Suite Scarlett (7 page)

The next morning, Mrs. Amberson was dressed in her yoga clothes and smoking on her ledge when Scarlett knocked on the door of the Empire Suite.

“Forget that for now,” she said, as Scarlett set down a pile of fresh sheets and towels on the dressing table. “You and I are going somewhere!”

“We are?” Scarlett said, looking down at her T-shirt and wrinkled shorts.

“I need to get reacquainted with the city,” she said. “It’s been a good twen…
while
since I’ve lived here. Do you even know what New York was like in the seventies and eighties? This Disneyland that you live in is not the New York I had to deal with. You didn’t ride the subway after ten at night unless you had a deep desire to get mugged at knifepoint. Times Square was porn central. It was a genuinely
frightening
place.”

She said this with a great deal of affection. She sprang off the sill and over the desk, tossing her lit cigarette over her head, narrowly missing the rail and having it bounce back into her hair.

“We’re going for a walk,” she said. “It’s time for me to rediscover New York.”

It was a steamy, sticky morning, but this did not make Mrs. Amberson slow her pace at all. They headed west to Central Park, entering at the zoo gate, negotiating their way through the crush of double-wide strollers.

“I couldn’t help but overhear you and your brother talking outside last night,” she said. “It sounds like you’re both in a bit of a pickle.”

By “couldn’t help it,” Scarlett assumed that she meant, “I was hanging off my window ledge to make sure I caught every word.”

“It’ll work out,” Scarlett said. “Spencer’s really talented.”

“I like your attitude. But he’s not the only one with a problem, is he?”

She let that statement linger and took a deep drag of her cigarette, exhaling smoke for what seemed like ten minutes, like a machine about to explode.

“I lived in New York during a very important time,” she finally went on. “I thought I came back to New York to revive my acting career, but I’ve realized what I should really be doing is writing my story. You said you were a writer. That’s what made me think of it.”

“You’re going to write a book?” Scarlett asked. “Just like that?”

“That’s right. And it’s going to be amazing! That’s why we’re taking this little walk—to get the creative juices flowing.”

Well, something got flowing, but mostly it was sweat. At least for Scarlett. Though her face glistened a little, Mrs. Amberson didn’t sweat. It was unnatural. They marched down Sixth Avenue, pausing briefly at Radio City Music Hall.

“I was almost a Rockette,” she said. “But I didn’t make the height
requirement. I was one inch too tall. One inch. I didn’t think I’d ever get over it. I did eventually, but it took a while.”

She got out another cigarette, struck her match on the building face, and waved Scarlett on. For an hour, Mrs. Amberson pointed out places where her friends had lived, restaurants that were no longer there, former clubs, sites of muggings and random acts of violence.

“Where are we going?” Scarlett finally asked, as they turned on to Ninth Avenue.

“To my roots,” Mrs. Amberson said.

Five more blocks of marching. There were lots of apartment buildings here, but they weren’t as pristine as some of the others they had passed. They finally stopped in front of a narrow gold-brick building, only a few stories high.

“It wasn’t
like
this,” she said.

“What wasn’t like what?”

“I lived here,” she said. “In 1978. It was the most frightening building you could imagine. I sat up there, on the fire escape, and watched a man run down the street firing a gun. I saw people get mugged, stabbed, beaten. My fire escape was more exciting than the news. I used to have to lock myself in at night with six locks.”

A woman came out of the building walking a tiny dog on a pink leash.

“I’m going to be sick,” Mrs. Amberson said, watching the pair walk off. “What’s happened to this city?”

Mrs. Amberson tried the door, but it was firmly locked. She hit a few random buzzers, but no one answered.

“Come on,” she said, turning back toward Ninth Avenue. “There’s something else I want to see.”

This stretch of Ninth Avenue was a mixture of restaurants and bars of every sort. Thai. Greek. Chinese. Italian. Ethiopian. There was a wine bar, a beer bar, a cupcake shop, a pet boutique, and a store full of upscale paints. In short, a happy little cosmos of urban needs were fulfilled in its short distance. In the middle of it all was a midsized fancy grocery store called Food Paradise, with a large display of exotic fruits, imported cheeses, and fine pastries in the window.

“Well, at least
that’s
still here, sort of,” she said. “But it wasn’t a paradise.”

She crossed the street midblock, dodging a cab, and went into the store.

“You should have seen the dump that was here in the seventies,” she said, eying the olive bar. “It was truly disgusting. Moldy Wonderbread, roaches. Back then, I used to make ketchup soup.”

She walked up and down every aisle, mumbling about what she saw there. All of the food, so nicely laid out, seemed to make her first sad, then annoyed, and finally, weirdly jubilant. Scarlett just got hungry.

“Let’s go,” Mrs. Amberson said abruptly. “I’ve had enough.”

She took Scarlett’s arm and wheeled to the door. A friendly-faced security guard cleared his throat and stepped in front of them.

“Just a minute, please,” he said. “Please open your bag, miss.”

Scarlett was surprised to find that this remark was addressed to her.

“What?” Scarlett replied. “Why?”

“Just please open it.”

Mrs. Amberson stared up at the ceiling, and Scarlett got a very sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t quite account for.

“Please open your bag, miss,” the man repeated.

Scarlett pulled her bag from her shoulder warily. It was unzipped. It had been zipped before, she was sure of it. She held it open. To her amazement, there were three cans of tuna fish lying on top that had definitely not been there when she left the house.

“Those aren’t mine,” she said.

“I know that,” he said. “All right. Step over to this office with me, please. Let’s make this easy, okay?”

Scarlett felt her legs start to go soft and found herself reaching out to Mrs. Amberson’s arm for support. It was amazingly muscular.

“Scarlett!” Mrs. Amberson said. “I thought we were past this!”

“What?” Scarlett replied, wheeling around.

“We have come way too far for this,” Mrs. Amberson was rambling on.

“What are you talking about?”

Mrs. Amberson angled herself between Scarlett and the man.

“Listen,” she said. “This is totally unacceptable, but please hear me out. I’m a volunteer with Teen Reach New York, which is a group that works with troubled teens.”

The man crossed his arms over his chest. Scarlett’s jaw dropped in shock.

“This is Scarlett,” she continued. “We’re transitioning her out of a very bad home environment. Scarlett used to have to steal to feed her brothers and sisters. I’m her one-on-one counselor—just a volunteer—and I take her out and help her develop new, socially
acceptable habits. I’ve been trying to teach her how to buy nutritious meals on a budget. I was supposed to be watching, but she’s fast…She’s a good girl, though.”

By now, other people were watching them. All activity in the three closest checkout lanes had stopped. Mrs. Amberson was shaking a little now, like she had truly been rattled by this whole event.

“Please,” she said. “Arresting her won’t do any good. We’ve done so much work to get her out of that part of the system. I’ll…”

She looked around anxiously, then pointed to a wall of paper balloons, each one marking a one dollar donation to a local food bank.

“I’ll pay for the tuna and I’ll buy a hundred of those balloons,” she said. She got out her wallet and pulled out a handful of twenties. “This is my money, and I will give the food bank a hundred dollars. Other people will benefit, along with Scarlett. And she’ll never come back in the store again. Obviously, the counselors and the doctors have some more work to do. But please. The girl stole
tuna fish.
This is how she used to have to live. She’s not one of these kids that steals for a thrill.”

The man was clearly struggling with this one. He had what he clearly believed was a shoplifter…and one of them
was
a shoplifter…yet Mrs. Amberson’s apparent anguish had moved him.

“She doesn’t come back here,” he said. “Ever.”

“Understood,” Mrs. Amberson said, shoving the money into his hand.

“You want to sign the balloons?” he asked.

“No. I think we’d better go. Thank you for your understanding.”

She put her arm around Scarlett’s shoulders and pulled her along, out into the blinding sun. She didn’t stop until they were down the
block and around the corner, where she threw up her hand for a cab, which she ushered Scarlett into.

“Sixty-ninth and Lexington,” she told the driver. “Mind if I smoke?”

“No,” he answered happily. “I will, too, then. No one ever lets me, you know?”

“Make my day.”

They both lit up. Scarlett sat, still not recovered enough to speak.

“Did you hear that?” Mrs. Amberson said ecstatically. “Did you hear what just came out of my mouth? I haven’t lost a thing. I am going to call my agent and tell him that he has to try to get me some kind of role as a child protection agent or something on
Crime and Punishment.
Someone who comes on and testifies and looks all shaken up but professional. Trouble is, I think my agent is dead. I guess I need a new one…”

“You stole tuna fish,” Scarlett finally managed. Her voice was loud enough to startle the driver and cause him to slide the panel behind his head shut. “You put it in my bag.”

“What’s even better,” Mrs. Amberson said, “is that he didn’t notice this. You covered so
well
!”

She reached into the waistband of her pants and pulled out a candy bar.

“I didn’t cover anything,” Scarlett said again, not bothering to lower her voice. “You almost got me arrested!”

Mrs. Amberson turned this time, but looked utterly unperturbed. She gazed at Scarlett through a thin veil of cigarette smoke.

“I would never have let that happen,” she said. “He was only bluffing. Wasn’t that
fun
?”

“I’m banned from the store! They think I’m a juvie tuna fish thief with a whole team of counselors and doctors!”

“You’ll never go to that store. It’s all the way across town. And they’ll never remember you, I promise. They just say that.”

“That is
not the point
!”

“You seem upset,” Mrs. Amberson said mildly. “You’re just full of adrenaline right now, and you’re using that adrenaline as panic. Performers constantly go through this, and we turn our head rush into performance. We use it. We enjoy it. Now breathe through your nose and out of your mouth, a nice cleansing flow of air. The store got money to cover what was taken. You didn’t get into any trouble. A very worthy organization got a hundred dollars to buy food for hungry people. Enjoy the moment!”

She was using a cooing, lulling voice that Scarlett felt was probably copied from one of her yoga instructors. Scarlett reached over and slid open the panel.

“Pull over,” she said to the driver.

“Oh, come on, Scarlett. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Adventure is white-water rafting. This…” She held up the can. “…is tuna.”

“That was very well phrased. You have a touch of the actress about you, too, you know.”

The cab stopped, and Scarlett opened the door and got out.

“You did very well!” Mrs. Amberson called to her as she walked off. “You pass! I think this is going to work out splendidly!”

Scarlett had no idea what that meant, and she didn’t care.

It took Scarlett the entire walk home to calm down—and it was a long, hot walk. When she arrived at the Hopewell, she pushed right on through the empty lobby, through the dining room, into the kitchen.

The Hopewell kitchen was embarrassingly large for a family that couldn’t cook and had no guests to feed. Most of the appliances were from the sixties and seventies, and there were way too many of them. Only about half of the stuff worked. Belinda could make the place behave somehow, but no one else could.

There was something else in the kitchen that refused to behave. Namely, her parents, who quickly moved away from each other and did some quick hair and clothes adjusting. Scarlett knew what that meant. She had walked in on them canoodling. Again. It was kind of nice to have parents who liked each other—she was one of the only people she knew who did. Still, every one of the Martin siblings had caught them making out. There was, after all, a good reason why there were four of them.

“Guys,” Scarlett said, wincing, “can’t you put up a sign or something?”

Her dad was pretending to be very interested in something behind one of the three refrigerators.

“Is it you or Marlene who freaks out about mice?” he asked casually. “I can never remember. I know one of you is spiders and one of you is mice.”

Scarlett responded by backing up against the worktable and pulling herself up to sit on it.

“Oh, right,” he said. “It’s you. You should ignore what we’re doing then.”

For once, the sucking face may have been preferable.

“Mrs. Amberson spoke to us this morning,” her mom said, opening a box of no-kill traps. “Has she told you her idea?”

“Oh, she told me,” Scarlett said, warily watching the floor.

“You don’t seem happy about it. I thought you’d be excited about working on a book.”

“Wait…what?”

“She wants you to be her assistant!” her mother said happily. “You really seem to have impressed her.”

“I thought you said I couldn’t get a job,” Scarlett said quickly.

Her parents gave each other googely-eyes for a moment.

“Look,” her dad said, “we had a long talk in bed this morning about all of you. And we’ve come to some decisions. We’ve realized just how much you all try.”

“Lola works hard and has voluntarily taken a year off from going to school or moving,” her mother said, reaching out for her dad’s hand. “Spencer has tried his best at auditioning, and he’s really straightened up in the last year—getting up at five every morning to work a breakfast shift. And you…you’ve
never gotten much of a chance at all. And here comes something that is what you love, writing, that would pay a really generous amount.”

“It would?” Scarlett said.

“She’s offering to pay you five hundred dollars a week,” she said. “Cash. We need the help around here, but she is your guest, and that’s a lot of money. And a good opportunity.”

Five hundred dollars a week was an
actual, literal
fortune. Some of her friends got almost that much for their cab, clothing, and going out allowances.

“So,” he said, “are you happy with that?”

This would have been the right time to tell them about the tuna, and the lying to the security guard. But…
five hundred dollars.

There was something else lingering here, though.

“What did you decide about Spencer?” she asked.

“Spencer told us that this show is connected to NYU and Juilliard, and that doing it might give him a very good chance to go there, maybe even get another scholarship, this time for something he really wants to do,” her dad said.

“We called the culinary school,” her mother said. “They said they’d have to let his scholarship go today, but there’s no reason he can’t reapply, and they’ll make a note on his file. There is a strong chance that if he reapplies in the next few weeks, they’ll be able to give him the same package. It’s not guaranteed, but it sounds like he has a good shot.”

“We decided to let him do this show,” he finished. “If it doesn’t work, we may still be able to get him in. And combined with you getting this opportunity…”

“The two things came at the same time,” her mother finished. “With this little bit of extra security for you, we felt better about taking a chance with him.”

Of course.
Of course
, her taking this job was tied into Spencer’s chance.

“So…” her dad said, all smiles, “happy?”

“Thrilled,” Scarlett said.

Okay. So her summer was about to be a minefield. But she would be rich by the end of it. She could buy a whole new wardrobe. A new computer. There would be iced coffees at lunch and cabs when she needed them…

“As for the money,” her dad said, “it’s way too much to play with. So she’ll be paying us directly, and we’ll put it away for you. But you can have fifty a week. Now, we just need you to take the dirty table linens to Mrs. Foo’s and pick up Marlene’s prescriptions at Duane Reade. The linens are behind the front desk.”

Scarlett slunk out of the dining room.

The dirty tablecloths and napkins had been bundled into a large plastic bag. Obviously, they had been allowed to collect, because the bag was heavy and a bit hard to carry. She hoisted it up and it partially blocked her view. She used it as cushioning as she slammed her way back out the door.

She staggered her way down half the block, the sun beating down on her.

“Whoa!” a familiar voice said. “That looks heavy.”

A pair of hands lifted away her burden, revealing Eric. She laughed, a keening, nervous laugh—sort of like the sound made by little purse dogs when people accidentally catch their fur in the zipper.
Not an alluring sound. Combine that with the fact that she was sweating and carrying twenty pounds of dirty linen…it was a pretty, pretty picture.

“Where are you going with this?” he asked.

“Down the block,” she managed to say.

“You lead the way. Can’t have you carrying this.”

She was too astonished to do or say anything when he took the bag from her.

“I’m here working with Spencer,” he said. “I just came down to get a sandwich from the place on the corner. So this works out. What’s going on today? Any more TV appearances?”

“No,” she managed, “but my new boss just tried to get me arrested for shoplifting tuna.”

He stopped and set the bag down on the sidewalk to redistribute the weight.

“Is that just a joke I don’t get, or did that happen?”

“It happened,” Scarlett said. “It definitely happened.”

“I’ve only known you for a day or two, and you’ve managed to do more weird stuff than anyone I can think of.”

He picked up the bag again, but frequently peered at her over it.

“Does crime pay well?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t get to keep any of it. It’s going to a school fund.”

“Ah, the joys of college tuition,” he said. “Thank God for my commercial. Two days of work paid for a whole year at NYU. I’d better get another one or I don’t know how I’m coming back.”

It was impossible for Scarlett to ignore that Eric needing to earn money fit nicely into the promise she had made to Spencer about rich guys.

They had reached the laundry. Eric carried the bag in and set it on the counter.

“I look forward to hearing the stories,” he said. “Promise me you’ll tell me when I see you. And I will see you. I’ll make a point of it.”

He gave her one final, devastating, and unlikely smile, then went off in search of his sandwich.

It was at that moment that Scarlett fully accepted her new employment.