“We’ll go where the day takes us,” Arthur said with a wink.
Go where the day takes us. That seemed like a good way of looking at it. Love always operated with a plan, but why? Why not go with the flow, follow their noses, fly by the seats of their pants? No reason why Love had to decide in advance about having sex with Arthur Beebe. She needed to take it easy. Relax. At five o’clock, after work, Love walked home past the Hadwen House. The Hadwen House with its ballroom under the stars. Its dreams of romance.
Tuesday morning, a taxi dropped Love off at the Beach Club at 7:35. She liked being early. It gave her a few minutes to stretch her legs and look at the ocean. The 6:30 ferry was a white speck on the horizon. Love watched the seagulls drop hermit crab shells onto the parking lot. She glanced at Bill and Therese’s house and figured they were probably in bed making love, but today Love didn’t feel jealous. Today she would just be one of many lovers on Nantucket. That was all she wanted-to be another person’s focus, if only for a day, if only for a few hours. Love was honest enough with herself to realize that unless a baby was conceived, this would be the best part of the whole affair: the sweet, exquisite anticipation.
But after another ten, twelve minutes, her anticipation became tinged with nerves. Her multipurpose sports watch said 7:48. Then 7:50, and then 7:53. Love jogged back and forth in front of the hotel; she peeked in the windows of the lobby, thinking perhaps Arthur was waiting for her inside. But the inside of the lobby was dark, deserted.
At 8:00, Mack pulled into the parking lot. He was early! She hid around the corner of the lobby and waited until he unloaded the cartons of that day’s breakfast and carried them into the lobby. Then she sneaked behind the pavilion, and down the side deck rooms to the water. She jogged past the Gold Coast. A few of the guests were out on their decks reading, a woman sat on a mat doing yoga. Love ran by room 10, room 9, room 8. The door to room 8 was closed, the deck uninhabited. Love ran all the way down to room 1 and then cut behind the Gold Coast rooms. The back door to room 8 was also closed. Love returned to the front of the lobby in case she had missed Arthur somehow. She consulted her watch. It was 8:06. She shielded her eyes and peered into the lobby. Jem and Mack set up the breakfast, the coffee loiterers loitered. Tiny stood behind the front desk. But no Arthur Beebe.
A minute later, the front doors of the lobby opened. Mack lugged Therese’s plants out onto the front porch. There was no time to hide again; Mack saw her.
“Hey, Love, what are you doing here?” he said.
“I was just…running,” she said. Although she wanted to, there was no way she could ask Mack if he’d seen Arthur Beebe.
“Nice day for it,” Mack said. He was in client mode: chipper, chatty, ready to skate across any topic of conversation. She could be in tears and he wouldn’t notice.
“I’m off,” she said.
Love ran home as fast as she could. She pushed herself to go faster, faster, faster than her fastest mile split (a 5:49 in the Boulder 10k, 1988). She arrived at home winded and sweaty, her heart pounding in her throat and her face. At first she was glad Randy and Alison were away, because she certainly didn’t want anyone to witness her humiliation. But the empty house was awful too-the way the wind blew right through it-and she wished for some company.
Love waited until ten o’clock, the usual time for her first conversation with Arthur Beebe, and then she called the front desk.
Tiny answered. “Good morning, Nantucket Beach Club.”
Love cleared her throat. “Yes, is Arthur Beebe in, please?”
“I’m sorry,” Tiny said. “The Beebes are no longer staying with us.”
“No, no,” Love said. “Tiny, it’s me, Love. I think you’ve got the wrong room. The Beebes are in room eight. They’re not checking out until tomorrow.”
“Oh, Love,” Tiny said. “The chambermaids went in to clean about forty minutes ago and noticed all the Beebes’ stuff was gone. So I called the airport. The Beebes’ jet left at five o’clock this morning. They skipped out on their bill-two grand.” She gave an amused little laugh. “Happens every year. I’m always suspicious of people who don’t use a credit card, but you figure someone with his own plane is going to be able to foot the bill. But not these folks-they snuck out of here in the middle of the night, like they were on the lam or something. What’s the deal? Did you know these people? What did you want with them anyway?”
Antarctica, Love thought. Would he have been so cruel as to dash his wife off to Antarctica? She hoped not, despite the fact that right now she wanted Arthur Beebe as far away from her as possible. At five o’clock this morning, Love had been lying in bed, listening to the birds, thinking about Arthur Beebe. Had she heard a plane flying overhead? No, just the birds.
“Oh, nothing,” Love said. “I didn’t want them for anything.”
By the next morning, Love had convinced herself that she was the reason Arthur Beebe had left the hotel in the predawn hours. Perhaps his feelings for her escalated, perhaps he was frightened by their intensity. Perhaps last night at dinner (Straight Wharf), he told Mrs. Beebe about his running date with Love-and maybe she was the one responsible for their early departure. There were many excuses Love could make for the man, but it didn’t change the fact that Arthur had disappeared, literally, into thin air, taking her hopes for a child with him.
Love was folding hotel brochures, thinking of how she might surprise Arthur Beebe someday in New York when Vance poked his head out from Mack’s office.
“Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
The lobby was empty and so she slipped back into Mack’s office. Mack was in the laundry room fixing a dryer.
“What?” she said.
“You know the people in room eight, the druggies? The ones who skipped their bill?” Vance said.
“The Beebes?” Love said. The name tasted funny on her tongue.
“I stripped their room yesterday and look what I found,” he said. “This ain’t no BB.” He brought his hands out from behind his back and showed Love a gun.
“You found it in their room?” Love asked. It was a handgun, shiny and silver. She tried to picture it in Arthur Beebe’s hand; she tried to picture him pointing it at someone.
“I told you they were drug dealers. Their own plane? Taking off in the middle of the night? And then I find this baby tucked in between the mattress and box spring? Come on, Love, we’re not stupid here.”
A little of this, a little of that. “What should we do?” Love asked. “Should we call them?” A part of Love wanted to speak to Arthur Beebe again. He’d left her feeling empty. Angry and humiliated, yes, but mostly empty.
“They never left a phone number. Tiny searched for it yesterday, but when Bill made the reservation, all he wrote down was a fax,” Vance said. “And guess what? We can’t fax a gun.”
“We could send a fax telling them we have the gun,” Love suggested. She wanted to fax herself to Arthur Beebe.
“Tiny faxed them about their bill, and we haven’t heard back. If we had the address, we could send the gun through the mail, although you can’t send the clip and the gun together,” Vance said. Love didn’t ask how he knew this. Vance pointed the gun out the window. “Pow,” he said softly. “Listen, I’ll take care of the gun. Let me know if Beebe calls asking for it.”
“Okay,” she said. It was scary watching Vance point the gun. Pow!
Love went back to the desk. The gun created possibilities Love hadn’t even considered. If Arthur Beebe were a drug dealer, if he did use his plane to fly back and forth between countries transporting illegal substances, then she should be glad nothing had happened between them. She should be relieved Arthur left. But she wasn’t.