"Sant Antoni runs on sunsets, cheap cava, and a railing held on with cable ties"
Rafael Ortiz has said yes eleven times before four in the afternoon, and he has the receipts: a note on his phone called NO LOG, kept for his therapist back in San Juan, where the No column reads zero. He has come to Ibiza on a five-month bartending contract to escape his cousin's wedding-video business and save for a sunset bar of his own in Cabo Rojo. His bar is the terrace of Café del Hostel in Sant Antoni, a 1958 family guesthouse turned party hostel, with dorms named after chill-out CDs, a plunge pool sixty centimetres deep and a fourth-floor Sunset Deck where, every evening, the whole island faces west and claps for the sun.
Everybody on the deck seems to hate Clem Ashby, the promoter behind the Balcony Season sunset parties. The Cork DJ whose track she stole threatens, in front of forty witnesses, to throw her off the balcony. The best man of a Wolverhampton stag paid four thousand for a VIP table that does not exist. A Welsh hen party has had its spot sold and its bride mocked online, a fired Swedish PR is sleeping on a beach waiting for his wages, and the influencer who is the face of the brand has noticed that some numbers do not match. Only Clem's partner Ollie, who carries the ice and blows the sunset horn, seems to forgive her. Imogen Hart, a true-crime podcaster who never forgets a face, starts a wall with string, strictly as a thought experiment.
Meanwhile the building keeps warning them. The manager, Nuria, whose grandfather built the place, has a ticket open about the loose railing in the corner: THIS IS URGENT, SOMEBODY WILL FALL. The little white Hub she calls l'EnsaĂŻmada marks it resolved from Palma, then moves Saturday's Balcony Limbo launch to that exact corner. The Guardia Civil sergeant says the railings are older than her mother. On Friday the rail swings out over the alley with a bride-to-be on it. The Wi-Fi splash page counts how many phones are filming the sunset. By Saturday the rail has been tied back with seven heavy cable ties and Rafa has pushed it with everything he has, twice. Eighty-one people are packed onto a deck rated for eighty, the buyer from Mallorca is watching, Nuria is guarding the rope, and the sun is a hand's width above the sea.
Age: 26
Type: Season-contract bartender from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico
Fatal Flaw: Says yes nineteen times a day and logs every one
Role: Protagonist
Age: 30s
Type: Sunset-party promoter behind Balcony Season
Fatal Flaw: Leans on anything, including people
Role: Victim
Age: 25
Type: True-crime podcaster and super-recogniser
Fatal Flaw: Hears a cold open in every tragedy
Role: Ally
Age: 31
Type: The other half of Balcony Season
Fatal Flaw: Wears the factory's misprinted hats so they won't be wasted
Role: Business partner
Age: 41
Type: Hostel manager whose grandfather built the place
Fatal Flaw: Trusts ropes, paper rotas and nothing from Palma
Role: Keeper of the building
Age: ???
Type: Mysterious presence
Fatal Flaw: None documented
Role: Observer
From the Prologue, "The RincĂłn"
She was a woman in her middle thirties in an oversized white shirt, huge sunglasses, and bare feet, with a watermelon vape in one hand and a phone in the other, and she was leaning her full weight back against Pep's railing with her elbows hooked over the top bar, the way you might lean on a bar in a pub where you knew the owner.
Nuria heard the railing move. It was a small sound. A tick, like a clock thinking about something.
"Perdona," Nuria said. "Excuse me."
The woman held up one finger without turning round. The finger had a long pink nail with a tiny diamanté sun on it.
"No, I'm going to tell him after Saturday," the woman said. "If he signs, he signs. If he doesn't sign, I've got the wristband numbers, and he can explain them to Javier himself." She took a long drag on the vape and blew it out over the alley, a pink cloud that smelled of Haribo. "Babe. Babe. I've known him since uni. I know exactly how he's going to take it. He's going to say 'no worries' and then go and buy everyone an ice lolly. That's his whole thing. He's the nice one." A pause. "Yeah. Well. Somebody has to be the other one."
"Excuse me," Nuria said again, louder, in the voice she used on stag parties who were trying to get into the kitchen at four in the morning to make toast. "Señora. The railing."
The woman turned her head. Her sunglasses were so big that Nuria could see herself in them twice: a small, tired woman of forty-one in an apron, with her hair up in a clip, holding a pink sash that wasn't hers.
"Hiya," the woman said. "Sorry, babe, is this you? Are you housekeeping?"
"I'm the manager."
"Oh my God, amazing. I'm Clem. Clementine Ashby. Balcony Season." She said it like the name of a country. "We're doing the Saturday launch up here. It's going to be iconic. Have you seen the deck? Obviously you've seen the deck. You own the deck."
"I don't own anything," Nuria said. "Please come to this side of the rope. That rail is not safe."
Clem looked down at the rail as if it had been rude to her. She rocked her weight against it, experimentally. It went tick.
"It's fine," she said. "It's like a hundred years old. If it was going to go it would have gone."
"That's not how things work."
"It's literally how things work, babe, that's what old means." Clem smiled. It was a professional smile, very white. "Look, if it's a problem, I've got people for that. Ollie will sort it. Ollie sorts everything." She lifted the phone again. "Sorry, Suze, the manager's here, she's having a moment about the railing. No, she's lovely."
Fictional reviews of the fictional Café del Hostel, quoted from the book.
â "everyone will be facing the same way." â @HostelReaper
â "Thank you for facing west." â @HostelReaper
â "she likes the corner." â @HostelReaper