There were two weird things about renting out rooms in the house, one being that they were doing it at all, and the other being that no matter what anyone complained about, you could keep them quiet by offering more towels. Mandy had discovered this by accident. One morning some woman was making hideous faces and complaining to her that the coffee was “like ice.” Really? That cold? As a goof, Mandy had apologized and asked her if she’d like more towels. Problem solved. A week later, some old guy from Ohio had told her that the windows had rattled all night and kept him awake. “So sorry,” Mandy had said. “Can I get you more towels?” She’d never heard another word about the windows, and he’d even written a positive review, highlighting the “big fluffy towels.”
Mandy stomped down the stairs. The woman in the hall was staring up at her with a totally phony smile.
“How many towels do you need?” Mandy asked.
“Just four or five. Put them on the bed, okay? I’m going out to the shops.”
Mandy had persuaded her mother to keep the sheets and towels in one of the closets at the far end of the hall that locked, which was a good thing because otherwise they’d have been wiped out within hours. She got the towels and added a couple of facecloths for good measure. The door to the woman’s room—“the Window Seat Room”; her mother was literal when it came to naming the rooms—was ajar. When she knocked, it swung open. The shower was running. She put the towels on the bed. The bathroom door was open and steam was billowing up over the shower curtain.
“They’re on the bed,” she yelled.
The curtain opened a sliver and a man’s head popped out, the husband. Dark and handsome, not cute at all. “Where’s Beth?” he said.
“She asked for towels and went out. I left them on the bed.”
He wiped soapsuds off his face. “Just put them on the toilet. I don’t want to get the floor wet.”
This was a bad idea and she knew it, but, as with a lot of bad ideas—saying yes when Mr. Crespo asked her if she wanted a ride—she was pulled into it by an urge to find out what would happen that was stronger than the urge to listen to the voice telling her not to.
She carried the towels into the steamy bathroom that smelled of Irish Spring soap and set them on the toilet.
When she turned to leave, the shower curtain was open wider, as she’d somehow known it would be. There was something about having been given that ride with Craig and the way he’d looked at her across the seat—like he was trying to flatter her with condescension—that made her feel bolder. It had to do with her own power, but she hadn’t sorted it out yet. Step one was finding out she had power, step two was figuring out how to use it. The man had his head thrown back, rinsing shampoo out of his hair but really showing off his body and the fact that he had an erection.
She swung the door shut as she ran out. As she pounded up the stairs, she had an uneasy sense that she was being chased, even though she knew she wasn’t. She slammed the door to her bedroom so loudly that Lindsay actually looked up from her phone.
“Mission accomplished?”
“Pretty much.”
“You look weird. What happened?”
“Nothing happened! What do you think happened? I was gone two minutes. Do you think I got raped?”
Lindsay frowned and starting putting her things into her backpack. “I have to get home.”
“Why? You said you could stay until dinner.”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”
“Are you seeing Brett?” Even to Mandy’s own ears she sounded like a jealous girlfriend.
“Why do you care, Mandy? And as a matter of fact, yes.”
She had such a strong, sudden desire for Lindsay to stay with her, she apologized, but that sounded weird, too. She listened to Lindsay’s footsteps as she went down the two flights of stairs. When it was clear she’d left, uneasiness crept along Mandy’s spine. She and the sleaze were alone in the house now.
She didn’t understand why she was always making mistakes or why she got angry at her mother for screwing up. Craig had driven past her a few times since that afternoon, but he’d always had another adult in the car with him. And then today he’d sent her a private message on Facebook, telling her he was going to be around school next week and to wait for him behind the abandoned IGA for a ride home on Thursday, and even though she got that dangerous feeling again and had replied “maybe,” she knew it was a definite yes.
It was like a date. When she thought about it, she felt the way she’d felt on a roller coaster at Six Flags—like she was going to explode from happiness and, at the same time, throw up.
She bolted her door and sat down at her computer.
Dear David, Thank you for writing. I am excited about working together. I really do need help with the college thing, not to mention everything else in my life. Ha ha, just kidding. You really should come visit us. Our rooms are cheap! (Free.) It would make everything easier. And my mother wants you to come but won’t say so to you.
Mandy
She hit Send before she had time to think about it. She returned to the paperback, but she had trouble concentrating, and it didn’t seem as funny as it had half an hour earlier.
5
As per usual, the weather report was apocalyptic.
“Some of these thunderstorms could be severe with wind gusts over 50 miles per hour and the potential for flash flooding. The good news is that tomorrow will be much cooler, and the tornado warning has been downgraded to a tornado watch for most of Essex County.”
Julie didn’t have the stomach for environmental crises tonight. It was after seven and the mortgage broker had sent her an email yesterday promising her he’d have news for her by tonight. She kept looking down at her phone to make sure she had service and had the ringer on. How late did these people stay in their offices?
There was a distant rumble of thunder. Tornado watch? That was the good news? Oh, well, extreme weather had become so commonplace that complaining about it was as pointless and boring as decrying public use of cell phones and the banality of reality TV.
She shut off the television and checked her phone again.
The refrigerator opened with a rattle of bottles. Mandy was in her room, so this had to be Natasha, the wan poet who’d moved into the Street-View Room two days ago. She’d allegedly checked in to have “a long talk with my muse,” but so far she seemed primarily to be in discussion with Julie’s refrigerator. She’d been pilfering yogurt and bagels and juice at all hours since the moment of her arrival. Julie was going to have to clarify what she meant when she told guests to make themselves at home.
In the wake of Tracy’s ABCD admonitions and with gathering anxiety about her own financial pressures and Henry’s threats, she’d started reading a blog by a woman who offered advice to Airbnb hosts. The author, Sandra, owned a “majestic Victorian mansion” in southern New Hampshire in which she’d been renting rooms for over a decade. She claimed to have put two daughters through college with her earnings. Another claim was that taking her advice could up your revenues by 25 percent and hiring her for an in-person consultation would double your income. Her online advice struck Julie as eccentric at best (she seemed to have an obsession with toss pillows and advocated an approach to hospitality that sounded like passive aggression raised to an art form), but her apparent success was hard to argue with. Julie was determined to get serious about this business and call her for a home visit.
“Never offer a good deal” was one of her pronouncements. Earlier in the day, Julie had received a reservation request for an older woman from Virginia who was coming to Beauport for a month to visit her son and daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law had sent the request. Given the length of the stay and Mrs. Grayson’s age, Julie considered offering a substantial discount. Then, emboldened by Sandra’s blog, she’d given a price that she considered slightly criminal. The one-word response to this proposal had been “fine.” Mrs. Grayson was arriving in two weeks, and the several thousand dollars
had already been sent to Julie’s PayPal account.
There was more thunder. Opal would be inconsolable even if the storm passed quickly. A wind gust blew a branch against the side of the house with a crack and Natasha gave a surprised cry. As Julie was getting up to make sure she was all right, her phone rang.
“Julie, this is Charles Phillips. About the mortgage.”
She froze. “So good to hear from you,” she said. Although she’d been waiting for this call all day, she suddenly had a bad feeling about it and wanted to put if off just a little longer. “Working late?”
“I apologize for calling at this hour, but we had a busy day. Are you having storms up there?”
“Not yet, although it sounds as if they’re on the way. The weather is so unpredictable and crazy these days, you never know.”
“Oh? Actually, I think thunderstorms at this time of year are pretty normal.”
She interpreted the comment to mean he was a climate denier and therefore a Republican. She started to pace around the living room, waiting to get through the obligatory small talk. She’d met with Charles twice. He was probably in his mid-thirties and seemed to be overcompensating for his boyishness by wearing excessive amounts of cologne and treating her with cool professionalism that bordered on rudeness. She’d never felt he truly looked at her; his glance always missed her when he was talking with her, as if he was afraid of eye contact. She’d found herself adjusting her body so she’d enter his line of vision.
“I hope you have good news for me, Charles,” she said, halfway thinking that saying this would make it more likely he’d tell her what she wanted to hear.
Instead, it made him pause for a few seconds. Finally, he said, “I’m afraid I don’t. Your application has been turned down.”
She fell back into a chair. Panic was not, she knew, a helpful response, but it was what she was feeling. She wished she had a more expansive technical vocabulary to ask follow-up questions, but the best she could manage was a barely audible, “Why?” dragged out to two syllables.
“I hope you remember, this isn’t my decision. Just my job to deliver the bad news.”
Things went downhill from there. Her credit rating was outside the acceptable range due to some credit card debt and a home equity loan, both of which she’d let slide longer than she should have, although she’d cleared them up in the end. He hauled out the financial crisis of 2008 and tighter regulations. “And, frankly, they didn’t like your income.”
Only someone who’d taken a vow of genteel poverty would like her income, but it wasn’t insignificant, and, as she pointed out to him, she had an excellent benefits package.
“That’s nice for you, I’m sure.” Papers rustled in his shiny office, and then: “We’ve also learned that you’re doing short-term rentals at the house. A lot of mortgage companies frown on that.”
There was more thunder and wind, as if everything were conspiring against her. She was tempted to point out that she hadn’t discussed that on her application, but there was no need.
“You didn’t mention that. Not on the application and not to your insurance company either. It’s a problem.”
“I must have forgotten. How did they find out?”
Again there was an ominous silence. Clearly this was not the right question.
“Eventually,” he said, “everything comes into the open.”
“You can’t be saying there’s nothing I can do.”
“Of course not. There’s always something you can do.” The tone in which he made this pronouncement reminded her of conversations she’d had with doctors after her mother had been diagnosed with lung cancer. There was always another option for treatment, another protocol, another expensive experimental drug. In the end, none of them had done more than prolong and intensify the agony. “You might, for example, go to someone who specializes in high-risk loans. You’ll be paying at least triple the interest, but it’s possible they’d take you on.”
She heard drops begin to spatter against the windows and did a quick mental calculation of her retirement account and what she had in it. Within seconds, the rain was coming down so hard, it was cascading off the roof and the fallen gutter in a silvery sheet.
“If there’s anything else I can do for you,” he said, more cheerful now that he was done with her, “please don’t hesitate to call.”
She felt as if she were being swallowed up by the sofa and by her own anxiety. The lights were flickering as they often did in Beauport in storms. “I should go check on the windows,” she said. “It’s pouring. Of course, after the mild, snowless, totally weird, bizarre, scary winter, we need the water.”
But she knew she needed so much more than that.
6
Renata and Leonard Miller lived in a shingled house hidden behind gates and gardens in a sequestered enclave on Russian Hill. It wasn’t a large house, but its charms and location made it almost shockingly valuable. Renata was forever trying to persuade Leonard to sell it and buy a small condo in a nearby building famous for having appeared in Vertigo. Or so she claimed. Sometimes, David wondered if her telling him about her desire to sell was merely an excuse to flaunt the value of their real estate. It gave David a peculiar sense of satisfaction that his landlord’s property, the place he was being evicted from thanks partly to Renata, was probably worth double.
Leonard let him into the house the night of their cocktail party. There was an awkward moment when it wasn’t clear if they were going to shake hands or hug. The result was a standoff that ended when he handed Leonard the obligatory bottle of wine. Leonard did him the courtesy of accepting it without reading the label, the way you might avoid looking at a stain on someone’s shirt or a mole on their lip.
His courtesy did not extend to avoiding a glance at David himself. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you,” he said. Because this was accompanied by a disapproving scan of his body, David assumed it was a covert comment on his weight. Not that Leonard was one to judge.
“About six months,” David said, and returned the harsh assessment.
Leonard was one of those highly successful men who gets expensive haircuts and manicures and has a tailor who makes out-calls. He treated his pudgy body with the worshipful coddling usually lavished upon a vintage sports car or an overfed cat.
“Can you believe Teddy’s graduating next year?” Leonard said. “He’s thriving. What he’s learning, I couldn’t tell you.”
“I believe his major is American Studies.”
“Yeah, but is he taking history, politics, law? As far as I can tell, the only American he’s studying is Teddy Miller. To hell with it. He’s getting a diploma. Have I thanked you for talking him into Tufts?”
Leonard had been fixated on his son going to Yale, probably in fulfillment of some class aspirations of his own. He’d initially blamed David for Teddy deciding against the school, conveniently skipping over the matter of the school deciding against Teddy.
“I don’t remember any thank-you notes,” David said.
“Don’t hold your breath.” Leonard put a condescending hand on David’s shoulder. “We paid you enough.”
“Not really. You still have an outstanding balance.”
With heterosexual men like Leonard, it was important not to concede an inch of ground or within minutes they’d be asking your opinion of paint colors and Anderson Cooper.
Leonard laughed and called David a shark in an approving way that made it clear they’d had their requisite exchange and wouldn’t have to speak again for the rest of the evening.
The first floor of the house had been professionally decorated and therefore had the strange cohesion that makes a space beautiful and serene but gives it the air of being uninhabited. David wandered to the far side of the room where a small fireplace had been converted to gas, the genetically modified version of a fireplace. Standing there was a couple Renata had referred to David. Joyce and Louis were a physically imposing pair; both were extremely thin, but Joyce was tall
and her husband short. She had the melancholy, elongated beauty of a Modigliani, while he had the compact boyishness of a high school wrestler. Her way of being empathic was always to appear sad.
“David,” Joyce said sorrowfully, as if they were at a funeral and he was the deceased’s next of kin. “We didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I was an afterthought,” he said.
“No, no. Don’t say that. It’s just that…”
“I was kidding. How’s Hallie?”
“The important thing is,” she said mournfully, “we don’t blame you one bit.”
“I appreciate that. For what, by the way?”
“She wants to drop out.”
David nodded. He was surprised to learn she’d lasted two semesters. “I did try to talk her out of Indiana. Anyway, a lot of kids feel that way their first year.”
“You mean the ones you advise.” Joyce nodded with mordant forgiveness for David’s failures.
“I meant kids in general. I’m sure she’ll feel better next year.”
“I’m sure she will,” Joyce said. She was connected in an amorphous way to the world of dance and in a more concrete way to a father who’d founded an investment house. Louis was an architect who worked for a firm that designed austere buildings that seemed an extension of his barren affect. “I think it says a lot about you that you came tonight.”
“It wasn’t such a hardship,” David said. “Free food and drink, after all.”
“No, but I mean … considering.”
He was about to ask for clarification, but none was needed when he saw Soren walk into the living room with his new paramour. Renata was between them, her arms looped between theirs—a low-rent Jeanne Moreau to this plebian Jules and Jim. It was a surprise, but not exactly a shock. David had seen Soren three times since he’d left, always in the company of Porter, his surgeon-lover. They’d carried on with civility.
“Oh, you mean them,” David said. “It’s fine. There’s no animosity between us.”
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