The Perfect Couple(39)
She has been at the job for three weeks now and she absolutely loves it. Unlike school, which she believes is a waste of time, this job makes her feel adult, relevant. She is doing something meaningful, facilitating travel between Nantucket and Hyannis, which is to say, between a summer fantasyland and the real world.
Lola especially likes her job on frenetic days like today, the Saturday after the Fourth of July, when the line is 117 people long. This boat, the 9:15, is sold out. Every boat today and all of the boats tomorrow are sold out. To get tickets for you, your wife, and your three kids back to America today, you basically had to make that your New Year’s resolution and execute on January second.
The woman who works at the station next to Lola’s, a sixty-year-old Nantucket native named Mary Ellen Cahill, has a sign in front of her computer terminal that says: BAD PLANNING ON YOUR PART DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN EMERGENCY ON MY PART. Although Lola agrees with this sentiment, she finds the most satisfying parts of the job are when she can be a hero, when she can arrange for a last-minute ticket to appear out of thin air, when she can fix a snafu. Mr. and Mrs. Diegnan meant to book the last boat back on Friday, not Thursday, even though the ticket Susan Diegnan was showing clearly said Thursday, which was the day before. No problem! Lola would switch the Diegnans to the Friday boat, free of charge. Lola loves calling a name off the waiting list and seeing joy and relief flood someone’s face.
This particular day, however, there will be no faces filled with relief, and Lola has nothing to offer but a manufactured expression of sympathy. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have a boat ticket available until Monday at four oh five. You may want to check with the Steamship Authority. Their car ferries accommodate far more passengers.” Today there will be people swearing in front of and at Lola. Today there will be people calling the Hy-Line a “Mickey Mouse operation” and a “dog-and-pony show.”
A dog-and-pony show? Lola thinks. What even is that?
In job training, Lola was taught to accept all comments with calm reserve. The worst thing she can do is react with anger or indignation, thereby engaging the disgruntled customer.
“I have a problem,” a puffy-faced pregnant woman says. She’s sweating, carrying a toddler, and she has another child, perhaps five years old, clinging to her leg. “I was holding my ferry tickets for two adults and two children, and I set them down for a second and when I picked them back up I had only one adult and two children, which means someone stole one of my ferry tickets.”
Lola nods. She has yet to be confronted with accusations of ticket theft, but if it was going to happen, she thinks, then it was going to happen today. On the other side of her counter is a mob of desperate people.
“Have you checked with your husband?” Lola asks. “Is it possible he took his ticket without you realizing it?”
“Of course I checked with my husband!” the woman says. “He doesn’t have it. I was in charge of the tickets and he was in charge of handling the luggage, which really means sneaking in one final beer at the Gazebo because he has a crush on the bartender. The one with the…” She gives Lola a good approximation of the eye-roll emoji. “You know how men can be.”
One of the things Lola has learned on this job is how men can be. Before, Lola knew only how boys could be. She has had a boyfriend for nine months, two weeks, and five days. His name is Finn MacAvoy and Lola loves him like crazy, it’s true love forever, et cetera, and she presumes they’ll end up getting married. Finn lost both his parents in a sailing accident and so he and Lola are both in the same situation—virtual orphans.
But Lola would be lying if she said she hasn’t been amazed by the power she seems to exert over certain men. She has been propositioned by some and blatantly ogled by others. It’s common for a pale, chubby, balding married dude to confront Lola and find himself tongue-tied. What had he meant to ask her? He can’t recall.
And that’s how men can be.
Lola feels bad for the pregnant woman (Aunt Kendra worries about Lola getting pregnant, but this job is effective birth control), but there is nothing she can do.
“I’m sorry,” Lola says. “I don’t even have one extra seat on this boat. The next seat I do have available is on Monday at four oh five.”
“But I had the ticket!” the woman shrieks. “I paid for it! And someone stole it!”
“Unfortunately, we have no way to prove that,” Lola says. “You might have dropped it accidentally and someone else might have picked it up. You do have your hands full.”
“But my mother is sick!” the woman says. “She’s in the hospital with shingles. We have to get off today. It’s a medical emergency.”
Lola remembers to breathe. It’s astonishing the lies people will fabricate when they’re desperate. Lola wants to quietly tell this woman that her best bet for getting off the island is to pretend she’s going into labor. She will be taken to the mainland in a medical helicopter and her husband can use the one remaining adult ferry ticket.
“I’m sorry,” Lola says. “And I’ll have to ask you to step aside so I can help the next customer.”
The next customer swears she has a reservation under the name Iuffredo but Lola doesn’t see it on her computer. “Could it be under a different name?” she asks.
“I have the reservation number somewhere,” Ms. Iuffredo says. She rummages through her purse.