Suite Scarlett (4 page)

There was no one behind the desk when Scarlett answered the emergency call—and no one had put out the
WE
’
VE JUST STEPPED AWAY
.
PLEASE RING THE BELL FOR SERVICE!
sign.

“Mom?” Scarlett said, hoisting herself up and looking over the desk.

Her mother was not crouching underneath.

Scarlett looked around in bafflement, then went behind the desk and sat down.

A tall woman suddenly stepped from behind the archway leading to the dining room. She had short, deep brown hair, cut through with an even darker streak, like a chipmunk. She wore skinny jeans on the bottom and a pink kimonolike shirt on top. Scarlett had seen lots of similar items in Chinatown, but there was something about the way the material hugged her form so gracefully, how the pink was soft and muted instead of super shiny…something told her that this was the real deal. Silk. Thick silk. Many worms had given all they had to make that shirt.

The woman was standing with her fisted hands planted on her hips. Something about her stance suggested that at any moment
she might raise her arms above her head and superhero it right through the ceiling and every consecutive floor until she hit the sky.

Both Scarlett and the woman stared a bit on seeing each other.

“Did you just call me mom?” the woman said.

“Not you,” Scarlett said quickly. “My mom…is here.”

“Your mother is here?” the woman said, looking around.

“Not right now.”

“But she’s staying here?”

“No.”

“Should you be behind that desk?” the woman asked.

“Do you need help?” Scarlett replied.

“Do you
work
here?”

“I live here,” Scarlett said. “I can help you.”

“Oh, so your mother is…” Scarlett could see the woman putting two and two together and slowly, ever so slowly, pulling a four into focus. “Who said child labor was dead? I’m being helped. But thank you. Someone, probably your mother, is getting me an espresso as we speak, an espresso that will hopefully prevent me from falling over. I’ve just gotten off the plane from Thailand. Twenty-nine hours. Have you ever been on a plane for twenty-nine hours? I haven’t sat still that long since I did a marathon meditation for two days when I was on the ashram. My ass could take it then. I don’t want to sit down again for a week, at least. I’ll admit it. I have jet lag.”

The majority of that was delivered in one long breath. She swiveled her torso, cracking her back loudly, then strode over to the desk and peered at the framed pictures that hung behind it, showing all the successive generations of Martins posed in front of the hotel. The last picture had been taken four years ago. Scarlett loved the
way her braces caught the sun in it. Eleven had been a rough year, for many reasons.

“God!” the woman said. “How many of you are there?”

“You mean my brothers and sisters? Four.”

“Four!” The woman laughed again. It was a strangely animated laugh, like someone had attached her chin to a string and was jerking it toward the sky. “You don’t see that much in the city. I guess your parents aren’t fans of birth control.”

Scarlett had had this exact thought many times herself, but she didn’t really like hearing this stranger saying it out loud. Nor did she like strangers hanging over her, practically staring down her cleavage. But it wasn’t the cleavage, or lack thereof, that the woman seemed most interested in.

“That’s Dior, isn’t it?” she asked, pinching the strap and feeling the material.

The woman was close enough for Scarlett to smell—she carried a faint fragrance of incense, and a light perfume that had an expensive feel inside of Scarlett’s nose.

“Yes,” Scarlett admitted.

The woman leaned over farther and stared at the picture again.

“Interesting group,” she said. “All the girls are blonde, like your dad. And your brother is brunette, like your mother. Good-looking guy, your brother. How old is he?”

“In the picture or now?” Scarlett asked.

“I’m only interested in now,” the woman said with a smile.

“Nineteen.”

“Older sister as well? She’s stunning. How old is she?”

“Eighteen.”

Her interest seemed to end with Spencer and Lola. She tapped a fingernail against her front teeth.

“It’s not exactly what I pictured,” she said, turning to look around the lobby.

Scarlett didn’t know what to say. The hotel was what it was. Not the best. Far from the worst.

Her mother entered from the kitchen, bearing a white mug on a saucer, with a tiny pile of orange rind clustered around it. The woman eagerly accepted this, pinching up all of the orange and dropping it into the cup.

“Four shots of espresso,” her mother said.

The woman nodded and sucked this back like it was nothing at all.

“This is my daughter Scarlett,” her mother explained.

“We’ve met,” the woman said. “Nice name. And nice dress. I’m more of a Vivienne Westwood woman myself. But really, I like small, up-and-coming designers, right out of design school. You get all the freshest ideas for a song.”

Scarlett’s mother’s face had slipped into that half-paralyzed mask it got when a seriously paying customer was around.

“This is Mrs. Amberson,” she said to Scarlett. “She’ll be here
all summer.
”

“All summer?” Scarlett repeated.

“All summer,” Mrs. Amberson said.

“All summer,” her mother said again. “In the Empire Suite.”

“The Empire Suite?” Scarlett said.

“This is adorable,” Mrs. Amberson cut in. “Do you often sing in rounds? Makes sense. You look a bit like the Von Trapps.”

It took Scarlett a minute to realize that she was talking about
The Sound of Music.
Actually, yes. Maybe they were a little Von Trapp like. Many, blonde, repetitive. Also, running for the hills sounded like a pretty good plan.

“Will your husband be joining you at some point?” her mom asked, sitting back down in front of the computer.

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Amberson said. “My husband is more of a concept than a person.”

She let that mysterious sentence linger in the air for a moment.

“Oh…fine,” Scarlett’s mom replied. “Just checking. And just so you know, we have a policy here at the Hopewell. As a family, we personally take care of some of the rooms.”

“So I read.” Mrs. Amberson pulled a
Whaddya Say We Do New York?
guidebook from her voluminous bag. She flipped the book open to the correct page with one shake of her hand. It looked like it had been turned to that page a number of times; the spine had cracked there as a kind of permanent bookmark. “The Empire Suite comes highly recommended. How fortunate that someone just canceled and it was free.”

The size of the lie almost caused Scarlett to burst out laughing. But that would only result in her mother having to kill her in front of the new guest, so she played with the stapler instead.

“It is,” her mother said, forging on. “Scarlett is taking care of your room. She’ll be able to give you a hand with day-to-day matters, errands, things like that.”

Mrs. Amberson looked Scarlett up and down like she was sizing her up for a harness.

“I could really use something like that,” she said. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Why don’t you let me get you another coffee?” her mother said. “Scarlett, if you’ll just…”

She grabbed the desk pad and scrawled the words: GET UP THERE AND AIR THE ROOM OUT!!!!!!!!!!

Scarlett felt her eyes widen. She was supposed to be taking Marlene out—possibly screaming and wrapped in a sack—in five minutes.

“I…”

Her mother turned and leaned over the desk.

Scarlett’s mother did not have a severe face. In fact, she just looked like an older, female Spencer, which was usually not intimidating at all. But like Spencer, she could occasionally muster a truly dangerous look. Spencer reserved his for the stage, but her mother kept it for moments just like this.

“I’m just going to go upstairs for a minute and open the windows,” Scarlett said.

“Good,” Mrs. Amberson replied. “I assume that someone will come for the…”

She waved at her bags.

“Oh, of course,” Scarlett’s mother replied. “I’ll have someone bring them right up.”

She said this breezily, as if there were dozens of staff members lingering discretely in the shadows, waiting to do these kinds of tasks. The illusion that this was a
real
hotel had to be kept alive.

Instead of staying where she was, Mrs. Amberson followed along right behind Scarlett.

“I’ll just go up with her,” she said. “Too much coffee unbalances me.”

Scarlett opened the gate to the elevator and they climbed in
together, then she pulled the gate shut, hard. It made a terrible squeaking noise in protest.

“That’s charming,” Mrs. Amberson said, nodding at the gate. Whether that was sincere or sarcastic, Scarlett wasn’t sure.

Standing side by side, Mrs. Amberson towered over Scarlett by several inches. Scarlett was fairly tall herself, so she suspected heels. She looked down to see that Mrs. Amberson was wearing tiger-print ballet flats. She caught Scarlett looking and turned her gaze to Scarlett’s flip-flops.

“So,” Mrs. Amberson said, removing a very old and expensive-looking red cigarette case from her purse, “Dior, huh?”

“It’s my sister’s,” Scarlett said quickly.

“Your sister has good taste. Expensive taste. I take it this elevator is original, mechanics and all?”

“Um…yeah.”

“Very authentic.”

Again, Scarlett had no idea what that remark was meant to mean. After about six days, the elevator triumphantly reached the fourth floor, and Scarlett sprang the gate. The Empire Suite was a long room at the front of the building, with three tall windows facing out to the street. The key stuck in the lock a little, but Scarlett got it open after a moment or two of jiggling.

It had been at least four months since anyone had occupied the room. It was painfully hot and still. Most normal hotels had AC running constantly, and the steady stream of guests meant that the rooms were regularly freshened. This room hadn’t been dusted since Monique left weeks before. The room was neat, but had that odd feeling that empty, expectant rooms tended to get—almost like
they were angry that they’d been neglected. A superfine layer of dust had accumulated. That was her problem now. Hopefully Mrs. Amberson wouldn’t run out and down the street to somewhere better.

“I may need to…wake it up a little,” she said.

“Wake it up,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I like that. Very evocative.”

Mrs. Amberson stripped off the pink kimono, revealing a tight, short-sleeved tunic top, like something a dancer might wear. She tapped the cigarette case on her forearm and walked around the room, pausing to admire the dressing table and its moony mirror. This was the highlight of the room, in Scarlett’s opinion. Along with the gorgeous mirror, the table had a dozen small drawers that presumably used to hold all of the little things necessary for a woman in the twenties—lipsticks, bracelets, small bottles of illegal booze.

“Well,” she said, apparently satisfied. “This is the good kind of authentic. I can smoke on the balcony, right? Don’t worry. I won’t burn the curtains.”

She was already climbing over the desk, out of the window, and onto the tiny, sheltered ledge outside. It was really for flower boxes. It definitely didn’t qualify as a balcony.

“That’s not really for people,” Scarlett said. “I don’t know if that’ll…”

“I don’t weigh much. And it’s only four stories. I’ll take my chances.”

She sat against the short wrought-iron rail, sticking her arm through the bars, away from the window. She kept the curtain tucked back with her leg.

“You don’t smoke, do you?”

“No,” Scarlett said.

“Good,” she said through pursed lips as she lit her cigarette. “You should never start. Smoking kills. Oh, that’s good…”

That last remark was addressed to the trail of smoke leaving her lips.

“Twenty-nine hours,” she said. “No smoking on the plane. No smoking in the airport. No smoking in the cab.”

Mrs. Amberson regarded her through the filmy veil that she breathed into the air. Scarlett felt the minutes ticking away. It was one kind of scary thing taking Marlene someplace. It was another, much more scary thing to take her there late.

“Is there anything you need?” she finally asked. “If not, I’ll…”

“It’s been a while since I’ve been in New York City,” Mrs. Amberson said.

She went back to smoking for a few more moments and, once again, Scarlett was left waiting for some kind of a sign of release. It was like Mrs. Amberson had her held there with a phantom leash.

“If you want anything…” Scarlett tried again.

“I undoubtedly will,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I’ll need to think about it.”

“I’ll leave my cell phone number,” Scarlett said quickly.

She scrawled it down on the hotel notepad on the dressing table.

“Here it is!” she said, pointing at it as she backed out of the room. “Call me anytime! I’ll just let you get settled, check on your bags…”

Mrs. Amberson didn’t answer. She just made an
mmmmm
noise, which Scarlett decided to interpret as a dismissal.

“Do you mind if I call you O’Hara?” Mrs. Amberson asked, just as Scarlett reached the door. “Like Scarlett O’Hara?”

“Whatever you want!” Scarlett said, as she backed out of the room.

“We’re going to be great friends, O’Hara,” Mrs. Amberson added. “I can feel it, and I’m always right about these things.”

Back on the fifth floor, Lola and Marlene were standing in the hall side by side in a frozen tableau, like something from a horror movie. Marlene’s face was palpably red.

“Where did you go?” Lola asked under her breath.

“I have a guest,” Scarlett explained. “She just arrived.”

“I got Chip to come by with the car to get you over there on time.”

“Oh, good,” Scarlett said flatly.

Lola plastered a happy smile on her face and turned to Marlene.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“We’re
late
,” Marlene said. “It’s ruined!”

“We’re not late! And I told you, the car is coming!”

“Why can’t you take me?” Marlene said, slumping against the wall.

Scarlett felt the dangerous look coming into her own eye, but Lola touched her lightly on the elbow in reassurance.

“We talked about this,” Lola said reasonably. “You’re doing me a big favor, and I won’t forget that. You’re going to
love
your makeover.”

Marlene considered this by rolling along the wall and burying her
face into the wallpaper, like she was trying to stencil it with an imprint of her scowl.

“And Chip said that he really, really wanted you to come out on his boat,” Lola added, in what sounded like a touch of desperation. “Remember the boat? How they have the little kitchen downstairs with the champagne glasses? I can do the makeover and then we can go on the boat. It doesn’t get much more glamorous than that.”

Marlene rolled toward them, the scowl still very much present.

“I don’t want stupid lipstick like that,” Marlene said, looking at Scarlett. Scarlett involuntarily balled her fists into the Dior dress. It just wasn’t worth it. It really wasn’t.

“You know I make everyone up differently,” Lola said. “That color is for Scarlett. But you look better in lighter colors. I have a new apricot gloss set aside for you. It’s my favorite.”

Marlene seemed slightly placated by the fact that she was getting Lola’s favorite color, as opposed to whatever Scarlett was wearing. Scarlett touched her lips. Was it too dark? Did she look like a clown? No. Lola didn’t make mistakes like that.

“We
will
be late if we don’t hurry,” Lola said, extending her hand. “And remember, when we see Mom, don’t say anything, okay? You’re in on my secret. I need you to keep it.”

Marlene accepted the hand and walked with Lola, brushing past Scarlett without a word.

“You know what?” Scarlett said, as they got to the elevator. “I’ll take the stairs. It’ll look more…convincing. See you down there.”

Lola threw her a look over Marlene’s head that might have meant, “I’m sorry” or “Please don’t sweat too much in my dress” or both.

The Mercedes was waiting silently outside the hotel. Chip, Number Ninety-eight himself, was sitting in the backseat. He had a
copy of
The Wall Street Journal
on his lap, which Scarlett found hilarious. Chip had never struck her as a reader. In fact, when she called up a mental picture of how he spent his free time (which she sometimes did), she always pictured him playing with an Etch-A-Sketch and not quite getting how it worked. She was never sure why, but it seemed to fit.

It was hard for Scarlett to tell if Chip was actually handsome, or if his pricey haircuts, regulation rich boy tan, lacrosse body, and sublime dental work caused the illusion of handsomeness. He had golden-reddish hair, much like Marlene, really huge eye-brows (which Spencer suspected he got waxed into shape), and big pouty lips.

Lola managed to lean in first and gave him a little kiss before Marlene squeezed into the car. She loved Chip. Sometimes she seemed to love him more than Lola did.

“There might not be enough room back here for all four of us,” Chip said, nodding a greeting at Scarlett. “Someone should ride up front.”

He didn’t say, “
You
should ride up front.” Not directly. But it was understood, since Lola and Marlene were already in the back. As she got in, she glanced up and saw Mrs. Amberson looking down at them curiously from her perch on the not-a-balcony. She raised her cigarette. Scarlett gave a half-hearted wave and got into the car.

“We’re making a stop first,” Chip called up to the driver. “Rockefeller Center.”

The car glided into action at his command.

“You will never believe this,” Chip said to Lola. “My parents are sending me to this class called Steering Wealth in a few weeks. It’s for people who, you know, are going to inherit stuff and have to
know how to do stuff with it. Hedge funds and stuff. I have to go all the way to Boston to sit around in some hotel for three days.”

Lola tutted in sympathy. Scarlett made a fake crying face. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the driver crack a small smile.

“You have to come up with me.”

“Boston?” Lola said. “I have work…”

“You have to. We’ll stay with my friend Greg and go sailing.”

“Chip, seriously. I can’t take off three whole days. I’m running out of excuses.”

“I’ll be fun,” Chip said. “And I’m not going to make it if you don’t come. You’ll like Boston. You have to get used to coming up there anyway when I move in the fall.”

Chip hadn’t gotten into Harvard. All they knew was that he was going to school “in the Boston area.” She and Spencer had a lot of very amusing theories on what this actually meant, several of which involved crayons.

“I guess you’re right,” Lola said. She didn’t say it with much conviction.

“Can I come?” Marlene asked.

“You want to go in my place?” Chip asked her.

Marlene laughed like she had never, ever in her life heard anything as deliciously entertaining as that. It was appalling.

The driver took the car along Central Park South, past the big hotels. Or, as some may have put it, the
real
hotels.

“Is the corner of Sixth okay?” Chip said. “Can you just walk down? We kind of have to get moving.”

“It’s fine,” Scarlett said. “It’s just a few blocks.”

The car came to a graceful stop between two horse-drawn carriages at the park entrance.

“When you get home,” Lola said in a low voice, “just say that we met up on the street and you walked Marlene the rest of the way home, okay? I really owe you.”

She adjusted Marlene’s wonky, slightly crispy curls and gave her a hug. Once the car slid away, Marlene’s smile was replaced with a look of barely contained rage.

“Why did you
do
that?” she snapped.

“Do what?” Scarlett replied.

“The car! I wanted to go down to the building! They would have taken us if you didn’t say something!”

Now Scarlett saw the error of her ways. Marlene wanted her friends to see her get out of the chauffeur-driven car.

“They had to go,” Scarlett said. “You wouldn’t want Chip and Lola to be late, would you?”

Marlene’s reply was to bolt from the curb and cross the street on her own, before the light had changed. Scarlett had to run after her. They barely missed getting clipped by a bus. Marlene kept ten paces ahead of Scarlett. Scarlett tried to speed up for a while, but then just gave up after the second block and let Marlene get ahead and slip out of sight. She finally caught up to her in the frigid lobby of 30 Rock. The building had a heavy glamour, with its black and gold walls and floor, the massive murals of planes flying and people building, the army of NBC pages scurrying around. Marlene had already latched on to a few of her Powerkids friends, and Scarlett was more or less forgotten.

One thing about disease: It didn’t care how much money your family had, or what neighborhood you came from. The Powerkids were a mix of Connecticut and New Jersey suburbanites; residents of Harlem, Chinatown, the East and West Villages, and the
Upper East and West Sides; Staten and Long Islanders; people from every corner of Brooklyn and the Bronx. These were the people Marlene had lived with for her hospital stay. This was her element.

The studio of
Good Morning, New York
was much smaller than it appeared on TV. To watch the show, you would think they had hundreds of people in the audience. In reality, there were some risers and room for maybe two or three dozen. It was only half full. It was also completely freezing. There were countless cables dangling from the ceiling, and shockingly bright lights.

The famous chef was also shorter than he looked on TV, and he was wearing a lot of makeup. It seemed to take the crew forever to set up the kitchen. Bowls of vegetables were being set out on the counter. The Powerkids were not particularly impressed. They were used to better entertainment than this. To entertain herself, Scarlett started playing with her phone, plugging in every number in the little book she kept in her purse, even really irrelevant ones, like people at school she barely knew outside of Biology study group and Dakota’s housekeeper.

A stage wrangler with a headset came out and addressed the group.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to film the cooking segment now. We’re going to need one or two of you to help in the demonstration and chop up some vegetables.”

The bored Powerkids suddenly came to life, and every hand went up. Scarlett was barely aware of it, and didn’t even notice when the woman said, “And how about you, in the back?”

Someone elbowed Scarlett softly in the neck and she looked up.

“Me?” she asked.

“Yes. Let’s get a bunch of different ages down here and mix it up a little.”

“But I’m…”

The woman couldn’t hear her, and was waving her down impatiently.

“Don’t worry!” said the chef. “I only bite my food!”

An obligatory laugh.

Marlene was not happy about this at all. She gazed at Scarlett in deadly reproach as she made her way down. She tried to throw Marlene a “I didn’t mean to do this” look, but the wrangler was already positioning her by a chopping board and a massive knife.

“You’re the oldest,” the chef said. “So we’ll have you do the more serious chopping, okay? What’s your name?”

Scarlett said her name was Scarlett.

The chef’s makeup was touched up, and there was a general scrambling and shifting around of dishes. They seemed more important than the two Powerkids and Scarlett, who were shoved into a few different positions before the whole thing was settled.

“We go live in one minute,” the wrangler said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be told what to do. Just be natural and have fun.”

She barked this out in the least fun-sounding way possible.

“Live?” Scarlett said, looking at the cameras and the lights.

The word live had never been mentioned before this. There was a lightness in her head, like all of her ability to think floating off of her brain like steam. The wrangler began counting down the minute as the cameras were shifted foward.

And then, there was a loud, horrible noise. Scarlett looked down and saw, to her horror, that her tiny phone clutched in her hand was ringing. The number was an extension of the Hopewell.

“Maybe you should answer that,” the chef said, good-naturedly.

In the shadows, behind the lights, Scarlett could see the wrangler shaking her head and raising her hands in frustration. Scarlett glanced down at the phone fearfully. The camera swung toward the chef, who was still cheerfully goading her to answer. The wrangler came forward to signal to Scarlett to
make it stop.
She had to do something, so Scarlett flicked it open and slapped it to her ear.

“Why don’t you answer your phone?” Mrs. Amberson asked.

“
I’m in a TV studio
,” Scarlett whispered.

“A television studio? Why are you in a television studio?”

Mrs. Amberson’s voice was clearly audible to all around.

“Tell her we’re cooking up some healthy quesadillas with the Powerkids!” the chef called over his shoulder. “She should come on down!”

Another obligatory laugh from the audience.

“Who was that? Where are you?”

“
Good Morning.
”

“Good morning to you, too, O’Hara. But that doesn’t answer the question.”

“
It’s a show. For quesadillas.
”

“What?”

The wrangler held up ten fingers, nine…

“
Do you need something
?” Scarlett whispered urgently.

“I need white plum tea. Whole leaf. Loose. Organic. Also, I want to talk to you. Can you meet me for lunch?”

“
When
?”

“Let’s say twelve-thirty. Where did you say you were?”

“
Rockefeller Center.
”

The wrangler was down to four fingers.

“Of course you are,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Well, meet me in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel then.”

Scarlett snapped the phone shut without a good-bye and dropped it to the floor, where it clacked loudly. She didn’t care if it shattered. The camera swung over to her as the chef passed over to her side of the counter.

“That your boyfriend?” he asked.

“Um…”

“Hey! It’s a party down here! Everybody should come!”

“And two, one…We’re live.”

A blinding red light came out of the camera, causing her to reel backward.

The chef and the host started talking. Their cheerfulness was even more excessive in person than it was on TV. The next five minutes passed in a haze. The Powerkids threw vegetables into a pan. At some point, there was tofu and an avocado.

Scarlett looked down and realized that a cucumber had been placed in front of her by a slinking crew member and that she had grabbed it unconsciously and was grasping it for dear life. Then she realized that it probably didn’t look good to be seen squeezing cucumbers on live TV.

When she was called upon to slice this, she found herself relaxing a little. The chef came over and helped her. It was all over much quicker than it had taken to start, and lights were being shut off. As they were filtered out of the room, Marlene kept ahead. Scarlett had to hurry ahead and catch her by the shoulder.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said.

Marlene shrugged her shoulder away.

“I didn’t,” she said again. “Come on. You saw what happened.”