At Your Service (9 page)

“That's quite a setup you have going. Hey, can I take a picture of it since we'll have to pack up soon?”

Ingrid smiles and holds a Barbie in each fist.

“Move them down a little. I can't see your pretty face.” I snap a photo. She just smiles and resumes her
Project Runway
reenactment. When the rest of us finish our midmorning snack, I help Ingrid pile everything into her backpack. She's a funny girl, but I really like her.

Which is why I say, “Princess Ingrid, would you like to pick what we do next? We have options. We can walk another half block to Dylan's Candy Bar, which is the biggest candy store you've ever seen, or we can walk or drive about five blocks to FAO Schwarz, which is the biggest toy store you've ever seen. Or there's Central Park right there too.”

We're making our way outside as Sophie answers for her.

“Oh, Central Park, most definitely. It will be nice to see some green amidst all this gray.” She wrinkles her nose delicately.

“Gray's nothing. Just be glad it's not the 1800s because,
before there were garbage trucks, the city used actual pigs to keep the streets clean. They'd just snuff along and gobble up all the trash.” Pay looks very proud of her New York trivia.

I choose to ignore it and produce a stat more likely to impress the ice queen, er, ice
princess
, in this case.

“Actually, Central Park has a TON of green space. It's even bigger than the entire municipality of Monaco,” I say.

Try that one on for size, Princess Sophie.

But all she says is, “Oh, Monaco is so very lovely this time of year. The gardens around Uncle Philip's castle are just enchanting. Ohmygosh, Alex! We forgot his birthday!”

“Speak for yourself. I played Operation X with him for four hours before his birthday gala.”

“You did? How?”

“Remote gaming headsets.” Alex shrugs.

Oh sure. Because of course, remote gaming headsets are exactly what you would use to play a special-ops video game with King Philip of Monaco, while dukes and duchesses and earls wait downstairs in the ballroom in their tuxes and gowns. I mean, it's so obvious.

Who
are
these people?

“Well, I did say our next stop is Princess Ingrid's choice.” I try to be diplomatic, but I'm beginning to have a hard
time keeping my cool. So sorry if my hometown is imperfectly real and yours sounds like some kind of Emerald City. Where's the fun in that? New York wouldn't be New York without some grime and obnoxious taxi drivers and open delivery hatches in the sidewalk that could drop you to a bloody death. Or at least a broken fibula. That's all part of what makes it the best city anywhere, and Sophie is so busy looking down her nose, she's missing it.

Ingrid tugs on my suit leg. “If we go to FAO Schwarz, can we still go back to the candy place later?”

I smile at her. “Sure!”

Bill is waiting with the limo, so we decide to skip the walk and grab a ride. A few minutes later he deposits us in front of the real-live “toy” soldiers keeping guard over the greatest toy store on earth. I hold the door so everyone can file in. Immediately we're greeted with the song we'll all be singing for the rest of the day/week/month whether we want to or not. “Welcome to our world, welcome to our world, welcome to our world of toys . . .”

Alex groans. “Mind if I head to the Apple Store just outside instead?”

“Yes!” The rest of us answer as one. I'm surprised everyone agrees with me for once. I don't know what their motives
are, but mine are clear: keep this outing as streamlined as possible. If we start splitting up now, it all turns to chaos. I grab Ingrid's hand again.

“C'mon. Upstairs there's a whole area dedicated just to Barbie.”

She bounces up and down and lets me lead the way to the escalator. The others trudge behind. Hans and Frans make themselves busy peering into the cluster of life-sized stuffed Pat the Bunnies as if secret government agents could be hiding among the mountain of soft fur.

“Can I at least duck into the gentlemen's room on my own, or does that need to be a group effort too?” asks Alex when we reach the second floor.

I blush and duck my head to hide it. “We'll wait for you. It's right over there, behind the Dippin' Dots stand.”

Even though we just had frozen hot chocolate, which is basically ice cream, Paisley and Sophie wander over to check out the flavors. Ingrid spies something just beyond.

“What's that?” She points at a souvenir penny press.

“C'mon, I'll show you. You're a coin collector; I'll bet you like this. You pick out the design you want, then stick a penny in this part here and two quarters here. Crank the handle around until it gets really hard to turn. And then a
penny pops out. But it's all flattened and it has the design you picked out on it. See, you can choose from a teddy bear, a toy soldier, a princess, or a train. And they all say ‘FAO Schwarz' on them so you can remember where you got it.”

Ingrid has her face pushed up against the machine like it's whispering the secret of life to her. She's still standing like this a full minute later when Alex exits the men's room and comes over to join us.

“What's this?”

“It's a penny machine. You really don't have these in Europe?”

“Well, considering we don't have
pennies
in Europe . . .”

Oh. Right.

Ingrid tugs at Alex's shirt. “Please, please can we get them?”

I take charge. “Sure! Let me see if I have some change in my wallet. And I'll bet downstairs they sell little folding books that are designed to hold collections of these.”

Alex rumples Ingrid's hair and smiles. “Just what this monkey needs—another coin collection.”

“I do! I really do! Chloe, are there more of these?”

I shrug. “Sure, they're all over the city. We can look up where there are others.”

I hand over a fistful of change to Ingrid, and she busies
herself making one of each design. She doesn't even want to see the Barbie section after that. All she can focus on is going downstairs to buy the collector's book to store her new treasures in. When she spots a second penny machine on the first floor, she goes crazy. Um, yeah. I thought I cared about my collection of hotel postcards, but this girl seriously loves her coins.

We can't find any of the collector books, but I stand in line to change a ten-dollar bill into a roll of quarters and swap one quarter for twenty-five pennies. This should last us their visit.

At least one person is on her way to happy.

W
hen we leave FAO Schwarz, Ingrid is a girl on a mission, but I manage to convince her that everyone gets a vote on where we go next. Alex is still yammering on about the Apple Store, and Sophie spots all the horse-drawn carriages lined up across the street at the entrance to Central Park. I would have thought she caught a ride to school every day in one of those, but I guess not, because she's doing some serious fangirling.

“Princess Ingrid, how about we let these guys head in to Apple, and we'll grab you a pink lemonade at the FAO Café before we meet back up with them. Sound good?”

The not-splitting-up thing? Totally only applies when it isn't my idea.

Pay pulls me aside as everyone else chats on the sidewalk. “How're ya holding up? You seem kind of . . . tense.”

I give her a smile to let her know how glad I am that she's here after all, even if she does insist on being overly casual with actual royalty.

“I'm just trying to follow all the protocols and make sure everybody's happy every second of the day. Speaking of which, I heard you call Alex ‘Alex,' but remember what I told you yesterday? Elise says we have to call them Prince and Princess before their names.”

“Yeah, but he introduced himself to me as Alex, not Prince Alex.”

I puff my hair out of my face. I don't have time to argue the point with Pay, and as long as
I
continue to follow instructions, I think I'm okay. “It's kind of a lot of pressure,” I say. “I mean, I'm used to that from other guests, but I guess I'm also used to guests who are a little more into the whole tourist thing.”

“I hear ya. On the other hand, these guys probably see their share of foreign cities and have to deal with different handlers everywhere they go. Not that you're just a ‘handler'! I only mean they probably get tired of having new people sucking up to them all the time and . . . yeah, none of this is coming out right.”

I snort and she laughs.

“Just try to relax and have fun. That's what I really wanted to say.” Pay shrugs her shoulders.

“Easy for you to say. You don't have to be ‘the very embodiment of the Saint Michèle brand.' ” I roll my eyes as I recite Dad's words. He's right, though; that
is
a concierge's job and I get it.

Pay studies me for a second. “Maybe these guys would have a better time spending the day with Chloe versus a hotel brand. I'm just saying . . .”

Again, easy for her. I can't do anything the least bit out of line that would get back to Dad or Elise or—I shudder just thinking about it—the king and queen. If that means I have to take my job seriously while everyone else has fun, well, that's kind of what I signed on for.

Pay gives me a quick hug and goes to join up with the others. Frans (or Hans maybe?) stays behind with Ingrid and me, while the other three and Hans (or possibly Frans) go off to play with toys that are more their speed. I order Ingrid her lemonade and then steer us to meet up with the group.

The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue is way cool. It's basically this giant glass box that, on cloudy days, shows the reflection of the Plaza Hotel across the street (hi, Eloise!). And then you have to walk down all these stairs to get to the actual store
part underground. I have no idea how they even built it. And the best part is it never closes, so if you really, really have to get an iPod Touch at three o'clock in the morning, they've got you covered.

Inside there's this wide spiral staircase made out of phobia stairs. That's what I call stairs that don't have a back part to them, just the part you step on. I know I'm not actually small enough to slip through the gap between them, because it's probably less than a foot tall or something, but I really, really, REALLY hate going up or down stairs like that. Going up is worse because I can see the gaps more clearly, but I still get nervous going down.

Which doesn't work out so well in this case. I'm going extra slow, and Ingrid doesn't seem to do anything extra slow, so she's literally stepping on my heels as I go down each stair. That makes me even more irrationally nervous that I'm going to slip right through the back of the stairs and split my skull open on the really expensive-looking marble floor. So I come to a complete stop.

Unfortunately Ingrid doesn't.

She goes tumbling. Not through the slats, because I KNOW, that isn't even logical, but just down two steps and right into Frans's or Hans's back. Luckily, it's like crashing
into a steel wall because he's all bodyguard muscular, so she stops right away. Not so luckily, she had her full cup of pink lemonade in her hands, so now Frans/Hans is wearing it. He doesn't look too excited about this. A small river of pink liquid
does
slide through the gap in the steps and onto the floor below.

“Are you okay?” I push my phobia aside and race down the steps to where Ingrid is rubbing her arm. Returning a guest in a full body cast is probably not going to look good on my Les Clefs d'Or application.

“I think Frans might be a Transformer. He hurts to run into,” Ingrid says. At least she can joke. That has to be a good sign. I grab her arm and help her up. And (bonus!) now I know which bodyguard is dripping pink sugar all over the spiral staircase.

“Sorry, Frans,” mumbles Ingrid.

“At least you are safe,” he answers, but I can see him trying not to wince when he sticks his leg out and his pants cling to him like a wetsuit.

“We can hang here if you want Bill to take you back to the Saint Michèle for a different suit. It's super close by,” I tell him.

Frans looks like he's debating the safety protocol involved,
but one step and a sloshing shoe is all it takes for him to see the light. He calls his brother, and they have a lightning-speed conversation in some foreign language.

“I will go with your driver and be right back. You all stay here with Hans,” Frans says.

“Okeydokey.”

Frans starts up the staircase and Ingrid and I head down. I'm totally taking the elevator when it's time to go.

We catch up with Alex, Sophie, and Pay by the iPads. It looks like they've found some way to play a game against each other on the demo devices, and they're tilting the tablets from side to side in their hands. Pay picks up her head to smile hi, but the other two barely acknowledge us.

Lovely.

Ingrid tugs at my suit-jacket sleeve. “You said we could find more penny machines.”

“I don't think there are any in here, Princess.”

Her shoulders slump. Is she going to cry? Oh no. No, no, no. I have a strict rule against any of my guests crying while in my care.

“Hey, I have an idea. Why don't we use one of these computers to look for a list of other penny machines in the city?”

I find a vacant iMac and Google “penny presses New York City.” Sure enough, within seconds I have a list of about twenty machines.

“Hey, there are some cool places on here. The Bronx Zoo, Coney Island, New York Aquarium . . . Times Square. We can definitely hit up some of these.”

Ingrid crosses her arms. “All of them.”

“All of them? Oh no, I don't think we have time for that this trip. The Bronx Zoo alone looks like it has eight separate machines. That's a whole afternoon right there. And Coney Island would take us way over an hour to get to. We can go to the ones in Times Square and, hey, there's one at the Central Park Zoo. That one's only about a five-minute walk from here. Don't worry, we'll get you a great collection.”