Romancing the Past

by Darcy Burke

  Instead, he retrieved the three boys from the storeroom, where they had been organizing the fresh supplies. None of them looked older than sixteen, but they all probably supported extended families.

  Moss drew a finger across the table and showed his dirty digit to Anastasio, the tallest. Anastasio stuttered a defense in simple English, claiming that he had cleaned most of the tables but left a few so that José could do his share. José quickly protested that he had done his share—he had wiped down all the chairs! But when Moss showed the group over to the dirty chairs, a forlorn José explained he had to leave something for Fernando to do. With great indignation, Fernando pointed to the floor, which he had polished—mostly.

  The conversation was accompanied by enough flailing of arms to have cleaned the room twice over. Before Moss could say so, Seb ended the complaining. “Three parts,” he said. He held up three fingers to punctuate his English.

  Pulling Fernando with him, Seb walked over to the left third of the room said in Tagalog: “This is your area. You clean the tables, chairs, and floors. Everything that sits on these boards. Understand?”

  Fernando nodded, and Seb showed José and Anastasio their center and right thirds, as well.

  “The boy with the cleanest area will earn five extra Mex.” Seb turned to Moss, realizing too late that maybe he needed to clear a raise with Moss in advance. But Moss nodded—Seb was the source of all salaries, including his own.

  By dinnertime, the boys were busy seating new customers. Then things got interesting. Moss watched Fernando seat one large party after another in the middle of the room. Anastasio followed his lead. When the two boys ran out of chairs, they plucked some from their own sections and squeezed them into the middle swath. The Oriente’s dining room looked like ants over a line of jelly—a line smack-dab in José’s section. Poor José could not defend his territory, stuck as he was pulling the rope to the huge punkah on the ceiling.

  Moss would have to handle this intrigue before it got out of control. He rotated Fernando to punkah duty, but not before informing the boy that he had changed responsibility for the floor sections. Fernando now had the crowded middle section.

  Fernando argued in quick Tagalog that began with, “Don Eusebio said—”

  “I know,” Moss said in English. “But this is a business, not a schoolyard.”

  Fernando cursed under his breath, almost. Anastasio had the same reaction when he learned that he was now responsible for either side of the middle—his original section and one more.

  “Hindi,” Anastasio chirped up. No.

  “Oo,” Moss said with authority. Yes.

  Unwilling to lose his job, Anastasio nodded reluctantly.

  Then there was the last boy, José, whose arms probably felt like taffy after pulling the punkah rope all night. “You are finished tonight,” Moss told him. “Sa bahay.” Go home.

  But José did not go. Instead, he stayed to toy with the others, laughing over his surprising “victory” in this improvised game. Eventually, though, with nothing else to do, he chipped in and helped the others clean the room after the diners had gone.

  At the end of the night, Moss gave them a stern warning: “Tomorrow—bukas—the chairs stay where they are. Same number chairs, same number tables. Same, same, sige?”

  They all agreed, and Moss hoped they meant it. He liked the boys’ spirit.

  Moss walked through the back door into the kitchen to check on his stock of eggs for breakfast. By the time he returned to the dining room, the late-night drinking crowd had arrived. Mrs. Helen Cooper and friends had just ordered two bottles of Moet & Chandon, which meant they would be here a while. So much for sleep, Moss thought.

  Miss Berget sat at the table next to them. A young woman her age should be enjoying the sunset social scene at Luneta Park, but he knew that Congressman Holt had not taken her there, not even once. The only place Moss had seen her outside the hotel was at Clarke’s, and she had been alone there too.

  It was not his problem. Yet what kept Mrs. Cooper from inviting Della to join her party? The women were not so far off in age. Usually, Americans clumped together in this city like iron filings on a magnet, even if they belonged to entirely different poles at home.

  Before Moss had decided on an action, his feet were already moving. “Hello, Miss Berget,” he called out as he approached. He tapped on Della’s shoulder. She jumped and spun at the same time. Her hands fell immediately to her lap.

  “Mr. North,” she said flatly.

  “I thought I would check on you, since you seem to be alone,” he said.

  Something close to resentment flashed in her eyes. “Is a woman not allowed to dine by herself?”

  She was not dining. But he was here to be nice, so he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Please, stay,” she said.

  Moss thought he heard sarcasm, but with the flat affect to all her speech he could not tell for sure. “I thought that you might want some company.”

  “Thank you for taking pity on me,” she said. “Or maybe it is something more?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She glanced at Mrs. Cooper, who looked up at Moss right at that moment.

  “I may have already served my purpose,” Della said.

  “What?”

  “Or are you looking for something novel? You suppose that a lack of faculties in one area might enhance my abilities in another?”

  “Are you suggesting—?”

  “Hearing men make assumptions,” she said, a little too loudly. “They think it a singular experience, I am told.”

  There could not have been a worse time for the woman to lose control of her volume. Moss heard open snickers from the next table.

  He would normally excuse himself from such a gross misunderstanding, but if he left now it could prove her—and their eavesdropping neighbors—correct. “I don’t know why you have such a poor impression of me,” he said. “But I wish you would be more discreet about it.”

  As usual, she misunderstood.

  “I shall not tell my grandfather anything unfavorable about the hotel, don’t worry. The Oriente is a miracle beyond words. I have found my Garden of Eden.”

  For sure, that was sarcasm.

  Something slipped from her lap and fell onto the floor. Moss and Della bent at the same time to pick it up, knocking heads, but Moss reached the small red journal first.

  Her wide-eyed-open-mouthed alarm was genuine. Did she think he would look in her precious book?

  He held it out to her without a second thought. “How have I offended you?” he asked.

  “You haven’t,” she said, but she grabbed the book quickly, as if he might yank it back any second. “I do not offend easily. If I did, I would be offended all the time.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I know what people say about me.”

  The woman’s perceptiveness made her poor opinion of Moss that much more worrying. “You think I am”—he lowered his voice to less than a whisper—“sleeping with my guests?”

  “Would you like to comment on that?”

  “No!” He looked over, but the other table had lost interest. “Because it is not true.”

  She shrugged—a universal sign for “so you say.”

  “Why would I?” He shook his head. “Never mind. I do not know what story you have concocted in your head. And please do not tell anyone about Mrs. Cooper’s ‘plumbing accident,’ either.”

  Della’s silence agreed to nothing.

  Moss leaned forward. He was feeling a little desperate, truth be told. “The Army pays for half my occupancy—”

  “So you look the other way, no matter what these women do?”

  It would hardly be good for morale if it came out that wives were entertaining men in a luxury hotel while their husbands were roughing it in camp. The enlisted men might get a good chuckle out of it—Moss knew because he used to be one of them—but they could not respect a cuckolded commander. And, worse, Moss would lose hal
f his business and, therefore, his job.

  “I am not their keeper, Miss Berget. And neither are you.”

  She wrote that down.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. He had to tap her shoulder and ask it again. Della smiled, but she did not stop writing. He put his hand over hers. “Stop.”

  She did, but maybe only because she was finished. She did not pull her hands away, either. “Why did you come over to chat with me, Mr. North?”

  God only knew. “Where is your grandfather?”

  “He did not return for dinner.”

  “You’ve been waiting for him all this time?” He wondered if she was loyal, obedient, or lying. He looked into her eyes, and with their hands still touching, it seemed a very intimate interrogation.

  When he removed them, she closed her notebook and sighed. “I have served his purpose on this trip already, and now I shall be bastilled in your hotel for the rest of our visit. He was not happy about me going to Clarke’s, maybe because I went without him.”

  “It is a respectable place—though you do not seem like the type to care what you should or should not be doing.”

  She smiled as if he had complimented her, and it was to her great advantage. Her combination of brown hair and brown eyes had seemed common at first, but now Moss saw that both were speckled with gold.

  “Grandfather is going to leave me here,” she said. “Meanwhile, he will travel to the southern islands.” She fluttered her eyes theatrically. “I suppose soon enough I shall entertain the local officers too.”

  “That is all I need,” Moss said with a sigh. “I can give you the name of a few other lodgings that I would prefer to see scandalized by the wayward granddaughter of a congressman.”

  “Are you asking me to take my business elsewhere?” She laughed a little—an airy, ringing sound—and something in Moss uncoiled a little.

  He exhaled a long breath. “I would consider it a personal favor.”

  “I’ll consider it,” she said.

  “What if I sweeten the deal with dinner?”

  She looked around. Other than the champagne party, the dining room was empty. “It looks like the chef is finished for the night, Mr. North.”

  “Who needs the chef?”

  “You will cook?”

  Moss nodded. “I am capable.”

  “I was hoping someone in this hotel would be.”

  He laughed. “Come with me,” he said, standing up and holding out a hand for her. “Will one chicken suffice, or should I make two?”

  Because she had looked at his hand, she missed his first words. “Two what?”

  “Fresh roasted chicken with potatoes and herbs,” he confirmed.

  She drew conspiratorially close. “If you are trying to buy my silence, you are using the right currency.”

  He led her to the door. “Step into my kitchen, Miss Berget. Let’s negotiate.”

  Chapter 5

  The Thaw

  Della watched Moss’s hands as they fluttered over the chopping board. He sliced a carrot in less time than she could write the vegetable’s name. He took a potato, stood it on one end, and whizzed down the side with a knife. In ten seconds, the whole potato was peeled.

  “You should have been a chef,” she said.

  He waited for her attention before replying, a kindness that even her family did not always extend. “My menu is limited,” he explained. “And I cannot bake.”

  She blushed at the memory of the afternoon’s scene, but then she remembered that she had not been the one humiliated in front of half of Manila. “You could learn.”

  “Luz will take the job,” he said, shaking his head. “I will pay her twice what Clarke does, and she can run her own staff.”

  Della understood the draw of opportunity; she had followed her own across the Pacific. “Is baking so hard?”

  “Hard enough—and humidity alters the yeast, the dry ingredients, even the baking time,” he said. “Baking in January is not the same as baking in July, but a hotel is supposed to smell like home, no matter what the season.”

  He turned to throw the peeled, cut potatoes in a boiling pot with garlic cloves and a few small lemons. He had long since taken off his cotton duck jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He threaded the tail of his black tie through his shirt buttons, keeping it from contaminating the raw chicken that he was rubbing with salt and pepper.

  “Clarke figured out a reliable formula,” he added, looking at Della again. “The problem is that he is not telling—not willingly.”

  Hence the culinary espionage, she thought. “Well, I am glad you are trying to improve the food here. It is pretty bad.”

  Moss stopped his work long enough to laugh. “Do you even know how to be polite?”

  Della looked down at the fork she was twirling in her fingers. “I suppose so,” she said. “I spent most of my life being polite—”

  She felt the table jolt and looked up to see Moss, wrists deep in chicken, knocking on the wood with his elbow. He had gotten her attention the only way he could. “Define polite.”

  “I was nice.”

  She thought he huffed out a chuckle. “You think ‘polite’ is not telling people to their faces that they are fools.”

  She shrugged. “Everyone thinks I am the fool.”

  “Like I did.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You do not assume all your customers are new to indoor plumbing?”

  “Had there not been water coming down your walls, how long before you would have put me in my place for some other reason?”

  Della did not know. The way that hearing people judged the deaf was predictable, and sometimes Della used that predictability to her advantage. She let them ignore her while she observed their every move. Strange to think of it now, but she would not be sitting here if Mrs. Room 37 had been a little more discreet with her guest.

  Moss tapped the table again. “Interesting answer.”

  She tilted her head. “I did not say anything.”

  “Exactly.” He set the chicken upside down and worked the other side.

  “Where did you learn to do all this?” she asked. “Your mother?”

  “I do not remember my parents. They died when I was a baby.”

  He turned away again before she could read his expression. She waited patiently while he finished the chicken and washed his hands. Then he picked up a sharpening stone, dabbed a bit of oil on it, and began dragging a knife diagonally across its face.

  “The six of us, my brothers and sisters, split up,” he explained. “The eldest three were almost old enough to take care of themselves, so they went with our grandparents. The next two went with my father’s sister. My mother’s only surviving relative, her brother, took me, the baby.”

  “Why?” she asked. “I don’t mean why would he want you. I mean . . .”

  She did not know what she meant.

  “It seems odd to me too, especially since my uncle was a widower, but he had a daughter not much older than me, and he earned a good income from his business.”

  “What business?”

  “The Queen Left Hand.”

  Usually, Moss was relatively easy to lipread—he spoke slowly and in complete sentences—but not this time. “The Queen Left Hand?” she repeated.

  She knew that was wrong the instant she said it, but Moss did not laugh. Instead, he stopped sharpening his knife long enough to pull out a worn, misshapen card from inside his billfold. It read: Moses J. North, Assistant Clerk, White Elephant Hotel, St. Paul, Minnesota.

  “Ahh.”

  “The place took ten years to build—the design was a little too grandiose—and people took to calling it a ‘white elephant.’ By the time my uncle opened its doors, that was the only name people would use.” He slipped the card back into his pocket.

  “You carry that card with you,” she observed. “You must have liked your uncle.”

  “He was fine.”

  She caught one side of his mouth tightening. �
��Fine?”

  “Busy, demanding, difficult . . . but fine. People liked working for him. We had one porter who stayed for twenty-two years, another for twenty. The headwaiter lasted seventeen, and the bartender fifteen. Uncle Carl was a dependable boss.”

  “My grandfather is dependable. It is not always a recommendation.”

  “I can think of worse things. My uncle did not treat me any differently than his own daughter.”

  Now Della felt bad for the girl. None of Moss’s evasions were very convincing, but neither was she going to get anywhere by asking questions head-on. “So you lived in the hotel?”

  “Along with my aunt’s sister, Mrs.”—the name was garbled—“who looked after me and Abigail.”

  “How well did she do?”

  “Fine.”

  “More ‘fine.’” The fact that Moss called his caretaker Mrs. Anything said it all.

  “Abigail was blood.”

  “But you were not,” Della concluded.

  “No,” he said, finishing with the knife. “She left me with the staff most days, and I am thankful for that. They were my family: Howard, the assistant manager; Billy, the chief clerk; and—”

  “And a cook?”

  “Several,” he said with a smile.

  “How much time did you spend in the kitchen?”

  “A lot,” he said, fishing a potato out of the water to test it. “As soon as I could hold a knife, I was on spud duty. It was the best way to keep me out of trouble. It mostly worked.”

  Some might have had trouble believing that the too-accommodating, too-patient man that Moss had become had once been a thorny little orphan. But Della knew a lot about little girls—and boys, for that matter—who were separated from their families. She had known children who befriended everyone, from gardeners to mailmen, in search of affection and acceptance. Others became bullies. Still others, charming tricksters. She figured Moss was the last type.