Ring of Truth (31 page)

The woman started in again on her complaint. Arturo assured her the hotel regarded the situation as deeply serious and would do everything in its power to make up to her for the distress she had suffered.

“Well, you can call the police for starters. I won't tolerate being attacked and insulted in this way.”

Arturo nodded to Tara. “Ms. Keegan will get right on it. And call security.”

Tara made the calls from the concierge desk. A uniformed security guard appeared instantly, spoke briefly to Arturo, and left the hotel.

As she expected, at SFPD, the sergeant she spoke with told her that his precinct would send a patrolperson around the area to see whether any of the local characters were acting out. She wished she knew where Eddie was, but she told herself that she should not worry about him. He had not attacked a guest, and he must be somewhere else in the city at this time of day.

As soon as the woman had gone up to her room, Arturo strode over to the concierge desk to demand that Tara tell him where Eddie's camp was. “And don't tell me you don't know. We do not tolerate incidents of this kind at the Belmont.”

“I do not know where Eddie's camp is, but I do know that Eddie is not the man involved in the incident.” She said it without hesitation.

Tara saw at once that in defending Eddie, she had gone too far, but Arturo was being unjust, condemning Eddie without any investigation. Arturo hadn't asked the first question that a just person had to ask—is it true?

Arturo's frown cut deep lines in his brow. “Apparently, Ms. Keegan, what you don't understand is the meaning of loyalty. You received a direct order, with which you have not complied. If we were not stretched to capacity this weekend, you'd be gone today. As it is, you have until the last of the Lynch party checks out. Then you're done.”

The rehearsal dinner guests began to assemble as Tara's shift ended. She prepared to leave and let the next concierge take over. In the staff room she took off her badge, retrieved her bag, and touched up her make-up, trying for a normalcy she did not feel. As she applied fresh lip gloss, she caught the flash of the ring's green gem in the mirror.
Some life changer!
The thing had spoken three times, and she'd lost her job.

She stretched out her hand.
Well, do you have anything to say? What should I do? Cave in to Arturo? Find Eddie?
She waited, but the ring was silent.

Instead, Jennifer entered the staff room. “Oh, you're still here. So what's going on? Did you quit, or what?”

“Neither. Arturo ordered me to tell him where my friend Eddie sleeps. I didn't, so he's going to fire me on Monday.”

Jennifer reached out with a quick hug, than backed away with a grave look. “Really, Tara? Are you going to blow it at the Belmont over some homeless guy? I mean I know they're people and they're down on their luck, but working at the Belmont is not just any job. You love this job, and you just got engaged.”

Tara zipped her lip gloss back into its plastic case. She did not trust herself to speak. The loss was big, and Jennifer was a friend who meant well, but she didn't feel like going back on her decision. Maybe she was being stubborn, or maybe the whole thing had not yet sunk in, but it felt right to stand up for a friend.

“I know. We should take you out to celebrate!”

“Celebrate my getting canned?”

“No, your getting engaged. I'll text Hadley. Hold on.” Jennifer whipped out her phone. “Where should we go? That pizza place you like near the square. Romina is just the person to cheer you up.”

“Do I need cheering up?”

Jennifer peered at her. “Hey your boss is threatening you, and your boyfriend's in Sweden. You need someone right here.”

“Jennifer, thank you, but I should look for Eddie to warn him.”

“Listen, security is not going to look for him tonight. So you can wait until morning. You know where he sleeps, right?”

But what kind of friend am I if I let security pick Eddie up?

“Come on. You've got a ring on your finger. Let Arturo and your friend Eddie worry their worries. You should do something fun.”

***

The three friends squeezed in the front corner booth of their favorite pizza place and ordered. The proprietress, an ex-dancer who had learned to make pizza in her native Rome, brought them red wine and admired Tara's ring.

“Why haven't we met this young man? Doesn't he eat pizza?”

Tara gave her usual explanation of Justin's work schedule, but it sounded hollow in her ears as she held out her hand to have her ring admired. The fantasy should be perfect—a woman surrounded by friends celebrating happy news. She didn't know how she had let it go so far. There was no way she could confess what she'd done now. It would be too humiliating when they were all being so nice to her. It would be like having all one's junior high fantasies revealed, those dreams of making eye contact with the cutest boy at the dance and having him choose you.

While her friends joked and chatted, she thought back to the moment when she'd first invented Justin after a series of spectacularly bad Internet dates. He had seemed like the best solution to a bad situation, her own private joke. She had taken the “Justin” from Justin Timberlake, and the Wright, from her grandmother's lawyers, and once she'd had a name, her fake boyfriend had come to life in her imagination. In the beginning she had known just how to play the whole thing cautiously. When asked about her status, she'd simply said she'd started seeing someone and it was too early to make much of it. Gradually, when pressed, she'd admitted to having a regular thing going with Justin.

She had wanted someone smart and funny and generous, someone taller than she was at five seven with room for her to wear heels. She had made him a little bit adventurous, willing to travel for his work, unafraid of heights or driving a stick shift in San Francisco with its precipitous hills. She had made him a confident guy who knew his baseball and football, but who was not into sports twenty-four seven. He was never awkward ordering or paying for a meal. Unlike Daniel, Justin actually knew her preferences for wine and food, flowers and film.

“Where do you think you'll be married?” Hadley asked.

“Oh, we haven't decided yet.”

Jennifer raised her glass in a toast. “To Tara, one lucky girl.”

“Amen.” Hadley chimed in. “And may there be more Mr. Wrights out there for us.”

Tara raised her glass. Suddenly, being engaged to Justin seemed as satisfying as having a conversation with Bingo Bear, and Tara wanted to end it. She gave the ring a suspicious look. The thing was messing with her mind for sure.

Their salads came, and Tara was able to tuck her ring hand in her lap and encourage other conversation. Both Jennifer and Hadley promised to check their contacts to see where there were concierge openings in the city. Tara was close to receiving her
Clefs d'Or
membership, the sign of the elite concierge who always went the extra mile for her guests, but besides hotels, lots of businesses now employed a concierge to manage customers' needs. She would find another job.

After pizza, Hadley insisted the celebration would not be complete without gelato. Even on a foggy January weeknight, North Beach drew tourists. The friends joined the evening crowd, passing in opposing streams up and down Columbus, dodging advertising stands, planter boxes, and little outdoor tables for hardy diners. The fog swirled about making yellow halos around the streetlights. A dozen women from a bachelorette party wearing fake tiaras, holding pink balloons, and whirling noisemakers giggled by in heels.

“That's you next!” Hadley offered her a high five. Tara wondered how soon she could start looking for Eddie.

The next moment, she bumped into a stranger, catching him smack in the kneecap with her bag. An automatic
excuse me
sprang to her lips as a pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders. She looked up into steady blue eyes, and felt a jolt of recognition.

“You.”

“Hey, bag lady. How are you?”

They looked at one another for a moment, then someone else called. “Jack, come on, man. We've got to make our reservation.”

The hands released her shoulders. “See you around.” He flashed her that confident grin.

Jack?
She turned to look over her shoulder as the flow of the crowd carried him off.

“I hope Justin's really hot,” Jennifer said, “because that guy was seriously good looking.”

He might be, but Tara pulled herself together. A flirtatious smile from a passing stranger was exactly nothing. It was like smelling a bakery at the end of a morning run, a whiff of goodness that did not fill one's stomach. Still, she figured twice in one day meant the stranger was probably local and she might see him again. A little voice sounded in her ear saying,
after you break up with Justin, of course.

There was no way the ring, with her hand tucked in her pocket, was speaking to her over the noise of city traffic, and it had to be coincidence that the stranger's name was Jack, like Eddie's friend.

She had no intention of taking Eddie up on his offer. Eddie's Jack was probably a fellow vet in his forties, in recovery, divorced with children he never saw, someone with whom she would have nothing in common, but it suddenly hit her that Eddie might be at a meeting. She halted mid-stride. There were hundreds of meetings in the city for recovering addicts of every sort. She fished in her bag for her phone and used it to find the nearest meeting for recovering alcoholics. She found nothing listed for a Thursday night in North Beach. There were only daytime meetings in the neighborhood of the Belmont, so if Eddie was at a meeting, he was on the other side of town, which, with security after him, would be a good thing.

She slipped her phone back into its pocket in her bag. She actually didn't know that Eddie had ever been an addict. She didn't even know how he had ended up on the streets. She had been accepting Eddie's cheerful support on her way to work each day ever since her grandmother had died. Now she was ashamed to realize that Eddie knew a great deal more about her job troubles than she knew about his more perilous circumstances.

The gelato was delicious, and she told herself there could not be any calories in something that dissolved in salty sweetness on the tongue. Didn't research show that if you didn't have to chew, a food could not be fattening? Once she broke up with Justin, she supposed she would have to diet in earnest and start running if she meant to go back to dating. The whole idea was depressing.

Jennifer asked for another cough drop, and Tara warned her not to let Arturo catch her coming to work with a cold.

Their cappuccinos came, and Hadley saluted her with the white cup. “I'm so glad for you that Justin came through before your ex showed up with his girlfriend. I'm sure it would be awkward and painful watching the whole Daniel proposal drama without a fiancé of your own.”

Jennifer added, “Even more important, you are lucky to catch this guy Justin now before you turn thirty-five. I mean, after thirty-five, a woman's profile doesn't even show up in the searches.”

“Hey, that's what Tinder is for.” Hadley took out her phone. Jennifer and Hadley had both joined Tinder, convinced that the new smart phone app approach to dating would be better than the old matching done by algorithms that took no account of chemistry. As they sat around the tiny marble table in the gelato shop, Hadley clicked on a picture and got an answering click. There was a guy out there within a five-mile radius who thought Hadley was cute enough to meet.

While her friends high-fived each other, Tara stood. It was time to look for Eddie.

Suddenly serious, Hadley looked up. “Do you think this person is really a friend, or is he some guy that's figured out how to get something out of you? I mean you bring him coffee every day.”

Jennifer added her concern. “Isn't he sort of like a pet or a mascot?”

Tara shook her head. Her friends ended by urging her not to go looking for Eddie on her own so late, but Tara held firm. She promised to text them both and take a cab later. She walked back to the Belmont, thinking about the way truth and fiction had become mixed up in the last seven hours from the time she'd put the crazy ring on her finger. Her friends wanted to celebrate her relationship with Justin and doubt her friendship with Eddie. Even if they were right about Eddie taking advantage of her, when Tara examined her own feelings, she found them sincere. Eddie had come into her life right after her grandmother's death. He had stepped into an empty space in her heart and filled it. He made her laugh, and he made her believe she could do her job. She liked him. She would look for him out of loyalty to her own feelings.

Her only hope of finding him was to return to the alley where she'd seen him that morning. If she was going to lose her job, at least she could let Eddie know that Arturo had Hotel Belmont security looking for him.

The glow of the city lit the fog above, but when she peered into Eddie's alley, it had turned ghostly, all shadows and black fathomless recesses. Holding her pink LED flashlight, with her bag in front of her like a shield, she ventured into the dark. She inched her way along close to a wall of lava-like bricks until a black plastic trash bin jutting across her path forced her into the open alleyway. The place smelled of compost bins and car fumes. Her tiny light wobbled in her hand. Eddie's pale green Victorian doorway should be just ahead of her, but darkness and fog turned all shades the same and obscured the shapes of the buildings. She took another cautious step forward.

The next moment a flashlight beam like a searchlight caught her in its glare. She threw up a hand to cover her eyes. The blast of light came from a hulking figure advancing toward her, whose shadow stretched across the alley from side to side.

Her heart gave a start as if the gun had fired for a race, but her brain recognized the light as belonging to someone in authority, a cop or... a security guard. Her light caught the Belmont badge clipped to the man's belt.

“Hi there,” she called. “Thank goodness you have that light.” She turned her own puny light toward the ground. “Maybe you can help me. I dropped something here.”

“Lady, you're nuts!”

Tara turned slightly to dip her free hand into her bag. She let her fingers close around the first item she found, her ear bud cord, and using her purse as a shield, she managed to lower the cord to the ground. She flashed her light around in wide swings and made as much noise as she could with her heels.

“My ear buds. I must have lost them running this morning. I'm sure they're somewhere around here.”

The big man stepped up beside her and turned his beam onto the ground illuminating a patch of pavement big enough to park an SUV. Almost instantly, his light caught the white plastic cord.

“Oh thank you.” Tara bent and scooped up the cord. She swirled her light around. “I guess I needed a bigger light.”

“Yeah, right. Just tell your scumbag pal to beat it, or he'll get his ass jailed.”

“Thanks again.” Tara emerged from the alley, heart pounding, and kept walking toward the hotel. She did not know whether she had led security to Eddie's place, or whether the man had found the spot on his own. Worse, she did not know where Eddie was or whether he was safe. Her day had gone down hill each step of the way from the moment she'd put the ring on her finger.

She turned left along a quiet retail block off the tourist track and all closed up for the night. Half way down the block, as her heart started to slow its crazy beat, a shadow stepped from a doorway and fell into step next to her. She clutched her bag and held back a yelp.