Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

by Elyssa Friedland

  She found Fanny and Louise sipping tea at a lobby table. They were rarely together one-on-one, and Aimee was surprised to find them deep in conversation.

  “Aimee,” Louise said, spotting her. “Good morning! I told Diego we’d meet him in the salon at nine thirty, but no reason not to just head over there now.”

  Fanny powered up her wheelchair.

  “You know what, gals? I think I’ll join you in the salon. I could really use a manicure.” A beat passed. “Don’t look so shocked, Louise. Stuck in this chair, I’ve got to do what I can to make my top half look as good as it can.”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea. A deep red would look great with your skin tone. Maybe Arabian Nights.” Louise sounded giddy. Aimee would love it if Fanny could be her mother’s project—anything to deflect attention from her. Making over Fanny Weingold wouldn’t fill the gaping hole of Louise’s widowhood, but it would certainly occupy some time.

  The three of them headed toward the salon. It was on the lower level of the hotel, next to the gym. “The men shvitz while the ladies get shain,” the older generation of women at the hotel used to joke, using the Yiddish word for “pretty.” It was all so terribly outdated, Aimee thought now as they approached the beauty parlor. The women she knew worked out just as much as the men, and the men cared just as much about their hair as the ladies. Roger did, anyway. He would spend a good fifteen minutes working gel through his curls, “taming the beast,” as he called his morning struggle with his aggressive cowlick.

  Aimee was a few steps ahead of her mother and Fanny, who had fallen back into quiet conversation. When she reached the glass door of the salon, she froze momentarily before turning around.

  “Maman, Fanny, you know what? I am not feeling great. Too much tagine last night. I need to lie down. Can we do this later? We really need to do this later.” She moved to block their approach.

  “Absolutely not, Aimee Delphine Goldman. Do you know how long it took Diego to get here? He rescheduled a vacation to help you. We cannot cancel on him. Imagine how he might retaliate with my hair color.” Louise moved to push past her.

  I think he’s already having a vacation, Aimee thought, panic rising up the back of her neck like climbing ivy.

  “Yes, Aimee, that really wouldn’t be right,” Fanny said, and edged her chair toward Aimee. Good grief, Fanny Weingold was going to run her over. Well, that was fine. This was worth losing a toe over.

  “Aimee, turn yourself around and get into that salon.”

  “It’s not open yet,” she protested.

  “I have a key,” Louise said.

  “Aimee, I haven’t gotten a manicure in probably thirty years. I don’t feel like waiting,” Fanny said, and her wheelchair sped off before Aimee could stop her. She grabbed her mother’s hand and rushed to Fanny’s side. They reached the glass wall of the salon entrance at the same time. They looked in together. Three faces, eyes wide, watching.

  There, in the tan leather reclining chair used to wash hair in the basin, a shirtless Diego was on his back. And on top of him, wearing only a salon cape, was Michael Weingold.

  * * *

  • • •

  The paramedics arrived quickly, considering some kid in the next town over had blown off a finger with an electric saw at the same moment Fanny Weingold had seen her grandson making out with Louise Goldman’s hairdresser.

  And the worst part—well, not really, considering an entire family was breaking down and an old lady in a wheelchair was now hooked up to a respirator—was that Aimee’s hair still looked like it had gone through a spiralizer.

  “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” Louise hadn’t stopped with the French since they’d encountered Michael in flagrante delicto.

  “Maman, you’re not helping,” Aimee snapped. “Amos, can I get you anything? Coffee? Wine? The rabbi?”

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Fanny’s head had just rolled to the side. For a split second, Aimee had thought maybe she was dead. But then she’d started gasping, “How? How?” At least she had a pulse.

  After the paramedics had cleared out, the families gathered in the defunct roller rink to avoid the prying eyes of the hotel guests. Ambulances arriving on scene weren’t anything too out of the ordinary at the Golden, considering the age group of the clientele. Usually it just sparked a round of gossip: Who? How? Where will shiva be held? Is there an available widow/widower to fix up? Still, the Goldmans and Weingolds decided to play it safe, and secreted themselves where nobody would find them.

  Diego and Michael were huddled together on a bench next to the skate rental. Brian was kneeling by his mother’s side. She still had the oxygen mask on her face, and Amos was silently stroking her hair. Phoebe and Zach were standing by the Pac-Man machine, holding hands. When exactly had that coupling happened, Aimee wondered, cursing Roger again for making her this insane and distracted. She took a deep breath and walked over to Diego and Michael. Someone had to be the grown-up.

  “Hi, Aimee,” Michael said sheepishly. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, honey. I mean, I might suggest you find more private quarters next time, but everything will be okay.”

  Her heart broke for this young man. Her teenage and young adult years had been torturous, and she hadn’t had to contend with coming out. Maybe that was why she’d married so early, to avoid the humiliations that came with entering adulthood. Surely it was easier nowadays, but a bit more complicated when your family owned one of the last bastions of traditional family values on earth and your grandparents referred to homosexuals as “the gays.”

  “Diego, I think you better go,” she said. “This is a family matter.”

  He rose quickly, like she’d handed him a ticket out of hell.

  “Do you need a ride to the bus station?” she asked.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Glasser, but I’m all right.” She could tell he wanted to hug Michael but instead gave him a meek wave. With his knapsack slung over his shoulder, Diego leaned toward Aimee’s ear, and she tensed. She had no room for any more shocks. If anyone knew how incredibly fucked up her own life was, they would leave her alone.

  “Apple cider vinegar. Two tablespoons. Apply to damp hair. Leave on for three hours under a shower cap. That should take most of the curl out. Then come see me at the salon. On the house.”

  Aimee nodded at him gratefully. Apple cider vinegar had better not be one of the perpetually out-of-stock items at the general store.

  She felt her phone buzz.

  I heard Michael was caught in a compromising position. I hope this doesn’t derail the plans to sell, read Roger’s text message.

  How did . . . what the . . . ? Zach must have texted Scott, who’d texted Maddie, who’d texted Roger. The goddamn rumor mill at this place.

  I wouldn’t use terms like “compromising position” if I were you, she texted back, feeling smug as the three dots of Roger’s reply appeared and disappeared several times. She slipped her phone into her back pocket.

  “I think everyone could use a little breather,” Brian announced just as the neon S in skate sizzled and burned out behind him. Jeez, it was like there was a film director following them around, cuing visuals to drive home the point that the Golden was finished. “Let’s take the day off from meeting and reconvene at dinner. I think it’s important we eat in the main dining room tonight. With the firemen storming the hotel and the paramedics today and the newspaper articles, it would be nice if our families made a strong showing.”

  Gentle nods of agreement circulated.

  “Aimee, can I talk to you for a minute?” Brian asked as everyone else gathered to leave. He didn’t look pleased, but then again, his nephew was ashen, his mother had an IV sticking out of her arm, and it was basically up to him to get their families to decide what to do with the hotel in three days.

  “Me?” She
felt her stomach drop. “Sure thing.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Brian

  Well, he wasn’t going to claim surprise that Michael was gay.

  Brian had eyes and ears, so yeah, he had been pretty damn certain. And he imagined his brother and sister-in-law knew, too. Peter was way too sharp, even if Michael had never said anything outright. Greeda was no dummy, either. Before she’d devoted her life to spin class and injectables, she’d been an executive at a top-notch advertising firm. His parents, though. Fanny had been blindsided by this—her near heart attack made that plain. The dots that Brian had yet to connect were how his nephew had managed to hook up with Louise Goldman’s hairdresser. He’d delve into that later. He was still processing the real shock of the week.

  Benny Goldman, his father’s partner in crime—though not really, since Benny was the lone criminal—had defrauded them. The betrayal was staggering. He was certain Louise had no idea. She’d made enough comments over the years to indicate that she believed if there was any grifting, it was on the Weingold side of the equation. It was one of the many things that had come out at that terrible July Fourth barbeque, when the two families had come dangerously close to a proper feud. Come to think of it, it had been Benny who had brokered a peace that night. After the last fire trucks had left the grounds, Benny had insisted all quarreling cease.

  Now there was no Benny to confront. No Benny to ask: How could you? Brian wanted to know what had driven the man who had been like an uncle to him to steal from the business. Was it pure avarice? Had he felt pressure to provide for Louise and Aimee in a way beyond his means? Brian wanted answers. What the hell was he going to say to everyone about the buyer’s cold feet? Everyone was expecting a decision to be made by Friday. If Howard pulled the offer, what would he say? Could Brian really conduct more meetings about the future of the hotel with this new drama looming?

  Aimee.

  He needed to talk to Aimee about this. Had his timing ever been worse? Maybe the day he’d come home early from work and found his wife straddling the contractor. But this was a close second. He’d slept with Aimee, and now he had to tell her that her deceased father was a crook. His life was a series of poor decisions and bad timing.

  He led Aimee away from the roller rink, and they walked in silence to his office. The way she looked at him when the door closed behind them, expectation in her doe eyes, it made him think that in a different life, the kind only to be found in movies, he would sweep the papers off his desk and lay her down. Make love to her fast and furious. But this was to be a different kind of rendezvous entirely.

  “Brian, hi,” she said, taking the seat opposite his desk. “I wanted to say, well, I don’t know what I wanted to say. I just don’t want things to be weird between us. And I don’t want you to think I’m a bad person.”

  Brian studied her face. Beneath the makeup and tidy outfit that conveyed composure, she was clearly struggling.

  “I could never think you’re a bad person. You’re an amazing daughter, mother, wi—” He stopped himself.

  “Some great wife I am, right?” she finished his sentence. Then she shocked him by pulling a cigarette from her purse. “Do you mind? I haven’t had one of these in years, but I really need it,” she said. “I know, wife of a doctor smoking. And after all the lectures I’ve given my kids about vaping. But, well, this has been a trying week.”

  Brian crumbled, watching her jittery fingers struggle with the matchbook. He had been so sure that he would tell Aimee about Benny. He had to tell someone on the Goldman side. After all, the buyer was combing through the title records with a microscope. A less charitable part of him wanted to tell Aimee. He was sick of the perception that the Weingolds were the less-thans. Just because Louise was beautiful and sophisticated and Benny had been the life of the party didn’t make them the rightful owners of the Golden any more than his family. He wondered how many other acts of disloyalty Howard would discover. An hour ago, Howard had sent Brian an email asking for any knowledge he had of a mortgage taken out in 1982. He and Peter would have been about fourteen then. Which meant that was the year Aimee had had her bat mitzvah. The party had been over the top, beyond anything the Weingold twins had seen back on Long Island. Instead of holding the party at the Golden, like Fanny and Amos had done for him and Peter, the Goldmans had had Aimee’s celebration at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. A famous opera singer had been flown in from Italy to serenade the guests. Brian remembered Aimee talking about going to Paris to get her dress. The party favor had been a sterling silver heart paperweight from Tiffany. “Can you imagine how much this shindig cost?” he remembered his father asking over and over while they careened back to the Island through the Midtown Tunnel.

  “By all means, smoke. I get how trying this has been.” He stood up, relieved her hands of the matchbook, and struck a flame he held near her chin. “The hotel means so much to all of us. And I know you feel responsible for your mother. And Scott’s not here, and Roger isn’t well, and we—”

  “Stop right there,” Aimee said, taking a long drag and ashing into a glass dish etched with the Golden logo. “This”—she pointed to the cigarette—“has nothing to do with the hotel. Not directly, anyway. It’s Roger. He’s not sick. You may recall that while we were both loaded the other night, I called him an asshole. Well, that was me being generous. I learned very recently that he’s been way overprescribing opioids. It’s what’s been paying for our lifestyle. He’s basically—” Aimee broke off. She was obviously on the verge of tears. Brian shifted in his seat. He hated to see people cry. Especially women. It was why Debbie, the hotel’s first manicurist, still had a job, even though she couldn’t color inside the lines. And why Larry stood behind the concierge desk, handing out activity sheets from 1972. Why Brian had never broken up with Angela, even though his heart wasn’t fully in it. The woman was lately tearing up at insurance commercials; getting dumped would bring on full waterworks.

  “You don’t have to say anything more,” he said, searching through his desk and bookshelves for a box of tissues. He was embarrassed by how his office must appear to her, shelves still holding trophies from his youth, empty Lay’s potato chip bags crumpled into balls. It was the workplace of a man-child.

  “I want to,” Aimee said, sitting up straight, forcing her posture into a collected stance. “Michael’s going to have to be brave, and so am I. Roger is a drug dealer. He preys on people’s addictions. The kids don’t know. My mother doesn’t know. Things could get ugly fast. He’s under investigation. The police tossed our house when Zach was there. I made up some story to him about it all being a misunderstanding, but if there’s one thing I’ve seen over the last few days, it’s that he’s cleverer than I gave him credit for. It’ll just be a matter of time before he tells his siblings.”

  Brian came up behind Aimee and placed his hands on her shoulders. There were only two other people in the world who understood the Golden in the way he did. And she was one of them. He would always feel tenderness for her, no matter what Benny had done.

  She turned and buried her face in his chest, now freely sobbing.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  But he was lying. He honestly didn’t know if things would work out. His mother and father were reeling from the Michael shock; his brother was grinding away his life at the office with a wife going off the rails; Louise was mourning a man with a dark secret; Aimee’s marriage was in tatters. Everyone was lost. They were gathered together in their summer home, but the glory days were long gone. In their place were pain, lies, confusion, and uncertainty.

  Aimee pulled away from him, wiping her runny eye makeup with the back of her hand.

  “I made this all about me. I’m so sorry. What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

  “Oh, it was nothing. Just wanted your opinion on some résumés that came in. Assuming we live to fig
ht another day, we gotta get our seasonal staff in place.”

  To: Weingold and Goldman Families

  From: Peter Weingold

  Subject: IMPORTANT

  I’M ON MY WAY.

  —Peter

  Chapter Eighteen

  Zach

  Hello, Zachary,” Greta said, reaching in to give him a hug. He was unsure how close to get to her, because half her face was covered in thick white bandages. From the neck up, she resembled a mummy. From the neck down, a really fancy lady. The kind his mom used to roll her eyes at during school events, saying things like, “Honestly? High heels to work a bake sale?”

  “Um, hi, it’s good to see you,” he said. “How, um, was your drive?” Making conversation with adults had never been his strong suit.

  Greta sank into a leather armchair in the lobby and put on oversized sunglasses. She might have looked glamourous wearing them indoors if the rest of her face hadn’t been shrouded in gauze.

  “My ride? Let’s see. Peter was on a conference call the entire time. When I had to use the restroom and asked him to pull over, he told me to be quiet and that I could blow a multibillion-dollar deal. When we lost reception in Katterskill, I tried to speak to him about Michael, but he said he needed to focus on the road. Which really means he’s thinking about work but doesn’t want to admit it.”

  “Um, I’m sorry,” he said. Why were adults so weird? He hated when they overshared. One of his professors used to do that. If Zach got to seminar early and said, “How you doing, Professor Baker?” the friendly teacher in a cardigan and bow tie would say things like, “To be honest, I think my wife is cheating on me.” What was Zach supposed to do with that information?

  “Phoebe’s been really awesome this week,” Zach said. “She came up with a ton of good ideas to make the hotel more modern. And the social media accounts she created have tens of thousands of followers already.”