Chapter 5
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The launch breakfast was at seven-thirty on a Thursday morning in the Penalty Box, which had been politely barricaded against the public for the first time in its sixty-year life and decorated by Marin Pell with two pots of small white flowers Wes did not recognize and a tasteful folded card on every table that said TIDEMARK x HARBOR ICE in bone-white on dark navy.
He had been told to arrive at seven-fifteen.
He had arrived at six-forty, because that was what time he was always at the rink, and he was not about to start altering his schedule for Marin Pell.
He was on his second coffee when Ada came in.
She had on the same canvas jacket, a soft blue sweater under it, her hair up. And — this was the only detail he noticed, because Sully would have noticed it from a different building — a thin gold chain around her neck that she had not been wearing yesterday.
Bridget Halligan was working behind the counter, which was a small miracle since Bridget had presumably been awake since four. Bridget gave Ada a nod, gave Wes a look that meant I know, and pulled the espresso shot for Ada’s tea-of-the-day without being asked.
Ada slid into the seat across from Wes. The Penalty Box had been reset for breakfast in a way that meant the booths were smaller and the tables were rounder and there were heavy linen napkins on everything, which Bridget was probably going to mock for a month.
“Berglund,” Ada said quietly.
“Halloran.”
“Tidemark people in the building?”
“Marin Pell in the staff hall, two assistants in the lobby, one photographer in the parking lot pretending to photograph the lobster traps. Pete is somewhere having a very small breakdown in private. I think he’s in his car.”
“Lovely.”
“I got you coffee.”
He pushed a paper cup across to her. The cup was the Penalty Box’s, not Tidemark’s. The lid had a thumbprint on it where he had pressed it on. The cup smelled, faintly, of oat milk and brown sugar.
Ada picked the cup up. She did not, for a second, drink from it.
“What did you order me,” she said.
“Coffee.”
“Berglund.”
He shrugged. “Oat milk, two sugars.”
She looked at the cup. She looked at him. She lifted the lid an inch and looked into the cup, like the cup was going to be a different cup if she looked from a different angle, and then she put the lid back on and tipped the cup against her lower lip and took a sip.
She did not say anything.
She set the cup down. She picked up the small linen napkin Marin Pell had put on the table and very deliberately rearranged it under her saucer.
“Did Bridget tell you that,” she said. Her voice was light.
“Yeah,” Wes said.
He had been waiting for her to ask. He had decided, on the drive in, that yes was the only answer he could give without telling more than was helpful in the first five minutes of the first event.
Bridget told me. It was even technically true.
He had, in fact, read a sticky note pinned to a wall behind the counter by Bridget herself.
“That’s nice of Bridget,” Ada said carefully.
“She thought you’d want it.”
“Tell her thank you.”
“I will.”
A small pause.
Ada took a second, larger sip of the coffee. She did not look at him. She looked at the room. She looked at the Penalty Box transformed, briefly, into a Tidemark advertisement, and she let her face be the bright, easy, slightly amused face of a woman at a sponsor breakfast.
“This room used to host my eighth birthday party,” she said. “There was a pi?ata of an octopus. The pi?ata won.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Sully Petrov walked past the front window of the Penalty Box on the sidewalk outside. He had no business being on this side of the building at seven-fifteen in the morning. He looked through the window at Wes and gave him a very small, deeply illegal thumbs-up.
Wes did not react. Ada, who had not seen Sully, said, “Who are you not reacting to.”
“Petrov.”
“Of course.”
The staff hall door swung open. Marin Pell came in.
Marin Pell was about six feet tall in her boots and wearing an enormous wool coat the color of slate, which she shed onto a chair to reveal a knit dress, a long thin scarf, and the brisk, faintly weary, very intelligent face of a woman who had been doing brand campaigns since before Mercer Bay had a website.
“Wes Berglund,” she said. “Ada Halloran. I’m Marin.
I’m not going to do the long speech today.
I have a thirty-second speech and then I am going to leave you alone with my photographer and three sets of muffins until eight, at which point twenty people from the rink, the city council, and our PR list are going to walk in for the back half of this breakfast. Are we good? ”
“Good,” said Ada.
“Good,” said Wes.
“Wonderful.” Marin sat down at the empty third chair at their table without being invited and crossed her legs.
“Speech. We are calling this campaign Real Harbor People. The campaign goal is to put a regional outdoor brand in the right kind of public conversation, which means hand-knit, working-coast, not glossy. The hook on you two is hyper-local, fake-news-resistant, and warm. I want this story to be about the rink, the town, the kids, and a couple that the town is rooting for. I do not need either of you to be Method actors. I need you to be likable. I need you to be photographable. I need you to not lie about anything I can fact-check.”
“Got it,” Wes said.
“Got it,” said Ada.
“Wonderful.” Marin nodded once, like she had ticked a small mental box. “I have one piece of unsolicited advice. Stop me if you don’t want it.”
“Go,” Ada said.
“You two are going to be a campaign for six weeks. The campaign is not the most important thing in either of your lives. I want you to remember that, in particular, when my photographer asks you to do something neither of you wants to do. The campaign has a budget for no. I want you to use the budget. Do not say yes to a thing my photographer suggests if you do not want to do it. We do not, as a brand, want a photo I had to bully you into.”
She looked at Ada when she said it. She did not look at Wes.
Ada was quiet for one full beat.
Then she said, “Thank you, Marin.”
“You are welcome.” Marin uncrossed her legs and stood up.
“Right. The photographer’s name is Cass.
Cass is gentle and a vegetarian. The muffins are yours.
The breakfast officially starts at eight.
We have a soft-launch photo we want to push at nine.
I will see you in front of the rink at eight-fifty. ”
“In front of the rink,” Wes said.
“In front of the rink. We are going to ask you to walk in together, in coats, holding two coffees, looking like two people who have been doing this for a while. That is the soft-launch image. After that you eat muffins and look at parents and I leave you alone.”
“Got it,” Wes said.
“Wonderful,” Marin said. She picked up her enormous wool coat in one fluid motion, threw it over one shoulder, and left.
Wes and Ada looked at each other.
“She is not a heavy,” Ada said quietly.
“She is not a heavy.”
“That was — that was the version of her where she’s checking us for cracks.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Ada said. “Good.”
Cass the photographer turned out to be a small woman with a brown braid and a mid-priced camera around her neck, who came over very politely, introduced herself, asked them to please ignore her, and then sat at the next table and ate a muffin.
By seven-forty-five they were on their second cup of coffee and Bridget had put a basket of warm bread on the table and was hovering at three feet, pretending to fluff the linen napkins.
By seven-fifty, the front door of the Penalty Box had begun to unlock and people had begun to drift in, one by one, in dark coats over sweaters, in scarves, in the careful, slightly-shy posture of small-town people invited to something they did not entirely understand.
A city councillor named Donna Acquaviva.
A man Wes recognized as the owner of the marina.
Three teachers from the elementary school, who Ada knew by name and who hugged her without saying a word.
Pete, looking like a man who had survived a small electrical fire.
Joanna, in her good coat, her hair done.
Coach Frenchie came in without his hat on, which was a thing Wes had not seen since a funeral. He nodded once at Wes from across the room and went to stand by the wall.
A few minutes later the bell over the door rang, and Theo Carmichael came in.
Wes had known he would. Theo was on the team’s media list and Theo was the starter and Theo was not the kind of person to skip a public breakfast to which he had been invited.
Theo was wearing a charcoal sweater and dark jeans and the specific easy smile of a man who had decided to be very gracious about something he was a little annoyed about.
He shook Pete’s hand. He shook Joanna’s. He nodded to Frenchie. He saw Ada across the room — she was talking to Donna Acquaviva — and he gave her the very small, considered nod of a man with manners. Ada returned it. The nod was a closed door with a polite curtain in front of it. Wes filed it.
Theo crossed the room.
He stopped at Wes and Ada’s table.
“Wes,” he said. “Congratulations on this thing.”
“Thanks, Theo.”
“You’ll be great.”
“Thanks, Theo.”
“I’m glad it’s working out.” Theo looked, briefly, at Ada. His expression did not change. He nodded to her, once, like a man saying good morning in a hallway in an office building they both worked in, and then he went and got himself a coffee from Bridget and sat down with Frenchie at the wall.
Ada took a slow breath.
“Was that all right,” Wes said, very quietly.
“That was as all right as that could have been,” she said. “He had a script. He stuck to it. I appreciated the script.”
“All right.”
“You repositioned your body,” she said, even more quietly.
“I — yes.”
“I noticed.”
“Was it okay.”
She thought for a second.