The House on Mermaid Point

by Wendy Wax

  “Anyone can throw a lot of money at a project,” Lisa Hogan replied.

  Anyone, Avery thought, but them.

  “Viewers want to see you all getting your hands dirty. And being inventive. They don’t want to see you standing around while a bunch of subcontractors do everything. If I give you too much money it won’t be anywhere near as interesting.”

  “So you don’t think stranding us on an island and cramming us into a houseboat with a single bathroom is interesting enough?”

  “If it’s too much for you, Avery, maybe you should get that hunky boyfriend of yours to come down and help.”

  Avery bit back the retort that came to mind. Even if Chase were available she was not going to fall into that trap. Calling Lisa Hogan a coldhearted bitch would make Avery feel better, but there was always the chance that it might be construed as a compliment.

  “This is not a question of an inability to handle the job,” Avery replied. “Only that the job can’t be done without a realistic amount of money.”

  “Well, I’m afraid your contracts don’t include any mention of budget size or veto power. And I wouldn’t want you to forget that you are all under contract to this network.” She paused to let the threat sink in.

  The woman had way more ammunition at her disposal than Avery did and she knew it. Avery couldn’t threaten a walkout again; not without approval from the others. Her gaze fixed on the lighthouse that shimmered out in the Atlantic, she drew in a deep breath in an effort to calm down. “So how would you suggest I make up the ridiculous shortfall?”

  “I have no idea,” Hogan replied blithely. “Perhaps you could panhandle. Or enter one of those charity fishing tournaments with the big winner’s purse. Or you could go out and rob a bank.” Her tone had turned saccharine sweet. “As long as my crew is there to get the footage, I really don’t care how you manage it.

  “And speaking of footage, I want more shots of Dustin Deranian and William Hightower. He looks pretty good for a guy who’s been rehabbed that many times. I especially like the shots of him without his shirt.”

  There were shouts out in the channel. A boat slowed as it passed and she saw the glint of camera lenses aimed at the island. She could just make out someone tall and lanky next to someone shorter and rounder. It seemed that Nigel and some of his paparazzi “friends” had chipped in on a boat.

  “You’ll have to take that up with your crew.” Avery turned her back on the paparazzi and looked up at the men scampering across the roof. “I’m not in charge of who or what gets shot.” The boat horn sounded, but Avery ignored it. “My concern is the renovation.”

  “We’re all concerned with the renovation,” Hogan said. “Particularly completing it on time while providing compelling video. I expect Mermaid Point B and B to be up and running by Labor Day weekend. In fact, I want the series to end with William Hightower greeting and escorting his first guests to their rooms.”

  “And the fact that there appears to be an ordinance prohibiting bed-and-breakfasts?” she asked Lisa Hogan.

  “I’ve got the network attorneys on it,” she said. “Apparently the fact that Mermaid Point is no longer connected to the mainland puts us in a potentially strong position. And if that fails, William Hightower’s Native American blood could come in handy.”

  Avery drew in another deep breath, but she felt a lot closer to hyperventilation than relaxation. “So just to recap, you’re telling me that there’s plenty of money in the budget for attorneys, but not for renovation.” She paused and forged ahead. “And you intentionally chose a location that’s difficult to reach, and where there’s a freeze on new construction and an ordinance against the very thing we’re supposed to be creating.”

  “Yes, I believe that sums it up.” Hogan’s voice was tart with amusement. “All you have to do is refurbish those buildings. It’s up to me to keep things interesting.”

  • • •

  Not yet ready to share the bad news, Avery continued to pace the beach, thinking out her next steps. The previous day she’d spoken to Mario Dante, who had been such a big help the summer before when they’d restored the South Beach house for season one of Do Over, which was to begin airing the following night.

  “I put out the word through the family grapevine,” Mario had said in his accented English. “Roberto is so skilled that he can make the wood sing. Last I heard he was somewhere in the Keys living on a boat.”

  There seemed to be a lot of that going around.

  Please God, she prayed silently now. Send Mario’s cousin the carpenter our way as quickly as possible. And please help me find the money to pay him.

  She was still trying to calm down when footsteps sounded on the path.

  “We got dizzy watching you pace,” Deirdre said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “The network?”

  She nodded.

  Deirdre let out a small, almost ladylike curse. “I understand that you’re in charge of the reno. And I have a pretty clear idea of how much you want to prove yourself. But you’re not in this alone.” She took Avery by the arm and led her to the pavilion where the others waited. “And in my experience multiple brains are almost always better than one.”

  “So?” Nicole prompted as Maddie poured Avery a lemonade.

  “So,” Avery said, her hands clenched tightly around the glass. “Lisa Hogan’s crunching us on money and time in order to keep things ‘interesting.’”

  No one interrupted as she filled them in. “I guess I should have expected this.” Avery shook her head when she’d finished. “But I feel kind of like the general of an invading army whose supply line is stretched too far and too thin. Only there are no local farmers’ fields to forage in.”

  “But we do know local farmers.” Maddie topped off her lemonade. “Or semilocal anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” Kyra asked.

  “I mean, is there any reason we can’t hit up the sponsors who did work in exchange for exposure in Miami?” Maddie asked. “We don’t have a mandate to use all new subs or anything, do we?”

  “No.” Avery smiled for the first time that morning. Their contract didn’t particularly protect them; but it didn’t delve into specifics of construction, either.

  “That’s good,” Deirdre said. “That means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We just have to find some local spokes.”

  “Miami’s only an hour away,” Nicole chimed in. “That’s practically local.”

  Maddie passed the lemonade pitcher around. “So we could hit up Superior Pools, Randolph Plumbing, Walls of Windows, and East Coast Electric, right?”

  Avery looked at Maddie. “How did you remember all of our Miami sponsors just like that?” Avery had the files from their work on the Millicent, but she hadn’t expected anyone else to remember them.

  Maddie shrugged. “I think I put them all together last year when I was trying to learn how to enter contacts in my iPhone. I came across them yesterday by mistake when I was trying to send a text to Andrew.”

  “Why don’t you let Nicole and me split up the list?” Deirdre suggested. “We’ll get on the phone this afternoon and remind them all about the first episode tomorrow night and set up appointments.

  “When we go in to see them, we can hit up the Miami showrooms, too. I was planning to place orders, but I can call in some favors while we’re there. I don’t see why we couldn’t get furniture and accessories in exchange for on-screen credit.”

  “I bet when they hear whose private island they’ll be working on and providing furnishings for it’ll be an even easier sell.” Nicole looked pleased.

  “Then maybe I could contact resale shops between here and Miami to see if we can sell or at least place the furniture William’s getting rid of on consignment.” Maddie sipped thoughtfully on her lemonade.

  “That’s a
great idea.” Avery felt a lightening in her chest as the ideas came one after the other.

  Kyra lowered her camera. “Maybe he’s got some memorabilia or old posters or something that we could offer on eBay. I could set up an account online and post photos and video to help sell them.”

  Deirdre narrowed her gaze as she looked around the pavilion. “I really want to put in a new outdoor kitchen. If we could get William to agree to cook in it on camera, I bet we could get it for free.”

  They were all looking at Maddie now. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t think he does much more than fry and grill fish.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a gourmet meal. We’ll stage it.” Deirdre’s voice hummed with excitement. “We just need his famous self using their products. William Hightower is still a bigger name to most than Max Golden.”

  “Gax!” Dustin chimed in.

  “This just might work.” Avery didn’t want to sound too excited, but she could feel her spirits lifting. “We’ll all reach out and see what we can make happen. Thomas will be here to watch the first episode. I’ll explain our budget issues to both of the Hightowers then and ask for their help attracting sponsors.”

  Avery reached for her glass of lemonade. “Maybe we should feed them one last home-cooked meal before we rip out the kitchen. Then hopefully the episode will impress William enough to get him completely on board.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  By the time they’d finished the tiramisu that had topped off the lasagna dinner and headed over to the television to watch season one, episode one, of Do Over, Will felt like the fatted calf. Except it was the women now seated around him who acted as if they were about to be slaughtered.

  Though no one had room for another bite, Madeline set out bowls of popcorn and then settled on the sofa with Dustin, whose feet didn’t reach the edge. William watched Maddie’s arm wrap around the little boy’s shoulder to pull him close and he caught himself considering his own son, whose childhood he’d mostly missed. And whose teenage years had been spent at a succession of boarding schools, which Will had paid for but rarely visited. All those years on the road without thought for the cost.

  The opening sequence showed the women arriving at a house on South Beach surrounded by a high wrought-iron gate barely taller than the grass inside it. The house was large and streamlined with nautical details, gouged plaster, and mismatched windows. It had been painted in a variety of colors that even Will didn’t think had ever been intended to go together.

  The room went silent as the television screen filled with shots of Maddie’s, Kyra’s, Avery’s, Deirdre’s, and Nicole’s shocked faces. Their discomfort with the camera couldn’t have been more evident. A considerably younger Dustin, held in his grandmother’s arms, was the only one who looked good in extreme close-ups—of which there were many.

  Despite the fact that Troy and Anthony were even at this moment shooting their reactions to the episode, there were gasps and groans from the women seated around him. Kyra’s fingers shook on her zoom lens; her lips formed a tight, angry line.

  “Dustbin.” The little boy pointed at himself on-screen. “Thas Dustbin, Geema.”

  The camera angle changed and the screen filled with a shot of the open front door of the house. A small old man with close-cropped white hair and matching caterpillar eyebrows teetered briefly on the front stoop and then began to walk toward the camera. He was dressed in a baggy white shirt and pants, which had been paired with an equally ill-fitting blue blazer. He held an unlit cigar in one hand and had a captain’s hat tucked under his arm. His welcome was delivered directly to the camera as if he were that captain welcoming people onto the Love Boat.

  “Gax!” Once again Dustin seemed to be the only audience member who hadn’t gone silent in shock.

  Will watched all that followed with interest. Max Golden was a ninety-year-old former vaudevillian with a warm twinkle in his eyes and a still-ready wit. But the thing that kept Will’s eyes locked on the screen was the women’s anger and discomfort in response to the clearly unexpected and intrusive camera. Equally riveting was the horrible state of the house, which had been chopped into apartments that they were somehow supposed to turn back into a single-family home.

  “Jesus,” he said when the show cut to a commercial for some sort of drain cleaner. “The Millicent makes Mermaid Point look like a piece of cake.” He pushed back the unexpected sympathy he felt for them. It was bad enough to be on a reality TV show knowingly; how much more awful to end up there without any warning. Up until now he’d thought he was the one lacking options.

  No one said anything right away. In fact, they seemed to be having trouble finding their voices.

  “I told you those cutoffs and halter were a mistake,” Deirdre said to Avery, who gave her an eye roll in return.

  “I can’t believe how stunned and frightened we all look,” Nicole said as she munched on popcorn. “It’s like watching one of those old cowboy movies where the settlers look up and see the entire pissed-off Comanche Nation riding down on their defenseless wagon train.”

  “It looks like a frickin’ ambush all right,” Will said.

  “We look completely stupid and inept,” Avery muttered.

  Kyra glared at Troy. “You added way more shots of Dustin into the opening scenes than we agreed. That’s not what the opening sequence looked like when I left the edit session.”

  “Lisa Hogan had final cut,” the cameraman said with an apologetic shrug. “And what the network head wants, the network head gets.”

  Will and Tommy exchanged a glance. The cast and crew Will had envisioned as invaders and conquerors were starting to look a lot more like victims. If they weren’t a part of his son’s plan to turn his private retreat into a damned hotel, he might have felt sorry for them.

  “Max looks like a nice guy.” Even Tommy seemed subdued by the intrusive nature of the video.

  Will wondered if his son had given any thought to what this Do Over project might really cost in terms of humiliation and intrusion. Or maybe that was the point. Maybe he just hadn’t fully realized how public a payback this renovation might be.

  Madeline’s discomfort was a tangible thing. He’d already discovered that she could get feisty when pushed, but she was about as thick-skinned as the little boy in her lap. How desperate did you have to be to open your family up to this kind of personal exposure? “You know, being that bug under the media microscope doesn’t get any easier. Max handles it pretty well. I bet he ate up the stage back in the day.” It was the only positive thing he could think of to offer. “What happened to him after the show?”

  They looked at him blankly. Troy lowered his camera from his shoulder, set it on the coffee table.

  “Max died.” Kyra’s tone was terse. Tears pooled in her eyes. “If you watch all eight episodes you’ll get to see him take a bullet meant for Dustin.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Will said.

  “Deirdre got shot, too.” Maddie said this quietly. Will turned to look at the older blonde, who was rubbing her arm almost reflexively. “Deirdre threw herself in front of a bullet to protect Avery.”

  “Jesus.” Will studied the women around him; they were a mixed lot and yet they seemed somehow fused together. But then it sounded like they’d been through way more crap together than he had imagined. Still, the mood was way too somber for comfort. “So . . . the homeowner doesn’t always die in the end, does he?” He couldn’t quite keep a completely straight face. And he saw flickers of surprised amusement on theirs.

  “We don’t actually know.” He could see Avery working to keep her tone deadpan.

  “And why is that?” he asked, playing along.

  “You’re only the second homeowner we’ve dealt with.” She smiled grimly.

  He turned and caught Maddie’s eyes on him. He winked at her. “I guess I’d better be on my bes
t behavior, then.”

  • • •

  The next morning after the debacle of the Do Over premiere, even the rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo sounded subdued. Maddie left the houseboat to walk to the main house while the sun was still ascending and was drenched in sweat by the time she got there. The roofers were already at work, their clatter and clang echoing all over the island. She peeked at the pool and saw William cutting through the water, his strong arms flashing with each stroke. Letting herself in the unlocked front door she stood in the front hall, where the blast of air-conditioning hit her full force, chilling her damp skin.

  In the kitchen she put on a pot of coffee, assembled the boxes Avery had left for her, and began to empty the kitchen cabinets, which were slated to be demolished.

  The others had been sent out to the garage with bags of kitty litter meant to soak up the gasoline stains on the cement floors and sledgehammers to take down walls and remove the garage doors. She knew she’d been given the easier duty, but she also knew it came with a price—she was supposed to help talk William Hightower into lending his face and name and possibly some of his memorabilia to shore up the insufficient budget.

  With all the noise on the roof she didn’t hear footsteps approaching and jumped when she realized Thomas Hightower was behind her.

  “Sorry.” He was dressed in khaki shorts and a pale blue polo, but his feet were bare. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I knew they’d start early to beat the heat, so, well, sleeping in is definitely not an option.”

  “There’s coffee if you’d like some.” Maddie snapped off a length of strapping tape and began to tape up the bottom of the box she’d been holding.

  “Thanks.” He poured a mug and leaned against the counter to drink it. “It tastes a lot better than anything Will or I have ever brewed.”