Chapter 6 - The Alder Hotel
The floor manager came running down the steel stairs from his office, his face purple, waving his clipboard. "What the hell are you doing hitting the E-stop? That’s four hundred yards of Marriott sheeting jammed in the rollers! Who the hell are you?"
Michael did not let go of Clara’s arms until he was sure her feet were solid beneath her. Then he turned, reached into his suit jacket, and took out his business card. It was heavy, textured Strathmore cotton, with his name and a direct private line to his executive assistant on the thirty-fourth floor of the Transamerica Pyramid.
He did not hand it to the manager. He pressed it flat against the front of the man's clipboard.
"My name is Michael Willoughby," he said, his voice cutting through the remaining hum of the exhaust fans. "Call the general manager of California Linen Services. Tell him that Clara is leaving her shift right now. Tell him that if one dollar is docked from her weekly pay, or if anyone from this facility contacts her regarding this absence, I will purchase the outstanding debt on this entire block before eleven o'clock tomorrow morning and turn this plant into a parking lot."
The manager looked at the card. He looked at Michael’s face. He opened his mouth to say something about company policy, then saw the complete lack of doubt in Michael’s eyes and closed it again.
"Get your things, Clara," Michael said gently.
She had only a canvas tote bag and a coat that had lost its zipper, held together with three large safety pins. She walked out of the plant between the rows of silent washers, the other women watching her through the steam with expressions of stunned disbelief.
When she stepped through the plastic curtains into the cold night air and saw the black Mercedes, she began to run.
The rear door clicked open. Scarlet and Lily scrambled out onto the wet asphalt, throwing their arms around her waist with small, desperate cries.
"Clara! Clara!"
Clara dropped to her knees in the rain, pulling both girls against her chest, burying her face into their hair, checking their arms, their faces, their ears, with hands that were shaking violently. "Where were you? Where were you? I told you to stay inside! I told you not to open the door!"
"We were hungry, Mom," Lily cried, using the word for the first time that night. "We went to get bread."
Thomas had already stepped out of the driver’s seat. He held a massive black umbrella over the three of them, shielding them from the cold downpour, while Michael carried Emma out of the car. Emma was still half-asleep; she blinked at her mother through the rain, reached out one small hand, and touched Clara’s wet cheek.
"I saved you a potato, Clara," Emma murmured. "In the white towel."
Clara pressed her forehead against Emma’s knee and wept. She did not weep quietly; she wept with the deep, tearing sobs of a woman who had carried three children through two years of absolute ruin on forty-two dollars a day, who had reached the end of her body’s ability to stand, and who had suddenly been caught before she hit the ground.
Michael stood two feet away in the rain. He did not offer empty comfort. He let her cry until the worst of the terror had washed out of her lungs.
"Get in the car, Clara," Michael said. "Let’s go get your things from the Alder."
The ride to the Alder Hotel took four minutes.
The building was five stories of blackened bay-windowed wood, wedged between a discount luggage shop and a boarded-up check-cashing outlet. The front entryway smelled of boiled cabbage, damp dog, and the chemical sweetness of cheap air freshener used to cover the scent of urine on the stairs.
Michael walked up the three flights behind Clara, his hand resting on the small of Scarlet’s back to steady her on the warped, linoleum-covered treads.
Room 214 was nine feet wide and twelve feet long.
There was one twin mattress on the floor, covered by three thin acrylic blankets and a quilted coat. In the corner sat a two-burner electric hot plate, two cans of evaporated milk, an open box of saltines, and an electric tea kettle with a cracked base. On the window sill, three small plastic horses—the kind that come in discount variety packs at the dollar store—stood in a neat row, facing the brick wall of the alleyway three feet away.
"This is all of it," Clara whispered, standing in the doorway, her head down in shame. "This is everything we have."
Michael looked around the room. He did not see poverty; he saw an immaculate, heroic attempt at dignity. The floor had been swept with a hand-broom until the linoleum was bare of dust. The four spoons and two forks were lined up on a clean paper towel beside the hot plate. The children’s clothes were folded into three neat piles inside two cardboard liquor boxes tucked beneath the window.
"Pack the clothes, Clara," Michael said. "And the horses."
Scarlet ran to the window sill, grabbed the three plastic horses, and shoved them deep into the pocket of her oversized cardigan.
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"Where are we going?" Clara asked, her voice trembling. "Mr. Willoughby... I don't understand who you are. I can't pay for a hotel. I don't have any money until Friday, and that has to go to the landlord or he locks the chain."
"You are not staying in a hotel, Clara," Michael said. "And you are never coming back to this room."
