The Hotel Nantucket (48)

That’s right—Lizbet is the breaker, not the broken. This is as good an affirmation as any; she’ll write it in her phone. “He told you that?”

“It’s the best drink on the menu.” Petey goes about mixing the various juices like an alchemist and she includes an eye-popping pour of Belvedere vodka. “Strong drink for a strong woman,” she says. “Word on the cobblestones is the Deck’s not half as good without you there.” This is nice to hear, though Lizbet suspects Petey is fluffing her.

Lizbet revisits the last time she saw JJ, when he’d gotten down on one knee in the crushed shells of the parking lot and, unless she’s misremembering, proposed. Now, only three and a half weeks later, Christina is back, swirling her oaky chardonnays in JJ’s emotional life. JJ is such a skunk. Such a disingenuous jerk. Why doesn’t knowing this make the hurt go away? Why does finding out that Christina is now working—and, who is she kidding, sleeping—with JJ make him seem more desirable? It’s a false construct, Lizbet tells herself. We all want what we can’t have.

But this doesn’t make her feel any better.

Anything for you, Lizbet, Christina said while she stuck Mrs. Amesbury in reservation Siberia.

Petey slides the Heartbreaker across the bar. Its deep red-orange color is even more mesmerizing than Lizbet remembers and she knows she should savor every sip—but she downs it in three long swallows. JJ and Christina are not only living rent-free in Lizbet’s head, they’ve moved in their new Crate and Barrel furniture. How does she evict them? With all the advances in medicine and technology, why has someone not created a pill that cures heartbreak? Emotional penicillin. Why has someone not invented software that will sweep all traces of your ex out of your brain or an app that eliminates unrequited love?

“I’m going to tell Chef you’re here,” Petey says.

“Please don’t,” Lizbet says.

Petey clears the glass and winks. “He made me promise to tell him immediately if you ever came in. I’ll be back in a few seconds to make you another cocktail. I assume you’d like another?”

“You betcha,” Lizbet says.

Petey vanishes into the back for just an instant, then returns to shake up the second Heartbreaker. (Breaker, not broken! Lizbet thinks.) Tony Bennett is replaced by Elvis Costello singing “Alison.” I know this world is killing you. Lizbet focuses on being present. She is, finally, out. It’s a hurdle cleared. And not only is she out, but she’s at the Blue Bar! She runs her hands over the blue granite and admires how the late-afternoon sun catches the bright penny-sheathed wall; she looks for the ceiling panel that conceals the disco ball. The curved banquette upholstered in sapphire velvet would be a wonderful place to curl up and cry.

Maybe JJ and Christina will get married and have six kids and two Labradoodles, and JJ will coach football at the Boys and Girls Club and win citizenship awards, while Lizbet…what will Lizbet do? Work the front desk at a hotel that will receive a three-or possibly even two-key rating from Shelly Carpenter because the hotel is cursed or haunted or both—and that’s only if Shelly deigns to show up.

No, Lizbet won’t mope. She won’t engage in negative thinking. She tries to recall an inspirational meme, but the only one that comes to mind is the quote attributed to Socrates, and she’s sick of it.

Lizbet is careful to just sip her second cocktail. The strawberry and ginger and blood orange square-dance on her palate—spiraling out, reeling back in. She closes her eyes.

“It’s good, right?” Petey says. “Those strawberries were picked at Bartlett’s Farm this morning.”

“Did you tell Chef I was here?” Lizbet asks.

“I sure did.”

“Is he coming out?”

“Coming out here?” Petey says.

Yes, Lizbet thinks. That’s what chefs do when there’s a VIP—they come out to the dining room to say hello. It’s only a quarter past five, so there’s no way Mario is in the weeds yet.

“He doesn’t believe in it,” Petey says.

Lizbet feels stung; it’s another rejection—not that she cares one whit about Mario Subiaco. He’s full of himself.

She should probably leave. Even in 2022, there’s something a little pathetic about a woman sitting at a bar alone. Lizbet has a bottle of Krug champagne at home, languishing in the back of her fridge. She’ll drink the whole thing by herself. She was saving it for a monumental occasion, either good or bad. She had hoped, of course, for the former and gotten the latter, but there’s no denying that Christina taking over Lizbet’s job at the Deck is monumental.

Petey disappears into the back again and Lizbet can’t blame her for wanting to escape; Lizbet isn’t exactly a fountain of scintillating conversation. When Petey returns, she’s holding a silver julep cup lined with parchment and filled with golden, crispy, paper-thin potato chips. Alongside these, she sets a dipping sauce that looks like creamy Thousand Island flecked with herbs.

“Our amnesia sauce,” she says. “It’s so good, it makes you forget everything else.”

Oh, but that this were true, Lizbet thinks. Then she tastes it—and for one sublime moment, she can’t remember her own name, much less the name of her ex-boyfriend or the wine rep he was sexting. For the next few minutes, she exists in a bubble where it’s only her, the Heartbreaker, the blue granite, and the world’s best chips and dip.