Page 2 of Summers at the Saint
“Do I even want to know?” She rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes.
“Mehdi’s leaving us,” Charlie said as soon as he was seated. “Accepted an offer at that new resort up the coast.”
“Nooo,” Traci moaned. “Not Mehdi.”
“Afraid so. And of course, Sam is going with her.”
“Which means I’m out my guest relations director, as well as a chef who went to culinary school on our dime,” Traci said. She looked over at Charlie. “Is it definite? I mean, could we offer them both a raise, some kind of incentive to persuade them to stay on?”
“No. Mehdi showed me their offer. It’s stupid money and she’d be stupid not to take it. Hell, I’d take it if they were looking for a washed-up old grouch with a bad knee.”
“You’re not that old,” Traci said. “But don’t kid yourself. I happen to know you can’t cook for shit.”
“Memorial Day is only a month away,” Charlie said gloomily. “We were already shorthanded, and now we’re losing two of our best.”
“So we’ll hire some more help,” Traci said unconvincingly.
“From where? The spring hiring fair was a bust. High school kids don’t want to spend a summer sweating their balls off as lifeguards or caddies or housekeepers.”
“Like you and I did,” Traci put in.
“The locals are all going to tennis camp in Florida, or doing TikTok videos for an energy drink that costs eleven bucks a bottle. Have you seen all the businesses in the village withHELP WANTEDsigns in their windows? Everybody’s hiring but nobody wants to work.”
“Maybe we need to try something different,” Traci said. “Can we recruit from farther away? We’re a beach resort, Charlie. Who doesn’t want to spend the summer at the beach?”
“We could, but where are these kids from Sumpter or Jacksonville going to live? It ain’t like it was when you were growing up here. Do you have any idea what the rents around here are now? Folks who used to rent to our summer help have turned their cottages or garage apartments into short-term vacation rentals.”
She swiveled her chair around and stared out the office window at the postcard-pretty view of the Saint Cecelia, the venerable beach resort and country club that had been founded by her late husband’s grandfather in the Roaring Twenties.
Nestled on a tiny private island off the Georgia coast, the Saint, as it was known locally and formally, had been a mainstay destination for generations of upper-crust families who’d flocked there for over a hundred years. If Traci squinted, she could see the pink-and- white candy-striped cabanas that lined the beach. And if she leaned out her office window, she might spot white-garbed players whacking croquet balls on the “village green” that had been added to the resort in the postwar years. One thing that had changed little over the decades was the presence of designer-clad moms watching as their little darlings splashed in the pool, while dads sipped martinis and plotted business deals après-golf at the Watering Hole lounge.
The golf course was lush and green, and just beyond the beach club and pool was a wide, sandy strip of shore and the shimmering green Atlantic.
If she closed her eyes she could almost picture walking along the beach, hand in hand with Hoke, after their first real date. Even at twenty-nine, he’d been so awkward, so tentative, bumbling even, in an adorable way, as he pulled her behind a palm tree for a kiss. Reliving the moment, she felt the inevitable lump in her throat and was glad her back was to Charlie.
“Traci?” Charlie’s voice brought her back to her present-day problems.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“Housing. What if we turned the old golf cart barn into a sort of dorm? Like the one everybody stayed in back in the day.”
“The one from back in the day that was a firetrap? That the county would have condemned if your father-in-law hadn’t paid off the inspectors?”
“Not like that,” she said firmly. “There are bathrooms in the cart barn, right? One for caddies and one for guests?”
“Therewere. The roof on that barn is falling in, Traci. The electrical wasn’t up to code when it was built, so it sure as hell ain’t gonna meet code now. It wasn’t fit to house golf carts, which is why we built a new one, and it sure as hell ain’t fit to house our summer help.”
“We’ll put a new roof on it, bring the electrical up to code, get some of those splitter heat and air units, like the ones we put up in the cottages by the lagoon.”
Charlie shook his head. “You want all that done in less than a month? You know what that’ll cost? In materials and labor?”
“You know what it’ll cost if we have to delay—or even cancel opening up by Memorial Day? How much money we’ll lose? You remember the pandemic? We’re still bleeding red ink. Now, we’ve got an almost fully booked summer season ahead of us, Charlie. We can’t afford to take that kind of a financial hit.”
His mouth opened to protest, but then he thought better of it.
“What’s the absolute minimum number we need to be staffed up?” Traci pressed. “How many more bodies do we need?”
