Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

by Elyssa Friedland

  Father’s Day. Right. Normally he blamed his spaciness on the weed.

  Maddie dialed from her cell, and Zach heard his father’s voice spill out after two rings. “I’m feeling a little better . . . miss you guys . . . Shaggy all right? . . . Love you, too.” Maddie handed the phone to him.

  “Hey, Dad, Happy Father’s Day.” Zach was keenly aware of his sister’s presence next to him. He might have pushed for information if she wasn’t hovering, waiting for her phone back.

  “Thanks, Zacky. Listen—I wanted to ask you, how is everything—”

  A different cell phone ring sounded in the background—the opening bars of Für Elise. What the hell was happening? Did his father have a burner phone? And if so, who set the ringtone of a burner phone to classical music?

  “You know what, son, I have to go. I’ll call you back later.” The line went dead before Zach could protest.

  “Got that done,” Maddie said lightly, taking back her cell phone from Zach. “You okay, Z? BTW, I was maybe wrong about your girl Phoebe. She’s not completely without worth.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, hearing that ringtone over and over. “She’s cool. And yeah, I’m all right.”

  “She’s cool” and “I’m all right” weren’t exactly accurate. Zach’s Google search history told the real truth. In his cache: Is Phoebe Weingold dating anyone? Reasons why a police search is conducted. Where to buy weed in the Catskills. And then a string of Roger Glasser AND police AND crime.

  “I’m gonna head in to shower,” he said.

  “Wait,” Maddie said. “I may be getting out of here. Andrew’s dad is getting honored, and I think I’m going to go to the ceremony.”

  “Okay,” he said with a shrug. Was he supposed to care? At least he could stare at Phoebe more freely.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to know what you think about the hotel before I leave. Like, do you care if Grandma and the Weingolds decide to sell?” Maddie fiddled with her bracelet as she spoke. If Scott were here, she’d be discussing it with him. Scott was more like Maddie, a man with a plan. He was going to be a doctor; Zach couldn’t remember a single Halloween that his brother hadn’t dressed up in a lab coat and scrubs, a plastic stethoscope dangling from his neck. Maddie had always held Scott in high esteem, asking him advice about school and dating, even though she was older than him. In Scott’s absence, apparently he was Maddie’s best option. Zach straightened his spine and sank a three-pointer that he tried to make look effortless.

  “I mean, yeah, I care. I love this place. I know I never come, but I guess I thought I would maybe bring my own family here one day.” Zach pulled his baseball hat lower to shade his reddening cheeks. “But I also understand selling. I mean, my sink water was brown this morning. I had to dry-brush my teeth.”

  “My closet door fell off the hinge and landed on my foot,” Maddie said, gesturing toward a welt on her ankle. “But we have a lot of memories here. Remember when we hid in the laundry bin and then we got rolled all the way to the pool hut?” His sister burst into hysterical laughter, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

  “Of course. What about the time Scotty had that allergic reaction to the cashews and started coughing during Golden’s Got Talent, and Grandpa Benny got so mad at him for ruining the performance?”

  “Oh my God, that was terrible. And classic Grandpa.” Maddie imitated his stern baritone. “Kids, do you know how much it cost to build this set? Do you know how much I’m paying this MC to be here? You will keep quiet or else.” She narrowed her eyes the way he used to when he wanted to appear threatening, which was often.

  Sometimes Fanny would feel sorry for the kids when Grandpa Benny lost it at them. She would whisper, “Remember, silence is golden,” and slip them their favorite strawberry sucking candies with the soft centers. Fanny was really nice, come to think of it. It was crappy seeing her in that wheelchair.

  Maddie looked at her watch. “Shoot, I gotta go. Text me updates, okay? I do want to know what ends up happening.” She surprised him by standing on tiptoe and hugging him. He had at least six inches on her. With regret, he watched her go. If there had been an opportunity to tell his sister about what had happened back home, he’d missed it the minute she left the court. A police toss of their home wasn’t something to casually drop over text, especially while she was with Andrew.

  Zach tucked the basketball under his arm and headed toward the main building. He checked his cell for the twentieth time for a message from Wally, but nada. When it rang, he jumped. Wally never called, only texted.

  “Hey, Dad,” he said, looking at the caller ID and instinctively moving out of earshot toward one of the walking trails.

  “Son, sorry about before. You got a minute now? Maddie just texted me that she’s leaving.”

  “Yep. Dad, what’s going on?” He lowered his voice. Half the guests were deaf, but just his luck this conversation would be overheard. “I know you and Mom said everything is just a big misunderstanding, but I’m not a moron. I didn’t want to ask on the phone before when Maddie was there.”

  “Zach, I will tell you everything. But not today. You need to focus on your mother and grandmother—make sure they make a sound decision. How are things going over there? Any decision yet?”

  Zach didn’t like the tone of his father’s voice. The hotel had never concerned him much before, so why was he suddenly so interested?

  “Not yet,” Zach said. “It’s hard to imagine selling this place. Maddie and I were just reminiscing about the times—”

  “Listen, Zach, the memories won’t evaporate if the hotel gets sold. Honestly, the place is a dump. Can you imagine having to go there instead of to Atlantis? You didn’t seem to be that upset when I got you private scuba lessons in December. Let’s be real. Push a sale, Zacky. That’s money that could end up yours one day.”

  Zach was suddenly very uncomfortable. He looked at his feet. A pile of green leaves had clustered on the ground from where he’d been pulling them off a tree.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Listen, Dad, I gotta go. Mom needs me to walk Shaggy.” He didn’t wait for his father to say goodbye before dropping the call. It may have been Father’s Day, but Zach wasn’t feeling much goodwill toward the man at the moment.

  Where was Shaggy, anyway? Zach hadn’t seen their dog since yesterday. Maybe his mother had locked him up, which she hated to do. Amos hadn’t been happy yesterday when their family had arrived with a canine, and he hadn’t done much to hide his displeasure.

  “That mutt’s gonna urinate all over the place,” he’d griped at dinner when Zach’s mother had asked their waiter for a bag of table scraps.

  “Dad, with all due respect, there is already urine on the furniture. And it’s of the human variety,” Brian had said. Everyone had squirmed a little after that.

  Zach decided not to head in for a shower after all. He needed a walk, some time to sort things out without distraction. He started on one of the easier hiking trails, marked by green arrows painted on tree trunks. The path helped him avoid passing the rebuilt auditorium, which he couldn’t see without feeling pangs of guilt and remorse. The weight of that secret gnawed at him whenever he was within fifty feet.

  He was about a half mile away from the hotel’s main building when he felt something like a rock hit the back of his head.

  “Jesus,” he said, putting his hand to his skull. “What the—?” He looked up at the canopy of treetops.

  “Shit, sorry,” came a voice he knew all too well from hours of watching her Instagram stories. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

  Zach spun around until he located Phoebe perched on the tin roof of the maintenance hut, at least twenty-five feet up in the air and dangerously close to the edge. He startled when she stood up and started walking around the roof’s perimeter, barely looking down.

  “Phoebe, what are you doing? Don’t jump. Please.
” Zach’s heart was pumping; he wondered if he could catch her if she plunged.

  She started to laugh maniacally. “I’m not suicidal, silly. I’m trying to get a decent Wi-Fi signal. Uncle Brian said it was fixed, but I can’t upload a video file no matter what I try.”

  Relief flooded his nervous system. “So you scaled a building?”

  “I had to,” Phoebe moaned. “Or else the Chinese will kill me.”

  The Chinese? First policemen tossed his house, now Phoebe Weingold was worried about the Chinese coming after her. Thank God he wasn’t stoned. He couldn’t handle an ounce of mental impairment.

  “I think you should come down,” he said, feeling ridiculous when he instinctively extended an arm to her. Even if she crouched down, there would still be ten feet between them. And he’d never be able to catch her, light as she was. His muscles were puny, and even the friendly basketball game earlier had sent him gasping for air. He imagined her toppling him, both of them flopping to the ground like overturned trees in a storm.

  “Not until I get this post done,” Phoebe said. “Michael took the car to go into town to track down some loser barista guy.”

  “So you guys, like, know he’s gay?” Zach asked, feeling bad for yelling it out. It was the first time he’d heard a Weingold mention the elephant in the room. Even his mother had shushed him and Maddie in the car when they’d talked about it.

  “I think the guy at the tollbooth driving up here knew Michael was gay,” Phoebe said. “That doesn’t mean my parents do. I mean, my mom probably does; she’s pretty much with the program. But for my dad to know would mean he would have to spend time with Michael. And that can’t exactly happen when you live at the office. My grandparents, of course, have no clue. That would give Granny another stroke.”

  “Uh-huh,” he responded, because he was a blathering idiot who didn’t know how to formulate intelligent sentences.

  “Anyway, back to my situation. I have like three hours and seventeen minutes to get this thing posted or I’m out five thousand dollars. Have you heard of EarBeats?”

  He had, and nodded. Zach desperately wanted EarBeats, the best noise-canceling headphones on the market, but they cost five hundred dollars. It was one of the few things he desired that made him wish he’d followed his friends into jobs instead of moving back home to play Call of Duty in the basement. He could ask his parents for them for Chanukah, but Chanukah was six months away. And he wasn’t eleven years old.

  “The company that makes them is paying me to post a picture of me using them. But it has to happen today or I’m in breach of contract.”

  Hearing Phoebe say the phrase “breach of contract” was surprising and intoxicating all at once.

  “I think I can help you if we can get you down,” he said. “I’m pretty good with computers. At the very least I can drive you to town, where you’ll get a signal.” He didn’t expound on why he was so good with computers as the freshman year memory flooded his brain. He and his roommates had needed access to quality porn, but the good stuff was all behind a paywall. One of his buddies was a computer science major and had led the all-nighter effort to successfully bypass YouPorn’s payment page. The challenge had unlocked a latent interest in Zach; not just an interest, a talent. In fact, when Scott had lost all of his notes from his first semester of medical school when his laptop had fallen into a fountain on campus, it was Zach he’d called to work his magic to retrieve them. He wondered if Maddie knew that story. He did good, useful things when asked. He was not a loser.

  “I can get down the same way I got up,” Phoebe said, and before he could ask how, she flung her arms and legs around a skinny beech tree and shimmied her way down with the ease of a chimpanzee.

  “Next time I do this, I’ll wear pants,” she said, gesturing to her inner thighs, where the jagged bark had scratched her. Prickly heat flowed through him. How was he supposed to look at Phoebe Weingold’s inner thighs and stay cool?

  “All right, Wall-E, help me out,” she said, and handed over her phone. He pressed the home button to bring it to life and was surprised to find that her screensaver was a picture of her, Michael, Amos, and Fanny sitting around the fire pit at the Golden. She registered his surprise.

  “You’d understand if you met my other set of grandparents. Nana and Papa Bauman are, like, the worst. Besides, I love the hotel. Michael and I have been exploring all our favorite spots since we got back here. Michael had this huge crush on one of the tennis pros last summer, and we found this place to set up our lawn chairs where we could watch him all day and he couldn’t see us. And I took my first real photograph—like the first one I was super proud of—of Lake Winetka at sunrise. I had been out all night with one of the bellboys and ended up on that tiny stretch of beach where the rowboats are kept. Anyway, he woke me when he had to start his shift, and I saw the most amazing orange and pink sunrise I’d ever seen in my life. I took a picture on my phone and he, like, made a huge deal of how great it was. I showed it to my mom later and even she kind of freaked over it.”

  “That’s really cool,” he said. “It’s cool being back together here—our two families. I feel bad sometimes about that fight at the barbeque. Like it was all my fault. I’m the one who said something about the roller rink falling apart, and then everyone looked at your uncle Brian, and then—”

  Phoebe shrugged. “Our grandparents have been partners for sixty years. An argument was bound to happen. They made up; that’s what’s important. The dry cleaners got the blueberry pie stains out of your grandma’s dress, I assume?”

  He laughed, though he hadn’t been laughing the night it happened.

  “Luckily the fire shut everything down anyway. And nobody got hurt,” Phoebe added. Zach bit his lip hard.

  He wondered if Phoebe’s nonchalant attitude meant that her grandparents didn’t regularly trash his grandparents, the way Louise did the Weingolds. Better not to ask. If there was one thing he was learning from getting older, it was that most thoughts were better kept inside his head.

  “Password, please,” he said, handing the phone back to Phoebe. “I should be able to get a Wi-Fi signal from the hospital down the road. Walk and talk?” He lifted his arm in the direction of the hospital and caught a whiff of his BO. “I’m really gross from basketball and need a shower. Sorry you’re seeing me like this.” He tugged at his jersey sheepishly. It swam on him mockingly, practically begging for muscles to fill it out.

  “You look cute,” she said, and looped an arm through his as goose bumps stormed his flesh. “Walk and fix, though, would be better.” She rubbed her thumb against her other fingers, the universal symbol for money. “I need my yen.”

  “That’s Japanese,” he said. “You mean yuan.”

  “Why do my parents say Scott’s the brain in your family?” Phoebe said, looking genuinely puzzled. “You know a lot for a supposed dummy.” She was obviously joking, but the remark stung. Zach made a note to speak up even more at the next family meeting. He wasn’t dumb. He had some attention deficit issues, and he found many things infinitely more appealing than studying, but he was pretty sure his IQ was above average.

  “Thanks, I guess,” he said, counting the pebbles on the path instead of meeting her gaze.

  Phoebe broke free from their pretzeled arms and said, “Race ya to the gatehouse.” Before he knew it, he was sprinting to catch up to her.

  * * *

  • • •

  I owe you big-time,” Phoebe said. They were seated on a bench in the town center eating ice cream after Zach had successfully uploaded the video.

  “It was nothing,” he said, wondering how Phoebe could manage to eat her chocolate cone neatly whereas his mint chocolate chip was melting everywhere. He wondered if she’d noticed him discreetly pop the Lactaid pill in his mouth while he was “grabbing napkins.”

  “You have a little something on your face,” Phoebe said, an
d used her index finger to wipe away the green dribbles on his chin.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It’s melting so—”

  “Wait, you have more,” she said, leaning in closer. “Just kidding.” Then she planted her lips on his and parted her mouth gently. He tasted chocolate and the mint of his own breath, and perfection. When they finally pulled apart, Phoebe looked at him with a glint in her eye.

  “Good. I’ve been wanting to do that since dinner last night.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Amos

  Rug! The rug!” He heard Larry Levine’s voice booming from behind the concierge station. Always a tumult from the Tummler, he thought.

  “Amos, the rug! Your rug!” Larry’s voice was incessant.

  Amos’s hand flew to his head. What was wrong with his hairpiece? He had just used his pocket comb to tame flyaways a few minutes earlier. Amos still hadn’t adjusted to his newest accessory. He’d been bald for at least a decade and never really fretted about it, even when the hairs had started collecting in the shower drain at an astounding rate. He cared a heck of a lot more that his back creaked and his knees were arthritic. Fanny was perfection in many ways, but a beauty contestant she was not, and Amos didn’t feel pressure to keep up. Though he’d run a summer resort for nearly six decades, the work mostly kept him indoors, shaded from the sun’s punishing rays. But in Florida, where his days were far too empty and taking up golf was a requirement of declaring residency, suddenly his baldness was presenting something of a problem.

  “Wear a hat,” Fanny had chastised him. “I can get you a nice sun hat right at the Publix on Collins Avenue.” But he didn’t want to wear a hat like the other geezers on the golf course. He wanted his hair back, especially now that he had retired to an over-sixty-five community in Boca Raton and was feeling his age more than ever before.

  Suddenly Larry was in front of him, awash in panic.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Amos asked, wondering why the guy had to yell “your rug” so loudly. Also, did he need to call it that? Sure, that’s what he and Fanny called his hairpiece jokingly, but not publicly.