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*Thank you," Laura said. "May I introduce— **
**We're having a New Year's Eve get-together at our place in Lake Forest; is it too late to ask you? Do come—so many people you'll just love, and if you're going to be part of Chicago there's no better way to get the right start. Otherwise you could waste months meeting the wrong kind of people. We'll send our chauffeur to pick you up, if you'd like. We'll talk about it in a few days, all right? Such a lovely weekend ..."
They drifted off. Laura and Rosa looked at each other. "I've fed those two a dozen times at parties Felix and Leni gave," Rosa said thoughtfully. "In fact, I've fed more than half the people here. I'm afraid I belong on the other side of the kitchen door, my young miss."
"You belong here," Laura said firmly. *This is my party and I've invited my special friends. The rest of the list was put togetiiier by a friend of mine."
"Well, they're all lovely people, just perfect, such a good idea to have them," Rosa said with a twinkle. "I'm proud of you, you know; you got them to come for a weekend in December—a busy social month, you know that—and you've got photogr^hers here; my goodness, everyone must think this is going to be a major hotel. And you're the manager! What a good job for you to have!"
Laura nodded, feeling guilty because she had lied—again —to Rosa. But she still was keeping her ownership a secret, especially from Felix, and she would as long as possible.
"So when you sent me the invitation," Rosa said, continuing the conversation that had been interrupted, "I told myself, She does want to talk to me. She's foigiven me for messing up her case in court. But I don't want to talk if you're going to start with a lot of explanations. You never did me any harm, my young miss; you loved me and I knew it, and I've missed you something fierce. And if I don't ever know the absolute truth, it doesn't matter anymore. It was so long ago, and I've always known, from day one, you were telling some lies and some truths, and since everybody does that why shouldn't I just go on loving you the way I always did?"
"Thank you," Laura said, her voice husky. She looked around as Qay came up behind her.
"Small problem with a table seating. Could you help?"
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She nodded and hugged Rosa—almost clinging, it seemed to Rosa—and kissed her again. "Cocktails in the lounge and dinner at eight. F11 try to get back to you, but there's so much to do . . ."
"Go on, go on," Rosa said. "I've done it in my time; I know it's the little things that can ruin a party or make it perfect. I'll be fine; I'll just look around and be impressed."
It was impressive, she thought as Laura left with Clay. And so were the two of them; Clay had grown a mustache and looked positively handsome, his blond hair smoothly waved, and Laura glowed with a polished beauty she'd never had before. Walking through the lobby, Rosa wondered what was behind it: if she was happy, if she had friends and a new lover, if she'd gotten over everything that happened. Maybe she has, she thought; she's certainly got a peach of a job, and if she helped with the decorating she's got more talent than I ever knew.
In the lounge, she found a wing chair beside the fireplace, and that became her vantage point for the weekend, as she watched the guests and kept her eye on Laura, who rushed about from one task to another, never sitting down and resting. She never looked flurried or anxious, but she never relaxed, not even at dinner on Friday night. While two hundred guests feasted on caviar, pheasant, and raspberry sabayon prepared by Enrico Garibaldi, the Beacon Hill chef, Laura was everywhere, taking care of hundreds of small details. On Saturday it was more of the same. There was a lunch of northern Italian specialties that Rosa, the experienced chef, much admired, and then everyone was chauffeured by limousine down Michigan Avenue to the Chicago Art Institute for a private showing of the year's most sensational exhibit: a treasure trove of gold, silver, and gems found in an Italian trading ship that had sunk off the coast of Spain four hundred years earlier. Currier had been a major investor in the search expedition that found the ship and brought up its treasure, and he had arranged with the Art Institute to have the private showing a day before the exhibit opened to the public. The magazine photographers who were covering the Beacon Hill weekend for Town and Country, Vogue, Eye, and a dozen other magazines dedicated to the glossy doings of the rich and famous were there,
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too, posing television stars, countesses, and corporate magnates beside glass cases gleaming with goblets, coins, and fabulous coronets. They paid no attention at all to Rosa. She had been personally invited by Laura Fairchild, but that didn't imfness them; all they knew was that she was small and round and her shoes were sensible, and they'd never seen her before.
Kelly Damton received the same glazed looks of nonrecog-nition. She arrived on Saturday morning, and after the guests letumed from the Art Institute to the Beacon Hill lounge for tea and cocktails, she joined Rosa at her post besi(k the crackling flames in the fireplace. "It's obvious we're equally non-newsworthy," she said, and held out her hand. "Kelly Damton.*"
''Rosa Curren." Rosa took her hand, liking its strength and the direct look in her dark eyes. "Laura told me about your lodge. And she says wonderful things about you.**
^All true, probably. I hear good things about you, too. When Laura likes somebody, she's generous with her praise.'*
"And when she doesn't like someone?*'
"She gets very quiet," Kelly said. "Isn't that what she did when you knew her?"
"She was very young, but she was never very big on showing her feelings."
**Well, God knows, she's still like that. Hello," she said, looking up as Ginny Starrett joined them.
"I wanted to meet someone new," Ginny said, taking the third chair at their rosewood tea table without being ask^. "I do get tired of seeing the same people at every party." She introduced herself, noting Kelly's callused palm and Rosa's soft one as they shook hands. "Laura is still like what?" she asked, having heard the end of Kelly's sentence.
"Private," said Kelly. "Doesn't tik about her own feelings, or anyone else's, either. To anybody."
"But she must have made friends," Rosa protested.
The three of them looked at each other. They all thought of themselves as Laura's friend; Ginny and Kelly had confided in her; Rosa had talked to her freely about the Salingers and her feelings about them. But they were the ones who had done the talking; Laura had never really been open with them. They loved her, they knew she cared about them—but none of diem knew her intimately.
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Rosa sighed. "Is she happy, I wonder? She's got a good job here, and it's such a perfectly beautiful place. . . .*'
A hostess stood at their table. "Fd like more sherry," Ginny said. "KeUy? Rosa?"
Kelly nodded. "Tea, please," said Rosa, and then looked about the room. "She was always very big on beautiful things. And I knew someday she'd find a way to make something beautiful of her own."
Her own, Ginny echoed silently, and she knew then what it was that was special about the Chicago Beacon Hill: its beauty was very personal. The lounge where they sat was a large room with soft lights and colors that made it a soothing oasis on a gray Chicago weekend. Along one wall, minors reflected the fleur-de-lis carpeting used throughout the hotel and large panels of French tapestries on the opposite wall. A sky blue ceiling with gilt scrollwork from another age arched over the guests sitting in pale blue armchairs and sofas around small round tables. On a raised platform, a harpist played baroque music, the delicate melodies weaving through the hum of conversation that rose and fell throughout the room. Hostesses served from glass and silver carts, and Laura moved from table to table like a slender flame in a long gold dress that glowed amid the soft colors of the room.
Ginny sighed with envy, remembering a time when her own face had been fresh and smooth, her color high and her eyes large without the help of makeup, her hips slim and her waist narrow without inhuman diets and diabolical exercise equip-I ment. But her envy fad
ed. It was absurd for a woman of sixty-one to envy a girl of twenty-five, but also, in all honesty, she had to admit Siat even at her best she wouldn't have looked like Laura in that dress: she didn't have Laura's catlike grace that made the fabric flow like liquid gold when she moved.
The hostess brought their drinks and, for Rosa, an English porcelain teapot wifli a matching cup and saucer. Beside diem she set a George V silver tea strainer fitting snugly in a silver receptacle. She opened a polished wooden box divided into small compartments filled with tea leaves and, when Rosa had chosen the kind she wanted, she spooned the leaves into the teapot, closed it and covered it with its own quilted cozy to
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steep. Finally, she arranged a plate of cookies and a basket of fruit in the center of the table, and set out fruit plates with mother-of-pearl fruit knives at each place. Rosa sighed. **There aren't many places where that's done so well. She's remembered everything I taught her, and then some."
A dog barked. The sound was so startling that all conversation stopped. Heads came up, glances darted about, the barking grew louder and more frantic, and then everyone realized it was not a dog but a man, sitting on a love seat near the harpist. His head back, his mouth wide, the muscles of his necic rigid, he growled and woofed and yelped while his com panion, a young girl, by now in tears, tried to shut him up.
"Son of a bitch," Ginny muttered. "Britt Farley. Coked to the gills. He never could hold it, especially when he drinks." a,
"Who?" Kelly asked loudly, competing with the barks ansj yowls. "
"Country-rock singer; hit it big in one of those television series." She stood. "He went to high school with my ex-husband; they both liked to drink and screw. Maybe I can gei him out of here before he messes up Laura's weekend."
But as she started toward Farley's table, she saw that Laura was already there. People were talking again, their voices raised in outrage or embarrassment; dishes and silver clinked, the harpist played rapid trills and runs, and everyone tried to pretend nothing was amiss. As Ginny reached Farley's table she saw Laura sit beside him, her arm around him, talking to him with her lips close to his ear. She talked steadily, without pausing, her fingers digging into his shoulder. And all the while his young companion was sobbing beneath the baiking that had begun to quiet down: "I asked him not to do any coke. See, £ey all think he stopped; he told them he did after they said if he didn't they'd write him out of the show, have bis character run over or something, and he couldn't stand that, he couldn't stand it if they killed him off, and he promised them he'd stop, he promised me he'd stop, but he doesn't pay me much mind usually, I mean, he thinks I'm like a little girl—that's what he calls me, his litde girl who's silly enough to stick with him. . . ."
Her voice trailed off. Ginny bent down beside Laura, listening. ". . . good, you're very good," Laura was saying, her
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voice a steady hypnotic monotone. "Good sound, good timbre, good volume, but no one appreciates it; there's no market for it, no market for country-rock singing dogs in television— '*
A giggle broke from Ginny. Laura flashed her a look of warning, and she cut it off.
"—or romantic ones, either, and you're so good at country-rock and romance, they wouldn't let you change even if they appreciated you. Maybe someday, someday soon, someone might recognize your other talents, but right now you're so big the way you are, so good, so important to the network they couldn't let you change, they couldn't let you be any-diing but the hero you are. . . ."
Slowly, as she talked, she eased him up, her arm still around him, her lips still beside his ear. He was much taller than she, and she had to walk on tiptoe, talking, talking as she led him through the room. Trancelike, his eyes half-closed, at last completely silent, he went with her.
Laura glanced back at Ginny and made a small gesture with her head asking Ginny to stay with the young girl, and then, as some of the guests watched and others turned away, she led Britt Farley from the lounge, down the two steps to tfie lobby, and into the elevator.
"I'm taking you to your room," she said, her voice like ice. At her abrupt change, his eyes flew open. "I'll have dinner sent to you there. I don't want to see you downstairs until you're sober. If that means brunch tomorrow, and I think it probably does, then you won't come downstairs until brunch tomorrow."
They stood close together in the richly paneled elevator while Laura tried to control her fiiry. This is my house, the first Vve ever had that's really mine, and I have guests here, and this damn fool dares to get drunk! And bark! Who the hell does he think he is, to come into my house and make my guests uncomfortable? The elevator reached the eleventh floor and she held his arm, propelling him down the short corridor to his room. "Hold on," he said thickly, trying to come to a stop. "Can't force me to leave the pauty . . . paid my money . . ."
"Not this time, you didn't; you're here as my invited guest,
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and you'll do as I say. Give me the card for this room." He hesitated. "Give it to me, Britt. You're in real trouble if you don't."
He squinted at her. "Britt doesn't get into trouble; Britt makes trouble."
**Call it what you want; if you don't unlock this room or let me do it, I'll call the poUce and have you arrested for disturbing the peace."
'*Oh no. No siree. Wes wouldn't let you do that. Knows me from way back. Bad publicity for hotel."
She looked at him with contempt. 'Try me."
He tried to stare back, but his eyes wandered, and after a moment his shoulders slumped. "Fuck it." He took from his pocket the plastic coded card that fit into a narrow slit in the door, releasing the lock. Laura used it and pushed him inside. The room looked as if a tornado had ripped through it: in the hour between returning from the Art Institute and going to the lounge for cocktails, Farley and his girl had J9ung clothes and shoes in all directions; scotch and bourbon botdes were on tables and amid the tangled sheets on the bed, and white powder was scattered over the dressing table, along with a deck of cards, men's and women's jewelry, and the girl's cosmetics. "And I worried about which room style you'd like best," Laura murmured. "Get undressed, Britt," she ordered bluntly. "Get into bed, sleep it off. I'll call later to see if you want dinner sent up. And don't worry about your friend; we'll take care of her."
"Silly little slut," he murmured sleepily, trying to unbutton his shirt. "Hangs around when nobody else cares whether I shit or shine. Even when I bark. You were right, you know; I'm good at it. Makes everybody pay attention to me. You see their faces? Ha!"
Gently, Laura pushed aside his frimbling fingers and unbuttoned his shirt. He stood quietly, his large body slack as she undressed him. Once, automatically, his hand came up and clutched at her breast. She pushed it aside without friss, as if it were a fly, and he made no protest; he acted from habit, not desire. She pulled back the tangled sheets. "Sleep well, Britt," she said quietly, and left the room, his heavy breathing filling the silence even before she closed the door.
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Our American hero, she thought caustically as she walked back to the elevator. But though her anger had faded, she was shaken. What had occurred would do more damage to Britt Farley's social reputation than to her hotel, but what shook her most was the gross falling away of the facade of Britt Farley. She had met him once in New York, with Currier, and had seen only the public man: a rugged, swaggering figure who had built himself into a mythic hero whose songs were about the dreams of everyday people and the ways to make them come true against all obstacles.
But then there was the man she had just put to bed: weak, frightened, probably on his way out of a job.
Every face has another face behind it, she thought as she took the elevator back to the lobby. Every scene has another one that's hidden until something reveals it to us.
She thought of Paul's photograph of the three children and their sand casde: a peaceful scene—but the children weie
quarreling. If Paul photographed Britt, she thought, he'd know how to show the face behind his pubUc one.
Paul. She stood in the lobby, alone in the empty space, wanting him, remembering the times m the past months when she had longed to share with him anecdotes about the people who worked on the renovation, neighborhoods she was discovering in her soUtary explorations of Chicago, and the men and women of other cultures whom she met in grocery stores and restaurants where she could not speak their language, nor they hers, but somehow they communicated and laughed together. She was alive, she was busy, she loved what she was doing, but none of it was as rich as it might have been, because she could not share it with Paul.
She wanted him so overwhehningly she ached all over. She could feel his arms around her, she heard his voice inside her as clearly as if he stood next to her in the lobby, she felt the wonderful security and completeness she had felt whenever they were together.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, willing the pain to stop. It's over. He's married, I have a whole life of my own, what we had is ended. Damn it, affairs end all the time; why can't I get used to the fact that ours is over?
One of the guests bumped into her; someone else adroitly
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stepped around her. "Sorry/' she munnured, and moved away from the elevator.
"No problem," said a tall, bearded man, one of New Yoik*s leading Broadway producers. "I'm glad to have a chance to tell you what a splendid job you've done here."
Laura smiled, grateful to him for bringing her back; she belonged here, in this lobby, not in her memories. Praise was as good as a fur coat, she thought wryly; it makes one feel warm and admired, no matter what else is going on.
She walked across the lobby and saw Currier waiting for her. "Well done," he said, putting his arm around her waist. "Ginny told me all about it; Vm sony I wasn't there to help you."
"Where were you?" she asked. This is where I belong: in this hotel, with Wes, with the life I'm making for myself 'There was a small problem in the kitchen. Nothing serious."
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