“Hey buddy,” the cab driver said, “why don’t you guys put it in the cab. So I can finish my shift.” We were still on the street.
ZK released me, but he held my hand tightly, preventing me from entering the cab.
“You’re certain I can’t rescue this night and charm you endlessly?”
“You already have,” I said, catching my breath, “but I have to go.” I stepped inside the taxi, gathering myself, still tasting him on my lips.
After all, I thought as the taxi pulled away, I have a super-rat to meet tomorrow.
39
What do you wear to a meeting with a super-rat?
I couldn’t help but go all out with a scarf over my head, some giant sunglasses, and Jess’s redux of a vintage Burberry trench we had snagged at St. Anne’s Thrift for twelve dollars; it felt very Charade.
When I woke up at Jess’s Chinatown flat that morning, Jess helped me put the whole look together. The trench coat didn’t come with a belt, which is why it was so cheap. Jess shortened the coat a bit and made a new belt out of this very cool pink fabric that she had lying around, and I was ready for my rendezvous.
* * *
Coming up the stairs of the subway exit, I made my way through the people on the crowded uptown sidewalk, clutching my purse, aware of how much my trench coat with the bright pink sash stood out from the army of New Yorkers wearing shades of black and gray.
I had two more voice mail messages from my mother, and I was planning to call her back until she texted me.
“I NEED YOU HOME NOW!” As I read those words, my urge to call vanished. She would have to wait.
Tabitha had sent me simple instructions where to go.
“St. Regis Hotel King Cole Bar ;) 11:30.”
As I reached the red-carpeted stairs at the entrance of the St. Regis, I didn’t know how well I would fare with Robert Francis, but I did know my look was a hit. Two women had stopped me in the subway station and on the street to tell me how much they loved my coat. I felt as if I should have started taking orders for the Designer X line.
The exceedingly polite doorman told me where to find the King Cole Bar and motioned me inside. Crossing the lobby, with its frescoed ceiling and elaborate marble staircase, gold-framed mirrors, and stunning terrazzo, was like stepping back in time.
Drawing my trench coat tightly around me, hugging my purse, I entered the King Cole Bar. A fairy-tale mural of King Cole, serenaded by three fiddlers, covered an entire wall behind the bar.
I lowered my oversize glasses and peered around the room.
“Hello, Lisbeth,” an older man’s voice said from the table behind me. I turned to see Mr. Armani—Robert Francis—standing at his banquette behind me.
“Oh hello, sorry I didn’t notice you when I came in,” I said as politely as I could manage.
“Come join me,” he said, holding up a glass of champagne. “I promise not to bite.” He put out his hand and directed me to the chair. He couldn’t keep a smirk from creeping into the corners of his mouth.
“Thank you,” I said and quietly stepped into the banquette.
“You look stunning as usual,” he said. “What an original knack you have. You’ve remarkably established yourself as the new girl on the rise in such a short time and certainly garnered my attention. Quite an accomplishment.”
He wore a deep-gray suit with a yellow tie and a pocket square, his salt-and-pepper hair neatly trimmed. Up close in the sunlight, he seemed older. I couldn’t help noticing his hands, their perfectly manicured nails delicate, almost vampirish. Robert Francis had a Dracula sophistication about him, I thought, a superficial elegance with a threat lurking beneath.
“It’s nice to be able to spend time with you,” he said.
“I didn’t really think this would be a social call,” I replied. He reclined in his seat, spreading his arms across the banquette, that devious smirk barely suppressed.
“Oh? What were you expecting? Some furtive encounter filled with threats and demands?” he asked. “The trench coat, by the way, is quite wonderful and original. Your so-called Designer X?”
I nodded.
“Clever marketing, that,” he added. “The Limelight blog, as well. However do you keep so much going on?”
I wanted to respond that it wasn’t that much going on, just me tapping in a blog entry or two before bedtime. And that the clever marketing was just my name for my friend who was a gifted, unheard-of designer and had worked hard for everything she had ever done and that no one I grew up with ever sat in an expensive hotel like this drinking champagne at 11:30 A.M. But I didn’t say a thing.
“You’ve been here before, of course?” he asked, eyeing me unnervingly. I nodded yes, though I’d never been there in my life.
“It’s my favorite hotel, an absolute time capsule, you know, built by John Jacob Astor the Fourth in the Gilded Age. If Astor came back, he would feel perfectly at home. Everything is exactly as he left it, including the butlers in white tie and tails scurrying about upstairs like little well-dressed mice. Astor himself collected the thousands of leather-bound books on the shelves over a hundred years ago, and not a volume has been moved since his tragic death.”
“Tragic?” I asked, trying to calculate how many times I had met this odd man. I realized that each of his appearances had been more discomforting than the one before.
“Indeed, don’t you know your history, young lady?” he admonished. “He died in the sinking of the Titanic. It was one of the great ill-fated romances of all time.”
“No, I didn’t know.” I was intrigued to see how enthusiastic he was to talk to me. Not at all how he had behaved before. The hotel, this banquette, was clearly where he spent a lot of time. He enjoyed whatever game he was playing.
“Well, eight years after the Saint Regis opened, Astor divorced his wife and married his secret lover, a lovely schoolgirl named Madeleine. She was actually a year younger than his son. Although these things happen all the time, it caused such a huge uproar that Astor fled with his young wife on an extended yearlong honeymoon through Egypt and the Middle East and the Orient to ride out the controversy. But after seven months, the lovely child bride became pregnant. Considering the state of child care in the Mideast, he decided to return to the States immediately. His misfortune is that he booked passage on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.”
“I take it they didn’t survive?”
“Yes and no. As the ship was sinking, Astor helped his young pregnant wife and her dog Kitty through the cabin window into the last lifeboat.”
“Funny name for a dog, Kitty,” I said. “Mrs. Astor must have had an interesting sense of humor.”
“I suppose,” he answered, seeming annoyed at a detail he considered minor.
“And what happened to Mr. Astor?”
“He found a deck chair, lit a cigar, and perished as the ship went down. Now that’s the movie that James Cameron should have made. That’s a romance. But Hollywood prefers to spin tales about a pauper instead. The ninety-nine percent, I believe your generation calls it.”
“That’s quite a story, Mr. Francis.”
“Please call me Robert,” he said, immensely pleased with himself. I took a deep breath and gathered my courage to bring our conversation to the point. Being the fly in his spiderweb was exhausting.
“Well … Robert, I appreciate the vivid history lesson, but I’d prefer to discuss what I came here for,” I said. “Tabitha has asked that you step aside and allow her to control her own affairs.”