Journey to an 800 Number

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Then I carried the tray into her room and poured a waterglass full of juice. Trina Rose would drink it, and I would pour her a cup of coffee. She would take the coffee and issue her first bloody of the day. Something like this: “There was a bloody capacity crowd last night,” she would say. “I sang my bloody lungs out—not because I loved them. I had to, just to be heard.”

  Then we would talk. I was anxious to learn about when she was Baby Bloom and had traveled with my mother from Frisco to Taos, and although she told me some things, she never told me enough to give me a clear picture of how my tailored mother had once been a girl named Sally Ghost. She asked about me, and what I had been doing since I was Maximilian and mother was Sarah, and I found that what I talked about the most were the things that had happened to me since Smilax.

  When I told her about Manuelo, she said, “Tough, Bo, tough. The only thing you can bloody do is to remember how much you hate yourself sometimes and be careful not be such a sticky smart ass next time.”

  When I told her about Sabrina and Lilly, the travel agents and the Lambda Gammas, the freaks and the eccentrics, she said, “Now, that Sabrina sounds like someone I’d like to know. Take me. If I weren’t so bloody talented, I’d just be a fat lady who sings. You’ve either got to be two kinds of freak or none at all.”

  When I told her about Denver and Ruthie Britten and how Father had abandoned me, she said, “Abandoned you?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Oh, Bo,” she said, “Woodrow bloody Stubbs is the last person in the world that you can say abandons anyone.”

  “You’re probably thinking of Ahmed and how he didn’t abandon Ahmed after Lucky Blue ran off with Dove and left him at the ranch.”

  “I’m only partly thinking of that,” Trina Rose said. “Only partly.”

  After we talked and after Trina Rose drank all her coffee and her juice, she would get up to shower and to dress. She mostly just got dressed in a bathrobe. While she was doing that, I would call room service and order her real breakfast and my lunch. We sat at a table in the living room to eat that

  After that Mordred would come and discuss business, or she would actually put on some out-of-door clothes, which—truth to tell—did not look too different from her housecoats, and we would go out to shop.

  Trina Rose loved big discount drugstores. She bought lipsticks and junk jewelry and hair brushes for herself. She bought combs and wallets and key chains for me. One drugstore had a record department, and Trina Rose took out a felt tip pen and autographed all her own albums. At the check-out counter, she said, “Some bloody broad just signed her name all over Trina Rose’s albums. No harm done. It’s just on the cello wrap. It’ll pull right off.”

  The checkout girl said, “There’s more weirdos in this town than in a state mental institution.”

  Trina Rose leaned over the counter to whisper in the girl’s ear, “Listen, dear, if you want me to, I’ll just go on back there and write not on top of every bloody one of those Trina Rose autographs. Everyone in his right mind knows that there’s no such person as Trina Rose. I’m the real thing: me, Catarina Rosenblum.” She then pushed her VISA card with the name CATARINA ROSENBLUM under the girl’s nose.

  “Sure, honey,” the girl said.

  To okay the credit card the girl had to ring for the manager. While she was waiting, she kept glancing over at us. Trina Rose turned to me and said, “Bo, honey, let’s you and me buy all those autographed bloody albums. Those signatures could be real. You go on back and pick them out for us.”

  There were seven of them, and I brought them up to the counter. By then the manager was there, too.

  “Add these to my bill,” Trina Rose said.

  The manager asked for three pieces of identification and okayed the bill. Trina Rose took the ball point pen and signed Catarina Rosenblum, and then took a felt tip pen out and signed Trina Rose under that.

  “They do match,” I said.

  Whereupon Trina Rose burst into song. “Cry! Cry! Cry for baby love,” she sang in that voice of hers, the likes of which there is no basic other.

  Then as the cashier and the manager checked the charge slip with Trina Rose scrawled across it, we walked out. Just remembering the look on the face of the clerk and her manager was a day’s entertainment.

  Wherever we might be during the day, you could be sure that Trina Rose was backstage by five-thirty. She was loose and unhurried and always on time. She was something remarkable. Everyone backstage was, but she was the most.

  Part of my Vegas routine was my reunion with Father, which took place every evening backstage before the early show. I would help him decorate Ahmed with pompoms in a color that matched Trina Rose’s mood or costume. After we sent Ahmed on stage with his star on top, Father and I waited until Ahmed was led backstage by one of the showgirls while Trina Rose stayed on stage and belted out one song after another.

  I found the showgirls interesting. After only a few performances, I found them more interesting than what they weren’t wearing.

  I concluded that there are two kinds of chorus girls: rose ones and gray ones. And their color has nothing to do with their color. It has to do with their behavior. The gray ones are hard.

  “You’re right,” Father said. “You can almost see their steel core.”

  Trina Rose, the star of the show, was rose and violet with just enough brown and gray to make shadows. Stars are variegated people.

  I went up to our suite after the early show and ordered room service. Trina Rose and Father would come along, and we’d have supper in the living room. They’d go back down for the midnight show, but I wouldn’t. I was a growing boy, and I had to take care of my health. I would stay in the suite and read or watch TV or think.

  There was a lot to think about. There was my mother most of all. Having her marry F. Hugo Malatesta had seemed the most normal thing in the world while I was in Havemyer. And that seeming normal made her being friends with Trina Rose and her once being Sally Ghost seem abnormal. I wouldn’t say freakish. Maybe I would say freakish.

  One evening after dinner when Father and Trina Rose had returned backstage, I remembered that I had left a paperback book from that day’s shopping trip in our hotel suite. I wanted it to read while we waited backstage, so I went upstairs to get it. When I returned, I heard Trina Rose saying, “I would have thought that Sally Ghost would bloody well have told him by now.”

  Father said, “I don’t mind. She’s not ready to.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It seems she told him that her parents died in an auto accident.”

  “Was that after your divorce she told him that?” There was a pause. Father must have nodded. Then Trina Rose said, “She’ll make it into respectability land with this F. Hugo Fart. I just don’t know, Woody. I just don’t bloody know. Sally Ghost was my good friend, but I don’t know Sarah Jane Whitley Stubbs Malatesta at all. But what the hell. I like the kid. Balls! Woody. I goddam love that kid.”

  They stopped talking as soon as they saw me. I said nothing because I knew that I would upset Trina Rose, and she didn’t take kindly to being upset before a performance. I just said, “hi!” as though I hadn’t heard anything, and I hung around and waited for her and Ahmed to go onstage before I asked my Father.

  “Do you mean that Mother lied when she told me her parents died in an auto crash?”

  Father shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe your mother lied, but maybe they died.”

  “Wouldn’t you think you would care enough to find out and at least send a sympathy card? After all, Mother was your wife; Mother is the mother of your child. That’s me, in case no one told you.”

  “I have never met your mother’s parents. I didn’t even know their name until your mother and I applied for a marriage license. The girl who came to stay at the ranch in Taos was known to me as Sally Ghost, and I didn’t ask questions.”

  “I notice that you don’t.”

  “D
on’t what?”

  “Ask questions.”

  “When we went to get the marriage license, I found out that your mother’s real name was Sarah Jane Whitley.”

  “Don’t you think that Grandma and Grandpa Whitley would have wanted to send congratulations? Or a wedding present?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your mother tried calling them, and they wouldn’t talk to her.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Do you know what pregnant is?” he asked.

  I was shocked. I said, “That shows how little you know about me. Of course I know what pregnant is.”

  “Of course you do. I shouldn’t have asked. You see, when I do ask questions, I ask the wrong ones. But the thing of it is this: your mother was pregnant when we got married.”

  I was a little bit shocked at that. Of course, they never mentioned their wedding date because they never celebrated it. Of course, if they had not gotten divorced and had celebrated their wedding date, I could have counted the months between my birth and their wedding and found out that I was pre-expected. I swallowed my surprise and said to Father. “So what? I’ve joined the crowd. I’ll bet half the first-borns at Fortnum School can’t add nine months between the time their parents got married and the time they were born. Is that what made Mother’s parents ashamed? Do you think she lied about her parents dying in an auto crash?”

  “I don’t know, Bo. Maybe they rejected her again, and she had to pretend to herself they were dead. I haven’t any idea at all about them. No idea if they’re alive or dead.”

  The chorus girl who led Ahmed on stage returned with him. Father took the guide rope from her and thanked her. Then he began loosening Ahmed’s bridle, and I went up to Room 1424 to think.

  6

  Instead of ordering room service the next morning, I put on my Fortnum blazer and went to the coffee shop, which was called the Gizeh Coffee Shoppe. On my way to the Gizeh I passed the bulletin board with the list of the day’s activities. I read it out of habit. At the top it said:

  WELCOME

  Southern Association, Real Estate Dealers

  Registration: 9:00-2:00 Luxor Room

  Banquet: 7 p.m. The Nile Ballroom

  FAREWELL LUNCHEON:

  U.S. CONFERENCE OF PHYSICAL THERAPISTS

  12:30 p.m. Cleopatra Hall

  SEE TRINA ROSE IN ARABIAN CHIC

  TWO SHOWS NIGHTLY

  7:00 p.m. and Midnight

  Make your reservation at Courtesy

  Desk in Karnak Lobby

  While I waited for my order to arrive, I saw Sabrina enter the Gizeh Coffee Shoppe and stand by the register where a sign said, “Please wait for hostess to seat you.” I saw the hostess return from seating two other people, and as she passed my table, I called to her and asked her please to show Sabrina to my table.

  “Your sister?” the hostess asked.

  I nodded.

  The hostess nodded to Sabrina and said, “This way, please.” She brought her to my table. I didn’t turn around, but she recognized me.

  “Maximilian,” she said. “What a surprise.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was born a surprise.”

  She sat down across from me. “Mother will be along in a minute,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Let me guess. You’re here for the Conference of the Southern Association of Real Estate Dealers, and let me also guess there’s been some confusion with your conference registration.” She started to say something, but I held my hand up to her. “And let me guess further than that. For some reason the conference has forgotten to give you and your mother—whatever your names are this time—your proper identification tags. But your mother will get duplicates. Handwritten. She’s at the registration desk straightening things out now. Is that right?” I asked. “A basic yes answer will do.”

  “No,” she said, “we’re here for the U.S. Conference of Physical Therapists.”

  “Oh!” I said. “Then you will be having your farewell luncheon at twelve-thirty p.m. And let me guess again. Your bags will be packed. That’s what your mother is doing right now. And in all the confusion of everyone leaving the convention after the farewell luncheon, you two will also leave. But you two will leave without paying your bill.”

  “Yes,” she said simply, “we do that. There’s always a lot of confusion at check-out time. We count on that. Mother was near panic in Dallas when I visited you. I’ll bet it takes days for the hotel to discover that we’ve skipped out.”

  “Don’t you know? Don’t they write you dunning letters?”

  “When the hotel finds that we’ve slipped out, they have to contact the sponsoring organization. We charge everything to them.”

  “Doesn’t the organization dun you?”

  “Dun who? Lilly Pacsek or Lilly Miller or Lilly …”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “Don’t the hotels ask for identification?”

  “Not when you’re a star. Lilly always books herself in as a featured speaker or a workshop leader. Sometimes she has flowers sent to our room with the best wishes of the organization.”

  “Don’t the hotels recognize you?”

  “Not a chance. There are enough conventions in enough hotels to go for years without repeats. Besides, hotels change management almost as often as they change bed linen. Mother and I are concentrating on the West this year. We wanted to explore this part of the United States. The year before last we did the Northeast. New York is very expensive. Imagine how expensive it would have been if we had paid for everything.”

  The waitress brought my order and pulled out her pad to take Sabrina’s. “I’ll be ordering for my mother, too,” Sabrina said.

  “I’ll be back,” the waitress said.

  “Never mind,” I said, pulling out my room key. “Put the whole thing on my check.”

  The waitress looked at my key number. “Hmmm,” she said. “The penthouse.”

  “Yes,” I said, slipping it into my blazer pocket.

  “A penthouse,” Sabrina said. “What happened? Did Ahmed demand rights to a Jacuzi or something? I understand Jacuzis are very big in Las Vegas.”

  “Everything is very big in Vegas,” I said. “Tits, tips. Everything is big. Nothing seems real.”

  I then told her what we were doing in Vegas, how undeluxe, unglamorous, unhousebroken Ahmed had made it into show business. And then I told her about how Trina Rose was my godmother, which was why I was staying in the penthouse. I was ready to tell her the news I had learned last night when Lilly appeared in the doorway of the Gizeh Room. Sabrina, who was facing that direction, waved her mother over to our table.

  Lilly was dressed in a tailored navy blue skirt and a white blouse. She had tied a scarf around her neck so that it looked like something halfway between a necktie and a ruffle. And her hair was pulled straight back into a bun. She had a jacket thrown over her shoulder. Her HELLO badge was pinned on the jacket. She slipped it off, but not before I read LILLY MILLER, Leafneck, Wisconsin.

  After saying how good it was and what a surprise it was to see me, Lilly said to Sabrina, “I have the best possible news, dear. I was talking to a colleague, and she said that the twins are doing fine. They still don’t have skulls; they still wear padded bonnets, but they say Mama and Dada and they play with each other. They still can’t sit up or walk, but she’s working on that. Isn’t that just grand?”

  “Your colleague was a physical therapist?” I asked.

  “Yes. She’s one who’s working with the twins. They were Siamese, joined at the top of their skulls, you know.”

  I said that I didn’t know.

  Sabrina said, “I’m glad you got the report, Mother. If they keep up the good work, I may have to take them out of my freak file,” she said.

  Lilly asked how Woody and Ahmed were, and I told her that Ahmed was now in show business.

  “Trina Rose is Maximilian’s godmother,” Sabrin
a said. “He’s staying in her suite.”

  “Imagine him not saying anything about that,” Lilly said.

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  After our breakfasts had been ordered, delivered and eaten, I took the check. I wrote Room 1424 and TIP $5.00 and signed my name. Lilly and Sabrina thanked me, and then Lilly excused herself saying that she had to attend to some packing. I gave Sabrina a knowing nod. Sabrina and I left the restaurant. “Thanks for breakfast,” she said. “We don’t usually have to pay for any of our meals after Mother makes contacts. If we don’t find someone to treat us, we eat in the hotel and charge it to our room, but Lilly usually lines up someone to treat us to lunch, to cocktails, to everything except the banquets and luncheons, where there are speakers and where the cost is prepaid in our convention fee—which we don’t pay anyway.”

  I asked Sabrina if she would please come sit by the hotel pool with me. “I look down on it from our room, and it’s always empty. We can be alone there, except for the towel boys and the cocktail waitresses. I want to talk to you,” I said.

  She said she would come and agreed to meet at the elevator on the pool level.

  I ran up to Suite 1424 and put on the bathing suit Trina Rose had bought me on one of our discount drugstore shopping sprees. Then I raced back out and waited by the pool elevator. Sabrina did not come. I used a house phone and called the registration desk to find out her room number, remembering that they were registered under the name of Miller this time. Lilly answered the phone. She told me that yes, Sabrina was there, but she was not feeling well, that she, Lilly, was just on her way down to tell me that Sabrina could not be meeting me.