The Beach Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

the farm then?” Maribel said. “You’ve decided?”
    “No,” Mack said. Maribel felt a twinge of guilt, because he did look completely at a loss. He wiped his plate with the crust of his toast. “Why do I have to decide now?”
    “Because you’re thirty years old, Mack. Because you want more money, more respect. Don’t you want things to change?”
    “I guess,” he said.
    Maribel reached across the table and touched his hand. He trusted her; he knew that her thinking was for both of them. “Ask Bill to profit-share. If he says no we can leave for Iowa.”
    Mack took his empty plate to the sink. He turned the faucet on, then off, then on, and he poured a glass of water and drank it slowly and deliberately, in a way that made Maribel want to scream. He was always making her wait!
    “Let me think about it,” he said.
    “Don’t you think it’s time we took the next step? Don’t you think it’s time you got what you deserved?”
    “Yes?” Mack said.
    “Okay, then,” Maribel said.
    Maribel watched from the living room window as Mack walked out to the Jeep and drove away. I want you to feel good about yourself , she thought. I want you to ask me to marry you!
     
    The first thing Jem Crandall thought when he arrived at the Beach Club to interview for the bellman’s position was that it was like a scene from a movie—the ocean, the sand, and then the leading man—strong handshake, sailing-instructor suntan, who called himself Mack, and said Why don’t we interview on the pavilion? The pavilion! Nantucket was the fanciest place Jem had ever been, and he’d certainly never been interviewed on a pavilion before.
    The pavilion turned out to be a covered deck with blue Adirondack chairs that faced the ocean.
    “This is like a little porch,” Jem said, taking one of the chairs.
    “What do you think?” Mack said. He half sat, half leaned on the railing with his back to the water, so he could look at Jem. Jem stared at Mack’s ankle, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. He was wearing deck shoes without any socks.
    “It’s fucking gorgeous,” Jem said. He shut his eyes. What had he just said? Fucking? Swearing, in a job interview! “Excuse my French,” he said. “I just meant…”
    “I know what you meant,” Mack said. He scribbled something down on his clipboard, probably, Low-class, not right at all for the job . Jem sat up straighter in the chair, but it was hard to achieve really perfect posture because of the way the back of the chair was slung.
    “Sorry,” Jem said.
    Mack checked his Ironman sportswatch. He was dressed like a J. Crew model—navy cotton sweater, khakis, a Helly Hansen Gore-Tex vest lined with fleece. Jem tried to keep from fixating on Mack’s swinging ankle.
    “So you want to be a bellman,” Mack said. “I have two questions. How long can you stay and do you have a place to live?”
    Jem arranged his thoughts. In career counseling at William and Mary, he learned that the key to a good job interview was to tell the truth, and not what he thought the interviewer wanted to hear. “I can stay until closing,” Jem said. “I graduated from college, like, last week.”
    “Where’d you go to college?” Mack asked.
    “The College of William and Mary.”
    “Okay, so you graduated. And you don’t have another job to start in the fall?”
    “Not lined up, no.”
    “What are you planning to do?”
    Jem tried to sit up. “I’m going to California. I want to be an agent.” An agent: that was the first time he’d said the words out loud. It sounded okay. I want to be an agent . Jem was afraid to tell his parents about his plans because they would reject the words “Los Angeles” right away. They would argue it was too far from home. Jem’s parents lived in Falls Church, Virginia; they were small-town people. They had to pull out the atlas to locate Nantucket.
    “An agent?” Mack said.
    “Yeah,” Jem said. His feet itched and he wondered if he’d gotten sand in