It’s hard to describe how we felt about this—excited, of course, but also vaguely uncomfortable. It was almost like inviting strangers to dinner and then presenting them with a check for their pork chops. And yet we knew we were giving our (future) guests their money’s worth and more: our prices were extremely competitive, and the house was stylishly decorated and boasted terrific ocean views.
Ironically, our first guests lived five blocks from our apartment in D.C. And although we never met them, I remember their names well—Carol and Jeremy. They were arriving the day after Christmas and would stay for a week. We couldn’t have been more excited if Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were dropping by for tea.
More rentals followed—by the end of our first season we had hosted eight couples—but since Carol and Jeremy would be our first they became our target audience, so to speak.
We tried to imagine what they were like. This, I reasoned, would allow us to anticipate their every need. But since I’m cursed with an unnaturally fertile imagination, this line of thinking quickly got out of hand.
What if they were Shinto? We’d need some sort of shrine.
What if they were billiards fanatics? A pool table.
What if they were nudists? More curtains.
You get my drift.
Eventually Michael suggested that we focus on what would make us comfortable. This sounded right.
And it was.
I’ll never forget the simple words Carol and Jeremy wrote in our guest book at the end of their stay: It feels like home.
Sigh.
☼ ☼ ☼
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before Carol and Jeremy arrived we still had to put the finishing touches on the house. So we popped down one last time in early December to make everything as perfect as possible.
It was a busy but enjoyable stay. The weather was superb—the days hot and sunny, the nights shot through with cooling trade winds—and the house was looking great.
We fell into our usual routine without even thinking about it—working in the morning, breaking at mid-day for lunch and a trip to the beach, followed by another stint of work in the afternoon before drinks and dinner.
And yet, even though our daily routine remained unchanged, we began to notice subtle changes in the island itself.
For one thing, lots of new businesses that had cropped up in the past year were disappearing. I had lived on Nantucket long enough (not to mention an eight-month stint in Key West in the late ’80s) to know that the rhythm of vacation resorts—essentially feast or famine—isn’t always a great recipe for commercial success.
But I was shocked at just how fast restaurants and other businesses were springing up in Vieques and just as quickly taking a nose dive.
Our realtor, Armando, had opened a restaurant a few months after we bought our house and we watched it go belly-up barely six months later.
The Wyndham Resort, which had opened with such fanfare around the time of our first visit to Vieques, failed miserably and was taken over by another company. Then the island rumor mill really kicked in and reported that this new incarnation was also tanking and would soon be replaced with a W Hotel (the Caribbean’s first). The latter rumor proved to be true, although the hotel’s opening date was pushed forward at least four or five times. The W finally opened in the spring of 2010.
An amusing corollary to the W story is that American Airlines decided, once the hotel’s plans were announced, to expand its American Eagle service to Vieques to accommodate all those posh new visitors the hotel was certain to attract. American got so excited it even footed the bill for a new wing of the airport.
This was big news indeed.
The island was serviced by a group of small, locally-owned, airlines with the exception of Cape Air, which flew a bunch of its small planes down to the Caribbean every winter since they weren’t being utilized to any great extent in New England in cold weather.
Now a major airline would be connecting the island with San Juan. Everything would change, nothing would ever be the same again. Or so the story went.
The new airport wing, sleek and stylish, was completed after about a year.
Islanders held their collective breath waiting for the first flight.
It came.
It went back.
Then the service was suspended indefinitely.
In the end, nothing changed at all.
But a couple of relatively new establishments in Isabel seemed to be thriving. One was a small sandwich shop on the right hand side of the winding road leading into town.
Jane had told us it was wonderful. We bought sandwiches our first day and took them to the beach. Yum.
The other new business was almost directly across from the sandwich shop. We had noticed the building before—frankly, it’s hard to miss—looming high above the other structures on the left hand side of the road as you enter town.
It’s a wedding cake of a building, all Corinthian pilasters and crown moldings, infinitely more ornate than any other structure on the island. But when we’d first visited the island the building had been in terrible condition, its paint peeling, its gutters hanging in tatters.
Now, though, it was tarted up with a coat of bright pink paint, its trim picked out smartly in white relief.
If the old building had resembled Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, the new one looked like Cinderella’s.
Coffee house in Isabel Segunda
The sign over the door said, Jack’s Coffee House and Bar. Caffeine and booze, I thought. What a winning combination.
We couldn’t wait to see what it was all about.
The interior was a zany pastiche of neon signs, neoclassical-style murals, and shell-encrusted mirrors.
“My God,” Michael murmured under his breath, “we’ve died and gone to gay heaven.”
The main section consisted of a rectangular, tall-ceilinged room with a bar on one end and sofas, tables and lamps ranged across the other. The back wall was punctuated by three enormous sets of French doors leading onto a spacious, palm-shaded patio.
From behind the bar we were greeted by a familiar face: a friendly young woman who had formerly run the Tiki Bar Grill in Esperanza. She had an endearing way of smiling all the time and calling everyone “sweetie.”
“Hey boys,” she screamed above the loud music. “Long time, no see. Are you here for a while?”
“Not really,” Michael said. “But we bought a house here, so you’ll be seeing a lot more of us.”
“Fab!” she enthused. “Where’s the new place?”
“Los Chivos,” I answered.
She gulped. “Oh my God, that’s where Charlie’s house is,” she replied, pointing to a middle-aged guy sitting at the bar staring morosely at his laptop. He was wearing a sweatshirt (which struck me as somewhat unorthodox garb for eighty-five degree weather) and drinking a beer.
Although he couldn’t possibly have avoided hearing her he didn’t deign to look up.
“Charlie’s a regular,” she went on. “Hey, Charlie, have you met your new neighbors?”
Reluctantly, he tore his gaze from his screen and favored us with a wintry smile.
“Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”
Without exactly being invited, we sauntered over to where Charlie sat and introduced ourselves. He motioned half-heartedly for us to join him.
“What’s your story?” he asked, though it was pretty obvious from his tone that he wasn’t exactly consumed with curiosity about our little saga.
“Nothing special,” Michael said. “Like everybody else, we fell in love with the island. And on our second visit we bought a place.”
“You came, you saw, you bought,” Charlie commented smirkingly.
“Pretty much.”
“Near me?”
“Not sure,” I piped in, hoping to liven up the conversation. “We’re in Los Chivos, near the top of the hill.”
“I live on the opposite side of the cre
st.”
“So we are neighbors,” I said, still trying to inject a note of warmth into the proceedings.
“Distant,” he replied.
You could say that again. A damp silence followed. I glanced at Michael, who was fidgeting in his chair. Time to go.
“So who takes care of your house when you’re not around?” Charlie asked through a haze of indifference.
“Jane Compton.”
He took a sip of beer.
“Never heard of her. Any good?”
“She’s great,” I said, looking at Michael, who was squirming again. I picked up my coffee, ready to make our goodbyes. Then suddenly it occurred to me how we could get this guy’s attention.
“Particularly compared to the jerk we started with.”
Charlie sat up in his seat.
“And who was that?”
“Daniel Hynter.”
He almost spewed beer through his nose.
“Oh my God, that freak!”
We seemed to have his full attention now.
“Our furniture wasn’t quite up to his usual standards,” Michael offered.
“Pretentious creep. You should see his house. It’s Pottery Barn on steroids.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Oh sure. He had a party when he and Rod first ‘arrived’ on the island. It was hilarious—more Fire Island than Vieques. Shirtless bartender, the whole hot mess.”
“Yikes.”
“So you guys had a falling out?”
Michael and I looked at each other. We were fully aware that this was a small island and that we were engaged in conversation with someone who was probably about as discreet as Julian Assange.
But it was way too tempting to pass up.
“He fired us,” Michael said.
“Oh my God,” Charlie gasped. “What the hell did you do to him?”
“Nothing. He painted our house the wrong color, and when we pointed out his boo-boo he had a meltdown.”
“He denied it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Bastard.”
“Pretty much.”
We sat and brooded over our respective beverages. In fact, conversation pretty much ground to a halt after that. Apparently Charlie had satisfied whatever curiosity he may have had about us and our little story.
“Good to meet you guys,” he said, turning back to his laptop.
Time to go.
☼ ☼ ☼
We ran around like deranged beings our last day on the island. Carol and Jeremy were arriving the following week, and we wanted to make everything as perfect as possible for our very first guests.
Lydia, our new cleaning lady, was scheduled to come by two days later to give the place a final once-over but we couldn’t resist doing most of the work ourselves. (I suspect some of this harks back to my childhood, when my mother would scrub our house from top to bottom before our extremely meticulous cleaning lady was due to arrive, muttering to herself, “I can’t let her see how messy we really are. She talks, you know.”)
In five hours of non-stop activity Michael and I touched up paint, rearranged dishes in the cabinets, plumped up throw pillows, and generally made the house look as spiffy as we possibly could.
Great room after renovation
Master bedroom after renovation
On a more practical note, we put a sewing kit in the kitchen drawer, flashlights in every room, and a first aid kit in the bathroom. We placed a bright pink notebook on the coffee table for guest comments. (My three seasons in the hotel industry had taught me that feedback from guests can lend a much-needed perspective to the inn-keeping process.)
One of my many projects that fall had been to create a modest library of DVDs and books for our guests. Bearing in mind that the second house we’d rented in Vieques had offered nothing but horror films—after all, there’s nothing like an idyllic day at the beach followed by a relaxing chainsaw massacre—we decided to go in the opposite direction with our selection, which consisted mostly of frothy comedies and nature-focused documentaries. In other words, the type of movies that would perpetuate the feel-good glow of island life rather than dismember it limb by limb.
By December we had managed to pull together about thirty DVDs, and although we wondered if they might “walk off” with our guests, I can report several years later that only a handful of DVDs has ever disappeared, among them a Best of Seinfeld collection that I was glad to be rid of. Michael, a die-hard Seinfeld fan, was less thrilled but he got over it.
Books were easier. First I took a long, hard look at my bookshelves in D.C. and sent down everything I felt I could live without. Even better, I found that used books were readily available on the island. Several businesses, including Jack’s Coffee House and Bar, had shelves full of dog-eared books for sale, mostly benefiting the local humane society.
By picking up three or four books each time we went in for a coffee or sandwich, I quickly built up our library, which soon comprised dozens of books ranging from classics to mysteries and a smattering of chick-lit.
We were ready!
☼ ☼ ☼
Our last night on the island was festive.
We lit candles, put on some sexy music and cracked open a decent bottle of wine we’d stumbled on at Superdescuentos Morales, the island’s sole “supermarket.”
Michael threw some steaks on the grill. I steamed broccoli and made a salad with some lettuce and blue cheese we’d picked up at the market, along with a bag of walnuts we’d bought in the airport on our way down.
After dinner we grabbed our wine glasses and wandered through the house, half-inspecting, half-just-enjoying.
“Ever think about the first time we walked in this place?” I asked.
“All the time. That’s why I haven’t slept a wink in eighteen months.”
I nodded.
“It was grim.”
“Gruesome.”
“And yet…”
“And yet we saw its potential.”
“Or…” I said, taking a swig of wine, “we went stark raving mad at precisely the same moment.”
“Sounds more likely.”
We stripped the bed the next morning and piled the sheets on the bathroom floor along with our dirty towels. We set out scented candles and laid placemats and cloth napkins on the dining room table. We scoured the kitchen and swept the floors.
We took a last walk through the house.
“It looks perfect,” I cooed.
☼ ☼ ☼
Two days later the message light was flashing on my phone when I arrived at my office. It was Jane.
“Call me as soon as you can,” the message said, her voice uncharacteristically tense.
I dialed her number with a sense of dread.
“Is everything okay?”
“Well,” she said, laughing nervously. “Not so much.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Water.”
“Meaning?”
“The toilet leaked. For at least a day. And when Lydia went in yesterday afternoon there was an inch of standing water everywhere.”
My stomach grabbed.
“Oh, Jane.”
“Clean water, mind you. The toilet didn’t overflow. It leaked.”
My mind raced, picturing the scene.
“Ah.”
“Still not a pretty sight.”
I sighed, remembering our perfect little haven of two days before.
I dreaded telling Michael, who was even more proud of what we’d accomplished than I was.
From deep down I dredged up the question I knew I’d have to ask sooner or later.
“Is everything ruined?’
A long, pregnant pause.
“Hell no!” she cackled. “We bought some big brooms and swept the water out and put most of the furniture on the balcony to dry and now it all looks as good as new.”
I swallowed hard.
“Really?”
She laughed happily. “Yep. The bat
hroom door’s a little warped at the bottom and your TV cabinet lost its top layer of skin but otherwise everything’s perfect.”
Finally I let myself exhale. “Jane, you’re a gem.”
“Don’t call me a gem,” she scolded playfully, “just put one in my Christmas stocking.”
Message received.
Eighteen
Concrete Ideas
Christmas was a low-key affair for us again that year. Most of our friends were away with their families so it was up to us to entertain ourselves.
This involved such riveting activities as playing Scrabble by the fire, dining out on fried seaweed and cellophane noodles, and shivering in line for more than an hour to see a stunningly pointless “holiday release” movie.
For the ritual gift exchange, we actually stuck to our resolution to give each other presents for the house this year—stuff we were going to have to buy at some point anyway—decked out in garish holiday paper to provide a quasi-festive spin.
Michael got an electric drill and in my stocking (figuratively speaking) I found two beach umbrellas and a hurricane lantern.
Made me want to head to the beach.
☼ ☼ ☼
Carol and Jeremy, our first guests at Casa Dos Chivos, were due to arrive the day after Christmas.
We called Jane that morning to make sure everything was ready.
“Thanks for my Christmas check!” she said. “You really got the hint.”
“We try.”
“I’ll bear that in mind next Christmas, not to mention my birthday and all federal holidays in between.”
The woman should do stand-up. I put her on speakerphone so Michael could get the full effect.
“So everything’s all set for our guests?”
She laughed.
“You guys are as nervous as virgins on a first date.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“Maybe. Can’t remember that far back.”
“He was only twelve,” Michael added. “Remember, he’s from Tennessee.”
“Duly noted.”
“So the house looks great?”
“Perfect. They’ll be thrilled. I’m picking them up at the airport at three-ten. Everything will go fine.”
The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House Page 11