Now her kidneys hurt, and her feet hurt, and she was very aware that she did not want to spend the rest of her life as an off-the-books chambermaid in the Whitestone Hotel, but the banana tasted good and the chair felt wonderful beneath her. At that moment she would not have traded her place in the scheme of things for anyone’s. In the weeks since she had le ft Norman, Rosie had become exquisitely aware of small pleasures: reading for half an hour before bed, talking with some of the other women about movies or TV shows as they did the supper dishes together, or taking five minutes off to sit down and eat a banana.
It was also wonderful to know what was coming next, and to feel sure it wasn’t going to include something sudden and painful. To know, for instance, that there were only two more rooms to go, and then she and Pam could go down in the service elevator and out the back door. On the way to the bus stop (she was now able to differentiate easily between Orange, Red, and Blue Line buses) they would probably pop into the Hot Pot for coffee. Simple things. Simple pleasures. The world could be good. She supposed she had known that as a child, but she had forgotten. Now she was learning it over again, and it was a sweet lesson.
She didn’t have all she wanted, not by any means, but she had enough for now . . . especially since she didn’t know what the rest might be. That would have to wait until she was out of Daughters and Sisters, but she had a feeling she would be moving soon, probably the next
time a room turned up vacant on what the residents at D & S called Anna’s List.
A shadow fell across the open hotel doorway, and before she could even think where she might hide her half-eaten banana, let alone get to her feet, Pam poked her head in. ‘Peek, baby,’ she said, and giggled when Rosie jumped.
‘Don’t ever do that, Pammy! You almost gave me a heart attack.’
‘Aww, they’d never fire you for sitting down and eating a banana,’ Pam said. ‘You should see some of the stuff that goes on in this place. What have you got left, Twenty-two and Twenty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Want some help?’
‘Oh, you don’t have to— ‘
‘I don’t mind,’ Pam said. ‘Really. With two of us on the case, we can turn those two rooms in fifteen minutes. What do you say?’
‘I say yes,’ Rosie told her gratefully. ‘And I’m buying at the Hot Pot after work — pie as well as coffee, if you want.’
Pam grinned. ‘If they’ve got any of that chocolate cream, I want, believe me.’
10
Good days — four weeks of good days, give or take.
That night, as she lay on her camp-bed with her hands laced behind her head, looking into the darkness and listening to the woman who had come in the previous evening sobbing quietly two or three beds down on her left, Rosie thought that the days were mostly good for a negative reason: there was no Norman in them. She sensed, however, that it would soon take more than his absence to satisfy and fulfil her.
Not quite yet, though, she thought, and closed her eyes. For now, what I’ve got is still plenty. These simple days of work, food, sleep . . . and no Norman Daniels.
She began to drift, to come untethered from her conscious mind, and in her head Carole King once again started to sing the lullaby that sent her off to sleep most nights: I’m really Rosie . . . and I’m Rosie Real . . . you better believe me . . . I’m a great big deal . . .
Then there was darkness, and a night — they were becoming more frequent — when there were no bad dreams.
III
Providence
1
When Rosie and Pam Haverford came down in the service elevator after work on the following Wednesday, Pam looked pale and unwell. ‘It’s my period,’ she said when Rosie expressed concern. ‘I’m having cramps like a bastard.’
‘Do you want to stop for a coffee?’
Pam thought about it, then shook her head. ‘You go on without me. All I want to do right now is go back to D and S and find an empty bedroom before everyone shows up from work and starts yakking. Gobble some Midol and sleep for a couple of hours. If I do that, maybe I’ll feel like a human being again.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Rosie said as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out.
Pam shook her head. ‘No you don’t,’ she said, and her face lit in a brief smile. ‘I can make it on my own just fine, and you’re old enough to have a cup of coffee without a chaperone. Who knows — you might even meet someone interesting.’
Rosie sighed. To Pam, someone interesting always meant a man, usually the kind with muscles that stood out under their form-fitting tee-shirts like geological landmarks, and as far as Rosie was concerned, she could do without that kind of man for the rest of her life.
Besides, she was married.
She glanced down at her wedding band and diamond engagement ring inside it as they stepped out onto the street. How much that glance had to do with what happened a short time later was something of which she was never sure, but it did place the engagement ring, which in the ordinary course of things she hardly ever thought of at all, somewhere toward the front of her mind. It was a little over a carat, by far the most expensive thing her husband had ever given her, and until that day the idea that it belonged to her, and she could dispose of it if she wanted to (and in any way she wanted to), had never crossed her mind.
Rosie waited at the bus stop around the corner from the hotel with Pam in spite of Pam’s protestations that it was totally unnecessary. She really didn’t like the way Pam looked, with all the color gone from her cheeks and dark smudges under her eyes and little pain-lines running down from the corners of her mouth. Besides, it felt good to be looking out for someone else, instead of the other way around. She actually came quite close to getting on the bus with Pam just to make sure she got back all right, but in the end, the call of fresh hot coffee (and maybe a piece of pie) was just too strong.
She stood on the curb and waved at Pam when Pam sat down beside one of the bus windows. Pam waved back as the bus pulled away. Rosie stood where she was for a moment, then turned and started walking down Hitchens Boulevard toward the Hot Pot. Her mind turned, naturally enough, back to her first walk in this city. She couldn’t recall very much of those hours — what she remembered most was being afraid and disoriented — but at least two figures stood out like rocks in a billowing mist: the pregnant woman and the man with the David Crosby moustache. Him, particularly. Leaning in the tavern doorway with a beer-stein in his hand and looking at her. Talking
(hey baby hey baby)
to her. Or at her. These recollections possessed her mind wholly for a little while, as only our worst recollections can — memories of times when we have felt lost and helpless, utterly unable to exert any control over our own lives — and she walked past the Hot Pot without even seeing it, her heedless eyes blank and full of dismay. She was still thinking about the man in the tavern doorway, thinking about how much he had frightened her and how much he had reminded her of Norman. It wasn’t anything in his face; mostly it had been a matter of posture. The way he’d stood there, as if every muscle was ready to flex and leap, and it would take only a single glance of acknowledgment from her to set him off—
A hand seized her upper arm and Rosie nearly shrieked. She looked around, expecting either Norman or the man with the dark red moustache. Instead she saw a young fellow in a conservative summer-weight suit. ‘Sorry if I startled you,’ he said, ‘but for a second there I was sure you were going to step right out into the traffic.’
She looked around and saw that she was standing on the corner of Hitchens and Watertower Drive, one of the busiest intersections in the city and at least three full blocks past the Hot Pot, maybe four. Traffic raced by like a metal river. It suddenly occurred to her that the young man beside her might have saved her life.