“Howard Comatis?” Bill said. “The big hairy guy? The loud obnoxious guy?”
“That’s him.”
“You’re going to work for him?” Bill asked. This news affronted him. Mack working on his family farm was one thing, but a guest snatching him away was another. Guests had been trying to hire Mack away for years, but he’d always turned them down. “What will you be doing?”
“Hotel rooms, dinner reservations, travel plans. Getting the team from place to place, that kind of thing.”
“How much is he paying you?” Bill asked.
“A lot,” Mack said. “We haven’t talked actual numbers but it’ll be a lot.”
Bill nodded. It must have been a lot for Mack to give up Nantucket.
“I’d do anything to keep you here, Mack,” Bill said. “I’ll give you a raise right now.”
Mack put his keys back in his pocket. “Not this kind of raise. Besides, you made it clear that your first concern is Cecily, and that’s okay.” He knocked on Bill’s desk. “Bill, that’s okay.”
Bill rubbed his forehead. “If Cecily weren’t threatening to leave, if Therese and I hadn’t already lost a child, all that, things would be different.”
“But they aren’t different,” Mack said.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” Bill said.
“We don’t have to say good-bye right now,” Mack said. “It’s only July. We still have lots of time.”
Bill looked back out at the beach. Dutifully, Cecily started to circulate among the umbrellas; a ferry approached on the horizon.
“We have time,” Bill said. “Okay, you’re right. We have time.” He stood up and stuck out his hand and when Mack shook it, Bill embraced him. “Congratulations,” he said.
Four bridesmaids in room 19 destroyed the place. Therese put down her clipboard. Empty diet Coke bottles rolled around on the floor, potato chips were ground into powder in the carpet, three wet bikini bottoms sat in soggy clumps on the bathroom tile. The top bedsheet had been ripped in half, hair spray scum covered the mirror, a nail polish spill pooled like blood on the dresser. These girls had requested extra towels. Extra towels! They were lucky they were here in the name of love. Therese had half a mind to kick them out.
Elizabeth appeared in the doorway with her cleaning cart and her vacuum. “Gross.”
“Gross, you’re not kidding,” Therese said. A pair of stockings fluttered over the brass reading lamp by the bed, a swollen tampon floated in the toilet. “This is the most disgusting room I have ever seen.”
“Really?” Elizabeth asked. She seemed encouraged by this news. “This is the worst?”
“You don’t have to clean this room,” Therese said. “I’ll do it.”
“You’re going to clean it?” Elizabeth said. She peered into the room. “They sure did drink a lot of diet Coke.”
“Go on to eighteen,” Therese said. “But leave me your vacuum.”
Elizabeth left and Therese furiously unwound the cord for the vacuum. Mack appeared in the doorway. “Geez,” he said. “What a mess. Here, let me help you.” He started to pick up the bottles and put them in an empty Lion’s Paw bag.
“Leave them be,” Therese said. “Anyone who makes this much of a mess deserves to live with their own filth.”
“But I want to help,” Mack said. “What can I do to help?”
Therese looked him dead in the eye. “I’m not changing my mind about the profit sharing,” she said. “You know I love you, Mack, but I can’t do it. I have a teenage daughter to think of. When you have a teenager of your own, you’ll understand. Boy, will you ever.”
“It’s not the profit sharing,” he said. “I have something else to talk to you about.”
Therese spied a bra dangling from the ceiling fan. She switched on the vacuum and swathed a path only where the floor was clear-around the cans, around the chips, around the clothes. It took her thirty seconds. She shut the vacuum off. “So what is it?” she said.
“I’m getting married.”
Married. The word took her so by surprise that she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she caught her reflection in the scummy mirror. She looked fuzzy, as if someone were trying to erase her. “You’re getting married?”
“I asked Maribel and she said yes.”
“I thought you two were on the rocks,” Therese said. The room went out of focus. It looked like a wedding that had been through the blender. “I thought she threw you out.”
“We’ve worked through that,” Mack said. “I’m going to marry her, Therese.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said. She didn’t want to believe it. Her dream of Cecily marrying Mack, a dream for the trash. She stood on the bed and unhooked the bra from the fan and threw it on the floor with the rest of the girls’ clothes, although what did it matter now? What did a messy room matter now that everything else was collapsing? Therese found a notepad. “The proprietress has cleaned your room!” she wrote. She left it amid the clutter on the nightstand and wondered if they would even see it, if they would even notice. Mack sat on the dresser, tapping his fingers on the top drawer.
I know what’s best for you. Therese thought. Nobody believes it, but I do.
Shotgun wedding. Handgun wedding. However you phrased it, Vance had Influence. His stunt with the gun had brought about Mack and Maribel’s breakup, and then Mack’s proposal. Vance might have been jealous-Mack marrying someone as perfect as Maribel-but instead he felt a grand satisfaction. He snagged control from Mack’s hands. He had made something happen. And oddly enough, it was something good.
It inspired Vance to go after Love. She was older than he was, but she was pretty and athletic and organized. He liked the way she spoke to guests; he liked the way she listened. He liked the way she didn’t wear makeup or hairspray. She was a natural Colorado outdoor beauty. She smelled like a pine cone. A refreshing change from the girls Vance usually brought home from the bars. She made him want to lighten up. She made him want to laugh. So he would have his own summer romance for once. And who knew, maybe someday he’d be the one getting married. Vance. Vance Romance.
Maribel wondered if she’d ever be this happy again. Hearing Mack finally propose was an answer to her daily prayers. Just when she’d given up hope, just when she thought she would have to somehow endeavor to move on, he asked. He asked and she said yes. More than anyone, Maribel wanted to tell her father. A man who didn’t exist, except for in her mind. See there, someone wants me. Someone wants to marry me!
Maribel called Cecily, and then her mother, and after relaying the news to a teary, elated Tina (“God bless you, Maribel. God bless you and Mack”), Maribel called Jem. She called early in the morning-during the bracket of time when Mack had left for work but Jem would still be at home.
He answered sleepily. “Hello?”
“Jem, it’s Maribel.”
“Maribel?” He sounded confused, then alarmed. “Did Mack hurt you?”
Maribel felt a flurry of guilt. “He didn’t hurt me,” she said. “He proposed.”
Silence. Then, quietly, “You’re kidding.”
Maribel winced. “No.”
“Oh, God,” Jem said. “Wow. He asked you to marry him? The nerve of that guy.” More silence. “But you said no, right? I mean, this is a guy who left you in the dust for another woman. This is a guy who cheated on you.”
“Jem…”
“You said no, didn’t you?”
“I said yes.”