“That is a lovely, lovely look, Amy,” Donna said. “It’s so nice to see you twice in one day.”
Mrs. Amberson was frozen, somewhat literally, in horror.
“Well, O’Hara,” she said darkly, “this, I did not expect. I may have taught you a little too well.”
“Yes, Amy.” Donna took a seat on one of the blue French-style chairs opposite the bed. “I’m sure you deserve all the credit.”
The pot hissed, signaling that the hot water was ready. Scarlett made two cups of the tea, handed one to Donna, and brought the other to Mrs. Amberson. They didn’t speak; they just stared. Donna, with her cropped head and Mrs. Amberson, wrapped tight in plastic, unable to flee—together at last.
“Why has it been so long, Amy?” she asked.
“I’ve lived abroad for some time,” Mrs. Amberson replied.
“You never called. You never wrote. It’s been years and years. And now, this.”
“And now, this,” Mrs. Amberson said.
“Until the two of you settle your problem, other people are going
to keep getting run over,” Scarlett said. “What is so bad that you have to keep sabotaging each other?”
“I didn’t sabotage anyone,” Donna said.
There was a loud snort from the bed.
“All right, O’Hara. You want the story? I’ll tell you the story. Have a seat.”
Scarlett sat at the bottom of the bed, between the two, in case she had to get up and separate them.
“I’ll begin, if that is acceptable to you, Donna,” Mrs. Amberson said snidely.
“However you like. I’m dying to hear what you have to say.”
“I’m sure you are. Our story begins a number of years ago, a fabulous time in New York. I had been living in the city for a year, auditioning, doing odd jobs. I had lost my apartment and was desperate for a new place to live when I met the woman who sits in front of me now.”
“We met at an audition for the musical
Annie,”
Donna said. “We were both trying out for the part of Grace Farrell, Daddy Warbucks’s secretary.”
“Which neither of us got,” Mrs. Amberson cut in. “At the same audition, I met an actor named Rick, who was trying out for the part of Rooster. I had never met anyone so talented, so funny, so naturally able to entertain. This was someone you just knew, instinctively, was a star. The three of us went out for a bite to eat afterward, and two things came out of it—I found a place to live, and I also met the
love of my life.
”
“My roommate had just moved out to go on tour,” Donna explained. “Amy came at the perfect time.”
“That was a happy time,” Mrs. Amberson went on. “Rick and I were so in love, and I had a wonderful new friend and a snug home on Seventy-seventh Street. The apartment was small, but we didn’t care. I had never gotten along with anyone so well. All three of us became great friends, going to auditions together. Everyone commented on what a good group we made, what amazing timing and rapport we had. And then, one day, the show came along…”
Scarlett had to swing her head back and forth to keep up, but so far, their story was exactly the same.
“It was a bunch of Hollywood types,” Donna said. “They were trying to make a new late-night show. Something very sharp, very hip. They wanted ten players—ten of the sharpest, funniest, most versatile that New York had to offer. Rick, Amy, and I were all selected to go in for the first audition, which was three hundred people.”
“We all made it through nine rounds, down to the last twenty,” Mrs. Amberson said. “The producers seemed to love the chemistry among the three of us, and we were all sure, in our gut, that we had made it together into the group that was being sent to California. There, the final ten were going to be chosen. They said they were going to make their calls over the course of a week. That was a Saturday.”
This is where they both stopped, showdown-style.
“Would you like to continue, Donna?” Mrs. Amberson asked. “I’m sure you remember what happened next.”
“Of course I do,” Donna said, unperturbed. “Rick got his call on Monday night. I still remember the three of us sitting around the
kitchen table, knowing that it was happening. We were going to go off to California together and be stars. And then you and I waited. And waited. And waited.”
“This was before cell phones, O’Hara,” Mrs. Amberson explained. “Or even answering machines, really. To make sure we didn’t miss the call, one of us was in the apartment at
all times.
When we heard nothing by Wednesday, I was feeling horrible and sick, and Rick went out and brought home this.”
She pointed stiffly in the direction of the cigarette case.
“Remember how I told you someone knew it was right for me, like he’d read my mind? Of all the objects in an entire city, Rick knew this was the one I wanted. I remember being so amazed, so in love, and my hope came back.”
“That?” Donna said. “You…”
“I will take over from this point, thank you.” Mrs. Amberson had gained total composure, and almost seemed glad to be telling her story. “Donna got her call on Thursday afternoon. There was one more day. I waited, never left the house, but the call never came. Three days later, in the bitter cold, they went off to California for the final round. My boyfriend and my best friend. I remember going with them in the cab to the airport in the snow, crying as the plane took off. I was so happy for them, and so heartbroken at the same time.”
“We got to California,” Donna jumped in, “and called Amy right away. We called her whenever anything happened. Over the next week, we were put through endless improvisations, interviews, and test screenings. They tried us in all the possible combinations. For me, it didn’t work without Amy there.”
“Oh, spare me…”
“Rick performed well,” Donna forged on, “but I didn’t. At the time, though, I didn’t really know what the problem was.”
“Lack of talent, I think,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I was so proud of Rick. I was bursting. I planned to make my own move out to California to be with him and try to start my career there. But in the meantime, as luck would have it, I got a call offering me another part. On Broadway. Not a lead, but a good, solid part. Actors need to take work when they can get it, so I accepted. I told Rick I would be out to LA as soon as I could.”
“Wait,” Scarlett said. “
Neither
of you got the part on the show you wanted. Only Rick got in. What was the problem?”
“Thank you for asking, O’Hara. Weeks passed. I figured Donna would come home. But she said she liked the warm weather—it was horrible in New York that winter—and that she would be back in a few weeks. Rick and his new cast bonded, developed their characters, enjoyed themselves in LA. He called all the time to tell me he missed me. And then one day, two weeks before the big premiere, Rick called me one night, all tears, saying how sorry he was. He and Donna had decided that they liked the new climate, and each other.”
“I was told you had long been on the rocks,” Donna said.
“On the rocks! Did we
look
on the rocks?”
“So this is about Rick?” Scarlett asked. “This is about a guy?”
Donna was nodding, but Mrs. Amberson uttered a grave, “No.”
“No?” Donna said.
“No,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I found out the truth.”
“What truth?”
“Evil deeds,” Mrs. Amberson said. “They’ll always haunt you.
Three years later I was having lunch with a mutual friend, someone else who was connected with that show.”
“The show never aired,” Donna explained to Scarlett. “Some producer changed his mind, and the whole thing was pulled at the last moment.”
“That’s correct,” Mrs. Amberson said, annoyed at the interruption. “My friend said to me, ‘You were smart to turn that show down. It was a disaster.’ Naturally, I had no idea what he was talking about. He said I had gotten the call and that the casting director had
spoken
to me.”
Donna almost dropped her tea.
“You see, I
got the part
, Scarlett,” Mrs. Amberson said, forcibly enough to cause a visible crack in her crust under the plastic. “They called me to tell me I made the last cut. They called me the next Gilda Radner on the phone, but
some woman
in
my apartment
pretending to be me said I wasn’t interested because live television was too scary!”
“You think
I
did that?” Donna said. “This is the first I’ve ever heard of this! This certainly explains your actions. There’s only one problem.”
“The only problem I’m seeing right now is that I’m entirely wrapped in plastic and can’t come over there and feel your peach fuzz.”
Scarlett was worried for a moment that Mrs. Amberson would get up and throw her clay-encrusted figure on top of Donna. She struggled to move, but Katiya had wound her too tight.
“I never took any phone call,” Donna said, standing up. “If you had gotten the part, I would have told you, Amy. You were my best friend, my partner. I couldn’t get through the last
audition without you. I couldn’t keep up with Rick, so he played to the other actors.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Mrs. Amberson said. “The person on the phone was female, Donna. Who else could it have been? The three of us were the only ones in that apartment.”
Donna fell silent. Mrs. Amberson gloated triumphantly.
“Can’t get out of it, can you?” she said.
Donna didn’t look like she was paying any attention. She drummed her nails on the arm of the chair.
“This is starting to make sense,” she finally said.
“Oh, is it?”
“There
was
someone else, Amy,” Donna said. “One time, when you were out and Rick was doing his phone shift—I came home unexpectedly and found another girl in our apartment, sitting at the table with Rick. Alice. The redhead from the audition. Do you remember her?”
It was hard to read Mrs. Amberson’s expression, but she nodded slightly.
“He said she had just come by for moral support, and she left right away. But it gave me a strange feeling, like I’d caught him doing something, but I had no idea what.”
“If this really happened, why didn’t you tell me?” Mrs. Amberson said skeptically.
“There was nothing to tell. I didn’t want to make you suspicious about nothing. All I had was a funny feeling and nothing to back it up. Then when Alice left, I remember that Rick said to me that he wanted to get you something special, to celebrate what he thought was going to be a big week. I suggested that case…”
She pointed at the red cigarette case.
“You did?” Mrs. Amberson was clearly shocked now. “How did you…?”
“You babbled about it all night when we were coming home from some party. You were a little drunk. I remember you said how much you liked it, and how you wanted to buy it when your big break came. He told me not to tell you that I suggested it. You believed in all that mystical stuff. He said you would take it as a good omen if it looked like he had read your mind. He seemed so concerned for you.”
It was Scarlett’s turn to fill in the silence that followed.
“Alice played you on the phone,” she said. “Rick was lying to you the whole time.”
“It makes so much sense,” Donna said, nodding. “There were only ten spots on that cast. Rick told me later, when we weren’t getting along so well, that he was never afraid that I’d get one of those ten places. He never thought I was good enough, but he was definitely concerned about
you.
He took you out of the running, Amy.
He
took your spot, not me.”
Mrs. Amberson was still trying to process this rewriting of the last half of her life.
“But,” Scarlett said, “at least it never aired, right? He didn’t make it, either.”
“Oh, he made it,” Donna said. “That show never aired, but he started making the Hollywood rounds. That’s when he realized he didn’t need me anymore. I can’t turn on the television without seeing his smug face. He eventually married two or three of his costars.”
Mrs. Amberson creaked to life, cracking as she pulled herself up to her knees.
“That
bastard
!” she screamed. “That absolute bastard! Donna!”
Donna swept in and embraced Mrs. Amberson, mud and all. Scarlett let them have a few minutes of weeping and drama while she ate some chocolates from the minibar.
“So now,” Donna said, when the tears had stopped for a moment, “you understand where I come into this. You conned me out of a job. You had someone cut off all my hair. Yes, I tried to find you. I wanted to know what kind of a complete psycho would do this to me. Wouldn’t you?”
Yes
, Scarlett thought to herself.
She would.
She felt too bad to even look over. She shoved more chocolate in her mouth.
“So you shut the show down,” Mrs. Amberson said.
“No!” Donna replied. “I never meant for that to happen. I work for the New York tourist commission part-time, in the theater section. I have lots of connections. I was just calling around to get more information, to find out more about who was doing this to me. It turns out that the owner of that garage had been cited before. He rents that place out all the time for things it’s not allowed to be used for, because of zoning or fire regulations or something. I accidentally tipped off the wrong people. I came down there to try to give you some warning, but you stormed off.”
“The show,” Scarlett said, glad that they had finally made it to the relevant issue. “We really need to take care of that now, and you guys can talk all you want when it’s done.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” Donna said. “That’s well out of my hands. I’m sorry.”
“O’Hara,” Mrs. Amberson said, her face a muddy mess. “As much as it pains me to say this, I just don’t think we’re going to find a…”
Scarlett held up a silencing hand.
“I already know where,” she said. “The only question is how. This is where the two of you come in…”
A plan this bold, this ridiculous, required a total rewriting of the rules. This is why Scarlett walked past the Orchid Suite door and went down the hall to the Jazz Suite, where Marlene was engrossed in some show about a high school where everybody sang all their feelings to one another. She dropped down on the couch next to her.
“Listen,” she said, “want to come down the hall and be in a secret conference with Lola, Spencer, and I?”
Marlene gave her a suspicious look.
“What?” she asked.
“Do you want to come down and talk with us?” Scarlett said plainly. “We’re planning something, and we need you.”
This direct approach confused Marlene, and she sat silent for a moment, chewing a cuticle.
“What is it?” she finally asked.
“Spencer’s show is in trouble,” Scarlett said, in a breathtaking show of honesty. “So we have to do the show at the hotel. And if Mom and Dad find out about this, they will have us killed,
first individually, and then as a group. I’m asking you to help us pull this off.”
“What will you give me?”
“I don’t have anything to give you. I’m just asking you to do it because we need you.”
Marlene ground her jaw a little before replying.
“You never ask me to do stuff with you,” she said, still clearly not believing that there wasn’t some catch.
“I know. But I want to change that, starting now. You can come with me, or you can go tell on us, whatever you want. The choice is yours. The door is unlocked.”
Marlene made no move except to turn back to the television. Scarlett’s stomach lurched, and she got up and went back to her room. Either Marlene was going to be lured in, or she had just destroyed the whole idea, and possibly Spencer’s life.
Not that he looked too worried. Neither of them did.
Spencer and Lola were sitting on the floor of the Orchid Suite. Scarlett’s clothes were everywhere, and Lola’s dresser drawers were pulled out. The dresser itself was leaning frighteningly to the left.
“It’s the
anti
Jenga,” Spencer explained. “You add things until it falls over.”
“We need to talk about the show,” Scarlett said.
“I told Lola. She knows.”
“I know,” Lola said, carefully shoving a handful of Scarlett’s underwear into the middle drawer. “That’s why dresser Jenga seemed okay. Today’s the day when things fall apart.”
“I never thought I’d be able to get her to do it!” Spencer said. His worry had made him giddy. “Oh, I can so top that. Watch…”
Spencer reached for Scarlett’s pajamas, but she snatched them out of his hand.
“You,” she said, pointing at him, “on my bed, now. Over there. And you…”
That was to Lola.
“…get on yours. I need you to listen.”
Like Mrs. Amberson, they were both so shocked at Scarlett’s sudden change in demeanor that they did as she said.
“This show is going to happen,” she said. “It’s ready. There are over fifty agents, writers, and producers coming to see it. All it needs is a place to exist for a few hours. Now, let me explain the whole thing before you interrupt. Our dining room fits a hundred people. Not well, but it does…”
Spencer raised his hand, like you would in class, but she ignored it.
“We can use half the room for seating, and half for performance,” she went on, thinking it through as she spoke. “You can have the entire rest of the hotel for a backstage. It’s empty, for a start.”
Spencer shook his hand impatiently.
“We can put the stage and the platforms on the far wall, under the windows. And with the sliding doors open between there and the lobby, there’s plenty of room for you to ride your unicycles around.”
Spencer couldn’t hold his thought in any longer.
“You may be right. We could probably fit. And it is nice. But—and I don’t think you’ll argue this point—if I said to Mom and Dad, can I bring home the entire cast of Hamlet and maybe do the show right here, tonight, with fighting and unicycles riding around on our nice, shiny floors…”
“They aren’t that shiny.”
“…they would look at me and laugh. Not a funny ha-ha laugh, either. It would be one of those laughs that you make when you’re really sad.”
“They’ll never allow it,” Lola said.
“Of course not,” Scarlett said. “We don’t tell them.”
Spencer and Lola looked at each other.
“We did this already,” he said. “In the basement? Remember how it didn’t work? Remember how we got caught? I think if we did it in the lobby, right in front of them, they might notice even more quickly.”
“They aren’t going to be here,” Scarlett said, quickly grabbing the side of Lola’s dresser as it suddenly realized that it was horribly off-balance.
“Where are they going to be?” Lola asked. “They never go anywhere.”
“They’re going to be on vacation,” Scarlett said, shoving one of her sneakers under the short leg.
Spencer was intrigued by this point.
“Vacation?” he said. “Where did you have in mind? Florida? The Alps? Grand Canyon?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. Where?”
She turned to Lola with a toothpastey smile all of her own.
“Remember how you owe me?” she asked.
The door to the Orchid Suite creaked open, and Marlene poked her head in.
“Oh, Mar…” Lola said. “Now isn’t…”
“I invited her,” Scarlett said.
Marlene proudly took a seat next to Lola. Spencer tried not to look alarmed by this turn of events, and failed miserably.
“This is a big favor,” Scarlett said. “And it involves both you, Lola, and you, Marlene. We need to get Mom and Dad out for a solid twelve hours or more. And the only way I can think to do that is to put them in or on something that they can’t get back from. Like a boat…”
“Chip has a boat,” Marlene said, catching on immediately. “He said he would take me on it.”
“The good ship Chipster,” Spencer said.
“You’re not serious,” Lola replied.
“You wouldn’t have to go,” Scarlett said.
“Well, why else would he take Marlene? And Mom and Dad for that matter?”
“She’s got a point,” Spencer said. “But you love boats, Lo!”
“I actually hate boats. They make me ill.”
“Love, hate…” Spencer said. “Interconnected emotions.”
“And you haven’t puked on a boat since you were twelve,” Scarlett added. “It was on the Circle Line.”
“I remember,” Lola said grimly.
“Chip has a nice boat. Fancy boat,” Spencer went on. “And he did promise Marlene a ride.”
“This is my ex-boyfriend we’re talking about,” she said.
“I know,” Scarlett said. “It’s asking a lot. I’m not asking you to get back together with him…”
“She’s
definitely
not asking that…” Spencer cut in.
“This is just asking him to take a little boat ride,” Scarlett finished.
“You mean you want me to use him.”
“Stop it,” Spencer said. “You’re making me love you more.”
“Look,” Lola said, squaring off to Spencer, “just because I broke up with him doesn’t mean you can still be mean.”
“Mean? When have I ever been mean?”
“You were
always
mean to him. Do you know how scared he was of coming here?”
Spencer looked like he was going to swoon with joy on hearing this, but Lola had lost her earlier playfulness.
“I’m serious, Spencer,” Lola said. “It hurt me. It really did. All those things you said about him. The two of you always thought it was funny, but it wasn’t. I would never have said anything like that about someone you were dating, and you brought home some crazy ones.”
Obviously, Lola had been holding this in for a while, and it stunned all three of them when it came flooding out. It certainly shocked Scarlett, who was still in the middle of delivering her amazing plan. Marlene loyally squeezed in next to Lola and wrapped her arms around her waist.
“I think half the reason I broke up with him was because you guys hated him so much,” Lola said, sniffing a little. “Especially you, Spence. You never gave Chip a chance. I’ll bet if Scarlett went out with someone you didn’t like, you wouldn’t pick on him.”
Spencer looked down at his hands quickly.
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “I think you’d be surprised.”
“I liked Chip,” Marlene said.
“I know you did, Mar. He liked you, too.”
Spencer looked to Scarlett nervously. He swung over to the side of the bed to face Lola.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t like him, but I never meant to make you feel bad. I didn’t think you were paying any attention.”
“Not paying attention?” she asked. “How could I
not
pay attention?”
“Because you think I’m an idiot,” he said, as if this was completely self-evident. “Seriously. I had no idea you cared at all about what I was saying.”
Lola was shaking her head, unable to comprehend what she was hearing.
“Spencer,” she said, “you’re my
older brother.
”
This simple statement landed on Spencer like a pile of lumber. Plus, all three of his younger sisters were staring at him.
“Oh,” he said.
He reached his hand over, but Lola preempted him and moved over to Scarlett’s bed, wrapping him in a hug.
“Why would you listen to me?” he asked, as he hugged her back.
Scarlett put her hands over her eyes. This was the second major emotional catharsis she had caused that afternoon—and all she was trying to do was get people to get themselves together enough to put on a show she wasn’t even in.
“Guys…” she said.
But Lola had earned her cry time. Marlene, moved by Lola’s distress, came over and joined the group, attaching herself to both Lola and Spencer. Spencer glanced up at Scarlett helplessly from over the human pile that had formed around him.
Scarlett began to pace. She accidentally knocked the sneaker out from under Lola’s leaning dresser, and it shifted swiftly. By the time she had it propped up again, Lola had regained control and was sitting up.
“So,” Lola said, wiping her eyes, “if you need help, I’ll do it. I’ll talk to Chip.”
“Okay,” Scarlett said, feeling more positive, “this is how it works. You guys set up the boat trip—make it long and make it far. The show takes a full three hours, plus at least an hour to clean up.”
“Longer than that,” Spencer said. “If we put up the stage, we’re talking two hours minimum.”
“Okay. So the show starts at seven, it’s over at ten. We need at least until midnight.”
“The ride to the boat basin takes about twenty minutes,” Lola said. “We can drag our heels getting off and getting to the car, I guess.”
“If you have to, make Chip say the boat stalled or something,” Scarlett said. “Keep it out there as long as you can.”
Lola sagged a bit. Spencer gave her a cheerful squeeze around the shoulders to hold her up.
“The part with Mom and Dad,” Scarlett said. “That’s up to you, Marlene. We need them both to go. We’ll tell them it’s like a mini vacation we set up for them, and that it really matters to you.”
“A mini vacation with Lola’s ex,” Spencer said. “Cozy. We’re going to need to do better than that.”
“I can get Mom and Dad to come,” Marlene said firmly. “What time are we supposed to go?”
“Ten in the morning,” Scarlett said, calculating based on her many hours of observation. “That gives us nine hours to get everybody in, and you guys can practice at least once. Does that sound possible, Spencer?”
“The whole thing sounds nuts, but nine hours—yeah, we could set up, reblock it, run it once. It won’t be smooth, but it’s possible.”
“Okay,” Scarlett said. “The first part is up to you, Lola.”
Lola rose unsteadily.
“I’ll do this,” she said, “but…”
This was to Spencer.
“No remarks about Chip. Ever.”
“I promise,” he said seriously. “No remarks about Chip, ever again. For life.”
Lola took her phone from the tipsy dresser and went out into the hall. Marlene followed to watch.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Spencer said. “I had no idea I upset her so much. You haven’t been listening to anything I say, right?”
“Of course not,” Scarlett replied. “I know way too much about you. Besides, I don’t want you to punch me.”
He shook his fist at her, then turned it on himself, knocking himself backward onto the bed.
“I’m going along with this, because the only other option is to do nothing at all,” he said from his flopped position. “But it’s never going to work.”
“It
could
work. And you were the one complaining that you never threw a party at home. Now’s your big chance.”
“True,” he said. “Might as well go out with a bang.”
Lola’s call was amazingly brief.
“It was almost like he was waiting by the phone,” she said. “He’ll do it. He’ll take us out on the boat whenever we like, for as long as we like. He’ll get some food brought on. We’ll have a picnic up the Hudson. Honestly, he picked up so fast, it barely rang once…”
This obviously stressed her out. She sat on the bed and twisted her hands together.
“All right,” Scarlett said. “It’s you now, Marlene. You have to
convince Mom and Dad that you all need a family day out. Spencer and I won’t be going, so don’t stress the family togetherness thing too much.”
“This is easy,” Marlene said, cracking her knuckles.
Her confidence made Scarlett a little alarmed—but she was on board.
“I’ll go down with her,” Lola said. “To confirm the details.”
The two of them left—Marlene strutted, glad to be in the middle of it all, and Lola looked like part of the defeated army.
“Are we leaving my future with Marlene?” Spencer asked.
“Yes,” Scarlett replied. “We are.”
“I really want to see this now,” he said. “It’s like getting to find out how you’re going to die.”