The Beach Club

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Another summer season is about to begin on beautiful Nantucket Island. I have just returned from my winter retreat-Nevis, Vail, Saipan-it’s your guess where I’ve been. The important thing is that I’m back, and I am prepared to sweeten my offer to buy the hotel. I know you have some crazy idea about family loyalty and passing the business on to your daughter, but things don’t always work out the way we want them to. Alas, I have learned this the hard way. So as you start this season of sun and sand, consider my offer: twenty-two million. That’s a pretty good deal, and if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re not getting any younger.

Feel free to write to me at the usual P.O. box downtown. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

As ever,

S.B.T.

On the first of May, Mack Petersen swung his Jeep into the parking lot of the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel for the start of his twelfth summer season as manager, the Almost Head Honcho. Twelve was an important number, Mack decided, with its own name. A dozen. Mack’s dozen years of working at the hotel were like eggs, all in one basket, like the Boston cream doughnuts served at the hotel’s Continental breakfast, one practically indistinguishable from the next. There were twelve months in a year, twelve signs in the Zodiac, twelve hours of A.M. and P.M. Twelve was a full cycle, a cycle completed. Maybe Maribel was right, then. Maybe this was the year things would change.

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