“Ready to go?” she asked.
“We’re late,” Marlene said. “It’s ruined!”
“We’re not late! And I told you, the car is coming!”
“Why can’t you take me?” Marlene said, slumping against the wall.
Scarlett felt the dangerous look coming into her own eye, but Lola touched her lightly on the elbow in reassurance.
“We talked about this,” Lola said reasonably. “You’re doing me a big favor, and I won’t forget that. You’re going to love your makeover.”
Marlene considered this by rolling along the wall and burying her face into the wallpaper, like she was trying to stencil it with an imprint of her scowl.
“And Chip said that he really, really wanted you to come out on his boat,” Lola added, in what sounded like a touch of desperation. “Remember the boat? How they have the little kitchen downstairs with the champagne glasses? I can do the makeover and then we can go on the boat. It doesn’t get much more glamorous than that.”
Marlene rolled toward them, the scowl still very much present.
“I don’t want stupid lipstick like that,” Marlene said, looking at Scarlett. Scarlett involuntarily balled her fists into the Dior dress. It just wasn’t worth it. It really wasn’t.
“You know I make everyone up differently,” Lola said. “That color is for Scarlett. But you look better in lighter colors. I have a new apricot gloss set aside for you. It’s my favorite.”
Marlene seemed slightly placated by the fact that she was getting Lola’s favorite color, as opposed to whatever Scarlett was wearing. Scarlett touched her lips. Was it too dark? Did she look like a clown? No. Lola didn’t make mistakes like that.
“We will be late if we don’t hurry,” Lola said, extending her hand. “And remember, when we see Mom, don’t say anything, okay? You’re in on my secret. I need you to keep it.”
Marlene accepted the hand and walked with Lola, brushing past Scarlett without a word.
“You know what?” Scarlett said, as they got to the elevator. “I’ll take the stairs. It’ll look more…convincing. See you down there.”
Lola threw her a look over Marlene’s head that might have meant, “I’m sorry” or “Please don’t sweat too much in my dress” or both.
The Mercedes was waiting silently outside the hotel. Chip, Number Ninety-eight himself, was sitting in the backseat. He had a copy of The Wall Street Journal on his lap, which Scarlett found hilarious. Chip had never struck her as a reader. In fact, when she called up a mental picture of how he spent his free time (which she sometimes did), she always pictured him playing with an Etch-A-Sketch and not quite getting how it worked. She was never sure why, but it seemed to fit.
It was hard for Scarlett to tell if Chip was actually handsome, or if his pricey haircuts, regulation rich boy tan, lacrosse body, and sublime dental work caused the illusion of handsomeness. He had golden-reddish hair, much like Marlene, really huge eye-brows (which Spencer suspected he got waxed into shape), and big pouty lips.
Lola managed to lean in first and gave him a little kiss before Marlene squeezed into the car. She loved Chip. Sometimes she seemed to love him more than Lola did.
“There might not be enough room back here for all four of us,” Chip said, nodding a greeting at Scarlett. “Someone should ride up front.”
He didn’t say, “You should ride up front.” Not directly. But it was understood, since Lola and Marlene were already in the back. As she got in, she glanced up and saw Mrs. Amberson looking down at them curiously from her perch on the not-a-balcony. She raised her cigarette. Scarlett gave a half-hearted wave and got into the car.
“We’re making a stop first,” Chip called up to the driver. “Rockefeller Center.”
The car glided into action at his command.
“You will never believe this,” Chip said to Lola. “My parents are sending me to this class called Steering Wealth in a few weeks. It’s for people who, you know, are going to inherit stuff and have to know how to do stuff with it. Hedge funds and stuff. I have to go all the way to Boston to sit around in some hotel for three days.”
Lola tutted in sympathy. Scarlett made a fake crying face. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the driver crack a small smile.
“You have to come up with me.”
“Boston?” Lola said. “I have work…”
“You have to. We’ll stay with my friend Greg and go sailing.”
“Chip, seriously. I can’t take off three whole days. I’m running out of excuses.”
“I’ll be fun,” Chip said. “And I’m not going to make it if you don’t come. You’ll like Boston. You have to get used to coming up there anyway when I move in the fall.”
Chip hadn’t gotten into Harvard. All they knew was that he was going to school “in the Boston area.” She and Spencer had a lot of very amusing theories on what this actually meant, several of which involved crayons.
“I guess you’re right,” Lola said. She didn’t say it with much conviction.
“Can I come?” Marlene asked.
“You want to go in my place?” Chip asked her.
Marlene laughed like she had never, ever in her life heard anything as deliciously entertaining as that. It was appalling.
The driver took the car along Central Park South, past the big hotels. Or, as some may have put it, the real hotels.
“Is the corner of Sixth okay?” Chip said. “Can you just walk down? We kind of have to get moving.”
“It’s fine,” Scarlett said. “It’s just a few blocks.”
The car came to a graceful stop between two horse-drawn carriages at the park entrance.
“When you get home,” Lola said in a low voice, “just say that we met up on the street and you walked Marlene the rest of the way home, okay? I really owe you.”
She adjusted Marlene’s wonky, slightly crispy curls and gave her a hug. Once the car slid away, Marlene’s smile was replaced with a look of barely contained rage.
“Why did you do that?” she snapped.
“Do what?” Scarlett replied.
“The car! I wanted to go down to the building! They would have taken us if you didn’t say something!”
Now Scarlett saw the error of her ways. Marlene wanted her friends to see her get out of the chauffeur-driven car.
“They had to go,” Scarlett said. “You wouldn’t want Chip and Lola to be late, would you?”
Marlene’s reply was to bolt from the curb and cross the street on her own, before the light had changed. Scarlett had to run after her. They barely missed getting clipped by a bus. Marlene kept ten paces ahead of Scarlett. Scarlett tried to speed up for a while, but then just gave up after the second block and let Marlene get ahead and slip out of sight. She finally caught up to her in the frigid lobby of 30 Rock. The building had a heavy glamour, with its black and gold walls and floor, the massive murals of planes flying and people building, the army of NBC pages scurrying around. Marlene had already latched on to a few of her Powerkids friends, and Scarlett was more or less forgotten.
One thing about disease: It didn’t care how much money your family had, or what neighborhood you came from. The Powerkids were a mix of Connecticut and New Jersey suburbanites; residents of Harlem, Chinatown, the East and West Villages, and the Upper East and West Sides; Staten and Long Islanders; people from every corner of Brooklyn and the Bronx. These were the people Marlene had lived with for her hospital stay. This was her element.
The studio of Good Morning, New York was much smaller than it appeared on TV. To watch the show, you would think they had hundreds of people in the audience. In reality, there were some risers and room for maybe two or three dozen. It was only half full. It was also completely freezing. There were countless cables dangling from the ceiling, and shockingly bright lights.
The famous chef was also shorter than he looked on TV, and he was wearing a lot of makeup. It seemed to take the crew forever to set up the kitchen. Bowls of vegetables were being
set out on the counter. The Powerkids were not particularly impressed. They were used to better entertainment than this. To entertain herself, Scarlett started playing with her phone, plugging in every number in the little book she kept in her purse, even really irrelevant ones, like people at school she barely knew outside of Biology study group and Dakota’s housekeeper.
A stage wrangler with a headset came out and addressed the group.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to film the cooking segment now. We’re going to need one or two of you to help in the demonstration and chop up some vegetables.”
The bored Powerkids suddenly came to life, and every hand went up. Scarlett was barely aware of it, and didn’t even notice when the woman said, “And how about you, in the back?”
Someone elbowed Scarlett softly in the neck and she looked up.
“Me?” she asked.
“Yes. Let’s get a bunch of different ages down here and mix it up a little.”
“But I’m…”
The woman couldn’t hear her, and was waving her down impatiently.
“Don’t worry!” said the chef. “I only bite my food!”
An obligatory laugh.
Marlene was not happy about this at all. She gazed at Scarlett in deadly reproach as she made her way down. She tried to throw Marlene a “I didn’t mean to do this” look, but the wrangler was already positioning her by a chopping board and a massive knife.
“You’re the oldest,” the chef said. “So we’ll have you do the more serious chopping, okay? What’s your name?”
Scarlett said her name was Scarlett.
The chef’s makeup was touched up, and there was a general scrambling and shifting around of dishes. They seemed more important than the two Powerkids and Scarlett, who were shoved into a few different positions before the whole thing was settled.
“We go live in one minute,” the wrangler said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be told what to do. Just be natural and have fun.”
She barked this out in the least fun-sounding way possible.
“Live?” Scarlett said, looking at the cameras and the lights.
The word live had never been mentioned before this. There was a lightness in her head, like all of her ability to think floating off of her brain like steam. The wrangler began counting down the minute as the cameras were shifted foward.
And then, there was a loud, horrible noise. Scarlett looked down and saw, to her horror, that her tiny phone clutched in her hand was ringing. The number was an extension of the Hopewell.
“Maybe you should answer that,” the chef said, good-naturedly.
In the shadows, behind the lights, Scarlett could see the wrangler shaking her head and raising her hands in frustration. Scarlett glanced down at the phone fearfully. The camera swung toward the chef, who was still cheerfully goading her to answer. The wrangler came forward to signal to Scarlett to make it stop. She had to do something, so Scarlett flicked it open and slapped it to her ear.
“Why don’t you answer your phone?” Mrs. Amberson asked.
“I’m in a TV studio,” Scarlett whispered.
“A television studio? Why are you in a television studio?”
Mrs. Amberson’s voice was clearly audible to all around.
“Tell her we’re cooking up some healthy quesadillas with the Powerkids!” the chef called over his shoulder. “She should come on down!”
Another obligatory laugh from the audience.
“Who was that? Where are you?”
“Good Morning.”
“Good morning to you, too, O’Hara. But that doesn’t answer the question.”
“It’s a show. For quesadillas.”
“What?”
The wrangler held up ten fingers, nine…
“Do you need something?” Scarlett whispered urgently.
“I need white plum tea. Whole leaf. Loose. Organic. Also, I want to talk to you. Can you meet me for lunch?”
“When?”
“Let’s say twelve-thirty. Where did you say you were?”
“Rockefeller Center.”
The wrangler was down to four fingers.
“Of course you are,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Well, meet me in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel then.”
Scarlett snapped the phone shut without a good-bye and dropped it to the floor, where it clacked loudly. She didn’t care if it shattered. The camera swung over to her as the chef passed over to her side of the counter.
“That your boyfriend?” he asked.
“Um…”
“Hey! It’s a party down here! Everybody should come!”
“And two, one…We’re live.”
A blinding red light came out of the camera, causing her to reel backward.
The chef and the host started talking. Their cheerfulness was even more excessive in person than it was on TV. The next five minutes passed in a haze. The Powerkids threw vegetables into a pan. At some point, there was tofu and an avocado.
Scarlett looked down and realized that a cucumber had been placed in front of her by a slinking crew member and that she had grabbed it unconsciously and was grasping it for dear life. Then she realized that it probably didn’t look good to be seen squeezing cucumbers on live TV.
When she was called upon to slice this, she found herself relaxing a little. The chef came over and helped her. It was all over much quicker than it had taken to start, and lights were being shut off. As they were filtered out of the room, Marlene kept ahead. Scarlett had to hurry ahead and catch her by the shoulder.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said.
Marlene shrugged her shoulder away.
“I didn’t,” she said again. “Come on. You saw what happened.”
“So why didn’t you say no?”
“I tried to.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Well, that was true, actually. She didn’t. In her head she was trying to say no. But in truth, she had just done as she was told.
“You’ve been on TV before,” Scarlett said. “You did that telethon.”
“When I was nine.”
This was a stupid conversation to be having, especially in the sleek black hallway of Rockefeller Center, in full view of people from the show and the other Powerkids. It was stupid under any circumstances.
“I have to meet my guest for lunch,” she said. “So I have to take you right back.”
“I’m supposed to have lunch with them.”
“I don’t have any choice, Marlene. It’s my job. Let me take you home…”
“I’m coming,” Marlene said. She was just doing it to be difficult—and frankly, her technique was working. But Mrs. Amberson was going to have to meet Marlene sooner or later.
More to the point…Marlene was going to have to meet Mrs. Amberson. And that, frankly, was kind of an amusing prospect.
LUNCH DATE
The Algonquin Hotel was one of the most pedigreed establishments in the entire city, famous for its literary connections in the twenties and thirties. Mrs. Amberson was settled on a small sofa in its dark paneled and richly appointed lobby. Where the Hopewell had sparkle (or used to have sparkle), the Algonquin had a deep, cultivated charm. And…guests.
“It’s this or a short hospital stay,” she said, greeting Scarlett with a raised glass of a deep red liquid with a celery stalk sticking out of the top. “Bloody Marys are one of the truly medicinal cocktails. The only way I can beat this jet lag is by staying up all day, and this is going to keep me alive. And who is this?”
This was directed at Marlene, who was stalking along behind Scarlett like a wet cat.
“My sister Marlene. We were at an event this morning for her group.”
Marlene dropped into a plush chair at the farthest end of the little table.
“Group?” Mrs. Amberson said, pulling out the celery and taking a big bite out of the stalk.
“Powerkids,” Scarlett said, sitting down a little closer. “It’s a cancer survivor thing.”
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br /> This was usually the place where people would go into a long, “You had cancer? What a brave little girl you are! How terrible, at your age. You know, they say that children who have been ill…” Blah, blah, blah. It was always the same, and Marlene never listened to a word of it. Mrs. Amberson, however, didn’t say a thing. She just cocked an eyebrow at Marlene and jabbed her celery stick back into the glass. It was a strangely satisfying reaction for Scarlett, who was equally sick of hearing the speech.
“I’m hungry,” Marlene said.
Mrs. Amberson smiled lightly and passed Marlene the menu.
“Help yourself,” she said.
This, Scarlett had not expected. The Alonguin was a nice place, which meant it was also an expensive place.
“I…um…I only have eight dollars on me,” Scarlett said. That was half of her current fortune.
“It’s on me,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Get what you like, Marlene. You, too, O’Hara.”
The menu was surprisingly heavy, bound in very thick pieces of leather. The food on it was fairly normal—just some sandwiches and snacks—all stupidly expensive, as she had figured. This was odd…being taken out to a place like this for lunch, by a guest, no less. She was supposed to be doing things for Mrs. Amberson, not the other way around. She quickly picked the cheapest thing and said water was fine. Marlene had no such compunctions. She ordered a plate of the house special miniburgers and a nonalcoholic pina colada with extra cherries.
“A girl who knows what she wants,” Mrs. Amberson said.
“Can I go make a call while it’s coming?” she asked.
Oh, yes. The fifteen-year-old rule did not apply to Marlene. She’d had her cell phone for years. The excuse was that she needed it to call home when she was in the hospital, which was a pretty good excuse, but still.
“Go right ahead,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I have some things to discuss with your sister.”
Marlene skulked over to an empty sofa on the other side of the room, far from them.
“I’m sorry,” Scarlett said. “She’s just a little…”
“You are an interesting bunch,” Mrs. Amberson cut in. “And you don’t have to apologize. I hope you don’t mind that we’re meeting at another hotel. No offense to yours, but this one has a pedigree and a fabulous bar.”
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