Lake Michigan Suite at the end of the hall, and her own trolley out here in front of 624.
Rosie lifted a pile of fresh washcloths stacked on the end of the trolley, exposing a banana. She took it, walked back across the room to the overstuffed chair by 624’s window, and sat down. She peeled the piece of fruit and began to eat it slowly, looking out at the lake, which glimmered like a mirror on this still, rainy afternoon in May. Her heart and mind were filled with a huge, simple emotion—gratitude. Her life wasn’t perfect, at least not yet, but it was better than she ever would have believed on that day in mid-April when she had stood on the porch of Daughters and Sisters, looking at the intercom box and the keyhole that had been filled with metal. At that moment, she had seen nothing in the future but darkness and misery. 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 left 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 cot 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 cots 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 fulfill 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