“So I read.” Mrs. Amberson pulled a Whaddya Say We Do New York? guidebook from her voluminous bag. She flipped the book open to the correct page with one shake of her hand. It looked like it had been turned to that page a number of times; the spine had cracked there as a kind of permanent bookmark. “The Empire Suite comes highly recommended. How fortunate that someone just canceled and it was free.”

The size of the lie almost caused Scarlett to burst out laughing. But that would only result in her mother having to kill her in front of the new guest, so she played with the stapler instead.

“It is,” her mother said, forging on. “Scarlett is taking care of your room. She’ll be able to give you a hand with day-to-day matters, errands, things like that.”

Mrs. Amberson looked Scarlett up and down like she was sizing her up for a harness.

“I could really use something like that,” she said. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Why don’t you let me get you another coffee?” her mother said. “Scarlett, if you’ll just…”

She grabbed the desk pad and scrawled the words: GET UP THERE AND AIR THE ROOM OUT!!!!!!!!!!

Scarlett felt her eyes widen. She was supposed to be taking Marlene out—possibly screaming and wrapped in a sack—in five minutes.

“I…”

Her mother turned and leaned over the desk.

Scarlett’s mother did not have a severe face. In fact, she just looked like an older, female Spencer, which was usually not intimidating at all. But like Spencer, she could occasionally muster a truly dangerous look. Spencer reserved his for the stage, but her mother kept it for moments just like this.

“I’m just going to go upstairs for a minute and open the windows,” Scarlett said.

“Good,” Mrs. Amberson replied. “I assume that someone will come for the…”

She waved at her bags.

“Oh, of course,” Scarlett’s mother replied. “I’ll have someone bring them right up.”

She said this breezily, as if there were dozens of staff members lingering discretely in the shadows, waiting to do these kinds of tasks. The illusion that this was a real hotel had to be kept alive.

Instead of staying where she was, Mrs. Amberson followed along right behind Scarlett.

“I’ll just go up with her,” she said. “Too much coffee unbalances me.”

Scarlett opened the gate to the elevator and they climbed in together, then she pulled the gate shut, hard. It made a terrible squeaking noise in protest.

“That’s charming,” Mrs. Amberson said, nodding at the gate. Whether that was sincere or sarcastic, Scarlett wasn’t sure.

Standing side by side, Mrs. Amberson towered over Scarlett by several inches. Scarlett was fairly tall herself, so she suspected heels. She looked down to see that Mrs. Amberson was wearing tiger-print ballet flats. She caught Scarlett looking and turned her gaze to Scarlett’s flip-flops.

“So,” Mrs. Amberson said, removing a very old and expensive-looking red cigarette case from her purse, “Dior, huh?”