The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs

Author:Liska Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

17.

Just as there’s a lull during the dinner rush Ilka Beaumont asks Coco to assist in-room dining. She’s about to refuse, the Polo Lounge is bustling around them, the word no building inside her. Have someone else do it, she wants to scoff.

Dinner had turned into one giant supper party. Everyone either knew one another, or wanted to be introduced. And Coco, who’s worked at the Pink Hotel for ten years, is more than an employee to many of them. She was called to tables, pulled aside, whispered questions and shared gossip.

“You are underdressed.” An emir is frowning at her from over his highball.

It’s an observation of the facts. She is underdressed. Her Cabana Cafe uniform with its irrationally short skirt. The Polo Lounge has its rules. Yet it feels like a betrayal. She has done her part, listened to them cackle and guffaw at the news, agreeing that the police could be more rigorous—when asked about her abuela and traffic and where in the city is the best panadería she smiled and said, Delicias has the best pan dulce, but don’t tell abuela. Her laughter shrill. That prick of guilt softened because someone had ordered her another martini and they were all laughing along too.

“It’s past their bedtime,” Ilka Beaumont explains, gesturing to the children running around. And Coco nods her head, yes, yes. She files out of the Polo Lounge, herding the children as if they were goats.

“But I don’t want to go,” the little ones whine.

She is wrangling the broods of politicians and CEOs, venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, celebrities and foreign aristocracy, the progeny of well-to-do literati—thinking of those hotel employees who don’t “live in.” Always they arrive before dawn. The housekeepers and groundskeepers, the bussers and prep cooks and porters. They come by carpool or bus, from as close as the Valley or as far as Victorville. Coco will overhear them in the women’s locker room as they change into their uniforms. Their makeup bags open on the bathroom counter, smudged with mascara and face powder. They’ll shout in Spanish over the blow-dryers, and if they see her, their expressions change.

They’ll ask if she slept well, always with a pronounced accent as if they were speaking to a child still learning the language. Even if they’re her own age. Always a polite wall of civility but with the faintest twist of the lips.

I don’t know why you try so hard with them, Ethan always tells her. Unable to understand why she goes out of her way to get them to smile at her. They’re just jealous. Don’t think they wouldn’t chew off your foot if it meant they’d get your job.

This morning there had been no shouting over blow-dryers, the cafeteria at lunch was empty of their easygoing chitchat. Instead, Keith Collins was handing out ice cream cones as if running for mayor, Kit Collins tucked into a corner of the room like a folding chair. How to explain to Ethan—to anyone—that these women are her buoy.

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