“Don’t cry,” Marie says and frowns. She plucks a tissue from the box on the bedside table and pats Cerise’s cheeks. It is a gesture that makes Cerise cringe. She realized last night that she will be at the mercy of the nurses for a long time to come, will be humiliated, bathed and wiped after the toilet, fed and have her teeth brushed by strangers. Roy has never had to clean her bottom, and Cerise is determined to never have him do such a thing all the rest of his days.
“Which neighbors?” Cerise asks, worried that Marie might soon have to hold a tissue to Cerise’s nose and tell her to blow if she can’t stop blubbering.
“The father of that nice family across the street. And a couple I didn’t recognize. They said they just moved onto Orchid. Next to the nice family. They were very nice, too. And before I forget—”
“Ed. He’s the one who saved your father.” Ed is the one who saved everything. Cerise loves the man. Forever.
“That guy?” Marie asks.
What does she mean? “Ed, the man from directly across the street,” Cerise tries.
“With two kids. They came from Wyoming or Wisconsin or someplace.”
“That’s Ed,” Cerise says.
“That man?”
Would Marie just stop? “What are you after, girl?” Cerise asks, irritated.
“I’m sorry you’re in so much pain,” Marie says. She squinches up her brow. She’ll be getting herself ugly forehead wrinkles if she’s not careful. “He’s quite thin is all. Sort of. For some reason I expected a bigger man.”
“Lil Thomas eating?”
Marie looks a touch guilty at the question, Cerise thinks. “Not enough,” Marie says. “Certainly not enough, but yes—before I forget, Mother, you and Daddy are getting moved into a room together tomorrow. They found one for you to be together in.”
“You think they might could—you think they might move us tonight?” Cerise saw Roy for only a short time last night, and her heart aches for him bad as her left hand, a constant throb. It took the second-degree burns. It can still feel. Most of her right, though, is just plain numb. They told her she killed the nerves. They told her she could end up with a claw if the tendons don’t recover properly. It’s what normally happens.
“I doubt tonight,” Marie tells Cerise. Marie’s breasts look like balloons.
“Are you wearing a nursing bra?”
Marie looks down at her chest. “Victoria’s Secret. They had a sale.” Marie smiles at her balloons, lifts her head to Cerise. The smile droops away. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry. I don’t know what else to say.” She sits in the chair pulled up to the side of the bed, rubs her hands together, looks at Cerise, stops.
“I’m happy to hear Lil Thomas is eating,” Cerise offers. She tries at a smile. “I wish I’d been awake for Ed’s visit.” She stares at her gauze mittens. “I don’t know the new people’s names.”
“Ganesh,” Marie offers. “And get this: Indira. Ganesh and Indira Gupta.”
“It’s pretty. Indira.”
“Some big footprints,” Marie says.
“What?” Cerise asks. The hospital food is terrible. When will she ever be able to cook again? Roy’s going to have to eat out a long while. She’d had a cobbler planned for last night’s dessert.
“You know. Gandhi.”
Sure. Cerise knows about Gandhi. She saw the movie on video. What an amazing human being. “You could go by home when your father gets out?”
“I’m freezing meals for him already.” Marie shows her teeth in a pretend smile.
Cerise wants to groan but holds it in. Marie’s a terrible cook. She’ll create some mess of a something from a magazine, something she won’t even taste for flavor. Maybe that’s it. Marie has no taste buds. And then, right then, Cerise’s left hand feels worse than a thousand fire ants stinging it at once. She has no words for the sensation, doesn’t know what to say. Childbirth pain is deep, womb and core deep, but her hand sends zings of pain all the way through all of her skin, like needles becoming liquid and stretching spiny tendrils up into her temples and down to her feet, and suddenly Cerise thinks she’s going to vomit. She says nothing, tries to cling to the tiny raft of conversation, remember what they’re talking about.
Marie says nothing. Laid on a table, Cerise’s hands would ignite the surface. She swallows. She should sleep. Try to sleep. She closes her eyes.
“Mom,” Marie prods. “Thomas and I have a proposal.”
Cerise thinks about Roy, tries to picture his eyes. Her entire body feels dunked in boiling oil. The room swirls. She thinks she can smell the mess beneath the mittens. It’s not what she would wish on anyone. But in the flash of memory, in those interminable seconds of searing, Cerise is more than happy, still, that Roy was spared.
Ariel stares. All day she’s run from one near disaster to the next, but now—now she can’t believe such a mistake like this could have happened. The presidential suite has been double-booked. A local hip-hop mogul, Greenback, and a touring lothario, some Somebody Important in the music world, have both been booked into the hotel’s best suite for the same week.
“The Governor’s Suite is perfectly lovely,” Henry offers. He’s the on-duty front desk worker with no connection to the grievous error that Ariel can detect whatsoever—and hence, possibly, Henry’s obvious delight with the situation.
Henry’s nasal gayness doesn’t usually grate as badly as it is at the moment. “I thought the new computer program wouldn’t allow this,” Ariel says to him.
“It doesn’t.” Henry pulls the handwritten telephone log closer. For an apparent explanation, Henry taps the date the mistake was made. “This booking never made it into the computer. It’s Bimbo’s handwriting.”
Bimbo didn’t last long. She worked the front desk for two weeks before she wormed her way into a touring band member’s room. Late, late night, after the comptroller had set the bell out to be rung for service and retired to the back, Bimbo’s unmistakable high-heeled totter, her sheath of waist-length hair, her careful scheming, all were captured on the security camera. The following afternoon, Ariel and the other managers watched the tape in disgusted fascination. Of course Bimbo had used La Belle Nouvelle to get to the bands. Of course her nickname stood to reason. And, of course, in the morning, Bimbo departed on a bus airbrushed with thorns and knives and bleeding hearts, never to be seen by the hotel staff again.
Yes, of course, it’s Bimbo’s fault, and now they have twenty-four hours to fix the problem. They’d have zero if the hip-hop mogul’s secretary hadn’t called to reconfirm. She always does. Jawanda’s got her act together. Ariel’s not sure why Greenback checks in and out of the hotel when she’s heard he has a mansion on that New Orleans golf course where all the huge money lives. Women, Ariel supposes. Sex and music. Sex and money. Last year, shortly after Ariel started, one of the bellhops brought a blacklight wand to work, the kind they use on crime TV shows. Evidently ejaculate glows in the dark. Ariel lost two maids from the kid’s stunt, showing the housekeeping staff what they were touching day in, day out. Sometimes, you just have to forget what’s all around you.
“Who’s this other music guy?” Ariel asks Henry. “Give me a good reason to piss off the regular.”
“He used to be married to that actress,” Henry says.
“What actress?”
“You know.” He drums his fingers on the marble counter. “The blonde.”
If only Ariel had a nickel for every blond actress. “I have no patience for this, Henry.”
“You know. She’s in that series. She sees dead people. Or maybe she treats dead people. I mean, investigates them.” Henry looks distractedly across the currently empty lobby. “Or whatever.” He seems to want to snap his fingers, Ariel thinks, to dismiss the gloom he’s suddenly fallen into. The gloom of forgetting a blond actress’ name. “So, you let the kidlets watch TV?”
Ariel interprets: So, Ariel, are you at least letting your children stay connected to current television culture so t
hat they don’t grow up to be you?
She’s not having a good day. She simply doesn’t know who is more important in the world of music, and so she doesn’t know which one she will need to call and apologize to. She worries the call will cost the hotel tens of thousands. Risking losing a regular is bad enough, but if the other is a major player, Ariel risks making the papers, something La Belle Nouvelle doesn’t need. Twice already the Times-Picayune has mentioned the hotel in articles, once in a piece about suspicious liquor law adherence and once in a column about noise pollution. La Belle Nouvelle’s continuing bad-boy reputation fuels business of the undesirable kind, and Ariel is, truly, at a loss as to how to stem the flow. The hotel needs guests if it’s to survive, and the undesirables pay. But they also leave behind burned coffee tables and vomit-filled bathtubs, overflowing toilets stuffed with feminine napkins and beer bottles and styrofoam containers of red beans and rice. The lists never end. Ariel pays one housekeeping staff member time and a half each day for P ’n B duty. Puke and blood.
Ariel has to decide what to do.
She’ll ask the sous chef. She’ll ask him, ask Javier, under the guise of asking the entire kitchen staff. His shift started an hour ago.
Ariel allows the kitchen staff a radio. They’ll know about the two music guys. They know a lot about music. “Man the fort,” she tells Henry.
“Absolutely,” he says. Henry’s usually good for at least a smile, half the reason she hired him. That and he’s proven to be a good snitch.
Ariel steps into the ladies’ room and checks her reflection. Her face continues to hold up, something she is infinitely grateful for. She’s very fair-skinned, pouty-lipped in a way she hated when she was a tomboy but appreciates now. She’s thinned, too, since having Ella, her weight even lower than in high school. Ariel unbuttons another blouse button then rebuttons it. Javier, she hopes, might think she’s a tease. She bends over for a quick flush, smoothes her hair, unbuttons the blouse button again, and walks to the back.
“Bimbo continues to haunt us, people,” Ariel calls out as she pushes open the swinging door of the kitchen.
In the lull between the lunch and dinner crunches, the two guys washing dishes this month have settled onto plastic milk crates at the alley doorway. Cigarette smoke wafts in. Ariel has told them countless times to sit on the stoop fully outside rather than inside with the door open, but they never do. She suspects it’s a shade issue. That or an authority issue. Everyone seems to like her alright, but there’s a point, she knows. They tease her about her accent, and she teases back. For over a year, so far, she’s made few enemies.
“What now?” Warren asks. La Belle Nouvelle’s executive chef seems to squat under his own weight, his hips as broad as his stance. He is smart, acerbic, sometimes mean; he and Ariel have made a short but proud history of bitching at each other to their faces. She considers Warren her best friend at the hotel.
Nikki, on prep, chops onions. A mound the size of a small child waits at the side of her cutting board.
In her peripheral vision, Ariel takes in Javier. They ignore each other with precision. Her body warms in the unair-conditioned kitchen, a New Orleans norm she couldn’t understand upon arrival, something as bad as not providing heat in the kitchens of Minneapolis in winter. She can’t comprehend why the unions haven’t gone nutty here. Javier cubes butter into a stainless container. He glances and nods at Ariel the way the rest of them do.
“Smoke outside or put ’em out,” Ariel tells the dishwashers. They take a few last drags. “Bimbo double-booked the Prez,” she says.
“Nimble Bimbo bounced best,” Warren says to the salmon he dresses in long green stalks of something.
“Bimbo bounced awright,” one of the dishwashers says.
Nikki points her knife at the ceiling. “To Bimbo!” she shouts, starting their chant.
“To Bimbo!” they answer Nikki. The kitchen staff stops what it’s doing and downs imaginary shots.
“So I need your recommendation,” Ariel says, tossing her imaginary shot glass over her shoulder.
Warren weaves green stalks. “Stop bothering us.”
Ariel walks behind the line. “Your livelihood depends on righting Bimbo’s wrongs.”
Warren pinches the salmon’s jaw and makes it say, “Me and Bimbo, we’re both fish.”
Ariel ignores him. “I need to know who’s more important. I have to call one and deliver the bad news that he’s getting the Gov’s.”
Javier says, “Not the Gobe-nor’s.” He looks at Ariel directly. Ariel thinks about meeting Javier in the safest of safe rooms they might have, the ones on the floors that the head of housekeeping has already cleared as clean. The ones with no other staff in sight.
Ariel meets Javier’s gaze. Yes, it could be thrilling, but she wants to keep her job. Her family needs her job.
Outside the kitchen, when they’ve walked to the Canal streetcar line after shift, Javier talks almost dirty into her ear. Sometimes his language, sometimes hers. All she understands is his tone. He wouldn’t crawl under the sheets and talk about making babies. He would talk about fucking, she knows, and that’s what they would do. In the bathrooms, watching in the mirrors. Leaning over the bathtubs, her skirt lifted, fingers splayed on the tiled walls. He is what Ariel desires with a part of her body she has no control over. He is shallow, and he is beautiful. He is filthy and sexy and slick and wicked-tongued and poor. She couldn’t become attached. Javier’s not bright. And he is dangerous. Javier has admitted to stabbing somebody and not getting caught, and Ariel has no idea if he’s telling the truth or not. Javier concocts sauces rich enough to kill old men. And Javier’s skin, against her own, would make a beautiful contrast. He is new. And fresh. And so wrong she feels herself getting wet.
“Yes, the Gov,” Ariel says, licking the corner of her mouth as though she’s found some bit of remoulade there. “So who’s more important: PhatCash guy, the regular, or Douglas-Michael Smithson?”
“Oooh,” Nikki says and sniffs. “Too bad for you.” She chops onions like a ninja.
“What do you mean?” Ariel asks.
Javier smiles a bright white smile at her. “No much choice,” he says.
Ariel picks up a piece of cilantro and chews on it. “Chef, want to help me out here?”
“You?” He’s back with the salmon voice. “You sentenced me to death. I can’t help you now.” The salmon has long green dreadlocks, maybe lemongrass, maybe chives.
“Nikki? Somebody help me out.”
“I buy PhatCash,” one of the dishwashers says. “Greenback my boy.”
“Smithson way large, bro,” the other dishwasher says. “My money on him.”
“Awww!”
“Chef? Javier?” She has a flicker of a fantasy from last month, of Javier taking her from behind while she sucked his thumb. He reached around, moved his wet thumb down. She came fast. “Any advice you might offer would be helpful.”
“It’s a lose-lose, bosslady,” Warren says. “Bimbo nailed you to the wall.”
“To Bimbo!” Nikki yells again.
“To Bimbo!” they respond. All departed employees elicit the same toast. Ariel downs her shot. She wishes she had a real one at the moment. The dishwashers have told her all she needs to know. “So I’m screwed.”
Lots of nods and mm-hmms.
“Give me a vote at least. Who’s for putting Greenback in the Governor’s Suite?”
No hands go up.
“So you’re all voting to put Douglas-Michael Smithson in the Gov’s?”
No hands go up.
Enough already. In a room upstairs, Ariel could force Javier to make a choice. Tell me or you’re not going to get any of this, she could say to him. She could grab a breast for effect if she needed to, her ass, her crotch. Javier can’t raise his hand alone in the kitchen, of course, but. Well, then.
She’ll call Jawanda, Greenback’s trusty secretary, and explain all about Bimbo. Jawanda might be able to help. If not, it’s going
to be a truly lovely day.
“Ain’t no matter no ways,” one of the dishwashers says. Ariel gave up trying to remember the dishwashers’ names last winter. In a hotel with a staff of more than fifty, she has no patience for the people who come and go. It makes no difference to her their gender, their race, or their sexual orientation. Dishwashers are temporary in all of New Orleans, she has learned, and the less they feel singled out, the longer they actually stay. “Ivan gone get ’em both out town,” he says.
“Who’s Ivan?” Ariel asks.
Ed watches the swirling mass of orange and yellow out in the Gulf on the Weather Channel. It’s called Ivan, and Ivan might just be the answer to the kids’ prayers. All morning, Ed’s nursed a serious backache from the events of the previous night, but now his brain bumps up against the threat of having to evacuate his family. He’s never attempted such a thing. The Twin Cities don’t pour out onto the highways and dissipate into the surrounding lake land at the first notice of, say, an impending snowstorm. He has no experience in such things.
A shopping spree is in order, from what he can gather. Ed pats his thigh, checking for his wallet. Most pickpockets won’t try a man’s front pocket, he learned years ago, and he feels his financial security to be better in New Orleans by implementing such a simple measure. Canned food. Batteries. He will even take one of the cars. There may be an emergency, after all, and emergencies warrant car use. Ed can’t help but feel a bit excited, although he knows he shouldn’t revel in potential disaster.
Checking on the Browns’ house only makes sense. They may have mail that needs to be brought in. Or possibly something else he could do. He’s never been inside Cerise and Roy’s. With his decision to submit to his curiosity about the elderly couple, Ed immediately promises not to touch anything that doesn’t need touching. Ed leaves, walks down the porch steps, turns around, walks back up the porch steps, and locks the door. Ariel would not be happy. They’ve already had one car keyed, the one she used to drive downtown. Or, rather, the CBD. Central Business District.
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