Hotel No Tell

by Daphne Uviller

  “You know, people in New York have kids, too,” I reminded her.

  “Maybe I should have an affair,” Lucy said, grabbing a sponge from the sink and wiping at nonexistent crumbs.

  “Excellent plan,” Macy said, sliding off her stool. “Very original, too. Call me when you need help deciding between the butcher and the lawn guy. I’m going to bed.” Macy blew us each a kiss and wandered out of the kitchen.

  Lucy watched her go and then looked at me pleadingly. “I feel so trapped, Zeph. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I imagine jumping in the car and leaving them all for good. I’m never going to do it, but the thought calms me down. Better than yoga breathing. How sick is that?”

  A thought crossed my mind, but I censored myself.

  “What?” Lucy said.

  “Well, and I’m only asking, and I don’t want to make you mad—”

  “Just ask.”

  “Do you ever … do you think sometimes you don’t connect with your kids because of, you know, the genetic thing …,” I trailed off, certain I was going to spark a tempest.

  “Because they weren’t my eggs?” Lucy asked with genuine surprise. She laughed with relief. “God, no. I think about the donor out there as one of the gajillion technicians who helped me have my babies. They’re mine and I’m stuck with them, and the fact that I sometimes wish I’d never become a mother has nothing to do with it.”

  I pulled the plastic wrap over the cake and tucked it back in the refrigerator. “Honestly, Luce? I don’t know what to tell you to make you feel better.”

  “I know you don’t. No one does.” She wrapped her arms around her tiny body, a body that had gotten worryingly thin. “I just need to get down to the city more. Go to one of Dover’s glittery events and forget myself for a few hours.”

  “Oh, hey!” I remembered as I rinsed off the communal fork. “Come down this Monday. He’s hosting a non-Oscar party, where people are reading the speeches they didn’t get to read at the Oscars.”

  Lucy’s mouth hung open. “People? You mean people who were nominated and didn’t win?”

  I nodded. “It was supposed to happen back in February, but it took a while for them to all coordinate their schedules.”

  Lucy laughed for the first time since Lenore had mucked with her marinade that evening. “You think? Can’t imagine why!” She placed her palms on the countertop and pushed down until her feet left the floor. “Why is that prospect still so damn thrilling? I can finally have a normal conversation with Dover, but the thought of eating pretzels with the cast of High Dudgeon is exciting enough to carry me through to next week.”

  “Maybe because you know for sure that Mercedes would never let your mother-in-law in the door.” I laid the fork among its gleaming brethren in the silverware drawer, which was free of the grit that mysteriously accumulated in my own. “Can’t you send Lenore on a cruise or something? Don’t you people with a lot of money do that?”

  “I still think a hit man would be the best solution.” Lucy stretched her neck, tilting her head from side to side. “But a cruise. That is intriguing.…”

  Chapter 10

  Having an ambulatory meeting with Pippa Flatland ranked low on my list of preferred activities, requiring as it did the lung capacity to keep up with her redwood-length strides while carrying on a coherent conversation as well as the forethought to bring to work a change of unsweaty clothes. If Pippa was angry or excited, her pace increased, and on this Thursday morning she was one or the other, but I didn’t yet know which. I forsook my dignity and broke into a light jog.

  “So after the cousin threatened you—”

  “Well, I don’t know if it was really a threat,” I puffed. The jog was not helping the stomachache I still had from gorging on apples in an upstate orchard.

  “Don’t split hairs, Zephyr. What did he do when you confronted him about the money transfer?”

  I had begun my briefing in Pippa’s office, but as soon as I got to the part about Samantha Kimiko Hodges and her potion, Pippa hadn’t been able to sit still. I had assumed we would head to the ferry but, instead, we charged up Pearl Street. By Wall Street, I was gasping for air. Pippa wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

  “He acted surprised, as if he didn’t know about it. As if he didn’t know Summa had paid Samantha.”

  “What makes you assume he was acting?”

  “Well,” I gulped, “the fact that he immediately wanted it covered up, forgotten. I mean, if someone else hired Samantha to kill him, wouldn’t he want both her and that person arrested? Also, it would be a free pass out of Bellevue, clearly attempted homicide, not suicide.” As we sailed past Maiden Lane, I thought longingly of the MetroCard nestled inside my backpack.

  “Any chance he was trying to stage his own murder, for whatever reason?”

  I shrugged. It was all I could muster.

  “Otherwise he’s a victim unwilling to reveal he’s a victim—equally mysterious.”

  A few yards in front of us stood an earnest-looking man wielding a clipboard. Normally I resented having to summon the energy to deflect petitioners—I’d put my cellphone to my ear and feign conversation—but today I hoped the do-gooder would offer me a chance to catch my breath.

  “Do you have a moment for the Democratic Party?” he asked.

  Pippa practically ran him over. I glanced back apologetically.

  “And what is this Summa place he runs?”

  “Not sure. Genetics something. Going to visit,” I wheezed.

  “And no guesses as to why this hotel guest had an appointment at Summa?”

  “Zero,” I admitted.

  On the next block was another petitioner. I started to slow my pace, but Pippa plowed ahead.

  “Do you have a moment for the environment?” pleaded a chubby Goth volunteer.

  “Oh for God’s sake!” Pippa sniped. “The rain lets up and you people are out like worms!” We crossed John Street.

  “All right, look.” Mercifully, Pippa came to an abrupt stop on the corner. “Where is the Hodges woman right now?”

  I shrugged sheepishly.

  “You asked her too many questions,” Pippa reproached me. “Does she suspect anything about you?”

  “I think she just thinks I’m a nosy pain in the ass.”

  “Still.” Pippa started walking again. I groaned out loud, but she didn’t even notice. “I’m concerned for your safety, Zephyr.”

  I was concerned with keeping my Jonagolds down.

  “Right,” she said, when I didn’t bother answering. “I’ll give you a chance to visit Summa, but then I’m inclined to bring some other folks in on this—”

  “Do you have a moment to save the children?”

  “NO!” Pippa bellowed. “Christ, we ought to have taken the ferry. Zephyr, for the next twenty-four hours, I want hourly updates from you. Call me when you’re going to sleep, and call me when you wake up. Meantime, I’m going to see whether I can dig up anything on the Hodges woman.” She stopped again and looked up at the street sign. She seemed surprised. “Brilliant, we’ve got you partway to the hotel.”

  I raised my eyebrows, as if I, too, were pleased by this discovery.

  “Speaking of which,” she said casually, brushing her hair back from her face. “Do you have any idea whether this is connected to Ballard McKenzie’s missing hundred?”

  I blushed. Pippa may as well have said: I think we’re both relieved that a month of work has resulted in something (even if it was entirely accidental), but, by the way, have you entirely forgotten the case I assigned you?

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I can’t figure out how, but I’m going to keep looking.”

  “Yes, do, Zephyr. It would be rather agreeable to make a dent in the case, don’t you think?”

  * * *

  I tried not to strangle Asa as he squinted at the ceiling.

  “Let me think.” He tapped a pencil against his doughy chin. “It was a moving van, that company that employs artists an
d actors. The van was reddish—mmm, maybe more like brown with red overtones? And there were two guys. One was a gym rat.” Asa wrinkled his nose in condemnation. “The other was much more my type. A little something to grab on to, you know?”

  “Asa?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did she tell you where she was going? Did the movers tell you? Do you have any idea?” I asked from between gritted teeth. I glanced around the lobby, trying to tune out the echo of Jeremy’s threat in my head.

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here on your days off. You know what? I think you actually have a thing for Hutchinson.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment and wished that I was familiar with some kind of breathing technique other than huffing with exasperation.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He hates you, and that intrigues you. Turns you on. Speaks to some sub-, post-, anti-feminist self-loathing.”

  “Asa.”

  He frowned, apparently having confounded even himself.

  “Asa, please. Do you know where Mrs. Hodges went this morning? It must have taken an hour or two to move her out. You didn’t ask? You didn’t make small talk with the out-of-work, love-handled actor?” I wasn’t even bothering to hide the desperation in my voice.

  “Why do you care? Did you develop some kind of Tuesdays with Morrie thing with her?”

  “Yeah, she’s my mentor. My godmother. My fucking spiritual guide. Asa, think!”

  Asa finally looked genuinely concerned and I almost felt bad for him, he of the absent sarcasm detector.

  “Oh jeez, Zeph, lemme see.” He put his chin on his fist. With anyone else, I would have thought they were putting me on, but Asa was all in earnest. I wouldn’t have been too surprised to see smoke curl from his ears and an animated chipmunk perch on his shoulder. Suddenly he looked up, his eyes wide.

  “Local! They said it was a local move!”

  “Local like in the neighborhood or the tristate area?”

  Asa looked like he was going to cry.

  “Okay,” I said reassuringly, “you don’t know. How was Mrs. Hodges acting? Angry? Nervous?” I realized this was a lot to ask of him.

  “She gave me a box of matzoh ball mix and said she wouldn’t need it where she was going.”

  What did that mean? The afterlife? Riverdale?

  “Anything else?”

  “She said to say goodbye to the zaftig busybody, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. Maybe Mrs. McKenzie? She gave me a note for her.”

  Luckily, I was not yet in possession of my Glock.

  “Asa,” I said calmly, “she left a note?”

  Asa dug around in the drawer beneath his computer terminal and came up with a neatly folded piece of hotel stationery, taped closed. I grabbed it from him.

  “Hey, that’s not for you!”

  “Look up ‘zaftig,’ ” I muttered, slitting open the note. In a spidery hand, that aberrational Asian had written, “I am now interested in talking to you. I am at the Hudson Street Nursing Home. Not for long.”

  Minutes later, I was hurrying along Greenwich Avenue, picking my way through a garden-variety street fair, where one could buy roast corn and tube socks, among other essentials. I stopped to purchase a lemonade, my only nourishment since a handful of animal crackers off Pippa’s desk a few hours earlier. Between my race to Grand Central on Tuesday, the morning’s speed walk with my boss, and this sprint to Abingdon Square, there was no way I wasn’t going to lose a few pounds and, with it, the adjective “zaftig.” Shallow, Zephyr, shallow. We’re talking about attempted murder and you’re thinking about a few pounds no one has ever complained about.

  I passed the Jefferson Market Garden, where a women’s prison used to stand, and wondered what could possibly have happened in the past two days to make Samantha Kimiko Hodges go from an independent widow who loathed me to a nursing-home resident who wanted to chat. Was this going to be a deathbed confession? Or was it a trap? The thought made me stumble. Was someone going to pick me off on the corner of Hudson Street? I picked up my pace, energized by the idea that I actually needed backup protection, that, for once, my life was in enough real danger to concern my pragmatic boss.

  There was that rescue fantasy again, I chastised myself as I crossed 10th Street. I needed to run this by the Sterling Girls and Macy to see if they thought I needed a remedial course in feminist thinking. When my phone rang, I flipped it open, distracted by visions of what form such a course might take: a male volunteer with whom you practiced divvying household chores? Listen, Bill, merely putting the clothes in the washing machine does not constitute “doing the laundry.”

  “You’re not dead,” said a male voice.

  “Excuse me?” My knees suddenly felt rubbery. Jeremy?

  “You don’t answer invitations to eat meat with heroes.”

  “Delta,” I said in a rush of relief.

  “You know any other heroes?”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  “For which part?”

  I blew out my lips. I couldn’t help thinking that if he really wanted to pursue me, he shouldn’t tire me out with this sarcastic variety of flirtation, which I didn’t care for in the least.

  “All of it. Work has been nuts.”

  “Is that all?”

  I tried to think of an honest but not too honest answer.

  “I’d like to see you again,” he said. “But if you’re not interested or if there’s someone else—”

  “There’s no one else!” I blurted out, to my utter dismay and surprise.

  “Meaning?”

  “That there is,” I admitted, too embarrassed to meet my own gaze in the window of Lafayette Bakery. “But there wasn’t anyone—I mean, he wasn’t in the picture—when you and I went out.”

  “That was Saturday. Ouch.”

  “No, I knew him from a long time ago.”

  “When did he come back?”

  “Do we really need to go into details?”

  “Good point. To summarize: You’re unavailable.”

  “I guess so,” I said reluctantly.

  “Zephyr?”

  “No, I am,” I told him, irritated again with Gregory for showing up and complicating everything. If we weren’t getting back together—and why the hell would we?—then I was being forced to pass up Lieutenant Fisk and any number of other possibilities. Textile designers, architects, pastry chefs, entomologists. This episode with Gregory might very well only serve to set me back three months of my life.

  “Okay, well,” he said, and I heard the deafening blare of an alarm in the background. “Gotta run. Listen, give the reunion two weeks and if it doesn’t work out, call me.”

  “And if it’s two weeks and a day?” I asked.

  “Then no guarantees.”

  “You’re very odd,” I told him, because I had nothing to lose.

  “But you had a great time with me,” he reminded me.

  “I did.”

  “Zephyr?”

  “You really have to go.”

  I flipped my phone closed and turned onto 12th Street, passing right by my building. Why two weeks? It was so bizarre, yet so appealing. Imagine scheduling a closing for any unresolved issue in your life—even a romantic one. What a relief that would be! If I limited the duration of my reunion with Gregory to two weeks, then I wouldn’t have to be angry at him for his jarring reappearance. We could even, I thought, crossing Bleecker Street, revisit our relationship once a year for a two-week stretch, provided no one was involved with anyone else at the time. A designated period to upend our hearts, with the knowledge that the upheaval had an expiration date. Brilliant. I’d propose it to him at dinner that night. We were scheduled to meet at Barbuto for a reverse date, during which we would back up to have the conversation we should have had at Bar Six.

  Two weeks to sort out whether we could make a go of it. Two weeks to resolve our different opinions on parenthood, differences we hadn’t been able to resolve over the course of a
three-year relationship. Surely Gregory would see the merits of this rational and levelheaded approach. He’d be so impressed that he’d remember I was much more important to him than an imaginary child. I could even suggest taking the twins for a week every month, thereby killing two birds with two stones—we’d dabble in temporary parenthood while giving Lucy and Leonard a break. I’d seduce Gregory with sanity, flabbergast him with phlegmaticness.

  What man could resist?

  Chapter 11

  I’d passed the Hudson Street Nursing Home countless times on my way to and from the Hudson River Park, but I’d never gone inside until I began volunteering with Macy. Since then I’d grown strangely comfortable with the aroma of cold eggs and denture cream. And instead of feeling dread and sadness, as I initially did (after all, I was the daughter of Ollie and Bella Zuckerman, both of whom regarded aging as a personal affront), I found it a relief to have so little expected of me, to be in a place where my mere presence was more than sufficient to satisfy the task at hand.

  I nodded at a few residents who were sitting on the benches outside, their white faces turned up to the sun while their black aides thumbed through magazines. Inside the glass door, I jogged up the five steps to the front desk. The perpetually harried director, Arturo, greeted me with a frown.

  “I don’t have volunteers scheduled for today,” he said, gathering up a stack of papers. The phone rang, but he ignored it.

  “I’m not here to volunteer. I’m here to visit a resident.”

  “Not the same thing?” He jabbed at the keyboard in front of him with his free hand.

  “She just moved in this morning. Asked me to come by.”

  “Name?”

  “Hers or mine?”

  “Both. I can’t remember all you volunteers.”

  “I’m Zephyr; she’s Samantha Kimiko Hodges.”

  Arturo traced the two sides of his pencil mustache with thumb and forefinger and sighed heavily.

  “Sign in. Show ID,” he relented.