Coming to Coulter Point

“Marilyn!” Alice cried when the car pulled into the driveway. The former school classmates hugged for several seconds in the driveway. “I’m so glad you’re here! It’s been forever!”

Marilyn noticed that Alice seemed only slightly different than she remembered. She had grown a bit taller, and her light blonde hair had already bleached out a bit from the sun. Her skin was bronzed from laying out in the sun.

Mr. Broadman welcomed Mr. Coolidge with a handshake and an invitation inside for a cold drink, which he accepted. The gentlemen retired to the back of the house, where there was a wet bar. Mrs. Broadman greeted Marilyn and Alice inside the doorway and offered her help carrying Marilyn’s things upstairs to her room.

Marilyn’s room for the summer was a tidy but warm yellow perch at the back of the house, over the kitchen downstairs, with a view down of the sea about a hundred yards away. The furniture was mission style cherry: a vanity and mirror on one side of the bed, an armoire caddy corned on the other, and a decently sized writing table beneath the single, large window. Alice’s bedroom was next door. There were two other bedrooms on the second floor, one of which would be occupied by Mr. Coolidge for a night before he returned to Confluence. Mr. and Mrs. Broadman stayed on the first floor.

Alice chatted nonstop as Marilyn unpacked her things—mostly about her first year at Meredith College in North Carolina. “There’s not much to do in Raleigh, especially out where we are, but it’s a lovely group of girls. We all get along perfectly, and on Friday and Saturday nights, we go to the parties at N.C. State with all the farm boys. It’s a real riot.”

“I still cannot believe you wound up at that school” Marilyn said, grinning. “Of all the people to go and live in a place like that! Who on earth entertains you?”

“You should talk, Mrs. Mawr,” Alice kidded back. “Have you learned to crochet yet?”

Mrs. Broadman returned to their room to let them know that dinner would be at six thirty. “Come on,” Alice said, “let’s go sit outside while the adults plot.”

The Broadman House was once the original Broadman Inn. The original design featured eight bedrooms (the four original rooms upstairs, and four downstairs where there is now a parlor, piano room, and bar area), and the business operated as a bed and breakfast of sorts for folks traveling up the coast. When Mr. Broadman inherited the Inn from his parents, he set about designing and constructing a more modern hotel across the yard from the house, which is where the new Broadman Inn now sits. The Broadman House remains a taste of Victorian grandeur. A shaded porch wraps front and back, and a terrace off Alice’s bedroom on the side of the house commands a breath-taking view of the coastline south toward town.

As Coulter Point became more popular as a vacation destination, and tourists began booking the rooms solidly through the summer season, Mr. Broadman added onto the new building, and later, when Alice was in grade school, he bought the restaurant that had been built just down the road. Just a few years later, he purchased several houses nearby and turned them into guest cottages. Business boomed, and the Broadman family quickly became the single largest property owner on the point.

Still, the Broadman House had its own domain in the compound, and a small forest of oak trees in the front yard shielded it from the view of the new hotel. The girls wandered out to the back porch and sat on wicker chairs facing the Atlantic.

“I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to have you here,” Alice said. “There’s never anything to do here in the summers anymore. I can only play so many hands of bridge with Mother and her friends before I begin to feel stir crazy.”

“Well, I don’t doubt that,” Marilyn said. “I must warn you, though, I’m not much of a bridge player.”

Alice giggled. “My goal is to avoid playing a single hand of bridge this summer. But I do have another plan for us, and it’s more fun.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s work at the restaurant this summer. We’ll be hostesses. My father said it’d be alright, but he probably won’t pay us.”

“You’re asking for free labor?”

“I’m offering free access to boys and booze,” she laughed. “There’s a bar inside the restaurant with the most gorgeous boy you’ve ever met named Billy. And there are the boys in the kitchen, too, who are incredible fun to be around.”

Marilyn grinned. “I can’t believe you’ve asked me down here to spend the entire summer getting into trouble with you. This isn’t the Alice Broadman I remember from school. Aren’t you supposed to be taking lessons on good posture?”

“The hell with that!” Alice said. “Bo-oor—ring!”

“Besides,” she continued, “my parents have given me full reign of the whole place, and they don’t care if I’m out late at the restaurant. It’s the perfect excuse to see boys!”

“You’d better tell me more,” Marilyn said.

“Okay. The one I want to introduce you to first is a boy named Charlie. He’s a tall, brooding hulk of a man. He has the most amazing arms you’ve ever seen. Now, Charlie lives here year-round, and his dad is a fisherman, and sometimes he has to go out with his dad to help with the catch, and The Red Scare gives him a hard time—"

“The Red Scare?”

“Mr. Moscow. That’s the manager of the restaurant. He’s kind of a hard ass, but everybody stays in line when he’s around. Anyway, Charlie works out on the boat with his dad sometimes, so he’s got this wonderful dark tan and dark brown puppy dog eyes. You are going to fall for him, I promise.”

“Surely you’ve claimed one of these boys for yourself.”

“Of course,” she said. “Naturally, I’ve picked out one of the bus boys. He is adorable, and he has shaggy blonde hair. He plays in a band!”

“Oh my Lord, you’re dating a musician.”

“We’re not dating!” Alice said, her voice lower. “And don’t say it so loud—my parents would completely panic if they knew I was hanging around the hired help.”

“Okay, so what do you call it?”

“We’re talking,” Alice said. “And drinking together! These boys are all a great time. You are going to love it here!”