“I’m fine,” Scarlett said, tightening her hold on the cart. “I like laundry.”
“That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve ever heard. Put those things back. You and I are going out. My friend Billy is working on a massive musical and he wants me to come by.”
“No,” Scarlett said. “I really can’t. I have plans.”
“Plans?” Mrs. Amberson leaned against the Empire Suite door. “What kind of plans?”
“With friends.”
“I thought all of your friends went away for the summer.”
“One of them came home early. She got stung by bees. Lots of bees.”
“How tragic. Well, of course! Go and see your friend. And the laundry…”
“I’ll keep it,” Scarlett said, quickly wheeling it off toward the elevator. “I’ll do it before I go. Have a good night at the show!”
She could feel Mrs. Amberson watching her as she waited.
“Give my best to your friend,” she said. “I’ll be thinking of her.”
THE RISKS OF BEING LUCKY
At six-thirty, Spencer and Scarlett went to Central Park, where he had arranged for the cast and crew to meet, well out of sight of the hotel. The idea of meeting a bunch of Shakespearian actors intimidated Scarlett a little at first, but when she arrived, she saw a bunch of people who looked pretty much like the same people Spencer went to high school with. They were a little older—mostly college students—but looked pretty harmless.
Trevor, the director, was tall and kind of heavy, with red hair, a tiny beard, and a massive voice. Hamlet was played by a Juilliard student named Leroy. He was the quietest. Scarlett thought he was keeping in character and brooding, but then she noticed that he was really just trying to balance a spoon off the end of his nose. Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend, was a carefully groomed guy named Jeff who thought he was funny, but wasn’t. Scarlett watched him look over in annoyance whenever Spencer did or said anything that was actually funny.
There were only a handful of girls. Paulette the stage manager was a tiny and curvy Texan redhead. She had the group well in hand, barking orders and asking about schedules as she ate cold macaroni and cheese out of a Tupperware container. She was roommates at NYU with Ophelia, who was played by a tall, dark-haired girl named Stephanie. She wore tiny glasses and had the firm build of someone who did a lot of gymnastics or modern dance. She also gave Spencer a lot of looks, but of a different kind than Jeff.
Eric was one of the last to arrive, sauntering along with a smile on his face so warming that he might have been singularly responsible for melting an ice shelf.
Getting everyone down the alley was even easier than they had imagined. Spencer and Scarlett had prepared everything as best they could, stuffing old towels under cracks, hanging blankets from the walls, covering the wooden steps and the concrete floor with everything they could find. It wasn’t a pretty effect, but the cast didn’t appear to think anything of it.
Except for Trevor, they were all good at self-monitoring the noise level. And with Scarlett in command of the washing machine, demand for the basement was nonexistent. They left at eleven, unnoticed by anyone except Weird Carlos, the guy who walked up and down their street with a nonfunctioning radio, telling everyone that he was Bill Clinton. When the last of them had gone, Spencer and Scarlett returned the basement to a more or less normal state.
“I can’t believe this,” Spencer said, pulling down an old blanket they had taped to the wall. “If I had realized that our basement was this ignored, high school would have been totally different. I feel cheated.”
“Cheated how?” Scarlett said, folding one of the dozens of towels she had washed. “What didn’t you do in high school?”
“I never threw a party. Mom and Dad were always home, or one of them was. I was the only one in my class who didn’t throw a party.”
“Yeah, but you went to about a million.”
“It’s not the same,” he said.
“And didn’t you say that you made out with your girlfriend from junior year, I can’t remember which one, in every single room, even on the front desk? Actually, it sounded like you did more than that…”
“When did I tell you that?” he said, snapping in her direction.
“I don’t know. Some night at the hospital.”
“I shouldn’t have told you that story,” he said, admonishing his former self. “And it was under the front desk. I told you this in the hospital?”
“Yeah. Some night that Marlene was really sick and we got stuck there all night, and you were working on Romeo and Juliet. I think you were sleep deprived. You were trying to stay up to learn your lines, and I fell asleep on your shoulder and you couldn’t move.”
“Oh, right.” He nodded and set to work pulling up the mats from the steps. “I remember that. I still shouldn’t have told you. Can you forget that? Don’t do that.”