by Mary Robison
Grace shrugged and made her lower lip pout.
“The hotel keys are here in my office,” DeVier said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
DEVIER PARKED ON THE HOTEL’S service road. He took Grace’s hand and led her under a marquee with wood letters and shattered electric bulbs. They passed a pool and flaking cabanas.
At the kitchen entrance, DeVier stood on a platform and tried different keys in a slatted door.
“Let me borrow your lighter,” he said in the kitchen. Grace buried her fingers in the cool lining of her purse and shuffled the contents until she brought out a butane cigarette lighter. DeVier took it to a fuse box over a deep-frying vat.
“We’ll be shot if we don’t find Lerner,” he said, the switch prong still in his hand.
Grace followed DeVier to a dining room, where a tiered chandelier had been chain-lowered to the floor’s center. A man with overlapping teeth and pitted skin was leaning on a carpenter’s horse. He held a sandwich and drank from an aluminum thermos.
DeVier said, “This is Mr. Lerner, Grace.”
Lerner nodded. He had a pistol holstered at his belt.
“May I have my lighter back now?” Grace asked DeVier.
DeVier patted his coat pockets. Lerner pointed his thermos and said, “Behind you,” to Grace. She turned and saw a parka with a rabbit collar, empty soda bottles, and books of paper matches.
Grace grabbed a match pack and said, “Where is your telephone?”
“In the pantry,” Lerner said. “Follow the cord.”
Grace called Lawrence’s house and got Clair. Behind his voice was music—Doris Day singing with a dance band. Clair said, “I think we miss you, Grace. I think we’re very low. I’ve had it with playing Scrabble. Lawrence keeps making seven-letter words.”
“I’m at the Clearwater Beach Hotel,” she said.
“You can’t be,” Clair said. “It no longer exists.”
“Indeed I am,” Grace said.
“We’ll send a cab for you,” Clair said.
“Come yourselves,” Grace said. “I’d like you to meet the owner, John DeVier.”
“Lawrence doesn’t want to meet DeVier. I know I don’t,” said Clair. “Is he really the owner?”
“Until July. We’ll look for your car. Tell Lawrence.” Grace hung up.
“Who am I going to meet?” DeVier said, behind Grace,
“You’ll like them very much,” she said. “Is that Lerner singing?”
“Yes, of course,” DeVier said. “He’s hired a combo to stay up with him in the Compass Points Room.”
Grace said, “That’s not Lerner. It’s a radio.”
“Yes, and it’s a fine thing, Lerner’s having a radio,” DeVier said. “Otherwise he might get bored between shifts of cardplaying and sports-betting.”
DeVier led Grace back to Lerner. “Lerner’s been informing me about the people who live here,” DeVier said. “Apparently there are dozens. I don’t care, except I might get in trouble with the health department or somebody, even though it’s Lerner’s job to keep them out.”
“You try keeping them out,” Lerner said. “I don’t love this job enough for some blast-up.”
“He plays cards with those who live on the lower floors, you see,” DeVier said to Grace.
Grace sat and examined Lerner’s battery-box flashlight. “Could I take this with me a second?” she asked.
“I guess so,” Lerner said.
“Where are you off to?” DeVier said to Grace.
“I’m just going to look around. I thought I saw a shape or something when I was on the telephone.”
GRACE WENT INTO A LIGHTED utility passage. She met a black man with a white wire beard, half-reclining on the tiled floor some twenty feet in.
“Where’s Red at?” asked the man. He had a green pint of whiskey paused before his mouth. He motioned for Grace to sit down, and when she was seated he passed her the pint.
“Who’s Red?” Grace asked. “You mean Lerner?”
“That’s right,” the man said. “Where’s Lerner?”
“Listening to his radio,” Grace said.
“Oh, yeah? Yeah? His radio? You don’t know Frosty, do you?” the man asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Grace said.
“He’s confused,” the black man said. “Frosty is confused. You ever been to Trinidad?”
“Are you from Trinidad?” Grace asked him.
The black man spat. He said, “Me? That’s right. No, I ain’t from Trinidad,” he said. “Frosty is from Trinidad or someplace. I’m Ernest Robinson. I’m the day guard. Frosty and me and Lerner are the three guards.”
Grace said, “Good to meet you.” She took a sip of the black man’s liquor. She lay close to him with her chin on her cocked palm and said, “I’m going around with this flashlight, upstairs, to see the people who live here.”
“Sometimes we find some people,” Robinson said. “What makes you think people live here?”
“Red told me,” Grace said.
ROBINSON AND GRACE CLIMBED THE fire stairs to the third level. Robinson kicked a landing door and shone the lamp down a hall. The corridor was empty, and stank of tobacco and rug cleaner.
They moved past louvered doors to one that hung open. There a thick plug of candle wax burned in a ground-coffee tin. A dwarfish woman stepped into the orange wash of the candle’s illumination. Men were asleep beneath a tarpaulin. A boy with a cloud of blond hair and a felt cap sat crosslegged in the room’s center. By his knee was a pile of cigarette ends, crushed black on the rug. He stared straight into the white beam of the light.
“Don’t worry,” Grace said to him. “We’re just checking around.”
“Stay with me,” the boy said. “Come in here and stay.”
Robinson took her to other rooms and other floors. Grace tried to talk to a little black girl in soft blue pajamas. The girl scratched at a spot above her ankle. Her legs were folded under her, sideways, like a colt’s.
On the sixth floor, a red-haired Negro in janitor’s grays was laughing to himself. Robinson pointed at Grace and said, “She is here with the owner of this hotel.”
“I’m pleased,” said the redhead. “I’m Pierce du Croix, called ‘Frosty.’”
“DO YOU KNOW I USED to dance here?” Lawrence said, looking up at the walls. He squared the knot of his tie, and Grace saw the discreet glint of his cufflinks. “I put people from the East up here if they weren’t fit to be houseguests. In the summer, I liked it better than the Blackstone or the Palmer. That was a while ago. What kind of man would want this hotel, Victor?”
“DeVier didn’t want it,” Grace said. “It was given to him to dispose of.”
“I wouldn’t have taken it, is all,” Lawrence said. “That’s what lawyers are for.”
DeVier met them in the lobby. Grace did not offer introductions, and DeVier said, “I understand this was quite a splendid place in the big-bands era, with film stars staying over. In one week, they say, Ginger Rogers, Frank Nitty, Mayor Daley—but he was Alderman Daley then and they put him in a room facing the avenue, not the lake.”
Lawrence cleared his throat. He said, “That was before, surely. Nitty and Alderman Daley would have been before the big bands.”
“You’re probably right,” DeVier said. “It was before I was around.”
“Hell,” Lawrence said, “it was before I was around. How old do you think I am?”
“Anyway,” DeVier said, “I’ve got the register at home. Clark Gable. Louis B. Mayer. Three Presidents.”
“Did they sign this register?” Clair asked. He snapped a piece of molding from a column and frowned at it.
“No, no,” DeVier said. “It was like a reservation book, kept in longhand.”
Lawrence moved toward a small dining room with his hands in his pockets. “Is this still called the Gold Room?” he asked.
DeVier looked confused. He said, “It’s not called anything now. It used to be the Rose Room.”
Lawrence said, “I remember the Gold Room. You ate downtown or you went hungry. One of those places where the veal tasted like the pastry and the pastry like the sole. This is pretty paneling here.” Lawrence said, “What is it—cherry?” He ran his thumb along some wainscoting.
“I don’t think it’s cherry,” DeVier said.
Lawrence pulled a radiator screen from a wall duct and hefted it. The tracery on the screen was cast to resemble a rosebush.
“Those were poured in a foundry in Skokie,” DeVier said. “Commissioned for this room.”
Lawrence set the ironwork down and brushed his hands together. “You’ve known Grace how long, DeVier?” he asked. “You couldn’t have known her too long because she’s not very old.”
“Four years before she ever stepped foot in your house,” DeVier said.
THEY WERE ALL IN THE Rose Room. DeVier had Lerner’s flashlight. “Are you set to leave?” he said, turning to Grace.
“Your wife is waiting up for you?” said Lawrence.
“I am leaving my hotel, Grace,” DeVier said sharply. “Locking it up. You are coming with me as planned.”
Lawrence moved, and DeVier switched the flashlight on him. Lawrence covered his eyes with the shadow of his outstretched hand. “Shut it off,” he said.
“It’s not too funny the things you do, Grace,” DeVier said. “So I thought we’d go downtown, or to Cross Point and get a room like we used to, or take a blanket up to Lincoln Park for the dawn and lie on the picnic green.”
“I don’t think we will,” Clair said.
DeVier turned the pool of light on Clair, who squeezed one eye shut but did not hide his face. “Have you ever been with Grace?” DeVier asked him.
“Of course I have,” Clair said.
“With Lawrence watching, probably,” DeVier said. “Is that the way you do these things? All of you included?”
“Not that I know of,” Clair said. “Larry, were you ever watching?”
“All right,” Grace said. She stamped her foot. “My apologies to everyone. Or whatever is called for.”
“Nothing’s called for,” said Lawrence.
“It’s not?” DeVier said. “Then I guess it’s not. Still, I feel very much like punching someone.”
Clair said, “Why don’t we get some food? Why don’t we all do that? When we’ve eaten, DeVier, you can sock the maître d’ repeatedly, because the owner of the only restaurant I know of that’s open deserves to have his employees bashed. Then you can come up and see Lawrence’s place. You owe him that, don’t you? He came to your nice hotel. That sounds right, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it, Grace?”
“It sounds wonderful,” Grace said.
Sisters
RAY SNAPPED A TOMATO FROM a plant and chewed into its side. His niece, Melissa, was sitting in a swing that hung on chains from the arm of a walnut tree. She wore gauzy cotton pants and a twisted scarf across her breasts. Her hair was cropped and pleat-curled.
“Hey,” said Penny, Ray’s wife. She came up the grass in rubber thongs, carrying a rolled-up news magazine. “If you’re weeding, Ray, I can see milkweed and thistle and a dandelion and chickweed from here. I can see sumac.”
“You see good,” said Ray.
“I just had the nicest call from Sister Mary Clare,” Penny said. “She’ll be out to visit this evening.”
“Oh, boy,” Ray said. He spat a seed from the end of his tongue.
“Her name’s Lily,” Melissa said. “She’s my sister and she’s your niece, and we don’t have to call her Mary Clare. We can call her Lily.”
Penny stood in front of Melissa, obscuring Ray’s view of the girl’s top half—as if Ray hadn’t been seeing it all morning.
“What time is Lily coming?” Melissa asked.
“Don’t tell her,” Ray said to Penny. “She’ll disappear.”
“Give me that!” Melissa said. She grabbed Penny’s magazine and swatted at her uncle.
“Do you know a Dr. Streich?” Penny said, putting a hand on Melissa’s bare shoulder to settle her down. “He was a professor at your university, and there’s an article in that magazine about him.”
“No,” Melissa said. She righted herself in the swing.
“Well, I guess you might not know him,” Penny said. “He hasn’t been at your university for years, according to the article. He’s a geologist.”
“I don’t know him,” Melissa said.
Penny pulled a thread from a seam at her hip. “He’s pictured above the article,” she said.
“Blessed be Mary Clare,” Ray said. “Blessed be her holy name.”
Penny said, “I thought we’d all go out tonight.”
“You thought we’d go to the Wednesday Spaghetti Dinner at St. Anne’s,” Ray said, “and show Lily to Father Mulby.”
Penny kneeled and brushed back some leaves on a head of white cabbage.
“I’d like to meet Father Mulby,” Melissa said.
“You wouldn’t,” said Ray. “Frank Mulby was a penitentiary warden before he was a priest. He was a club boxer before that. Years ago.”
Ray stuck the remainder of the tomato in his mouth and wiped the juice from his chin with the heel of his hand. “Ride over to the fire station with me,” he said to Melissa.
“Unh-unh, I don’t feel like it.” She got off the board seat and patted her bottom. “I don’t see what Mulby’s old jobs have to do with my wanting to meet him.”
“Why do you want to meet him?” Penny said. She was looking up at Melissa, shading her eyes with her hand.
“To ask him something,” Melissa said. “To clear something up.”
AT THE FIREHOUSE, TWO MEN in uniforms were playing pinochle and listening to Julie London on the radio.
“Gene. Dennis,” said Ray.
“What are you here for, Ray?” Dennis said. “You aren’t on today. Gene’s on, I’m on, those three spades waxing the ladder truck are on.” Dennis made a fan with his cards and pressed them on the tabletop.
“I’m supposed to be buying a bag of peat,” Ray said. “Only I don’t want to.” He went around Dennis and yanked open a refrigerator. Under the egg shelf there was taped a picture of a girl in cherry-colored panty hose. “I’m avoiding something,” he said. He pulled a Coca-Cola from a six-pack and shut the door. He sat down. “My niece is on the way. I’m avoiding her arrival.”
“The good one?” Gene said.
“The good one’s here already. I pushed her in the swing this morning until she got dizzy. This is the other one. The nun.” Ray held the can off and pulled the aluminum tab.
“Don’t bring her here,” Gene said. “I do not need that.”
“Whatever you do,” Dennis said.
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Ray.
“You can bring that Melissa again,” Dennis said.
“I wouldn’t do that, either. You all bored her.” Ray drank from the can.
A short black man came up the steps, holding a chamois cloth. His shirt and pants were drenched.
“Charlie,” Ray said, tucking his chin to swallow a belch. “Looking nice.”
“They got me with the sprinklers,” Charlie said. “They waited all morning to get me.”
“Well, they’ll do that,” Dennis said.
“I know it,” the black man said.
“Because they’re bored,” Ray said. He sat forward. “I ought to go set a fire and give them something to think about.”
“I wish you would,” Charlie said. He pulled off his shirt.
“WHY THE HELL IS HE at the lead?” Melissa said. She was looking at Father Mulby, who wore an ankle cast. They were in the big basement hall at St. Anne’s, and the priest was carrying a cafeteria tray. Fifty or sixty people waited in line behind him to collect plates of spaghetti and bowls of salad.
“Lookit,” Ray said. “You and Sister Mary Clare find a seat and have a talk. Penny and I’ll fill some trays and bring them over.”
“No, no,” the nun said. “It feels good to stand.
I’ve been sitting in a car all day.”
“Besides, we couldn’t think of anything to tell each other,” Melissa said.
“Melissa, there’s a lot I want to talk about with you.”
“I’m sure.”
“There is,” Sister said.
“Hey,” Ray said to Melissa, “just go grab us a good table if you want to sit down.”
“I do,” Melissa said. She left her place in line and followed Father Mulby, who had limped to the front of the room and was sitting down at one of the long tables. She introduced herself and asked if she could join him.
“It’s reserved,” he said. “That seat’s reserved for Father Phaeton. Just move over to that side, please.” The priest indicated a chair across the table.
“Okay, okay,” Melissa said. “When he gets here, I’ll jump up.” She sat down anyway. Her long hair lifted from around her throat and waved in the cool exhaust of a window fan.
Father Mulby glanced across the room and lit a Camel over his spaghetti. “I guess I can’t start until everyone’s in place,” he said.
“That’ll be an hour,” Melissa said.
“Here’s Father Phaeton,” Mulby said.
Melissa changed sides. Ray and Sister Mary Clare joined them and sat down, with Melissa in between. Penny came last. She looked embarrassed to be carrying two trays, one loaded with silverware, napkins, and water glasses,
Ray passed the food and utensils around. “Someone will be bringing soft drinks,” he said to Melissa.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“No,” Father Mulby said. “We don’t serve coffee anymore. The urns and all.”
“I’d like to be excommunicated,” Melissa told him. “I want the thirteen candles dashed to the ground, or whatever, and I want a letter from Rome.”
“I don’t know,” the old priest said. He forked some salad lettuce into his mouth. “If you kick your sister or push me out of this chair onto the floor, I can excommunicate you.”
“What’s this about, Father?” said Sister Mary Clare.
“Nothing,” Ray said. “Just your sister.”