Orphan Train(69)

Richard has his arms around both girls now, pinching them on the waist, laughing as they squirm. I glance at the desk clerk, the same one who was here when we checked in. It’s been a long day for him, I think. He’s leafing through a newspaper and only looks up when there’s a raucous burst of laughter. I can see the headline from here: “Germans and Soviets Parade in Poland.”

“I’m getting thirsty, girls. Let’s find a watering hole,” Richard says.

My stomach is rumbling. “Should we get dinner first?”

“If you insist, Miss Vivie. Though bar nuts would do it for me. What about you girls?” he asks the other two.

“Now, Richard, this is Viv’s first time in the city. She’s not used to your decadent ways. Let’s get some food,” Lillian says. “Besides, it might be risky for us lightweights to start drinking on an empty stomach.”

“Risky how?” He pulls her closer and Lillian smirks, then pushes him away, making her point. “All right, all right,” he says, making a show of his acquiescence. “At the Grand Hotel there’s a piano bar that serves chow. I seem to remember a pretty good T-bone. And I know they got a nice martini.”

We make our way out onto the street, now humming with people. It’s a perfect evening; the air is warm, the trees along the avenue are swathed in deep green leaves. Flowers spill out of planters, slightly overgrown and a bit wild, here at the furthest edge of summer. As we stroll along my spirits lift. Mingling in this wide swath of strangers shifts my attention from myself, that tedious subject, to the world around me. I might as well be in a foreign country for all its similarities to my sober real life, with its predictable routines and rhythms—a day in the store, supper at six, a quiet evening of studying or quilting or bridge. Richard, with his carnival-barker slickness, seems to have given up on even trying to include me. But I don’t mind. It is marvelous to be young on a big-city street.


AS WE APPROACH THE HEAVY GLASS-AND-BRASS FRONT DOOR OF the Grand Hotel, a liveried doorman opens it wide. Richard sails in with Lil and Em, as he calls them, on his arms, and I scurry behind in their wake. The doorman tips his cap as I thank him. “Bar’s on the left just through the foyer,” he says, making it clear he knows we’re not hotel guests. I’ve never been in a space this majestic—except maybe the Chicago train station all those years ago—and it’s all I can do not to gape at the starburst chandelier glittering over our heads, the glossy mahogany table with an oversized ceramic urn filled with exotic flowers in the center of the room.

The people in the foyer are equally striking. A woman wearing a flat black hat with a net that covers half her face stands at the reception desk with a pile of red leather suitcases, pulling off one long black satin glove and then the other. A white-haired matron carries a fluffy white dog with black button eyes. A man in a morning coat talks on the telephone at the front desk; an older gentleman wearing a monocle, sitting alone on a green love seat, holds a small brown book open in front of his nose. These people look bored, amused, impatient, self-satisfied—but most of all, they look rich. Now I am glad not to be wearing the gaudy, provocative clothing that seems to be drawing stares and whispers to Lil and Em.

Ahead of me, the three of them saunter across the lobby, shrieking with laughter, one of Richard’s arms around Lil’s shoulder and the other cinching Em’s waist. “Hey, Vivie,” Lil calls, glancing back as if suddenly remembering I’m here, “this way!” Richard pulls open the double doors to the bar, throws his hands into the air with a flourish, and ushers Lil and Em, giggling and whispering, inside. He follows, and the doors close slowly behind him.

I slow to a stop in front of the green couches. I’m in no hurry to go in there to be a fifth wheel, treated like I’m hopelessly out of it, old-fashioned and humorless, by the freewheeling Richard. Maybe, I think, I should just walk around for a while and then go back to the rooming house. Since the matinee nothing has felt quite real anyway; it’s been enough of a day for me—much more, certainly, than I’m used to.

I perch on one of the couches, watching people come and go. At the door, now, is a woman in a purple satin dress with cascading brown hair, elegantly nonchalant, waving at the porter with a bejeweled hand as she glides into the foyer. Absorbed in watching her as she floats past me toward the concierge desk, I don’t notice the tall, thin man with blond hair until he is standing in front of me.

His eyes are a piercing blue. “Excuse me, miss,” he says. I wonder if maybe he is going to say something about how I am so obviously out of place, or ask if I need help. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

I look at his golden-blond hair, short in the back but longer in front—nothing like the small-town boys I’m used to, with their hair shorn like sheep. He’s wearing gray pants, a crisp white shirt, and a black tie and carrying a slim attaché case. His fingers are long and tapered.

“I don’t think so.”

“Something about you is . . . very familiar.” He’s staring at me so intently that it makes me blush.

“I—” I stammer. “I really don’t know.”

And then, with a smile playing around his lips, he says, “Forgive me if I’m wrong. But are you—were you—did you come here on a train from New York about ten years ago?”

What? My heart jumps. How does he know that?