Suite Scarlett

by Johnson, Maureen

  “Hey,” Scarlett said, as the guilt sank in. “I’ll take the desk for a while. I mean, I’m here.”

  The front desk of the Hopewell was not a good place to distract yourself. It was, however, a great place to really let the loneliness and pain sink in. Lola had gone off to try to find the towels of her dreams at a lower price, her parents were still buying pipes, and Marlene was off at her friend’s apartment. Even their three guests were out.

  Scarlett was the most alone person in the city of New York—a city that never let you be alone. She tried to distract herself by reading e-mails from her friends, but it only made them seem farther away and their lives so much better than hers. She tried not to replay every single moment of what happened the day before…that didn’t work. Then she really tried to avoid watching Eric’s commercial online.

  Seven viewings later, she was openly weeping at the desk. This was probably the only good thing about no one being around.

  Unable to take it anymore, she hung the sign and headed out down the street to buy herself an iced coffee. She was just locking the door, when she heard someone speak.

  “It’s not Tara,” the voice said. “It’s Lola, right?”

  “Scarlett,” Scarlett corrected whoever it was. She gave her eyes a quick rub, just in case they were still dripping, then turned to find herself facing a woman with very short silver hair.

  “Oh. I must have read it wrong. Nice name, though.”

  Donna Spendler looked very different with a crew cut.

  “Going out?” she asked.

  “Just to get a coffee,” Scarlett said. There was the throat thing again. The clamp was on her—but this time, it was all panic.

  “I’d like a coffee myself. Do you mind if I come down with you?”

  It wasn’t like she could refuse, so the two walked together. Donna seemed strangely at ease as they went together. She even paid for Scarlett’s coffee before Scarlett could stop her.

  “I left a message for you yesterday,” she began, when they sat with their drinks. “You may not have gotten it.”

  “Sorry,” Scarlett said.

  “I’ll bet you’re wondering how I got here.”

  This was precisely what Scarlett was wondering. Her brain was working feverishly on this problem and getting nowhere.

  “It took a while before I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I was so pleased to get a television show that I let some oddities slip by. But when I didn’t hear anything about the script, when my agent couldn’t confirm what was going on with any of the trades…sometimes those things are normal. But then she really started looking, and no one had heard anything about The Heart of the Empire. The Heart of the Empire really did not seem to exist. And I started to think. Paul. I kept thinking he looked very familiar. I started to think very hard about where I had seen him before. Then I remembered. It was a commercial.”

  The famous commercial. Scarlett felt her eyes roll back into her head in realization. Mrs. Amberson probably didn’t know that his face was already familiar—she had been in Thailand when it was shown.

  “It wasn’t hard to trace his name online. He posts his resume. From there, I was able to find his agent, find out what he was working on. Do you know that someone in that cast keeps a blog about what’s going on with the show, complete with pictures? Imagine my surprise when I saw his assistant in there as well. I looked up your brother, and lo and behold, both of you are pictured on the Web site for this hotel. The Internet is an amazing thing.”

  The picture with the braces glistening in the sunlight. Apparently, she still looked like that.

  “Now,” Donna went on, ripping open a packet of sweetener, “I had to ask myself, why did the cast of Hamlet at a little theater downtown want to set me up like that? You see, that stunt ended up costing me a big part in a show. And I can’t help but feel that maybe that was the goal.”

  Scarlett looked past the tips of Donna’s clipped locks, out of the window to the street.

  “I figured the explanation behind this had to be pretty interesting,” Donna said. “So, Scarlett, would you care to enlighten me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know what? Why it was set up? Who did it? Because it wasn’t you or your brother or his friends who planned this.”

  Scarlett sucked hard on her straw. What was she supposed to say?

  Donna took out a leather case, which she snapped open. She wrote down her number on a piece of paper inside, and ripped it off.

  “You should know,” she said, “that I work both with theater people and the tourist industry. It’s easy to get a bad reputation in the theater world, and it’s also easy for a hotel to get the wrong kind of publicity. I am taking this very seriously, Scarlett. Don’t think for one second that the fact that I’m not screaming and yelling means that I’m not angry. Whoever it was can contact me here. They should make it soon.”

  Donna got up and left, leaving her coffee untouched. Scarlett put her head in her hands and allowed herself to panic. Spencer was under threat. The show was under threat. The hotel…

  And Spencer didn’t even know what he had done.

  “Oh,” she said to herself. “This is so not good.”

  A COZY DINNER

  There was a sickly smell gassing up the lobby, where Scarlett was pacing between the desk and the door, occasionally pressing her face into the diamond-cut glass to get a wobbly view of what was going on outside. She got the sinking feeling that the odor was homemade pizza. That acrid smell was the crust burning—the tangy, bitter smell was cheese being turned to rubber.

  Both Spencer and Mrs. Amberson had sent her messages saying that they were on their way back from the move-in to the parking garage, the play’s final home. Mrs. Amberson arrived first in her cab.

  “The cab wouldn’t take your brother’s bike,” she explained, as she pulled out her cigarette case. “He’s coming on the subway. You look better than I expected. You have good, fighting stock in you, O’Hara. I was also thinking about getting you an appointment with this wonderful girl, Katiya…”

  “Donna came over,” Scarlett said.

  Those three words didn’t quite have the chilling effect that Scarlett had hoped. It took Mrs. Amberson two matches to get herself lit, but otherwise, she didn’t look disturbed.

  “Came over where?”

  “Here!”

  “And how was her haircut?” she asked, a wry smile slipping on to her face. “Was it very, very fetching?”

  “Did you just hear me? She was here.”

  “You’re repeating yourself, O’Hara. How did she get here?”

  “She figured it out. Not about you. She recognized Eric, then worked back to Spencer and me.”

  “Well, well,” she said. “Donna is a little smarter than I remember. I hope you were nice to her. Did you rub her head for luck? Did it feel like a squirrel?”

  “She also said that she could cause trouble for Spencer and Eric, and that she might say things about the hotel.”

  Mrs. Amberson gazed at Scarlett for a moment.

  “She doesn’t have the nerve,” she said dismissively. “Or the brains.”

  “Are you sure? She found us.”

  “A little luck, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you think you should maybe talk to her?” Scarlett asked. “She left her number.”

  Scarlett produced it, and Mrs. Amberson visibly bristled.

  “Listen to me, Scarlett,” she said. “She angry, so she’s putting on a little show, pretending she has clout. Someone like Billy…now he can make or break a career. But not Donna Spendler. Ignore her.”

  “But…”

  “What could she possibly do to Spencer? What could she possibly do to this hotel? In two days, this show is going to be performed in front of over fifty influential people from the New York theater community. That’s what we have to pay attention to. I’m going to go freshen up before dinner.”

  Marlene came out of the elev
ator as Mrs. Amberson was going up. She hadn’t spoken to Scarlett since the fight the other night, but her stance was no longer combative. Or, it wasn’t as combative as normal.

  There was a grudging respect behind it, like she now accepted Scarlett as a fellow warrior.

  “We have to set the table,” she said. “Mom said.”

  The burning smell was much worse in the dining room. Scarlett and Marlene exchanged a look of mutual disgust as they worked. They were almost getting along until a familiar black car pulled up in front of the building.

  “He’s back!” Marlene yelled, rushing for the door.

  “Oh, God,” Scarlett said.

  Chip was getting out with a freakishly tall arrangement of white and pink orchids when Spencer came skidding along on his bike.

  “Oh, God,” Scarlett said again, almost dropping the plates in her rush to get outside.

  Chip and Spencer were staring at each other like two cats who haven’t quite worked out if they’re going to claw each other apart or groom each other to death. Spencer was almost twitching in his desire to say something. Marlene, meanwhile, was swarming around Chip in unfettered delight, openly flirting and batting her eyelashes.

  The arrangement he was carrying, aside from being three feet tall, was delicate and vaguely Asian, in a square vase wrapped in strips of bamboo. It looked very, very expensive.

  “Those are pretty,” Scarlett said, stepping between the steelygazed Spencer and Marlene and her dance of love.

  “Oh.” He looked down at the flowers as if he had forgotten he was holding them. “Yeah. I tried. Lo likes white, and this pink color seemed good. I was just going to leave them. I should just leave them…”

  There was a look on his face that she recognized—a hopeful, pained look.

  “No,” she said. “You can come in.”

  Spencer coughed. A tiny, polite cough.

  “You should,” Marlene said, tugging on his sleeve.

  It was clear that Chip had planned to leave his flowers at the desk unnoticed, and instead, three separate Martins had accosted him on the street.

  “It’s okay,” he said, passing Scarlett the flowers. “And if she doesn’t want them, you can keep them.”

  There was so much sadness in his voice. Stupid Chip, with his bottomless bank account and his Number Ninety-eight status and his repulsive friends.

  “Hello, Chip,” Spencer finally said. His voice was completely normal, but the delay was oddly menacing.

  Marlene continued to protest, asking him to come in, requesting a ride in his car, on his boat…

  “Come on, Marlene,” Scarlett said, trying to pull her back while balancing the huge flowers. This did not improve Scarlett-Marlene relations, and when Chip eventually left, she stormed inside.

  “It’s nice to see him,” Spencer said, watching the car disappear around the corner. “Really. I miss him.”

  “I felt bad for him,” Scarlett said.

  “He can go home and suck on a credit card.”

  Scarlett looked at the flowers. Chip had chosen them with care—they really were perfect for Lola.

  “Sorry,” Spencer said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I forgot. I guess you would feel bad for him now. Special circumstances.”

  He did a quick up-and-down check of her overall demeanor and expression and didn’t look completely satisfied with the result. Spencer must have assumed that her pale and stricken expression was still the aftereffects of the day before. It was—but it was also having Donna Spendler on their doorstep.

  “You never punched Chip,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I kind of wish I discovered my violent streak earlier.”

  He locked up his bike, and they went inside. Scarlett set the flowers down on the desk. Lola came down the stairs a moment later and reeled at the sight. She kept a radius of several feet around them, like they might reach out for her.

  “Chip brought them,” Scarlett explained.

  “Why didn’t you get me?”

  “He didn’t really want to stay.”

  Lola looked to Spencer accusingly.

  “I did nothing,” he said, holding up his hands. “Besides, why would you want to see him? You broke up with him. Don’t you want me to keep him away?”

  “That’s not the point,” Lola said.

  “It’s not?”

  “Just…forget it.”

  She stormed into the dining room, leaving Spencer to shake his head in bafflement.

  “Someone’s in a bad mood,” he said. “Always at me.”

  The elevator opened, and Mrs. Amberson joined them. She had changed into a rare pair of jeans and a formfitting tank top.

  “These are lovely,” she said, flicking a petal as she walked by. Scarlett watched with revulsion as Spencer’s gaze followed her along.

  There was a palpable tension around the dining room table, not entirely caused by the blackened pizza. Lola was still miffed over some imagined offense. Marlene was annoyed in general because of Chip. Scarlett was sick for several different reasons. Mrs. Amberson was fidgeting in her seat.

  “You know,” she said, “I would just kill for a drink. I’m not sure if that’s possible, but…”

  “We don’t have a bar license,” Scarlett’s dad said. “But you’re our family guest for dinner. I’ll just make you whatever you’d like.”

  “A double whiskey would be lovely,” she said with her most toothpastey smile. “It’s a bit heavy for summer, but it’s made with whole grains, and that’s what counts. It’s a celebration today, after all. The show is about to open! Just two more days!”

  “Is the show going well?” her mom asked, chopping ineffectually at the pizza with a butcher’s knife. “Can we expect some tickets?”

  “Of course!” Mrs. Amberson said. “Of course! Best seats in the house for all of you! Spencer does a wonderful job. He’s absolutely a star.”

  Scarlett’s father returned from the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and a glass of ice. Mrs. Amberson dumped the ice into her water and poured herself what looked like a serious amount of straight alcohol, which she downed with alarming speed.

  Spencer kicked Scarlett under the table, but she couldn’t watch. This didn’t bode well.

  “You must have been thirsty,” her dad said, trying not to look at the empty glass.

  “Oh, just one of those days!” she said. “But, yes. Spencer is quite a performer. How do you feel about it, Spencer?”

  “Like I’m on top of the world,” he said, watching her closely. “Like that guy from Titanic. But less dead.”

  She laughed a truly silverware-rumbling laugh that made all six Martins lean back in their chairs.

  “Mind if I have another?” she asked, plucking the rejected ice cubes back out of the water. “Just a small one. Little chaser.”

  Another whiskey slid to its death. Scarlett was officially terrified. The Donna news had evidently sunk in.

  “I knew a wonderful young actor once,” Mrs. Amberson said, setting down the glass. “God, it was a while ago. He was a musical-theater performer. His family was Italian. They run a restaurant in Queens, as a matter of fact. That’s where I learned about good pizza.”

  She smiled at the untouched slab of carbonized dairy and wheat product on her plate.

  “He could dance,” she went on, “but he was really a singer. You could feel that when he was performing—he didn’t just want other people to see him and clap for him, he really wanted people to be entertained. And they were. That’s what the best actors are like. I think you’ve got that, Spencer. Cheers to good actors.”

  She raised her half-empty glass.

  “Does your friend still perform?” Scarlett’s mom asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Amberson said. “He’s quite successful. Haven’t seen him in years, though. He lives in Hollywood.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  Mrs. Amberson stood, slightly unsteadily.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” sh
e said. “Thank you for the lovely meal, but I have to be off. Spencer…no late night tonight! We head out at eight in the morning, on the dot!”

  Mrs. Amberson’s behavior shortened the dinner a bit. As everyone scattered and Spencer and Scarlett gathered the dishes, she took his arm.

  “I’m coming with you tomorrow,” she said.

  “Scarlett,” he said. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  Whatever had happened with Eric, whatever she felt…something much bigger was going on now. Something he didn’t know about. Something he wouldn’t have even wanted to know about.

  “I am coming with you,” she repeated.

  SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN DENMARK

  The parking garage was a multistoried one, a winding concrete mess, overlooking an East Village street. The stage was being set up on the second level for the first part of the show, then the audience would be moved up to the open air on the third level for the big final act. Every part of the garage was being used, so there was commotion and equipment everywhere. The whole cast had been hard at work for hours.

  Scarlett made it a point to stick close to Spencer, or it could have been Spencer making a point to stick by her. It was difficult to tell. There was a magnetic connection going on no matter what, probably in their mutual interest to avoid more heartbreak and scenes of violence. At the moment, all she could see of him were his feet. The rest of him was underneath the half-assembled stage with a drill, tightening a support. She sat next to him, supporting a light so he could see what he was doing. From here, she had a perfect view of Eric across the way. He was lifting lights out of the back of a van. He was wearing one of his tighter T-shirts.

  She dug her fingers into her leg as hard as she could.

  “Ow.”

  That wasn’t her. That was Spencer. She had let the light droop, and now the drill had gone silent.

  “You okay?” she said, peering fearfully into the void.

  Before she found out what damage she had just caused to her brother, Mrs. Amberson swooped down on her with a handful of twenties.

  “O’Hara,” she said. “Go downstairs to that pizza place on the corner and have some food and drinks sent up. There’s a health food store across the way, so you can pick me up a carrot juice. I’ll get this.”