The Paragon Hotel

by Lyndsay Faye

  “The Klan just managed to kill two niggers with one stone. How wonderfully efficient of them. Oh, poor Doddridge, I can’t bear to think on it, but though I’ll go slower, they’ve ended me just the same.”

  “What in the name of—”

  “We weren’t nearly finished with the treatments.” Delicately, she sets the bucket on the floor. “Now we never will be. You had better go, honey.”

  “I won’t leave you like this!”

  “We both need to pack.”

  “But—”

  “Please leave, Alice.” She hugs herself in a familiar gesture, turns to the window. “If Officer Overton was shouting that bit of gossip through a megaphone, and Mavereen warns the rest like I suppose she intends, then it’s really just as well.”

  “What is?”

  “That I’ll be dead soon enough,” she answers, “and won’t have to pretend to be Henry for very long.”

  ◆ Twenty-Six ◆

  A moratorium on race prejudice would mean that 13 millions of colored people in America would become politically free from disenfranchisement; physically free from lynching; mentally free from ignorance and socially free from assault.

  —BEATRICE MORROW CANNADY, The Advocate, Portland, Oregon, October 3, 1931

  The Paragon Hotel on the morning I leave it feels like a living creature. The dear old kid hums with awakening guests stretching their arms and smacking their lips in anticipation of coffee. An awfully lucky few will know nothing; most will wonder as they yawn why they feel heavier inside. And a few will recall instantly that a colored war veteran was mutilated and hanged, and will blink for long seconds at the ceiling before rising. Wondering when their own time comes, whether they’ll drift up to heaven from their warm beds or from the cool rustling of strange tree branches.

  Rap, rap, rap.

  “Come in,” I hear, and I turn the knob.

  Entering, I survey Jenny Kiona’s room. My bags are packed, but I’ve business to settle first, on several fronts. The chamber is girlish and dreadfully brainy at the same time. A pink throw lazes at the end of the bed, a row of simply darling miniature porcelain animals from a Chinese apothecary shop grace her mantel, and a bunch of wild daisies beam at me from a cheap vase. But there are also shelves aplenty here, and the amount of books wedged into them would knock a librarian for a loop. I remember her brother telling me that Jenny started life as one of Mavereen’s silent, stalking maids and hand it to the girl with due gusto: Wednesday Joe might be the sort to avoid walking under ladders, but Jenny is the type to climb them.

  “What are you doing here?” she rasps.

  “I’m sorry. You must feel awfully unwell, everyone does, but I need to speak with you before I hoist skirts and vamoose.”

  Jenny sits at a secondhand desk that’s wide enough for a Wall Street tycoon and scratched enough it could have gone ten rounds with Medea. Papers are strewn over it in a way that’s incomprehensible yet apparently organized, because she’s shuffling rapidly through them with crimson eyes, her plump lips locked like a bank vault. Her sable hair hasn’t been brushed, just wound into a roll with a pencil speared through it.

  “You look different,” she comments. “Is this who you actually are?”

  Intriguing query. Sometime around six in the morning, I changed into a loose peach crepe blouse with powder-blue scrollwork stitching and a belted waist, and a kicky blue skirt, and I brushed my hair and added a few fat curls around the face, and rouged my cheeks and lips but left my eyes alone.

  You put all this on because it suits you. It may even be what you look like.

  Who can say?

  “I don’t know. I admire to do some research on the subject. Any tips?”

  “You aren’t the faintest bit interested in research or journalism.” Jenny blows her nose and then applies the kerchief to the wet pools she’s trying to see out of. “The whole thing was a horrible joke.”

  “Jokes can sometimes serve a purpose. What are you working on so early?”

  “Dr. Doddridge Pendleton’s obituary for The Advocate, with an accompanying piece about lynching.” Her chin juts, daring me to mock her. “Go on—tell me it’s useless, tell me it’s childish to even try to make people aware. Say it.”

  “The way Blossom would have done? I wish I could make a dandier advocate in her absence, but the truth is, I think you’re a jolly good scout. As to whether one article and one obituary will make any difference, I’ll right merrily admit that I don’t know. One might not help, but twenty might. Two hundred. And you’ve got an awful lot of words left up your arm.”

  Jenny regards me afresh. “You’re—you just called her, I mean, you said her,” she stammers miserably.

  I twitch my shoulder. “I’m a terribly old dog. New tricks are as algebra to the poodle.”

  “Mavereen says she lied to us all. And we were close, we were . . . we were very good friends, and I feel such a fool,” she whispers.

  Blossom, of course, was right: Mavereen lost no time in baring all to the inner sanctum. I heard this from Miss Christina, who came to my door with a haggard face after dinner service, wondering what if anything this shocking news could have to do with Davy Lee.

  I told her I didn’t know. We may never know: Blossom was about as forthcoming as a spare tire. Miss Christina left with her face in the apron she still wore, mourning the little boy she was beginning to suspect was lost to her forever.

  “You’re not exactly expiring to hear what I think, but here it is anyhow,” I say with care. “Blossom isn’t your usual breed of Homo sapiens. She doesn’t pierce any mustard with Mavereen, she does with me, and wherever you land on the question is your own affair. But I think you just preached gospel—you were very good friends, and if Blossom had first shaken your hand in a three-piece getup and a bowler, why, I don’t know but whether that might not have been a bigger whopper than this one.”

  “Maybe. It’s all so tangled. But I hated to see what—how she looked when she left.” Jenny’s sweet mouth wobbles. “It was horrid.”

  Blossom departed about an hour ago. Dressed in a quiet grey suit with a button-up, a striped tie, and a hat pulled low over her bloodied, unadorned face. Because she is an awfully recognizable personage hereabouts, and now the news is spreading like wildfire, and Henry might not be noticed at all. Jenny stood with tears running down her cheeks, unable to move. Wednesday Joe hugged the singer tight, confused but uncaring. Rooster nodded soberly. Miss Christina shook her hand, very hard. Max, carrying both a hatbox containing Medea and a trunk full of necessaries, played George for her with his head high.

  I watched all this from where we parted ways outside the elevator.

  Mavereen was nowhere to be seen.

  Jenny scratches heartbroken circles on her notepaper. Since there’s nothing I can do for her save what I came to accomplish, I approach the desk.

  “Here.” I drop my scratch pad before her, all my very real observations, though minus any hint of scandal. “You’re right: journalism isn’t my strong suit. How awfully fortuitous it happens to be yours. I hope you can read shorthand.”

  Jenny looks up incredulously. “Of course I can. But . . . you’re abandoning your notes about the Paragon? Like your time here meant nothing?”

  “Actually, I’m abandoning it like it meant a terribly important something, deserving of a professional eye. Go on and look, they’re real details. In case Overton ever checked them. An article about the importance of the Paragon Hotel is a swell notion, says yours truly. Finish Dr. Pendleton’s obituary and then introduce your nose to a new grindstone.”

  “Wait!” she calls after me, standing. “I don’t argue that this whole business of the Klan and the Paragon needs telling, but there’s no finishing it. Overton could walk at any moment, there isn’t a single lead regarding the lynching, and we still haven’t found Davy Lee.”

  “May
be that’s the story,” I posit. “That we need to do better at solving things.”

  “I . . . yes, I suppose that could be. Miss James—”

  “Alice.”

  “Where will you go now you’re leaving the Paragon?”

  “Oh, don’t think me secretive, but I haven’t decided yet.” Tapping my cranium, I smile. “I’m looking for someplace specific for a change. None of this flinging myself at burgs willy-nilly like a bird crashing into a windowpane.”

  “When you find the place . . . will you send me your address so I can show you the article?” she inquires, chilly but sincere.

  “That would tickle me entirely senseless.”

  “All right, then.” She seats herself, flips through a few pages of my notebook. “Thank you. Goodbye, Miss James, and good luck.”

  I leave her scribbling. Blossom is probably correct—Jenny can’t change the world. But I wonder what a thousand Jennies, sitting at a thousand typewriters and punching millions upon millions of letters into straight columns, all those separate words in newspapers across the nation marching as one great force, might accomplish if given the means and the time.

  After fetching my coat and bags, it’s with a profound sense of loss that I lock the door of my room. I don’t want anyone else to live there. I know all has been warped past straightening, but I still feel ever so sore picturing a spotty young secretary or a bull-shouldered ironsmith asleep in what I came to consider my bed.

  When the elevator door rattles open, Wednesday Joe regards me with haunted eyes. Stepping in as he busies himself, I say gently, “I’m awfully sorry it came to this, old pal.”

  He stops manipulating levers. Slumps into the corner with an unsteady chin, tugging at his uniform collar.

  “First Davy, then Dr. Pendleton and Blossom. It’s not fair, Your Majesty.”

  “Not by any standard, no.”

  “What’s going to happen to my sister?” he forces out.

  This sends us off the proverbial rails. “Beg pardon?”

  “The luck.” The sweet laddie’s shoulders shake. “It’s a mean streak, a real bad one, and what if Jenny’s next? Ma died having me, from Sunday luck. I couldn’t protect Dad no matter what charms I left in his pockets every night. And now we’re in the middle of a hex, and what if it takes my sister? I’ll be alone.”

  Wrapping myself around the youth, I thank my stars I already anticipated what he’d consider a nifty parting gift. Fishing in my skirt pocket with my other arm still tight around his shoulders, I thrust a snub of lead under his nose.

  “Make your sister carry this around. Unless you’re heading into a sticky situation, in which case you can borrow it. Remember me when you use this, please, for I seem to have grown ever so fond of you.”

  Wednesday Joe steps back. He holds a flattened bullet, edges irregular and metal gleaming, and his eyes seem to reach for it.

  “Don’t tell me this bullet has hit somebody,” he says reverently.

  “Joe ‘the Coffin Maker’ Castano. The bullet struck the wall of the cellar where he was ambushed. I picked it up and cleaned it, of course. I’m no rube.”

  “But anybody who carries it can’t die a sudden death!” he exclaims. “I dunno if I can keep this, Miss James. I’m grateful, but what’ll protect you?”

  “I’ve got plenty of other talismans. Use it in good health.”

  Wednesday Joe squeezes me tight before firing up the elevator and slipping the bullet in his pocket. “I’ll never forget this, Miss James.”

  “Neither will I, Joe.” I watch as the floors whir past, gravity taking me ever closer to the ground, and thence to the street, and after that the wide, uncharted world. “Neither will I.”

  Bags in hand, I enter the lobby. The usual morning crowd bustles about, but the poisonous news has sickened their smiles and leached the color from their smart metropolitan clothes. Miss Christina is sharing a quiet word with Rooster behind the counter, both looking as if they were shouldering all of Portland’s mountains.

  Mavereen remains hidden. Picturing her in what is doubtless an avalanche of mourning, I calculate just how much her world has shrunk in the past week, and forgive her for that. I don’t plan on forgiving her for what she did to Blossom. But as for not slicing my farewell cake, she’s well and truly acquitted.

  “I’m off,” I say from my usual cover by the ficus tree. “Thank you for . . . thank you. Please know that I’m forever sorry I couldn’t accomplish more.”

  “Was never your business to set right, Miss James,” Rooster answers, not unkindly. He engulfs my hand, shaking it. “Safe travels.”

  Miss Christina, who wears black under her apron now, presses me furtively and releases me. “It’s too much for a body to bear, crashing from one grief straight through to another like this. You were a nuisance, Miss James, but you were a comfort too, and you ought to know it. Please take care.” She pauses, chin quivering. “If you ever find out any more about . . .”

  “You would be my first confidant,” I assure her. “Trust in it. But I do believe, Miss Christina, that some of your other trials are destined to end sooner rather than later. There’s been enough suffering. The tide has to turn.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t see my way past violence and misery just now, Miss James. But I’m sure enough gonna try.”

  As I turn away, I wonder whether the five thousand dollars in untraceable counterfeit cash I slid in an envelope under her bedroom door will lift her spirits. The information she imparted to me was as manna to the Israelites, and lo, did I in turn shower her with greenbacks. Well—paper indistinguishable from greenbacks.

  Anyway, it’s better than a kick in the pants.

  When I’ve pushed the spinning glass round and the Paragon Hotel spits me out, I turn to look back at it. Its dozens of windows with its hundreds of guests, all of them hiding something. All of them fighting for something. All of them frightened of something. That’s the kicker about hotels—they aren’t homes, they’re more like the paragon of waiting rooms. Unless you’re part of the inner circle of this one, and you burrow underneath one another’s surfaces, air the cupboards, lift the drapes, and everyone is unhappy, and everyone is searching, and everyone is both cruel and kind.

  * * *

  —

  The bedroom that April the nervous housemaid shows me into is just about the charmingest I’ve ever seen. Wide windows, lace-edged curtains, the walls papered in lilac sprays. There’s a table with a pair of overstuffed armchairs flanking it, and a writing desk with sparrow-claw feet. Like the rest of the house, the outdoor vista is blocked by nature, but here the dripping trees seem like friendly sentinels, and a dainty chandelier sends crystal shards of light scattering in all directions.

  “She’s not to be excited, Mr. Vaughan says, and so does the doctor,” April frets.

  “I won’t excite her,” I vow. “I’ll calm her like anything. Please leave us, and thank you for allowing me to see her.”

  Evelina Vaughan is nestled in a bed all done up in white and lavender, which matches both her complexion and the circles under her eyes. Her hair is down, and gosh and golly don’t cover it. I’d paint her if I had any brushes or talent.

  She cranes to see me. “Is that you, Alice?”

  “None other.” Sitting at the edge of the bed, I take her hand.

  “Tom told me,” she says quietly. Her eyelids are edged azalea pink. “What Overton . . . what he did to Blossom, and why he said he did it, and. I don’t know where to start, Alice.”

  “You needn’t start anywhere, actually. It was such an awfully unmitigated disaster, Blossom spilled all. So you just rest your head.”

  It’s not a lie, but it omits key aspects of the chronology. I imagine Evelina would prefer to think that Blossom unburdened her bosom to me after the cat had already checked out of the bag, so I let her.

 
“Oh, Alice,” she laments. “And to think I wasn’t there. I said I always would be, whenever she needed me, and I wasn’t, and—”

  “Believe it or not, so did I, which means I know this sort of rumination isn’t going to help.” I lightly clap her hand, encouraging. “You would’ve if you could’ve, but you couldn’t so you didn’t.”

  “Is she all right? Please say that she’ll be all right.”

  “She’s just scratched and scraped, more worried about your adventures than hers. You were awfully busy staring down the KKK, and a girl can’t be everyplace at once. Blossom wouldn’t want you to make yourself sick over it and neither would Tom.”

  “Tom!” she exclaims with a strained laugh. “Tom, sweet Tom, dear Tom. And Blossom, fighting off Overton all by her lonesome. And poor Dr. Pendleton. It’s my fault, you know. Fainting of all things under those circumstances, God. It isn’t as if I meant to, but I’m a horrid little idiot, and now Dr. Pendleton is dead, and Blossom . . .”

  I’m getting to be expert at the crying-lady wrangling by this point. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less. I stroke her hair off her brow until the weeping thins out.

  “Blossom admired to be here more than anything to see that you were all right, actually, but she didn’t want to run afoul of Tom. He’s at the station house?”

  “Yes,” Evy whispers in an odd tone. “At the station house.”

  My bag rests at my feet, and I pull a sheaf of papers from it. “That’s just as well. I know there likely isn’t a good place to hide these, but you’re going to need to ferret one out. Blossom’s tasked me with giving you all of Davy’s boarding school paperwork. Obviously it’s more of a hat trick for you to correspond with the faculty, but she has duplicates and will keep helping.”

  “For as long as she can.” Evy’s grey eyes melt into mercury. “It’s admittedly . . . off the topic of your visit, but. I don’t know how anyone can be expected to stand this, Alice.”

  “Neither do I.” I set the papers on her nightstand. “One foot in front of the other, I suppose. At least, I haven’t any other brilliant ideas.”