Back in the Orchid Suite, Scarlett dropped the note on her bureau and drew the purple sheers. She could hear her parents yelling about the pigeons (“the flying rats”) from the opened window below. She dropped back on her bed and did nothing. She let the heat fall over her and crush her.
A few hours later, the door creaked open and Spencer looked inside. He was carrying a bag.
“I thought you might be here,” he said. “I bring presents. Soup dumplings from Joe’s Shanghai. Yes, I am actually that good.”
Soup dumplings were, arguably, Scarlett’s favorite food. They were dumplings full of the most delicious soup in the world, plus a little meatball.
“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “You can eat them.”
“Come on,” he said, holding out the bag. “I went all the way down there. And you’re telling me you won’t even eat one?”
Scarlett accepted the bag and pulled out the container of steaming-hot dumplings. She stared at the little globlike forms inside—forms that would usually have made her indescribably hungry. They did nothing now except repulse her slightly. Spencer flopped down next to her.
“How is he?” she asked, unable to even say Eric’s name.
“Bruised,” he said. “But fine. I was kind of hoping that if I screwed up that big I’d at least have given him a black eye, but I guess it’s good that I didn’t. I didn’t hit him that hard. He just wasn’t expecting it. If he’d had a chance to react, things would have ended differently.”
“Are you in trouble?”
Spencer shook his head.
“He obviously wanted to drop it. Someone got him some ice, he made a joke, I made a joke. We waited half an hour and did the fight again. Eat.”
Scarlett tried nibbling at the thin dough for Spencer’s sake, but gave up on the effort and set the soup back down.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“I know you like soup,” he replied.
“You know what I mean.”
Spencer took the container for himself and very deliberately avoided her stare.
“All I know,” he said, “is that Amy came by in the afternoon to work with me and was going on and on about how sad you looked. For about an hour.”
Right. The brilliant plan at work again.
“Then you came in with Eric. I’ve never seen that look on your face before. We were on stage, things were going fast, someone was telling me to hit him. My brain just decided to go all literal. I sort of watched myself do it. I saw the spot where my fist was supposed to turn, and it just didn’t turn.”
He shoved a dumpling in his mouth, not taking the time to create the vent on top that was so critical in the eating process. He jerked back when he felt the burn and opened his mouth to let out the steam. Scarlett had the feeling that that was self-punishment.
“You knew about the other girl,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
He looked at her as he waved his hand in front of his mouth frantically. He showed no surprise hearing that there was another girl.
“I didn’t know,” he said, when he had gotten it under control. “I guessed.”
“How?”
He sighed.
“Whenever anyone asked him if he was seeing anyone, he would always give cagey answers, at least around me. Once you said that it was his idea not to say anything…it all fell into place. There’s only one reason he would do that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“There was nothing to tell. I never saw her. I told you I had a bad feeling. That was all it was.”
“Well,” she said, sniffing. “You were right.”
Scarlett was hit by a wave of exhaustion—a welcome chance to block it all out.
“I just want to sleep,” Scarlett said. “And never go back.”
She rolled over on her stomach. Spencer scrunched her curls until she settled herself—another throwback to when she was little. She heard him take the bag of soup away, heard him shut the door. What she couldn’t possibly have heard was his arm brushing the bureau as he left, causing a small slip of paper to flutter to the ground. It landed just under the bureau, where it could hardly be seen.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TOWELS
“Let’s talk about towels,” Lola said, coming into the Orchid Suite late the next morning.
Scarlett looked up over the top of her blanket blearily.
“What time is it?”
“Eleven. Spencer told me to let you keep sleeping. You must have been really sick. Do you feel any better?”
Scarlett had to make an effort to collect her thoughts. She’d been sleeping for something like fourteen hours. Her mouth was dry, her head hurt, and she was starving. Oh, and Eric had still dumped her.
“Not really,” she said.
“I’ll bring you up something to eat,” Lola said. “Unless you feel like you can get up.”
“No,” Scarlett said, sick of being in her bed. “I’ll get up. I need a shower.”