The Lady in Residence

by Allison Pittman

  “Is there a reason why you didn’t tell me any of this earlier?” After all, she had shared some important, intimate details of her past.

  “I guess it just didn’t come up. I don’t introduce myself as a ‘divorced man.’ It’s part of my past, but it doesn’t define who I am. If I’m dating a girl, I don’t bring it up until the third or fourth date, and then only if I think there’s something…you know…there.”

  Dini wondered if their time together constituted dates, and if he thought there was something…here. She was left to her wondering, however, because Quin’s phone began to speak directions of upcoming exits and turns.

  “What’s this town?”

  “New Braunfels,” she said, pronouncing the name correctly, unlike his disembodied navigator. She filled the space with trivia about the German-founded Texas town.

  They exited the highway and made their way up a long, twisting, eclectic road. Their “destination, on the left,” was the historic Prince Solms Inn, a solid, two-story brick structure with a set of double front doors painted in an inviting shade of tomato red.

  “Bed and breakfast?” Quin said, reading its large green sign.

  “Yes, formerly a hotel. It’s got a great space downstairs. Used to be a speakeasy. That’s where the show is.”

  It took a bit of driving and luck to find a parking spot, leaving Dini and Quin with a half-block walk to the inn. He worried about her shoes, which she thought was sweet, but then she produced a pair of flats from the back seat. “Always prepared.”

  Her bag for this show was a favorite—vintage powder blue and round, probably part of some woman’s honeymoon set. Dini opened it and stashed her heels into the shirred pocket that spanned the width of the inside of the lid. The case had a small, looped handle designed to be slipped over a dainty wrist, meaning Quin looked a little ridiculous carrying it.

  The walk to the inn was rough and uneven, in places totally without a sidewalk, and with each step Dini was glad to have ditched her heels. “We’re going to the Sidecar. There’s an entrance around the corner, but let’s go through the house.”

  They walked up the stairs, through the inviting red door, and into a narrow entryway. On the right, a white banister stretched to the second floor; a sharp hook of a turn revealed a door that opened to a steep, dark set of stairs.

  “After you,” Quin said, gesturing with his free hand.

  “Nope,” Dini said. “I have a thing about walking down stairs with someone behind me.”

  “Because if I fall, we both fall?”

  “Exactly.”

  Stepping into the Sidecar at the Prince Solms Inn was like stepping out of a time machine. Exposed brick walls, dim light from electric bulbs. Tufted black leather seating ran the length of one wall, tables interspersed in front of it. At the back stood an impressive-looking bar with a mosaic of bottles on the shelf behind it.

  “Well, hello, Miss Magic.”

  Dini turned her attention to the woman who’d snuck up from behind. “Hey, Miss Lorraine.” She was heavyset, in a way that looked like a controlled, trim figure let loose with age.

  “We weren’t expecting you for another half hour or so.” Lorraine’s tone was more efficient than friendly, but Dini knew not to take offense. She hoped Quin did too, considering the mildly disapproving assessment Lorraine was giving him.

  “This is my friend I told you about. Quin? Also known as Irvin Carmichael the Fifth. Can you imagine? Today is his last day in town, and he’s never seen my show. Thank you for letting him crash.”

  “Someone’s got to carry the bag,” Quin said, grinning self-consciously.

  “That’s an American Tourister hat case. Nineteen sixty-four, sixty-five, maybe,” Lorraine said with disdain. “It’s a woman’s bag.”

  Dini jumped in. “Lorraine was a flight attendant back in the day. She knows her stuff.”

  “Back when flying was a class act,” Lorraine said. “That’s a fine bag.”

  “Thank you,” Quin said, not at all awkwardly.

  “I’ve got this.” Dini relieved Quin of the bag and shooed Lorraine back to her table of chattering women, but not before learning of the afternoon’s signature drink—something called a Virgin Pink Flamingo—and instructions to wait in the Pipe Room until it was time for the show.

  There was a small stage at the foot of the stairs, most of which was taken up with a baby grand piano lacquered to black silk. At Dini’s request, a small table sat next to it. While setting up, she looked around to offer the occasional smiled greeting, noting the ladies had dressed for the venue: an illustrated flapper on their T-shirts, and red hats in 1920s styles. To think, some of them might have been born in the decade.

  She held the suitcase closed without zipping the lid and stepped down from the platform, picking her way over to an alcove behind the stage. Open booth seating ran along all three walls, with a glass case parallel above it displaying hundreds of artfully arranged pipes.

  “You think this is the Pipe Room?” Quin asked. He held two margarita-style glasses filled with a thick pink drink.

  “I think the better name would be the Fox and Pipes Room,” Dini said, pointing to the mounted fox posed above the case. She reached for a drink. “Strawberry?”

  “Grapefruit,” he said. “Frozen and delicious. I had a taste before he poured.”

  Dini took a drink and concurred. Tart with underlying sweetness. She sat in the booth, and Quin brought over a chair while she changed her shoes and retrieved an open deck of cards from the case. Leaving the Jokers in the box, she commenced to shuffling, the feel of the cards fanning through her fingers immediately comforting.

  Not—for once—that she needed it.

  “This is called The Lovers,” Dini said as Quin sat down. She fanned the soft cards, cut them, and shuffled again. “Appropriate, because this place too is haunted by a tragic love story.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is.” She shuffled as she spoke. “It was just after the turn of the century, 1901, maybe ’02. There was a wedding to be held here, and the bride and her family arrived a few days early to make preparations.” Dini set the deck on the table. “Take the top half and shuffle the cards.”

  “I can’t do fancy shuffling.”

  “Any shuffling will do.” Dini did the same with her own half. “Anyway, the morning of the wedding, the groom didn’t show up. The bride waited and waited. All day and the next.” Dini set down her half of the deck, signaling Quin to do the same. “Her father sent her brothers out to track him down. Drag him back if need be. They found a set of tracks leading out of town, but the trail ended, cold. Nobody had seen him, and as far as the family knew, nobody saw or heard from him again.” She picked up her half of the deck. “Cut it”—she demonstrated—“and look at the card in the cut. Don’t show me.”

  Quin did, bringing a familiar furrow of concentration to his brow.

  “Remember it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. Now put it on top.” She reached out, took Quin’s half of the deck, laid hers on top, and began a series of swift cuts, moving small groups of cards throughout the deck. “The woman refused to leave the hotel, knowing that her lover would return. She stayed after her family left, and the owner let her work as a maid, and she eventually ran the place. She died sometime in 1930.” She looked up, fully focused on Quin. “Do you remember your card?”

  “Nine of spades.”

  “Nine of spades. Mine was the four of hearts.” She began turning the cards over, one by one. “A few years later, the new owner is about to lock up for the night, when suddenly the door bursts open, and a man dressed like someone from the last century comes running through the door. And—get this—he runs through the owner. Like a chill. And right up the stairs. Those very stairs we saw when we walked in.” She turned over his card. “Nine of spades.”

  “There it is,” Quin said.

  “There it is,” Dini said. “And then, the guy turns, looks up at the top of the
stairs, and what do you think he sees?”

  “The bride.”

  “The four of hearts,” she said before turning her card over. “Like the lovers, finding each other.”

  She liked to do this trick at wedding showers or bachelorette parties, having learned a few bits about the bride and groom’s story. She’d even done it at birthday parties, turning the cards into a rescued princess, or even mortal enemies meeting for a final battle. It was the last part that made it a show, timing out the final telling so the revealing of the card fell in rhythm with the story. She’d done it hundreds of times, but today was the first time she’d sat across the table from someone she wanted very much to find again. To return to.

  “Amazing,” Quin said, leaning in, his elbows on the table.

  She felt her cheeks flush and took a sip of her drink. “Not really. It’s pretty simple.”

  “Not the trick, no offense. But you. You’re mesmerizing. You’re the magic.”

  “I love that story.”

  It was dark in the Pipe Room, the alcove lit by a single amber bulb. The women were nothing but a soft, far-off sound. Dini shuffled the cards. “Want to see another one?”

  Before he could answer, Lorraine stuck her head around the corner. “Five minutes, sweetie. You might want to freshen your lipstick.”

  “I’m up!” Dini said, focusing. She took another sip of her drink. “There’s no alcohol in this, is there?”

  “The bartender assures me, no.”

  “Good to know.”

  For the next ninety minutes, she worked. The crowd was sweet, laughing at her jokes and offering a few back without heckling. She kept up the banter through all the illusions, snapping the cards and tapping the deck on the table with every punch line. The Triple Deal. The Swimmers. The Switcheroo. She brought volunteers up from the audience just as she would at any other party. She asked, “What’s your name, sweetie?” and “How old are you?”—a question that bore no stigma in this room. The oldest, Betty Jean, had turned ninety-nine the previous week.

  Dini saved The Lovers trick for the last of the show, bringing Lorraine up (on Quin’s arm) as her participant. She walked through the story as she had with Quin, but didn’t dare risk even a glance his way. It was hard enough to control her hands, remembering how he’d looked at her. How—according to the weight she felt on her skin—he looked at her now. At the final reveal, the ladies emitted their now-familiar gasp and applauded generously. Afterward Dini stood for photos, knowing her face was going to be posted on a dozen different Facebook profiles and Red Hat group pages.

  “Just remember to hashtag Dini Blackstone,” she said, handing out her card as a reminder.

  When all had dwindled down to Lorraine settling up with the waitstaff, and Dini had packed up her case, Quin took her hand and led her to a secluded, dark corner saying, “I want to show you something. Look.” It was a narrow phone booth, lit by a single, bare bulb. Inside, a green rotary dial phone, represented by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, presided like something from a time machine. “Just think, kids wouldn’t even know what to do with that.”

  “Okay, Grandpa Irvin,” Dini said. “Maybe you spent a little too much time with the old girls today?”

  “That Betty Jean, she kind of stole my heart.”

  “Want me to run outside and see if I can catch her?” Dini took a step.

  “Nah,” Quin said, reaching out to stop her with a touch to her forearm. “I think I might have something else going on. I don’t want to break her heart.”

  “You’re a good man, Quin Carmichael. Now, have we seen enough of the phone? Or is there a fax machine somewhere you want to show me?”

  “Would you take my picture? In the booth? My sister collects phone booths. I mean, not actual phone booths, because that would be insane. But pictures of phone booths. She has a thing.”

  “Like with the notebooks?”

  “Different sister.”

  “I don’t know if you’re supposed to go in there.”

  He held his finger to his lips and opened the door. “See? Not locked.”

  Dini took his phone and snapped a variety of poses—Quin looking serious, Quin holding the green handset and miming conversation, Quin taking off his glasses, gripping his shirt as if any second Superman would appear. Then he held out his hand. “Come here.” She did, and he maneuvered her against him, the two of them pressed together as he held his phone out for a selfie. “We want to be sure to get the phone in,” he said, working for a better angle.

  “We want to get the squirrel in too,” Dini said, referring to the head mounted on the wall above the phone. It wasn’t easy to make the joke, given the closeness of him, the way his chest pressed against her spine, his beard close enough to tickle the exposed skin on her shoulder.

  “Hey!” The intrusive voice came from around the corner, attached to the bartender. She was expecting some kind of chastisement, but he merely offered to take a picture of the two of them.

  “Thanks, man,” Quin said, stretching past Dini to hand him the phone. He was still behind her, but he put his hand on the curve of her waist and brought her somehow closer. Dini’s mind raged at her body’s pliability. She wasn’t one to mold against another person and yet the rigidity that would grip her in the most accidental of brushes didn’t reach past her lungs. They froze, their duty of breathing in and out temporarily halted.

  Once the bartender said he’d gotten some “good ones,” he returned to his duty while Quin scrolled through. “I’m sending these to you,” he said before picking up her bag. “Ready to go?”

  Dini, not having uttered a single word since pointing out the squirrel, nodded. Not until they got to the stairs did she say, “Wait there. Ten steps.”

  “So if you fall I have time to brace myself and stop you?”

  “Exactly.”

  The late afternoon—nearly four o’clock—air was cool and gray. While Quin got the car, she leaned against the beveled newel and opened her phone to the camera. It took a bit to find the right angle for her face and the red door behind her, but once she got it, she posted to her Instagram, tagging the Inn and the Sidecar, thanking them both for an afternoon of history and haunted romance. Within seconds, the red heart beneath the post lit up, and she saw that @QCMichael liked it. Quin. Then his own post popped up, the picture of the two of them—one taken by the bartender—with a caption: This girl is magic and amazing. No hashtags (just because a guy develops an app doesn’t mean he “gets” the marketing aspect of IG), but the picture…She’d posed with men before—the dads at birthday parties, guys from the audience after a show—and she always looked so stiff. So uncomfortable. Because most of the time she’d just taken a step from their proximity or shrugged off their touch or steeled herself against an unwelcome embrace.

  But here, the two of them stuffed into a tiny room built for one, she could see the way their bodies formed to each other. Her lines intersected his lines. His fingers splayed against the stitching of her belt. Had his arm encircled her? And she hadn’t noticed? Didn’t twist herself away with a frozen smile?

  No. In fact, there was no smile on either face, unless you counted the contented half lift of Dini’s lips. Quin, however, wasn’t even looking at the camera. He was looking at her, his glasses loosely held in his left hand, his face turned at an angle that betrayed his gaze. Even though she was there, even though it was her, Dini felt like she was peeping in on a private moment. Nobody would ever look at this picture and not think that Quin was in love. He couldn’t have posed for this. Surely in the series of the bartender’s snaps there was one where both of them wore cheesy friendship smiles. This was a moment unguarded and captured. This was a trap like the one the poor fox in the Pipe Room must have wandered into. And, like the fox, Quin had put it on full display for her and—she checked—all 117 followers.

  Chapter 16

  Excerpt from

  My Spectral Accuser: The Haunted Life of Hedda Krause

 
; Published by the Author Herself

  One week passed. Then a second. And perhaps a third—measuring time became the least important of my priorities. I knew I should leave the Menger. Even more, I knew I should leave San Antonio, but I knew that if I left, I would never see my worldly goods again. Sallie White had gone from being a mischievous irritant to a force of destruction. I knew people thought me to be mad. I heard the sniggers of the staff as I passed them in the hall and the whispers of guests who somehow knew my tale. I may not have been robbed by Sallie White herself, but I’d been robbed by this place. My hands might be empty, but I would not walk away until they grasped some kind of justice.

  One afternoon, after a stretch of mutual avoidance, I took it upon myself to step behind the front desk and knock on Mr. Sylvan’s private office door. At his terse “Come in,” I entered, holding myself tall, lest he think I came to grovel.

  “Mrs. Krause.”

  “Mr. Sylvan.” Then an uncomfortable minute before, “May I sit down?”

  “I’ve never known you not to do exactly as you wish.”

  I took a seat in the chair opposite his desk, noting how absolutely tidy it was, not a stray paper in sight. Just a blotter, a telephone, pen, ink, and massive ledger. “I’m sure you realize why I am here.”

  “Has it something to do with the staggering amount of money you owe the hotel?”

  “Surely staggering is an exaggeration.”

  He licked the tip of his fingers and flipped to a page at the back of his ledger. I did not see the specific figures, but even from this distance the amount of red ink appeared as damning as anything in Carmichael’s notebook. “Would you like to hear the total?”

  “I would not. Not right now, thank you.”

  “I’d be well within my rights to have the police come and toss you out on your bustle, you know.”

  I suppressed a smile at the way his moustache twitched at the word bustle. “I understand. And I am thankful for your generosity—”