He shook his head. “There’s no time for that baloney now,” he said. “let them come right through the lobby. Every second counts.”
“But Mrs. Golden said …”
“Where is Ellen now?”
“She just went down to the health club … some sort of emergency.”
“Call her back. But page David Oberman first. When you reach Ellen, tell her we’ll be waiting in her office and to get there as fast as she can.”
“But …”
“Quickly, damn it.” He slammed his hand on the switchboard. Rosie quickly rearranged her earphones and signaled for the pageboy across the hall.
“What’s this business about the ambulance going around the back?” Bruce asked.
“Guests on holiday don’t like to see any signs of illness around them when they’re on vacation,” Sid said, leading his cousin toward Ellen’s office. “They like the idea that medical attention is available nearby but they don’t want to see anything that reminds them of sickness or of death. A lot of elderly people vacation in the Catskills.”
“So they sneak in the ambulances where nobody can see.”
“That’s about it. Don’t laugh. I’ve been to hotels where they’ve made the ambulance attendants don jackets and ties in the evening before they could walk through the lobby to get to a sick person. About two years ago,” he went on, opening the door to the office, “a man collapsed at the desk in this very lobby. I was upstairs treating a woman who picked up poison ivy in the woods behind the staff quarters. She never did tell me what she was doing there though I can guess. Anyway, by the time I came downstairs, the man was dead as a doornail. I looked up at Phil Golden and he looked down at me. There was nothing to be said. We sent for an ambulance and when it arrived, we put an oxygen mask on the dead man’s face. As long as it appeared there was still hope, you see, people were satisfied. But to let them know that death had already arrived …”
“What the hell is going to happen around here when we let them know the truth about the cholera?”
“I shudder to think of it.”
They both took seats in the office, Sid at the easy chair to the right of Ellen’s desk and Bruce on the couch.
“What about Jonathan Lawrence?” Bruce asked.
“What about him?”
“Shouldn’t he be here?”
“Let Ellen handle him. He works for her,” Sid said.
“You’re obviously not particularly fond of this guy. How come you placed so much trust in him?”
“As they say, he was the only game in town.”
“What about the health authorities?”
“When you meet the health officer, you’ll see why I tried to avoid bringing him in unless I positively had to.”
“I don’t understand,” Bruce said, trying hard not to sound critical. “Personality notwithstanding, shouldn’t he have been notified right away?”
“If you go by the book, I suppose so. But life doesn’t always go that way.”
They were interrupted by a gentle knock on the door. It was Rosie.
“Mrs. Golden’s on her way, but your David Oberman isn’t answering the page.”
“Please keep trying, Rosie. It’s very urgent we locate him.”
“I’ll send some bellhops down to the lake and the golf course if you think it will help.”
“I can’t see him going out there, Sid.”
“Let her do it anyway. Who knows how far he was able to go.”
Rosie hesitated, waiting to see if the doctor would say anything more, something that would give her a hint as to what was going on. He looked at her sharply and she backed out, closing the door behind her.
“To get back to why you didn’t call the public health office on Thursday?” Bruce continued.
This time they were interrupted by Ellen Golden opening the door. Both men stood up as she acknowledged them and continued into the office.
“Hello, Sid.” She looked at Bruce.
“This is Bruce Solomon, my cousin.”
“Sorry I didn’t get to meet you earlier,” Bruce said quickly. She looked at him curiously and then back at Sid.
“Does this have something to do with the woman in three fifteen?” Ellen walked to her desk slowly.
“Everything, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?” She sat down, staring at Bruce. The two men took their seats. “Rosie told me how you wanted to handle the ambulance. Is it that serious?”
“We’re practically positive that she’s got it.”
“Got it? Got what?”
Sid shot a quick, very frightened look at Bruce who bolted up so quickly for a moment Sid feared he’d go through the ceiling.
“You know why Bruce is here at the hotel, right?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Ellen said. “You did say he had something to do with the woman in three fifteen.”
“Didn’t Jonathan tell you about Bruce?”
“Jonathan? No. What was he supposed to tell me?” She kept looking from Sid to Bruce.
“I’m getting very bad vibrations,” Bruce said. Sid felt his own stomach churn. The blood rushed to his face. A wave of panic caused a sudden shudder.
“Ellen, you do know about Tony Wong, don’t you?”
“Tony Wong? Oh, yes.” Sid relaxed a little. “He was the Chinaman who passed away. I’ve been meaning to call you about him, in fact, but you won’t believe what’s been going on around here. I just came from the health club where they tell me a man walked right into the steam room with all his clothes on. I didn’t stay around because Rosie called to say you had an emergency back here but I told Sven to get that man out of there as fast as he could, even if he had to carry him out bodily. Can you imagine?” She stopped talking because both men were staring at her so intensely.
“Ellen,” Sid said quietly, marking every word with precision, “didn’t you know that there was a possibility you had cholera in this hotel?”
Somewhere in the greatest recesses of her mind, where her thought and words were in the embryonic stages, where images were conceived, where memories of pain and fear lay dormant until resurrected, a scream was struggling to free itself and travel down the highways of communication. She struggled to subdue it calling on all her strength and all her control.
“What in God’s name are you talking about?” she said, her voice strangely hollow.
“I knew it,” Bruce said, getting up and pacing the floor. “I knew somehow this was going to happen.” Before anyone else could speak, the phone rang. Ellen found it took all of her might to reach out and lift the receiver. She wasn’t even sure she had said hello. Then she listened.
“Dr. Bronstein will be right there,” she said and hung up. “The man in the steam bath … they just carried him out … they think he’s dead.”
“David Oberman,” Sid and Bruce said in tandem. “My God.”
The phone rang for the second time.
“Yes? Right.” She hung up once again. “The ambulance squad is here. They’re on their way to three fifteen.”
“I’ll meet them there,” Sid said, standing up. “Bruce, you go down to the steam room. See if it’s Oberman and if there’s a chance he’s still alive. I’ll send one of the ambulance guys over right away.”
“Will do.”
“One thing,” Ellen asked. “Jonathan. Sid, you say he knew all about this?”
“Everything.”
“I see,” she said. “Does anyone else know?”
“No. Just the three of us … and now you. I suggest you get your general manager down here right away. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
The two of them rushed out of the office, When the door closed, Ellen sat back in her chair. It was as though she had been punched in the very center of her existence. She lifted the receiver. She felt a stranger to the new sound in her voice.
“Get me Jonathan Lawrence. If he’s not in his office, call security and have him located immediately. I want him in this office i
n five minutes.”
Her rage began to subside but she wouldn’t permit it.
“I’m too frightened,” she thought. “I can’t afford to stop being angry.”
eleven
The day camp was an inglorious mixture of cherubs of all ages. One of the counselors carried a three-year-old in her arms and pleaded with him to stand on his own two feet. He was having none of it. The minute she lowered him in the earth’s direction he set up such a howl she was forced to lift him back to her level. Grateful and content, he brought the nipple of his juice bottle to his mouth and began to suck.
Most of the children were working industriously on various arts and crafts projects—finger painting, weaving, belt making and clay sculpture. Others were playing games like checkers, Parcheesi, Monopoly or simply reading or coloring under a tree.
Half a dozen counselors circulated among them, most of them teenage girls and boys from town who worked the season for a minimal salary plus whatever tips they could wangle from the parents. Those who were more experienced made it their business early in the summer to find out which kids came from wealthy families so they could seek them out for special attention.
Because there were more children this weekend than expected, the counselors were overwhelmed by the number of children in their charge.
Sandi stood in the arts and crafts section of the rec hall dishing out globs of sticky clay into eagerly awaiting hands. Only an hour before, against her better judgment, she had let Magda cajole her into lending a hand. It was something she hated to do, especially today when she wanted to spend more time with Grant, but it was hard to turn Magda down when she asked a favor.
“It’s not for the entire summer, Sandi. It’s just for a couple of days. You don’t want your mother to have another problem to worry about, do you?”
No, she didn’t. Not after last night’s conversation. She remembered her mother’s words the last time she was asked to pitch in two or three months ago. “A little work won’t kill you now and then, honey. Your father started helping out when he was still in short pants and he doesn’t look any the worse for it, does he? Besides,” she’d added, “it will give you character.”
How the hell working with screaming, nose-dripping, spoiled brats gave her character, Sandi never quite figured out. All it did for her was give her a headache.
Nevertheless when she got to the day camp she saw that Magda had been right. It was like a three-ring circus, the counselors running around in circles surrounded by little armies of noisy, dirty, three-to-eleven-year-olds all demanding immediate attention. Stan Leshner, the director of activities, was overjoyed to see her.
“You’re an angel in disguise,” he said, lifting her off her feet. “I don’t have the time to break in someone new. Let me have your attention everybody,” he shouted, clapping his hands loudly. “Everybody hold it down a minute, okay? Now listen boys and girls. After lunch your counselors are going to take you for a nature hike in the woods behind the staff cottages. Then you’ll come back and change for a swim. After rest hour, there’ll be a puppet show in the rec hall.” There were a lot of oohs and ahs. “So everyone behave and give your counselors your full cooperation, okay?” The children nodded seriously. “Good, I’ll see you all later.”
He withdrew quickly, grateful that at least one situation was under control. Sandi went to her station by the clay and after seeing that her charges were occupied, began to mold something for herself. At first it began as a long, thin scarecrow but gradually it began to look more and more like a long phallus. One of the counselors, Mary Dickson, a bright redhead with a heavily freckled face, stared at the way Sandi was working the clay up and down her hand.
“What is that?” she asked, looking up from the small group of children seated around her. Sandi snapped out of her daze.
“Huh?”
Mary laughed and turned back to her kids. Sandi studied her creation and then crushed it quickly, pounding it with vicious energy. Suddenly she felt a tug on her jeans. She looked down at a four-or five-year-old girl with an expression on her face that told all.
“Shit,” she said, louder than she meant to. Much of the action around her stopped and other children looked up from their work. “Glady, GLADYS,” she screamed at the head counselor who was working with the older kids. The tall, excrutiatingly thin eighteen-year-old turned around impatiently. She had dull brown hair and a plain, homely face.
“What is it?”
“We’ve got a problem here. One of the kids made in her pants.”
“Well, can’t you handle it?”
“Not if I’m not getting paid.” Whether her mother liked it or not, there was a point where she drew the line.
Glady frowned and came across the room, weaving her way in between a maze of little bodies. When she saw who it was she gasped in amazement and put her hands on her hips.
“Not you again, Miriam.”
The little girl nodded softly and began to cry.
“Nice work, Gladys,” Sandi whispered sarcastically. “Now you’ve got her crying too.”
“Well this is the third time I’ve had to take this kid to be changed.”
“My stomach hurts,” the little girl sobbed. Both counselors stared down at her. She really did look terrible.
“Didn’t you tell her mother?”
“I couldn’t find her. I got the room key from the front desk and took her up myself. The first time I just changed her panties and let her come back. The second time I made her put on a different dress. But this time it’s splattered all over …”
“You better find her mother before it’s too late. The kid looks awful. When you see her, don’t forget to remind her that the hotel has a doctor she can call if it gets really bad.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that. Watch my side, will ya?” She started to embrace the child, then thought better of it. Instead, she took her hand and led her once again toward the main house.
It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes later when Mary Dickson let out a scream. The sound of the counselor’s voice was enough to bring the entire camp to silence. She stood up quickly, holding her skirt away from her body. The little boy seated beside her had suddenly, and without apparent warning, begun regurgitating. He was still throwing up and spitting on the floor.
I don’t believe it, Sandi thought. What the hell did I get myself into?
“Everybody get up and go outside while we clean things up in here,” one of the other counselors announced. “Let’s go over and sit under the apple tree and sing some songs,” another one suggested.
The children rose obediently, their faces reflecting curiosity and surprise. They were unusually cooperative and quiet as they filed out of the hall. Mary Dickson, still holding her skirt up and away from her body, yelled out for a rag. The little boy began to cry.
“I’ll take him back to the hotel,” Sandi said, helping him up to his feet. She took his hand in hers and started him out of the building. “It’s all right, little boy, don’t cry,” she said. “You’ll feel better in no time.”
“My stomach hurts,” he replied. She stopped for a moment and looked over at him. He sounded exactly like that little girl Miriam. Odd, she thought, two children in the same morning.
Just outside the steam room, the men’s health club had three rows of lounges on which guests could nap and relax. The walls of the health club were made of a heavy, slick aqua tile. The floors had recently been relaid with an inexpensive indoor-outdoor darker blue carpet. On both sides of the lounge area there were shelves of towels and racks of current newspapers and magazines. Further in, just past the steam room, was the shower section consisting of a dozen stalls. Small cakes of soap could be taken from wall dispensers spaced out evenly along the outside walls. To the left of the showers were two small rooms used for massages. Four men dressed in see-through tee shirts and white pants slapped and stirred the flesh of groggy guests sprawled out like corpses in a pathology lab. Legs juggled and stomachs growled as musc
les were stretched and the blood around them stimulated.
Bruce Solomon knelt down beside the end lounge on which the limp and now dampened body of David Oberman had been placed. Marco Romano, the men’s health room attendant, stood beside him looking down. Marco had been a professional wrestler, a fact still testified to by his thick, muscular shoulders and forearms. Only his lower stomach had surrendered to time and lack of exercise. He had almost grotesque facial features with wide separations between his teeth. A piece of his left eyebrow was missing, the result of an old wrestling injury that never healed properly. In his time, he had been a popular performer going under the name Marco the Magnificent. When he worked he wore a centurion costume and carried a spear into the ring with him.
“Sven told me he couldn’t get this guy to move but I didn’t want to use force on him till we contacted Mrs. Golden. It could be he’s drunk or maybe just a kook. We get our share around here, you know.”
“Look,” Bruce said, noticing the small crowd that was beginning to form around them, “you’ll have to clear out one of those massage rooms so we can put this man in there until the ambulance comes.”
“Clear one out?” He looked in their direction. “But … the guests are paying for their time in there.” One look at Bruce and he knew he wasn’t kidding. “Okay, I’ll take care of it right away.”
“What’s the matter with him?” a man asked.
“I’m not sure. Probably passed out from too much heat.” He remembered Sid’s description of how hotels handled their sick in front of their guests.
“O.K.,” Marco said, coming back. “let’s just lift him lounge and all. It’ll be easier.”
“Right.”
The two of them carried David’s body into the massage room. Marco left and Bruce closed the door, shutting himself off from the onlookers. He studied the dead man’s face. His mouth was opened slightly, but his eyes were sealed so tightly they looked like they’d been sewn shut. His identity had already begun to seep out of him. Death was replacing it with that anonymity that characterized all corpses. How quickly a man or woman became a thing, an object only good for scientific curiosity. It was difficult to relate the voice and the gestures of the David Oberman he had met the night before to this cold and clammy body sprawled before him.
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