Mrs. Amberson had left a voice mail for Scarlett while she was asleep.
“Please tell your parents I will be coming along to family dinner night, as usual,” she said. “They very kindly extended me an invitation. I have some very exciting news.”
Scarlett’s multiple attempts at calling back to get this news were unsuccessful. Mrs. Amberson was simply not answering.
By five, she had to go rouse Spencer, who was deeply asleep fully dressed in his wet clothes. For some profoundly disturbing reason, he shouted the word “peanuts” when Scarlett finally shook him back to consciousness.
“Anything?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Mrs. Amberson is coming over,” Scarlett reported. “
Something
happened, but she won’t say what.”
Spencer shook his head hard to get the blood flowing and blinked at her a few times. There were still tiny specs of white makeup around his ears that he hadn’t gotten off—the last evidence of the show that probably was no more.
“No matter what happens tonight,” he said, “even if I walk out of dinner as a culinary student and not an actor…I owe you. I want to tell you this now, because I have a bad feeling that I’m not going to be the best person to be around for a few weeks. I won’t forget what you did. And we had fun, right?”
He smiled, but it sounded like he was conceding defeat in his mind.
Downstairs, two pans of the lasagna of death had been roasted into existence. The rolls and salad had been purchased premade, so they were edible. A cab rolled up and Mrs. Amberson stepped out, wearing her brown karate ensemble. Scarlett met her on the sidewalk.
“I love these early dinners,” she said. “So serene, and good for the digestion. We should always eat this early.”
“What’s going on?” Scarlett asked. “Have any agents contacted you? Have you heard anything about where to move the show?”
“All will be revealed,” she said, in an irritatingly sly way.
She took out her cigarette case and opened it. It contained no cigarettes. Instead, it was full of long toothpicklike objects.
“Bamboo soaked in tea-tree oil,” she explained, popping one in her mouth and chewing on it ferociously. “I’ve given up smoking. My acupuncturist says these are very soothing.”
She looked like she was about to gnaw it up and eat it, which probably wasn’t the idea. She swanned along inside, leaving Scarlett to follow. She greeted the Martins effusively, even Marlene, as if she hadn’t seen them in decades.
“Funny thing,” she said, sniffing the air. “Quitting smoking has left me ravenous. I can’t wait for dinner.”
Much to Scarlett’s amazement, Mrs. Amberson took a huge
helping of the scary lasagna, a chunk of bread, two scoops of salad, and she even accepted a large glass of the instant iced tea. She dug right in, eating and making small talk for a full half hour, rambling on about anything and everything but the show.
“I’ve been doing a little research,” she said, setting down her fork in triumph. She had cleaned two plates. She removed a book called
J. Allen Raumenberg: Design for an Age
from her bag. “The man who designed this hotel…do you know what he went on to do afterward?”
“Did he invent Jenga?” Spencer offered.
Mrs. Amberson clearly had no idea what Spencer was talking about, but smiled like she did.
“No. He went on to make things like this.”
She held the book out, story-time style, showing fabulous black-and-white pictures of stage and movie sets.
“J. Allen Raumenberg was one of the greatest set designers of the golden age of Hollywood and Broadway. Your home was essentially a test run for a dozen different sets. Here, do you see?”
She flipped a few pages and held up a photo from a film called
Midnight Journey.
It could have been a picture of the Empire Suite, except you could see the Chrysler Building through the window.
“You see,” she said, “I chose this hotel for two reasons. One, I wanted the lovely family atmosphere that was promised, and certainly delivered. The second was that I wanted New York glamour—real New York glamour. The kind you can’t just manufacture somewhere. I was so sad to leave…but I’ve developed terrible allergies. I’m sure Scarlett has told you. Absolutely terrible. I had to move to a place with a centralized air conditioning system with air filters. Hence the quitting of the smoking.”
This, Scarlett felt, probably had a lot more to do with the origins of the cigarette case, and not this imaginary illness.
“We’re very excited to see the show tomorrow,” her father said, finally bringing the dreaded topic to the fore. “We’ve been waiting for weeks. Sounds like it’s going to be great.”
Spencer physically braced himself, then looked his parents and Mrs. Amberson right in the face, ready to take the bullet that was coming.
“Yes,” she said. “About that…A very funny thing happened. I ran into an old friend of mine, a very good friend named Donna. It was thanks to Scarlett that we got together, actually.”
Spencer shot her a look of confusion. This was going in an odd direction.
“Donna works for the tourist commission, for Broadway really, helping advertise the arts to tourists. I was telling her how your hotel is sadly empty much of the time. She had the most
remarkable
idea. It turns out there are loads of amateur theatrical groups who want a taste of real New York action, up close and personal with the performers. She deals with them all the time. ‘What if,’ she asked me, ‘what if there was a way to bring a show
into
a hotel? Let people see the process really up close? Spend time with the actors, see the preparation.’ An extraordinary proposition, really.”
There was a desperate, scary silence, which Mrs. Amberson moved quickly to fill.
“I couldn’t follow how that could possibly work either, but she pointed out to me that I, as the director of a theater company, could potentially join forces with you, bringing the production of
Hamlet
here.”
“Here?” her mom said. “But I thought this show was a very
successful company, in a theater…well, some kind of theater downtown.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Amberson said. “It is. That’s what I told her. I said, ‘Donna, it’s a nice idea, but we’re about to have a massive success on our hands right where we are.’ But she kept talking and managed to convince me that this just might work out. Why, I imagine that with a little rearrangement, we could perform in this room with no trouble at all!”
“But…” Scarlett’s mom said.
“Then I got to thinking,” Mrs. Amberson went on, skating over the interruption. “With the personal service you provide here, you’d really be able to give these people the trips they’ve been dreaming of! Large hotels are so impersonal. But here, they could get advice on the hottest shows to see—aside from
Hamlet
—right from the in-house actors.”
“And shopping,” Lola cut in. “People love to come here to shop. I could show them where to go. I could even take them around.”
“A personal shopping guide!” Mrs. Amberson said, clapping her hands. “A stroke of absolute genius!”
“It’s an interesting idea your friend had,” Scarlett’s dad said, trying to be polite, “but I’m not sure it would draw more people here.”
“It’s like you’re reading my mind,” Mrs. Amberson replied. “I said, ‘Donna, it sounds good, but can you actually get groups to come up and do this?’ And you know what? She typed some things into her computer, made a few phone calls…well, let’s see.”
She produced a thick swath of papers from her voluminous bag.
“A group from Florida,” she said, glancing through them. “They’d be interested in coming for a week. A Japanese tour operator is interested for three days. A small company from England, four days.
Another from France. A community group from Ohio. All of these people are looking to book soon, before the rates go up in the fall. There’s probably enough here to fill this whole place for a month, if you were, you know, interested.”
She pushed the pages over, all innocence. Scarlett’s dad reached over for them, wide-eyed.
“I had another thought,” Mrs. Amberson said, allowing a triumphant smile to sneak onto her face. “My sudden attack of allergies could probably be remedied by one of those portable air filters. So if you were interested in doing this, I could come back and take my old room, if it’s available. In any case, purely for your information.”
She concluded this performance by taking a huge bite out of a roll. The others didn’t know it, but Scarlett could read her expressions now. This one said, “I’m so good, I’m going to eat this baked good made with bleached flour.”
There was a long pause during which Scarlett felt that many things about both their immediate and long-term futures were probably being decided.
“Mrs. Amberson,” Scarlett’s mom said, “would you mind giving us a minute?”
“Not at all! I’m used to taking smoking breaks, anyway. The habit is still there, even though the cigarettes are gone. I was just about to excuse myself for a moment.”
Scarlett’s mom snapped into action the moment she was gone.
“Lola, I need you to check all the rooms and storage closets, make sure there’s nothing we need to order. Marlene, you’re going to do the dishes tonight while your dad and I call all these people.”
Marlene looked up in surprise. Frankly, so did everyone else. Marlene
never
got asked to do anything. She opened her mouth, possibly to object, then closed it decisively.
“Come on, Mar,” her dad said, getting up. “I’ll show you how to do the first few. We’ll get a system going.”
Lola got up as well to start her round of the hotel. This left Scarlett and Spencer.
“Why do I have the strangest feeling that there is something you all want to tell us?” their mother said.
“Tell you?” Spencer asked, looking to Scarlett and shrugging. “I don’t think so…”
“Not me,” Scarlett added, trying to plaster on an innocent expression.
More troubling silence, then she lost control of the serious expression she had been trying so hard to hold.
“You two help Mrs. Amberson get her things and move her back in. Oh, and Spencer…”
She reached into her pocket and produced a card.
“Someone came by and left this for you. He said he saw you here last night. I won’t
even pretend
to know what that means.”
Spencer took the card and read it, then quickly passed it to Scarlett. It read:
TOM HICKMAN
,
COMMERCIAL CASTING
. Along the bottom, there was a line added in pen that said, “Call tomorrow re: washing machine commercial.”
A few hours later, Mrs. Amberson sat on her perch in the Empire Suite, twitching like a bug. She had chewed up a dozen tea-tree sticks while waiting for Spencer to carry up all her bags from the
lobby. She seemed to have acquired some more things during her stay at The St. Regis.
Spencer collapsed onto the bed next to Scarlett after the last bag.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mrs. Amberson said, pulling out another stick. “You’re going to need an agent. You don’t have one, do you? Commercial or straight?”
“No,” Spencer said. “I could never get one before. No one would talk to me. I was way too unemployed. I’m still unemployed. It’s just an audition.”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “They’ve seen you. This is a callback, at the very least. I have a good feeling about this.”
Even exhausted, Spencer was crackling with energy from all the news.
“You know,” Mrs. Amberson said, “at a big agency, you just get lost in the shuffle. They spend all their time on stars and big-money clients. What you need is an agent with a small list, dedicated to building your career. Someone who wants to nurture you to the top,
make
you a big client.”
“Do you know someone like that?” Spencer asked.
There was a light in Mrs. Amberson’s eyes that Scarlett immediately recognized.
“I believe I do,” she said. “Someone with years of experience in the theater world, who knows their way around a contract, someone with nerves of steel and total dedication. Someone who is just starting to build a list of new clients.”
“Who is it?” Spencer said. “Can you put me in touch, maybe give me a recommendation?”
Mrs. Amberson smiled her slowest, most toothpaste-commercial-ready smile.
“There’s some money on my writing desk,” she said. “Do me a favor and run to the corner deli and get me a pack of licorice? I have such a craving for it. I’ll make a call or two while you’re gone. And pick up one of those organic protein smoothies they make. That’s for you. Make sure to drink it. They’re delicious.”
After Spencer sprinted from the room, Mrs. Amberson looked to Scarlett.
“One of the first goals will be to put ten pounds on him,” she said. “Muscle mass. Also, I wonder if that girl Stephanie is ever going to stop being so annoyingly professional and finally ask him out. That is a situation to watch over the next few weeks, O’Hara. I’m sure there’s something we can do about that…I like my clients to be happy and fulfilled. Keeps them out of the tabloids.”
“You’re not an agent,” Scarlett said. “You don’t have clients.”
“I’m not an agent
yet.
But I will be as soon as I call one of my lawyer friends and have her draft me up a contract for your brother to sign. I’m perfect for this, Scarlett. Molding people. Forming relationships. Lunching. What do you think I should call it? I was thinking AA for Amberson Agency—but that acronym is taken. But hey, most actors have belonged to the original AA, they might just want to join the new one as well. I could get a gorgeous monogram made. The cards and stationary will be exquisite. A double A, linked together and overlapping. Oh, that’ll look like an M, won’t it? Maybe I’ll just do back-to-back
A
’s, then.”
As usual, Mrs. Amberson’s priorities were well in order.
“I’ll need an assistant, of course,” she went on. “Someone reliable. Someone
invested.
”
“I start school in a few weeks,” Scarlett said warily. “There’s so much to do and…”
“Then it’s perfect! You couldn’t find a better after school job than this. What is there to lose?”