By Thursday, Freida had wreaked havoc in the Bahamas, and she moved along the eastern coast of Florida where she hooked up with a local low-pressure system and increased in size and speed. Class four, 230 miles across, sustained winds of 101 miles per hour. The newscaster hadn’t said “Nantucket” in twenty-four hours. Instead they showed clips of the Caribbean: palm trees with their heads ripped off, washed-out bridges, whole houses floating away. Every hour at fifty past, they flashed the international forecast. Rio was sunny, thirty-three degrees Centigrade.
Bill lugged his body out of bed and walked straight down to the beach. People lounged under the umbrellas, a man was swimming. No hurricane here. Then Bill heard someone coughing and he turned to see Clarissa Ford standing on the deck of room 7, smoking. She waved to him. He waved back. She waved at him, beckoning. Bill groaned inwardly. Clarissa was seventy years old, a widow, her very wealthy husband killed years ago by half a million cigarettes, and yet Clarissa continued to smoke. She stayed at the hotel for the whole month of September, spending over sixteen thousand dollars. A year’s worth of the college tuition that Bill would not be paying to the University of Virginia. He slogged through the sand until he was a few feet from her deck.
“Bill,” she said. Clarissa Ford’s face was tan and wrinkled; she looked like dried tobacco. “Bill, how are you, my dear?”
“I’m okay, Clarissa, how are you?”
“Fine, dear, wonderful.” She inhaled on her cigarette. “You see I’ve been obeying the little rule your wife set up for me this year. I’ve not smoked in the room once.”
“I find that hard to believe, Clarissa,” Bill said. Last year they had to air the room for three days after she left. And still room 7 had the faint smell of an ashtray.
“It’s true,” she said, “I’ve been out here morning, noon, and night.”
“Thank you,” Bill said. “We appreciate it.”
Clarissa ashed into the sand just off the deck. There was a gray spot the size of a saucer already. “How’s my darling Cecily?”
Bill looked out over the water. A ferry approached from Hyannis. “I don’t know,” Bill said. “She ran off to South America.”
Clarissa’s laugh sounded like wagon wheels rolling over gravel. It sounded like someone balling up a cellophane bag. “Tell her to come over and visit me when she gets a free second,” Clarissa said. “I haven’t seen her in eons. She must be all grown up! Is she ready for college?”
“I told you, Clarissa. She’s run off to South America.”
“Honestly, Bill. Will you send her over? I have some valuable wisdom to impart.”
“Impart it to me,” Bill said. “I could use it.”
“You take yourself so seriously, Bill, dear,” Clarissa said. She waved her cigarette like a magic wand. “Lighten up!”
“You know we’re getting a hurricane?” Bill said. “The hotel could wash away.”
Clarissa crushed her cigarette out on the railing of the deck. Bill winced. “Pshaw!” she said. “That’s exactly what I mean by too seriously, Bill. It won’t be a hurricane! It’ll just be a little rain here in paradise.”
On Friday, a phone call came to the house. It was Nantucket’s fire chief, Anthony Mazzaco.
“We’re going to get some weather here, Bill. It’s not a pretty picture. You need me to send someone down to help ya? Mack tells me you haven’t made a move. Now, you got people in those rooms, Bill, you have to make a move.”
“Look outside, Tony,” Bill said. “Do you see rain? Do you see a storm?”
“She’s coming,” Tony Mazzaco said. He, too, sounded excited. “She’s coming.”
On Saturday, Freida made landfall in Norfolk, Virginia. The newscaster on the weather channel drew a yellow arrow off the coast of Long Island, heading out toward the North Atlantic. Good, Bill thought, let Long Island take the hit. But for some reason, the man said, “Nantucket is in a position to catch Freida’s wrath. Nantucket is in her way.” Nantucket again. Bill sat up, and saw how, as Freida moved for the chilly North Atlantic waters, she would sideswipe Nantucket. She was huge, two hundred plus miles wide. The island was thirteen by four. Freida could gobble them up.
Freida, the mean woman. Only in Bill’s mind, Freida was a girl with crazy red hair-she was an angry teenager throwing a tantrum. The room blurred.
He sat in bed, trying to focus. He hadn’t showered in two days. The bedsheets had a smell. Bill tried to care about the storm, about the hotel, about himself. He tried to care, but he couldn’t. He would let her come.
It was all over the TV and radio; everyone in town was talking about it. Tourists booked flights and hopped on the steamship. Stop & Shop’s parking lot overflowed with people buying bottled water, bread, candles, Duraflame logs. Boats came out of the water, houses were shuttered, deck furniture stored. The Nantucket police and the fire station answered worried phone calls. There was a small-craft advisory and as of Sunday morning, the ferries were canceled. A hurricane watch and coastal flood warning were issued by the National Hurricane Center for the island of Nantucket. Hurricane watch became hurricane warning.
And Bill would do nothing about it. Mack had never seen him act like this. Since Cecily left, the guy had crumbled, caved in. He accused Mack of wanting this storm, wanting it! But nothing could be further from the truth. Mack loved the hotel and he would do whatever he could to protect it.
Even if it meant going over Bill’s head.
Mack found Therese bringing her plants in from the front porch. A good sign-maybe she believed in Freida even if Bill didn’t.
Mack kicked a hermit crab shell across the parking lot. “I’m going to gather Vance and Jem and start shuttering this place if that’s all right with you.”
Therese ran her hand through her pale orange hair. She looked tired, and sad. “What does Bill say?”
“He says don’t do it. He doesn’t seem to care what kind of hit we take.”
“You’re right,” Therese said. “He doesn’t care. Why should he care?”
“When Cecily comes back, Therese, it might be nice if there was a hotel left to pass on.”
She touched the leaves of her geraniums. “I wish you’d asked her to marry you…just asked her, you know?”
“Therese,” Mack said. “Can I please do my work?”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Do what you have to do.”
Mack began the time-consuming task of screwing wooden shutters over every window. It only took two or three minutes to put up a shutter-but there were so many windows. He raced to finish the lobby and office before it grew too dark to work. He hauled the wooden shutters out of storage, grabbed fistfuls of screws and kept two or three pinched between his lips as he worked. Just as he was finishing the windows of the lobby that faced the water, he smelled smoke. He looked around. Clarissa Ford stood behind him in the sand, the ubiquitous cigarette dangling between her fingers.
“You’re not going to shutter my room, are you?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Not tonight.”
“Not tomorrow,” Clarissa said.
“Yes, tomorrow. I’m sorry, but there’s a storm coming.”
“I don’t want you to shutter my windows. And certainly not my door.”
“I’ll leave the back door alone,” Mack said. “I don’t want to trap you in there. But I’m sealing up the front. Especially your room, Mrs. Ford. Your room faces the water.”
“I don’t want you to do it. I’ll sign whatever I have to, a release for my safety.”
“Your safety’s important to us, Mrs. Ford,” Mack said. He wiggled his feet in his boots; talking to her was slowing him down. “But we’re also concerned about the hotel room.”
“I’ll talk to Bill,” Clarissa said. “He’ll say to leave my room alone, I guarantee you.”