Soul Siren by Aisha Duquesne Page B

you a breath of fresh air!” he chuckled. “I’ve had folks thundering and hollering at me because they didn’t send a stretch job with the tinted windows and the mini wet-bar inside. I guess it’s true what they say about you people.”
    “You people?” I echoed, instantly on my guard.
    “Canadians.”
    “Oh! Yeah, I guess it is, eh.”
    “You guess it is,
eh
? I love that!”
    He pulled the car into the narrow parking strip in front of a sumptuous hotel, and I looked up and saw the gilt logo for the Lockwood-Tremblay. This was the brand spanking new luxury job along “Museum Row” designed to rival the Plaza for views of Central Park. There’s got to be a mistake, I told him. I sure as hell wasn’t booked in here. In fact, I didn’t know where I would be staying that night, presumably in a sleeping bag on the floor of Erica’s closet of an apartment up past 135th Street or in Midtown or who knows, maybe out in Queens if she were so lucky.
    “They’re expecting you.”
    “I can’t be staying here,” I insisted.
    “I don’t know if you’re
staying
here,” he said with a shrug. “Miss Jones said bring you to the party, and she’d come as soon as possible. Look, don’t worry about it. Go on in. Your name’s on the list. Nobody’s going to give you no hassle.”
    I was staring like a fool at the doorman, waiting like all doormen in one of those ridiculous outfits that are a cross between a Beefeater uniform and the wardrobe for an organ grinder’s monkey. He wore a rather benign expression on his face, considering I’d arrived in faded jeans and a sweater over a tank top with my knock-off Fendi luggage. I thanked him as he pulled on the large brass handle that formed the “L” of the “TL” logo and walked in.
    Ssshhhheeee-it.
Thirty-foot-tall mirrors, oxblood wingback chairs and framed sepia photographs of old New Yorkers. Yes, I had had passing brushes with luxury before—I’d gone into the King Edward Hotel in Toronto, and, yes, my parents did take my brother and me to restaurants with napkins of linen instead of paper. But this wasn’t like creeping timidly into the lobby of the Plaza or the Waldorf Astoria as a tourist and maybe splurging on the seven bucks for a lousy bottle of Evian by the fireplace. I was twenty years old, and someone had my name on a list and was expecting me. I thought the best way to limit embarrassing myself was to find the youngest clerk behind the front counter and appeal to his pity.
    “Look, I’m supposed to be here,” I explained after providing my name, “and I don’t know where I’m going.”
    “Here?”
The blonde girl in the navy blazer poked her finger downwards as if to mean “this spot.” It didn’t seem such a stupid idea when you thought of how I was dressed and what little information I had. For all she knew, I had come for day work. “Hang on. Brown…No ‘e’?”
    “That’s right.”
    She tapped my name into her computer terminal. “Yeah, here you are. Floor twenty-one. Here’s your swipe card, and if you can please return it to us when you leave. Elevators to your left.”
    “What room?”
    “Sorry?”
    “What room?” I asked again. “You said
floor
twenty-one.”
    “The whole floor, Miss Brown. Mr. Swann has booked all of Park View C for the weekend.” Sensing the enormity of my ignorance, she leaned in and said, “Umm,
do
remember to hand in that swipe card. It’s got a sensor in it. It’s not like it’ll set off the doors at Bloomingdale’s or anything, but the security guys come after you outside, and people feel silly forgetting.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “Uh, who did you say booked it?”
    “Steven Swann,” she said, smiling and slightly shaking her head in surprise. As if she couldn’t believe I didn’t know my host.
             
    S teven Swann. Yes, I knew
of
him. I didn’t know I’d be sharing the same oxygen with him two and a half hours after escaping New Haven. And I certainly didn’t