Suite Scarlett

Maureen Johnson

Contents (55)

Suite Scarlett

Maureen Johnson

This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever played a dead body on stage or screen. It takes a big actor to lie on the ground and keep quiet. Droop on, my lifeless friends.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Act I

A Party Best Avoided
Sink, Sank, Sunk
The Good Ship Reality Has Docked
The Good Burn
A Guest Arrives
The Star
Lunch Date
The Scene Partner
One Big, Happy Family
The Day of Reckoning
The Short Arm of the Law
Deal of a Lifetime

Act II

The Inhabitant
A Minor Problem
The Risks of Being Lucky
A Spy in the House of Denmark
The Guru
The Other Famous Whitehouse
The Exciting Lives of New Yorkers, Revealed
The Play’s the Thing to Catch the King
Performance
The Heart of the Empire
The New Space
Cracks
Lola Sees a Dinosaur
Celebration
The Impossible Break

Act III

Punch in a Velvet Glove
That is the Question
The Loneliest Girl in New York
A Plan Unfurls
Miss Calculations
The Importance of Towels
A Cozy Dinner
Something is Rotten in Denmark
Combustion

Act IV

Desperate Times
The Final Battle
Family Bonding
The Players Arrive
Meanwhile, in Denmark...
The Greatest Show that Never Was
The Thing in the Box
The Girl in the Moon

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books By Maureen Johnson

Read On For More

To do list

ACT I

The Hopewell has been a family-run institution on the Upper East Side for over seventy-five years. It is a jewel box of a hotel, just a slender five stories in the East Sixties, just blocks from Central Park. Furnished in 1929 at the very height of Art Deco style by one of the top designers of the age, J. Allen Raumenberg, it remains a bastion of classic Jazz Age New York glamour. You can practically see the flappers walking across the herringbone lobby floor.

Each guest room is individually named and decorated with the original furnishings, and though time has taken a bit of a toll, they are still a marvel. Of special note is the Empire Suite, the last and most magnificent of Raumenberg’s creations. The silver-blue wallpaper is prewar Parisian and is perfectly lit by the delicate, plum-colored crystal Viennese light fixtures and dramatically cone-shaped, rose-colored wall scones. The rosewood furniture was made in Virginia to his specifications, as was the hand-sewing of all the silver and rose-pink silk accompaniments.

The crowning glory, however, is the gigantic round mirror that sits above the dressing table—a sliver of the top smoked out, to look like a moon just on the verge of being full. There is something magical about this room. It has a spirit of romance and possibility that none of the major hotel chains can ever evoke.

Make sure to start each morning with the hotel’s signature toasted cherry bread, decadent spiced hot chocolate, and the delicate sweet almond biscuits made by the brilliant in-house baker and chef.