The Beach Club by Elin Hilderbrand Read Free Book Online Page B

them a cab.”
    “Common sense,” Love said.
    “There will be guests who say they don’t like the fruit at breakfast. They’ll want peaches instead of bananas. If someone asks for peaches, write it down. I buy the breakfast and I’ve been known to honor requests for peaches. We don’t offer room service so we try to do the best we can on the breakfast.”
    “No room service,” Love repeated. She wrote it down.
    “You’ll be working every day from eight to five, except Tuesday, your day off. That’s a lot of time on the desk. In July and August it can get pretty hectic. You’ll be bombarded with requests, questions, people checking out, people checking in. If it gets to be too much, let me know. Let Therese know, let Bill know. Don’t try to tackle everyone’s problems at once. It won’t work.”
    “I took a magazine to deadline each month,” Love said. “I can handle the pressure of twenty hotel rooms.”
    “Mid-June, of course, the Beach Club starts,” Mack said. “We have a hundred members who pay dues to use the beach. They each have a locker. They each have a key. They all need chairs and towels. The kids want buckets and shovels. On a hot day in August when you have thirteen check-outs and twelve check-ins and twenty-five kids running through the lobby with sandy feet and a guest in room twelve telling you his toilet is overflowing and old Mrs. Stanford has lost the key to her Beach Club locker, then you will know the meaning of pressure.”
    Clearly he was trying to scare her. “I guess so,” Love said.
    Mack lowered his voice. “I did want to say a little more about the guests. What I’ve learned in twelve years is that it’s common to experience feelings of…resentment.” He looked around the lobby as though there might be a guest or two hiding behind the wicker sofas. “The people who stay here, the people who use the beach, all have a lot of money. And they look to you not as an equal but as someone who works for them. Listen, a guy comes from New York, he has two weeks off a year and he’s spending that precious time and a boatload of money here at the hotel. He wants things perfect. You see what I mean? It gets tricky, dealing with egos. There’s a lot of financial muscle flexing going on here.”
    Love smiled. Didn’t he know she had come from Aspen ? “I get your point.”
    “But what I’ve learned is that wealthy people are frequently sad people,” Mack said.
    “I’ve found that to be true as well,” Love said. “Money can only get you so much. It can’t cure your cancer or get you love. It can’t make you fertile.”
    Mack smiled. “Fertile?”
    Love blushed. Her personal life was slipping already, showing like a bra strap. “Yeah, you know, money can’t get you a child. Your own child.”
    “Exactly,” he said. “You’re going to do a fantastic job. I can tell.”
     
    After Love finished her lesson about the phones and the fax and the credit card machine, and after she impressed Mack with her knowledge of the island, he left to take care of a lock in one of the rooms. Love drummed her fingers on the polished wood of the desk, stared down at the phone console, gazed out at the lobby, and thought, This is where I’m going to meet the father of my child .
    She heard a voice in the back office. She tiptoed through Mack’s messy office and listened at Bill’s door, which was still ajar.
    Love held her breath and knocked. Bill cleared his throat, then said, “Come in!”
    He was the only one in the office. “I heard you talking,” she said. She smiled at him. “Do you always talk to yourself? I do.”
    “I was reciting Robert Frost,” he said. “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches’ and all that. I didn’t realize anyone was still here.”
    “Sorry I startled you,” Love said. “The poem you were reciting, is that a favorite of yours?”
    “They’re all favorites,” Bill said, thumping the cover of his book. “This one is called