What's The Worst That Could Happen (9 page)

As for that show, it was
Desdemona!,
the feminist musical version of the world–famous love story, slightly altered for the modern American taste (everybody lives). Hit songs from the show included “Oh, Tell, Othello, Oh, Tell,” and “Iago, My Best Friend” and the foot–stomping finale, “
Here’s
the Handkerchief!”

There were statistics also, known to management, as to how many Europeans stayed at the hotel and/or attended the show, how many South Americans, how many Japanese, how many Canadians, how many Americans, and (show attendance only) how many New Yorkers (eleven, so far). There were statistics about income levels and education levels and number of family members in party, and all of that stuff, but so what? What it came down to was, the N–Joy had, according to plan, quickly established itself as a destination for amateurs, vacationers, not very worldly world travelers of moderate income and education. Except for TUI employees, who had no choice, the hotel got almost no business trade, a market they wouldn’t be starting to tap into until five years down the line, when the top–floor conference center was completed. In the meantime, they knew their customers and were content with their customers, and business was ticking along pretty much as anticipated.

Of course, not every customer exactly matched the statistics and the demographics. For instance, most hotel guests who arrived by taxi had come from one of New York’s three principal airports or possibly one of its two railroad stations or even, more rarely, it’s one major bus depot; none had ever come here from Third Avenue and Nineteenth Street before, as John and May Williams with a home address in Gary, Indiana, had done, late on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 10; though of course there was no way for the scarlet–uniformed doorman to know where this particular taxi had come from nor what a short journey had been taken by that scuffed and mismatched luggage Mr. Williams was wrestling the bellboy for until Mrs. Williams kicked Mr. Williams a mean one in the ankle.

Most of the hotel’s guests lived more than a hundred miles from New York City, whereas the Williamses, who had never been in Gary, Indiana, in their lives, actually lived a mile and a half from the hotel, downtown and then across to the east side. Most hotel guests used credit cards, as did Mr. Williams, but usually they were the guests’ own cards, which had not recently been stolen, ironed, altered, and adjusted. And most hotel guests used their own names.

“Mr. and Mrs. Williams, enjoy your stay at the N–Joy,” the desk clerk said, handing Dortmunder two of the magnetized cards they’d be using instead of room keys.

“We will,” Dortmunder said. “I’m sure of it.”

“New York!” breathed May, with a dazzled smile. She gazed around at this lobby in the sky, a four–story–tall Greek temple to the goddess of costume jewelry. “So this is New York!”

Dortmunder thought she was overdoing it, but the desk clerk seemed pleased.

Not that there weren’t shops, stores, boutiques. The lobby was ringed by them, like a necklace of paper clips, each with its own display windows to show the enticements within, each with the names of other cities in gold letters down at one corner of the display window, to suggest that this shop had branches in those cities. But why? Why have a store full of
this
stuff in Milan, in London, in Paris, in Beverly Hills? Well, okay, Beverly Hills. But in those other cities, what these citations must mean is that they’ve got a shop like this in a
hotel
like this in those cities. So the argument was, why travel?

With the shops closed and foot traffic in the lobby sparse, Kelp eased himself into boutique after boutique, hoping there might be something toward the rear of the place different from what was visible through the window, but it was always more of the same, and the key word was
shiny.
Shiny leather, shiny men’s watches, shiny furs, shiny pink glass vases, shiny covers of shiny magazines, shiny purses, shiny shoes, shiny earrings. It was like being in a duty–free shop for magpies.

Midnight, and no score. Kelp knew John and May didn’t like him to burst in unexpectedly, and he might maybe have been doing it a little too often lately, so he would definitely not go to their room before the 1:00 A.M. appointment, which meant, what now? Whereas the New York City outside this building was still jumping, just getting into its evening surge, the N–Joy was down and dark, all except for the cocktail lounge, tucked away in a far corner. So Kelp went there.

The cocktail lounge was a long low–ceilinged lunette curved around a massive bar. The principal color was purple, and the principal lighting was nonexistent. The candles that guttered on every table were encased in thick red glass. The main light source, in fact, was the shiny black Formica tops of the round tables, each of them surrounded by vast low overstuffed armchairs that to sit in would be like trying to sit in a jelly donut. Three of the tables were occupied, by murmuring, whispering, muttering couples, all dressed up with nowhere to go, drinking stingers or something worse. At the bar were two women, one of them a waitress in a black tutu, the other a customer with her elbows on the bar, her lumpy old shoulderbag on the stool next to her, and a tall glass in front of her that, judging by her bleak expression, was definitely half–empty and not half–full.

The bar stools were tall and wide, with soft purple vinyl tops. Kelp took one equidistant from both women, put one forearm on the bar, and watched the bartender, a dour workman with a mustache, finish building two stingers. The waitress took those drinks away, and the bartender turned his attention to Kelp. “Yes, sir,” he said, sliding a paper napkin onto the bar.

“Bourbon,” Kelp said.

The bartender nodded and waited, but Kelp was finished. Finally, the barman said, “And?”

“Oh, well, a glass, I guess. And an ice cube.”

“That’s it?” A faint smile appeared below the mustache. “We don’t get much call for that kind of thing here,” he said.

“You’ve got bourbon, though,” Kelp suggested.

“Oh, certainly. But most people want something with it. Some nice sweet vermouth? Maraschino cherry? A twist? Orange slice? Angostura bitters? Triple sec? Amaretto?”

“On the side,” Kelp said.

“You got it.”

The bartender went away, and the woman to Kelp’s left said, “Hello.”

He looked at her. She was probably in her midthirties, attractive in a way that suggested she didn’t know she was attractive and therefore didn’t try very hard. She was not in a holiday mood. The sound of her voice when she’d said hello had made it seem as though she hadn’t particularly wanted to speak but felt it was a requirement and so she’d gone ahead and done it. “And hello,” Kelp said.

The woman nodded; mission accomplished. “Where you from?” she asked.

“Cleveland, Ohio. And you?”

“Lancaster, Kansas. I’m supposed to go back there … sometime.”

“Well,” Kelp said, “if that’s where you live.”

“I believe my husband has left me,” she said.

This was unexpected. Kelp didn’t see a second glass on the bar. He said, “Maybe he’s in the men’s room.”

“I think he left me Monday,” she said.

Ah; today being Wednesday. Kelp thought about that while the bartender placed a glass and an ice cube and some bourbon on the paper napkin in front of him. “Thanks,” he said, and said to the woman, “Here in New York? Just disappeared?”

“Not disappeared, left me,” she said. “We came here Sunday, and on Monday he said, ‘Anne Marie, it isn’t working out,’ and he packed his bag and went away.”

“That’s rough,” Kelp said.

“Well,” she said, “it’s rough because it’s
here.
I mean, he’s right, it
isn’t
working out, that’s why I’ve been having an affair with Charlie Petersen for three years now, and is
he
gonna turn white as a sheet when he hears the news, but I do wish he’d done it, if he was gonna do it, I do wish he’d done it in Lancaster and not here.”

“More convenient,” Kelp said, and nodded to show he sympathized.

“What it was,” she said, “this trip was our last try at making the marriage
work.
You know how people say they wanna make the marriage
work?
Like they wanna give it a paper route or something. So we came here and we got on each other’s nerves just as bad as we do at home in Lancaster, only here we only had one room to do it in, so Howard said, it isn’t working out, and he packed and took off.”

“Back to Lancaster.”

“I don’t believe so,” she said. “He’s a traveling salesman for Pandorex Computers, you know, so he’s all over the Midwest anyway, so he’s probably with some girlfriend at the moment.”

“Any kids?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “This damn glass is empty again. What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Bourbon.”

“And?”

“And more bourbon.”

“Really? I wonder what that’s like.”

“Barman,” Kelp said, “I think we got a convert. Another of these for me, and one of these for the lady, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I hate to be called the lady.”

“Sorry,” Kelp said. “My mama told me pronouns were impolite.”

“The lady sucks.”

“That’s good news,” Kelp said. “From now on, I’ll refer to you as the broad. Deal?”

She grinned, as though she didn’t want to. “Deal,” she said.

The barman brought the drinks, and the broad sipped hers and made a face. Then she sipped again, tasted, and said, “Interesting. It isn’t sweet.”

“That’s right.”

“Interesting.” She sipped again. “If you get tired of calling me the broad,” she said, “try Anne Marie.”

“Anne Marie. I’m Andy.”

“How you doing?”

“Fine.”

“You see, what it is,” she said, “it’s a package, a tour, we paid for everything ahead of time. I’ve got the room until Saturday, and I got breakfast until Saturday, and I got dinner until Friday, so it seemed stupid to go back to Lancaster, but in the meantime what the hell am I doing here?”

“Holding up the bar.”

“I certainly don’t want to get drunk,” she said. “I’ve been pacing myself.” She frowned at the half–empty glass in front of her. “Will this get me drunk?”

“Probably not,” Kelp said. “Unless you’re one of those rare people with the funny chemistry, you know.”

She looked at him as though she might begin to doubt him soon. She said, “How long are you here for?”

“Oh, for a while,” he said, and sipped from his own half–full glass.

She thought about that. “You like this hotel?”

“I’m not staying here,” he said.

She was surprised. “Why would you come in here,” she asked, “if you’re not staying here? You couldn’t have been just passing by.”

“I’ve got an appointment in the neighborhood,” he told her, and looked at his watch, and said, “pretty soon. So I’m killing time here.”

“So we’re ships passing in the night,” she said.

“Possibly,” Kelp said. “In this hotel, do they have that little refrigerator in the room full of stuff?”

“Beer,” she said, “and champagne, and macadamia nuts and trail mix.”

“That’s the one. Does it have bourbon?”

She considered, then pointed at her empty glass. “This stuff? I’m not sure.”

“I could come around later, take a look,” Kelp suggested. “I figure, my appointment, I’m probably done by three, maybe earlier, something like that.”

“That’s some late appointment,” she said.

“Well, you know, New York,” he said. “The city that never sleeps.”

“Well,
I
sleep,” she said. “Though not so much, actually, since Howard left. I suppose he isn’t coming back.”

“Doesn’t sound it,” Kelp said.

“I’m in 2312,” Anne Marie said. “When your appointment’s done, you know, you could try, knock on the door. If I’m awake, I’ll answer.”