At ten the next morning, Scarlett waved off Lola, Marlene, and their parents…who had reluctantly accepted the offer of a day off. They were obviously wondering why Lola was willing to go on a day-long boat ride with her ex, but Marlene’s extremely skillful nagging did the trick. Plus, the prospect of a day in the sun and a catered picnic up the Hudson was appealing.
“You’re sure you don’t want to go?” her dad asked, as they got into the cab.
“Positive,” Scarlett said. “I’m just going to hang out. I have those school passes to the art museum. Spencer and I might go over later.”
Spencer had pretended to go to work that morning. In reality, he had long ago taken the day off. He was over at Trevor’s, helping to pack the props and stage components into a van.
Mrs. Amberson had been lingering down the block in a cab of her own. She pulled up as soon as the Martin family cab drove away.
“O’Hara,” she cried, stepping out. She was dressed in her dancer clothes again, and carried a small suitcase. “What a gorgeous day for a subterfuge. Though, it does look like it might rain a bit later.
Perfect for Denmark! I was up all last night talking to Donna—
so
much to catch up on. Visits to other old friends to plan.”
“You mean Rick.”
“I do,” Mrs. Amberson said. “You’re always very quick with these things, O’Hara. But that is not a matter for today. Today, we do a show!”
At ten-thirty, they all began to arrive. Paulette and Leroy came first, squabbling about one of Hamlet’s cues. They dribbled in over the next half hour, filling the lobby with their many bags of costumes and supplies. Eric was one of the last to arrive, having come with the group in the van with most of the stage components and props. Scarlett herded them into the dining room, where Mrs. Amberson had taken position near the windows.
“Right!” She clapped her hands loudly. “We don’t have a lot of time, so this is how it’s going to go. Scarlett is in charge.”
Scarlett looked down to see fifteen faces looking up at her, ready to take direction. Fifteen actors and theater people, when she herself had no real experience, no real idea what she was doing. Which meant that the only choice was just to start talking.
“It’ll be easiest to use the second floor for your changing rooms, because it’s closer. There are two good rooms there—the Metro and Sterling Suites…”
“Do
not
use the bathroom in the Sterling Suite,” Spencer said. “Seriously. Don’t even
look
at it.”
“You have two ways of getting down, either the elevator, which is really slow, or the back stairs. For your backstage, to keep your swords and stuff, the kitchen is over here.”
She led the group over and pushed open the door, revealing the cavernous space and its many antique appliances.
“We can take all of these tables to the basement, and the chairs are for the audience, obviously. So, I guess the first thing is to clear this room.”
They didn’t move.
“You heard her!” Mrs. Amberson said. “Let’s get these tables out of here.”
It took all day, even with everyone working at once.
First the carrying of all the tables—out of the dining room, through the lobby, down the steps. Then the van was unloaded, and all of the contents spread around. There was just so much. The stage was made of a dozen or so small platforms, each one only a few feet square, plus the supports that held them together. It took ten people to assemble. In the meantime, Scarlett carried all the bags and costume pieces up to the second floor and set up one room for girls, the other for guys. Scarlett kept passing Mrs. Amberson in the hall. She was ducking in and out of the various guest rooms and spiriting away objects.
By the time Scarlett got downstairs, the actors were in a full rehearsal, reblocking all their moves. She tried to watch as much as she could, but there was so much to do. She brought up the rain and snow mats that they usually put down in the winter to protect the lobby floor. These would provide a path for the unicycles to ride on. There were at least a dozen calls to answer about the where and when of the performance, fragile objects to move out of the way. The actors kept popping out needing hammers and water glasses and pieces of string…so Scarlett had barely noticed the time going by until an arrangement of flowers as big as her leg turned up. A half hour later, a truck rolled up, and two caterers stepped out, carrying crates of champagne and glasses.
“Social lubricant,” Mrs. Amberson said, waving them in. “There are few problems in this world that a case of decent bubbly can’t fix.”
Scarlett tried not to give in to her nerves as Mrs. Amberson ordered them back to the kitchen with a seemingly never-ending amount of booze and ice.
“We’re only having fifty people,” she said. “Isn’t this a lot?”
“I always figure on a bottle a person,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Plus a little extra. And I invited a few more, just some people I thought of at the last minute. Don’t worry. That room can
easily
seat a hundred…”
“Seventy-five,” Scarlett corrected her. “With the stage.”
“Close enough. Time for you to change, O’Hara. Put that nice black dress on. You’re a host tonight. Make it snappy. You have twenty minutes.”
As Scarlett went to the elevator, she heard Mrs. Amberson cheerfully barking out commands to the caterers.
“You can set the bar up here—and you have one basic instruction for tonight.
Refill.
I bought this stuff, and I want to see it used. No half-pours…”
She headed up with the general crush of people going to the second floor, stopping in to make sure they had everything they needed. Everyone was doing their makeup, so the mirrors were all full to capacity.
The fifth floor seemed comparatively silent. Scarlett dressed quickly, taking just a moment to get into the dress, apply her lipstick, and give her curls a fruitless shake. When she emerged, she heard voices coming from Spencer’s room. Spencer emerged, wiping makeup from his fingertips. He was completely transformed—full
white on the face and black lining around his eyes. He held up a warning finger.
“This is silent-movie makeup,” he clarified. “Not mime. We had to apply more heavily because the light is different downstairs.”
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you say.”
Eric emerged a moment later. He had the same makeup on. The white only brought out the beautiful shape of his face, and his eyes looked darker. Scarlett felt the familiar lump rise in her throat, that ache that his beauty caused her. She swallowed it down hard.
“I’m going to go down to get things ready,” she said, ducking past him. “See you there. Good luck.”
Back downstairs, Scarlett was astonished to see that the front desk had been converted into a full bar, complete with an ice sculpture of a book as the centerpiece. It was already dripping a bit onto the parqueted floor. Bottles of champagne were lined up and ready to go, along with a small pyramid of glasses.
“Okay,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I’m going to go gather the troops. It’s your watch now. The guest list is behind the desk. When they’ve all arrived, or at quarter to seven, come and get us in my room.”
She repeated her demand about no half-pours, then vanished, leaving Scarlett to fend for herself.
The guests started arriving a full half hour in advance. They were normal looking enough people, casually dressed. Most of them were happy to accept a glass of champagne and mill around, making phone calls or talking to one another. At quarter of, Scarlett went back upstairs to the Empire Suite. The entire cast was stuffed in there, squashed into every possible nook, with Mrs. Amberson on her normal perch in a black dressing gown and looking newly
showered. Eric sat at the moon dressing table. The were all holding hands in a big lumpy circle and doing some kind of actor chant to get themselves ready.
“They’re here,” she said.
Mrs. Amberson nodded and dropped her cigarette, possibly on one of the arriving luminaries.
“All right,” she said. “Spencer and Eric. Take your unicycles and get down there and buzz around the crowd. Entertain a little.”
It was an odd little elevator ride, with Scarlett crushed between her brother in an oversized suit and a unicycle, and her former not-boyfriend in an oversized suit and unicycle…all riding downstairs together to entertain almost a hundred people who shouldn’t have even been there. The elevator, in a typically uncooperative move, decided to go extra slow, and even stalled a bit between the third and fourth floors.
Spencer brought it to a halt on the second floor.
“Could you get out here and walk down?” he said. “We’re going to make a big entrance out of here, so we need to make sure no one is in front of the doors, or we might, you know, kill them with unicycles.”
Scarlett ran the last flight and got downstairs just in time to see the elevator door come open. Eric emerged first. He wobbled uncertainly through the guests. This was a fake out, Scarlett knew. He was completely steady on it. The guests laughed and moved out of his way. Spencer shot out a moment later, cutting a quick path through the crowd. He made a beeline right for the closed doors of the dining room. Scarlett watched in horror when he didn’t slow down. He took them at full speed, knocking himself backward off
the unicycle, doing a backflip through the assembled guests. They fell silent until he sprang up and pretended to be embarrassed. They exploded into applause and laughter.
Scarlett realized she’d been holding her breath. That was a new trick, and it looked amazingly real. Eric wheeled up next to her, lingering a moment by her side. He leaned in close—close enough that she could feel his breath on the side of her neck.
“Your brother is a show-off,” he said in a low voice.
This was followed by a wink, then he was back in the crowd, wrangling them, making conversation.
The elevator door opened again. Half the cast had crammed into it, and they processed out. The other half came down the back steps. They all went into the kitchen in a strict formation, greeting the guests in character as they passed. The last person to appear was Mrs. Amberson. She wore a slinky black dress with a minor explosion of fresh violets on her shoulder.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Welcome to our show.”
The doors of the dining room snapped open by unseen hands. Inside, all was shadow and flickering candlelight.
“Please take your seats,” she said, pointing the way. “Anywhere you like. The show is about to begin.”
Mrs. Amberson hooked her arm into Scarlett’s and pulled her along.
“It’s your show, O’Hara,” she said. “Come and watch.”
It wasn’t the dining room anymore. It had been completely transformed.
The chairs had been formed into curved rows facing the windows, which had been draped in familiar-looking silver and rose cloth. It took Scarlett a moment to work out the fact that what she was looking at was the bedding from the Empire Suite.
All of the normal overhead lights were off, except for the crystal chandler, which had been draped as well, to dim it. Her purple window sheers were much easier to recognize. The effect was amazing. They hung all the way to the tops of the surrounding chairs, suspended like a regal ghost. Some clip-on lights had been attached at strategic points to chairs, poles, curtains, and wall sconces. At least three dozen unprotected candles were placed around in the room in a blatant violation of the fire code. The smell of candles, extinguished matches, and the sweet stickiness of the champagne filled the air.
Outside, there was a flash and a loud crack of lightning, as if nature itself was getting in on the act. Rain pounded the window.
And then it began—the stylish
Hamlet
, old-movie style. There were the guards walking the perimeter, waiting for the ghost of the dead king. There was Hamlet, the angry college student home for his father’s funeral and his mother’s wedding, storming through the room in the suit that Scarlett had helped make. As all the adults conspired against him, he flirted with and tormented his girlfriend, Ophelia. His ridiculous friends on the unicycles came riding in, adding both comedy and a weird touch of menace. Spencer and Eric both spoke their lines well.
Scarlett began to lose track of time. She forgot that her parents were out on Chip’s boat. It was Demark inside…a strange, gleaming Denmark, full of murder and conspiracy. She was startled when the lights went out, and a cast member with one of those movie clapper-things came out and announced a “cut.” The audience broke into applause, and the doors were opened. Intermission was underway.
“For the love of God, keep them drinking,” Mrs. Amberson said quietly. Her voice was happy, though.
Scarlett slipped out of the crowd and into the kitchen, where she found Eric and Spencer collapsed on the floor, drinking some water.
“How’s it going?” she asked, trying not to look at Eric, or even really direct the question toward him. His presence was making her too crazy and queasy. “You scared me with that door trick.”
“Yeah,” Spencer said. “I just thought of that on the spot. I’m kind of glad it worked. Otherwise, I guess I’d be in the hospital or something. How do they seem?”
From the lobby, Scarlett could hear Mrs. Amberson’s low, smoky voice.
“Well,” she was saying. “They didn’t actually
use
it in the show. But I’ll tell you what it was later. It’s not really for mixed company…”
“Happy,” Scarlett said. “Entertained. I think Mrs. Amberson is telling her
Chorus Line
story for the five hundredth time.”
“We should go back,” Eric said, getting up. “Do some more party tricks.”
“I guess you’re right.” Spencer drained the last of his water. They picked up their cycles. As they walked out, Eric brushed against Scarlett ever so lightly. If it was anyone else, she would have thought it was an accident. But one thing she had learned living with Spencer and knowing the tricks—those little moves never were.
“Don’t think about it,” she said to herself quietly. “Do. Not. Think. About. It.”
When she stepped out, Mrs. Amberson immediately latched on to her and started introducing her around. She had clearly had a few glasses of champagne herself. Spencer and Eric decided to entertain the crowd with a fight this time, starting with a casual bump, like the one she’d just received. This escalated into slapping, and soon, the crowd had given them room to have a full-on smackfest. It was just a taste of what was coming later.
As an afterthought, Scarlett pulled out her phone and checked it. Three calls had come in—all from Lola. But there were no messages.
She tried calling her back, but there was no answer. There was something a bit disturbing about this.
“Everyone!” Mrs. Amberson called. “Please get your drinks refilled and take your seats again. Take a whole bottle in if you like! We’re about to start!”
Spencer staggered over in Scarlett’s direction, landing hard
against the wall, close enough that she could clearly see him strike it with his hand and cushion himself against the blow.
“What’s the matter?” he mumbled under his breath. “Why are you staring at your phone like that?”
She clicked it shut.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. It’s all good.”
He had no time to reply, because Eric grabbed him by the collar in an unexpected bit of extra comedy and threw him into the dining room. Then he shut one of the doors and stepped in front, out of view of the people in the room. He stayed there just a moment too long looking at Scarlett, until Mrs. Amberson swept past.
“Coming, O’Hara?” she said.
“I think I should…” She looked at her phone again. “I think I should stay out here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She waved Eric inside, and slid the doors closed herself.
For the next hour, Scarlett sat at the desk, listening to the action and staring at her phone. She missed the big fight, but it was clear that the audience enjoyed it immensely. They were just burying Ophelia when Lola called again.
“Where have you been?” Lola asked. “I was trying to call you earlier…”
“In the show. What’s wrong?”
“We’re on our way home,” she said cheerfully, at normal volume. Someone else was obviously there. “Yeah, probably about a half an hour.”
Scarlett felt her heart tremble.
“
Half an hour!
” she hissed.
“Right!” Lola went on, using the same clear, chipper tone. “About a half an hour! It’s been a great day! But it’s raining! And we have to come in!”
“The show’s still going on,” Scarlett said. “Lola, do something.”
“Right…” Lola said, still faking her way along. “Yeah…I don’t know…”
“There are almost a hundred people here, Lola. There’s an ice sculpture on the front desk, which is now a bar.”
Dead air on Lola’s end for a moment.
“I see what you mean,” she said. She was still doing the happy voice, but there was a clear strain to it now. “I’ll see what I can do. Okay! See you soon! Clean up that big party you’ve been having!”
There was a pained fake laugh, and she hung up.
“Okay,” she said, glancing around quickly and settling on the caterers, who were slouched on some chairs in the corner. “I kind of need you guys to go. Now. As quick as you can.”
“I’ll take us fifteen minutes to bring the van around and find a place to park,” one of them said.
“Fifteen. Whatever. Just fast.”
They stared at her, a little slack-jawed. Scarlett wondered if she should just ask the caterers to beat her to death with the big, melting ice book. What did Mrs. Amberson do at times like this? Offer to pay people. Seem confident.
“Look, if you can do it, I’ll make sure you get an extra…fifty bucks each.”
This seemed to change the situation entirely. Suddenly, they were moving.
“What about this champagne?” the other one asked. “That lady bought it all.”
“Uh…right. Fourth floor, Empire Suite. Door’s open. And can you take these flowers up there, too?”
There was no time to be delicate. Scarlett threw herself at anything she could possibly move. She dragged the mats from the floor and threw them down the basement steps. When the final round of applause rang out and the cast had left the stage and made their way into the kitchen, she grabbed Mrs. Amberson while she was still in her seat, pulling her away from whatever conversation she had started.
“O’Hara,” she hissed. “What are you…?”
“You need to get these people out of here, now,” Scarlett said. “They’re on their way home.”
Mrs. Amberson clicked her teeth together once.
“Everyone!” she said, standing on a chair. “Due to the usual constraints of this performance space, I have to ask you to make your way out now. However, may I suggest that we reconvene at The St. Regis bar?”
These words had little effect. The group was busy chatting amongst one another. Scarlett had to resort to pulling up all the unoccupied chairs and stacking them, just to give them the idea that they really did have to go. It took fifteen minutes for the two of them to get everyone out of that room, but some still lingered in the lobby. Scarlett closed the dining room doors and looked at the scene in front of her. A stage, curtains and blankets and candles, ramps…There was no way it could all be hidden.
Some of the cast members began to creep out, not knowing that anything was amiss. Scarlett ran to the kitchen to find Spencer. He
was sitting on the table, talking to Stephanie in a very flirty manner. He had wiped half his makeup off, roughly.
“I need you,” Scarlett said, physically yanking him down.
“What?” he said, when Scarlett got him into a corner of the dining room. “What’s wrong?”
“They’re coming.”
“They aren’t supposed to be here for two hours!”
“It’s raining,” Scarlett said. “They are
on their way.
”
“Like, now?”
“We may have ten minutes.”
Spencer wheeled around and looked at the stage, the ramps, the piles of props.
“We can’t move any of this in ten minutes,” he said.
“I know. Just…get everyone in here and tell them what’s going on.
Don’t
let them go upstairs.”
Mrs. Amberson had done a fairly good job of expediting the evacuation of the last of the guests. She had not resorted to physical violence, but she was pressing the last three lingerers out with a decided firmness. Scarlett was left alone in the lobby for a moment, her head swirling. There was a small trail of water where the melting ice book had been dragged away. There were obvious skid marks on the floor from where the unicycles had gone off the mats. She grabbed a champagne glass that was hiding under one of the chairs and a champagne bottle that must have just been set down. What else was lurking around? There was evidence everywhere.
“I have them all,” Spencer said, coming in from the dining room. “Now what?”
“Now we…get them out?”
“And hope Mom and Dad just ignore the set?” he asked.
“First things first! First we get the cast away from here, and we…”
Scarlett had no idea what came after that. She spun around, as if the answer was hiding behind the front desk. There was no answer there, but there was another champagne glass. She shoved it into the file cabinet.
“I don’t think we have to worry,” Spencer said, while she was doing this.
“What? Why?”
“Because Chip’s Mercedes just pulled up. And everyone is getting out. I believe the phrase ‘game over’ applies.”
Scarlett wasn’t giving up just yet, though. She flung herself at the dining room door.
“Everybody!” she screamed. “Turn off the lights, keep quiet, and don’t move!”
She slammed the doors shut and threw herself against them just as her parents came into the lobby.
“Hi,” she said, brushing the curls back from her eyes. “Nice ride?”