Elin Hilderbrand - The Beach Club

Love wasn’t a person who went places on impulse. This trip qualified as the most impulsive thing she’d ever done. She’d lived in Aspen for the past seven years working at a popular outdoor magazine. But then she met Bill Elliott at the gym. They were lying side by side on the mats, using the Abdominizers. Love sneaked a look at Bill in the mirror, because that was what one did at gyms in Aspen-inspected the opposite sex. Especially Love. Ever since her fortieth birthday, Love had been looking for a man to father her baby.

She smiled at Bill in the mirror. “Sometimes I wonder if these things actually work,” she said, indicating the Abdominizer.

Bill laughed. “I figure everyone using them looks pretty good.”

Love crunched twice more, then said, “Do you live here in Aspen?”

“Just for the winter,” Bill said. “How about you?”

“Local,” Love said. “Where do you live in the summer?”

“Nantucket,” Bill said. He finished with his Abdominizer and stood up. Love stood as well and followed Bill to the StairMasters. An out-of-towner was a requirement in Love’s search for a father for her baby, because she wanted a baby but absolutely did not want a husband.

“What do you do in Nantucket?” Love asked. She punched her weight, one hundred pounds even, into the console of the StairMaster.

“My wife and I own a hotel,” he said.

“Oh, you’re married,” Love said. This was not necessarily an obstacle; after seven years in Aspen, Love knew he could still be thinking of an affair.

“Yes, and I have an eighteen-year-old daughter at boarding school. Finishing up.” Love pumped up and down on the stairs. She was so delighted to hear that Bill already had a child that she felt almost guilty. Out of town, previous reproductive success, a business owner-Love ran down her mental checklist, and glanced around the gym. There were two noticeably pregnant women using free weights, and who knew how many others not yet showing. Many of Love’s friends, co-workers, and acquaintances were now, in their late thirties and early forties, starting families. In the past eighteen months, Love had taken a crash course on new millennium parenthood: seven-grain zwieback crackers, strollers with allterrain mountain bike tires. She saw women in the gym and on the cross-country paths with healthy, swollen bellies. Love’s desire to be a mother was a physical, painful hunger. Since her fortieth birthday, she could think of nothing else. Love wanted a baby, flesh and blood that would be connected to her for the rest of her life, and she wanted to raise her child alone. There was a group in Aspen called Single Mothers by Choice; Love saw their flyer posted in the health food store. When she finally got pregnant, she would join.

At the end of the workout she smiled at Bill, and said, “You’re in good shape.”

Bill winked. “Just doing what the doctor says: I get plenty of exercise, and I make love to my wife. Good for the spirit!”

Love’s hopes fell down around her feet like a couple of sagging ankle weights. It was okay with her if a man wanted to admit he was married, but talking about his sex life was taboo. She hoped her disappointment didn’t show. But then, on their way out of the gym, Bill offered to buy Love something from the juice bar. While Love sipped a carrot-raspberry juice, Bill told her about the hotel on Nantucket.

“She started out as a Beach Club in 1924. Men wore silk suits and top hats, and women carried parasols. There were over four hundred wooden changing rooms, rented twice a day to meet the demand. My father bought the place in 1952 and I built hotel rooms on the property when he retired twenty years ago.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Love said. “I’ve always wanted to see New England.”

“Well, then, I’d like to make a proposition,” Bill said. Love’s thighs tensed. “What’s that?” she said.

“Why don’t you come work for me this summer? We need a full-time person on the front desk. She’s a beautiful hotel, I promise.” Love was familiar with his tone of voice; she heard it all the time. He was setting her up on a blind date. Still, it might be the perfect plan. Leave Aspen for the summer and return in the fall, pregnant.

She finished the last of her juice, licking her teeth clean of raspberry seeds. “I already have a job,” she said. “But it’s a thought.”

Bill offered Love the job every time he saw her at the gym. “What would you miss in six months?” he asked her. “Would you be leaving someone behind?”

This question offended her. She was certain Bill knew the answer was no. No one and nothing to leave behind. Not even a dog, like so many other athletic, unmarried Aspen women. Dogs made her sneeze.

“No,” she said.

“Listen,” Bill said, “I’m going to be retiring soon, whether I like it or not. I’d like to have a good summer. If you think you want to be part of it, I’d love to have you work for us.”

His liver-spotted hands trembled at his sides, and despite all his exercise, his skin had a grayish tint. But his eyes sought her eagerly, as though he believed there really was a talented front-desk person somewhere inside of her. And so, at the beginning of April, with the closing of the ski slopes imminent, Love agreed to take the job. A summer at the beach, then, on Nantucket.

The ferry sounded its foghorn. Here she was.

Love O’Donnell was organized. She had three maps, and a book called Vintage Nantucket which she had read cover to cover. She disembarked onto Straight Wharf and picked up her luggage: a North Face duffel bag and her Cannondale M1000. (She never went anywhere without her mountain bike.) She inhaled the ocean air. It smelled of salt and fish, as she expected. What she did not expect was how rich it was, how luxurious; it was air pregnant with oxygen. If nothing else, she would be happy to live here all summer and breathe this air.

Love’s taxi driver was a tall, thin girl with dyed-black hair, a nose ring, and seven or eight earrings in each ear.

“Where you headed?” the girl asked. Her T-shirt said Piping Plovers Taste Like Chicken.

“Hooper Farm Road. But I’d like to see a little first, if you don’t mind. What’s your name?”

“Tracey,” the girl said. “And I’m no tour guide.”

“Do you live on the island?” Love asked.

The girl glanced behind her at the line of cabs. She threw Love’s bike in the back of her station wagon, got into the driver’s seat and waited for Love to climb in, then she pulled away. “I’m here for the summer,” she said.

“Your first summer?” Love asked.

Tracey nodded. They drove slowly up the cobblestones of Main Street.

“Mine, too,” Love said. Her voice jumbled and bounced with the tires. “Did you know these cobblestones were brought here by the early settlers as ballast on their ships?”

Tracey didn’t respond. Love looked out the window at the names of the shops and restaurants: Murray’s Liquors, Espresso Café, Congdon’s Pharmacy, Mitchell’s Book Corner. They they reached a brick building with stately white columns: Pacific National Bank.

Love tapped on the glass. “They call this the Pacific Bank because the Nantucket whaling ships had to sail to the Pacific Ocean to hunt whales. They went all the way down around Cape Horn. Sometimes ships were gone for five years. But that’s where the money came from, the Pacific Ocean.”

“You’re a regular encyclopedia,” Tracey said.

Love ignored the sarcasm. She didn’t want her first interaction on Nantucket to be a negative one. She studied her map. “Let’s keep going to the top of Main Street.”

They crept up on the Greek Revival Hadwen House, which Love intended to tour in the next few days. “This big white place on the left has an upstairs ballroom,” Love said. “The ballroom was built with a retractable roof, so people could dance under the stars.”