“I guess grilling is out of the question for the time being,” the woman said, as we got back to the landing.
“I’ll get someone here as soon as possible,” I said. I reached into my folder, searching around until I found a voucher for a dinner for two at Finz. “But tonight, why don’t you go out on us. Hopefully by tomorrow everything will be fine.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s so nice! Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” I told her.
Another satisfied customer, I thought, as I walked back to my car. This was why I’d been working pretty much whenever I could lately. I needed distractions, problems I could easily solve. Wild cats were never ideal, but now, I’d gladly take them.
It had been about a week since Theo’s big news at the Pavilion, and things hadn’t gone exactly as planned. At breakfast the following morning he was not offered the job, as he’d envisioned. Instead, Clyde asked for his help going through the work that had been in storage and piled up in a shed behind his house. In typical Theo style, he did not see this as a setback. Instead, he explained to me, it was Clyde’s way of trying him out, testing his mettle, before handing over the real prize. That would happen a few days from now, at the press conference/cocktail party he and Ivy had planned before their split to celebrate the end of filming and the tour announcement. Between now and then, all he had to do was make himself indispensable, bond further with Clyde, and cement his standing as the most knowledgeable about the work, other than the artist himself.
“It’s a win-win,” he kept saying.
He wasn’t the only one feeling confident. Not only had Margo listed my father’s house in North Reddemane and gotten an offer in record time, but the negotiations and inspections had so far moved quickly, without a hitch. The furniture had all been packed up, the floors refinished, the septic and electrical checked out. My father and Benji had moved to a motel just down from Gert’s, the Poseidon, with Leah in a room adjacent, to wait until the final repairs were done before heading home. While they both seemed eager to return to their lives, Benji, like me, was looking for distractions. Turned out he was pretty good at finding them.
It had started with some backtalk, not wanting to do the touristy things his mom had planned. He rolled his eyes at minigolf, claimed seasickness at ferry rides, and about the aquarium said only, “Fish are boring.” This general bad attitude escalated once they moved to the Poseidon, manifesting itself in the slamming of doors, heavy, constant sighing, and complaints about the lack of decent channels on the TV. At first, Leah held her ground, dragging him on various expeditions even as he protested. After a couple of days, however, she caved to his near-constant requests and started dropping him off with me.
“I just don’t get it,” she’d said to me one day from her car, which he’d exited like a shot before it was even fully stopped. “I thought he’d want to have fun the last few days here. What ten-year-old would rather work than go to the beach?”
“Got me,” I said. “I’d love to be at the beach right now.”
She sighed. “All I know is that I am dreading when we tell him we’re leaving next week. He’s been insufferable here. I can’t imagine two days in the car.”
“You haven’t told him yet?”
She shook her head. “I mean, he knows it’s coming, just not the exact day. Joel felt if we waited until the day before, it would be clear it was a fact, not something to be negotiated.”
It was hard not to make a face, hearing this, but I did my best. I had not talked to my father since our argument, keeping my dealings to either Benji or Leah. He hadn’t made any effort either. Now more than ever, it was no surprise to me that he’d preferred facts to negotiations whenever possible. Eliminate the opposing argument and you, too, always get to win.
With all this winning going on, someone had to lose. I’d really been hoping it wouldn’t be me, but now I wasn’t so sure about that either. If June was the beginning of a hopeful summer, and July the juicy middle, August was suddenly feeling like the bitter end. But it wasn’t the end I’d expected, which had totally thrown me off.
What had I thought would happen in these three months? If I was honest, maybe a healing between my father and me, a beach backdrop as a bonus. Instead, we were back to where we’d been before his trip, if not further apart. I’d planned on a fun summer with a boy I’d long loved … who cheated on me. Adapting, I’d looked on the bright side, thinking a summer romance might be my fate. Now, though, even that was turning out to be more complicated than I ever imagined.
Theo and I had not talked again about plans for the fall, but only because he’d been so caught up making his come to fruition. Each day for the last week, he’d joined Clyde for his customary early bird breakfast at the Last Chance at six a.m. sharp, after which they set out in the truck together. After collecting collages and paintings from the various places Clyde had them squirreled away around town, they hauled them to the Pavilion, where the show and party was to be held. When Clyde was filming with Ivy, he left Theo there to catalog and organize, rejoining him when he was done. The upside of all this was that Theo was so busy that by the time we saw each other, he was too exhausted to discuss much of anything. The downside? Those twenty-three days I’d finally tallied were now seventeen and counting.
But the cats—the cats I had under control. After putting in a call to C.A.R.E., I headed back to the office, where I found Rebecca on break, my mom and Margo gone, and Benji at my grandmother’s computer, explaining the fine points of social networking on UMe.com.
“And, see, now that we’ve built the office’s profile page,” he was saying as I came into the doorway, “it’s really easy to add various kinds of content.”
“Content?” my grandmother repeated, peering over her reading glasses at the screen.
“Yeah. Like, say, pictures of some of the houses, in a kind of gallery? Or reviews from people who have rented from you. You can even set up a comment section, so people can ask questions in real time.”
“Hmmm,” my grandmother said. “Interesting.”
“No fair,” I called out, getting their attention. “I’ve been trying to get you to update the main Web site for two years, and now you’re on UMe.com?”
“You haven’t updated your Web site in two years?” Benji asked her.
“I told you, I’m a dinosaur.” Grandmother helped herself to a Rolo, giving one to him as well, and they both turned back to the screen. “Okay, now tell me again what these pictures are of, on the side?”
“The people who have listed the page as a favorite,” he explained. “Which means it’s on their page for everyone to see as well. So far, since we just made it, it’s me. But soon there will be others.”
“Emaline,” my grandmother called out, eating her Rolo. “Will you please make our page a favorite? Ask Rebecca, too. And everyone else you know.”
“Done,” I said, pulling out my phone and opening the UMe.com app. “Anything else?”
“No.” She was still studying the screen, then suddenly she looked at me. “Oh, wait, yes. Someone’s waiting to talk to you. In the conference room.”
“The conference room?” I turned. The lights were on, the usual array of food and drinks cluttering the table’s surface. At the very head, dressed in black with her head ducked over her own phone, was Ivy.
“What does she want?” I asked.
“She didn’t say. But she’s been waiting awhile.” Grandmother narrowed her eyes at the screen. “Now, Benji, suppose we wanted to put up something about a rental special or promotion. Would we do it on this page, or another one?”
“Either,” he replied, hitting a few keys. “But the best function would be this Newsflash button.”
“Newsflash?”
“Yeah. See, how that works is …”
I walked over to the conference room door. I was wary of seeing Ivy under any circumstances, but glad for once to be in my own territory. “Can I help you?”
She looked up, he
r face grim. “I don’t know. Can you finish the last of the filming for me, then wrap up everything here and coordinate the move of all of my equipment back to the city?”
“Nope,” I said.
She looked back down at her phone, her shoulders sagging. “Yeah. I didn’t think so.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. I came inside the room and slid into a chair. “You need Theo,” I said.
“I need a capable assistant with a working knowledge of filmmaking,” she corrected me. “Which, in New York, are basically everywhere. Here, though …”
“Not so much,” I finished for her.
“Nope.”
Another silence. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I was supposed to be doing here, only that it felt odd enough to want to wrap it up, and quickly. “Well,” I said, “I really should—”
“Look,” she said, cutting me off. “I know you don’t like me.”
“Ivy.”
“But right now, I need help. And I don’t even know where to start finding it.” She ran a hand through her hair, then looked at me. “The reason I’m here, humiliating as it is, is because I know you do.”
“You want to hire me?” I asked, confused.
“I want to finish my film,” she said. “I want you to find the people to do everything else that needs doing in the next week so I can do that.”
“I have a job,” I pointed out.
“I’ll pay you well.”
“There’s only so much time in the day, though.”
“True. But you’re efficient.” I must have looked particularly doubtful, because she quickly added, “Look, I know you’re leaving for school soon, so you could use money. And if this is about Theo—”
“It’s not,” I told her. “I just … I’m kind of overwhelmed right now as it is.”
She exhaled. “Emaline. Really. Do you want to see me beg?”
Truthfully, I kind of did. Not that I would have said so. So I was trying to figure out how to decline again, nicely, when I heard the front door open. A moment later, Margo came down the hall, my father behind her. He was carrying a folder, his face tense. When he saw me, it grew even more so.
“Just have a seat in my office,” Margo said, turning on the lights and waving him in. “Leah should be here soon, and we’ll get started.”
He nodded, disappearing inside. I glanced over at my grandmother’s office. She was on the phone, Benji still at the computer. He watched my father go inside, his own face darkening. You owe me a dollar, I thought. And then, I heard myself say something, this time aloud.
“Okay.” I turned back to Ivy. “I’m in.”
* * *
I clocked out at the office right at five. Ten minutes later, I was at the Pavilion, encountering the first of what I knew would be many awkward interactions.
“Hey,” Theo called out when he saw me. “You’re early.”
I nodded, withholding further comment. I knew this room mostly from social functions like the Beach Bash, when it was decorated in one theme or another. Now, it was just big and empty, with paintings and collages leaning against the walls and stacked on folding tables. Theo was crouched next to a large painting, a close-up of four tall, vertical plants, done in exacting, perfect detail. His laptop was at his feet, some papers scattered around it.
“This is nice,” I said, pointing at the canvas. “Very … earthy.”
“Oh, it’s amazing,” he replied, turning to type something on the laptop. “When he first returned here, if my timeline is correct, Clyde really shifted his focus. He’d been doing so much with metals and scrap, but suddenly there’s a lot of naturals, most in tight detail. I researched this one, and it’s this obscure kind of wheat plant that grows only in certain kinds of Southern pastureland.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I know. I can’t wait to see what people have to say about it. Hey, can you hand me that camera over there?”
I turned, seeing one with a zoom lens on the table behind me. I went over to retrieve it and brought it back. He took it, his eyes still on the screen, then said, “I thought we weren’t meeting until later. I still have a lot of stuff to do here.”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “I, um, actually came to just check out the venue.”
Now he glanced up, looking around. “Yeah. It’s not much. But I think the sparcity will help to put the focus on the paintings. Honestly, though, I thought Ivy would have more stuff done here, with the opening so soon. She must be freaking.”
And there’s my opening, I thought. I cleared my throat. “Actually, I … sort of wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Ivy? What about her?”
“Well,” I said, “she came by the office today. Apparently, she really needs help with this event. And some other details.”
“Ha! I bet she does.” He grinned, bending back over the painting. “What, so she’s looking for the rental agency to do that, now?”
“Not exactly.”
Now I had his full attention. “Then what did she want?”
I swallowed. “She asked me to help her. Coordinate this event, hire people to do the other stuff she needs …”
“You?” He laughed. “Please. Like you’d ever help her after how she’s treated you. And us.”
I didn’t say anything. In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out, recognizing the number for Everything Island, the party supplier I’d told Ivy about all the way back on the first day I’d met her. “One sec,” I told him. “I have to take this.”
I put the phone to my ear, stepping a few feet away, his eyes still on me. There I had a clear view of his face, his expression increasingly incredulous, as I arranged for chairs and tables to be delivered to the Pavilion that coming Saturday morning. When I hung up, he shook his head.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You took the job.”
I sighed. “Theo. She’s desperate.”
“And she hates you! And you hate her!” He turned, shaking his head. “I can’t believe this. I finally emancipate myself and you dive right into the shackles. And thwart everything I’m doing in the process.”
“How can you say that?” I replied. “If this party’s a bust, it hurts you and Clyde just as much as her.”
“This party’s in Colby,” he said, waving his hand. “It doesn’t count for anything, other than a chance for Ivy to get his new work on film while the locals gape. If this stuff ends up getting the attention I think it will, Clyde won’t even need her little movie. In fact, we’ll probably be better off without it.”
Maybe it was the way he said the words Colby and locals, neither of them nicely. But I said, “We? I thought you didn’t have the job yet.”
“Why do you keep harping on that?”
“Because it’s the truth?”
“Emaline,” he said, sounding tired. “Jobs like this are earned, not given. It’s not like bringing towels to people, okay?”
Ouch. “And you think that’s all I do.”
“I think,” he said, picking up the camera again, “that you have no idea what it’s like to live in the real world.”
“Which is New York,” I said, clarifying.
“Which is anywhere other than this small, coastal burg, where you know every single person by name and nothing ever changes.”
“Burg?” I said.
He snapped a picture of the canvas. “It means small town.”
“I know what it means. I did well on my verbal, remember?”
“Clearly. You got into Columbia.”
“Who’s harping now?” I asked. “And what does that have to do with this?”
“It has everything to do with this,” he replied, turning to look at me. “Emaline, you’re a really smart girl on paper. And it’s not your fault you’ve done some not-so-smart things.”
I was speechless. Literally: no words.
“But the truth is, you haven’t had a lot of outside influences, people to show you there is another way,” he continued. “I’m here now
. And I’m telling you, you do not want to take this job with Ivy. It will be a mistake.”
“You think I made a mistake turning down Columbia.” Now, apparently, I could talk. Barely.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re a girl from Colby High School who got into the one of the best schools in the country. It was a dream come true.”
“Not my dream, though.”
Another eye roll. “This is exactly my point. You don’t know what’s out there, Emaline. If you even had the slightest idea, you’d understand what you’re missing.”
Instead of replying, I looked at him, closely, standing there before me. This boy, in his jeans and expensive fitted T-shirt, hipster sneakers, owner of sport coats. Someone to whom everything had to be Big and Special, or not worth his time.
But that is the hard thing about the grand gesture. Once you pull off one, what’s left to do but start planning the next? Get used to pomp and anything less is just a disappointment. Why stop at the Best Summer Ever when you could try for the Best Ever After? The truth was, there was no way everything could be the Best. Sometimes, when it came to events and people, it had to be okay to just be. I’d already explained that to my father. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to do it again.
And it was in that moment, a plain and simple one, that I knew what he’d said was right. I didn’t know very many people like him. But l was beginning to think that was okay. One was probably enough.
“You know, I think I’m going to go now,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do.”
“So you’re really going to do this to me,” he called out, as I walked away. “You’re taking the job.”
“Yep,” I said over my shoulder.
I heard him sigh. “You’re not who I thought you were, Emaline.”
Finally. Something we could agree on. “No,” I told him. “I’m not.”
And then I was walking, towards that open door that looked out on the boardwalk. It was late afternoon, still sunny, and I could see ocean. Funny how now that I knew I didn’t have to make the ideal exit, this one came damn close anyway.
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