Hotel Vendome

The graduation dinner that night was a grand affair, with excellent food and a very decent band. He danced with his daughter, and she danced with her friends for the last time. After all their hard work for two years, this was a night of celebration and saluting their accomplishments. And the next morning they congregated for the last time, after being out the night before till six A.M. Heloise hadn’t even bothered to go to bed. After hugging all her friends and exchanging contact information, she got in the car with her father, went to the airport in Geneva, and fell sound asleep as soon as they boarded the plane. He covered her gently with a blanket and smiled as he looked at her. She looked like a little girl again with her bright red hair and her freckles. She was a woman now, with a life and career ahead of her, but she would always be his baby, in spite of her accomplishments. He leaned over and kissed her and watched her while she slept as the plane headed to New York.

Chapter 18

THEY BOTH HIT the ground running when they got to New York. Hugues was handling the usual dicey situations at the hotel, employee disputes, threatened lawsuits, labor unions, arriving important guests. And Heloise was on duty at the front desk the night they got home. Her diploma was still in her suitcase, but it made no difference here. She had to help an arriving guest with lost luggage deal with the airline, find a change of rooms for a complaining guest who hated the suite she had, which was hard to believe since it was one of the new ones, but the guest in question said that the color green made her anxious and gave her migraines and there were green tassels on the drapes. And miraculously Heloise was able to switch suites with a guest who hadn’t arrived yet. She had to call a doctor after midnight for a guest whose five-year-old had a high fever, and she had to get security to deal with a domestic argument between two drunks on the fourth floor, without calling the police if at all possible so they didn’t wind up on Page Six of the New York Post. And she had to scold room service several times at two A.M. for not answering their phone, and explain to another guest why the concierge desk was not open at five A.M. She finished work at seven, and was dead on her feet when she got to her father’s apartment and saw that Natalie was there. She hadn’t seen her since she got home the day before, and she was so tired she didn’t care. They were having breakfast as Heloise walked past them to her room with a cursory hello. She hated the look in her father’s eyes when he looked at Natalie. He looked like he was about to melt into a puddle on the floor. Heloise thought it looked ridiculous for a man his age to be so lovesick, but she tried not to notice as she headed to her room.

“How’d it go last night?” he asked as she went by.

“Okay. We had a nasty situation on the fourth floor. The Morettis got into a fight, and both rooms on either side wanted to call the police.”

“What did you do?” He looked concerned, and she seemed mildly sheepish as she answered.

“I sent Dom Perignon to all the people who complained. Bruce spent about an hour with the Morettis. Apparently he had made insulting comments about her mother, and Bruce sat with them until they were so tired and so drunk that Mr. Moretti went to bed, and we gave Mrs. Moretti a complimentary room on another floor. I didn’t know what else to do. And I got a doctor for six-nineteen at two A.M. Her kid had strep, and an ear infection.”

“You did all the right things,” her father praised her. She had learned more than ever in the past two years that hotelry was as much about diplomacy and ingenuity as about service, and you had to think on your feet. She was good at it and had the correct instincts.

“The Morettis need a shrink,” she said with a grin, as she took off her uniform jacket and threw it on a chair. She had kicked off her shoes at the front door. She glanced at Natalie then. The wedding was in less than four weeks and her own party in a few days. “How’s the wedding coming?”

Natalie grinned and then sighed. “My sister-in-law broke her ankle Rollerblading last week. Both my nieces have mono and may not be able to come. There’s a threatened air strike in Holland so we’re not sure about the flowers. We haven’t set the menu yet, and your father doesn’t want a wedding cake. And three of my clients want their installations that week while they’re away. Other than that, it’s fine.” Heloise couldn’t help laughing at what she’d said. She seemed a little mellower now that she had her degree and had spent three days alone with her father in Lausanne. Natalie was glad she hadn’t gone, and with all she had to do, she couldn’t have anyway. And she knew that Heloise would have viewed her as an intruder if she had.