Ghost Country (11 page)

“I E-mailed Harriet as soon as I heard about the situation,” the hotel president told his superiors in the Olympus Hotel Group during one of those endless meetings corporations convene to avoid action and assign blame. ”Apparently the garage people had a complaint earlier, got operations involved. They had the cops remove the woman once, but when she reappeared, Brian Cassidy at the garage thought corporate had decided she could stay as long as she kept a low profile. But that night …”

That night Luisa got thrown out of Hagar’s House for breaking up the Bible study class. She leaned against the gate, muttering to herself, but when a man walked by, said, what’s a fox like you doing out here alone? looks like you could use some company, she
flagged a cab. In the dark the driver could see her imperious hand and the outlines of her expensive suit, not the torn and dirty details.

When the cab dropped her at Michigan and Wacker the driver was furious to discover she had no money. Leaving his car where he stopped—blocking two lanes of traffic—he jumped out to chase her. A horrible screech of metal on metal made him turn around: a bus had ripped off his open door.

A policeman strolled over from the far corner, demanding to know what the hell the driver meant, leaving his cab in the middle of the road. By the time he explained he’d been stiffed, Luisa had disappeared underground.

Those two homeless women had been very kind in their way. The diva clutched the railing to keep from tripping on the stairs. Philistines, not recognizing Violetta’s great aria when Luisa started to sing it in the refectory, but sympathetic with her plight when that bitch who gave herself airs because she had a title objected to Luisa’s impromptu concert. How pathetic people were in their neediness. Why should Luisa bow and scrape to a director of a homeless shelter, when her own name had been on dressing rooms in Milan and London? But when that idiot, that Warlocks or whoever she was, forced Luisa to leave, the two homeless women followed her to the door. The black one wrote down directions to a makeshift shelter they sometimes used on Underground Wacker.

A canceled engagement, was that it? Harry and Karen not home, was that it? For some reason she was in Chicago without a place to stay. She’d had a room, some wretched hovel that Harry shoved her into, always jealous of her, she couldn’t even remember why, it went back so far into their childhood, and then something went wrong with the room. She was locked out, the ugly man at the desk demanding money for her to stay on. She explained that she never handled money, her manager did that, gave him Leo’s number in New York, but he refused to call. Said he wasn’t going to rack up a long-distance bill that she couldn’t pay, but when she got her social security check on Tuesday she could come back, pay
up, he’d hang on to her clothes until then. As if she would ever darken his doorstep again!

After that, she couldn’t remember what happened. Needing a drink to steady her, not true that she was a drunk as that prissass Bible thumper was saying tonight, obviously listening to the gossip Cesarini and Donatelli were spreading about her, doesn’t make you a drunk just because you want a little brandy when some oily Brown Shirt locks you out of your own room.

Finding a man who would part with some cash … No, cunt, I didn’t pay to hear you sing, spread your legs, she must have seen that in a movie someplace, that hadn’t happened to her, but she got the price of a quart. The woman at the liquor store was so rude, had to see her money before she’d even bring a bottle down from the shelf. Fat with three hairs on her chin, shave before you touch my bottle, Luisa said, I don’t want to catch lice from you, and the woman so hostile, you’re lucky I don’t touch you over the head with this bottle, you drunken whore.

Chicago was a horrible city. Why had she come back here? Harry sold her beautiful little apartment in Campania, just because her account at Banco di Roma was the teeniest bit overdrawn, and she told the manager her brother was rich, he’d take care of the problem. And then Harry showed up in Italy, bellowing, not helpful at all. He was like all men, greedy, wanting money more than anything, how terrible for Becca to be growing up with a father like that, And now here was this revolting taxi driver swearing at her. “My good man, it’s been your privilege to carry the world’s greatest soprano in your car. It is something you can tell your grandchildren, if any woman would ever come close enough to your ugly body to allow you to procreate.” And then he was chasing her down the street.

She had to laugh when the door came off his cab, serve him right for swearing at her. When the cop came over, she should have gone and explained why the man deserved to be arrested…. But some survival instinct made her scuttle underground instead.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs she was supposed to go straight ahead along Wacker, then turn right at the second roadway. The black woman had written it all down for her on a napkin, so kind, even in Chicago you could still find enormous love for opera among the common people. Not like in Copenhagen or Berlin, of course, but heartening when the world seemed bent on burying her alive.

Turning into the second entryway she stopped, rage flooding her brain. A woman was waiting for her. Humiliating her. A mock stage set for
Otello.
Candles lit, a portrait of the Madonna between them, the woman kneeling before the portrait in ecstasy, no doubt singing
“Ave Maria, nell’ora della morte.”

Luisa lunged forward. “Who sent you here? Was it Leo or that stupid tenor, couldn’t stand being upstaged, badmouthed me to the
New York Times?
Did those two homeless bitches set me up?”

She assumed a mock bass that bounced off the high concrete overpass. “Don’t go down below Michigan, Luisa: we have a crib you can hang out in.’ And all the time waiting to set me up.”

The woman in front of the Madonna screamed, “Don’t come near me, Jezebel, the dogs will eat me if they see you near me.”

Luisa whirled, lost her balance, sprawled in the street. “Where are the cameras? Where are all you paparazzi, panting to—You want to show me—show me—you hate me, I’m the best that ever was, Piero Benedetti said so, he heard my Violetta,
carissima
, that voice, that presence, I won’t make you a queen—you are one already—but I will make the world acknowledge your majesty, he said that to me, not to Cesarini, or Donatelli, everyone knows she has to be miked to sing, but not me, not even in Covent Garden.”

She lay in the road, howling. A car coming out of the Hotel Pleiades’ garage almost hit her. The owner jumped out.

“You stupid bitch! What are you doing lying in the road like that?”

Luisa continued to sob. The man kicked her, tried to force her to the gutter.

“Don’t do that.” A small crowd had gathered, a few late workers
waiting for their bus and some theatergoers on their way to collect their cars; one of the women shook off her husband’s restraining hand to lecture the driver. “What if this woman is hurt? We ought to call an ambulance. Patrick—go into the garage and see if they’ll phone 911.”

The driver of the car ignored the theatergoer and yelled down at Luisa, “I ought to run over you, drunken cunt, get out of the street!”

He got back in his car and leaned on the horn. Luisa didn’t move. Where was Leo, her lawyer, the police? She sniffled. The man reversed with a great squeal of rubber, revved his engine and drove forward, missing Luisa by a few inches.

As the honking went on Madeleine began to wail. “The Mother of God hates that sound. It’s an abomination. She will punish you, She will rain curses of black blood on you for desecrating Her home.”

The onlookers edged away from both Madeleine and Luisa. The three people waiting for a bus decided to go to upper Michigan and hail a cab, while the woman who’d initially intervened agreed with her husband that they were in over their heads—collect the car and head for home, besides, the baby-sitter needs to be relieved.

The parking attendants were already standing at the mouth of the garage, drawn by Luisa’s diatribe, when night manager Brian Cassidy appeared. The honking hadn’t roused him: it was commonplace in the city, but one of the hotel guests, waiting for a car, had come in to complain about the chaos outside.

“I always stay at the Pleiades because I feel safe here, but this kind of street warfare is intolerable. What am I supposed to do? Wear a bulletproof vest just to come down to get my car?”

“Is not so bad, Mr. Cassidy,” one of the attendants said. “No one shooting, no one has gun, only two poor drunken ladies, or maybe they crazy. They hurting no one, only man, driver, too much angry, almost run over that one.”

“I want an escort up to the lobby,” the angry guest said. “It’s
not safe down here. I don’t want to be jumped by some street person.”

“The elevators are inside the garage, ma’am, and they’re secure. Why don’t you let Nicolo here escort you to the lobby? He’ll make sure no one’s lurking in the elevator.”

Nicolo flashed a smile, offered the woman his arm, but she refused to be mollified. Safe in her room she wrote out a detailed complaint, including how much business her company sent to the Olympus Group’s hotels during a year and how she expected to be protected from incidents of this kind. Okay, maybe she fudged a few points. Maybe in her version the driver didn’t kick Luisa and almost run the diva over; maybe in the angry businesswoman’s story the woman at the wall started raining curses on her, on all the guests at the garage. But that wasn’t lying, it was only an effort to make the hotel president see how serious the problem was.

At the garage Brian Cassidy ordered two of the attendants to pull Luisa out of the road and stick her around the corner, out of sight of any more hotel guests. The diva had passed out by then, and although she hadn’t eaten well for months, hers was a dead weight. The men grunted as they shifted her down the roadway. They propped her against the Westinghouse box, next to a man sucking on a can of Colt 45.

G
IAN PALMETTO, PRESIDENT
of the Hotel Pleiades, wants to know why they haven’t heard back from their expensive lawyer at Scandon and Atter Secretary phones secretary late in the day: a family emergency has summoned Ms. Stonds from the office.

Palmetto comes on the line in person—Sorry if Harriet has a personal crisis, but he needs advice, urgently, on hqw to dislodge a homeless woman from the sidewalk outside his garage. He spoke briefly to Harriet this morning; she promised to get on it. Will Harriet’s secretary, for Christ’s sake, find someone who knows what steps she’s taken? No one knows? Surely Harriet isn’t dragging her feet because she thinks the hotel mistreated her sister?

The secretary doesn’t think so … the police?

Thank you, yes, he’s been to the police. The sidewalk being public property the city won’t arrest the damned woman for trespassing. The cops could cart her elsewhere, but they won’t put her in jail. Someone suggested threats: rough the woman up a bit. Scare her into moving on. He could hardly order a subordinate to do that (wouldn’t mind if it happened but these days he can’t order it: some busybody would find his E-mail or report him to the ACLU. And then, phht!—good-bye, career). Gian Palmetto needs other
options. Given the three hundred dollars an hour he pays Scandon and Atter for Harriet’s advice he’d appreciate a little activity.

“What kind of emergency?” he asks, wanting only to know how soon she’ll be back in the office. “I didn’t know Harriet had a family.”

“The Stonds housekeeper, who’s been with them a long time, had a heart attack this afternoon.”

Family emergency. This conjures up a child falling from a swing, not a housekeeper with a heart attack. Gian Palmetto is understandably furious when he hangs up. Especially after the report he’s received on Harriet’s younger sister from the Special Events director. He goes out of his way to find a job for the sorriest specimen who’s ever worked at the Pleiades, including dishwashers and laundry maids, and then the lawyer stiffs him because her housekeeper is sick. In the full flood of his anger he dictates a letter to senior partner Leigh Wilton.

Really, few people even at Scandon and Atter knew Harriet had a family. So burnished was her professional armor, so tightly did she keep all personal feelings locked in a remote chest, that her coworkers didn’t know she was an orphan, that the housekeeper was as close as she could come to naming a mother. Not for her the chitchat with secretaries or associates on family matters. When Leigh Wilton complained about the lack of direction his children had, and how his two older sons had moved back home, Harriet shook her head in sympathy, but didn’t share horror stories of Mara dropping out of Smith, hanging around in her bedroom or at bars, barely holding down a dead-end job at the Pleiades, then getting fired from that.

Yes, the hotel fired Mara, on Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Ephers had her heart attack on Thursday. Before that she’d been in perfect health, aside from the occasional cold.

“We didn’t know she had any heart disease,” Grandfather Stonds told the cardiologist.

Didn’t know she had a heart, Mara muttered to herself. They blamed her, Grandfather and Harriet. What did you do to her,
Grandfather demanded, because Mrs. Ephers refused to go to the hospital until the doorman promised her that Mara would be kept out of the apartment until the doctor got home.

“What did she tell you?” Mara yelled at Grandfather, grabbing his arm, shaking it despite his icy anger at her for jarring his operating hand. “Did she give you the letter? Did you see the photograph? Who is it?”

Mara, seeing herself as the ugly lurching Caliban of the Graham Street apartment, secretly agreed she had caused Mephers’s illness. Although her getting fired didn’t bring on the attack—that only confirmed Mara as a failure, after all. Maybe Mephers’s heart beat a little faster, with pleasure at seeing Mara flounder, but that wouldn’t cause damage to the muscle.

No, it was Mephers’s fury when she found Mara in her room going through her papers. The housekeeper pulled Mara to her feet, slapped her so hard that Mara had a black eye for six days, and then collapsed, clutching her left arm but refusing to cry out. She was eighty: hauling a nineteen-year-old, especially one as big as Mara, was too much exertion for her.