“How did you get rid of her?” Spencer asked.
He was the last to arrive and hadn’t quite gotten the full story as he was ushered into the living room for a family conference about the stranger. He sat on the floor on the side of the room, eating a container of Chinese food. Scarlett sat in the middle of the sofa, the others gathered around her. She was the witness. The unharmed victim.
“I showed her a picture of you in a dress from…whatever show that was where you had to wear a dress,” Scarlett said. “She didn’t think you were scary after that, and I convinced her that Sonny would want her to go.”
“I think I looked nice in the dress,” Spencer said, nodding. “I had really good hair, too.”
“You did,” Scarlett said. “But you also looked a little cheap.”
“I resent that. It was the fake boobs, right? I kind of couldn’t help that. I’m not exactly blessed in that department. Don’t judge me. And I could have gone bigger, but I said no…”
“Enough,” her dad said tiredly. “This is serious. There are a lot of weirdos out there, and they’ve clearly figured out where you live.”
Spencer fell silent and poked at the noodles, looking unhappily puzzled by whatever he saw in the depths of the container. Outside, the pigeons on the window ledge cooed soothingly.
“Sorry,” Spencer said. “They must have just traced it back to the articles about the show. And I talked to a reporter in the lobby the other day, but that article’s not out…”
“It’s not your fault,” their mom said. “We just need to rethink how we do things. It’s obviously not enough to lock the lobby door when no one’s at the desk. We’ll either have to make sure someone is sitting there around the clock…”
Scarlett heard her father groan lightly.
“…or we stop giving keys to guests. We have the buzzer wired up to this floor. We do something to keep people out.”
“But this is a hotel,” Lola said, stating the obvious. “We let people in for a living.”
“People who pay to stay here.”
“How do we know they won’t start coming just to see him?” Lola said, flicking a hand in Spencer’s direction.
“You say that like having guests is a bad thing,” Spencer said.
“It is if they’re insane.”
“Insane people have credit cards.”
“Why won’t you take anything seriously?” she snapped.
And then she left the room, followed closely by Marlene. Spencer sighed, pushed his chopsticks into the noodles, and set the container on the floor next to him as if he was setting down a great burden.
“It’s not your fault,” their mom said again. “We’ll figure something out. Lola’s just…”
“I know what Lola is.”
“Don’t start,” Scarlett’s dad said. “Okay? This isn’t the time.”
Spencer shook his head, picked up his food, and left the room without another word.
“The two of them,” her dad said tiredly. “What is it with the two of them? Always going after each other. I thought they’d stop doing that when they grew up.”
“They still have a little ways to go on the growing up thing,” her mom said. “Give them time.”
“They’re both technically adults now, scary as that is.” He shook his head and looked over at Scarlett. “When do you think they’ll stop fighting?”
“I’d give it until they’re forty,” Scarlett said.
The three Martin sisters were all in the Orchid Suite a half hour later—Scarlett attempting to do her homework while Lola tried to braid Marlene’s hair. Marlene was speculating a mile a minute about the freaks and psychos that were theoretically coming for them now, and all the things they might do to the hotel. They would try to burn it down. They would leave poisonous chemicals in the lobby. They would check in under assumed names and sneak around the hotel at night, killing them all, one by one. On the non-lethal side, she also thought they would release rats or pigeons into the hotel (or, as Scarlett thought, more rats and pigeons), they would leave bad reviews online (more bad reviews), and they would destroy the furniture (again, a redundant gesture). Lola listened, tight-lipped and silent. She would work the braids halfway, give up, and undo them and start over. Scarlett read the same passage from The Sun Also Rises six times, but it never sunk in.
Spencer waited about an hour before he knocked on the door and let himself in. Scarlett knew he would come eventually. He could never leave an argument with Lola hanging. He dropped himself down on Scarlett’s bed, next to her. He gave Lola a defiant look.
“You think this is my fault,” he said. This was a more tempered response than he normally gave, which made Scarlett think that he probably was blaming himself.
“This is your fault.”
“You can’t blame me for getting a job,” he replied.
“Yes, a normal job. But everything you do makes things crazy here. Crazy people wandering the fifth floor are bad. Your little sister getting hurt is bad.”