Water the Chances - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 109

“Particularly compared to the jerk we started with.”
Charlie sat up in his seat.
“And who was that?”
“Daniel Hynter.”
He almost spewed beer through his nose.
“Oh my God, that freak!”
We seemed to have his full attention now.
“Our furniture wasn't quite up to his usual standards,” Michael offered.
“Pretentious creep. You should see his house. It's Pottery Barn on steroids.”
“You've been there?”
“Oh sure. He had a party when he and Rod first 'arrived' on the island. It was hilari-
ous—more Fire Island than Vieques. Shirtless bartender, the whole hot mess.”
“Yikes.”
“So you guys had a falling out?”
Michael and I looked at each other. We were fully aware that this was a small island and
that we were engaged in conversation with someone who was probably about as discreet as
Julian Assange.
But it was way too tempting to pass up.
“He fired us,” Michael said.
“Oh my God,” Charlie gasped. “What the hell did you do to him?”
“Nothing. He painted our house the wrong color, and when we pointed out his boo-boo
he had a meltdown.”
“He denied it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Bastard.”
“Pretty much.”
We sat and brooded over our respective beverages. In fact, conversation pretty much
ground to a halt after that. Apparently Charlie had satisfied whatever curiosity he may have
had about us and our little story.
“Good to meet you guys,” he said, turning back to his laptop.
Time to go.
☼ ☼ ☼
We ran around like deranged beings our last day on the island. Carol and Jeremy were ar-
riving the following week, and we wanted to make everything as perfect as possible for our
very first guests.
Lydia, our new cleaning lady, was scheduled to come by two days later to give the place
a final once-over but we couldn't resist doing most of the work ourselves. (I suspect some
of this harks back to my childhood, when my mother would scrub our house from top to