Ellen laughed in spite of herself. “It’s not that I haven’t thought of it,” she said, “but I don’t think there’s a place in this country where someone hasn’t heard of the Congress, and for that you can be very proud of your father. Besides, I feel I have an obligation to his memory to at least try to keep it running the way he would have wanted it. It meant so much to him and he put so much into it. It just wouldn’t be fair to walk away.”
“But wouldn’t daddy want to see us happy?”
“More than anything else in the world … but we’re still not sure we can’t be happy here. Let’s make a deal,” she suggested. “I’m not sure I can do it but I’m willing to give it a try under one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you give me a helping hand.”
“Me? What can I do? I’m only thirteen.”
“I’m not sure yet, but we’ll figure something out. Right now what I need most from you is just to know you’re on my side—that the Goldens are a team. If it doesn’t work out here, we’ll look into something else. Is it a deal?”
“Okay,” she said tentatively. “I guess so.” She stood up to leave.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Go back to the Teen Room, I guess.”
“Fine. And if you decide to go to Champagne Hour, let me know. Maybe I’ll join you for a few minutes. As a matter of fact, why don’t you check in anyway with me from time to time. Just in case I need you,” she added with a wink.
“Will do,” Sandi said as she left to meet Grant and Alison. For a moment, now that her mother was going to give her responsibility, she almost felt grown-up.
Ellen was just beginning to relax where there was a knock on the door.
“Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Golden,” her secretary said, “but I thought you’d like to know.”
“Know what?”
“I was just talking to Buzzy Sussman, one of the porters. His sister is a Pink Lady up at Community General. They don’t get paid, you know, but they help out around the hospital, bring juice to the patients and—”
“I know what a Pink Lady does,” she said, trying hard to hide her impatience. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, Buzzy says his sister told him that the Chinese man who was sick died.”
“What Chinese man?”
“A guy by the name of Tony Wong. He was one of the new custodians.” Ellen recalled a vague reference Magda had made in the coffee shop, something about a new employee being hospitalized.
“What happened to him?”
“Buzzy’s sister didn’t know. All she said was that he was dead and his doctor told everyone not to talk about it.”
That’s odd, she thought. “Has Dr. Bronstein called?”
“Not since I’ve come on duty. Do you want me to call his office for you?”
“No,” she said, looking at the small clock on her desk. It was 9
P.M.
“We’d only get his answering service now. I’ll make a note to call him in the morning. Thanks.”
Ellen was pensive as her secretary left. It had been a long, hard day. The meeting with Jonathan, going through her rites of passage at the cocktail party, the scene with Sandi, now the death of an employee. It was almost too much for one person. More than anything else she wished she could just go home, put on some Bach, pick up a book, maybe even light the fire and have a pony of Courvoisier. Unfortunately, the night was young, even if she didn’t feel she was, and there was more work to be done. The only saving grace was that by the time she was ready to lay her head down on her pillow, she’d be so physically and emotionally exhausted she’d drift off to sleep—that soft, gentle escape she’d welcome with open arms, if only for just a few hours.
∗ ∗ ∗
The music in the Flamingo Room was so loud it could be heard two floors above. Garishly designed by an over-eager Francophile who thought tinsel, glitter and murals of Can-Can girls showing off their rear ends was the epitome of good taste, the nightclub was the one facility of the Congress that needed remodeling—fast. Phil had, in fact, already interviewed a number of architects and was about to make a decision shortly before he died.
Bruce, Charlotte and Fern sat high up at a corner table in one of the multileveled sections reserved for singles. They had been joined by a man they met at dinner, David Oberman, a twenty-eight-year-old CPA from Forest Hills.
David was a soft-spoken, unobtrusive man with large facial features, hair that was thinning prematurely, and a soft chubby frame that reminded them of the comedian Buddy Hackett. From what they had gathered at dinner, he came to the Congress often in hopes of finding “the right girl” but had never yet found anyone his mother thought good enough for her only son, the certified public accountant.
Bruce couldn’t help noticing how Fern identified with Oberman, his awkwardness with people, his obvious lack of confidence, and it surprised him to discover he was jealous. The more Charlotte dominated the conversation, the more he felt it important to win Fern’s attention. Charlotte, in turn, sensed Bruce’s lack of interest and took it philosophically. It wouldn’t be the first time and, rather than brood, she turned her attention to the newcomer. If not exactly her knight in shining armor, at least he was there.
“With all the times you’ve been here, David, I’m sure you’ve entered Champagne Hour at least once.”
“Me? You’ve got to be kidding. I wouldn’t enter a contest like that for a million dollars!”
“What kind of contest?” Bruce interrupted. He looked questioningly at Fern but it was obvious she didn’t know any more than he.
“After the dance teachers finish their exhibition, they call for volunteers. Five couples to go on stage and do the tango, merengue, mambo, peabody, whatever they think they do best. When they’re done, the instructors hold their hands over each couple and we, the audience, bang our ‘knockers’ on the table.”
“Our what?” Fern almost fell out of her chair.
“Our knockers,” Charlotte said, lifting the orange and purple sticks from her cocktail napkin. “What did you think I meant?” She directed her question coquettishly at David.
Fern looked the other way. “And then?”
“The winners get a complimentary bottle of champagne.”
Bruce laughed and tapped his knockers rhythmically on the table. “Here, here!”
“So what do you say, David?” Charlotte asked, shaking him by his shoulder pad. “Are you game to take a chance with me?”
“You mean enter the contest?”
“Well, there are other things, but we can talk about them—later!”
Bruce and Fern looked at each other in mock exasperation.
“Well, I’m really … not much … good. I mean—”
“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. There’s nothing to it,” she said. “All you have to do is follow my lead.” She grabbed him by the hand. “C’mon, let’s go down to the dance floor and practice.”
Reluctantly, Oberman permitted himself to be pulled from his seat. Bruce and Fern sat for a few moments in silence, each wondering what the other was thinking. Finally he signaled a waiter and ordered more drinks. “She’s something else, that Charlotte. Doesn’t she ever get embarrassed?”
“She’s really not that bad,” Fern said. “You’ve got to understand her … her desperation. It affects different people different ways. Some pull back, others plow ahead like gangbusters.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“When you are a woman and you reach a certain age,” she said, fingering the top of her glass, “there are certain pressures. People—sometimes it gets unbearable. I mean—” she looked at him directly and intensely for the first time. “You’re never considered an individual, a complete person, unless you have a man. People think of you as something unfinished. That’s why Charlotte is so desperate. She wants to feel complete.” She took a sip of her drink. “I often wonder if there’ll ever come a time when a woman can be respected for what she is, a real human being, just for herself.” Bruce was staring at her with a half-frozen smile on his face. “I guess I’m not making any sense.”
“On the contrary. You just amazed me, that’s all. I guess I never thought of it that way before.”
“It’s why I didn’t want to come up here in the first place,” she continued, encouraged by what seemed to be genuine interest. “Sometimes I get a feeling it’s like a cartoon. Young girls come up looking for husbands and husbands come up looking for young girls. People are expected to play certain roles, be caricatures of themselves, and a woman isn’t supposed to have a mind, just a bosom, ass and hips.”
“Why can’t you have them all?” Bruce asked. “I’ve never enjoyed going out with a mannequin who has cabbage for a brain, but I also have too much respect for the human body not to realize that needs are biological as well as emotional.”
“I guess it’s a matter of priorities,” Fern said, verbalizing her feelings to a man for the first time. “I want to be appreciated intellectually before I give myself physically. With men, I guess it’s the other way around.”
“Don’t be too sure,” the researcher said with a smile. He didn’t want the conversation to get too serious. “Sometimes we men can fool you. For instance, I bet you even think I know how to dance.” He extended his hand and she took it. “Now, what is that,” he asked, leading her onto the crowded dance floor, “a mambo or a cha-cha? I never can figure out the difference.” He enjoyed the way her eyes twinkled and pulled her body tenderly close to his.
She didn’t say a word. Somehow it just didn’t seem necessary.
“So I’m here,” Grant said. “What’s the big deal?”
The girls had been waiting for him in front of the Teen Room, Sandi as sophisticated in her navy jersey and heels as Alison was dowdy in her dirndl and flats. “I win the bet. Alison said you wouldn’t show up,” Sandi said.
“What’s the prize?” Grant asked, trying hard not to stare at the two little mole hills trying to erupt from her chest.
“You’ll find out soon enough. It’s a surprise.”
“Okay. Surprise me.”
Neither girl made a move.
“Well, are we going to stand around here all night like a bunch of idiots or are we going to do something?” he asked impatiently. He hated not knowing what he was doing.
Sandi looked around to make sure she wouldn’t be overheard, then whispered. “Wait just a sec. Then we’re going down to my secret hideaway.”
“Hideaway? What kind of hideaway?” He was intrigued.
Sandi waited until the last elevator opened and nobody she knew got off. “Okay, follow me,” she said, leading them through the passage that connected the boutiques, dance studio, barber shop, makeup concession and beauty parlor. At the end was a door marked E
XIT
that opened to a flight of stairs. Sandi and Alison entered quickly and waited for Grant to catch up.
“Hurry up,” she chastized him. “The basement is off limits to anyone who doesn’t have permission. My mother would kill me if she knew I was here.”
“So would mine,” Alison piped up.
Grant remained silent. His mother probably wouldn’t give a damn.
“I have a secret room,” Sandi said, starting down the stairs. “It’s a storage room with a few old mattresses in it, but it’s never used anymore. Except by me when I need to be alone.”
“I’d be in there all the time,” Grant said, but Sandi was too far ahead to hear him. Alison and Grant were both affected by her surreptitious behavior. When she got to the bottom, she put her hand up and they stopped on the last two steps. She looked down the long, gray corridor. The low, indistinct murmuring of custodians could be heard.
Other than that, the corridor was deserted. She gestured for them to follow as they passed various storage rooms, some used for dry goods, sacks of flour and barrels of powdered soap, others filled with tools and parts of worn-out machines. Grant looked up and stared at the steel girders running along the ceiling. Pipes and wires were crisscrossed all along the hall. He shifted his attention to the wide metal ducts that were turned up and through the ceiling of the basement. He imagined they were used for air-conditioning and heat.
About three quarters of the way down, Sandi stopped at a closed door and took out a key. Grant presumed this must be the hideaway she was talking about but his curiosity was even more aroused by what looked to be a carpenter’s workshop at the end of the hall. Stage scenery, wooden horses, cans of paint, brushes, styro-foam cutouts of wells, animals and trees and hundreds of crepe paper ornaments were stacked next to and on top of each other.
“What’s all that?”
“That’s where they make the stage scenery for the nightclub shows,” Sandi explained. Grant studied it for a moment as Sandi opened the hideaway door and snapped on a light. “Get in quickly,” she urged, closing the door quietly behind them.
Grant could hardly hide his disappointment. The hideaway consisted of two rather dirty double mattresses on the floor, a half dozen more of the same stacked along one of the walls, two folding chairs, a few cartons, three shelves of comic books and old newspapers and a crumpled stack of what looked to be used wallpaper. Alison stood dumbly by, she, too, not quite sure what to make of it.
“So this is the big deal hideaway?” he sneered. “Jesus, what are we supposed to do now, somersaults?”
“Relax,” Sandi said. “Wait a minute.” She walked over to the mattresses stacked against the wall, knelt down and reached in behind them. Grant watched with interest. Alison stood by nervously biting her lip. In a moment, Sandi’s hand came back out holding a giant bottle of Concord grape wine.
“I’ve got a few other surprises back here too,” she said, putting the bottle down beside her on the mattresses. She reached in again and this time pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes. Grant grabbed one eagerly and looked around for a glass for the wine. Not seeing any, he put the bottle to his lips and took a deep slug.
“Shit, I don’t have any matches,” Sandi said. “I forgot about them.”
“Don’t worry,” Grant said, kneeling down beside her. “I have some.” He smiled broadly for the first time.
“Close the door,” Jonathan barked as he had done so often in the Marines. Gary Becker stifled the impulse to salute and proceeded to obey the order. “Well?”
“I did what you told me, Mr. Lawrence. Took the three of them straight to the Hotel Coolidge in Manhattan. The two Puerto Rican guys jabbered in Spanish all the way down and from what I understood, I don’t think they were too happy about it.”