The white crockery sang its usual morning tune as Moonu, the
Hotel Delite waiter, delivered breakfast dishes and pots of coffee or tea to
the tables scattered around the upstairs dining room. Though barely eight o’clock,
most of the guests had already ordered and plunged into newspapers or discussions
for their plans for the day. Anita loved the sound of the hotel waking up.
“All is well?” Auntie Meena peered
into the dining room.
“Everyone seems happy.” Anita made a
half turn and glanced back at a young woman hunched over a steaming cup of
coffee. “Miss Tiffany doesn’t seem very cheerful this morning.”
“Anita, she is an actress. She is
achieving proper mood for her work. A sad story I am thinking.” Auntie Meena
was nothing if not a devoted fan of the arts. “I shall offer my admiration.”
And with that she marched across the dining room and stopped abruptly, her
expression shifting from sweet anticipation to abject embarrassment. She opened
and closed her mouth without speaking, stunned into silence in the face of fame.
Anita decided to rescue her.
“Good morning, Miss Tiffany.” Anita
stepped beside her aunt. “Do you find everything as you like it?”
Miss Tiffany, a young woman who
looked like she’d earned the name at the moment of birth, stared up at Anita
with the most startling green eyes and a complexion that always brought to mind
the cliche of peaches and cream, no matter what country she landed in. She had
silky blond hair that held a curl and swept down to her long neck from a
perfect widow’s peak. Even Anita was taken aback by her beauty. “Oh, yes,
everything’s wonderful,” Tiffany said.
“You look as though something is
wrong,” Anita said. For once, Auntie Meena didn’t jump in to defend her beloved
hotel, a sign of how smitten she was by this young foreigner. “Can we do
anything to make your visit more enjoyable?”
Tiffany sighed deeply and tilted
her head to the side. Really, Anita thought, she’d be wonderful on a soap
opera. “I wish you could. But I guess I’m just not a very good actress.”
“But you are a superb actress, the
very best. I am knowing this.” Auntie Meena clenched her hands together as
though her feelings were almost too much for her to contain. Miss Tiffany smiled.
“Thank you, Mrs. Nair. But I’m not
very good at all.”
“What has made you so disappointed?”
Anita asked.
At the moment Hotel Delite was
packed with guests, including a few members of the film crew making a romantic
movie, a rom-com she’d been told, in the city. They retreated to the hotel
every evening quite late, and sometimes not until after midnight. At first the
hotel schedule was thrown way off kilter, but the staff adjusted, which meant
Anita stayed up most of the night and Moonu dragged through the day like a zombie.
The cook seemed unfazed and willing to stand at his stove for hours on end.
Anita didn’t blame Tiffany for becoming dispirited.
“I’ve had to do the same scene over
one hundred and seventy times already,” Tiffany said. She stared at her coffee.
“Perhaps it is especially
difficult. Are there so many lines?” Meena asked.
“I have no lines.”
“No lines?” Meena screwed up her
face and repeated this several times. “Why are you having no lines?”
“My role is to walk up to the
hotel, speak to the doorman, and then enter. Then I walk through the hotel
lobby to the restaurant. I know the exact number of steps, which foot to use to
begin to climb the short stairs to the lobby, how many steps on the carpet and
how many on the marble, when to lift my hand to acknowledge the doorman, the
concierge, the clerk on the desk, the head waiter in the restaurant. I have it
down to the nanosecond. But no lines that anyone hears.”
“You must be having lines,” Auntie
Meena said. “Such a lovely voice you are having.”
“What happens then?” Anita asked.
“Then I do it again.” She shook her
head. “Oh, you mean in the movie. I don’t know. The next scene takes place on
the other side of the city, and the scene before takes place in an antique shop
somewhere else.”
“But when is your next scene?”
“I don’t have one. When we all
gathered for dinner on the first night I thought I could get the director to
explain things to me, but he kept saying, Whatever and Who are you? I felt like
I was getting in the way.”
“You should try to talk to him again,”
Anita said.
“I do but our schedule never seems
to mesh with his and we keep missing him.” And with that Tiffany sighed again
and rose from the table. “Time to be off. We begin filming at nine—again.” She
rolled her eyes and headed out of the dining room. When the cameraman saw
Tiffany pass his table, he nudged the man next to him and the two followed her
out, the cameraman tall and rangy with broad shoulders and sandals slapping
against the terrazzo, and his assistant, apparently a student, a good foot
shorter with short hair and heavy glasses.
“She should have lines,” Auntie
Meena said when she returned to the registration desk.
“Yes,” Anita agreed. “She should.”
* * *
Moony delivered elevenses to the front desk right on time.
He could barely keep his eyes open and Anita sent him home for a nap. She’d
manage lunch herself, since it was usually a quiet meal in the hotel.
“Did you know, Auntie, there are
three movies being made in the city even now?”
Auntie Meena waggled her head and
preened. “Very popular place, isn’t it? Cinema people and artists and important
people.”
“And not one of them is filming a
story that calls for the Belvedere Hotel lobby, or any exclusive hotel lobby.”
Anita continued reading.
“Nonsense. This is in the story.
Tiffany is telling us.” Meena pulled the newspaper away from Anita. “Here. You
are mistaking.” She read through the newspaper article, frowning and muttering.
“Perhaps she is going to the wrong hotel.”
“With the cameraman and his
assistant?” Anita slid off the stool and promised to be back later.
* * *
Anita didn’t return to the hotel until almost six-thirty,
when the sun was setting and a pink glow seeped into the sky. She was hot and
tired and worried, and headed straight for her suite over the garage. Half an
hour later, as the lights began to glow on the sandy terrace and dinner guests
headed down the stairs, Anita found her aunt in the office, wringing her hands
and staring around wild-eyed.
“Oh, Anita! A terrible thing has
happened. Terrible.” Meena grabbed her niece’s wrists and pulled her into the
office. “The police are in the upstairs dining room with Tiffany. She is to be
arrested. And the cameraman and his assistant are gone! A great crime has been
done. What is to be done?”
“Well, first I’ll go in and find
out what the police are thinking,” Anita said.
“They are thinking terrible things
about our Miss Tiffany.” Auntie Meena sank into her chair. “It is very bad you
are not here to help. Very bad.”
Anita patted her aunt’s shoulder
and headed into the dining room. She marched in without knocking on the door,
and a young constable jumped to stop her but his superior waved him to the side
and lifted his eyebrow in query. Anita introduced herself.
“We are almost finished here,” the
subinspector said. “Miss Tiffany will be coming with us. She is refusing to
cooperate, so she will come in for further questioning.”
Anita wondered if Miss Tiffany
could have cooperated if she wanted to. She was crying so strenuously,
sniffling and gulping air and wiping the tears streaming down her perfect pink
cheeks that she could barely get out a word of protest let alone of
explanation.
“That won’t be necessary,” Anita
said. “The people you want are the cameraman and his assistant.”
“Exactly,” the subinspector said. “And
Miss Tiffany refuses to tell us where they have gone.”
“They have absconded,” Anita said. “But
they won’t get far.”
“And how are you knowing this?” The
subinspector rose, and Anita realized how intimidating he was. She was glad
they were on the same side, and she fervently hoped he knew that.
“The cameraman asked for the use of
our car and driver for the day, so this afternoon, after I guessed what was
happening, I texted Joseph and told him to take them wherever they wanted to
go, but not to get there. They are stranded even now in the hills, where Joseph
is trying to fix the car.” She pulled out her cell phone and turned the screen
to the subinspector. He peered at it but didn’t reach for it.
“And why did you do this?” he
asked. Even Tiffany stopped sniveling enough to listen. She stared at Anita
with astonishment.
“Yes, why?”
“I went to watch the filming this
morning to see you, Miss Tiffany,” Anita said. “You were struggling with your
role, you said, and I wanted to see how it was going.” Anita knew no one but
perhaps Auntie Meena later would challenge this blatant lie. “And I saw her
going through her scene, marching in and out of the Belvedere Hotel.” The name
of one of the poshest hotels in Kerala elicited approving murmurs from the subinspector.
The constable’s eyes widened and then narrowed.
“They are having important exhibit,”
the constable said. The subinspector was about to scold his underling when
Anita turned to him and smiled.
“Exactly so.” Anita turned back. “And
with Miss Tiffany’s unwitting help the cameraman and his assistant made off
with a pile of jewelry, leaving Miss Tiffany to face the police and the hotel
bill.”
Anita heard someone gasp behind
her. “They are running off without paying the bill?”
“Alas, Auntie Meena, they have done
this.”
“And Miss Tiffany will answer for
it,” the subinspector said.
“She was a dupe,” Anita said.
“The concierge and others saw her
go to the jewelry exhibit,” he said.
“They saw a person in her outfit in
a blond wig,” Anita said. “While she is outside taking a short break, the
assistant cameraman dressed in a wig with her makeup and a matching outfit entered the hotel, deviating slightly from the
script. But no one is noticing because they have seen this actress crossing the
floor so many times that she is now invisible. The double is going to the
jewelry display and in a moment taking three fine pieces worth lakhs and lakhs,
and walking out the door. A moment later, Miss Tiffany returned to her place,
despondent but determined to carry on. She enters and walks through and when
she returns, the cameraman and his assistant are not there. But the concierge
is there and the security guards on duty are there. And now she is here, not
knowing where the other two have gone or what has happened.”
“But you say you know where they
are?”
“I do.” She tapped in the
instructions to Joseph and turned the screen to the subinspector again. “And
now you do too.”
The subinspector grumbled, growled
an order into his mobile, and headed out the door, ordering the constable to
stand guard over the actress.
“What will happen to me now?”
Tiffany asked.
“You will get a better role,”
Auntie Meena said, sitting down beside her and patting her hands. “An artist
must never give up. Another role is coming. I am certain of it.”
“Exactly,” Anita said. “The
starring role in the trial of the cameraman and his assistant.”
-End-
