The Paragon Hotel Read online

  “Whose child did you say again?” he returns without interest.

  Miss Christina replies, “He’s an orphan, sir, and we care for him.”

  “Well, that goes a way toward explaining things, if he didn’t care for the situation. Did you work him hard?”

  Blossom Fontaine’s remarkable face contorts into an expression unlike anything I’ve ever seen as she whirls around, hiding it. Terror for the foundling she discovered, yes. But hurt and bitter protest spikes the punch into a lethal concoction.

  Miss Christina’s scrawny frame, so shrunken next to Blossom’s elegant angles, balloons in outrage. “You figure every parentless kid for no better than a slave?”

  “Wouldn’t you know more about that than I would?” Licking his thumb, the agent shifts to count his till.

  Blossom’s back is turned to me, but her laugh alone could still land her in the hoosegow in seven or eight states. So I intervene.

  “Mister . . . what did you say your name was, sir?”

  “Did I say?”

  Every man needs a hobby. My argument is simply that playing stupid shouldn’t be on the menu.

  “My name is Miss Alice James, and I’m presently writing an article about your fair city. What, pray, is your handle?”

  “Hank.”

  Hank lapses once more into contemplation of mortality.

  Yippeecanoe and fuck you too.

  “Hank, a child is missing. It’s dreadfully urgent. I’d hate to think the Elms will fare badly in my future publication. Now—”

  “How’s everybody doing today?” Hank interrupts as a white family of mum and pop and four matching squirts approaches. “’Scuse me, Miss James.”

  The family antes up to pay. Blossom is too formidable to invite unwarranted touches, but we’ve taken to each other like the dickens, and her back quivers in distress, so I place a palm against her ribs. When we first arrived, the park was nigh deserted, idle couples playing hooky from their workday trading hot glances and cold lemonades. I think the Paragon’s residents planned it so. But now the locals who’ve taken an early Friday are ambling in, and the sight of every single brat who isn’t Davy makes Blossom’s throat work desperately and Miss Christina’s hand clench.

  “Back to it, then,” I suggest. The white family’s eyes are mottled with questions as they leave. “Hank, the child has been gone for too long.”

  I don’t say the child has been gone all afternoon, because I dread with every fiber to know what that means.

  Hank deposits fresh tobacco in his face. “Did you try the carousel?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Did you try the floating bathhouse?”

  “Trust in it.”

  Blossom swallows. It looks like a scream.

  “Begging your pardon, I got a few suggestions,” Miss Christina announces. It’s salt-cured civility, the kind invented for lean winters.

  Hank folds his hands together.

  “Could your staff help us search?”

  “Are you paying them? Or am I?”

  “Davy disappeared in the Barrel of Fun. Can we turn the lights on and search it real, real thorough?”

  “Is the park closed yet?”

  “Then can we at least ask the visitors if they’ve seen him hereabouts?”

  Hank blows his cheeks out, puffing the red cockscomb of his whiskers. “This is the Almighty punishing me for taking your bribe. Forgive me, Lord, for I have surely sinned. I shoulda never let you niggers in here, but I figured, what the hell, they’ll lose interest same as they do with every damn thing and shuffle off to the next bit of hoopla. Look, lady, it’s not my job to mind your kid. So if you don’t get outta my sight, and I mean now, I’ll send for the cops. We clear?”

  If he were addressing a certain set, sending for the cops when a child is missing might strike us as a perfectly dandy notion. We are not the aforementioned set. So we three walk back into the Elms. The trees beyond its border rustle with sharp-toothed creatures, and fairy lights begin to wink to life along the perimeter.

  Miss Christina takes Blossom’s arm, squeezing ferociously. “What’s next? It won’t do for us to go to pieces.”

  Blossom’s head falls back on her long neck. “I’m sorry, I’m just picturing that man’s corpse with my best pearl hatpin stabbed through his eye.”

  “Since we’re losing daylight,” I interject, “might I ask a few questions? As someone who didn’t know Davy from Adam?”

  “God, please,” Blossom begs.

  I study the crowds as we powwow, searching every passing face. “Eat the nastiest bite first so it’s over, Mum used to say. Was Davy ever sick, sick enough for us to think something might have happened to him in one of the dead-end corridors? An attack of some kind? A condition?”

  “Not as I ever knew,” Miss Christina says immediately.

  “No, nor I, but we can’t simply rule it out, can we?” Blossom demands, stricken. “I mean, we searched with our hands, we went through that building inch by inch. But, God, it’s not as if we’ve a map, and—”

  “We’ll look there again,” Miss Christina soothes, “and we won’t wait for closing neither. And we’ll start to ask the park guests too. I don’t give a damn what that fool told us.”

  “You’ll give a damn if he chucks us out, honey,” Blossom says hoarsely.

  “Next,” I continue, “have you seen any friends of his here, someone he might trust enough to run off with?”

  “Davy would trust a grizzly bear if it wore a fireman’s hat and offered him an engine ride,” Blossom grates.

  Miss Christina tugs at her coat collar. “No denying, Davy’s an innocent. Even if he was afraid of somebody, that somebody wouldn’t have to waste much air explaining it all away.”

  A towheaded chunk of a child not far from Davy’s size tumbles over his own feet and starts up his sirens a few yards from us, and I can feel Blossom’s wince. “Do we have any reason to suppose someone threatened Davy specifically?”

  Blossom’s entire countenance curdles.

  “Give the old girl a fair hearing, I beg your honor. Did Davy upset any white kids? Their parents? Specifically, I mean. What about the sprout who gave him a drubbing?”

  “I see what you’re after, but Davy’s existence is offensive,” Blossom returns coldly. “Trust me when I tell you that none of it need make any sense whatsoever. He’s a mulatto orphan who lives in the ritziest all-Negro hotel in the venerable state of Oregon. We’ve been vandalized for months. Blacks are being beaten in the streets and city councilmen are wearing dunce caps and bedsheets.”

  “You think it’s motiveless,” I supply.

  “Oh, Alice,” she breathes, shutting her eyes. “I do not think it motiveless. I think it ingrained loathing. Tell me that loathing isn’t a motive, honey. Go on, I’ll buy you a bag of penny candy over there if you can manage it with a straight face.”

  “We’d best be back to searching,” Miss Christina frets.

  “Just one more thing.” I bite my lip. “Davy’s an . . . imaginative chappie. Would he ever run off and get a bit topsy-turvy as to the way back?”

  “Davy doesn’t always mind us as best he should,” Miss Christina admits. “He once followed a stray dog he said was trying to tell him something, led him somewhereabouts, ended up nearly a mile away from what we can figure.”

  My chilled blood warms a fraction.

  If Davy is only lost, why then heavens, he must simply be found.

  “What transpired? You searched for him, I assume.”

  Blossom chuckles bitterly. “For all the good it did us. He was returned to the Paragon via the United States Postal Service like the dearest of lost packages.”

  “The mailman brought him back,” Miss Christina translates.

  “So he could have wandered into the woods nearby?” I prompt.
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  “Oh God, this is—this is a nightmare. Davy is out there!” Blossom cries. “I can’t just stand here discussing the matter.”

  She’s right. Yes, back to searching.

  It’s clear from my queries that’s just what we should be doing. But by this time sickly sweat paints my brow, my legs tremble, and any trace of the morphine fishbowl around the tunnel through my torso is a blissful memory.

  “We could search quicker with more of us,” I point out. “And yours very truly is about to keel to starboard, but . . . I think I can make my way back to the hotel alone and give the alarm?”

  “Lord, I hoped there was no need to scare them all, but right enough, Miss James,” the cook agrees. “Are you sure you can find your way?”

  “If I can’t, I’ll fix a stamp to my head and climb into the nearest mailbox. Blossom?”

  She pauses. “Yes, go. Fetch whoever can leave the hotel. And hurry.”

  Miss Christina follows her. A numbness overlays Blossom’s usually artful speech, a woolen blanket like laudanum over a toothache. I know the sort of tragedies that bring such tones to people’s voices.

  I pray that Blossom Fontaine turns out to have no need of hers. Or anyway, I wish so on a likely seeming rosebud, tracing my fingers against it as I exit the park.

  * * *

  —

  Thanks can’t express my gratitude, but it’s all I have on me. Will an air rifle do presently, or would you prefer a baseball mitt?”

  Wednesday Joe Kiona smiles as he sets down a tray containing two bowls of yesterday’s sorrel soup and two hot coffees. But a sad gravity tugs at his copper-hued cheeks. We’re both of us rather the worse for wear, come to that. I’m sporting a pale green silk set of wide-legged lounge pants with a modest mandarin-style top, and he’s switched out his uniform for trousers and a sweater.

  It’s four o’clock in the morning, and the search party hasn’t returned.

  Wednesday Joe makes a shy gesture. “Mind if I . . .”

  I pat the seat of the chair adjacent. “I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

  “Much obliged, Your Majesty.”

  The Paragon’s dining room is fully as stately as Mr. Salvatici’s at the Hotel Arcadia. Eight crystal chandeliers in the shape of huge teardrops mourn over us in the dim. Between the six-foot-high window wells are panels with wall sconces, the wood patterned in byzantine splendor. But the lights are snuffed and Wednesday Joe has left only the electric bulbs in the kitchen and four or five oil lamps shining. I gave the SOS at ten in the evening, when I finally straggled back like a half-dead thing, and then promptly devoted four hours to my bed and Dr. Doddridge Pendleton’s drugs.

  The two hours I’ve been awake have been awfully long. Max wasn’t here when I arrived back, or at least I didn’t spy him settling his affairs before catching the sleeper. He left for his next Pullman stint, without my saying nice knowing you, and even now is smiling at people between here and Chicago, or here and Atlanta, or here and—

  Light a goddamn torch and stand in the rain, why don’t you.

  “Busy night flying solo?” I ask.

  “Just orders for tea with something special in it. Extra pillows. Nothing really.” Wednesday Joe sighs.

  When I emerged around two, it was pouring again, and I discovered that Mavereen had been dispatched so that Rooster could double as guard and night desk clerk, and that Wednesday Joe was seeing to most other needs alongside the maid and porter staff. He wants to be in the woods shoving past bracken, calling out for Davy, squinting at flashes of torchlight.

  “This is my fault,” he says in a raw tone.

  “What?” I exclaim. “Whyever do you say so?”

  He shakes his head. “I was seeing to the new window plants yesterday. And I came inside to wash up and still had a spade in my apron pocket.”

  My heart stings in sympathy. “Oh, but Joe, that means a death in the family, and Davy is fine. Truly, I’m altogether set on it. Did you at least take it back out through the same door?”

  “Yeah, of course, and rubbed my rabbit’s foot seven times exactly. But what if it wasn’t enough?” The teen’s voice wobbles.

  “It was enough, I’m positive, and it’s not like you carried a hoe or a rake in here, is it? Only a wee little spade. There. You know I’m right. Now, tell me how you and your sister came to reside at this veritable paradise. Are you from Portland?”

  “Not really.” He lifts a spoonful of soup but sets it down untasted. “When Dad was alive, we used to travel from Tacoma to Klamath and everyplace between. Wherever we heard there was some kind of work—fishing, hunting, dishwashing. It was hard to find shelter sometimes, but the food was okay since we could go into the woods for it. Once we heard they needed Indians for an exhibit in Salem and all three of us got paid to wear the costumes the museum put together with feathers and shells and things. That was the best three months ever—all we had to do was stand there and glare, and they let us sleep in the storage loft. Dad could build or fix anything, but he liked boats best. So the War was good for us, when they made so many.”

  “You’re both ever so bright for wildwood children.”

  Wednesday Joe shrugs. “He couldn’t read, but Mom could. It was important to her. So wherever we ended up, he’d find some church lady and pay her to teach us. When the chain snapped and the planks fell, he was finishing raw cut timber to replace merchant marines here in Portland. Left us plenty hungry. We asked just about everyone to hire us and finally ended up at that door.” He nods at the kitchen where I likewise arrived, actively dying. “Jenny used to be a maid here, but now she writes for The Advocate. She worked real hard every week with Mrs. Evelina Vaughan. Learned good spelling, grammar, that sort of thing. She’s smart. Way smarter than me, anyhow.”

  I don’t say and your mother? But he sees me staring wistfully into my soup.

  “She died having me. She’s the one who taught Jenny the tribal stuff—that she’s really Ka’ktsama. So I’m just plain Joe, because she didn’t have a chance to . . . well. But that’s all right.”

  “Doesn’t have to be,” I observe.

  He hesitates. “I never told Blossom, she’d only take the mickey, but . . . I think you’d understand, maybe. It was on a Saturday it started, her labor, and. And by Sunday she was dead, you see.”

  “I do see.” I draw heat from the coffee mug between my palms. “And am therefore in complete agreement that Wednesday is altogether the jazziest day of the week. I don’t think Blossom actually means to make fun, by the by.”

  “Oh, I know. She’s a swell lady. Everyone except for Dr. Pendleton loves her, and that’s only because he’s kippered most of the time.”

  “Even your sister?” I ask without inflection.

  Wednesday Joe finally tastes the soup, with a bit too much gusto. “Sure. They fight, but who doesn’t?”

  “They seem to fight more . . . energetically.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  And now I know that you do.

  “What about you, Your Majesty?” he asks, black brows tilting. “Everyone says . . . well . . .”

  “Yes, they do, I imagine. And yes, I was.”

  “Jesus. But that’s just awful. Why’d you get shot?”

  Colors swirl behind my corneas. Rye is dancing on the table, his eyes every color as they reflect the gowns of all the chorus girls applauding. His eyes still every color for hours and hours afterward. For too long. Mr. Salvatici is lit from behind with coral dawn as he unlatches the coop door and pulls out a pure white pigeon, sending it soaring. Nicolo Benenati is standing in a lake on a packed earth floor, hay scattered about, and the hay is the wrong color, the entire world is the wrong color.

  “I got shot because I cared about someone. Which begs the question, what should you and I do about Davy?” I trail my spoon through the soup. “Are there an
y white horses stabled hereabouts?”

  His eyes light up. “Actually, there’s a pretty big hostelry I know of, and if we bring an apple and wish on—”

  Raised voices in the lobby beyond cause our silverware to clatter on the china. When the door bangs open, my hand flies to the throbbing in my side.

  “—already repeated half a dozen times just for the sake of my health anyhow, which may I add is decidedly not in an ideal state at present!” Blossom cries.

  The space between my spine and my belly floods with a queer tingling light.

  Blossom Fontaine is giving Maximilian Burton a sizable piece of her mind.

  “Aw, that’s fair, that there’s as reasonable as you done sounded yet!” Max shouts. Apparently his Brooklyn accent stages a coup when he’s sore. “Chrissake, I knows you ain’t been having no picnic these few months, but why not throw it in my face, like, when everything I’s asking you about is aimed at getting Davy back where he belongs?”

  Wednesday Joe makes a low sound and flees for the kitchen. Max flings his hat on a table so hard half the breakfast settings fly off, tinkle-clash.

  Blossom melts into the nearest seat, deposits her finger-curled head in crossed arms, and sobs.

  Max winces instantly. Buries his nails in his hair in frustration. Seeing me, he nods, and before I’m stupidly happy over it, I’m baffled.

  Oh, the light, I remember. I’m by one of the only lamps. That must be why he noticed me.

  “Hey, kid.” He angles up behind her and drapes capable hands over her heaving shoulders. “Blossom, I ain’t none too proud of the last five minutes. But we both meant well by ’em. How’s about an armistice?”

  She pays him no mind as he rubs circles on her nape with his thumbs, and I can’t think of anything to try. I have no right to be here at all. Then the door swings again and Jenny Kiona enters wearing a navy housecoat. Though she doesn’t seem to have been part of the search party, she hasn’t been sleeping either, for her lustrous eyes are red rimmed and she has plentiful ink stains on her fingers.

  “I was coming down to check in with Rooster and heard the most terrible racket. Nothing yet?” she breathes when she sees them. “Oh God. Blossom, no, you have to breathe, dear heart. Blossom? Here, let me.”