Page 4

Chapter Four

That evening, the Burns Night ball preparations continued to be put to use as forty Border Patrol agents barreled into the Magnolia Dining Room to eat the feast intended for the previous guests. After this, they would be banished to the staff dormitories, but for now, this first night after a long journey, they were pampered. The largest and most formal of the hotel’s dining areas was adorned on every surface: heavy crown molding, paneled ceiling, brocade wallpaper, checkered Italian Carrara marble floor. June still treasured the letters she’d gotten from her peers (peers!)—men who had received certificates from the Cornell School of Hospitality!—over her decision to update it during the Depression.

A swarm of staff had prepared the dining room as always, wiping down tables, refreshing centerpieces, and using custom-cut rods to ensure each place setting was laid exactly the same distance from its neighbor and the table’s edge. Now the Border Patrol men laughed, boomed, shuffled, thundered, drowning out the sounds of the quartet—schoolboys or cattle, pick your metaphor, nothing like the Avallon’s mannered guests. They had dirty hands and dirty knees and dusty beards. These were men who’d been plucked from assignments on the wild Texan and remote Canadian borders, men who only remembered to remove their five-gallon hats when the host at the door of the dining room murmured, “Sirs, the Magnolia Dining Room has a dress code.”

The men adjusted their wilderness-sized guns to be able to sit at the tables, stored their hats beneath their upholstered chairs, and spread their legs wide. Waitstaff tactfully advised them on which fork should be deployed when.

June lingered in the doorway, observing the sight as the sight observed her. Unlike the men at the initial meeting in the Smith Library, these fellas didn’t bother hiding their interest. She returned each stare with her usual little smile, holding their gazes until they smiled, too.

When the three FBI men appeared in the room, they received hoots and whistles. Difficult to tell if this was due to their clean-shavenness, the color of Agent Calloway’s skin, or simply their austere manner in comparison to the Border Patrol agents. Agent Pony Harris showed the crowing Border Patrol agents all his crocodile teeth in a knowing sort of way; Agent Hugh Calloway smiled tightly, no teeth; Agent Tucker Rye Minnick said something low and sharp to the table of Border Patrol agents closest to him and they all stopped carrying on at once, expressions somber.

Unlike the Border Patrol agents, the Bureau men had status; they had been assigned rooms in the Avallon proper and given use of Gilfoyle’s handsome upstairs study for their paperwork and the Glass Studio for their interviews. They’d gotten to work directly after the meeting. Agent Calloway had begun staff interviews, Agent Harris had set up a mail sorting system, and Agent Minnick had collected radios. Possibly they had been up to other work, too, that June wasn’t privy to. Ordinarily, the hotel did not so much as twitch its tail without her knowing. The Bureau men crawled like intruders, fleas. Handsome fleas. On his way to an empty table, Agent Minnick’s frowning gaze found June where she stood, hands in pockets, leaning against the doorjamb. She smiled her small smile at him, but he could not be convinced to mirror her expression as easily as the Border Patrol agents.

“Hello hello hello, Miss Hudson.” Benjamin Pennybacker, the State Department agent, joined June, his bow tie, as before, a bit askew, his coat shoulders rumpled.

“Hello hello, Mr. Pennybacker.”

Unlike the Border Patrol agents and the Bureau men, Pennybacker was the only one of his kind, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He was an ineffectual- seeming man, which June understood was part of what must make him effectual. His exterior, either by nature or design, suggested a pliable, affable man who would lend a sympathetic ear before being easily shoved aside. A flunky. But in this particular mission, he outranked everyone else, so June assumed all this personal softness covered—or was made allowable by—immense professional power. He probably had more in common with the usual Avallon guest than any of the other men there.

“Are they really getting caviar?” June asked him. “Our diplomats held overseas, I mean? Is that really what is at stake here?”

“War is not what it used to be. This is an ugly one.” Pennybacker tried to pet one of the dachshunds, who evaded him with a look of distaste; perhaps it, like June, was thinking that the last war had been hard on the eyes, too. “There are rules in war, you know, laws of human civility. We hope to shame the Axis countries into remembering them. You did not hear it from me but there are POWs starving right now. Women. Children.”

“I don’t need a propaganda poster.”

“Fine, then, men, too,” Pennybacker said. “Men are also starving. Ugly men, who cheat at cards, faces too unpleasant for posters.”

Taking pity on him, she nudged the friendlier smooth dachshund in his direction. “Now we’re getting somewhere. How much did you say the govmint was paying for this?”

“Ten dollars a day for every adult! Ten dollars for every ugly man. Five dollars for each child. Does that seem fair?”

The chandeliers dripped from the ceiling. Rib roasts jutted from the plates. Crystal sparkled. The Magnolia Dining Room was not simply luxurious by the standards of quality hotels; it could easily go toe to toe with a palace.

June replied, “Look around you and ask yourself: Does that seem fair?”

“You’ll feel differently when you have diplomats at these tables, Miss Hudson. You’ll see. They won’t be that different from what you’re used to,” Pennybacker said. “Now what’s this I hear about demons? The valets were telling me the bathhouses are haunted and you’re the only one who can speak their language. They told me I was probably in danger. I do love these mountain stories.”

“It’s not a story,” June said. “And there’s no demons. Just the water.”

“Mayhap I could take a dip. I could use some magic. These are very good dogs. What are their names?”

“I don’t know. They were left here by a guest.”

Guests left all sorts of things behind. Books, sweaters, half-eaten boxes of chocolates, typewriters, board games, golf clubs, Winnet billies, fiancés, dogs. It was then the hotel’s job to determine—tactfully—if the object had been abandoned by accident or on purpose and, if appropriate, arrange for its return. It wouldn’t do to call a guest’s home and ask the wife about a found ring, for instance, only to discover it belonged to a different lady friend. Permanently abandoned items joined a collection called Good Behavior, which was parted out to exemplary staff members by Griff Clemons at the year-end staff celebration (canceled last month on account of Pearl Harbor; Good Behavior must be brimming). The dachshunds, however, were wanted by no one, including their old master, who had found them difficult. June didn’t find them difficult. They hadn’t trusted their previous management, that’s all.

Pennybacker asked, “However do you call them, then?”

“Like this.” She snapped her fingers; the dachshunds all looked at her attentively. “The staff call them the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa María.”

He gratefully rubbed the head of the dachshund she had assigned him. “Is this the Santa María?”

“No.”

Both June and Pennybacker watched Sebastian Hepp, her best waiter, glide over. Even when balancing a heavy tray, his posture was steady. More than steady. Swanlike! Sebastian was one of the very best; it was troubling that June and the local Draft Board were probably in agreement on this, and for similar reasons. A good soldier would take well to training, become a good shot, keep himself clean and healthy, and follow orders. A great soldier would do all this, but with such pragmatic optimism that others would follow him into the dark. A very great soldier would do all this, but also realize the terrible game of war was always changing, and would spend his time innovating, not simply surviving.

This was true of waiters, too. June dreaded the day he was called up.

The dachshunds stood on their back legs all around Sebastian, begging. His tray did not so much as wobble as he stroked them. With his very slight German accent, he said, “Hoss, it’s Chef.”

Pennybacker, sensing he was about to be left to his own devices, cast a baleful glance at the Bureau men. On paper, the Feds had a lot in common. In reality, the lean G-men seemed like they had to catch their dinners. Pennybacker seemed more like the thing they might catch.

She told him, “We can send dinner to your room if you need to take care of work.”

The sun came out in his expression. “Very good idea, Miss Hudson.”

“The only kind I have.” She thought about Gilfoyle, who had disappeared to the family apartment in the North Wing. He would be taking dinner in his room, too. Earlier, she had wanted him to send for her so she could refuse the request. Now, she wanted him to send for her so she could stop wondering if she would give in and go to his door.

“You’re very funny, Miss Hudson.”

“You’re not the first jasper to notice.”

“Ha!”

“Ha.”

···

June whisked away to Chef. She went alone, just as she had in the elevator earlier, not because the kitchen was haunted, but because the chef was. She was very proud of acquiring Chef Maurice Fortéscue. It was hard to lure highly skilled staff this far off the beaten path. Generally, she made do with the exiles (the troubled, the disenfranchised, the fallen from grace), the dreamers (the young, the newly brokenhearted, aspiring novelists), or the eccentrics (the crackpots, the poets, the listeners). Chef Maurice Fortéscue was a bit of all of them. Most chefs were known for their tempers—every member of a kitchen brigade, from the lowly plongeur to the r?tisseur to the commis , had their stories of apoplectic chefs—but Fortéscue wasn’t angry. He was gloomy.

Outside the Grotto, June told the kitchen staff huddled in the hall, “Take a smoke break, cats.”

The cats in question were coed, unsegregated, a mix of both imported European staff and locals, unlike the primarily French male brigades of most luxury hotel kitchens. Over her time as GM, June had directed sweeping changes to the claustrophobic Grotto. Carpenters tore out walls to expose the original stone arches. Engineers tunneled through bedrock to create windows. June herself reorganized the hotel’s three kitchen brigades. Fortéscue was difficult, but necessary. The rest of the Grotto had to be in balance.

After June and the chef were alone, she strolled around, peering in pots and looking in ovens and investigating cutting stations. Fortéscue said nothing as she did; he simply stared into the steam rising from one of his stockpots as if scrying for his future.

“What is this?” she asked. “And that?”

The chef spoke in a dull voice. “It will be candied yam. And corn fritters.”

“This?”

“Fried oysters rémoulade.”

“Mmm. And this?”

“Stuffed peppers. And braised celery.”

Fortéscue had been a nonfunctioning drunk when he’d first arrived; that was part of how she had acquired him. It had not taken him long to begin missing shifts, just as he had at the Royal-Montague. With Griff Clemons and five of her room service waiters, June had pushed her way into Goldenrod Cottage without knocking. Inside, they’d found abandoned food swarming with ants, crates that hadn’t been touched at all since they’d come from Saint-Julien-lès-Metz to London to New York to West Virginia, empty bottles hidden under furniture as if there was anyone but the swing chef to see them, and Fortéscue himself half-conscious on the kitchen floor. At a nod from June, Griff and one of the waiters took Fortéscue to run him under cold water. Two waiters dragged trash down the stairs. One replaced the filthy linens on his despairing bed, another set up a cot in the hallway. That had left June to scrub, hang his clothing, shelve his French novels, set his carefully packed model airplanes on the mantel, and pin his air-show and airplane posters to the bedroom walls. Then, June and the others hadn’t said a word, just left him to it—all, that is, except one minder, who slept on the cot every night for six weeks, until Fortéscue was good and dry.

June indicated a saucepan. “What is this?”

“Red wine and marrow sauce.”

“In here?”

“Baked tomatoes for the tenderloin and duchess potatoes.”

In the dining room, the Border Patrol agents called back and forth, chairs scraped, glasses clinked. It had been a long time since a meal at the Avallon was late.

June did not hurry. “What will this be?”

“Milk-fed chicken with smothered green peas.”

“What will this be?”

Instead of answering the question, Fortéscue said, “My sisters wrote me a letter about my village. It is such a boring village. Nothing ever changes. But they wrote that in the market the other day, there was a crowd around this young girl, fifteen or sixteen. Her head was shaved, like this, down to the bone, and she had a sign around her neck. It said she had been caught in a crime, and the crime was kissing her Jewish beau. They were spitting on her. I probably knew her mother, that is how small the village is, and the people spitting on her—they probably did, too. My sisters and Aubert and Pourciau wrote that they made some trouble for the crowd, and I am sure they did, but that does not change that I am here and they are there, where people are spitting on young girls for who they love.”

What he meant was, I don’t want to serve these people.

She said, “It is only for a short time, Chef.”

In a low voice, he said, “How will I do it, Hoss?”

Fury raged through June, not at Fortéscue, but at Gilfoyle. She knew her staff would rise to the occasion. Not because they wanted to, but because she, June Hudson, Hoss, had asked them to, and because she had made all of them whole at one point or another. Because they trusted her. But it wasn’t her decision they were trusting this time. It was Gilfoyle’s.

“Fourteen hundred forty eggs,” June said. “Twelve hundred dinner rolls, 800 pounds of meat, 600 pounds of potatoes, 120 pounds of vegetables, 92 pounds of fish, 80 loaves of bread, 72 pounds of butter, 50 pounds of coffee, 40 pies and cakes, 24 cases of fruit, and 16 gallons of ice cream. Then you’ll go to sleep, and the next day, you’ll do that again.”

What she meant was, I know I’m asking a lot of you.

As Fortéscue raked a hand through his hair, she softened it for him. She said, “Erich von Limburg-Stirum is coming.”

“Erich von Limburg-Stirum?” Fortéscue echoed. In his expression, she saw planes looping, wings scraping the clouds, skimming the treetops. Erich von Limburg-Stirum, ladies and gentlemen. Is there anyone better in the air? Betrayed, he asked, “Is he a Nazi?”

“There’s all sorts of fish caught in the Feds’ net, Chef,” she said. “It ain’t our job to untangle it, just feed them.”

Fortéscue’s eyes found the sweetwater font on the wall. A cunning carving, two songbirds singing water into a basin.

“Leave the water to me,” June said.

“They say it’s turning.”

“It’s not turning.”

“The fourth floor—”

“Do I tell you how to make a rémoulade?”

Fortéscue said, “That word sounds ridiculous when you say it.”

“That’s how you sound, talking about the water.”

The two of them regarded each other.

June asked, “What say you?”

With a sigh, Fortéscue tightened his apron strings. “I say vive l’Avallon, Hoss.”