Now that it is too late, I rush to her. “Laurie, are you okay?”
“Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!” she screams, pounding the floor. “Andy, I can’t stand being like this!”
“Really?” I ask. “I thought you were very graceful. Are you hurt?”
She pauses for a while before answering, as she assesses her own condition. “I don’t think so. Just frustrated and embarrassed.”
“Where’s the nurse?”
“I sent her home. I wanted things to be back to normal tonight.”
I help her over to the couch, and though she staggers slightly, she seems to be okay. Tara and Waggy immediately take advantage of the situation to jump on the couch and snuggle next to her, their heads coming to rest on each of her thighs.
Laurie starts to laugh at how quickly they’ve assumed the comfortable positions, and she pets both of them on their heads. It is amazing how comforting dogs can be.
I didn’t see Marcus outside when I arrived, but that doesn’t surprise me. Marcus has a way of not appearing to be somewhere until he needs to be there, and I’ve learned to have confidence in that. I’ve given him a key, so he can come in and out when he pleases, but I know when he’s been inside, because the refrigerator is empty.
“You sure you should be out of bed?” I ask.
“Yes, Andy. Despite my embarrassing performance on the stairs, I’m doing okay. I’m not an invalid.”
“Okay. Good.”
“I can do things. Really,” she says.
“Great. Make me dinner, woman.”
“Except that.”
“Okay. Let’s get naked.”
“And except that.”
I nod. “So, to rephrase, you can do anything except good stuff.”
She smiles. “Right. And I’m especially good at thinking.”
“What have you been thinking about?”
“Going home. Getting back to work.”
That was not exactly what I was hoping she’d say. “You’re not ready for that, Laurie. You must know that.”
She nods. “I do. But I have this need to get back to real life.”
“Living here is fake life?”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Andy, this is coming out wrong. I love it here, and I love being with you. I just can’t stand being helpless like this. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”
“Laurie, it feels like yesterday that you were in a coma, and you were… fighting for your life.” My voice catches on these last few words; just the thought of that first night in the hospital is enough to reduce me to a sniveling, unmanly wreck. “You’re doing great.”
“I know. I’m just impatient.”
“So how can I make you less impatient?”
“Maybe you can let me help you with the case. I can read through the files, maybe come up with some ideas. It will give me something to think about, and there’s a chance I can contribute something.”
This is an easy one for me; Laurie is as good an investigator as I’ve ever been around, and it can’t do anything but help to have a mind like hers on our side. “Absolutely. That’s a great idea.”
“I know I can’t come down to the office yet, but-”
“You don’t have to. We’ll bring the office here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kevin and Edna would be fine working here instead of the office. It’s no hardship at all. And that way you can sit in on meetings and be a part of things.”
“Andy, please tell me if I’m being childish.”
“Not at all,” I say. “It’s a great idea.” And in fact it is. “Now, what else can I do?”
“You can hold me.”
Since Waggy and Tara are still on each side of her, that is going to be difficult. “You seem to be surrounded,” I say.
“Not now. Tonight. In bed. I want you to hold me all night.”
“You’re asking a lot, you know.”
She smiles. “I realize that. And I wouldn’t blame you if you refused.”
“This is not going to turn into an every-night thing, is it?”
“No, I promise,” she says. “Tomorrow night I’ll find someone else to hold me.”
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll try it with me for a year, and see how it goes.”
She smiles again. “I think it will go fine.”
Me too.
THE HAMILTON HOTEL is on Hudson Street in New York City.
At the moment it is considered the hippest part of the entire city, and I am aware of that because I know people, who know people, who know people, who are hip.
This is actually known as the Meatpacking District, because for years it has been the city’s center of wholesale meats. Mind-bogglingly, the meatpacking business is still thriving, even though hipness is springing up all around it. The area is now filled with expensive hotels and boutiques in addition to less expensive lamb chops and veal shanks.
Only in New York.
In front of the Hamilton are velvet rope lines, and even though it is only three in the afternoon, they are preparing for the influx of people who will try to get into their rooftop bar tonight. I am told that people will regularly stand out here for hours in the hope, often vain, that they will get past the bouncers and gain admission.
Like everything else about the hip world that I’ve never inhabited, it makes no sense to me. There are half a billion bars in New York City that you can just walk into and order a drink. They’re more ubiquitous than pizzerias. What could prompt a person to wait hours, and risk rejection, in order to get into this one? And the drinks are probably priced like used cars. So why do people come here? How good could their vodka be?
I enter through the revolving door and walk the fifty feet or so to the concierge desk. On the way there, three employees wish me a good afternoon. They obviously care about me a lot.
I have found that expensive hotels in New York either are very modern or look like they were furnished during the Revolutionary War. This one is modern, and the entire lobby is done in black, white, and chrome. The floor is white with diagonal chrome stripes, and the only carpeting is a few small area rugs in the seating areas. I guess if they raise their room rates to nine hundred a night, they’ll be able to afford wall-to-wall.
I know my bias is showing, but I hate hotels like this. The rooms are usually smaller than the average Holiday Inn, and you have to take out a mortgage to eat peanuts from the mini bar. Yet those rooms are always filled, at least until another, even hotter, hotel opens up down the street.
The female concierge is helping a male guest, so I stand behind him and eavesdrop. He has a number of requests: dinner reservations, theater tickets, limousine rental… all of which she handles with ease with a phone call.
Each call she makes she starts with, “This is the concierge at the Hamilton Hotel,” spoken in the same imperious tone she would use if she were announcing that the queen of England was calling. But it certainly works; this is a woman who gets what she wants, or at least what the guest wants. If I were staying here I would be throwing requests at her all the time; it would be like having my own genie.
When it’s my turn, we exchange greetings and I say, “I’d like to speak with the manager, please.”
She smiles and says. “Perhaps I can help you?”
“Are you perhaps the manager?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you likely to be promoted to manager in the next few minutes?”
