Under the Boardwalk

by Amie Denman

  “That was loud and clear,” Gus said.

  “Evie loves me. I’m way less irritating than our sister, June.”

  “Should I stop?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Evie’s on a mission right now. And so are we.”

  “Is she your...um...copresident?”

  “No. Still one year left of college. She’ll work here for the summer, but just a regular job. Not as an owner. She deserves one more carefree summer.”

  His voice was low and joyless, like an echo outside a funeral. Was it really so bad owning an amusement park?

  “Does Evie like to bake? Maybe she could work for me?” Gus asked.

  “I doubt she can bake—she certainly wouldn’t have learned from our mom. She’s majoring in accounting. Getting her CPA.”

  “Even better. I might just hire her to manage the accounts for my three shops. I need someone strong I can trust, or I’ll never make it.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said.

  They pulled up to the Last Chance Bakery and wrangled the final oven across the uneven planked porch. Evie swung through the saloon doors just as they slid the oven into place. She had a beautiful smile and looked a lot like her brother, with a few exceptions. Her hair was several shades closer to blond and her eyes were almost green.

  “I’m Evie,” she said, sticking out her hand for Gus to shake. “And I didn’t mean you were a jerkface. I know who blew that horn.”

  “I’m glad. And glad to meet you. I was just talking to your brother about snapping you up before someone else does.”

  “A job?”

  “Managing the books for my bakeries here.”

  “I would love it,” she said. “I usually work for a vendor because there’s less conflict of interest. Speaking of which,” she continued as she rummaged through her bag, “I’m out delivering contracts to all the vendors right now.”

  “Gotta go,” Jack said. “My secretary’s called fifteen times and she’ll probably get on the PA system if I don’t show up.”

  Without another word, Jack speed-walked across the bakery’s porch and headed up the trail to the front of the park. Gus wondered why he’d ignored the phone calls for the past hour, but she imagined there was a lot she didn’t know about Jack and his business. Perhaps Evie showing up was the convenient exit he’d been hoping for.

  “I’ll come by later when I’m done,” Evie said. “This is the best job offer I’ve had. Especially since the airbrushing stand didn’t work out last year and I’m no good at scooping ice cream. Numbers I understand.”

  * * *

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Jack locked the men’s room door and leaned against it, eyes closed, for a full minute before heading for the sink. Cold water rushed over his hands as he scrubbed them mercilessly. Warm water would’ve been better for washing away the grease and construction dust he’d picked up on the latest inspection of the Sea Devil, but he needed to cool off. He stared at the rivers of water rolling over his fingers, imagining all his problems sluicing away.

  “Gotta get a grip,” he said. Jack dried his hands, smoothed down and buttoned his sleeves, rolled his shoulders. He refused to look at his own face—his father’s face, thirty years younger—in the mirror.

  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 ne
ither 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.”

  Jack turned and headed for the beach entrance, only pausing a second when he felt the sharp zing of a rubber band on the back of his head as he slid through the doors.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TOSHA PUT HER arm around Gus, her head barely reaching Gus’s shoulder. “I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or turn him over my knee and spank him,” she said.

  “You got a good aim,” the hot-dog vendor said. “I say we elect you as our official leader.”

  “I’m the newest one here,” Gus objected.

  “But you’ve got three bakeries,” Bernie said. “And I’ll bet you’ve got as much riding on this season as the rest of us.”

  Gus thought of the payments on her business loan. No kidding.

  “What do we do?” she asked, dropping into the chair vacated by Jack Hamilton. “Tell him to go jump in the lake and take his extra ten thousand and ten percent with him?”

  “That’d sure be nice,” Hank said. He tugged at his butcher’s-style shirt, which had Hank’s Hot Dogs embroidered on it. “But I was planning on going to Florida this winter with the money I make this summer. Arthritis is getting to my wife.”

  “If we all walk, he won’t be able to replace us in time for opening day, will he?” Gus asked.

  The other vendors shifted nervously and exchanged swift glances.

  “Probably not right away,” Hank said. “It would put the hurt to him for a while at least.”

  “But he’d replace us eventually and we’d be out,” Bernie said. “Permanently.”

  “Nobody wants to walk away,” Tosha said. “This has been our summer home for years. We all loved Jack’s father, and those Hamilton kids have practically grown up under our noses. They’re like family. Right?”

  No one said anything.

  “We could try threatening to walk away and see what he does,” Tosha added.

  “I’m afraid he’d let us go. You heard what he said—twenty-four hours to sign the contracts. I’m not so sure bluffing will work on him,” Hank said. “His dad was an easy guy to work for, but I wonder about Jack. Can’t figure out what’s going on in his head now that the whole thing’s in his lap.”

  Gus sighed. “I have all my money riding on these bakeries and the one downtown. I’m in deep.”

  “I can’t afford to pull up stakes,” Bernie said. “Besides, people expect me to be here...they bring their kids to get the same boardwalk fries they got when they were little.” He spread his hands, looking around him for support. “It’s a tradition.”

  “Hate to bother her when she’s grieving, but we could try talking to Jack’s mother,” Hank suggested.

  “No,” three voices said at the same time.

  “Virginia gets wind of this,” Bernie said, “we’ll all get etiquette lessons for the STRIPE this summer.”

  “Lessons?” Gus asked. Virginia had mentioned making Gus her STRIPE sergeant, but she’d let the thought get lost among all her other concerns.

  Tosha sat on the arm of Gus’s chair. “Every summer, Virginia plans and operates the Summer Training Improvement Program for Employees. All employees. Vendors, management, security, beach patrol, everyone.”

  Hank nodded and grimaced. “Everyone. Part of the contract.”

  “Is it part of our contract?” Gus asked. She flipped through the document crumpled in her hand.

  “Page four,” Bernie said. “Already checked.”

  “So, what does everyone have to do?”

  “Depends on the program,” Tosha explained. “It’s usually a skill Virginia considers useful. She always insists that, whatever her crazy idea is, everyone should know how to do it just in case. She views this as more than just a summer job, wants people to take away skills as well as their minimum wage, I guess.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Gus said. “What kind of stuff have you had to do?”

  “Change the oil in a car engine,” Hank said.

  “Swimming lessons,” Tosha added.

  The other vendors jumped in.

  “Square dancing.”

  “Setting a formal dinner table and polishing silver.”

  “Knitting socks and a scarf.”

  “Conversational Spanish.”

  “Riding a horse—English and Western.”

  Gus felt her tension slipping into the soft chair. She grinned. “I had no idea this job came with such perks. I feel like a better person already.”

  Bernie groaned. “You gotta understand. Virginia’s serious about this stuff. You not only have to attend a series of classes, but you gotta prove you actually
paid attention.” He passed a large hand over his face. “Didn’t think I was going to make it the summer we had to sew a backpack and embroider our name on it. To her satisfaction.” He looked around, a lopsided grin edging up one corner of his mouth. “You know what? I still use that darn thing.”

  “How can this be legal?” Gus asked. “It seems pretty far-fetched.”

  Hank shrugged. “If it’s in the contract and you sign it, you’re obligated. If you don’t play along, you’re not getting invited back next year.”

  “Assuming we make it through this year,” Tosha said.

  “Maybe I can help,” Gus said. “Virginia said something about me being a sergeant this year. What if she wants everyone to learn to bake chocolate-chip cookies? I could make it easy for you.”

  “No way,” Hank said. “It wouldn’t be that simple. We probably have to assemble a three-tiered wedding cake and deliver it. Just in case we ever need to do that in our lives.”

  “Or make a soufflé that doesn’t fall, even in a thunderstorm,” Tosha suggested.

  “Or decorate cookies representing every ride in the ever-lovin’ park,” Hank growled.

  “Hope not,” Gus said. “I’ve got some signature cookies planned, even ordered special cutters in the shapes of some of the trademark rides. Don’t want anyone stealing my thunder.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment.

  “So,” Tosha said. “Sounds like you plan to sign that contract and stick it out?”

  Gus fooled with the silver A she wore on a chain around her neck. “I’ve got three shops.”

  “That’s sixty thousand bucks,” Bernie said. “He’s killing you worse than the rest of us.”

  “But I’ve already made a huge investment in equipment, got supplies ordered. I’m in debt up to my eyebrows.” Gus tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked up, meeting the eyes of the more vocal vendors standing closest to her. “If I walk away, I lose for sure. If I stay, it’s a gamble.”

  “We could try talking to him again,” Hank suggested. “Maybe not gang up on him this time. He’s probably still smarting from everything that’s happened.”