want this for her , Maribel thought. I want to get married because I know it will make her happy. It will take away the demons of her loneliness, to know that I, at least, won’t have to spend my life alone .

“Will you love me anyway?” Maribel asked. “Will you love me even without Mack?”

More sobbing. “You know I love you best of anyone in the world. You know you’re my number-one prize. If you made this decision, then it must be God’s will.”

“It’s my will,” Maribel said. “Mama, it’s my will.”

And then the power went out.

Maribel had candles and matches ready, and in seconds the apartment glowed with candlelight. She went into the bathroom and splashed water on her face, and then she opened a bottle of red wine.

Maribel toasted the air. “Fuck you, Freida,” she said. She sipped her wine. She would get good and drunk.

There were headlights in her window. Maribel saw the Jeep swing into the driveway. Her heart stood up. Mack hadn’t left her alone after all. He’d come home. Maribel’s mind stumbled over words for an apology.

Oddly, there was a knock at the door. A knock? Maribel flung the door open, and there, standing in the rain, was Jem.

As Jem drove the Jeep to Maribel’s apartment, he thought about the two words Neil Rosenblum had left him with: Get her . The wind was blowing so hard that Jem had to grip the steering wheel with both hands just to keep the Jeep on the road. The wipers flew back and forth, and at every low point, Jem drove through deep puddles that sloshed over the hood of the car. The rain was ridiculous, and Jem probably would have crashed if there had been other cars on the road. But from the look of things, Jem was the only one out. On his way to see Maribel, with Mack’s permission.

Jem pulled into Maribel’s driveway and switched off the ignition. The trees in Maribel’s backyard bowed in the wind, and a carpet of fallen leaves covered the grass. A heavy branch crashed to the ground. Jem ran like hell down the sloping side yard to the apartment. The gas grill lay on its side. Jem knocked on the door. Be home , he thought. Maybe this was all a joke-maybe Maribel was off-island.

But then she opened the door. The apartment was lit by candles.

“Jem,” she said. “I thought you were Mack.”

Jem’s heart sagged. Here he was standing out in the middle of a hurricane, and what did she say? I thought you were Mack .

“Mack’s at the hotel,” he said. “He sent me here to keep you company. Listen, can I come in?”

“He sent you here?” Maribel said. Her brow creased into lines that looked like an M. M for Maribel. Or more likely, an angry M for Mack. It occurred to Jem then that Maribel might not enjoy being handed off like a baton.

“Can I come in?” Jem pleaded. His shoes filled with water. The wind blew sideways. Another branch fell in the yard.

“For a minute,” she said. She ushered him in and slammed the door behind him. “So Mack sent you here. He sent you here.”

“Sort of.” Jem was afraid to move anywhere in the room. He dripped onto the welcome mat. “Can I take my shoes off?”

“You’re only staying as long as it takes you to tell me exactly what Mack said.”

Jem looked around, stalling for time. “You lost power,” he said. He needed to think. He felt hesitant to get Mack into trouble, since Mack was the one who gave him the okay to come. But that was the whole point. Mack was a creep. He was giving away his girlfriend.

“What did Mack say?” Maribel picked a glass of wine up off the coffee table.

“He said, uh…he said you’d be alone and that I should keep you company. And he gave me the keys to the Jeep.”

Maribel slugged back some wine. “So he’s pimping me out.”

“Excuse me?” Jem didn’t like the sound of that word anywhere near Maribel.

“He sent you over here because he wants us to have sex. That’s his way out of the relationship.” She finished her glass of wine and then she ripped her cardigan sweater right down the middle, so that the buttons popped off and disappeared into the shag carpet. Underneath the sweater, she wore a shiny blue bra, which she unhooked and flung onto the sofa. Jem was confused, but he couldn’t keep from looking at her breasts. They seemed fuller than they had at the beach that day.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She unbuttoned her jean shorts and let them fall to her ankles. She slid her hands inside her flowered panties and slipped these off as well. She stood before him, completely nude in the candlelight. Jem thought he might faint.

“You can take your shoes off,” she said. “And the rest of your clothes, for that matter.”

“What’s going on?” he said. His body screamed out for her. Her ass, the curve under her chin, the backs of her knees. But something was wrong. She was steaming like a tea kettle, and it wasn’t from desire for him.

“You’re angry at Mack,” he said.

“You’re damn right I’m angry!” she said. “He set all this up. I’m sure he thinks he’s doing us both a favor! But he’s manipulating our feelings. And guess what? I don’t care. He wants us to have sex, we’ll have sex.”

Just hearing Maribel say the words almost knocked Jem out. The front of his shorts was pitched like a tent. But this was wrong, everything about it was wrong.

“I love you, Maribel,” Jem said. “And I’ve never been in love with anyone before, but I don’t want you to sleep with me because you’re angry with Mack. I’m going home.” He opened the door, afraid to turn around and see what she was doing. He thought he heard her pour another glass of wine. He geared himself up to make a run for the Jeep, thinking if he timed it right he could run between gusts of wind.

Another branch fell, and Jem took that as his sign. He ran from Maribel’s house as quickly as he could.