Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

Eddie was able to run away from his disadvantages, but Barbie, eleven months his junior, had been forced to face them. She had been teased mercilessly about her clothes, her shoes, her hair, her smell-and she had gotten into fights and was suspended three times before she graduated from high school. In Barbie’s mind, he knew, there could never be enough money.

“I have a novel idea,” she said. “Try selling a house.”

“Funny,” he said. The market was a frozen tundra.

“Well,” Barbie said, checking her desk calendar, “that guy is coming with his group to Low Beach Road next week.”

“What guy?”

“You know what guy,” Barbie said. “The guy who asked.”

The guy who asked: Eddie wished he didn’t know what his sister was talking about, but he did. She was referring to Ronan Last-Name-Withheld.

One of the perennial aces in Eddie’s hand was the house at 10 Low Beach Road. This was a showcase house right on the Atlantic Ocean with six-count them, six-master suites, an infinity-edge pool, two gourmet kitchens (one indoor, one outdoor), a grass tennis court, a five-thousand-square-foot basement with a movie theater, an arcade filled with vintage pinball machines, a gym that was exactly like the one the New England Patriots worked out in during the off-season, a sauna, a mahogany-paneled billiards room, and a walk-in cigar humidor. Also, there was a stucco-walled wine cellar with a table that had originally been built for William of Orange. The house rented for fifty thousand dollars a week, and Eddie had the exclusive listing. The owner was a thirty-year-old graduate of Nantucket High School who had gone to Cal Tech, where he invented a computer chip that was used in every ATM in America. The owner had married a supermodel and lived out in L.A. The owner and supermodel came to Nantucket for two weeks every August; the rest of the season, the house was Eddie’s to rent.

The year before, Eddie had rented the house to a group of businessmen from Las Vegas. They were a gaming operation called DeepWell that had chosen Nantucket for their annual retreat. The leader of the group, Ronan Last-Name-Withheld, had arrived at the house before Eddie’s team of five Russian housecleaners were quite finished, and Ronan LNW said, “Any chance these girls could come back later and entertain the guys?”

“Entertain?” Eddie had asked. He knew what Ronan LNW was getting at-or he thought he did, anyway. He squinted quizzically at Ronan. “They don’t juggle, and I’m pretty sure they don’t sing.”

Ronan said, “Ten grand extra in it for you. Per night.”

Ten grand per night. Eddie had felt dizzy.

He wasn’t going to lie: for a moment, he had considered it. He would pay the girls a thousand dollars apiece per night, and he and Barbie would split the other five-per night.

But then his good sense took over, his moral compass spun and landed on true north, and Eddie said, in a self-righteous tone of voice he didn’t even recognize, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t think that will work out.”

Ronan LNW had backed off immediately. “Okay, man, no problem, no problem. I was only asking.”

But now, as Eddie drove out of town, toward his house on the Wauwinet Road-where, it was certainly possible, more bills awaited-he thought, Ten grand per night. Over the course of a week, his cut would be seventeen-five. Could he ask the girls? Would they understand? It would be a lot of money for them, possibly too much money to turn down. It was illegal, of course, so there was the risk of getting caught.

When Eddie had posed this question to Barbie, she had snorted and said, “It’s the world’s oldest profession, Eddie. You hardly invented it.”

He gave her a look.

She said, “It couldn’t hurt to ask, you know. Just call them and ask. They love you. They would eat fire for you.”

The pile of bills on the passenger seat seemed to smolder, and at the same time, Eddie’s heartburn started, even though he had eaten only a bread-and-butter sandwich for lunch.

Fifty-eight large. There was nowhere else to get the money short of taking a third mortgage out on his house. He could probably squeeze another forty or fifty in equity there. The two commercial properties he owned were leveraged to the hilt. He was sinking. There was no other way to look at it. He, Edward Pancik, Fast Eddie, the savviest real-estate agent on this island, was going under.

There wasn’t really room in his life right now for a moral compass.

He decided to do some exploratory work. First, a call to Ronan LNW.

“Hey, man,” Eddie said. “It’s Eddie, Eddie Pancik, Fast Eddie, Nantucket.”

“Fast Eddie!” Ronan LNW said. People loved his nickname, men especially. Eddie wasn’t quite sure why.

“Hey, do you remember asking me about those Russian girls last year?”

“Yeah, man,” Ronan said. “Why? Have you rethought the idea? Possibly landed in a different square?”

“Possibly,” Eddie said.

Next, the more challenging conversation. Eddie called Nadia, the spokesperson for the five Russian girls, as her English was the best.

He explained the indecent proposal as delicately as he could. Group of American businessmen checking into the house next week… Would you be willing to get all dolled up and go over around ten o’clock at night and have drinks with the gentlemen?

It would mean a thousand dollars, cash, for each of you.

But… it’s probably not just drinks, Nadia. You girls would have to do whatever they asked.

And you can’t tell anyone-or you’ll be fired and then deported.

Nadia was silent for a second, and Eddie thought, Oh boy. Nadia and the girls were illegal, so they had no recourse against him for asking, but still, he felt like a heel. If they quit, he would have to replace them, probably at a higher wage.

But then Nadia started babbling away in Russian, presumably to Elise or Tonya. The girls squealed with what sounded like… joy? Excitement?

“Yes,” Nadia said to Eddie. “Yes, we do it.”

It sounded to Eddie like the girls were crazy about the idea. Could he be misunderstanding their tone? A thousand dollars a night was an assload of money. Besides which, these men weren’t losers picked off Times Square; nor were they thick-necked Russian thugs. These were cultured, refined, rich business executives.

Fair to say, three of the five probably had delusions of a marriage proposal somewhere down the road. They sounded as excited as girls going to the prom.

Elise took the phone away from Nadia. Elise was the smallest of the bunch, the runt of the litter. She said, “Eddie, you are best, thank you, Eddie!”

Eddie hung up the phone feeling weirdly proud of himself. Almost as if he had, indeed, invented it.

Redd Dreyfus, Madeline’s agent, called to say he’d bought her two more weeks with the catalog copy.

“And when I say bought, I mean bought,” he said. “I cashed in a favor that Angie Turner has owed me for eight years, a favor I have been saving and polishing like a diamond. And I am using it on your behalf. Don’t make me sorry, Madeline. Come up with something great.”

This should have made Madeline feel better-she had two more weeks-but instead, the mounting pressure made her head ache.

She meant to spend her first day of reprieve really brainstorming… but when she went in search of her favorite pen, it turned into an hour of organizing the junk drawer. In her defense, that drawer really needed to be cleaned out. Madeline found half a petrified peanut butter sandwich in there, along with broken scissors, an empty tin of ground pepper, four lanyards from Scout Air, a campaign pin from 2006 for a selectman who no longer lived on Nantucket, three bottles of dried-up nail polish (when was the last time Madeline had worn nail polish?), as well as rubber bands, paper clips, expired coupons, safety pins, screws, nails, picture hooks, bottle caps, Elmer’s glue, a baby’s pacifier, and, yes, thankfully, her favorite pen-bright pink, for breast-cancer awareness.

The second hour Madeline spent on eBay, looking for drawer organizers. She had a crazy idea that if she cleaned the clutter from the junk drawer, she would clean the clutter from her brain.

Drawer organizers ordered: $21.99 with shipping.

Then, shockingly, it was three o’clock in the afternoon and time for her to go to Brick’s baseball game.

In the bleachers, Madeline sat with Rachel McMann, Calgary’s mother. Rachel was a nice woman, if a touch overbearing and a bit rah-rah for Madeline’s taste. Rachel always wore her Nantucket Whalers apparel to games, and she carried a navy-and-white pom-pom, which she shook at every possible opportunity. Rachel had gone to the University of Delaware, where, she liked to tell people, she had been social director of her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta.

Rachel worked as a real-estate agent for Bayberry Properties, which was the rival of Eddie’s agency, Island Fog Realty. For this reason, Eddie and Grace did not care for Rachel.

Plus, there was the thing that had happened between Grace and Eddie’s daughter Hope and Rachel’s son, Calgary, at Christmas. If Grace knew Madeline was voluntarily sitting with Rachel McMann, she would strongly disapprove.

But Madeline believed that the parents of her child’s friends and teammates were a necessary part of her personal community. Brick and Calgary had been friends since preschool. Madeline and Rachel had been attending sporting events together since the kids were five years old, playing T-ball. And today, Madeline could use a dose of Rachel’s optimism.

Madeline had actually brought her legal pad to the game, just in case inspiration struck between the second and third innings or during a trip to the concession stands for sunflower seeds.

Rachel eyed the notebook with her usual sunny enthusiasm. She said, “How’s the writing going?”

Madeline couldn’t help but be truthful; it was her nature. She said, “Working from home is killing me. Today, I organized the junk drawer and spent an hour on eBay.”

Rachel said, “You need a writing studio.”

Madeline said, “You got that right.”

Rachel said, “I’m serious. Like Virginia Woolf said, every woman writer needs five hundred pounds a year and a room of one’s own.”

Madeline blinked. She was impressed that Rachel McMann had just quoted Virginia Woolf. Even Grace might have been won over by that.

Rachel leaned in. She said, “Seriously, Madeline, I have just the place.”

Madeline should have stopped Rachel then and there. She should have said that, while a writing studio would have been nice, it was a pipe dream, because she and Trevor couldn’t afford such an extravagance. Some months, their mortgage was a stretch-not to mention utilities, insurance, groceries, cell phone bills, gas, car repairs, Saturday nights out, Brick’s college fund, and a large leftover hospital bill from when Big T died. Life is expensive, Madeline should have said. Virginia Woolf will have to wait.

But instead, Madeline said, “Really?”

Rachel said, “Yes, really! A one-bedroom unit in the blue Victorian on the corner of Centre and India. The last time one of those units became available was in 2004.”

And Madeline said, “Wow.”

Much to Madeline’s relief, Rachel had let the subject drop there. She resumed watching the game and shaking the pom-pom, and Madeline held her blank legal pad protectively on her lap.

The next day, as Madeline was trying to brainstorm but was also chopping onions, potatoes, and carrots for a pot roast-because she couldn’t let dinner slide once again-Rachel called and said, “What time can you come look at the unit on Centre Street?”

Madeline had stammered before finally saying, “You… mean today?”

“Today,” Rachel said. “It will go today, or tomorrow at the latest. It’s exactly what you’re looking for, Madeline, I promise.”

Madeline stared at the mess of onion skins, potato peels, and carrot tops on her cutting board. The pot roast would go in the slow cooker, but all of this would have to be cleaned up, and she had to run to the store for more beef broth. How did other women get anything done?

I need to get out of this house, she thought.

“I’ll come right now,” Madeline said.

The apartment was ideal, in its simplicity and location. Madeline had hoped the price would be outrageous, way beyond her means, so that she could automatically dismiss it. But it was far less than Madeline had expected. And Rachel was willing to give her a six-month lease… because she was a friend.