Chapter 8
NAOMI
Five days before the award night, the Serafina stops being a hotel and becomes a theater with room service.
Florists arrive in waves. A string quartet auditions in the orangery at nine, gets replaced by a different string quartet at eleven, nobody explains.
A lighting crew rigs the ballroom ceiling with something the foreman keeps calling a constellation and Alessia keeps calling a lawsuit.
The lilies at the front desk have been doubled for the occasion, so the whole lobby smells like a wedding got loose, and I’ve learned to take the staff corridor past the kitchen instead, because lilies at ten in the morning are currently a category-four event for my stomach.
I’m three drafts into the feature. Clara has notes on all three.
“It’s gorgeous, N, don’t misunderstand me.
” Her voice comes through my earbuds smooth as a boardroom lunch while I walk the ballroom’s perimeter, marking sightlines for the photographer.
“The bones are stunning. I just need the top to sing a little more. Aspirational but insider. Warm but authoritative. You know the register.”
“Warm but authoritative. Like a border collie.”
“Like Lumière,” Clara says, unbothered. Six years of my jokes have taught her nothing, she treats them like weather delays, noted and routed around.
“And confirm the photographer’s list today, truly today.
Also the donor office asked for your headshot for the media wall, I sent the Portofino one, you look credible and tan. Also, are we aligned on the sidebar?”
“We’re aligned on the sidebar.”
“You’re my favorite writer this quarter,” she says instead of goodbye, and the line is dead before I can say it back.
I lower the phone. For a second, alone in the middle of the empty ballroom, the whole day tips.
Five days. Three hundred guests, fourteen accredited media, one fitted dress, and a woman in the middle of it running on crackers plus ten o’clock naps, smiling her working smile, twelve weeks...
no. Ten and change. I’ve stopped letting myself round up.
The count stays exact or it gets away from me.
The room smells like sawdust and florist’s water. Under the new constellation, workers call measurements to each other in Neapolitan. My hand does its migration to my stomach, and I let it stay there for exactly three seconds, the daily allowance I’ve negotiated with myself in public spaces.
Then Dario walks in like a man entering his own living room, trailing a photographer’s assistant he dismisses with two fingers, and the three seconds are over.
“There she is.” He’s in linen today, pale rose, sunglasses pushed up into the hair. He crosses the parquet with both arms out, as if we ended warmly. “The voice of the coast. I hoped I’d catch you.”
“You’ve caught me working.”
“Perfect, it’s a working visit. The Lido’s up for Beach Club of the Year, you’ve heard.
” He says it like an engagement announcement.
“Category gets presented right before the dinner, which means my table’s front third, which means you’ll be photographing me anyway.
I thought we’d get ahead of it. An interview.
Exclusive. The man behind the coast’s best nights. ”
“The feature’s venue-focused. No profiles.”
“Make an exception.” Still smiling. He’s recalibrated since July, the charm’s been re-aimed, less date, more transaction, which should improve him and somehow doesn’t.
“You’re here through the award season, the Serafina Thursdays through...
” He catches himself, waves his own sentence away. “You’re here all month. There’s time.”
Instead of shivering, I do something professional. I smile the rope-line smile and say, “Send the press kit to Lumière,” which is where exclusives go to die. We both know it.
Nothing about him moves for a second. Then the smile widens by one tooth. “I’ll bring it by. I’m here often, category business, the donor office loves me.” He’s backing away already, palms out, the exit performed as generosity. “We’ll find the time. The coast is small, Naomi.”
He pronounces my name correctly, which he shouldn’t be able to do, because I never gave it to him.
The AV table by the stage saves me from thinking about that too long. The montage editor, a sweating boy with two laptops, is having the week’s second crisis at volume, and since the montage is going in my sidebar I drift over with my notebook open.
“Half the licensed pool is garbage,” he’s telling his producer.
“The beach club footage, the summer material, corrupted files, dead links, the licensing agent keeps apologizing. Nine thousand frames last week. Six hundred usable this morning. I’m building summer on the coast out of six hundred frames of other people’s boats. ”
“So use the boats,” the producer says, hotel-tired. “Nobody at a dinner has ever complained about boats.”
I ask the producer whether the corruption story has legs for my sidebar. “Boats,” he says, with the face of a man who has chosen peace. I write it down anyway, color, the montage nearly didn’t happen. Some technical nothing, gone from my mind before I finish the sentence.
I finish the sightline notes with a pen I have to hold deliberately.
Then I go down the staff corridor to the events office, where Alessia is running three phones and a seating chart like a fire commander.
I wait for her to finish terrorizing a linen supplier, then say, “Dario knew my schedule. He started to say which days I’m on property, then swallowed it. And he knows my name. First and last.”
Alessia puts down all three phones.
“The concierge desk,” she says. “Paolo mentioned last week someone was asking after the press arrangements, which rooms the media hold, arrival times. He assumed donor office. I assumed donor office.” She pulls a hardback notebook from the drawer, the one she uses for banquet disasters, opens it to a clean page, and writes the date at the top in her furious tidy hand.
“Not anymore. From today, anything he asks anyone on my staff goes in here. Time, question, who he asked. If it’s nothing, the book stays boring, nobody’s harmed.
If it’s not nothing, we’ll be very glad we have the boring book. ”
“You’re logging him.”
“I log everything, love, it’s why I run this hotel and the manager plays golf.” She writes, Dario. Knows N’s name + schedule. Source unknown. Asked concierge re press rooms, arrival times, and underlines it twice.
“Should I be telling somebody?” I ask. “The police, the donor office?”
“And say what, a nominee is friendly and knows your byline?” She shakes her head once.
“The donor office invited him. The police write reports that get read by whoever asks nicest. Books first, love, institutions after. That’s the order that works on this coast. Besides,” and she taps the page, “the award season brings out every kind of insect. He’s most likely just a bruised ego doing reconnaissance on a woman who said no in front of his club, which is its own small ugliness, but a known one. ”
“And if it’s the other thing?”
“There’s no other thing yet. There’s a book.” She caps the pen and looks at me, the fire-commander face gentling by a degree. “How’s the passenger?”
“Making demands. Mostly crackers and unconsciousness. We have an appointment in Sorrento the week after the award night, first opening she had.” I sit down across the desk from her, the seating chart between us, three hundred little name cards like a museum of decisions.
“I keep thinking I’ll feel less like a fraud once a professional confirms it.
A woman with a doctor is managing something.
A woman with three sticks in her friend’s bathroom is just a rumor about herself. ”
“You’re the most managed rumor I know.” She swings the chart around. “Since you’re here. Press table. I can put you near the kitchen doors, fastest exit, best air, or center-floor where the donor office wants the media, in the perfume cloud with the speeches.”
“Kitchen doors. Forever kitchen doors.”
“Correct answer.” She marks it. There, in her banquet book, between a linen crisis and a man being logged, my whole condition gets managed in one line, press table relocated, no reason given.
I could put my head down on her seating chart and weep with gratitude, so instead I make fun of her pen grip, she threatens me with the perfume cloud, we get through it the way we get through everything.
My phone rings on the stairs down, an Italian number, and I take it between floors in the concrete cool of the staff stairwell.
“Miss Vale? Studio Ricci, Sorrento, confirming your appointment.” The receptionist has the pleasant lowered voice of an office that understands its clientele. “The week after next. The doctor asks, is this a first visit?”
“First visit.” My voice drops to match hers, and I check the stairwell in both directions like a woman in a bad film. “First everything.”
“Then she’ll want the full hour. Drink water, bring any dates you’re sure of, don’t worry about the rest. The doctor is very calm, everyone says so, it’s practically the specialty.” A pause, kindness fitted into scheduling software. “And congratulations, ma’am. However it’s landing today.”
I stand in the stairwell a moment after she rings off, phone against my collarbone. However it’s landing today. Somewhere between the crudo and the constellation, at a count I keep exact on purpose. That’s how.
The tasting is at four, because the feature needs three hundred words on the award menu, the chef needs an audience, and God needs a laugh.
Five courses. Course one is crudo, beautiful, glistening, raw as a confession, and my body announces during the plating speech that raw fish is over.
I nod through the chef’s description like a woman taking mental notes instead of shallow breaths.
Alessia, beside me, develops the sudden professional need to taste my portion for consistency.
Course two arrives under a dome. Domes mean steam, steam means smell arriving all at once, and when the waiter lifts it with a flourish I meet the truffle cloud head-on, both hands flat on the table, eyes fixed on the horizon.
“Notes?” the chef asks, glowing.
“Assertive,” I say. “It arrives with real presence.”
“Presence,” the chef breathes. “Yes. Exactly. You understand the dish.”
“She understands everything,” Alessia says, straight-faced, forking my crudo. “It’s a medical condition.”
He repeats it to his sous like scripture.
Alessia’s shoulders are shaking, very slightly, a woman laughing in a register only I can read.
She slides her water glass over to me, takes my wine, smooth as a card trick, one motion she’s done four times tonight and will do all award night too, my designated drinking arm.
The wine list will describe me as difficult this season.
The wine list can take it up with the passenger.
By course four I’ve actually eaten something, the pasta, blessed and plain under its sauce.
The chef has decided I’m his toughest critic, therefore his favorite, and it’s almost easy, it’s almost just my job, a table, a notebook, a friend stealing my pinot noir with sommelier-level sleight of hand.
Then the dessert arrives with candied lemon, and the smell is exactly the limoncello tray from a night in July.
For three full seconds I’m on a terrace in blue light with a stranger’s hand at my waist, learning what his laugh sounds like when it’s nearly silent.
Gray eyes. A watch older than the cliff. You can still walk out.
I put the memory nowhere, because there’s nowhere it goes. I eat the lemon. It tastes like the whole summer, which is not information I share with the chef.
It’s past ten when I get back to my room, the good small one on the fourth floor that Alessia calls the writer’s garret and comps me shamelessly.
The window’s open to the sea doing its dark breathing below, some hotel-boat ferrying lights across the black.
My laptop waits with the feature at draft four.
Clara’s sent two more thoughts, both beginning quick thought.
Bianca calls while I’m brushing my teeth, video, from a fitting room in Milan with pins in her mouth.
“Tell me everything. Is the ballroom done, is the chef crying yet, are you eating?”
“Done, twice, yes.”
“Liar on the third.” She turns to show me the back of a gold gown, talking around the pins.
“They’ve extended me through the menswear shows, which means I’m missing your award night, which is a crime, I’d have worn something that got us both banned from the coast. Wear the blue like a weapon.
Send me one photo of you actually in the room instead of writing in a corner of it. ”
“I’ll be working, Bee.”
“You’ll be gorgeous, working is just what your face does on top of it.” Someone off-screen calls her name. “Bye now, darling, don’t let the promoter breathe near you, I saw his season coming. Eat something.”
She’s gone, and for the fortieth time the decision not to tell her gets made in her absence. Distrust has nothing to do with it. Bianca’s love is a public utility, it powers whole neighborhoods, it cannot be metered down to a secret this small and this enormous. The room goes quiet.
And on the bed, back from the fitting, wrapped in tissue the way the Serafina wraps everything, lies the award-night dress.
I unwrap it and hang it on the wardrobe door.
Midnight blue, long, cut close through the waist by a tailor who worked from the measurements they took of me eight days ago, which is to say, from historical records.
It’s a stunning dress. It’s a professional dress.
It’s a dress for a woman who stands at the edge of gorgeous rooms with a press badge and takes them apart.
In five days I’ll wear it in front of three hundred people, working, smiling, sipping from a glass Alessia keeps swapping, hiding one passenger plus one entire July.
The tailor took the waist in a centimeter, going by the fit. There won’t be many more chapters of that.
I check the lock on my door, which I’ve started doing since a promoter learned my last name without being given it. Then I turn off the lamp with the dress still watching me from the wardrobe door, the outline of somebody I’m scheduled to become.
Five days, one ballroom, three hundred strangers, and me at the kitchen doors with my water glass, my exact count.
What’s the worst a party can do?