It Stings So Sweet (22 page)

CHAPTER

One

Sophie

SIX MONTHS LATER . . .

“Now, Miss
Sophie, you don’t wanna be starting trouble ’round here, do ya?” Hamilton asks me, removing his bellboy
cap to scratch the wooly curls at his aged brow.

“Oh, horsefeathers!” I thread the posy I grabbed
from the garden outside into his buttonhole so he’ll look dapper.

I can see that I make him
nervous, but then ag
ain, I make most people nervous.

Anybody who wants to change things usually
does.

“I’m not trying to cause any trouble, Hamilton; I’m just trying to improve things around
here.”

Hamilton looks over his shoulder, a little bit relieved that the hotel’s elegant breezeway
is empty and no one is waiting for the elevators who might overhear us. “I dunno, Miss Sophie.
Maybe things’ll git better with the new management.”

By
new management
I suppose he means young
Mr. Aster, the prodigal son, returned to the city to take over for his father, the cranky old Robber
Baron who somehow bribed a few corrupt officials to make him an ambassador to China. Young Mr.
Aster is rumored to be a shiftless wastrel who will assuredly run the Aster Hotel into the ground and
as far as I’m concerned, it’s already halfway there. “He’s not
new
management. He’s been here
six
months
and things haven’t changed a bit.”

Well, that isn’t entirely true. They just haven’t
changed for the better. Whereas the ambassador arrived each morning at precisely eight o’clock, doffing
his top hat to important guests and scowling at everyone else, his son usually stumbles into the
lobby after carousing all evening, then sleeps in late as a lollygagger.

Of course, every girl
in the hotel strains her neck trying to get a glimpse of the new boss, whether he’s sober or stumbling
drunk and unshaven. This is because the younger Mr. Aster has a bedazzling smile. Even
I
find his
dimples disarming. One morning, he made a wrong turn into the boutique and grinned with such wattage
that I nearly stumbled blind into the counter.

But I’ve got my senses about me now, so I show
Hamilton where to sign.

“You heard what happened to Gertrude, didn’t you?” I mimic the harsh
nasal tone of Mrs. Mortimer. “‘We won’t tolerate immoral women who flaunt their depraved and wicked
behavior.’ That’s what she said before giving Gertie the sack. And we both know Gertie didn’t make
a baby all by herself.”

Hamilton ignores my petition to stoop down to haul luggage onto the
shiny brass cart. He’s done this job half his life, but at his age, it’s getting harder for him to
manage the parcels. He won’t accept help if I offer, though, so I wait until his back is turned to drag
the heaviest trunk closer. Suppressing an unladylike grunt, I use my free hand to give the iron-banded
chest a good yank trying not to slip and slide on the marble floor in my heels. I keep arguing
all the while. “It isn’t right to fire Gertie for something that isn’t anybody’s business.”

“I’m awful sorry about Miss Gertie,” Hamilton admits, “Still, it ain’t right for folks like us to be
running ’round with petitions and starting a fuss. You’re a smarty, you are. Always got your nose
in a book or writing in one. But can’t you ever behave like other girls your age, Miss Sophie?”

“I do!” I protest. “Other girls . . . like books.”

Of course, I have to fight a blush,
because the book I intend to spend the evening with is my own private diary, in which I write wild,
untamed thoughts that have nothing to do with being a smarty . . .

“You should let a fella
take you to see the latest Clara Cartwright film.”

Oh, cruel
temptation
! Miss Cartwright is
my favorite movie star. Something about her confidence just makes me want to sing. But I can’t let
Hamilton distract me from the task at hand. “I’ll go when I can afford it, and
not
with a fella,
thank you very much, because I can pay my own way. Of course, I could pay my own way a good deal more
often if there were fair wages around here. What about you, Hamilton? You make three dollars a week
less than every white bellhop and now they’re shaving off another because of your age.”

Hamilton
frowns. “I don’t load the luggage as fast as I used to, Miss Sophie.”

“But you’ve still got
to load them, don’t you? And I’ve never seen you take a day off work, not in all the time I’ve been
here.”

Hamilton gives a rueful smile. “You’re gonna git yourself fired if you keep on, but
you sure is a girl with gumption.”

“What a very nice compliment,” I say, pressing the pen into
his gloved hand. “If you promise to keep it quiet, I’ll leave this petition with you to think over.
We’ve got somebody from every department except for the bellboys. If we all speak with one voice,
the big shot will have to listen.”

The next morning, Mrs. Mortimer tells
me to report to the boss, and my heart sinks. So this is it. I’m getting the sack. And even the supercilious
elevator operator knows it. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, Miss O’Brien?”
he asks, shutting the elegant doors carved with the Aster family crest, then pulling the grate
closed behind me like a prison door.

I clench my pocketbook in my hands. “At least I’m trying
to keep food on the table for your child, Mr. Underwood. You oughtta thank me.”

He stiffens
at my frankness. “There’s no way to know the baby is mine.”

I can’t imagine how Gertie could
have lost her head over such a man because I hate him all the way from the tilt of his cap to the
rows of shiny buttons on his uniform. “You know bloody well whose baby it is and if you’d only used
precautions, like I told you both to do—”

“Well, it’s all spilt milk now, isn’t it, young lady?”
he asks, cheeks ruddier than usual as he works the manual controls that take us to the top of
Aster Tower. “Gertrude’s out of a job, you’re about to be out of a job, and given the mischief you’re
making around here for Mr. Aster, you’ll likely take a few of the staff with you.”

Mr. Aster
. The reminder of the playboy millionaire who holds my fate in his hands makes my knees shake. I should
take a seat on the posh velvet bench or steady myself against the brass handrails, because if I
lose my balance and crack my head open on the marble tiles, the pretty bastard is likely to charge
me a fee to clean up my blood from the floor.

At the thought, I hold my chin up high, because
I’m going to give the man an earful before I go.

In fact, I walk into his office spoiling for
a fight.

Gallingly, Mr. Aster welcomes me with a bright smile, as if summoning me like a naughty
schoolgirl is the highlight of his day.

He’s a big man; you don’t realize it at first, because
everything about the Aster Hotel is big, too, and this office is no exception. He’s dwarfed by the
giant Art Deco sunburst on the wall, wrought in polished brass. And sitting behind the massive walnut
desk with its curved, geometric legs, his broad shoulders are effectively masked. If I don’t think
about it too much—his size, his wealth, and the fact that he has all the power here—I might be able
to stop my knees from knocking. I remind myself that he’s nothing to admire or fear; just a callow
capitalist who stiffs bellboys of their hard-earned wages and puts pregnant shopgirls out onto the
street.

“Good morning, Miss O’Brien,” he says. “Please have a seat.”

I sink down onto
the oversized chair in front of his desk, straightening my dress over my knees and removing my cloche
hat as Mrs. Mortimer didn’t even give me the chance to take it off this morning before sending me
upstairs.

With blond hair slicked straight back, an aristocratic nose covered with freckles,
and long lashes that frame hazel eyes, Robert Aster is something to look at. I’ll give him that. Then
again, it’s always the people who are blessed with an abundance of everything who never seem to
worry about taking what little the rest of us have got.

“Miss O’Brien,” he begins. “How long
have you been working here?”

“Two years, sir.”

We both know what’s coming and I wish he’d
just get on with it.

“Has Mrs. Mortimer been your supervisor all that time?”

“No, she
was promoted just a few months before you came to work here . . . and the pinch-mouthed harpy has been
lording it over the rest of us ever since.”

There. That ought to move things along.

To
my surprise, he laughs. “You’re very young, aren’t you?”

He must be almost thirty years old,
but I won’t have him thinking he can treat me like a child. I sit straighter, so that my spine doesn’t
touch the chair. “I’m twenty-one.”

“And not a day over, I’d guess. As it happens, there’s been
some discontent amongst the employees of the hotel. Some whispers of an organized protest. It was
brought to Mrs. Mortimer’s attention that you might be one of the
agitators
.”

The way he says
it, with such an air of amusement, gets my dander up—as if a fair Irish lass could never have thoughts
in her head beyond the frilly things in the boutique. But before I can make a sharp retort, he
sets a number of items on the desk where I can see them. Pamphlets from the Civics League, the Humanist
Society, and the Birth Control Federation. A few flyers for talks that I wanted to attend in the
coming weeks. My books. And, most incriminating of all, the leather-bound journal of my secret thoughts.

“You ransacked my locker?” How naive I was to think ordinary courtesy might shield me from the
ruthless types like him, men who own half the city.

“
I
didn’t, no,” he says, quickly. “Mrs.
Mortimer took it upon herself to go through your belongings looking for evidence of suspicious activity.”

A flash of temper overtakes me, and I cross my arms over myself. “She had no right. I keep a
change of clothes in my locker, too, and ladies’ undergarments and a few nickels for fare. I’ve a right
to some privacy and security, don’t I?”

Mimicking my posture, Mr. Aster pretends to consider
the merits of my argument. “I don’t suppose you hold with the notion that the locker room is in my
hotel and only afforded to you by courtesy, therefore you ought not use it to store anything you’d
be distressed for someone else to find?”

“No, I don’t hold with that notion at all.”

He picks up one of my books and glances at the spine. “Upton Sinclair. I keep meaning to read this .
 . .” Then his eyes drift back to me and he pushes the birth control pamphlets my way. “Do you know that
two nurses and a doctor were recently arrested for distributing similar information?”

I tilt
my chin defiantly. “I do and it’s unjust, if you ask me.”

“So, I take it that you feel married
persons are perfectly free to take their pleasure from one another without fear of consequence.”

I’m surprised, and a little delighted at the freedom of knowing I’m going to get the ax. I won’t
know where my next meal is coming from, but at least I’ll know I spoke my mind. “I
do
think married
persons ought to be free to take their pleasure from one another without fear of consequence . .
 . and unmarried persons, too, if it comes to it.”

He flashes me a smile as shiny as new silver
coins from the mint. “You’re a rather liberated young lady, aren’t you? One of the
new women
we
keep hearing so much about?”

His implication makes me swallow hard. He thinks he knows what
kind of girl I am, but he’s got the wrong idea. On the other hand, the way he’s looking at me makes
my toes curl, so maybe his idea isn’t so far off the mark. “I just don’t think anyone should be ignorant
of such matters.”

“So you have the pamphlets for the sake of intellectual curiosity, of course
 . . .”

The pamphlets were for Gertrude—not that she took them. She’d believed that preparing
herself, making a decision about what might happen with her lover, would turn her into a fallen woman.
But it wasn’t the pamphlets that got her into trouble.

It was the elevator operator.

And in spite of the trouble she’s in, I admit, I envy her a little. Taking a lover is sophisticated and
modern, but I don’t have Gertie’s looks and I’ve always been too practical to get that carried away
 . . .

Mr. Aster tilts his head, apparently amused at my silence. “The notion of men and women
in sexual congress for the sake of recreation doesn’t offend you?”

Why won’t he just get on
with it and fire me?

“I don’t see why it should offend anyone, what two people do behind closed
doors. Certainly, it ought not be the cause of a dismissal—”

“What about more than two people?”

“Pardon me?”

His gaze intensifies. “What about sexual recreation between more than two
people?”

The thought intrigues me as much as it scandalizes me. Does he
mean
to shock me or
is that genuine curiosity? No, he must be trying to knock me off balance. I’m being toyed about like
a mouse in the paws of a cat, but I don’t intend to squeak.