Since Last Summer

  “He’s the worst waiter in the history of the universe,” Evan went on. “And I’m a close second. Luckily the manager seems pretty desperate. One of the waitresses never showed up. I guess that happens a lot around here in the summer. But the people who work here are pretty cool.”

  She peered in the window. Two girls chatted with each other as they folded napkins and set out silverware. They looked a bit older than Isabel but not too old. I could be friends with them, she thought. Even better, neither of them were as pretty as she was.

  Evan’s friend Jeff seemed a little geeky, but people looked like they were actually having fun, and wasn’t that what she wanted for this summer? To have a fun place to escape to during the day? Being around Evan all day wouldn’t hurt, either, she thought. The only downside she could see was the very drab uniform: black jeans and a black polo. But there were ways around that.

  “So if that other waitress never showed up,” she asked, “do you think your manager’s looking to hire someone?”

  “Why? You know someone who’s interested?”

  “Yeah,” she said, looking right at him. “Me.”

  “You?”

  “Uh-huh. Not that I have any experience.” She batted her eyes. “But that shouldn’t be too big a deal, right?”

  Evan’s eyes seemed to light up. “Stay here,” he said, pulling open the door to the restaurant. “I’ll go get Bill.”

  He disappeared into the restaurant, leaving her alone with her thoughts. If this worked, and she actually got a job here, this would definitely qualify as the most random thing she’d ever done. Everyone in her life was bound to think that this was either crazy or kind of embarrassing. Naturally, this made working here even more attractive. And there was always the added benefit of working alongside Evan. He would definitely make it a good time, and possibly more.

  Evan opened the door and gestured for her to come inside. Isabel stepped into the restaurant, feeling the sudden attention of the rest of the waitstaff.

  “This is Bill,” he said, leading her over to a stocky man with beady eyes and a thick, seventies-style mustache. The scowl on his face was like a sucker punch to her confidence. He seemed to be chewing something. “Bill, this is Isabel.”

  “So you don’t have experience?” Bill asked, eyeing her closely.

  “Yes,” Isabel said. “I mean, no.”

  Bill looked her up and down. “You know how to add?”

  “Yes.”

  “You own a watch?”

  “Right here,” she said, holding up her hand.

  “You got somewhere of your own to stay out here? You’re not gonna have to leave in the middle of the summer because you had a fight with somebody?”

  “I have somewhere to stay,” she said.

  “Fine,” Bill said grudgingly. “We’ll start you off at lunch. You can shadow Evan for a coupla days. After that, if you don’t get the hang of things…” He made a burping sound and slashed the air with his hand. “Finito. And this isn’t a fashion show.” He pointed at her peasant blouse and jean skirt. “Black jeans, black polo.”

  “Actually, about that,” Isabel said. “Isn’t black a little depressing? Especially for lunch?”

  “Eleven o’clock tomorrow,” Bill grunted, and then thrust a menu covered in green leather at her. “Take this home. Learn it. Cover to cover. No excuses.” Then he turned around and lumbered back to the kitchen.

  “Looks like you won him over,” Evan said.

  “That was winning him over?” she asked.

  “Yeah. He practically fell in love.”

  “Too bad he’s not my type.” She grinned.

  “Oh yeah?” Evan asked. He smiled at her in a way that made her blush.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said coyly.

  “Guess so,” he said. “See ya.”

  As she walked to the door she felt Evan’s eyes on her, following her. She’d forgotten how much fun it was to flirt. Of course, she’d had her rusty moments, but she hadn’t lost her touch. And Evan turned out to be a worthy sparring partner. He was smart and funny, and there was something sexy about his green eyes and quick wit. All she needed to do was survive her first day of work, and she had a feeling that her dry spell would be a thing of the past.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Here’s what we’re trying to accomplish at the East End Fest,” said Nina Montalban Sanders from across her cluttered architect’s desk. Her voice was slow and her words perfectly enunciated, and as she talked she petted her long, shiny black hair. “We want to celebrate the Hamptons’ history as an artists’ colony,” she went on. “To bring back the time when creative geniuses like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol lived and worked here. When this was a place of artistic refuge. Before it became a place about money and real estate and Gwyneth and P. Diddy.”

  Rory noticed Nina’s perfectly manicured nails and her gold drop earrings in the shape of obelisks. As one of the directors of the East End Festival, a new nine-day festival of independent film, music, and digital entertainment, Nina was exactly the kind of Stanford alum Rory hoped she’d be one day—stylish, put together, but with a strong artistic soul. The application process to be her summer intern had involved multiple phone interviews, e-mails, and letters of recommendation, but now that Rory was here she knew that it had been worth all the work.

  “That’s the whole idea behind the festival,” Nina continued. “Reestablishing the Hamptons’ artist cred. Getting back to its creative roots by featuring cutting-edge art and music and film.” Nina leaned back in her sleek postmodern chair. “Sort of like Coachella meets South by Southwest meets…”

  “The Cannes Film Festival?” Rory offered.

  “Exactly,” Nina said, holding up a finger.

  Rory glanced up at the bulletin board behind Nina, where black-and-white portraits of Jean-Luc Godard, Patti Smith, and Samuel Beckett were tacked up among handwritten lists and bullet-pointed memos. She’d always meant to get into Samuel Beckett but for some reason had never gotten around to it.

  “Opening night is August fifteenth,” Nina went on, “so we should have all the entries finalized by now.” She touched a key on her computer keyboard, and her screen lit up. “That’s funny. We don’t. Shorts has one more open slot.”

  “Shorts?” Rory asked. “You mean short films?”

  “Someone must have dropped out.” Nina blinked a few times. “Right now I have my hands full with the opening gala, so what if you select the last one?”

  “Sure,” Rory said, so excited she could barely speak.

  “Wonderful. And let me say something else. I know that summer internships can sometimes be disappointing for people. But you are not going to be sitting around answering phones and running to get coffee. You are going to be a vital part of the process here, Rory. We don’t have assistants, so our interns get to do everything. You’re going to learn a lot here.”

  “Great,” Rory said. She couldn’t stop smiling.

  “Good,” said Nina. “So a few technical things. Since I’m going to be in meetings for most of the day, I’d love it if you could answer my phone. If I get a call from my partner—his name is Troy—it always comes through.”

  Rory scribbled Troy on her pad.

  “And then I have a dinner reservation that I’d love for you to reschedule for later tonight at Nick and Toni’s. Around nine would be perfect.”

  “I can do that,” Rory said.

  “And, this is very important. At exactly noon today, I need to register for Revolution.”

  “Revolution?” Rory asked.

  “Oh.” Nina smiled gently—apparently this was a foolish question. “It’s a spin studio. You’ve never heard of it?”

  Rory shook her head.

  “Well, I’m kind of addicted to it,” Nina said delicately, placing a lock of hair gently behind one ear. “And so is everyone else around here. Which is why you have to register a week early to get into Kiera’s class on Saturday mor
nings. And the only time you can get in is when they put up the new schedule on Mondays at noon. I would do it myself, except I’m going to be in a meeting then. It’s really easy. You go to their website and type in my full name and password—it’s revolution—and you hit a button to register a bike. It couldn’t be simpler.”

  “I’m sure I can figure it out,” Rory said. She wrote down the words Revolution and twelve noon.

  “Great,” said Nina, tapping her small hands palms down on the desk. “Well, then I think we’re all set. Oh, and one more thing. I heard that you’re staying with Lucy and Larry Rule.”

  Rory tried to remember if that had come up in her phone interview with Nina. “Yes, I am.”

  “They’re quite the power couple out here,” Nina remarked. It was unclear whether she was giving them a compliment.

  “Yeah, I guess you could say they are.”

  Nina’s phone trilled. Rory reached for it, but Nina held up her hand and answered. “Yes? Be right there.” She replaced the phone in its cradle. “Another fund-raising meeting,” she said with a knowing roll of her eyes. “Well, that’s it, then. Go get settled in.”

  “Okay,” Rory said, standing up. “And I just wanted to say… I’m really glad to be here.”

  Nina smiled broadly. “I’m glad you’re here, too, Rory. Good luck.”

  Rory walked back to her desk and sat down. Her cubicle was cramped, but it had a decent desktop computer and her own landline. It also had a pair of futuristic-looking padded headphones that were already plugged into the monitor. Rory guessed that these were for watching the submissions. She’d never had a job before where she needed a computer and a phone, let alone fancy headphones. She thought for a moment about calling Sophie or Trish and chatting for a while, but she didn’t want to be caught slacking on her first day.

  There was a creak as the person in the cubicle next to her wheeled his or her chair back a few inches. A girl a year or two older than her with curly auburn hair and deliberately large, tortoiseshell glasses faced her. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Amelia.”

  “I’m Rory.”

  “Are you actually doing anything here? Or just waiting for people to notice you?” Her stare was almost as blunt as her question.

  “It’s my first day,” Rory said, “so I’m not sure yet.”

  “I’ve been here since last week,” she said drily. “And I’ve been doing nothing. Nada. Unless you count the crossword. But then again, that’s how all these internships go. You think you’re going to be rolling up your sleeves and having an impact and all that, and you just end up sitting around texting all day.” She squinted at Rory. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” Rory said. “I just graduated.”

  “First internship?” Amelia pressed.

  Rory nodded.

  “This is my third,” Amelia said.

  “If they’re all so lame, then why do you keep doing them?” Rory asked.

  Amelia looked this way and that and wheeled her chair closer to Rory. “I have a film,” she said in a half whisper. “A short. I heard that if an intern submits something they like, they’ll get behind it. Include it in the lineup.”

  “Oh?” Rory said. Nobody had told her about this.

  “They don’t really advertise it, but it’s sort of a known thing,” she said. “I figure a summer of boredom is worth it if it helps me with my career. But now I just have to get up the nerve to tell my boss that it’s on the server.” Amelia pointed behind Rory. “It’s Luis. He’s the one with the Che-Guevara-goes-Fifth-Avenue facial hair.”

  Rory turned to see an attractive dark-haired man with a revolutionary’s beard and carefully coiffed hair sitting in a glass-walled office.

  “I’m not sure he knows that I’m his assistant,” Amelia added.

  “Well, good luck,” Rory said. “That’s really exciting.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  “Nina,” Rory said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Amelia said knowingly. “She’s the one in charge of shorts, I think.”

  “Is she?” Rory said. She didn’t want to seem too knowledgeable about it.

  The muffled chime of a cell phone could be heard behind the cubicle wall.

  “Oh, that’s me.” Amelia wheeled herself out of sight, leaving Rory alone at her desk.

  Rory clicked onto the server and opened the folder marked SUBMISSIONS—SHORTS . She scrolled down the list of titles and directors and found Amelia’s right away.

  A slight wave of jealousy rippled through her. Even though her films were all documentaries, she still wished she could submit something. Looking at Amelia’s name now, she couldn’t tell if she wanted her film to be good, so that she could recommend it, or if she wanted it to be terrible, because of her less-than-pleasant attitude. She decided to watch some of the other shorts first, just to have some context.

  The first one she watched was entirely silent and involved a man walking down a highway with a dog, trying to hitchhike. When it was done Rory dropped it in the REJECTION folder with only a shred of guilt. I could make something better than this, she thought. She went on to the second one, which was marginally better, but not by much.

  There was another creak of wheels, and soon Amelia poked her head into Rory’s space again. “I’m gonna go out and get something to eat,” Amelia said. “Wanna come?”

  “No, thanks,” Rory said. The less she was around Amelia’s negative attitude, the better.

  Amelia got up and left. Rory went back to her movies. About five minutes later, she realized that she was hungry. She looked at the clock at the top of her screen: 12:10. Time for lunch, she thought. And then her eyes fell onto her notepad.

  Revolution, twelve noon.

  Her heart stopped. She’d forgotten all about Nina’s spin class.

  With a few clicks of the keyboard, she found the website. She typed in Nina’s name and revolution to log in and clicked on the schedule. The Saturday morning class was full.

  Rory picked up the phone and dialed the number on her screen.

  “Hello, Revolution,” said the woman on the other end.

  “Yes, hi, is your Saturday morning class full?” Rory asked, trying not to sound panicked.

  “It is. Would you like to be put on the waiting list?”

  “Actually, is there any way you could fit one more person in there? You see, my boss asked me to register her, and I totally forgot, and it would just be for this one time, not a regular habit or anything—”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s only the waiting list,” the woman said. “Do you want me to put her on it or not?”

  Nina didn’t strike Rory as the type of woman who liked to wait. Especially when there was a good chance that it would be for nothing. “That’s okay. I’ll call back.”

  Rory hung up. It was her first day and already she’d done something wrong. She got up and slowly walked to Nina’s office. Through the glass wall she could see Nina and Luis deep in conversation. Great, Rory thought. There would be a witness to all this.

  Nina waved her in. “What is it, Rory?” she asked.

  Rory took a deep breath. Luis was staring at her.

  “I started watching the submissions, and I… well… I forgot to register you for the spin class. I’m so sorry.”

  Nina hesitated, as if the words were still sinking in. “I didn’t get into the class?” she asked in a toneless voice.

  “I can’t believe I forgot. I got so wrapped up in watching those submissions I think it just slipped my mind.”

  Nina was about to speak, when Luis shook his head quickly, as if signaling Nina to rein it in. The cloud passed from Nina’s face, and soon she seemed utterly content. “That’s okay,” Nina said nicely. “Really. No worries.”

  Rory glanced at the photo of Samuel Beckett. His craggy, weathered face seemed to be looking down at her, furious with disapproval.

  “Are you sure? I really am sorry.”

  Nina held up her hand. “Completely fine. No big deal
.” She looked at Luis and smiled. “By the way, this is our codirector, Luis Sandoval. Luis, this is Rory McShane.”

  “Hello, Rory,” Luis said in a smooth baritone, extending his hand. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you.”

  “Uh, thanks,” she said, momentarily frazzled by his attractiveness.

  “I’ve met Lucy and Larry Rule before,” Luis said. “But I doubt they’d remember me. I know how social they are.”

  “Um, sure,” Rory said. She wasn’t sure why Luis was bringing up the Rules during this awkward moment, but at least he was being friendly. She turned back to Nina. “I’m really sorry, once again.”

  “It’s okay,” Nina said, glancing at Luis.

  “Nothing to be upset about,” Luis chimed in. “Oh, and tell Gregory I said hi. We have some mutual friends.”

  “I will.” Rory backed up toward the door.

  “I’ll let you know if I need anything else,” Nina said. She waved. “Bye, Rory.”

  That had gone so much more smoothly than she’d expected. But Rory couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a reason for Nina’s easygoing reaction. A reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Isabel carried the last pair of black jeans from her closet to the bed, where she carefully laid them down next to the other five pairs she’d already bought. Even though she hadn’t started her job yet, it couldn’t hurt to get her uniform together.

  “What’s all this?” Rory asked as she walked in.

  “Tell me, which do you like better?” Isabel asked. “The ebony AG’s or the metallic black J. Brands?”

  “Did somebody die?” Rory asked.

  “I got a job.” Isabel tossed her hair over her shoulder and did a little happy dance. “You are looking at the Hamptons’ newest waitress.”

  Rory looked shocked. “Really?”

  “Yep. And this is my ugly uniform.”

  “Wow,” Rory said. “What place is it?”

  “The Baybreeze Café.”

  Rory had no reaction.

  “The place on Main Street?” Isabel prompted. “Near the movie theater?”

  “Oh,” Rory said, clearly still mystified.

  “It’s good practice for New York. I mean, all actors do in the beginning is wait tables.”