Suite Scarlett (15 page)

Spencer was outside on the sidewalk, sitting on the stoop and drumming his fingers on the lid of one of the trash cans chained to the front of the building. His unicycle was balanced against his knee. There was a look in his eyes that Scarlett had never seen before—a distant, dim stare. She saw him notice her tousled hair and slightly rumpled clothes.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” he said. “I called you about a dozen times.”

Scarlett looked at her phone in confusion. The answer was depressingly dumb—it had run out of charge.

“Oh, it…”

She held it up to explain. This didn’t impress him much.

“Come on,” he said.

He said nothing as they waited five minutes for a free cab to come by. Spencer tossed the unicycle into the trunk. She got in and he slid beside her, keeping close to his side of the seat.

“I called home and covered for you,” he finally said in a low voice when they were halfway uptown. “That wasn’t easy. You were supposed to be home two hours ago. I told them we were working
late and that I was with you. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, because I might not have.”

“You’re angry,” she said.

“Yeah,” he snapped. “I am
seriously
pissed.”

The cab made a frighteningly fast turn. She slid into him and then edged her way back.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

There was no point in denial.

“I…couldn’t.”

“What do you mean you
couldn’t
?”

She was about to say, “Because Eric said not to.” But no matter how she put that, it was not going to come out well. She left the question unanswered as they rode up Third Avenue.

“Then you took off from the party without telling anyone where you were going. So, suddenly, you just aren’t there, you’re not answering your phone, you’re just gone. No one knew where you were, not even Mrs. Amberson. To be honest, Scarlett, it scared the crap out of me. I only went to Eric’s because I had no idea where else to look.”

The cab jerked to a halt in front of the Hopewell. Spencer reached into his pocket, pulled out some crumpled bills, and shoved them through the window to the driver. He kept three steps ahead of her while he unlocked the front door and didn’t say a word in the elevator. When they hit the fifth floor, he dropped the unicycle and stalked down to their parents’ room, the Diamond Suite, knocked on the door, and mumbled a few words of explanation.

His entire body stiffened as he walked past her to his room. She followed him inside. He started undressing, as if the conversation was over and she wasn’t even there.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I am. I swear.”

“I’m tired,” he said, tossing his shirt into the corner. “I get up early, remember?”

He climbed into bed, still in his shorts and shoes, but she didn’t leave. He folded his arms over his chest and stared at her. Spencer mad was actually a scary, but infrequently seen thing, like the Loch Ness Monster. He could hold a lot of emotion in the narrows of his face.

“Do you want to know what really bothers me?” he said. “What makes me mad is that you couldn’t just tell me. You looked right at me and lied to my face.”

“I…”

She was going to say
had to.
But she didn’t have to lie to Spencer. She just did. He had her dead to rights.

“Can I just ask,” he said, his voice reaching a sharp edge, “what you think is going to happen? He’s about to start college, Scarlett. You’re going to be a sophomore in high school. How’s
that
going to go? Do you think he’ll have time for you once he starts school?”

There was a meanness to this that was completely unfamiliar. It made her nauseous.

“So, you think he can’t like me?”

“Of course he
likes
you,” he said. “He’s a guy.”

“What does that mean?” she spat. “Are you just mad because
you’re
not dating anyone?”

Where had
that
come from? She didn’t mean that. It just came out.

“It means just what I said,” he replied. “This is a bad idea, all around. And this is my show you’re messing with.”

“Messing with?” she said. “This isn’t about you. He likes me. So what if he’s in your cast? And the only reason there’s even a show to go to is because of me.”

He rubbed his face hard with his hands, as if trying to make the view of her go away.

“Forget it,” he said. “I covered your story. I’m going to sleep.”

He flopped on his side, turning from her. She backed out of the room, waiting for any sign that he was going to keep talking. It didn’t come. When she was out in the hall, he got up and closed the door. And for the first time, she heard the sound of his bolt sliding shut.

Almost every hotel in New York has experienced a death; therefore, it is no surprise that most hotels in New York have had reports of spectral activity.

In 1934, the Hopewell Hotel on the Upper East Side was well-known among the Broadway set. Its small size and
au courant
design made it an elegant enclave—and it was considerably more affordable than The Waldorf-Astoria or The St. Regis (where the Bloody Mary was invented in the King Cole Bar that very same year). Performers desiring decent accommodation and a friendly atmosphere kept the hotel going during the Depression. (It was also helpful that the hotel’s owner tended to turn a blind eye to room sharing. A room filled with too many guests was better than one with no guests at all.)

In June of that year, a would-be actress named Antoinette Hemmings moved into a room in the Hopewell called the Orchid Suite, which she shared with a theatrical secretary named Betty Spooner. Though Antoinette had done many chorus roles, she had greater aspirations. It looked like she was on the verge of her first big break when she auditioned for the role of Hope Harcourt in the new Cole Porter musical
, Anything Goes.
A summer cold and a sudden attack of laryngitis derailed Antoinette’s dreams on the day of her final, critical audition.

Antoinette was crushed to miss such a massive opportunity. She was determined to get noticed some other way. She returned to the Hopewell and wrote a long note of instruction to Betty, including the name of the closest hospital and the phone number of a friendly newspaper reporter who covered the theater beat. After dressing herself in her diaphanous, pink, feather-edged dressing gown, she took a handful of sleeping pills, and washed them down with champagne…timing the entire event carefully to coincide with Betty’s return from work.

Unfortunately for Antoinette, the normally timely Betty was delayed. Instead of finding the elegant but still very much alive Antoinette draped elegantly over the bed, ready to be carried off to the hospital in her pink gown…she found the very dead body of Antoinette by the door. She had apparently realized in her last moments of consciousness that Betty was not going to be able to save her and made an attempt to get help.

In 1974, a guest in the Orchid Suite reported that a young woman in a pink gown knocked on his door. She asked if Mr. Cole Porter had called for her. The man was about to ask her who she was or why the longdead Cole Porter would have called her when he said she “vanished before my very eyes, like a lifting fog.”

—
FROM
81
BIG APPLE GHOST TALES
,
CHAPTER
8, “
HOTEL GHOSTS
:
THE GUESTS WHO NEVER CHECK OUT
”

It should have been one of the best weeks of Scarlett’s life.

Mrs. Amberson was more or less out of Scarlett’s hair entirely. She had forgotten all about the book, and was spending the majority of her time running around the city doing what she called “social PR” for the show. She sent Scarlett in her place to watch and help with costumes. This meant that Scarlett had a full six hours a day to hang out with Spencer and watch Eric.

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.”