“Thanks, Derek. We’re not dressed. Just leave it outside. And thank you.”
“Sure thing. Have fun.”
She waited until she heard the elevator door close, then pulled the rolling table in as Billy’s eyes grew wide. The food smelled delicious, and she pulled a chair up to the table for him. “Have a nice dinner,” she said softly. She wrote down her cell phone number, and told him to call her if he had any problem, or wanted something else to eat. “I’ll get you breakfast tomorrow morning. You’ll have to leave pretty early, before things get busy in the hotel. I can get you out the same door.”
“Thank you,” he said, his eyes filling with tears again, as he started to eat the delicious dinner. “You must be an angel from Heaven, disguised as a little girl.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “Keep the door locked, and put the chain on and don’t go out in the hall.” It never occurred to her that he might refuse to leave the next day. So far everything had gone according to plan. “And don’t answer the phone.” He nodded and devoured his steak as she let herself discreetly out of the room and went back down the stairs, happy with the way things had gone. The look on Billy’s face was worth it all.
She checked things out in the ballroom, and the decorators and florists were setting things up for the wedding the next day. She hung around for a while, and then went down to the basement and visited the wine cellars. She stopped in the uniform room, where everything was hanging in dry cleaner bags. She knew it was going to be a long night, and all she had to do was avoid her father for the rest of it. No one was surprised to see her drifting from place to place. She let herself into the first aid station, knowing they had a bed and an exam table; with luck, she could spend the rest of the night there. It was after midnight when one of the room service cooks came in for some burn medicine and was surprised to see her there.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with a look of surprise to see Heloise lying on the exam table half asleep. She was listening to her iPod in the dark, and both of them were startled as she leaped to her feet.
“I’m playing hide and seek with a friend,” Heloise said nervously with a grin. “She’ll never find me here.”
“Are you up to mischief?” the cook asked her with a suspicious look.
“No. But please don’t tell my dad.”
“You’d better go back upstairs.” The room service cook was not one of Heloise’s closer friends and hadn’t worked at the hotel for long. Heloise went back up to the ballroom then, and everyone had gone. There were voluminous billowing satin curtains, and Heloise concealed herself behind them and tucked in for the rest of the night. All she had to do now was wake up in time to get Billy out of the hotel. And by sheer luck, the morning cleaning crew started vacuuming at six A.M. and woke her up. She came out from behind the curtains and went back to the second floor and knocked on Billy’s door. She could hear the TV on, and she spoke through the door and told him who she was.
He whispered through the door, “Is that you?”
“Yes,” she whispered back, and he let her in. He looked as though he had bathed, and he was clean shaven. His hair was combed, and he looked happy to see her. “Did you get some sleep?”
“Yeah, best night of my life.” There was an empty wine bottle next to the bed, from the minibar, but he didn’t seem drunk, and he was wide awake. He was used to getting up early to clear out of the door-ways where he lay.
“I’ll order you breakfast. What would you like?”
“Fried, sunny side up?” he asked cautiously, and she ordered them, with muffins, a pastry basket, bacon, orange juice, and coffee. They were outside the door in twenty minutes, and Billy devoured the whole meal in ten. And then she told him they had to leave. He looked gratefully at her as he put on his ragged coat, but he looked infinitely better than he had the night before when he came in. And the night had passed without event. All she had to do now was get him out.
They went down the back stairs quietly after Heloise locked up the room. It was just two short flights, so not much time for the security cameras to spot them, and she hoped they wouldn’t. She was going to come back and clean up after he left. Just before they reached the middle landing, she pulled the hood of her jacket up and turned her face, in case security was watching the video cameras. She didn’t want them to recognize her. She opened the back door and followed Billy out. They were standing on the street outside the back door of the hotel. It was still dark. And he looked at her with so much gratitude that it brought tears to her eyes.
“I’ll never forget what you did for me last night. You’ll go to Heaven for that one day for sure,” he said, and gently touched her arm. “I’ll remember it forever.” Then pulling his coat around him, with his blanket and sleeping bag under his arm, he shuffled off. He turned the corner a minute later, as Heloise watched him, and then she went back upstairs to clean the room. She knew where the maids kept their carts, she had helped them a thousand times before. She knew just what to do. Half an hour later she had changed the bed and cleaned the bathroom, and no one would have suspected the room had been used. She put the cart away and headed back upstairs to their apartment. It was almost eight when she let herself in. Her father was reading the paper over breakfast and looked immaculate in a dark suit.
“You girls got up early,” he said, looking surprised. “Where’s Marie Louise?”
“She takes ballet on Saturday mornings, so she had to leave early. I serviced the room. Josephine didn’t come, she was sick,” she said nonchalantly, picking at a blueberry muffin just like the ones she had ordered Billy two hours before.
“You didn’t have to do that, but it was nice of you.” Her father smiled at her. He was expecting a busy day- several of their VIPs were coming in, and the foreign president.
As soon as he got to his office, Bruce Johnson, the head of security, came to see him. Hugues assumed it was to discuss their arrangements and coordinate with the Secret Service for their foreign dignitary. Bruce was a huge man and had worked for Hugues since they opened. He had a tape from one of the security cameras in his hands and a serious look on his face.
“There’s something I want you to see,” he said quietly.
“Something wrong?” Hugues asked. Bruce looked more serious than usual, as he put the tape into a machine Hugues kept in his office. They had gone over tapes together many times when an employee was suspected of stealing, drinking, or taking drugs on the job, or had behaved inappropriately in some way.
“I’m not sure. You tell me. Back door, last night. I didn’t catch it till this morning. I came in early and I ran the tapes from last night. I think entry was right after seven P.M. Exit was just before seven A.M. this morning. I think we had an unexpected guest last night. I checked all the other cameras after I saw this, and I don’t pick him up anywhere. Whoever got him in and out of the hotel knows this place pretty well.”
Hugues’s blood ran cold as Bruce said it and he wondered if Heloise had sneaked a boy in last night and not been with the innocent Marie Louise. If so, a new day had dawned, and it was not one he was going to like. Hugues braced himself for what he would see.
Bruce Johnson turned the tape on, and they watched a disheveled, dirty-looking homeless man come in through the back door. He was accompanied by a slight figure in a hooded jacket who had turned her face away, and they disappeared rapidly up the stairs. They turned up nowhere else. And then the same two people came down the stairs that morning. The homeless man looked somewhat less untidy than he had the night before. He had a spring in his step; he was smiling, looked cleaner, and had combed his hair. And the person with him dodged the camera again. And that person came back into the hotel again a few minutes later and bounded up the stairs.
“What is that?” Hugues asked, looking upset. “
“Look again,” Bruce said softly with a slow smile. He was one of Heloise’s biggest fans and had carried her around when she was two so she wouldn’t get hurt while they were doing the renovations. “Does anything look familiar to you?”
Hugues stared at the screen with wide eyes. He was relieved that Heloise hadn’t sneaked a boy in instead of her friend, but she had done something far worse, and she could have gotten hurt in the process. Hugues shuddered as he looked at the man.
“Oh my God,” Hugues said with a horrified expression. “Are you telling me she brought a homeless man in? Where did he sleep?”
“Probably in one of the rooms.” Bruce picked up the phone and called housekeeping then, but they had no knowledge of Heloise using a room. And then he called room service, and they told him Heloise had ordered breakfast and dinner for 202, but the DND sign had been on, so they left it outside. He turned to his employer then and gave him the news. “She ordered a steak, mashed potatoes, chocolate mousse, and a hefty breakfast this
