T. Boyle - The Women

She had the car drop her off a block from the Garfield Arms 34—it wouldn’t do to get too close. She was on her way to the museum, that was the story she and the detective had concocted in concert with her Chicago lawyers, when she just happened to see her husband’s car pulled up in front of the hotel where she’d stayed with him on occasion. She called out a greeting to his chauffeur. Exchanged pleasantries with him. And, curious, she’d gone into the lobby to inquire after her husband, only to discover, to her horror, et cetera.

The wind was in her face — and if she’d thought she was in California still, she was disabused of that notion, the cold a force of its own, bits of paper and refuse driven before her like drift, the manholes steaming, businessmen buckling under the weight of their scarves and greatcoats. She was wrapped in fur, her hair pulled back in a bun and imprisoned beneath her turban, her heels beating a martial tattoo on the pavement. Up the street she came, determined, her shoulders thrown back, her head held high. And it was just as they’d planned — there was the car sitting idle at the curb, and there was Billy, hunched over a cigarette and giving her a sheepish woebegone look. “Billy,” she cried, bending to peer in the window of the car, “what a surprise. What are you doing here? Is Mr. Wright staying over?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She watched him wriggle a bit, and it was clear whose side he was on. “Down from Taliesin on business?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, I’ve just come back, you know. California was lovely, but my place is here with my husband. I’d thought he was in Wisconsin still — but how convenient that he’s here in Chicago. Perhaps I’ll just stop in and say hello—”

He had nothing to say to this, but oh, he was wriggling now. Good. Good. Let him suffer, the apostate, with his false face and bugged-out eyes.

“—and then maybe we can all go up together, just like old times. Right, Billy?”

Still nothing. His face was set, one hand held fast to the wheel, the other working the cigarette at his lips. Finally, because the conversation was over — that much was evident, even to him — he raised a finger to his cap in salute.

Inside, the lobby was busier than she would have expected, and she had to wait a moment behind a couple checking in (with enough baggage to mount an expedition to Timbuktu) before she could catch the desk clerk’s attention. The clerk was a man in his thirties with a toothbrush mustache and blue-black hair greased to a seal-like phosphorescence, no one she recognized, but then staff turnover was scandalous these days, not at all like it used to be when you could count on seeing the same faces down through the years. He showed his teeth. “May I help you, madam? ”

“Yes, I’m Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s my understanding that my husband is currently in residence here.”

There was a flurry of activity at the door behind her, bellhops, baggage, people sweeping in from the cold. A great fat man in a beautifully tailored wool suit sank into an armchair on the far side of the room and then immediately rose again with a roar of laughter to greet a smart young woman in a fox coat. There was a sound of music drifting in from somewhere, two bars of a popular tune, and someone out on the street was impatiently honking an automobile horn. The clerk gave her a blank look. “Mrs. Wright, did you say?”

“Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright,” she repeated, and the man checking in beside her at the long marble-topped counter gave her a covert glance, “and I have reason to believe that my husband is here under suspicious circumstances. Now, I’d like to have a look at the register, please.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that, madam. It’s against our regulations.”

“That is his automobile pulled up to the curb out there. That is our chauffeur at the wheel. Again, I ask you: let me see the register.”

The man beside her — she had a vague impression of whiskers, starched collar, the flush of the alcoholic — was staring openly at her now. Had she raised her voice? She hadn’t meant to. She’d told herself to stay calm at all costs, to avoid making a scene — or too big a scene at any rate — and here she was, losing control of herself. The clerk’s eyes were locked on hers, dismissive eyes, eyes that reduced her to an aggrieved nonentity, a nuisance and nothing more, and she felt a wave of emotion rising in her throat as if it would choke her — she hadn’t thought it would be this hard, this disorienting and tragic, but the fact of the matter was undeniable: Frank was upstairs with his paramour and she was left stranded at the desk like a beggar.

“I’m sorry,” the clerk said, and all at once the wave broke in a flash of anger that consumed her like white phosphorous. She made a snatch for the register, his hands there, the cuffs of his shirt shooting back, and they were actually tugging on it like two children fighting over a bauble on the playground and somebody — was it she? — was shouting, “Call the manager! Call the manager!”

Yes, it was a scene — she’d created a scene and she wasn’t sorry about it at all. She heard the clerk let out a yelp — a squeak, the sort of sound you’d expect from a rodent in a cage — and the register slipped from her grasp. People stared. All the ice of the place melted and then refroze again. And here was the manager coming up the corridor in a stiff-kneed jog, coattails flapping, eyes wild, a pale sprinkle of cake crumbs lodged in the corners of his mouth. “What is it?” he gasped, throwing the clerk an exasperated look. “What’s all this, this”—he seemed to take her in then, his eyes making a quick revolution from her shoes to her skirts to her furs and jewelry and the rigid furious compression of her face—“confusion? Is there anything amiss, madam? May I be of assistance?”

Oh, they were watching now, everyone in the place, though the more discreet tried to cover themselves by making a pretense of consulting watches or newspapers or counterfeiting a conversation, but they weren’t fooling her. She might just as well have been perched on the proscenium of the Apollo Theater, the curtain poised to come down, the revelatory words on her lips. “Yes,” she said, teasing out the sibilance of that sematic little s till the room hissed and crepitated with it, “yes, you may.” She paused to draw in a breath. “You can start by ringing up the police.”

His eyes jumped round the room. He was terrified, whipped already, she could see that, his only desire to soften, placate, give in. There was the hotel’s reputation to consider. The other guests. His own scrawny worth-less neck. “The police?”

The fury came over her again, a surge of the blood and its secret hormones that had her trembling as she snatched off her glove and pointed a single accusatory finger at the clerk. “I want this man arrested.”

“Please,” the manager was saying, “let’s just step into my office and I’m sure—”

“For aiding and abetting a crime in progress, a crime of venality, vice — and I’ll have you arrested too—”

“Madam, please”—and was he going to touch her, was he going to dare reach for her arm? — “be reasonable. Whatever it is, we can rectify it, I’m sure, if you’ll just give us the opportunity. In my office. Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable in my office?”

She stepped back from him, jerked her arm free. “Don’t you touch me,” she hissed, and she was glowing, glowing. “My husband is up there, don’t you understand?” She lifted her chin, forced her eyes to sweep the room, people turning away now, murmuring, embarrassed, caught in the act of eavesdropping, gaping, staring. “He’s up there,” she said, fighting to steady her voice even as the tears — real tears, true and spontaneous and blood-hot — erupted to sting her eyes and stain her cheeks, “up there. . with his. . with his whore. ”