The Paragon Hotel

by Lyndsay Faye

  “That would be . . . so terribly sad,” I manage to say in character.

  “Yes, but these things happen, Alice.”

  “Isn’t that a bit callous?”

  “Why, my dear, you don’t doubt that God’s hands are more capable than ours? Never forget that certain tragedies are beyond mortal control, thanks to our sinner’s nature. We must simply abide, and pray for His will to be done.”

  I’ve prayed about as often as I’ve avoided the underside of ladders, with similar results.

  She rambles on. “Anyway, what would our Klan want with a harmless little half-breed boy? And if some unhinged ruffian from south of the Mason-Dixon did him any wickedness, wouldn’t it have been public?”

  Muriel’s got the bull firmly by the stabby bits, I realize.

  Why wouldn’t it have been public, if some crazed backwoods saint was making a point?

  “But there is a problem developing, Fred mentioned.” Another noxious bark sounds. “Buttons, for heaven’s sake, I have had enough. Apologies, Alice. Oh, it seems that the child going missing has led to bands of roving Negroes in the woods surrounding the Elms fairgrounds.”

  I put records on the phonograph for Mr. Salvatici, in the very early days, and accidentally scratched them. Never maliciously, never on purpose. Which is what Muriel Snider sounds like now.

  Not malicious. Not on purpose. Ignorant, though, as to how the machine works.

  “I think maybe you mean search parties,” I supply.

  “Well, I hope so, but Fred’s associates have wondered. It’s all very well to say you’re a search party, but it isn’t as if such people could possibly have any form of identification proving it. Goodness, the very idea gives me the shivers, happening on a pack of colored folk in the forest. But don’t fret yourself. Just stay away from the Elms. Simple as that!”

  I thank her with appropriate effusion. Stubbing my cigarette out in a pretty brass tray, I ring off. Faintly sick when I imagine the Paragon’s search party coming to any harm over their regard for the life of a small boy.

  No good deed goes unpummeled.

  Strolling out into the lobby carrying a subtle cloud, I think to find Mavereen and duly report. Muriel’s point about public humiliation and terror nags at me something ferocious. I saw Mr. Benenati lipless in a barrel, I saw Sammy the Saint presented like a prize hog with an apple in its teeth.

  If the Klan took Davy to strike terror into colored hearts—where’s the spit and the sacrificial lamb?

  Mavereen Meader isn’t present at the front desk. But Rooster is, all bulky baritone and laconic courtesy, checking in a shabby, genteel mother and daughter. Their glances around the Paragon’s reception area are furtive, and when Rooster hands over their documents, I catch him heaving a short sigh.

  You’ve unfinished bones to pick with this fellow.

  He hangs a room key on its neat brass peg. I remove myself to the shadow of a convenient ficus tree, where I’m less likely to disturb.

  “Miss James,” he intones without looking at me.

  “Mr. . . . Rooster.”

  The hint of a smile dawns. “I’ve been called worse.”

  “Ditto. What ailed that charming pair?”

  He settles broadly spaced elbows on the countertop. I’ve not been alone with him yet, and Rooster is handsome for all his bulk, with a delicate tracework of wrinkles around his eyes and supple lips he pushes outward when cogitating.

  “New in town—mother’s looking for work. Heard about Davy, heard about the Klan. Word travels fast. We make sure of it.”

  “Ah. Yes, we had similar methods in Little Italy when someone’s insides were about to end up outside.”

  Another set of guests walk through, these ones a clearly honeymooning pair of lovebirds, and Rooster smiles at them in a surprisingly sentimental way. Two of Mavereen’s maids pass us in their usual tidy silence, sharing the weight of a heavy washing bucket.

  “I just heard a rumor that the Klan noticed Max’s search parties,” I state carefully when they’re gone.

  Rooster shifts, collar digging into his tree-trunk neck.

  “That would be lousy,” I conclude.

  He leans on the front desk, pulling fingers down his square chin.

  “So we need to tell Mavereen, she being sovereign ruler. Whereabouts is she?”

  “Searching.”

  “You’ve not been doing much of that, I notice.”

  The grandfather clock in the alcove chimes and Rooster pulls out his watch, checks its timekeeping placidly. “Somebody’s got to guard this place. I get four hours’ shut-eye a night as it is, Miss James. I’ll tell her soon as she’s back. Meanwhile, best believe I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”

  I’d about ten times rather hide in a wall like a mouse or don eyeglasses and start up the stammering than pull any straightforward stuff. But maybe it’s this Nobody’s sensible shoes and suffragette pin, maybe it’s something in the air other than the rain, but I find myself saying, “Did you get on with Davy?”

  Rooster taps his fingers on the ledger. “Davy’s a child. What kind of question is that?”

  “I heard he was sore at you. Some petty quarrel, I figured, but he seemed like such a happy tyke. What twisted his knickers?”

  Rooster’s nostrils flare. Given the scale of the man, the act carries weight.

  “I don’t know where you heard that,” he rumbles, “but it’s between me and the kid. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “My bark is worse than my bite. What about Miss Christina? Anything amiss with her? She seemed skittish before.”

  This merits no response.

  “Look, I mean no offense, honestly. Did I ever tell you the one about the elevator operator? He sure had his ups and downs.”

  “No,” he answers. “Did I ever tell you about the colored man dangling from a tree? He was just hanging around.”

  Rooster wins, and I turn to go.

  Then I pivot again and find myself saying, “Davy matters to Blossom even if he doesn’t matter to you, and the entire lot deserve to know what’s going on.”

  “No,” he replies, still not looking at me. “They don’t deserve to know what you’re asking about, in particular. Especially you don’t. And if you dig into Miss Christina’s private life, you’ll have me to deal with.”

  No, you’re not the most intimidating person I’ve ever met, I think as I walk away.

  He could still flick me out the door like the veriest ant, however. Which makes it strange that my instincts tell me he’ll refrain. Rooster just threatened me, that’s gospel—but he didn’t lie to me, not once. Not about Davy Lee’s animosity, nor about the plain fact Miss Christina has indigestion about something. When I spoke to Max about it yesterday, he said in no uncertain terms they were both thoroughly trustworthy, so it must be a private matter and none of our beeswax.

  I remember when I assumed people could be trustworthy beyond a doubt. It was ever so nice, like assuming I’d live in New York for the rest of my life.

  I head for the hills—which is the elevator and Wednesday Joe. The opening doors prompt a heady sense of relief. Joe doesn’t know me exactly. But he does in a certain sense understand me, and I step into his vertical chariot with a light foot, considering.

  “Where are you headed?” he snaps. The poor lad’s eyes are bloodshot again.

  “My floor. Where else? Goodness, Joe, you never seemed like the type to tell a bullet to get a move on.”

  “Sure, be funny about it. See if I care.”

  When I regard him in blatant dismay, he softens. “Sorry, Your Majesty, but. Going out with you and Max didn’t earn me any favors with Mrs. Meader. Here’s your floor and you’re welcome to it.”

  This is too abrupt, and the youngster too upset, for me to let it lie.

  “Wait! Give the old girl
a moment. I’ll explain to Mrs. Meader that chasing down a white horse was my—”

  “No use. I’m already on duty tonight scrubbing out Miss Christina’s stoves. Just . . . leave it alone, Miss James. Leave me alone.”

  I step backward. He clangs the grate shut.

  You don’t belong anywhere, Nobody. That’s the real secret you’ve been keeping all along.

  Meanwhile, something about this hallway causes my feet to scuff reluctantly.

  Ah, yes.

  Here I am. Here Davy still isn’t. And I’ve got a knack for hotel locks, a hairpin in my pocket, and I’m standing across from Miss Christina’s door when I know she’s sweating a fine mist into her soup du jour. Rooster just put me off, and rightfully so. Miss Christina deserves privacy. But, lo and behold, here’s a profligate spy, a busybody, and one with a burning urge to find the kidlet whose absence is causing such terrible pain.

  The lock takes under ten seconds to vanquish. There’s Davy’s abandoned castle, which slices a wider ribbon off my heart than it ought to do. There’s the settee and the door to the bedroom.

  There’s her desk, with a pen in a coffee mug. There’s a drawer.

  The missives I’ve seen her clutching are stashed on the top left in plain sight. So I open one. The first is a love letter in a masculine hand.

  Dear one,

  This oppressive atmosphere will not hang over us forever. You seem wearier every day. Know that every opportunity, I send more money. Know that a farm, with all the fresh eggs and beans and strawberries you could ever want, and a stream thick with fish, will be yours. Picture it. Everything I can set my hands on will be yours. I will be yours. You will never have to think of this place again.

  Patience will see us through,

  Your own

  The first thought smacking me on the brow is what an awfully swell suitor this sounds like. Is it Rooster, as I suppose it to be from the intimacy of their interrupted tête-à-tête? Blunt but eloquent? And if it is Rooster, what could possibly be oppressing them? Worse, why should this beautiful hotel be a place anyone admired to forget? Granted, there exist fraught relations between . . .

  I stop to think.

  Between Blossom and Dr. Pendleton. Between Davy and Rooster. Between Jenny and Blossom. Between Blossom and Mavereen.

  The name Blossom starts bouncing around my noggin like a racquet ball. So I keep reading.

  Dear one,

  I understand that you find the money offer unsettling. But we need it. How much we need it you know as well as I do, and even if the arrangement is unusual, it’s not as if it’ll cause anyone harm. So I’ve—

  “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  It’s against my training to drop the letter. But holy merde, how close I come.

  “Blossom!” I blink at where she looms like a weirdly elegant stick figure. “I’m . . . well, it looks just horrid, but . . . wait, what are you doing in here?”

  “Leaving a note for Christina. I heard someone’s footsteps, so I thought I’d simply tell her.”

  Blossom Fontaine approaches me with long strides. She went back to her room after sobbing her lungs out in mine, and now she wears an apple-green gown dotted in complex arrow shapes with bronze bugle beads. One that makes her skin shine peacock violet like polished metal.

  Or perhaps that’s the rage shining, second thought.

  “I don’t pretend to be coy around you, Alice,” she hisses. “In fact, the only thing I ever pretend to be around anyone is civil, because I do not give a single shit about civility when civility doesn’t serve. What are you doing in Miss Christina’s room, if you please?”

  Her temper has never been directed at me before. It feels something like a spearpoint, and something like a battering ram.

  “I thought I might do good by finding out what’s in the letters she’s perennially reading. You know the ones, you’re her friend. I’m sorry. I’m accustomed to being around people who are altogether full of bull, and if she was hiding something—”

  “She is hiding something.” Blossom snatches the letter away. She smooths it, darts her eyes over it, then slaps it against her lean thigh. “This is what she’s hiding, Alice. And she never would dream of confiding a word of this wretched business to you.”

  “Oh,” I say in an awfully small voice.

  I haven’t felt mortified for quite a few calendars. And I wasn’t troubled by accidentally stumbling upon Blossom’s diagnosis. But now—now heat begins to bubble up my neck.

  “And it’s none of your nosy, meddling, interfering business.” Blossom scans the note a second time. “How much of my friend’s private correspondence did you sample before I arrived? Just this?”

  “That was the second, and I barely started it.”

  “What was in the first?”

  “Not much to speak of. She feels oppressed. Something about saving for a farm.” Impossibly, I feel like crying. “Please understand, I only meant to—”

  “What? Solve some sort of imaginary mystery? Air someone’s dirty underthings?”

  “No, it’s that I can tell when someone’s hiding something, and—”

  “And you could smell it on her.” Blossom steps toward me, a statuesque menace. “Yes, oh I see, we’ve all practically splayed our hearts on a dissecting board for a complete stranger in the past few days and you liked that. Didn’t you?”

  I gape at her. She has me. I’d wanted intimacy and I’d gotten it. And I’d given next to nothing in return.

  Blossom smirks. “Gracious, there’s the bit that smarts. They’re like cough syrup, secrets—no getting enough of them once you’ve had a taste.”

  “They’re my stock in trade, actually. And I know far too much about cough syrup. I could write an ill-advised novel.”

  Blossom laughs. Not kindly. She might be good and she might be bad and she might be wrong about which. So many are.

  But on this particular afternoon in not-sunny Portland, Oregon, she isn’t kind.

  “Yes, of course you could write the book on heroin, honey, you’re a criminal I befriended despite the fact Jenny warned me. You lot are practically lining up for respiratory ailments. Ever so posh, perhaps, almost Victorian levels of faked suffering, but also just the tiniest bit pathetic, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I don’t see you leaving any whiskey glasses wet,” I snap.

  We stare at each other. I in horror that I lost control, even if it was for Rye. She in the identical feeling she’d caused by catching me pawing through love letters. Letters written without any name, letters identifiable only by the swoop of the downstrokes and the flavor of the words chosen, letters I should never have seen. She drinks far too much. We both know it. And now we’re sharing the same sensation. Shame.

  “Get out.” Blossom folds the note, hands visibly humming.

  “Blossom, we’re both being a bit beastly, and I think—”

  “No, you most certainly did not think.” She raises her eyes. “I have a life here. I have responsibilities, I have family, and yes, I also possess an absurd affection for lost pennies, but Alice James, trying to find Davy and smudging your fingers all over my friend Christina’s private mail for kicks are different matters entirely.”

  My dismay at being caught wrong-footed notwithstanding, my brow burns at this. Everyone detests having their motives misconstrued.

  “You know as well as I do that’s a blue-ribbon whopper,” I return, matching her quiet tone. “Davy hasn’t been ransomed or made an example of or contacted you. He’s just gone. For no reason at all. That bears looking into, don’t you suppose?”

  Slivers of a second pass when I think I just made Blossom Fontaine cry.

  “I don’t question your love for Davy,” I protest. “But those who live in tin houses shouldn’t throw can openers. And I’m ever so sorry I hurt you. You’re one of, I�
��I think you might be my only friend in the world. Please say that—”

  “Get out.” Blossom crosses her arms around herself, tight as a straitjacket, crushing Miss Christina’s letter. “If you decide to dawdle, I’ll report this curious event to Mavereen. Get out.”

  Bowing my head, I approach Blossom as I exit. Her gaunt chest heaves beneath its glittering silk gown, an emerald snake’s torso writhing in distress. Then I see up close just how jazzy her choice of sackcloth is this evening.

  I hesitate. “Are you performing tonight?”

  “Don’t stare at me like a simp—of course I am.” Blossom inhales hard, but the air around us is acrid with scalding words and burned bridges.

  “But—”

  “I need the money!” she cries, throwing her arms out as if she’s being splayed on a rack. “In case you haven’t noticed, and you notice far more than is decent, honey, it’s what I liked about you, I continue to require medical attention.”

  “I have money,” I remind her instantly. “How much do you need? Just as a loan. I’d be awfully pleased to help.”

  “I recall instructing you to be elsewhere.”

  “Listen.” I raise a hand to touch her arm but drop it at the flash in her dark irises. “If you won’t take my money, then take me with you. You don’t even have to speak to me. Last night was so awful, I didn’t get the chance to spill everything. That Overton bastard has a gun, not to mention a picture of you in his pocket, and he—”

  “Oh, I can handle Overton.” Blossom forces a gallows smile. “You’ve seen me do it, it’s better than fully staged Wagner. Now if I were you, I’d vanish in a pounding big hurry, honey.”

  There’s nothing to be done. I leave her standing there, with her hand wrapped like a raven’s talons around the letter I found. I walk to my room. My heart finding new places to crack for the entire journey, the way even a crumbling ruin can still muster the energy to drop a fresh hail of stones. Locking my door, I spend a moment blinking stupidly.