“Are you leaving?” Lydia asks. Her cheeks are flushed. “I’ll probably stay for a while, enjoy my coffee.”
“Oh,” Irene says. “Okay, then. Thanks for dinner, it was fun, Happy New Year, call me tomorrow, be safe getting home, all of that.” Irene smiles at Brandon, but his eyes are fastened on Lydia like she’s the only woman in the world.
Good for her! Irene thinks as she walks home. It’s a new year and Lydia is going after what she wants. A man. Brandon the barista.
The wind has picked up. It’s bitterly cold and Irene has to head right into the teeth of it to get home. She ducks her head as she hurries down Linn Street, past a group of undergrads coming out of Paglia’s Pizza, laughing and horsing around. One of the boys bumps into Irene.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he says. “Didn’t see you.”
Invisible, she thinks.
This thought fades when she turns the corner and sees her house, her stunning castle, all lit up from within.
She’ll light a fire in the library, she thinks. Make a cup of herbal tea, hunker down on the sofa with her favorite chenille blanket, crack open one of her new books.
Maybe the “something else” she’s seeking isn’t running for office, Irene thinks. Maybe it’s turning her home into a bed-and-breakfast. It has six bedrooms, all with attached baths. If she kept one as a guest room for family, that still left four rooms she could rent out. Four rooms is manageable, right? Irene has a second cousin named Mitzi Quinn who ran an inn on Nantucket until her husband passed away. Mitzi had loved running the inn, although she did say it wasn’t for the faint of heart.
Well, Irene’s heart is as indestructible as they come.
What would Russ say if she proposed running an inn? She guesses he’ll tell her to do whatever makes her happy.
It would solve the problem of her loneliness—people in the house all the time.
Would anyone want to come to Iowa City? Parents’ weekend at the university, she supposes. Graduation. Certain football weekends.
It has definite appeal. She’ll think on it.
When Irene opens the front door, she hears the house phone ringing. That will definitely be Russ, she thinks. No one calls the house phone anymore.
But when Irene reaches for the phone in the study just off the main hall, she sees it’s the same 305 number that showed up on her cell phone. She hesitates for a second, then picks up the receiver.
“Hello?” she says. “Steele residence.”
“Hello, may I please speak to Irene Steele?” The voice is female, unfamiliar.
“This is she,” Irene says.
“Mrs. Steele, this is Todd Croft’s secretary, Marilyn Monroe.”
Marilyn Monroe, Todd Croft’s oddly named secretary. Yes, Irene has heard about this woman, though she’s never met her. Irene has only met Todd Croft, Russ’s boss, once before. Todd Croft and Russ had been acquainted at Northwestern, and thirteen years ago, Russ and Irene had bumped into Todd in the lobby of the Drake Hotel in Chicago. That chance meeting led to a job offer, the one Irene had been so eager for Russ to accept. Now Todd Croft is just a name, invoked by Russ again and again. The man has become synonymous with the unseen force that rules their lives. Todd needs me in Tampa on Tuesday. Todd has new clients he’s courting in Lubbock. “Todd the God,” Irene calls him privately. And yet everything she has—this house, the swimming pool and gazebo, the brand-new Lexus in the garage—is thanks to Todd Croft.
“Happy New Year, Marilyn?” Irene says. There’s a hesitation in her voice because Irene can’t imagine why Marilyn Monroe—Irene has no choice but to picture this woman as a platinum blonde, buxom, with a beauty mark—would be calling. “Is everything…?”
“Mrs. Steele,” Marilyn says. “Something has happened.”
“Happened?” Irene says.
“There was an accident,” Marilyn says. “I’m afraid your husband is dead.”
AYERS: ST. JOHN, USVI
Servers across the country—hell, across the world—regard New Year’s Eve with dread, and although Ayers Wilson is no exception, she tries to keep an open mind. It’s just another night at La Tapa, the best restaurant in St. John, which is the best of the Virgin Islands—U.S. and British combined—in Ayers’s opinion. Tonight, for the holiday, there are two seatings with a fixed menu, priced at eighty-five dollars a head, so in many ways it’ll be easier than regular service and the tips should be excellent. Ayers will likely clear four hundred dollars. She has no reason to complain.
Except… Rosie is off tonight because the Invisible Man is in town. This means Ayers is working with Tilda, who is not only young and inexperienced but also a relentless scorekeeper, and she has a crush on Skip, the bartender; it’s both pathetic and annoying to watch her flirt.
The first seating, miraculously, goes smoothly. Ayers waits on one of the families who came on her snorkeling trip to the British Virgin Islands that morning. The mother looks like a woman plucked from a Rubens painting, voluptuous and red-haired, with milky skin. She had wisely spent most of the day under the boat’s canopy while Ayers snorkeled with her two teenagers, pointing out spotted eagle rays and hawksbill turtles. Now the mother tilts her head. She knows she recognizes Ayers, but she can’t figure out how.
“I’m Ayers,” she says. “I was a crew member on Treasure Island today.”
“Yes!” the mother says. The father grins—kind of a goofy guy, perfectly harmless—and the kids gape. This happens all the time: people are amazed that Ayers works two jobs and that she might appear in their lives in two different capacities on the same day.
Ayers’s other tables are couples who want to finish eating so they can get down to the Beach Bar to watch the fireworks. In past years, Ayers has managed to squeak out of work by quarter of twelve. She and Mick would change into bathing suits and swim out to Mick’s skiff to watch the fireworks from the placid waters of Frank Bay.
Ayers and Mick broke up in November, right after they returned to St. John from the summer season on Cape Cod. Mick, the longtime manager of the Beach Bar, had hired a girl named Brigid, who had no experience waiting tables.
Why on earth did you hire her, then? Ayers asked, but she figured it out in the next instant.
And sure enough, there followed days of Mick staying late to “train” the new hire, whom he later described to Ayers as “green” and “clueless” and “a deer in the headlights.” On the third day of this training, Ayers climbed out of bed and drove down to the Beach Bar. It was two thirty in the morning and the town was deserted; the only vehicle anywhere near the bar was Mick’s battered blue Jeep. Ayers tiptoed around the side of the building to see Brigid sitting up on the bar counter and Mick with his head between her legs.
Ayers hasn’t been to the Beach Bar once since she and Mick split, and she certainly won’t go tonight. She has bumped into Mick—alone, thankfully—once at Island Cork and once, incredibly, out in Coral Bay, at Pickles in Paradise, the place “they” always stopped to get sandwiches (one Sidewinder and one Sister’s Garden, which “they” shared so “they” could each have half) before “they” went to the stone beach, Grootpan Bay, where “they” were always alone and hence could swim naked. Ayers had been stung to see Mick at the deli—he was picking up the Sidewinder, which was funny because she was picking up a Sister’s Garden—and she could tell by the look on his face that he was stung to see her. They probably should have divided the island up—Pickles for her, Sam & Jack’s for him—but St. John was small enough as it was.
Ayers has also seen Mick driving his blue Jeep with Brigid in the passenger seat—and worse, with Mick’s dog, an AmStaff-pit bull mix, Gordon, standing in Brigid’s lap. Gordon used to stand in Ayers’s lap, but apparently Gordon was as fickle and easily fooled as his owner.
Tilda taps Ayers on the shoulder and hands her a shot glass of beer, which Ayers accepts gratefully.
“Thanks,” Ayers says. “I need about forty of these.” They click shot glasses and throw the beer back.