Florence Adler Swims Forever(39)

Stuart was ten years old when his grandfather died, and within just a few short years, it was as if Stuart’s father had erased him entirely. He hired a New York architectural firm to design a massive new addition for the hotel, and the plan they came back with called for knocking down Covington Cottage completely, save the fa?ade of the original structure, to make way for two twenty-three-floor towers that would be the tallest in Atlantic City, if not New Jersey. The surviving veranda would become an arcade of shops and the swimming pool would be demolished to make room for a larger one. As construction got under way, Stuart’s father hired a New York advertising agency, too, and the ads they created, which referred exclusively to a place called “The Covington,” beckoned tourists to stay at Atlantic City’s “Skyscraper by the Sea” and exalted the hotel’s ocean views, private bathrooms—complete with faucets that pumped healing salt water directly from the ocean—and other modern amenities such as radios, telephones, and baby cages. Mama K was given an early retirement, and in her place, Stuart’s father hired a chef, also from New York, who had been trained at Paris’s Cordon Bleu and could turn out a menu that was both appealing to an American palate and written entirely in French.

Stuart nodded at a young man behind the reception desk whom he recognized but couldn’t name. The thing about being the boss’s son was that, whether Stuart wanted the attention or not, every single member of the staff knew exactly who he was—and who he wasn’t. When he had been coming along, everyone from the front desk attendants to the waiters to the gardeners had been kind to him, no doubt imagining that one day he’d be signing their paychecks. But as he grew older, and it became clear that he wasn’t interested in going to work for his father, he thought he had noticed the staff’s patience with him withering.

Stuart got into the elevator alongside the bellman, Cy, and a middle-aged couple who might as well have been holding placards that read FROM PHILADELPHIA’S MAIN LINE. Cy pressed the button for the second floor, where the hotel’s administrative offices were located, without waiting for Stuart to ask.

There had always been a type of guest The Covington attracted—monied, white, and Protestant—but never more so than after Covington Cottage reopened as The Covington. Stuart had noticed that, over time, much of his resentment toward the hotel itself had been redirected toward the people who frequented it. And, of course, toward his father, who maintained his grandfather’s belief that Jews—and most definitely Negros—had no business staying at a hotel as grand as The Covington.

Florence had been the one to point out The Covington’s discriminatory practices to Stuart, back when she was swimming for the Ambassador Club, and he remembered feeling embarrassed that he hadn’t even noticed there were no Jewish names in the hotel’s guestbook. “That’s why my parents don’t like you,” Florence had said, as simply as if she were explaining why she was late to swim practice. Stuart had initially felt stunned, so unfamiliar was he with the sensation of being disliked by anyone, but then he’d begun to pay attention. When he looked around The Covington’s dining rooms, bars, and ballrooms, he saw the East Coast’s most privileged elites, all eager to spend their holiday pretending they lived in a world that didn’t actually exist.

Cy let Stuart off on the second floor, and Stuart tipped his head to his companions. He could feel his chest tighten and his breathing grow shallower as he arrived at the administrative suite. Since it wasn’t yet nine o’clock, the desk of his father’s secretary sat empty. He grabbed a peppermint out of a glass jar she kept beside her typewriter, then rapped on the door that led to his father’s office.

“Who is it?”

Stuart didn’t feel the need to announce himself, given the fact that his father had summoned him. Instead, he just turned the doorknob and went inside.

“You made it, I see,” said his father, looking at his wristwatch.

“I did.”

“Twenty-three hours later.”

Stuart refused to be riled. “I’m here,” he said as he sat down, uninvited, in one of two leather club chairs that faced his father’s desk, an expensive Bauhaus contraption of mahogany and tubular steel that he’d paid to have shipped from Germany. Stuart unwrapped the peppermint as slowly and loudly as possible and popped the candy into his mouth.

His father just looked at him.

“Yes?” Stuart asked, when he could stand his father’s quiet surveillance no longer.

“I heard about Florence Adler.”

Stuart didn’t like the sound of her lovely name on his father’s tongue, didn’t like the way he referenced her by her first and last name, as if Stuart wouldn’t have understood whom he was talking about, otherwise.

“How did you hear?” asked Stuart.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, actually.”

“Chaz told me.”

“The chief?” Stuart would have liked to hide the look of consternation on his face but he had a poor poker face. Was Chief Bryant so deep in his father’s pocket that he’d come running right over to The Covington as soon as he’d gotten word that Florence had drowned?

“He was worried about you.”

“He could have told me that.”

In response, his father lit a cigarette.