My face in the elevator mirror looked wild and haggard, as though I’d spent years in a forest away from human contact. I ran a comb through my thick hair, hoping that my hollow eyes were merely a trick of the light.
I took a ten from my wallet and folded it into the palm of my hand. In the lobby I gave the doorman what was supposed to be a charming smile, with a comment on the weather.
“Mild for this time of year,” he agreed. “Do you need a taxi, miss?”
I said I didn’t have far to go. “I hope it isn’t hard getting taxis later—the rest of the Rossys’ company seemed to be prepared to stick it out all night.”
“Oh, yes. Very cosmopolitan, their parties. People often stay until two or three in the morning.”
“Mrs. Rossy is such a devoted mother, it must be hard for her to get up with her children in the morning,” I said, thinking of the way she had held and stroked them at bedtime.
“The nanny takes them to school, but if you ask me, they’d be happier if she was less devoted. At least the little guy, he’s always trying to get her to let go of him in public. I guess he’s seen in American schools little boys don’t let their mothers hold them and fuss with their clothes so much.”
“She’s such a soft-speaking lady, but she seems to run the show upstairs.”
He opened the door for an older woman with a small dog, commenting on the nice night they had for their walk. The little dog bared its teeth under its mop of white hair.
“You going to work there?” he asked when the pair were outside.
“No. Oh, no—I’m a business associate of the husband.”
“I was going to say—I wouldn’t take a job up there on a bet. She has very European views on the place of the help, including me: I’m a piece of furniture who gets her cabs. It’s her money, what I hear, that runs the show. Mister married the boss’s daughter, still asks ‘how high’ when the family says ‘jump.’ That’s what I hear, anyway.”
I fanned the flame gently. “I’m sure she must be good to work for, or Irina wouldn’t have come from Italy with her.”
“Italy?” he held the door for a couple of teenage boys but didn’t stop to chat with them. “Irina’s from Poland. Probably illegal. Sends all her money to the family back home like all the other immigrants. Nah, the missus brought a girl from Italy with her to look after the kids so they won’t forget their Italian living here. Stuck-up girl who doesn’t give you the time of day,” he added resentfully: gossip about the bosses keeps a dull job interesting.
“So both women live here? At least Irina can sleep in after a late night like tonight.”
“Are you kidding? I’m telling you, for Mrs. Rossy, servants are servants. The mister, no matter how late the guests stay, he’s up at eight ready for work, and you’d better believe it isn’t the missus who gets up first thing to make sure that morning coffee is ready the way he likes it.”
“I know they entertain a lot. I kind of expected to see Alderman Durham at dinner, since he’d been over here earlier. Or Joseph Posner.” I casually left the ten on the marble console where he had television screens showing him the elevators and the street.
“Posner? Oh, you mean the Jewish guy.” The doorman gracefully pocketed the ten without pausing for air. “Not likely the missus would let either of them at the dinner table. Around six-thirty she comes sailing in, talking on her cell phone. I figure it’s to the mister, since it’s in Italian, but she hangs up and turns to me, she never shouts, but she still gets the message across that she is PO’d big time: ‘my husband has invited some business associate to do business here tonight. It will be a black man arriving, who is to wait in the lobby until my husband gets here. I am not able to entertain a strange man while I try to get ready for my guests.’ By which she means her makeup and so forth.”
“So Mr. Rossy was expecting Alderman Durham. Did he invite Posner, too?”
The doorman shook his head. “Posner showed up unexpected and got into quite a shouting match with me when I wouldn’t let him go sailing up on his own. Mr. Rossy agreed to see him as soon as the alderman had left, but Posner only stayed up there fifteen minutes or so.”
“So Posner must have been pretty angry at getting such a short audience, huh?”
“Oh, Mr. Rossy’s a good guy, not like the missus—he’s always good for a joke or a tip, at least when she isn’t looking—you’d think if you had a bundle you could spare a buck now and then when a guy runs all the way down to Belmont for a cab—anyway, Mr. Rossy managed to calm the Jewish guy down in fifteen minutes. I don’t get the funny dress, though, do you? We have a lot of Jews in this building and they’re just as normal as you or me. What’s the point of the hat and the scarf and all that?”