Lola ran her hands through her hair in frustration. She was obviously a little nervous about the whole thing.
“I work in a store,” she said. “I can switch shifts. And Chip has to go to this wealth management training thing in Boston…he doesn’t have time. Just do me a favor, okay? I was never here this afternoon. I’ll owe you.”
“You already owe me.”
“So, you’re building credit.”
“It’s fine,” Scarlett said. “I won’t tell on you. I’m not…well, Marlene.”
Lola’s face blossomed into a smile.
“I’ll see you later,” she said. “I’ll try to sneak you out something good from the pastry sampling we’re going to. I’ll be back early, anyway. Marlene has a bowling party tonight at seven I have to take her to.”
Lola was gone in a moment, only the light fragrance of her perfume lingered. Finally, a few hours to write. Scarlett turned on the air conditioner, opened her computer, and…
Again, the only thing in her mind was Eric.
She hadn’t seen him since that day on the sidewalk with the laundry, but he had never once left her mind. Every day she wanted to ask Spencer about him when he got home from rehearsal, but every time she opened her mouth to speak, there was an unfamiliar queasiness.
Scarlett had never had an actual, labeled, official boyfriend. But then, almost none of her friends did. It was an intense place, Frances Perkins. No time for attachments—just fleeting making out between labs, museum visits, more labs, and endless extracurriculars. Dating was for the weak, for people who didn’t plan on doing double chem (which Scarlett didn’t), double physics (ditto), or getting into the Right School.
This, she had gathered, had not been the case at the High School of Performing Arts. Every time Scarlett saw Spencer’s classmates, they were all over each other, getting together and breaking up as loudly and dramatically as possible. Spencer had wooed and been wooed so many times that Scarlett stopped trying to learn their names.
The point was…this should have been an easy topic, but it wasn’t. Not that there was any point in asking. She was aiming too high.
Still…
Even thinking about him made her itch.
She Googled Eric’s name and, within a minute, she found his commercial. She watched it once, then again, and again. It crossed her mind that she might be going crazy, or that this might be cyber-stalking, but these thoughts didn’t trouble her too much.
By the time she had finished her thirtieth viewing, Scarlett couldn’t sit still any longer. The YouTube Eric was not enough. Nothing prevented her from leaving Spencer a message and meeting up with him when he was done. And where Spencer was, Eric was likely to be close by.
To her surprise, Spencer picked up immediately.
“Are you a mind reader?” he asked.
“Maybe…” she said mysteriously. “Let me guess what you’re thinking about now. Does it involve leather pants and bologna sandwiches?”
“You’re good,” he said. “I have to give you that. Either that, or you’ve been reading my That’s So Raven fanfiction again. How are you with using your psychic powers to solve problems?”
“Incredibly expert,” she said. “Hit me.”
“I’ll meet you in the park in an hour,” he said. “Bring your spirit guide.”
A MINOR PROBLEM
When she arrived, Spencer was sitting on the Alice in Wonderland statue. Two unicycles sat by his feet.
“You’re wondering why I’m not at rehearsal,” Spencer said.
“Actually, I was wondering about the unicycles,” she said. “But why aren’t you at rehearsal?”
“The unicycles are for the show. Ask me about the show.”
“What about the show?”
“A truckload of officials showed up in the middle of Ophelia’s death scene and slapped us with a vacate order,” he said.
“What’s a vacate order?”
“As in, get out this very second, this building is full of disgusting, infectious, black death mold,” Spencer said, coughing a little. “They came in wearing masks and moved us out, then they put yellow tape and a big sign over the door. Like a crime scene, but less fun.”
“But where are you going to rehearse?”
“Ah.” Spencer held up a finger. “You’ve hit on a very exciting point. That was the only place the company could afford. They got a special deal from the building’s owner—probably because he knew the place was about to be condemned. The company director is making some calls. But unless he finds something cheaper, immediately…and he’s not going to find anything cheaper. So I’m going to let you figure out what that means.”
“No show,” Scarlett said hoarsely.
“No show,” Spencer repeated. “No. Show. Me, off to cooking school. End of any plans to act. Unless we come up with a really good idea in the next few hours. In the meantime, I can enjoy my shiny unicycle before it has to go back to the rental place.”
Spencer tried to smile, but it looked a little strained.
“They aren’t both mine,” he said. “One is Eric’s. But he took his scooter to rehearsal and couldn’t take his home. I’m good, or I will be once I learn how to ride this thing, but not good enough to ride two at once.”
He picked up one of the unicycles, balanced it on an angle, and tried to get into the seat a few times, tipping over and falling again and again.
“What do you need?” she asked. “I mean, for the rehearsal?”
“Basically, we just need a large, empty room to work in. Nothing special. Maybe a place to store our stuff, set up some props. Something big enough to hold about fifteen people with room to move around.”
“That doesn’t sound too hard to find.”
“It’s not,” he said, steadying himself in the seat by spreading his arms wide. “There are a lot of rehearsal places around the city for rent, we just can’t afford any of them.”
He looked like he had basically gotten himself in position and was able to ride a few feet.
“Let me play around with this thing for a few minutes,” he said. “I have to blow off some steam.”
Scarlett knew that when Spencer was frustrated, the best thing to do was let him fall down a lot. He rode off unsteadily down the path, narrowly avoiding running over some small dogs and almost falling over into a stroller as he went.
A large empty space with storage. Something that fifteen people could move around in. It was a shame—they had nothing but empty rooms at their place. But they were too small, too full of fragile things. Except…
A little germ of an idea popped into Scarlett’s mind. At first, it seemed like a very bad, weak idea. But it didn’t bring any little idea friends along with it, so it was the only idea.
Spencer came back into view, carrying his unicycle under one arm. He was much dirtier than when he first rode off a few minutes before.
“You know what?” he said. “People give you really suspicious looks when you emerge from a bush, covered in leaves, carrying a unicycle.”
“I know a place,” Scarlett said. “It’s not pretty. It doesn’t have any fancy stuff in it. But it isn’t going to be condemned.”
Spencer cocked an eyebrow at her.
“And how much does this paradise cost?” he asked.
“It’s free.”
She definitely had his attention now.
“Our basement,” she said. “It’s big. It’s mostly unused. It isn’t covered in mold that will kill you.”
Spencer tumbled to the grass.
“I don’t think Mom and Dad will let us move an entire theater company into the hotel,” he said. “I think Dad would call that something like ‘guest disruption.’ Also, they might change their minds about my show counting when they find out that we don’t even have a place to store our unicycles. I don’t even think they should know about the unicycles. Otherwise, I like everything about your plan.”
“The trick,” Scarlett said, “is that they won’t know abou
t it. How often do any of us even go into the basement, except to get to the washing machine or the recycling?”
Spencer thought this over.
“I go down there,” he said. “Because that’s where I keep my bike. That’s about it.”
“So, if we make sure that we’re the only ones taking the recycling down or doing the wash, no one will actually see.”
There was silence for a few moments as Spencer did a little feasibility test in his head. Scarlett could see him sitting straighter as it dawned on him that this just might work.
“Everyone can come in through Trash Can Alley,” Scarlett thought aloud.
That was the nickname for the service entrance to the basement, which was a set of concrete steps leading down to a dark doorway. They kept the hotel trash cans chained up to the railing that protected it.
“I can stand by the front door and give you the all clear. As long as you all go in and out at the same time, it should work.”
Spencer was looking more and more hopeful every second. He spun the wheel with his hand.
“We might not be seen,” he said. “But could be heard. We scream and yell.”
“Who pays attention to screaming and yelling in New York? It’ll be muffled. No one’s going to think it’s coming from the basement. It’ll at least buy you a few days.”
A preliminary test brought excellent results. It would be relatively easy to get everyone in and out of the side entrance with the door propped open. Scarlett sat in the lobby while Spencer went down and screamed for a while. She could hear him, but as she suspected, it didn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary. They sat in his room to work out the finer details.
Spencer’s bedroom was the Maxwell Suite. It was a small, simple room designed for single, professional men—back when people used to live in hotels, as they sometimes did. It was his private hovel, filled with all the things that made Spencer, Spencer. There were pieces of bike, dog-eared scripts, bizarre pieces of old costumes, a massive pile of books on acting, and a few truly mysterious boxes and containers that Scarlett divined, just by instinct, she never wanted to know the contents of.
“If Lola has to take Marlene somewhere by seven,” he said, reaching into one of these and pulling out a crumbled contact sheet, “then we should be good from maybe six-thirty on.”
Scarlett’s brain was already moving on now that Spencer was working on the details. If the show was coming to the hotel, that meant that Eric was coming, too.
“I’ll clear all the crap out of the front room,” Spencer was saying. “That’s big enough for everyone, right?”
Someone like Eric had to have a girlfriend. Some humans are so beautiful, so perfect, that other humans are instantly drawn to them like magnets. And they always stick.
“It definitely is,” he answered himself. He was already busy typing something into his phone and consulting the sheet.
It couldn’t hurt just to ask, though. Just for information. After all, Eric was someone Spencer worked with closely, and it was just polite to want to know more about him.
“Spence?” she said. “Is Eric…”
He paused his typing.
“Is he what?”
Nope. She couldn’t do it.
“A good actor?” she heard herself asking. Her voice had gotten weird and high.
“Is he a good actor?” Spencer repeated.
“Yeah…” she said. “It’s interesting. Acting. How do you know if someone is good?”
He just stared at her, which was fair enough.
“I’m just thinking about the basement,” she fumbled. “If they…project a lot. The good actors. Maybe we should put some padding around the basement door.”
This was an extremely bad cover, but Spencer was both distracted and puzzled and decided to let it drop.
“Padding’s a good idea,” he said, turning back to his phone. “I’ll hang some of the rain mats in the stairway. We can buffer the sound a little. Anything that reduces echo is good. We can do that this afternoon.”
“I’ll go start,” she said. “I have a plan.”
There is something about staying in a hotel that makes even the most meticulous and orderly person lose all sense of decorum. It is a place of no shame, where you can use ten towels per shower and dangle them off of anything more sturdy than a wet towel. You can litter the floor with bags, papers, discarded clothing, pillows, wrappers…and much worse things. In fact, Scarlett wasn’t even permitted to turn rooms over by herself until she turned thirteen, and even then she had to have Lola or Spencer with her. They had a special device known as The Claw to pick up anything really scary.
The fine art of hotel laundry is to wash everything using as much bleach as possible without actually dissolving the fabric. When cleaning, you use the most toxic and alarming products on the market—the ones that kill every living thing they touch. The idea is to always destroy what went before.
Before, Scarlett only did the occasional room clean, just as an exercise to learn the family trade. But she was now well-established in the routine of cleaning the Empire Suite every day, usually when Mrs. Amberson went to yoga or dance class or one of her four-hour lunches.
Mrs. Amberson was not like most guests. She actually filled the ancient drawers of the normally unused furniture. Her wardrobe was bursting with clothes. The dressing table was full of little notes, phone numbers, piles of magazines and theatrical publications, and the bedside stand had a neat stack of books on writing, meditation, and natural healing. She had immediately rejected the use of industrial cleaners and sprays and had Scarlett go out and buy a huge bag of organic products and reusable cleaning cloths. It was actually a nice ritual. Scarlett would put in her headphones and tidy up, using the almond wood cleaner, the ylang-ylang bathroom spray, and the vinegar-and-cucumber glass cleaner.
Most important, she washed the towels and sheets in special environmentally friendly liquid. She even did the occasional load of personal laundry. This gave her a new kind of jurisdiction over the washing machine. Mrs. Amberson was the queen of guests, and her needs came first.
As she worked away that afternoon doing the “room freshening,” Scarlett made sure to take everything that could possibly be washed—not just the sheets and towels, but her Egyptian cotton bathrobe, her neatly bundled pile of yoga clothes, her silk pajamas (handwashing was an excellent way of killing time in the basement).
Scarlett had a lot of laundry—and a plan. Not only would she keep guard over the basement by doing the laundry and going up and down the steps, not only would she have an appreciative guest, but…she would also be at the rehearsal.
Because, if she was really being honest with herself…which she only sort of was…this saving-the show-by-sticking-it-in-the-basement idea wasn’t just about helping Spencer. It was mostly about helping Spencer, of course. That was eighty percent of it. But there was no harm in a plan that helped her brother while allowing her to see the most beautiful guy in all of creation, even if that meant doing all of the laundry in the entire hotel.
Mrs. Amberson arrived home as Scarlett was wheeling out many of her possessions in the laundry cart.
“Well, well,” she said. “Such a work ethic! I leave you alone and tell you to take it easy, and you decide to do piles of laundry. I worry for you, O’Hara.”
“I’m fine,” Scarlett said, tightening her hold on the cart. “I like laundry.”
“That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve ever heard. Put those things back. You and I are going out. My friend Billy is working on a massive musical and he wants me to come by.”
“No,” Scarlett said. “I really can’t. I have plans.”
“Plans?” Mrs. Amberson leaned against the Empire Suite door. “What kind of plans?”
“With friends.”
“I thought all of your friends went away for the summer.”
“One of them came home early. She got stung by bees. Lots of bees.”
“How tragic. Well, of course! Go
and see your friend. And the laundry…”
“I’ll keep it,” Scarlett said, quickly wheeling it off toward the elevator. “I’ll do it before I go. Have a good night at the show!”
She could feel Mrs. Amberson watching her as she waited.
“Give my best to your friend,” she said. “I’ll be thinking of her.”
THE RISKS OF BEING LUCKY
At six-thirty, Spencer and Scarlett went to Central Park, where he had arranged for the cast and crew to meet, well out of sight of the hotel. The idea of meeting a bunch of Shakespearian actors intimidated Scarlett a little at first, but when she arrived, she saw a bunch of people who looked pretty much like the same people Spencer went to high school with. They were a little older—mostly college students—but looked pretty harmless.
Trevor, the director, was tall and kind of heavy, with red hair, a tiny beard, and a massive voice. Hamlet was played by a Juilliard student named Leroy. He was the quietest. Scarlett thought he was keeping in character and brooding, but then she noticed that he was really just trying to balance a spoon off the end of his nose. Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend, was a carefully groomed guy named Jeff who thought he was funny, but wasn’t. Scarlett watched him look over in annoyance whenever Spencer did or said anything that was actually funny.
There were only a handful of girls. Paulette the stage manager was a tiny and curvy Texan redhead. She had the group well in hand, barking orders and asking about schedules as she ate cold macaroni and cheese out of a Tupperware container. She was roommates at NYU with Ophelia, who was played by a tall, dark-haired girl named Stephanie. She wore tiny glasses and had the firm build of someone who did a lot of gymnastics or modern dance. She also gave Spencer a lot of looks, but of a different kind than Jeff.
Eric was one of the last to arrive, sauntering along with a smile on his face so warming that he might have been singularly responsible for melting an ice shelf.
Getting everyone down the alley was even easier than they had imagined. Spencer and Scarlett had prepared everything as best they could, stuffing old towels under cracks, hanging blankets from the walls, covering the wooden steps and the concrete floor with everything they could find. It wasn’t a pretty effect, but the cast didn’t appear to think anything of it.
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