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nose around the buttons, frustrated once more by the slot in the metal that some male idiot thought would actually work. The same fool who believed a three-ounce iron was better than a heavy one. Lighter, yes, but it didn’t iron anything that needed it, just things you could unwrinkle with your own warm hands: T-shirts, towels, cheap pillowcases. But not a good cotton uniform with twelve buttons, two cuffs, four pockets, and a collar that was not a lazy extension of the lapels. This was what she had come to? Vida knew she was lucky to have the hospital job. Slight as it was, her paycheck had helped fill her house with the sounds of gently helpful bells: time up in the microwave oven, the washing cycle, the spin dryer; watch out, there’s smoke somewhere, the phone’s off the hook. Lights glowed when coffee brewed, toast toasted, and the iron was hot. But the good fortune of her current job did not prevent her from preferring the long-ago one that paid less in every way but satisfaction. Cosey’s Resort was more than a playground; it was a school and a haven where people debated death in the cities, murder in Mississippi, and what they planned to do about it other than grieve and stare at their children. Then the music started, convincing them they could manage it all and last.
    She hung on, Heed did. Allow her that credit, but none other to a woman who gave torn towels and sheets to a flooded-out family instead of money. For years before Cosey actually died, while he aged and lost interest in everything but Nat Cole and Wild Turkey, Heed paraded around like an ignorant version of Scarlett O’Hara—refusing advice, firing the loyal, hiring the trifling, and fighting May, who was the one who really threatened her air supply. She couldn’t fire her stepdaughter while Cosey was alive, even if he spent most days fishing and most nights harmonizing with tipsy friends. For it came to that: a commanding, beautiful man surrendering to feuding women, letting them ruin all he had built. How could they do that, Vida wondered. How could they let gangster types, dayworkers, cannery scum, and payday migrants in there, dragging police attention along with them like a tail? Vida had wanted to blame the increasingly raggedy clientele for May’s kleptomania—Lord knows what those dayworkers took home—but May had been stealing even before Vida was hired and long before the quality of the guests changed. In fact, her second day at work, standing behind the desk, was marked by May’s habit. A family of four from Ohio was checking in. Vida opened the registration book. The date, last name, and room number were neatly printed on the left, a space on the right for the guest’s signature. Vida reached toward a marble pen stand but found no pen there or anywhere near. Flustered, she rummaged in a drawer. Heed arrived just as she was about to hand the father a pencil.
    “What’s that? You giving him a pencil?”
    “The pen is missing, ma’am.”
    “It can’t be. Look again.”
    “I have. It’s not here.”
    “Did you look in your pocketbook?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Your coat pocket, maybe?” Heed glanced at the guests and produced a resigned smile, as if they all understood the burdens of inadequate help. Vida was seventeen years old and a new mother. The position Mr. Cosey had given her was a high and, she hoped, permanent leap out of the fish trough where she used to work and her husband still did. Her mouth went dry and her fingers shook as Heed confronted her. Tears were marshaling to humiliate her further when rescue arrived, wearing a puffy white chef’s hat. She held the fountain pen in her hand; stuck it in the holder, and, turning to Heed, said, “May. As you well know.”
    That’s when Vida knew she had more to learn than registering guests and handling money. As in any workplace, there were old alliances here; mysterious battles, pathetic victories. Mr. Cosey was royal; L, the woman in the chef’s hat, priestly.