48. Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Five
A side from Carlton that first week, a couple celebrating their golden anniversary had booked the inn for two nights. Although they lived in Lavender Bay, they wanted to do something special.
Emma was home and a huge help. She assisted Nadine in cleaning the rooms when guests checked out. Nadine was so happy to have her there for the summer. Although she didn’t see a lot of her, as her daughter’s days were spent at the beach with her cousins. When the inn was full, Emma stayed either with Louise or over at Maureen’s house.
Carlton was a busy man. When he wasn’t off visiting maritime museums or diving with a charter to explore shipwrecks, he was holed up in his room, writing.
They’d agreed that Nadine would do a weekly clean of his room, focusing on the bathroom and changing the sheets on the bed. After the first week, she stood in the doorway, her mouth hanging open. The room had been overtaken. There were books everywhere, open on the floor, the little desk, along the dresser.
A laptop sat in the center of the desk. Sheets of paper and notebooks with all sorts of scribblings were piled high on every available surface, some teetering on the floor.
All in all, it looked like a disaster zone. She didn’t know how he got any work done in that kind of environment.
Carlton was home by late evening, having stopped somewhere along the way to eat. The married couple had gone to the Annacotty Room for their dinner.
“Carlton, can I speak to you about something?”
“Of course,” he said.
After seeing the state of his room, she had come up with an idea. “Would you like to use the library for your work? To get out of your room?”
He seemed surprised. “That would be helpful.”
“Understand though, that if a guest wants to access the back porch, they’ll be walking through it.”
“Understood.”
“All I ask is that you keep it tidy,” she said. She felt funny asking this, but she told herself to man up; she was an innkeeper, and she had to keep the place neat.
So, it was settled. On the odd days that Carlton was there, when he wasn’t diving or trawling through museum archives, he set himself up in the library. Sometimes, Herman joined him, falling asleep on the rug in the corner. Carlton didn’t mind. And after a while, he started keeping a box of dog biscuits in the bottom drawer of the desk.
Days before the Parallel Parking Championship, Nadine had managed to book out the remainder of the rooms to some parking enthusiasts that had come up for the contest and a woman who’d come to visit her mother in a nursing home. The woman, though friendly, was rarely there, spending the day with her mother, who was failing.
Her first guest was a young man by the name of Hugo Monteforte. He was in his late twenties, worked at a recycling plant, and drove a late-model Honda Accord. He was tall and lanky with strawberry blond hair that fell into his eyes, causing him always to be sweeping it away with his hand. He had a habit of shrugging until his neck disappeared into his shoulders and sticking his hands in his front pockets.
He arrived two days before the event and quickly made himself at home, hanging out in the communal front parlor when he wasn’t out and about practicing his parking in town.
Nadine had a few minutes as she was waiting for the dryer to finish, and she sat down in the parlor. Back in the library, Carlton Brady sat at the desk, books spread out. He never asked for anything or bothered her. He rarely interacted with the other guests, preferring to keep to himself and work on his research.
Hugo made himself comfortable on one of the sofas. Herman stood in the doorway of the parlor, wagging his tail.
“Dude, come on in.” Hugo waved the dog in and patted the sofa cushion.
Herman turned around and, looking over his shoulder, backed in. This resulted in Hugo cracking up. He clapped his hands together. “That never gets old.”
Herman stood in front of him and whined. Hugo leaned forward and reached out with his long arms, ruffling the dog’s hair and fooling with him. “Great dog, Nadine. He’s got a great reverse technique, I bet he could learn to parallel park a car.”
Nadine laughed. They were soon joined by one of the other couples. They were in their early thirties and they resembled one another in that they were both dark-haired and soft and fleshy. They sat next to each other on the other sofa. The wife, Sarah, pulled out her knitting from her bag and went to work on a baby sweater she was making for her newborn nephew. Her husband, Phil, wore jeans and a black T-shirt with some obscure band on it. When Nadine questioned it, he replied it was a grunge metal band. Nadine, unfamiliar with that kind of music, could only nod .
“Did we miss the dog backing into the room?” Sarah asked, knitting needles clicking away.
“Yeah, you just missed it,” Hugo told them.
“Darn, I love it when he does that,” Sarah said.
“What’s the plan?” Phil asked.
“Well,” Hugo answered, “I spent the morning scouting out possible locations for the contest, but it’s really a crap shoot. Who knows where it’s going to be.”
That was one of the things Nadine had learned about the competition. It was a mystery locale, revealed only an hour before the contest began.
“However, I’ve been driving around the town, practicing my technique.”
“Same.” This from Phil.
“Have you tried Java Joe’s?” Hugo asked. “The paninis are to die for.”
“Not yet.” Phil threw an amused look at his wife. “I can’t get the missus out of Coffee Girl.”
“Their desserts are out of this world,” Sarah said enthusiastically, her knitting needles picking up speed.
Hugo stretched out his long legs in front of him and glanced back to the library, where Carlton had his head bent, scribbling furiously in a notebook.
“Hey, professor, why don’t you join us,” Hugo called.
Without lifting his head, Carlton raised his hand in a wave. “I’m good, thanks.” And then as he’d said before, “Call me Carlton. ”
“I can’t call him by his first name, my father would knock me into the middle of next week,” Hugo said, leaning back against the cushions with his arms folded across his chest.
Nadine hoped he was joking. Out of curiosity, she asked, “How do they judge a winner? What if everyone parallel parks correctly?”
“Ah, a newbie, I love it,” Phil said, rubbing his hands together.
Next to him, his wife rolled her eyes and said to Nadine, “You’ll be sorry you asked.”
Phil launched into formulas and when he mentioned geometry, Nadine had a flashback to tenth-grade math. All these complicated-sounding terms had her head spinning.
Hugo interrupted. “Long story short, it’s how long you take to park the car in a twenty-foot space, and the distance between the tires and the curb.”
“Thank you.”
Sarah stopped knitting and elbowed Phil. “See? Just say that. No need to go into technical mathematical terms.”
Phil protested, “But I’m a mathematician.”
“Who likes to parallel park.” Sarah giggled and returned her attention to her garment.
Phil shrugged with a smile.
She wrapped up her knitting and tucked it into her bag. “Come on, let’s go for dinner. I’m hungry.” She looked at Hugo. “You want to join us? ”
“Sure.” He stood and stretched and called out to Carlton, “Hey, professor, wanna join us for dinner?”
“No thank you, Hugo,” Carlton said, finally looking up.