Suite Scarlett

by Johnson, Maureen

  Theoretically, all perfect.

  Like the good actors they were, Spencer and Eric kept right on going as everyone’s favorite lovable idiots, playing to the crowd. If there was any weird feeling from the night at the party, they weren’t talking about it, weren’t showing it. As for how they treated her, however, each had his own unique method of torture.

  Spencer had barely spoken a word to her in a week. He didn’t come down to her room. He closed his door when he was at home. When they went home at night, he put on his headphones, if he waited for her at all.

  Eric spiced things up by adding the element of uncertainty. It seemed clear that the discovery had rattled him a little, and his response was to lay very low. He kept his communication to subtle glances, brushes in the hallway, an incredibly covert hand squeeze during a run-through of Polonius’s death scene. The major event of the week took place in the costume closet—the tight little space behind the stage with the exposed insulation. Scarlett had gone back to get Ophelia’s crazy drowning outfit to rough it up (the term was distress) a little. Eric had swung in behind her, pulled her behind the rack, given her a long, closed-mouth kiss, then grabbed a hat and run right out.

  Which was great…but what did you do with that? That wasn’t a date—it was an ambush.

  By Friday morning, after a sleepless night, Scarlett decided she could take it no more. She planted herself on the floor outside of the bathroom door while Spencer was getting ready for work. If he wanted to ignore her, he would have to step over her.

  Spencer finally emerged in his work clothes. He didn’t see her at first because he was toweling off his head.

  “Remember me?” she asked. She stretched herself wide, blocking his way as best she could. “I’m your sister. The one you used to like.”

  “Come on, Scarlett,” he grumbled. “I don’t have time.”

  “This has to stop. Please.”

  He leaned against the door frame and sighed, picking at the crack that ran through the wood.

  “After rehearsal tonight, want to get something to eat?” she asked. “My treat.”

  Normally, the offer of free food would have Spencer come running across the hills. Today, not so much. He continued to work at the cracked wood with his nail.

  “Come on,” she said. “Are you going to let your anger get in the way of a free meal? With dessert?”

  He looked like he wanted to say something—something other than, “I have to go.” But that’s what came out. He stepped over her carefully and went off down the hall. Scarlett stayed right where she was, in case he came back, and ended up falling asleep there. Lola woke her up soon afterward.

  “I have no idea what you’re doing out here,” she said, “but since you’re out of bed, want to help me with breakfast?”

  Lola, in the wake of her breakup with Chip, had decided to take the opportunity to go a little insane. Not fun insane, where you talk to your imaginary friends and put food on your head. Annoying insane. The single, unemployed Lola was evangelical about work, to a painful degree.

  “Why not?” Scarlett asked, dragging herself off the floor. “I have a few hours.”

  Lola seemed thrilled to be able to share some of her new rituals with her little sister. She and Scarlett frosted juice glasses, ground fresh coffee, made napkin sculptures, and ironed linens. All in all, a lot of work to do for two guests who just grabbed pastries and left. Then, they moved on to cleaning.

  “The trick,” Lola was saying, as she huddled over the toilet-paper roll in the Metro Suite, coaxing the last square into a point, “is to get it even, because if it’s not even, what’s the point? Then you just look like you’re trying and failing. It’s almost better to leave it alone. There…”

  She completed the fold to her satisfaction.

  “Press it flat, so it sort of looks like a little round envelope. And then, the secret touch…”

  She pulled something from her apron and squirted it on the roll carefully.

  “Lavender water,” she said. “It’s important to buy a very pure extract. That’s the difference between conjuring up thoughts of Provence, or smelling like an old lady’s house.”

  Scarlett watched this from the empty clawfoot tub, where she was lounging, her feet carefully dangling outside so as not to get it dirty.

  “Have you considered medication?” she asked politely.

  “You laugh,” Lola said, “but you want to know something? It’s not the big things that people remember about service…it’s the little ones. People don’t remember what street the hotel was on—but put a Maison du Chocolat truffle and a tiny bottle of Evian next to their bed when you turn it down, and they’ll remember that they liked it.”

  It was hard to tell if Lola was suffering or if she was just really like this and had simply been too busy with Chip in the last year to let her freak flag fly.

  “What’s going on with you and Spencer?” Lola said, polishing the tap with some vinegar on a Q-tip. “You two usually share a brain. Or, at least, he normally borrows part of yours. Something seems weird.”

  “He’s just busy with the play,” Scarlett replied. Which was true, if irrelevant to the question.

  “Don’t you work on that play?”

  “Yeah…well…he has to concentrate. Be all actory.”

  “Scarlett,” Lola said, turning around, “Spencer has been in plays since he was twelve. His brand of actory intensity isn’t exactly quiet and brooding, and he can’t go fifteen seconds without talking to you. So what’s up?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied.

  “I doubt that. Whatever it is, you two have to work it out. The silence between you is creepy. Dad was asking me about it yesterday, and I had no idea what to say. And Spencer looks miserable. Talk to him. Now, do you want to see my new technique for vacuuming the curtains? It’s amazing. You should see what I get off them.”

  “Have to go,” Scarlett said, propelling herself out of the tub.

  That afternoon, while Scarlet was on sewing duty, it was pretty much the Spencer and Eric show. Their many hours of unicycle practice, handstands, self-punching, and falling had finally paid off. Their routine was now to be woven throughout the entire play. They had even worked out an elaborate comic fight between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

  It was a good one, too—a carefully crafted version of what they did in the park, played for maximum comic effect. Spencer tripped Eric, causing him to fly offstage. Eric stormed back and punched Spencer, knocking him down. Then he flipped Spencer and grabbed him by the ankles, forcing him to walk in a handstand.

  There was a loud smack from the stage that cut through the empty room like a gunshot. Of course, this was just Spencer doing the face-first falling trick, but it startled Scarlett so much that she jammed the needle she was sewing with into her thumb. Blood dripped out of it and onto Hamlet’s coat.

  “Idiot,” she mumbled to herself.

  “Okay!” Trevor shouted. “Let’s take a little break! That was great guys…”

  Scarlett pulled out the needle and stuck her thumb in her mouth. She was digging around in her bag for something to wrap it in when she felt something bounce off her back and land on the floor behind her. It was a towel, marked with the Hopewell monogram. And it was followed by Spencer.

  He sank down to the floor, picked up the towel, and began rubbing his face and neck dry. He was drenched in sweat from the fight.

  “What did you do to yourself?” he asked. “Lemme see.”

  The normal ease still wasn’t there, but he was talking. He leaned over and examined the injured thumb. That was at least brotherly.

  “It’s fine,” he said. He dug around in his bag and produced a packaged hand wipe, the kind that comes with take-out food. “This will clean it up a little.”

  He cracked open his water and settled back for a long drink.

  “I haven’t seen you do that handstand-flip thing in a long time,” she said, ripping the wipe open and giving her wound a lemonscented
cleaning.

  “I had a bad experience when Dad waxed the lobby floor,” he said. “Hand grip is pretty key. But it did teach me that falling on your face is a funny way to end that. When you’re faking, at least.”

  He drained the rest of the water in one long gulp. The bottle crackled under the suction.

  “Okay,” he said, getting up. “Tonight. I’ll go with you. I think Paulette has Band-Aids. She has everything.”

  He was clearly trying not to make a big deal about it. He just sauntered off to talk to Trevor as if nothing unusual had happened. Scarlett suddenly felt something in her chest—a real, physical sensation like something horrible she couldn’t see had just been lifted off of her, enabling her to breathe.

  She enjoyed the rest of the afternoon, watching how they worked the scenes together, piece by piece. Hamlet stabs Polonius, the king and queen’s spy, through a curtain. Gertrude, the queen, watches this, and thinks he has gone insane. Hamlet drags the body off and hides it. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—Eric and Spencer—are given the unwelcome task of making a crazed killer give the body up, which he refuses to do. The fight they made up was over who had to talk to Hamlet, with each move carefully tied to a line of the script.

  They slid through the sequence again and again, twisting and tuning each bit, rearranging it endlessly. Scarlett didn’t really need reminding that her brother was good at this, that he was highly trained and professional, but watching him work filled her with pride. Especially now that he was talking to her again.

  “I just have to wash up and change my shirt,” he said, when they had finished for the day. “There is no way I can wear this one out to eat, even to wherever we’re going. Be back in a minute.”

  He walked back toward the scary bathrooms in the vestibule.

  “I’ve been waiting for Spencer to walk away,” Eric said, out of the side of his mouth. “Are you doing anything now?”

  He was giving her that look. The smoky one. Sort of the one he used at the end of the commercial, when he was on…well…fire.

  “I…”

  Spencer was going to be coming out in a minute, expecting to go to dinner with her. Her brother. The one she loved, and the one she had to make up with. He would always forgive her in time. But this chance with Eric…this might not come again.

  “No,” she heard herself say.

  “Want to meet me in front of my apartment? I’m heading there now. There’s something I really want to show you, but I can’t explain here.”

  It took about ten minutes of agonizing wait before Spencer reappeared, wiping himself down with the towel.

  “Where is this food I’ve been promised?” he said, throwing himself down next to her in his normal manner. “I’m starving.”

  “Um, about that. Can we do it…tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I can’t today,” she said, unable to even look at him.

  It didn’t take him long to get the idea.

  “Another commitment?” he asked coolly.

  “Kind of.”

  He sat there for a moment, beating out a little rhythm on his thighs with his hands, deciding what he thought of this. He laughed mirthlessly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…”

  “Watch the clock this time,” he said, putting his bag over his shoulder and leaving. “I’m not running all over the city looking for you again.”

  THAT IS THE QUESTION

  Eric was waiting on his building steps when she arrived. He had changed his clothes with astonishing speed, and was now dressed in a light blue dress shirt. He was still wearing shorts, and he wore sunglasses to keep out the late summer evening glare. The effect was ridiculously actor-modely, enough to make Scarlett’s heart make an alarming glurg in her chest.

  He had never looked so good. No one had ever looked that good. There was no way that he was actually waiting for her, Scarlett Martin. He was clearly waiting for a trio of models to spirit him off into a montage for a vodka commercial.

  “Hey,” he said warmly. “You came! This is probably going to sound ridiculous to you, but I want to go up to the top of the Empire State Building. I don’t want to go by myself.”

  Scarlett had been up the Empire State Building before with her third-grade class, but again, this was one of those places you just didn’t go if you were native.

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you by asking you in public,” he said, as if reading her mind.

  There are probably places in the world where being asked to go on a walk implies that you are going off to do something private and intimate. Maybe it means that in most places. But not in New York. The advantage of walking in New York is that there’s lots to see and do—but even on the most private ramble you’re bound to trip over at least three Chihuahuas, walk behind people who spit a lot, and maybe set off a car alarm.

  Still, Eric had a way of making Scarlett feel like she was the only person on the sidewalk he noticed. He had at least a half-dozen stories about shows he had done in high school—tragically missed cues, actors disappearing before they were supposed to be on stage, malfunctioning lights, collapsing set pieces. It was all very entertaining, but it was difficult for Scarlett to get any meaning from it all.

  One thing Scarlett had either not noticed or forgotten—once you actually make it through the lobby of the Empire State Building, you end up in a vicious trap of endlessly weaving lines, multiple escalators that don’t seem to go anywhere but across, and hordes of people. Finally, though, they were loaded into the elevator that shoots right to the top, and Eric reached over and took her hand. He kept hold of it as they escaped from the people trying to sell them photos and the crush in the gift shop that led to the observation platform. It really was adorable how excited he was.

  It was just getting dark, and the sky over the city was apricot-colored. They worked their way forward to a spot near the edge. (Not that you could ever get near the edge, really.) Eric wanted to see the view in each direction, including the one that faced the Hopewell. It wasn’t even remotely visible, but they could see the park and the avenues. They were looking at it, whether they could see it or not.

  “This building is based on a building in Winston-Salem,” he said. “True story. The Reynolds Building. The people who built that were hired to make this, and they were in a hurry and pulled out a set of the early plans. So, this is the early, rejected version of something near my hometown.”

  The embarrassment on his face was real. He laughed at himself and wrapped his hands around the protective bars that keep people from jumping or falling to their deaths.

  “I only know that because my seventh-grade history teacher told us the story ten times,” he said. “Swear to God. I think she was trying to convince us that Winston-Salem was as important as New York.”

  “Sure,” Scarlett said. “That’s what they all say.”

  He turned her around to face him.

  “There was another really stupid thing I wanted,” he said. “Are you going to laugh if I ask? Because if you are, I am marching right back down those ten million stairs and going home.”

  “I won’t,” Scarlett said, keeping a very straight face.

  “You get the scariest look when you lie like that,” he said.

  “I’m not lying. What do you want? Did you want to do a pencil rubbing of the plaque in the lobby? Get a snow globe?”

  “It’s both scary and sexy,” he said.

  Now he’d done it. He’d called her sexy, and not in the joking way that she and Dakota and Tabitha called each other sexy twenty times a day, or in the way that Spencer told her she looked very sexy when she got a comb ensnarled in her curls and she had to keep it there all day until Lola got home and could weave it out. He just dropped it right in there, like a quietly ticking bomb mixed into a clock display.

  “What I wanted,” he said, pulling away the curl that had fully impaled itself in her eye, “was to kiss someone once I got to the top.”

 
He didn’t wait for her inevitably stupid reply. He took her chin in his hands and kissed her—fully, unabashedly, right in the middle of the tourists and for all of New York to see, if they could see on top of huge buildings. And not a quick kiss, either—it went on and on, with at least five pauses for breath, and then, when it looked like it might be over, just started up all over again. He kissed her so long that she had to hold him for support.

  The tourists didn’t care. They just milled around like this was just something else they expected to see. Scarlett even got a flash in the corner of her eye as someone took their picture. As it was finally winding down, they switched the lights on overhead, and the spire that towered above them turned a luminescent purple.

  “That,” Eric said, looking up at the light, “was pretty much how I imagined it would be.”

  Scarlett found it a little hard to stand as they went back through the gift shop, to the series of elevators and escalators to take them back down. The whole “weak in the knees” thing, which she always thought was just some idiotic expression back from the golden age of idiotic expressions, was real. Her knees really were weak. Why, she had no idea. Kissing shouldn’t produce any particular leg strain, at least once it’s over, but there it was. They were all spaghettilike.

  Eric had his arm wrapped around her as they rode the elevator back down, as if proudly announcing their coupledom to the world. It was this, combined with the general body weakness, and the g-force of being dropped so many hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds that caused Scarlett to do what she did next. As they emerged on the mezzanine, Eric stepping back to allow her to go first down the escalator, she said, “Are we…you know…dating?”

  “We haven’t had a proper date yet,” he said, good-naturedly. “Where I come from, nothing is official until you’ve had dinner together in the mall and made out for at least two hours in a car. What do you do without malls and cars?”