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Chapter Fifteen

Despite the diplomats, the staff remembered June’s birthday; in the morning, the dachshunds bounded right into a tray of baked goods and apple juice outside her door. As they backed away apologetically, one tentatively mincing through spilled juice, June said, “You’re all right, keep your shirt on now,” and used the cloth napkin to wipe the juice from the pads of their paws and a piece of Avallon stationery that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HOSS . The latter was embossed by her old friends from the print shop (after she’d saved Sandy, Mr. Francis had moved her there as a clerk) and signed by the staff—a handful simply marked with an X , since they had never been taught to write. The offering would be the first of many; June rarely paused for a proper birthday celebration, so her staff tucked innumerable little fairy gifts into nooks and crannies they hoped she’d come across throughout the course of the day.

“Happy birthday,” Basil Pemberton said, plummily, as she entered the bright lobby.

“Thank you, Mr. Pemberton.”

“I rescued some mail for you from the post office.”

Even before she saw the return address, she recognized Gilfoyle’s handwriting on the square envelope.

“Oh,” she said, “how old-fashioned of him.”

She didn’t know what she meant by that, only that she needed to say something offhanded so Basil Pemberton would not think this card was particularly especial to her. But she knew even as she did that it was farce, because Basil Pemberton had already known to “rescue” the envelope. The staff might not know what was between June and Gilfoyle any more than June did, but, like her, they knew it was something .

She blustered, “Just put it on my desk with the rest of the mail, would you? I won’t have time for any of that until later.”

Basil allowed her the dignity. “Of course.”

She had a thought she might reward herself with it at the day’s end; in her apartment, she would undress for bed and sit on her mattress with a little whiskey and whatever birthday sweet the kitchen would have found for her, because she knew they would, and then she would run her finger beneath the envelope flap and let his words cover her. A prize, a release—

—a wise decision, it turned out, because the day quickly filled with sour things. The first: a journalist who had blown up against the gatehouse like a bit of tumbleweed or trash. The hollow-cheeked fellow in a suit introduced himself as Mr. Forester from The New York Herald Tribune and flapped a little notepad at her.

He said, “The piece could be about the hotel, really, more than the foreign nationals. For instance, here is an easy question to start: What do you think the war should be called? Are you in favor of any of these: War of World Freedom, Right Against Might, The People’s War, Franklin’s Folly, Rich Man’s War, Anti-dictator War, War of Liberty…”

None of the proposed names bore the artifice or hope of the last war’s: The War to End All Wars. So far, the moniker June had heard most people use—Second World War—seemed right. Dragging even the remote Avallon onto the global battleground.

“Mr. Forester,” June interrupted. “The only thing I can offer you is the official statement the govmint gave me. I ain’t gonna insult your smarts by assuming you don’t already have it.”

He twitched the notebook. “But, see, I already got some interviews in Constancy. One of your elevator operators is marrying one of the Japs. Shocking. And that swastika discovered in your chef’s quarters? Outrageous. The Pearl Harbor party held in your ballroom?”

She couldn’t be baited. Mr. Forester of The New York Herald Tribune was just a mortal penning folklore about gods. Her guests didn’t care what the papers printed about their favorite vacation spot. They owned the papers.

The journalist added, “Not to mention what people are saying about Francis Gilfoyle.”

She’d underestimated him.

He’d known to leave this statement for last, for impact. He wanted her to ask, What are people saying about Francis Gilfoyle? Did she already know the answer, if she considered hard enough? Mr. Francis had taught her everything she knew about this hotel, nearly everything she knew about society, had raised her alongside his own children.

But she did not know the man he had been outside this hotel.

“The locals told me you inherited the hotel,” Mr. Forester said. A deliberate exaggeration, demanding refutation. When she said nothing, he asked, “Why did a man like him leave a part of the hotel to someone like you?”

Someone like you.

In the gatehouse, Stan Fairhope (sixty-five, white-haired, safe from the draft) clucked his tongue and averted his eyes, as if the journalist had sworn.

“Give me your hand, Mr. Forester.” June didn’t wait. She took it. She held it in both of hers. Earnestly, she said, “I think what’d be best is for the State Department and the FBI to come down for a complete background check. You understand, I can tell you do. You’re a patriot. This is a matter of national security. I’ve got a full house of G-men up there who could make sure you don’t have any anti-American sympathies, that this piece won’t endanger any American lives. I’m guessing there’ll be interviews. Of your family. Friends. They’ll need your photo, your mother’s name, your father’s name. They’ll need to see where you live. You wouldn’t object to a temporary wiretap, would you? Those Feds are right anxious about fascism. Communism. Mr. Fairhope, could you see if Special Agent Pennybacker is available? Mr. Forester, what’s your full name and place of birth? We can get started.”

The journalist removed his hand from hers. It had gone quite warm.

Stan Fairhope leaned from the gatehouse, a phone against his ear. “Front desk says they can get Special Agent Minnick down here in five, Hoss. He’s finishing his breakfast.”

Mr. Forester put his little notebook away. “I wouldn’t want to endanger the war effort.”

“No.”

“I can place a few calls to make sure this proposed piece really is good for America.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll probably return.”

“I’d be shocked if you didn’t. Would you like a ham biscuit for the road?”

He would not.

As Mr. Forester’s car departed, Stan hung up the phone without a word; calls that were never patched through required no goodbyes. She was worried he would say something about Mr. Francis, but instead, Stan retrieved another fairy gift: a corsage. He gestured as if to pin it in her buttonhole himself before thinking better of it and merely passing it over. As she smelled the hothouse blossoms, he said, “Happy birthday, Hoss.”

···

The next sour thing happened just outside Toad’s office, when Ovid Persinger intercepted her. June already knew what Toad would give her, because it was the same each year: a kiss on the temple and a potent hug, squashed in Toad’s bosoms. In June’s memories, all these birthday hugs had become one hug, except for the first—June’s first birthday alone—when Toad had found June tearlessly gazing into the basement swimming pool.

“I hear you’re letting the press run roughshod over us.”

Ovid Persinger was slight but powerful, like a coal pony, soft-spoken but forceful, like a dying preacher. As the food controller, he tracked every purchase, issue, and food sale. No one ordered room service without him knowing how many eggs were beneath the lid; if an onion or a saltshaker left the storeroom, he wanted it itemized, dated, signed. Every curl of lettuce, can of peas, ounce of gelatin—his mind was constantly updating prices, adding, subtracting, multiplying these figures. Even now, standing before June, he was probably scheming. Did people leave portions of potato salad on their plates? Could the canned peaches be substituted? Could a leg be served instead of a breast? He was awful; he kept the hotel profitable. Both these facts were true, although he only knew one of them.

“Why don’t you tell me how your week is going, Mr. Persinger,” June said.

“My boy needs a new pair of shoes, but we used our stamp already, so he’s flapping until summer. The Nazis—not the ones in our dining room eating butter, the rest of them—are giving Cuba a hell of a time. Why aren’t we using margarine?”

She said, “Until margarine tastes like butter, upstairs gets butter; try margarine in the canteen and see how it goes. I think Mrs. Surbaugh can find your boy a pair of shoes. I can’t fix Cuba.”

“Give him a pair of shoes? This is why we bleed money!” Ovid was delighted to have caught June in unprofessional generosity. “Now, look here, see here. Jerry hates our menu and the Swiss say we have to kowtow. Fortéscue wrote a new one that’ll have us bankrupt by August and he won’t budge a carrot. I just came up here to find out if that’s what you wanted? Bankruptcy by August? Is that right?”

“I was hoping it would take less time than that.” Not a hint of a smile from Ovid. “Gut the menu, tell Chef I am behind you. I didn’t think you could be bullied.”

“Hold your britches, I wasn’t being bullied. Fortéscue made it sound as if this was your idea. I understand now it is just to pamper that pilot. Celebrity is very close to idolatry, Miss Hudson, but I would not expect a Frenchman to understand that. He says you needed a picnic for your birthday; I found room in the budget for that, too.”

Surprised, she said, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, thank the child whose mouth you took a sandwich out of.”

Long ago, after an unpleasant exchange June hadn’t been present for, Mr. Francis had suggested firing Ovid.

Didn’t you tell me it was about what the hotel wanted, not what I want? she’d asked him. They could find someone more pleasant than Ovid, sure. They couldn’t find someone as good, though.

I think you’ve learned just about everything I can teach you, June.

With a sigh, June asked, “Ovid, do you think you’re like to be drafted?”

“Flat feet.” Of course. He added, “I hear tell Sebastian Hepp got marching orders.”

June stilled.

“From whom?”

“?‘Whom!’ Forget what they say about the fourth floor, Mr. Francis lives in you. Mrs. Parton heard he got the telegram. Got a few months until induction, but won’t matter, the Nazis here used up the last of peacetime.”

She knew what he meant. Even after the diplomats departed, there would be ration cards and draft boards, women stepping into vacant positions and men with limps averting their eyes. Already the Burns Night ball belonged to another time. What was on the other side? Sebastian’s paper airplane traded for a gun. Erich von Limburg-Stirum saying that, in Germany, he’d be dropping bombs.

June forced herself to remember the letter from Gilfoyle. The envelope, she had noticed, still smelled like him, that spicy Dunhill. In only a few hours, she’d let herself open it.

“Now, Miss Hudson, the Lord saw fit to give you another birthday,” Ovid said. “I’d advise you to humbly meditate on those He didn’t grant the same clemency.”

···

The final sour thing happened at the picnic.

Pennybacker had requested a meeting, so he and the Swiss took June’s birthday picnic in the Avallon II. Inside, greenhouse flowers transformed the interior to summer glory; the feast was spread out beside the cold Soak. The Grotto had done itself proud: deviled ham and egg spread, garnished with radishes, with white toast, potage mongole with croutons, chef’s salad special, homemade Russian dressing, Golden Delicious apple and alligator pear salad, horseradish and green pepper sandwiches on day-old Boston brown bread so they would hold their shape, and butter cake with fig filling and seven-minute frosting. The last was June’s favorite. Good old Fortéscue.

“I thought there was a war on,” Pennybacker said, but happily. He was eighty percent immersed in the water, one hundred percent immersed in the experience. The grizzled Swiss conductor sat with his trousers rolled up and feet in the pool, frowning at the wiry Swiss harpsichordist, who was submerged in both the water and a jellied dessert. June sat cross-legged beside the Simmer, trailing her fingers in the water.

Pennybacker said, “It’s joke time, gentlemen. And lady. Here’s one I read yesterday: Hitler asks a fortune teller, ‘What day will I die?’ She says, ‘On a Jewish holiday.’ He says, ‘Are you sure?’ She says, ‘Very sure.’ He says—wait, I might be telling this wrong; no, I got it—Hitler says, ‘How can you be so sure I’ll die on a Jewish holiday?’ She says, ‘Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday!’?”

A pause. June frowned. The harpsichordist laughed.

The conductor said, “I think it is in very poor taste.”

“That is where the humor lies,” the harpsichordist pressed. “In the shock.”

“I can think of many shocking events lacking humor,” the conductor said.

She could tell that they were fighting about something else; the joke was just a convenient vehicle. She said, “Don’t quarrel in my sweetwater.”

“Don’t tempt Miss Hudson’s demon water,” agreed Pennybacker. “Now, Miss Hudson, time for good news. I have my eye on a boat to put these diplomats on! Don’t get your hopes up. But it could all come together very, very quickly, if the negotiations don’t fall through.”

June’s hopes didn’t have enough information to go up. She asked, “What do these negotiations entail?”

“It’s hostage mathematics, I’m afraid,” he replied. “For every American citizen we want back from Germany, we must give them a German citizen. For every American we want back from Japan, we must give them a Japanese citizen. The names on those lists are negotiable. If we do our jobs right—if I do my job right—the lists will be the same length at the end, and it’ll be only happy faces setting out of the Avallon. It has been a tricky business. Angela Bickenbach put a real hitch in my stride. Her staying here means an American has to stay in Germany.”

“That seems like a devil’s game.”

“It is a devil’s game, Miss Hudson,” Pennybacker said. “And I am forced to be a—what is the word?—a minor devil. What’s the word for that?”

“ State Department agent ,” said the conductor, and the men all had a convivial laugh at Pennybacker’s expense.

June supposed she needed to spend her evening looking at personnel. She needed to figure out how to run the hotel with far fewer men. Someone would have to be promoted to Sebastian Hepp’s position; she and Griff had not even begun to talk about solutions for the gutted valet department. It wouldn’t be as simple as training women for the front-of-house positions typically held by men, either. June would have to train the guests, too, to associate women besides herself with luxury. The journalist’s words rattled around in her head: Someone like you.

She took her fingers out of the water.

June asked, “Mr. Pennybacker, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“For you, Miss Hudson, and these two fine gentlemen, I am a book with pages sprawled open.”

“You’re really sure?”

“Miss Hudson, please. Nothing is too intimate when I am among such good company.”

“How long ago did your wife leave you?” she asked Pennybacker.

His mouth tightened. The conductor busied himself with the food on his plate. The water chuckled beneath the harpsichordist’s elbows as he fidgeted. The dachshunds fought, made up.

“Who told you?”

“My demon water.”

The truth was that Pennybacker was a loyal sort of fellow; he had a steady job with a fine salary, and he wasn’t the worst thing to look at, so unless he preferred the company of men, he must have been married, even though he was not wearing a ring. But he was not agitating for leave time with his family, or accepting any of the staff’s flirtations, or receiving letters from a wife or lover. So the only choices were married to a dead wife or to an estranged one, and recent widowers slept around more.

Pennybacker admitted, “There was a younger fellow. Less soft around the thorax than I. He’s not in the picture anymore, though. She has gotten an apartment near her mother. Peoria. She’s a decisive woman. We were married in a month, wartime speed, without the war. I was lucky I was one of her choices, that’s what I always said.”

“There was something else besides this jasper, wasn’t there.”

Pennybacker looked different with his eyes closed, without his bedraggled bow tie. Older, more serious. A man who disguised a hard life by blanketing words upon words on every conversation. He said, “We lost a baby.”

The conductor said, “You never said. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, Rudy,” said Pennybacker, voice tremulous, just at the end. The kindness of men! This world forged them with their armor on the inside, and if trauma tugged that skeleton free from their skin, they no longer had the structural integrity to stand. Now war would flay tens of thousands of men at a time, returning them to peace broken. She would not think about her father, Sandy, Sebastian. Not right next to the attentive sweetwater.

“Do you write to your wife?” June asked.

Pennybacker gladly returned to this safer heartbreak. “Every day. I am a typist of the heart. I write, I call, I leave messages with her roommate, who is an actual typist. Every day I send letters from here with all details of the mission redacted, but all the emotion intact. Don’t tell me I’m a cuckold and a fool, I’ve heard it all from my brothers and sister.”

“I was just going to say that silence is a powerful aphrodisiac, Mr. Pennybacker.”

“I’m not gifted in that department.”

“I can arrange to have my staff hold your calls and letters if you cannot hold them yourself. Let her miss you.”

“You haven’t even met her!”

It did not matter. June had seen ever so many husbands and wives and lovers and fiancés and fiancées break up, make up, propose, divorce, marry, schism, remarry, re-divorce, all assuming they were unique, never imagining that the wonder or dysfunction of their intended pairing might have been repeated elsewhere. June listened, watched, learned. No, she had not met Mrs. Pennybacker, but she suspected she knew the shape of her. A missing partner was like an unspoken word; it fit neatly against the spoken one.

“Don’t do that,” the conductor said sharply.

Sudden antagonism crackled between the two Swiss men.

“It is not funny,” the conductor said.

The harpsichordist replied, “I was not being funny.”

June took in the picture: the conductor, drawn back, as if stung. The harpsichordist, eyes alight with an intense, unnamed feeling.

“He splashed me.” The conductor tilted his plate to reveal water droplets glinting in the light. His sleeve was dotted with damp.

“I—I didn’t,” protested the harpsichordist. It was hard to disbelieve him. The conductor wasn’t the sort of man who encouraged foolishness, even if the harpsichordist was a foolish sort of man. “I wouldn’t.”

The conductor’s tone was brittle. “Who did, then?”

The idea that any of them might splash was ludicrous. And to splash and then deny it—childishness beyond imagining. Pennybacker and June watched, bemused, as the harpsichordist scrambled from the pool, not looking at the conductor, lightly touching his face and chest with his fingers, the uncertain gestures of a punished boy.

“I didn’t do it,” he insisted.

The pool rippled between the men. On the walls, bright hard shapes moved restlessly, reflections from the moving surface as the conductor pulled his legs free and went for a towel. After a moment, the harpsichordist followed.

The harpsichordist returned in a few minutes, fully dressed, clutching his bag to his chest. He said, “I am going back to the hotel.”

“Where’s Rudy?” Pennybacker asked. The conductor had already gone, though, somehow slipping away without any of them noticing. Uneasiness hovered somewhere inside June’s chest. She thought of the balcony rung clattering to the balcony floor. The rot at the end of the spindle had been the work of water, slow and inexorable, even if its flight had not. “I don’t know what got into him. This the work of your demon water, Miss Hudson?”

Even though she had just been thinking about it herself, she said, “The water don’t work that way.”

But after they had gone, she lowered her hand into the water once more and listened. Really listened. The water was just a bit warmer than she was. When she rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, it felt like nothing, like she had no skin at all. Her body and the pool and the spring beneath the rock and the stream that simmered under the mountains were the same. Out of nowhere, she was reminded of the first time she had seen Hannelore Wolfe as she pressed her hand onto the moss. June half imagined she could feel the girl’s clever, disordered mind swirling around her fingers—that, and Sabine Wolfe’s chilly unhappiness. June’s sweetwater was, in fact, a little sour.

Standing, she wiped her hand on her slacks.

So the diplomats might be out of here soon? Just as well. The water was starting to listen to them.

Happy birthday.