“Mrs. Golden is across the room. Would you like me to introduce you?”
Nick looked in the direction Jonathan indicated, looked back at the nervous general manager, and shook his head. “No, I think not. This is no atmosphere for a serious conversation.” His attitude toward Jonathan was distinctly peremptory. “I’m not interested in thirty-second cocktail chitchat.”
“Um, yes, of course,” Jonathan stuttered defensively. “You’re quite right. We’ll make it another time.” Before he could finish his sentence, Nick and Melinda had already made off toward the bar.
Damn it, he muttered to himself, gulping down a glass of champagne. What the hell is happening to my control? Of all the times to …
“Hey,” he said, spotting one of the bellhops at the entrance leaning against the wall, his jacket unbuttoned and hanging lopsided on his chest. He was talking to a teenage girl. “What do you think this is, a pool hall? Straighten up your uniform and find something to do.” The girl gave Jonathan an icy stare. He moved on, feeling for the moment relieved.
“Excuse me one minute,” Charlotte said, giving Bruce’s forearm a little pinch. “I’ve got to go to the little girl’s room.” As she giggled and walked away, Fern had an immediate sense of panic. Charlotte had dominated the conversation until now and suddenly she had no idea what to say.
Bruce rubbed his arm and moved to her side. “Your friend’s quite a character. Is she always this lively?”
“I don’t really know. We don’t hang around together all that much. It’s our parents who are friends.”
“I see.” Bruce nodded slowly. “Is this your first trip to the Catskills?”
“Yes. I’ve never been to a place like this before.” She sipped nervously at her drink.
“Me neither,” he said, lighting toasting her champagne glass with his. Fern felt herself relax. This guy wasn’t at all as pushy as she had come to expect. There was something very unassuming about him, something quite natural and easy.
“I suppose it’s still one of the best vacation values around, considering you don’t have to pay extra for meals and entertainment,” she said. “What was it you said you do?”
“Medical research. Lab work.”
“That’s a lot more interesting than what I do … bookkeeping.”
“It may sound like it is, but most of the time it’s like everything else—routines, filing, paperwork.” He took a better look at this girl. She had such an attractive face, almost Levantine in structure. If only she wasn’t so afraid of calling attention to it. Her lack of confidence was so obvious his heart went out to her. He felt an urge to hug her in his arms. If only someone could wake her up. He caught himself. He was at the Congress on business, not to play Pygmalion. “Would you like another?”
“Oh my,” Fern said, looking down at her empty glass. “I think I’m drinking this stuff too fast.”
“Don’t fret. It’ll help you loosen up. First experiences are always unnerving.”
So he understood the way she felt, she thought, almost giddily. How lovely. “How can people eat so much,” she asked, pointing to the couples going back for refill after refill, “with a full course meal waiting for them right around the corner?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Beats me. I guess they’re making sure they get their money’s worth. So,” he went on, “where exactly do you live in the city?”
She answered and he asked another question. She began to talk more openly, about how she hated it when she lived with her parents, how she loved to listen to WOR’s “Metropolitan Opera of the Air” on Saturday afternoons, and how much she liked Chinese food. They walked aimlessly around the Gold room, watching the people flirt and listening to the Latin music. It suddenly occurred to her that Charlotte was spending an awfully long time in the bathroom. She was glad.
Charlotte, in fact, was upstairs in the dining room trying to chase down the maitre d’. One of the headwaiters had gone in the kitchen to get him as she stood cooling her heels and watching the staff prepare for the invasion that would take place in a matter of minutes. The room was enormous, but thanks to a strategic placement of mirrors and balconies, it gave off an undisputed feeling of warmth and intimacy. The china and crystal glistened in the candlelight as the busboys and porters continued to make last minute gestures, polishing the silver, filling the relish and bread trays, putting the fresh flowers in vases, and setting up the coffee and tea service. The captains continued to see that the stations were in order and finally the elegant Mr. Pat, uncharacteristically harassed, hurried down the middle aisle. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said as he took Charlotte’s hand in his and brushed it up to his lips. “We had a little confusion in the kitchen. A couple of dishwashers forgot to show up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll only keep you a moment. Actually, I’m here for a favor. My girlfriend and I just met an old friend at the cocktail party whom we didn’t know was going to be here. I was wondering if you could arrange for him to be seated at our table.”
“Let me see,” Mr. Pat said, looking at the chart on the top of his desk. “You are—”
“Charlotte Fein. And my friend is Fern Rosen.”
The maitre d’ perused the chart slightly longer than he needed. He knew the girls were already slated to sit in Siberia, the area furthest away from the kitchen and serviced by the least experienced help. He also knew they would not complain.
Seating arrangements at a Catskill resort were never left to chance and after many years Mr. Pat of the Congress had it down to a science. Most couples and families preferred to dine with each other, not too close to the entrance and not too far from the kitchen. Old timers were happiest right in the center or on the first balcony where they could oversee all that was going on. Older people preferred tables with younger folk, a desire not reciprocated by the younger ones. Singles only wanted to be with each other, even in Siberia, and if the chemistry at the table was right, they didn’t mind if the service was slow. It gave them more time to get to know each other. Also, and not a matter to be taken lightly, they knew they would be able to get away with tipping less than their counterparts in the more distinguished areas.
Mr. Pat had a unique method for making the arrangements. Some time ago he had built a large peg board with large circles that represented the location of tables in the dining room. Using different colored pegs—blue for unattached males, pink for females, and yellow for couples, he would work up his strategy every Friday afternoon after getting copies of the check-in slips, balancing sexes, marital statuses, sometimes even geographical backgrounds to set up tables. He was firmly convinced that as many romances, affairs and marriages were due to the placement of his colored pegs as they were to Magda, the hostess’s introductions.
“And the gentleman’s name?”
“Solomon. Bruce Solomon,” Charlotte said, stepping close to the desk and slipping a folded five-dollar bill in the hand closest to his pocket.
“There’ll be no problem,” he said with a smile, moving a blue peg from one circle to another a few inches away. “No problem at all. You’ll all be at table 21.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said. “It sounds just fine.”
The jingle of the phone jarred Grant out of his trance. It was a trance built out of anger. Melinda had actually suggested that he take his meals in the Children’s Dining Room. “You just wouldn’t have a good time eating with a group of adults, Grant. You’ll feel out of place.” It wasn’t enough that she had totally ignored him since the moment they arrived. Now she didn’t even want him near her at dinner. Why the hell had she brought him up there in the first place?
“I’m not going to eat in any Children’s Dining Room,” he screamed. “I’m not going to eat at all if that’s my only choice!” Finally she compromised and gave him money for the coffee shop.
Now the phone was ringing and his first thought was that she was calling to say she had changed her mind. Well, it was too late. He didn’t care. Now he wouldn’t eat in the dining room if she got down on her knees and begged.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah? What kind of way to answer the phone is that?” Sandi asked.
“I thought it was my mother.”
“That’s a heck of a way to talk to your mother.”
“So what do you want?”
“Jesus, you’re a hell of a conversationalist.”
He leaned back, pressed his back to the wall, and slid down to the floor. “I’m just not in a good mood right now. Sorry.”
“Forget it. I just called to find out what table you’re at in the dining room.”
“I’m not going to eat in the dining room. I’m gonna grab a hamburger in the coffee shop.”
“How come?”
“It’s a bore—sitting with all those stupid adults who just blah, blah, blah all over the place.”
“You’re still going to meet Alison and me later anyway, aren’t you?”
“Why should I?”
“You’ll see. It’ll be fun. Be in front of the Teen Room at nine, okay?”
“Maybe.”
“We’ll cheer you up, I promise.”
“Maybe,” he said again. He hung up abruptly. How the hell did he know what he’d be doing in three hours? He wasn’t even sure where he’d be in the next ten minutes. He walked over to the double windows and looked down at the cars lining up one behind the other. They seemed almost human to him. Where were they coming from? Where were they going? And why didn’t anybody care about him?
Billy Marcus literally lifted Sandi off her feet and turned her away from the pinball machine in the Teen Room. The half dozen kids watching the game looked up in shock.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Your mother wants you in the office,” he said, a look of disapproval on his face.
“I’ve got to finish my game.”
“Not any more,” he said and leaned over to tilt the machine. Sandi marched sullenly out of the room and followed him into the lobby.
“Your mother’s been looking for you,” the receptionist hollered as she passed the front desk.
“You don’t have to yell. I know. Big deal.” She entered her mother’s office and slammed the door behind her. Ellen looked up from her desk.
“What kind of way is that to come into the office?”
“Well, I was right in the middle of a pinball game and Billy Marcus tilted it.”
“A pinball game? That’s what you’re in such a huff about?”
Sandi gave her a dirty look, then walked over to the couch and flopped backward, her skirt flying up past her knees. Ellen had been rehearsing her words all evening, wanting desperately to say the psychologically correct things, but one look at the obstinate expression on her daughter’s face made them just tumble out.
“Where the devil were you this evening? I don’t think there was one old-timer at the cocktail party who didn’t ask for you. Mr. Teitelbaum was actually going to walk over to the farmhouse to get you.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“I know. I called. Where were you?”
“Just walking around.”
“Just walking around. I see. I thought we decided you’d be with me in the Gold room.”
“We didn’t decide. You decided. I said maybe.”
“Do you think it was easy for me, standing all by myself, greeting all those people?”
“You weren’t by yourself. Magda was there.”
“You know I love Magda very much, but is she family?”
“Well, not exactly …”
“This was the first Fourth of July in fifteen years I’ve been without your father. We’ve always spent it together as a family and that was how we welcomed our guests at the start of the season. It was a tradition we started when you were three years old.”
“I don’t give a damn about tradition,” Sandi said sarcastically.
Ellen struggled to keep her emotions under control. “Then just what exactly do you give a damn about? Pinball machines? Band singers? Is that all you care about?” She swiveled in her chair and looked out the window at the young couples strolling arm in arm on the terrace, seemingly without a care in the world. Then she turned around.
“I don’t know if you understand,” she said softly. Sandi caught the change in her mother’s tone and looked up. “I’m going through a very difficult time now. I miss your father very much. To make things worse, I’m not even sure I’m capable of taking his place, being all things to all people here like he was. Most important, I’m afraid of losing you, too. And nothing means more to me in the world than you.”
Sandi felt her eyes well up and looked away.
“I hate this hotel,” she said angrily.
“Not really, honey,” her mother said sympathetically. “I just think that right now you blame it for taking your father away from you. Sometimes I feel the same way, but then I think back about what Dr. Bronstein said. Remember?” Sandi shook her head. “That sometimes people die before their time and there’s no logical explanation. It has nothing to do with their physical history or their work, it just happens, and there’s nothing we can do but be grateful they were with us for as long as they were. Like Mrs. Teitelbaum was telling me this evening, sometimes we just have to accept things as God’s way, no matter how difficult it is. It would be unfair to just blame the hotel.”
Her daughter ran her fingers up and down the gold locket her father had given her for her thirteenth birthday. After a moment of silence her feelings erupted. “I was afraid to go to the cocktail party. I was afraid people would keep talking about daddy, saying how sorry they were he had died and all of those things.” The tears started pouring down her cheeks. “I knew it would make me feel bad because it wouldn’t bring him back and I didn’t think I could stand to listen to them.” Suddenly she bolted and ran into her mother’s arms. Ellen held her as if her life depended on it, which, for the moment, she felt it did.
“I’m sorry, mama, I’m really sorry,” she sobbed. “It’s just that sometimes I get so confused. I don’t even know what I’m feeling half the time.”
“Hush baby, it’s all right. Just cry and get it out.” Their tears intermingled.
When Sandi finally pulled herself together she decided to ask her mother something that had been on her mind for days. “Maybe we ought to sell this place and get away … go somewhere where no one ever heard of the Catskills or the Congress.”