Hotel Vendome Page 6

  “She’s married to someone else.” He stood there looking around him then, and Heloise gently suggested he sit down. “I have to take the dog back. Why don’t you watch TV or something? I’ll come back in a few minutes and order you some food.” He nodded as he stared at her, genuinely bereft of speech, as she quietly left the room with Julius and took him back upstairs to Mrs. Van Damme.

  “What a long walk you two had.” She had no way of knowing that Heloise had barely walked him more than a block, and he’d been back in the hotel the rest of the time. His owner took off his cashmere sweater, and Heloise kissed her on the cheek and hurried back out again. She was back in Billy’s room on the second floor in less than five minutes and let herself back in with the key.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed with a stunned expression, afraid to lie down. He looked terrified and happy all at the same time and immensely relieved to see her again. She had already figured out that she would have to hide somewhere in the hotel that night, since she couldn’t go back to her apartment if she was pretending to be with Marie Louise. And she obviously couldn’t stay with Billy in this room, although she was sure he wasn’t dangerous. She had spoken to him often in the last few weeks. He just looked cold and old and tired by his life on the streets. He had told her he was sixty-two years old, and this was something special she wanted to do for him, to show him someone cared.

  “What would you like to eat?” she asked, handing him a menu, and he looked confused the moment she did. She wondered if he needed glasses and didn’t own a pair. “What’s your favorite kind of food?”

  “Steak,” he said with a big grin, although he was missing a lot of teeth. “Steak and mashed potatoes, and chocolate pudding for dessert.” Heloise picked up the phone and ordered it from room service, with a salad, and she translated the chocolate pudding into chocolate mousse, with a big glass of milk. And then she sat with him, while he turned on the TV with the remote, and she put the Do Not Disturb on the door. “I’ve never seen a room like this in my life. I used to be a carpenter. I worked in a furniture factory when I was a kid, but we never made nothing like this.” She couldn’t help wondering what had happened to him after that, but she didn’t dare ask.

  Half an hour later, room service arrived and knocked on the door. She answered immediately and spoke through the door, and the waiter delivering it recognized her voice.

  “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 be
fore.

  “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. “Who is that? What the hell is going on? Am I running some kind of homeless shelter here? Do you think one of the kitchen people let him in?”

  “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 morning of fried eggs and bacon and a pastry basket at six-fifteen.”

  “I can’t believe she’d do a thing like that,” her father said in amazement. He called her on her cell phone then and asked her to come downstairs. She was in his office five minutes later, and she tried to look nonchalant when she saw Bruce and gave him a big smile.

  “This is very serious,” her father said without preamble, with a somber expression. “Did you bring someone into the hotel last night? A homeless man?”

  She could see the images on the screen herself. She hesitated for a moment and then nodded and jutted out her chin. “Yes, I did. He’s old and sick, and he was starving and it’s too cold outside. He couldn’t get into a shelter,” she said as though she knew him well.

  “So you brought him here?” She nodded soundlessly as her father looked genuinely panicked. “What if he had hurt you, or another guest? He could have hurt you … or worse. Do you have any idea how foolish and dangerous that was? Where were you all night? In the room with him?” He looked even more terrified by that. What if he had raped her?

  “I slept in the first aid station till midnight. And then I slept behind the ballroom curtains till six. He’s a good person, Papa. He didn’t hurt the room. I cleaned everything up myself.” Listening to her, Bruce Johnson was trying not to smile. She looked so earnest and so serious. He was well aware that she had taken a terrible risk, but at least she hadn’t gotten hurt. He was sure the Secret Service wouldn’t be comforted to know there were homeless people being sneaked in and sleeping in the rooms.

  “I’m not going to let you have friends here anymore if you lie to me and do things like that,” her father said sternly.

  “You always say that we have an obligation to poor people, and to remember that everyone isn’t as lucky as we are. He might have died on the streets last night, Papa.” She wasn’t apologizing for what she had done, and she was thrilled that it had gone off without a hitch. And if she was punished for it now, it was well worth it and she didn’t care.

  “We can fulfill our responsibilities in other ways,” her father said sternly. “We give to the food bank. I don’t want you ever doing that again. He could have been dangerous and hurt you or one of the guests or someone who works here.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. I know him,” she said softly. And as proof, everything had gone fine.

  “You don’t know that. He could be mentally deranged.” Hugues was trying not to shout at her, out of fear over what could have happened to her. She could have been dead in the room and no one would have known.

  “Papa, letting him spend the night here may have changed his life or given him hope. He got to live like a human being for one whole night. That’s not a lot to ask.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” her father insisted. “I forbid you to ever do that again. And I want you to stay in the apartment and think about it today. You can go now,” he said solemnly as she left the room, and the two men looked at each other and shook their heads in amazement.

  “You’ve got a little Mother Teresa on your hands. You’d better keep an eye on her,” his head of security warned him.

  “I had no idea she’d ever do something like that. I wonder if she’s done it before,” Hugues said, looking stunned.

  “I doubt that. We’d have seen her on the screens. But she pulled it off pretty well last night. At least he got a good night’s sleep and two good meals. Maybe she’s right and it will change his life,” Bruce said quietly, touched by what she had done.

  “Don’t you start,” Hugues warned him. “I am not turning this hotel into a homeless shelter.” He had an idea then and wanted to talk to Heloise about it later, but not just yet.

  Bruce took the tape out of the machine. “She’s quite a gal, our little princess. And I think she’s going to keep you busy for the next few years.” Hugues nodded and sat quietly in his office afterward, thinking about what his daughter had done and how brave and compassionate she had been, and then he went to see her upstairs. She was lying on the bed in her room with her iPod in her ears, and she sat up when he walked in.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said quietly.

  “I just want to tell you something,” he said with tears in his eyes. “It was crazy and dangerous and wrong in many ways, but I want you to know that I love you and admire you for what you did. I’m very proud of you, and you were very brave. But I still want you to promise that you won’t do it again. I just want you to know that I respect you for it too. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what you did.”

  “Thank you, Papa,” she said, beaming at him, and threw her arms around his neck. “I love you so muc
h.”

  He nodded, choking back his emotions, which were overwhelming him. “I love you too,” he whispered as he held her, and tears slid down his cheeks. And most of all, he was grateful that she hadn’t gotten hurt. And then he turned to her with a slow smile.

  “I have a job for you,” he said with a serious expression. “I want you to work with the kitchen people who organize our food bank donations. I want you to learn everything about it, and when you’re a little older, I’ll put you in charge of that project. So that’s your assignment from me.” She beamed at her father and hugged him again. And he had another idea too. “And if you want to do more hands-on work, you can volunteer at a family shelter. But no more bringing them home to the hotel!”

  “I promise, Papa,” she said solemnly. Bruce had come upstairs and given her a lecture too.

  Hugues realized that she had a need to do some real philanthropy, and he was willing to help her do it. He was still stunned by what she had done and the sheer innocence and goodness of it. She was quite a girl! And he was a very proud father.

  Chapter 4

  WORD OF HELOISE’S escapade with Billy the homeless man had been whispered among the employees. No one discussed it with her openly. She started working on their food bank donations in the kitchen, and within a few weeks everyone knew about Billy, and thought it had been a brave and crazy thing to do. And she was tireless in her work on the food bank project, even carrying crates of food herself to the truck that picked them up. And her father found her a job at a family shelter downtown twice a week.

  She had looked for Billy again when she walked Julius, but he had moved on and disappeared. She hoped he had gotten into a shelter by then. And she was still glad she had brought him into the hotel for a night. She wondered if she’d see him at the soup kitchen where she worked sometime, and hoped she would.

  Two weeks later, with four February weddings scheduled, Sally Biend, the catering manager, fell off a ladder in the ballroom and broke her leg. She had been taking a closer look at the chandelier to see if it needed to be cleaned before the wedding the following week. Everyone was enormously relieved that it was only her leg.