“It took a while before I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I was so pleased to get a television show that I let some oddities slip by. But when I didn’t hear anything about the script, when my agent couldn’t confirm what was going on with any of the trades…sometimes those things are normal. But then she really started looking, and no one had heard anything about The Heart of the Empire. The Heart of the Empire really did not seem to exist. And I started to think. Paul. I kept thinking he looked very familiar. I started to think very hard about where I had seen him before. Then I remembered. It was a commercial.”
The famous commercial. Scarlett felt her eyes roll back into her head in realization. Mrs. Amberson probably didn’t know that his face was already familiar—she had been in Thailand when it was shown.
“It wasn’t hard to trace his name online. He posts his resume. From there, I was able to find his agent, find out what he was working on. Do you know that someone in that cast keeps a blog about what’s going on with the show, complete with pictures? Imagine my surprise when I saw his assistant in there as well. I looked up your brother, and lo and behold, both of you are pictured on the Web site for this hotel. The Internet is an amazing thing.”
The picture with the braces glistening in the sunlight. Apparently, she still looked like that.
“Now,” Donna went on, ripping open a packet of sweetener, “I had to ask myself, why did the cast of Hamlet at a little theater downtown want to set me up like that? You see, that stunt ended up costing me a big part in a show. And I can’t help but feel that maybe that was the goal.”
Scarlett looked past the tips of Donna’s clipped locks, out of the window to the street.
“I figured the explanation behind this had to be pretty interesting,” Donna said. “So, Scarlett, would you care to enlighten me?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know what? Why it was set up? Who did it? Because it wasn’t you or your brother or his friends who planned this.”
Scarlett sucked hard on her straw. What was she supposed to say?
Donna took out a leather case, which she snapped open. She wrote down her number on a piece of paper inside, and ripped it off.
“You should know,” she said, “that I work both with theater people and the tourist industry. It’s easy to get a bad reputation in the theater world, and it’s also easy for a hotel to get the wrong kind of publicity. I am taking this very seriously, Scarlett. Don’t think for one second that the fact that I’m not screaming and yelling means that I’m not angry. Whoever it was can contact me here. They should make it soon.”
Donna got up and left, leaving her coffee untouched. Scarlett put her head in her hands and allowed herself to panic. Spencer was under threat. The show was under threat. The hotel…
And Spencer didn’t even know what he had done.
“Oh,” she said to herself. “This is so not good.”
A COZY DINNER
There was a sickly smell gassing up the lobby, where Scarlett was pacing between the desk and the door, occasionally pressing her face into the diamond-cut glass to get a wobbly view of what was going on outside. She got the sinking feeling that the odor was homemade pizza. That acrid smell was the crust burning—the tangy, bitter smell was cheese being turned to rubber.
Both Spencer and Mrs. Amberson had sent her messages saying that they were on their way back from the move-in to the parking garage, the play’s final home. Mrs. Amberson arrived first in her cab.
“The cab wouldn’t take your brother’s bike,” she explained, as she pulled out her cigarette case. “He’s coming on the subway. You look better than I expected. You have good, fighting stock in you, O’Hara. I was also thinking about getting you an appointment with this wonderful girl, Katiya…”
“Donna came over,” Scarlett said.
Those three words didn’t quite have the chilling effect that Scarlett had hoped. It took Mrs. Amberson two matches to get herself lit, but otherwise, she didn’t look disturbed.
“Came over where?”
“Here!”
“And how was her haircut?” she asked, a wry smile slipping on to her face. “Was it very, very fetching?”
“Did you just hear me? She was here.”
“You’re repeating yourself, O’Hara. How did she get here?”
“She figured it out. Not about you. She recognized Eric, then worked back to Spencer and me.”
“Well, well,” she said. “Donna is a little smarter than I remember. I hope you were nice to her. Did you rub her head for luck? Did it feel like a squirrel?”
“She also said that she could cause trouble for Spencer and Eric, and that she might say things about the hotel.”
Mrs. Amberson gazed at Scarlett for a moment.
“She doesn’t have the nerve,” she said dismissively. “Or the brains.”
“Are you sure? She found us.”
“A little luck, that’s all.”
“Don’t you think you should maybe talk to her?” Scarlett asked. “She left her number.”
Scarlett produced it, and Mrs. Amberson visibly bristled.
“Listen to me, Scarlett,” she said. “She angry, so she’s putting on a little show, pretending she has clout. Someone like Billy…now he can make or break a career. But not Donna Spendler. Ignore her.”