Golden Girl(62)

“Cranberry seltzer with lime,” Willa says.

“You guys eating?”

“There’s no room at the bar,” Willa says. “They told me it’s a ninety-minute wait for a table. Do you have any pull?”

Not tonight, Carson thinks. But she can’t resist showing off in front of Pamela so she approaches the hostess stand where Nikki is busy crushing people’s dreams and says, “It’s my sister’s first night out since my mom died. Any chance you can put her at table one?” Table one is the two-top closest to the dunes at sunset. It’s the best table at the Oystercatcher.

Nikki growls. “I shouldn’t, but I will. For her, though, not for you. The people are paying now. Tell her five minutes.”

Carson hustles back to the bar. “Five minutes,” she says, handing the chard, the ice, and the seltzer over the counter. “These drinks are on me.”

“Thank you!” Willa says—but Carson doesn’t care about Willa. She cares only about Pamela, who is gazing out over the beach, looking very alone among the sea of people. She accepts the chardonnay without a word and doesn’t even look at Carson.

I’m invisible to her, Carson thinks, and although she’s offended, she knows this is for the best.



After service, Carson heads down the hall, past the retail shop and the restrooms, to George’s office. The door is closed. Has she been saved? Is he gone for the night? Tomorrow, her drops will be forgotten. The service industry has a short memory, especially in a place like the Oystercatcher where there is never a quiet moment for reflection.

Carson knocks.

“Enter!”

Carson swears under her breath and opens the door. George is at his desk, which is meticulously organized—invoices on the left, order forms on the right, and in the center is a weekly calendar that shows the schedule, written, always, in pencil. Pencils are sharpened, kept points up in a mason jar. The computer behind the desk displays an old-school game of Tetris.

“Please sit down,” George says.

There’s a folding chair, known to the staff as the Hot Seat.

Carson feels she should remain standing but she’s been on her feet since three, so she gratefully collapses.

“Two drops tonight,” George says.

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t have an excuse. I wasn’t paying attention.”

George tsks under his breath. George is universally loved at the Oystercatcher and on Nantucket. He has worked in restaurants on the island for something like forty years, managing at both the Straight Wharf and the White Elephant and then running the grill at the Miacomet Golf Club for a few years before buying the Oystercatcher. Because George has worked as a barback, bartender, busser, and server, he makes an excellent boss. He’s a confirmed bachelor, a ladies’ man, and loves poker and golf and clamming out on Coatue. If there’s a problem with George, it’s that he knows too many people, some of them famous (Jimmy Buffett), and customers throw his name around like it’s currency to get a better table or any table at all—but that’s Nikki’s problem, not Carson’s. Carson has no complaints about George.

“What are you on?” George asks.

“Excuse me?”

“What are you on?” George says. His expression is inquisitive rather than angry. “You just lost your mom in a tragic accident, Carson. You know what? My sixteen-year-old sister was killed by a drunk driver when I was in college, so I get it, I’ve been there. And because of that, I want to know what you’re taking because there’s no way you can come back two weeks later to do a job that requires breakneck speed, laser focus, the patience of Mother Teresa, and a sense of humor without some kind of chemical help. Tell me the truth, please.”

Tell him the truth?

Carson wakes up every day around noon, brushes her teeth, then pours Kahlua into her coffee or drinks a screwdriver. For lunch, she smokes some weed or eats a magic cookie. Before work, she drinks three shots of espresso and snorts some cocaine. Sometimes that’s too much, she can feel her heartbeat in her throat and her temples and her ass cheeks, so she tempers the high with a Valium. Some days—most days—she hits productive equilibrium. She comes to work and knocks down the crowd like she’s John Dillinger with a machine gun. During work, there’s more espresso and a bump or two in the ladies’ room. After work, the serious drinking begins—a couple of cocktails first, shots, then beer. Then weed and an Ativan or a Valium to fall asleep.

“I’m not on anything,” she says. She’s surprised by how convincing she sounds. “I mean, I smoke a little weed on my day off and I usually grab a drink after work…”

“But no oxy, no pills, no smack?” George says.

“No!” Carson says, sounding affronted, feeling affronted. “Oxy? Smack? Do I seem like a junkie to you, George, really?”

George takes a visible breath. He’s a lot grayer now than he was when Carson started here three years ago, but Carson likes the gray. Zach has some gray at his temples, and she finds it very sexy. “I’ve been in this business thirty-eight years, so I have to ask. One drop, fine, accident. Two drops and I begin to think there’s a problem.”

“I had a bad night,” Carson says. “That’s allowed, isn’t it?” She thinks back over her previous summers working at the Oystercatcher. “What about when Gunner reached across the bar and jacked that guy up because of something he thought he heard? At least I didn’t assault a customer.”