Nantucket Read Free Page A

– unpainted pine shingles that had turned grey, with white trim that had to be refreshed every other year. It had five bedrooms, spacious porches where you could sit and play scrabble when it rained, easy access to the ocean when it was sunny. In the time before air-conditioning, when Broadway theatres closed for the summer months, it had been part of a noted actors’ colony. Its relatively isolated location, on the ridge at the eastern edge of the island, threw its occupants together and required them to perform.
    Andrew saw himself as an impresario – a profession requiring both vision and nerve. He booked airplane tickets twelve months in advance, and spent each fall and winter deciding who it would pay to entertain. If Cathy grew weary, which to be fair hadn’t been often, he’d remind her that “your skill as a hostess and my brass balls are what put our daughters through college.” Nine months earlier, Joe and Shiva had never heard of Andrew. Didn’t know each other either. He’d talked them into separate meetings with him on the strength of an idea. By the end of the year he hoped to send each of them a bill for ten million dollars.
    A big fee would be quite helpful, to be honest. He hadn’t brought one in for a couple of years. The men who ran his firm were reasonable, but Wall Street is Wall Street. The unspoken question, “Is Andrew losing his edge?” would getasked soon enough.
    Andrew hadn’t discussed compensation with either house guest yet. The time to do that was after the weekend, when the fact of his having brought them together would be irrefutable. Joe would agree immediately. Shiva would try to negotiate, but would fold when Andrew pointed out that Joe had already agreed. Then when they got to documenting the transaction, Joe (or more accurately, his lawyers) would be difficult, and Shiva would have to ask him to lighten up. That’s how he read them, anyway. Andrew prided himself on reading people.
    Going down the steps from the plane, Andrew scanned the crowd of wives waiting behind the waist-high chain link fence at the edge of the airfield. No Cathy. Bad form, her being late. That hadn’t happened before. But no doubt there would be an explanation. Andrew told himself not to be grumpy. All it would do was show he was anxious. Mustn’t be anxious.
    One of Cathy’s party tricks was to meet the plane from New York with a thermos of gin and tonic, which she served to arriving guests in plastic cups. “House rules,” she’d tell anyone who was reluctant. “You’re on holiday. And make the men take off their neckties.” It would spoil the effect, though, if she was late.
    A moment later, Andrew spotted Sally, the au pair. She was holding the thermos and a stack of cups. She appeared to be wearing one of Cathy’s loose-fitting, brightly coloured summer dresses. No doubt there would be an explanation for that as well. In any event, she seemed to have collected Shiva and Rosemary, who’d been seated further forward in the plane and would have been easy to identify. Andrew suggested Joe and Cynthia join them and went to organise the luggage.
    The “au pair” was an innovation. Andrew was, to behonest, slightly disconcerted by her. Something about the way she moved, the way she did things – rearranged the refrigerator, ate a raw carrot while she fried mushrooms, perched on the porch railing reading a magazine – every gesture told you she was in charge. She struck him as a free spirit. There weren’t a lot of free spirits in his world. But with Cathy being for some reason delayed at home, it was certainly convenient to have employed her. In contrast to the high-school girls they’d had when their daughters were young, Sally was a safe driver and a capable cook. She was teaching Cathy to draw. They went running together. And she was nice to look at. Joe and Shiva would both like that.
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