THE WESTERN WING

Chapter 5: The Letters Queued for November

The Grace Hotel's switchboard was a cord board from the 1930s: wooden shell, brass plugs, twenty-four jacks, seven of them internal. Only one person in the whole hotel could work it, and that was Scarlett.

At eight forty on the morning of October 8, jack number one lit up.

"Good morning, the Grace Hotel."

"Accounting," the voice said. "I'm calling for Mr. Ben."

Scarlett seated the plug into jack seven. Her fingers paused on it for a moment, because the caller had given no name and hadn't said I'm calling for your manager. He had said I'm calling for Mr. Ben. Two ways of naming the same man: the first was a guest's, the second a creditor's.

She didn't pull the cord. She leaned in a little closer and listened for seventeen seconds before setting the listening key down.

In those seventeen seconds she caught four words: statements, renewal, review, next month.

At ten the pending tray went upstairs. At eleven forty Ben came down, his face the same as always. Scarlett handed him a slip of paper with the bank's call times on it.

"Understood," Ben said.

"What did they say?"

"They said review." Ben folded the slip and put it in his inside pocket. "Review means there's a problem. A problem means someone else is asking."

He said nothing more. He turned and left. Scarlett watched his back, and for the first time it occurred to her that this man who walked without a sound looked a little like someone holding himself up by force.

At three in the afternoon, the internal line rang. Jack eight, Ms. Chase's study.

"Come up."

Scarlett went up. The ledgers in the study were closed. Ms. Chase sat by the window with a pen in her hand, nib pointed down, writing nothing.

"The guest on four."

"407, Mr. Marsh," Scarlett said. "Paid a week, then extended to the end of the month."

"What does he do?"

"He says he's come to look at the archive. An 1891 journal."

Ms. Chase set the pen down. It touched the desk once, very lightly.

"Has he asked about the east wing?"

Scarlett stopped for one second. One second is a long time in the Grace Hotel.

"He has."

"How did you answer?"

"I said it's been sealed nine years, don't ask."

"And if he asks again?"

"I said he should come ask you," Scarlett said. "I didn't send him to ask you. I only said that if he asked again, it would be time for him to come ask you."

Ms. Chase looked at her for a while, then suddenly gave a short laugh—brief, like a fingernail flicked against glass.

"Four years here, and you learn faster than I expected."

"I'm afraid of getting it wrong."

"Right," Ms. Chase said. "In this building, a person who's afraid of getting it wrong is useful. A person who isn't afraid is not. And a person who gets it wrong and argues about it—you keep that one."

She picked the pen back up.

"One more thing. If he asks about November, tell him November is fully booked."

"Yes."

"If he asks about Mr. Sutton, tell him you know nothing."

"Yes."

Scarlett answered and withdrew toward the door. Ms. Chase called her back.

"Scarlett."

"Yes."

"Your mother's contract expires in March," Ms. Chase said. "When the time comes, I'll take a look at it."

"Thank you, Ms. Chase."

After the door closed, Scarlett stood in the corridor for three seconds. She was thinking about something else: Ms. Chase had asked whether the guest had asked about the east wing, not whether he had asked about Yvonne.

Which meant that in her eyes, the daughter in this building was safer than the building itself.

At four thirty, a courier brought a letter.

A kraft envelope, gilt-embossed letterhead, pressed flat, not a crease at any corner. Scarlett knew whose it was at a glance: Sutton Group correspondence never named a sender, only the letterhead. She put the letter on top of the tray, and before carrying it up she pressed her thumb against the seal. There was more than one sheet inside.

It was the third one she had seen. The first came in February of this year, when she didn't yet know the weight of that letterhead. The second came in July; she signed for it on Ms. Chase's behalf, and Ms. Chase opened it in front of her, read two lines, and said two words: "No retreat." The third was today's.

At six in the evening, Marsh came down and laid a new list of questions on the counter.

"Who is Mr. Sutton?"

Scarlett was tidying the key rack. Her hand stopped for half a second, then went on.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"From Ben. 'The answer Mr. Sutton wants,'" Marsh said. "Also, last Wednesday night there were men talking in the garage. I caught a few words. Appraisal. Deed. The old lady."

A key tag slipped out of Scarlett's hand. She bent to pick it up, and by the time she straightened, her face had changed.

"You heard 'the old lady'?"

"Yes."

"That's what they call Ms. Chase." Scarlett's voice went lower. "It's not what we call her. We say Ms. Chase. Sutton's people have called her 'the old lady' from the very start—as if she were some old woman squatting in a house, as if the building should have been theirs long ago."

"What is Sutton?"

"Three generations of real estate," Scarlett said. "Silas Sutton is the third. His grandfather's generation bought the street. His father's generation bought the land. In his hands, they started buying the people who won't sell."

"What does he look like?"

"I've never seen him," Scarlett said. "That's the most frightening part. He never comes. He only appears when somebody else signs."

She hung the key tags back on the board one by one, slower than usual.

"Last year he bought the two streets to the east. There was a bakery on one of them, forty years in business. The owner wouldn't sell; she held out for seven months," she said. "After seven months her lease came up for renewal, and she couldn't renew, because the deeds to the whole street had changed hands."

"And our Ms. Chase?"

"Our Ms. Chase is harder than the bakery," Scarlett said. "And the harder a thing is, the louder it sounds when it falls."

"Are you afraid of him?"

"What I'm afraid of isn't Mr. Sutton." Scarlett hung the last tag and turned around. "What I'm afraid of is that one day Ms. Chase decides that selling is easier than being hard."

"Would she?"

"She wouldn't," Scarlett said. "But everyone in this building lives on that 'wouldn't.' Including me."

That night, at ten forty, jack number one lit up again.

Scarlett was alone in the switchboard room. Few calls came at night; she usually pushed the listening key all the way down and let the bell ring out at the front desk. But tonight her hand moved first.

"The Grace Hotel," she said.

"Ms. Chase," the voice said. "Mr. Sutton."

Scarlett's fingers stopped on the plug. She hesitated for one second only—then seated the plug into jack eight and pulled up the listening key. It was the one thing in four years at the Grace that she should never have done.

Ms. Chase's voice was flat, like someone ordering a meal.

"Mr. Sutton."

"Ms. Chase. The letter was received?"

"Received."

"Then shall we talk?"

"We won't talk," Ms. Chase said. "The Chases don't sell."

There was a laugh on the other end. Through the current it sounded like someone tapping a glass in a faraway room.

"Ms. Chase, the last time I heard those words was at the bakery."

"I'm not a bakery."

"Of course not," the voice said. "You are an 1891 building. A building is worth more than a bakery. It is older, too."

"Mr. Sutton."

"Here."

"This building has hosted three governors, one candidate for president, and one hundred and forty flood victims in a single hurricane," Ms. Chase said. "It has seen more than you have. If you want to buy it, you'll have to ask it first."

"Buildings can't talk."

"Buildings c***k," Ms. Chase said. "That appraisal report of yours—which page was the gable on?"

Two seconds of silence on the line.

"Ms. Chase. We'll speak another day."

"There is no other day."

Ms. Chase hung up.

Scarlett sat in the switchboard room, the listening key still in her hand, a thin film of sweat on the wooden shell. She set the key down, pulled the plug, and then did one thing more: she reached behind the board and loosened the connection on the trunk line by half a turn.

Half a turn, and calls could neither go out nor come in. It took twenty minutes to fix, and only one person in the hotel could fix it.

She went back to the front desk, opened the staff log, and wrote one line in that day's box:

October 8. Outside line fault.

When she finished she stared at the line for a while, suddenly remembered what she had written on her first night shift, and added a second line:

Tonight, nobody sleeps.

At seven the next morning, she spent nineteen minutes tightening the connection back. Through all nineteen minutes she thought about one thing: if Ms. Chase ever learned that it was her, what would be done with her.

In the end she understood: Ms. Chase would do nothing to her. Ms. Chase would remember her.

In this building, being remembered and being dealt with are two ways of saying the same thing.

(End of Chapter 5)

Next chapter — Chapter 6: The Tuberose in the Glass. A sealed east wing, a glass of water that no one dares touch, and the reason Miss Yvonne stopped being able to go up to the fifth floor when she was eleven.