we pull into the three-story parking garage adjacent to the eight-story hotel.
“Oh, yeah. When I was a little boy, I thought the Aurora was the coolest building on the planet. My parents actually had their wedding reception here, up on the roof.”
“They didn’t want to come tonight?”
“You think they’d be invited? After all my dad’s caustic editorials about the new fascism?”
“I guess not.”
“Dad’s not in any shape to come anyway.”
“I thought you told me he was doing about the same.”
Guilt pricks at my conscience. Though Nadine and I have gotten close over the past months, I’ve tended to minimize the physical toll of my father’s illness when I’m with her. I don’t know why. Maybe out of an irrational fear that I’ll inherit the disease from him. “He can still walk, but his body’s board-stiff. If he went into a crowd, he’d fall and break his hip.”
Nadine takes my hand and squeezes it. “Why do you hold back when we talk about that?”
“I don’t know. It’s pretty rough.”
She looks up at me, her eyes nakedly sincere. “I can handle rough. I nursed my mom for two years, right to the end.”
I nod, finding it hard to speak. “He can’t control his bladder anymore. His bowel problems are a nightmare. He has to sleep in a diaper. It’s killing his pride, and its wearing my mother down fast, even with sitters.”
She leans her head on my shoulder and clenches my hand. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s hard. And I know you’re a help to your mom.”
“I don’t know about that. But they did love this place. Dad used to bring us to eat at Luxor restaurant on Sundays, when Adam and I were kids. But they closed the hotel in the late seventies, I think. I never saw the interior after that.”
“Nineteen seventy-eight,” she informs me as we walk through the low-ceilinged garage to the side entrance of the hotel, which has been strung with white Christmas bulbs. Two couples wearing tuxedos and evening gowns walk about fifty feet ahead of us. I’m only wearing a gray suit, and Nadine, a black sleeveless V-neck cocktail dress.
“I talked to Lenore at the historical society,” she goes on, swinging a black clutch. “The Aurora was closed two other times: from ’29 to ’33, after the crash, and from 2008 till 2015. In 2015, Beau Holland went in with Tommy Russo and bought it as part of the EB-5 visa program. That’s the scam where rich foreigners can basically buy green cards by investing in U.S. property.”
“That sounds like Poker Club bullshit, all right.”
“Since the paper mill deal, they’ve been secretly restoring the whole thing, to reopen it as a hotel. Even Claude Buckman and Blake Donnelly have money in it now. It’s going to be spectacular.”
“Will we see the renovations tonight?”
“I don’t think so. Was the Egyptian décor still intact when you used to eat here?”
“Yeah, but it was run-down. Peeling gold paint everywhere.”
Beyond the side entrance, we find gleaming brass elevators and carpet that looks like no one has ever walked on it. A huge Eye of Ra motif lies beneath our feet. Heavy plastic sheeting has been stapled to the walls, blocking the hallways leading left and right. The owners obviously don’t want anyone taking a premature peek at their new crown jewel.
We enter an elevator with two other couples and take a pleasantly swift ride to the roof. The Aurora rooftop once boasted a luxury penthouse apartment and the Nefertiti Lounge, which I’d like to see; but once again, the halls leading away from the elevators are screened with heavy plastic.
As we walk through the double doors leading to the roof, a bracing breeze hits my face, and we’re instantly sucked into a whirling mass of tuxedos, evening gowns, crystal glasses, and flashing jewelry.
“We’re underdressed,” I observe, dodging couples dancing to big band music coming from a PA system.
“Nobody’s going to kick us out,” Nadine says with a smile. “Let’s find the bar.”
Above the glittering crowd, a yellow gibbous moon hangs in a sky filled with stars. The deep forests of Mississippi lie just beyond the lights of the town, and the black farmland of Louisiana stretches for miles across the river, but up here it feels like New York or Chicago in the 1920s.
“This is like The Great Gatsby,” Nadine marvels, still dodging dancers.
She’s right. Some of the men are actually wearing white tie. That’s not unheard of in Bienville, but tonight there’s no hint of camp, as