Chapter 1 — The Presidential Suite
“Hi, I have a reservation. The presidential suite, please.”
The woman behind the counter glanced at Maya Bennett’s shoes. One of the laces had been tied into three knots by a six-year-old who had recently learned to make bows and regarded the first two attempts as essential to the process.
“Oh, it’s unavailable.” The receptionist smiled at the little boy holding Maya’s hand, the way adults sometimes smiled at children when they wanted credit for what came next. “Especially for someone like you.”
Maya had spent the last hour of the drive teaching her son to whistle. She still had the taste of peppermint on her tongue from the candy they had shared in the parking lot. For one absurd second she wished she could step back through the revolving door and finish the lesson.
“Okay. Look up the name. Maya Bennett.”
The receptionist tapped the keys with one hand. Maya saw precisely when the entry appeared. The woman’s other hand came off the counter and caught the edge of it.
“Wait. Maya Bennett?” She raised her eyes. “You own this hotel?”
“Oh, yes, I do.”
Maya felt Eli’s thumb moving over her knuckles. He was counting them. He did that in dentists’ offices and during the loud parts of movies. She let the last trace of a smile leave her face. When she spoke again, she took her time.
“You’re fired.”
Behind them a suitcase tipped over. Nobody picked it up.
The receptionist looked down at her badge as if she might find instructions printed under her name. Claire Mercer. One corner of the little brass rectangle had worn smooth against her jacket. She had worked here a while.
“Would it make a difference,” Claire asked, almost too quietly for Maya to hear, “if I told you who taught me to say that?”
“Would it make a difference who I was?”
Claire opened her mouth. The answer that finally came out was “No.”
“Then call the duty manager. Tell him to arrange your final pay. And please step away from the desk.”
A young bellman rescued the fallen suitcase and returned it to its owner. The revolving door turned. Somewhere beyond the lobby, a kitchen timer began to ring. Ordinary noises came back one at a time.
Eli waited until Claire had gone through the frosted door behind the counter.
“Mom, does she know everybody else can get fired too?”
“What do you mean?”
“The other people heard her. They just kept doing stuff.”
Maya turned. A security guard examined the street through the front windows. A man in a slate suit pushed the button for an elevator that was already open. The bellman looked straight at her. His expression was difficult to read, but at least he looked.
“My name’s Arthur,” he said. He was perhaps twenty-three, with a nick in his eyebrow and the posture of someone accustomed to carrying much heavier things than suitcases. “Would you like me to show you to your room?”
“I’d like a key first.”
“Yes, ma’am. That part’s been a little complicated today.”
The duty manager burst through the frosted door carrying a silver tray with two flutes of champagne. He had achieved the remarkable feat of learning that Maya had arrived without learning anything that had happened since. His name was Peter Lang. She recognized his face from the staff directory.
“Ms. Bennett! Welcome home. Your father always said the best thing about the Calder was seeing a familiar face come through those doors.”
“My father hated champagne before lunch.”
Peter considered the tray. It was four in the afternoon.
“And my son is six,” she added.
Arthur took the tray away. Peter produced a key envelope with PRESIDENTIAL embossed in gold. On the back somebody had written a number in pencil and rubbed it out. Eli, who had recently discovered that detectives could read erased messages by holding paper sideways, asked to see it. She handed it over.
“Eight fourteen,” he announced.
“That’s the room we give guests to freshen up while the suite is being prepared,” Peter said.
“Is the suite being prepared?”
“It’s ready. Absolutely.”
“Then why does this say eight fourteen?”
“There must have been a mix-up at the desk.”
Maya had spent twelve years turning old buildings into places people could afford to live. She had heard that phrase from contractors who ordered the wrong windows and from lenders who changed the terms after the scaffolding went up. A mix-up generally had a person at one end and money at the other.
“Arthur, please take us upstairs.”
The bellman lifted their one small bag. Peter tried to come with them. Maya held out a hand for the key and let the elevator doors close between them.
Eli pushed twelve. “What does presidential mean? Do you have to be president?”
“No,” Arthur said. “Presidents usually want a whole floor. The name means somebody can charge extra for two bathrooms.”
Eli laughed. Maya liked the boy for making her son laugh, then caught herself calling a working man a boy in her head. Her father had still called the engineer who maintained the boilers young Frank when Frank turned sixty. Hotels were very good at keeping people the age and shape you first remembered them.
“Did you work here when my father was alive?” she asked.
“Three years. He owed me eleven dollars.”
“What for?”
“He kept borrowing it to pay the guy who shined his shoes. Said if he used his own cash your mother would find out he was standing more than his doctor allowed.”
For the first time since she had entered the hotel, Maya heard something that sounded like her father. She started to laugh and nearly cried instead.
Twelve opened onto a narrow corridor with blue walls. At the far end stood the green double doors she remembered. Her father had insisted on painting them himself and left a thumbprint in the lacquer just above the left handle. As a girl she used to put her thumb inside his whenever they visited.