“That’s really cool. And that’s how you found this place?”
“Actually, Dad heard about it from one of the prisoners he was escorting to court. The guy got arrested breaking into this place—”
“Gabe!” My hand flies up to my mouth. “We have to go. We’re going to get in so much trouble!”
Gabe closes the space between us and pries my hand from my face.
“Easy, doll,” he says. He kisses my knuckles and every part of me melts like warm butter. “Dad and I got caught one night when I was thirteen. When the shows were sold out, or if it was one we’d seen a few times, we’d bring popcorn and snacks and stuff down here and just hang out and listen to the music or the game on an old radio. The guy upstairs, the one we saw at the door? He caught Dad and me. Dad explained that we weren’t going to hurt anything, maybe name-dropped Mom little, and he agreed to turn a blind eye as long as we didn’t make a mess or disrupt anything.”
He presses his fingertips to my shoulders and kneads the knot away. “So relax. We aren’t going to go to jail tonight. At least not for being here.”
We both laugh and he pulls me down onto the old, dusty piano bench next to him.
“You play the piano, too?” I ask. I know I said nothing else would surprise me about him, but is there really anything he doesn’t do?
“Not a bit,” he laughs. “I just like the way the keys feel.”
I run my index finger down a few of the white keys. They’re covered in a thick layer of dust and when I press down, they’re clearly out of tune.
“So what is this place?”
“Honestly?” Gabe asks. “I think it’s just a storage room now. I know that’s not a very exciting or romantic answer, but I guess I’d like to think that Mom was wrong. Sometimes things can be amazing, even when they’re simple.”
“I think you’re right.”
He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me closer to him on the bench and we play a bastardized, out of tune version of Chopsticks mixed with what I think may be a little bit of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It sounds both terrible and beautiful—the way it mixes with the laughter of two people who needed to escape so badly.
It sounds like the most perfect song I’ve ever heard.
“Lena,” he whispers, my name escaping his lips like a fervent prayer. “Thank you for staying tonight.”
“Now, see, if you would have gotten a proper accounting of all of the places that I actually have been in the city, we could have checked this one off of our list,” Lena says.
“Not a Parker House virgin, then?” I say. The term turns the tips of her ears red and she sort of freezes in place. I clear my throat then push through the revolving door of the hotel. “We’re not here to eat Boston Cream Pie, or Parker House rolls, anyway.”
Lena shuffles in behind me and tugs on the tips of her bangs to straighten them out.
“Of course we’re not.”
And good thing, because all of the restaurants in the hotel lobby are closed, save for maybe the whiskey bar and I don’t think we could pass for the legal age in a place like this. I don’t think the bartenders here will take a little extra cash to pour drinks to underage kids like they do in the shitholes the kids from my school and I hang at.
Plus, I don’t think a bar is Lena’s scene at all.
“No hidden basements this time, though?” Lena asks. She raises her eyebrow, but it’s all play.
“Nope,” I say.
We pass the front desk and make our way to a little offshoot from the main lobby. It’s quiet down here, and that’s a good thing, but that’s not the reason I chose this spot. I pull out one of the thick, upholstered arm chairs and offer it to Lena. She sits down, but slants her eyes at me nervously.
“What?” I ask, taking the chair next to her.
I sink into the soft, striped fabric. This place is over a century old, and though the furnishings are new, everything feels old—in the best way. The entire hotel reeks of history.
That’s what I love about it. That and the painting on the wall across from us.
I lied to Lena when I said I wasn’t into art. I was only ever into one artist, though.
My grandfather.
This painting isn’t his, but he donated it to the Parker House.
I stare across the room at the woman in the red hat, with the bright yellow scarf draped around her neck, wearing her own version of a Mona Lisa smile. Lena eventually follows my gaze.
“Is that…?” Lena jumps up from her chair and walks over to the painting. I watch the way she tilts her head, taking it all in. The gentle brush strokes of the woman’s mouth, the way she’s almost biting her lip, or maybe about to whisper a secret.
“This is a Leon Kroll,” Lena proclaims. I love the way she says it. Full of wonder, not pretention. “It’s stunning. Did you know he lived in Gloucester until he died?”
I nod my head and then get up to walk over to her. “I did know that.”
“Of course you did. I mean, Gloucester is full of artists, but Kroll, he was—”
“He was the ‘Dean of U.S. nude painters’,” I say. Her shoulder bumps into me as we both laugh.
“Yes! How did you know that? I thought you didn’t like paintings.”
I point to the small gold plaque under the painting.
“The Red Tam. Donated by Albert Bryk and family,” Lena reads out loud. “This was…?”
“My grandfather’s,” I say. “He used to work here. He was a bellman his entire life, started when he was just a kid. My grandfather wasn’t just a hard worker, he loved this place like he loved his own home. Kroll used to stay here, so many artists and writers and politicians stayed here. Gramps helped him out one day, loading up all his stuff into his car, making sure it was packed up just right. Kroll was impressed. Kroll spent a lot of time in Gloucester back then, and told Gramps if he ever wanted to learn a few things, to come by. Gramps had never painted anything other than a house, but who turns down an offer like that?”
Lena is leaning forward, hanging on every word.
“Your grandfather knew Leon Kroll? I can’t…this is…Did he teach him to paint?”
I tilt my head back and forth. “Depends on who you ask. Gramps wasn’t exactly an artist, but he tried. More than anything, he found a friendship with Kroll. When he’d come into Gloucester, Gramps and Babci would visit with Kroll and his wife. She was Parisian and Babci just loved her.” I sit back down in the club chair. Lena follows.
“We have some other paintings and sketches of Kroll’s at Babci’s. You’ll have to come by and see them sometime.” I pause. “I mean, if you’d like.”
“What about your grandfather?” Lena asks.
“What about him?”
“Do you have any of his work that I could take a look at?”
“Yes,’ I nod slowly.
She smiles softly. “I’d like that.”
I’d like that, too. My grandfather was, like my Mom so detested, simple. But he was a good man. He worked hard his entire life and he did everything with integrity. I miss him every day. I wonder what things would be like now if he were still alive. If my dad wouldn’t have taken off. As lost as I felt after Gramps passed, and as much as my life has spiraled since then, I sort of can’t blame my dad for bailing now.
“You were close to your grandfather,” Lena says. It’s not a question.
I stare at the fabric on the chair to avoid meeting her eyes.
My instinct is to deny, or change the subject, but the mention of my grandfather while sitting in this place that he loved so much, by this person who actually gives a damn, makes me want to talk about him. It makes me want to remember him.
“My grandpa was the best man I’ve ever known.”
“Tell me about him,” Lena says, leaning forward in her chair.
So I do.
I tell her about the time my grandfather taught me to change the oil in his car, the day he insisted on going out on the water to fish in the dea
d of winter, and how we literally had to push our rowboat across the ice because the harbor was completely frozen over.
I tell her about how fiercely he loved Babci, how they held hands across the table like the couple at the diner earlier during every meal.
I tell her how he never said an unkind word about my mother in front of me, even though she never showed the same courtesy. I explain to Lena how my grandfather was the first and only one to ever tell me that I was going to do something good with my life, that I just hadn’t found my place yet. He believed in me.
I tell Lena about the time my Gramps and Dad took me to New York to see the Red Sox play the Yankees. How I didn’t even really care about baseball, but sitting in between them, listening to them joke and argue and cheer was the best way I could’ve spent a day.
I tell her how that was the last time I saw my Grandfather.
And she listens to every word.
Lena yawns, then covers her mouth and says, “I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s just—what time is it?”
I check the time on my phone. “Almost three o’clock.”
Lena giggles and asks, “How is that even possible?”
“What do you mean? We’ve been here for a while.”
“No, I mean, how is it possible that twelve hours ago I was sitting in my room, fighting with my sister and now—”
I know she’s thinking the same thing I am.
How can you change so fast? How can the world tilt so easily—so quickly and irrevocably, and leave everything looking so different in the company of someone you hardly know?
But neither one of us has the guts to say it.
“He was from New York but fell in love with Gloucester? Kroll I mean,” she says. “I guess that means it can’t be so bad, right?”
“Gloucester?” I ask. “Nah, Gloucester’s beautiful. But you know it works in reverse, too? You can be from a beautiful place and move on, too.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying… I think you can fall in love with many places. I saying you don’t have to stay in one place because that’s where you’re from.” I reach forward and let my finger graze her hand. “I’m saying that if NYU will have you, I think you should go.”
“Maybe,” she says, staring at my hand on hers. I pull away. “I guess it just depends if I even get in.”
“I think you will. I think there’s too much good that could come from you if you were given the chance.”
“You know, I’ve never even toured the campus?” she shifts in her chair, leaning over to one side, and rests her head on her arm. “I’ve heard it’s set up kind of weird, what if I hate it once I get there…if I get there.”
“We should go,” I say a little too eagerly. “To NYU. I’ll take you, I mean. It’s less than four hours away. We can tour it together, you can see what life would be like in the city on your own.”
“I don’t know if I could even survive on my own,” she says.
“Eh, I think you’d surprise yourself. And if not, you come back home. Or try somewhere new.”
Lena shifts again, this time sitting up straight. She stays quiet and stares at her hands in her lap for a few moments before saying, “I feel like…I feel like I’m this person, who isn’t even a whole person. Does that make sense? I’ve never done anything. Seen anything.”
“You have that chance, though. You don’t have to end up at Endicott College. Hell, you don’t even have to end up at NYU. You can do whatever the hell you want, Lena. You can paint. You can travel. You can become an engineer or a heart surgeon. You can decide to put off school altogether if you wanted.”
“My parents will freak if I choose anything but a local school.”
“Let em,” I say with a shrug. “They’ll get over it. What other choice do they have, anyway?”
“Easy for you to say, your parents—” she clamps a hand over her mouth. “Shit.”
I laugh at the way her sweet voice sounds with a swear on her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“It’s not a big deal. It’s true. Dad’s not around, and Mom…well, you’ve seen my mom.”
“Then what about you? Don’t you think you’ve got something bigger to offer the world?”
I twist my shoelace around my finger and say, “I feel like I don’t belong anywhere right now. Not here. Not Gloucester. Honestly, I have zero plans, Lena.”
“Did you ever think that you’re exactly where you should be? That maybe things really do happen for a reason?”
“What do you mean? Like tonight?”
“Maybe,” she says with a shrug.
“Are you saying that us ending up stuck in the city is like an atrial septal defect?”
Lena pulls her brows together and leans back in her chair. “I don’t…I don’t think?”
“I’m kidding,” I laugh, but Lena still looks uneasy, like she has no idea where I’m going with this.
She rests her elbows on her lap and sets her chin in her hands.
“But truly, tonight really is the perfect example of things happening for a reason.”
“Yep,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “I got in a fight with my mom, I had a run in with my ex, I am going back to Gloucester without the valve cover—”
“You’re enjoying a beautiful evening with me.”
“You’re absolutely right.” I smile slowly as I watch the liquid copper in her eyes turn to honey. And I feel my chest squeeze knowing that warm look is for me.
I swallow hard before I say, “I’m enjoying a beautiful evening. With a beautiful girl.”
***
We sit in the lobby talking about life. About our futures. About what the heck her parents will say if and when they find out that she was gone all night long. We talk until our throats were raw from laughter and our eyes became too heavy to hold open. We talk until guests start coming down from their rooms, wheeling luggage behind them to check out, likely to catch early morning flights. We talk until management starts questioning why we’re there.
So we take that as our final queue to leave, and manage to track down a tiny restaurant open near the train station.
This night has been so amazing, so full of things I never expected to experience.
And so exhausting.
Lena folds her arms on the table and rests her head on them. She closes her eyes and sighs, like she’s probably in that perfect place between asleep and awake where she can still hear the music from the old jukebox in the corner, the cooks in the back calling out orders, and the waiters shuffling across the black-and-white checkered floor, but she looks so relaxed that she might as well be dreaming.
I wanted to take her somewhere fantastic to eat, but our options are limited at this hour, and our legs and empty stomachs wouldn’t carry us too far.
“Lena,” I say, rubbing my hand across her forearm. “What do you want to drink, doll?”
“Um,” She sits up in the padded booth and blinks a few times.
“Coffee,” she says.
“Regular or decaf?” the waiter asks.
“Regular,” she says, at the same time that I say, “Decaf.”
The waiter looks at me, then to Lena.
“Regular is great,” she says. “Thanks.”
“Same,” I say. I check the time on my phone. “Only a little over an hour until the first train. You gonna be alright?”
“Yep,” she says, stretching her hand across the table for me to clutch in my own. How can I have only known her for less than a day when her hand in mine feels like the closest thing to home I’ve ever known? “Just sleepy.”
“Well, before you know it, you’ll be back home in your own bed.”
Our waiter comes back with our coffee and Lena and I each order a proper breakfast. Eggs and toast and hash browns. And Boston Cream Pie. I fight rolling my eyes when Lena insists on adding two slices to the order.
“You may not be a tourist, but I sort of am,” she says.
&n
bsp; “You’ll be back soon enough,” I say. “I’ll make sure of it. And next time, cannolis.”
“I hope so.” She stirs a heaping spoonful of sugar into her coffee before asking, “What am I going to do about my parents? How am I supposed to go home and just slip back into the life I’ve been living?” She looks so lost in thought that I don’t know if she even realizes she said it out loud until I answer her.
“I don’t know, Lena,” I say. “I think you’ve done your best to understand them and where they’re coming from. I think you’ve done your job and played by their rules, but they have to know that realistically things couldn’t go on like this forever. Eventually they’d have to let you go a little.”
“What would you do?”
“Ah, hell, I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask.” I rub the back of my neck and frown. “I don’t typically do things the right way, you know? My mom says I’m reckless.”
“Yeah, well, I wish I ever even had that option.”
“No you don’t,” I say, shaking my head. I take a couple of sips of my coffee and then say, “It’s not for you. When you’re reckless, it’s because you don’t care. It’s because you don’t have anything to lose, Lena. It’s when you don’t have anything worth protecting.”
“Do you believe that’s what you are?”
“I did.” I look up at her, the warm copper swirling in her eyes. She looks at me like she gives a damn. It’s been a long time since someone has done that. “Now I’m not so sure.”
When our food shows up, we both shovel eggs into our mouths to avoid asking or answering the hard questions that hang in the air.
When our plates are clean and our dessert arrives, I leave mine untouched. The pie isn’t the problem. It’s the nagging question that’s been tugging on my brain for the last few months.
“What’s wrong?” Lena asks. She takes a small bite and swallows slowly, looking worried. “Not hungry?”
My words all come tumbling out too quickly. I don’t want to unload it all onto Lena, but I don’t know who else to turn to.
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