Scarlett Fever (10 page)

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ACT IV

Gothammag.com

THE MOST HATED MAN IN NEW YORK

When I meet Spencer Martin in the lobby of his family’s small Upper East Side hotel, he’s doing a handstand. A slightly younger girl with wild blonde curls stands next to him. From upside-down, he asks me to wait just a moment over by the desk.

“Remember,” he says to the girl, “go slow.”

The girl lifts her foot, and pauses.

“You’ve got it,” he says, shifting his weight from arm to arm, steadying himself. “Don’t worry. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I’m about to ask what’s going on when the girl swings her leg back and appears to kick Martin directly in the face. I’m not sure what to do—call for help, call the police, or join her. Right now, a lot of people around New York think kicking Spencer Martin in the face is a very, very good idea.

Martin comes crashing to the floor, landing with a loud smack, sprawled in all directions. I’ve just decided that the correct thing to do is come to his aid, when he sits up.

“I think that works,” he says, getting off the floor, completely uninjured. He puts an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “This is Scarlett. She’s my sister. She’s still mad at me for shooting Sonny.”

This is all the explanation I get for the scene I’ve just witnessed.

Unlike the intense, sneering character he plays on television, Martin is the picture of affability. On screen, he looks gaunt, with piercing eyes. In person, he is tall and slender, his eyes bright and friendly. Martin, 19, is a recent graduate of the High School of Performing Arts. Right before he was cast on
Crime and Punishment,
he was your typical young New York actor—working a day job as a waiter, doing small productions at night. He is eager to please, maybe to offset the negative reaction many people have had to his character.

Though he lives in a hotel, Martin is quick to point out that he isn’t exactly a Hilton—his getting a part on television has nothing to do with privilege. A quick look around the lobby, where we sit down to talk, confirms his story. There are threadbare patches on the arms of the chairs and the floorboards are uneven. The phone never rings, and no one comes through the front door. No, the Hiltons they are not.

“I spent most of the summer doing
Hamlet
in that room right there,” Martin says, pointing at the dining room. “On a unicycle.”

A unicycle?
Hamlet?
In the hotel?

“It was kind of a carnival, old movie setting,” he explains. “We had to do the show here because…well, that’s a long story. But we were sort of the goofballs of the show. I’ve run into that dining room door headfirst more times than I can count.”

Martin explains that his part on
Crime and Punishment
was supposed to be a small one—a one-off episode. But when the script was changed to accommodate the departure of Donald Purchase, he found himself thrust into the spotlight.

So, how does it feel to be the most hated man in New York?

“I don’t know,” he says. “Kind of weird? Very weird? I like doing this part, but…people seem really upset about what happened. It’s just a show…”

But for many
, Crime and Punishment
isn’t just a show—and the characters aren’t just people on TV. They’re old friends. And Sonny Lavinski was the oldest friend of all. I’ve read enough reports of people attacking Martin in the street, throwing food at him, to know this must be an ongoing issue for him. Would he still take the part, even knowing what would happen?

“Sure,” he says, without hesitation. “I’m an actor. I have to take work when I can get it.”

Does he worry that he’ll be typecast? That he might not work again because people will always associate him with this odious role? That maybe he’s done a little
too
well?

For the first time since I’ve met him, Martin’s features cloud over, his cheeks hollow a bit, and I see just the smallest hint of the darkness of his character.

“You think?” he asks.

THE WORST OF TIMES

All of the rooms in the Hopewell Hotel were called suites, even though they were single rooms, and a suite by definition is a series of rooms. It had always been this way. When the hotel was given its very expensive makeover in 1929, this lie was physically manifested in the form of a hand-engraved brass sign on every door, edged in a Deco lightning-bolt motif.

No one ever complained about the non-suiteness of a Hopewell room. They complained about other things, like broken televisions, or squeaky old bed frames, or the damp in the walls. Or incidents like that time two years ago when a pigeon got into the Sterling Suite when it had been vacant for a while and the window was left open to air the room. The pigeon nested in one of the wall sconces, a fact that remained undiscovered until the guest turned on the light and the enraged pigeon flew out, much like the proverbial bat from hell, and started flapping around the room. Smoke started billowing out of the wall. Within seconds, the Sterling Suite was a scene from a horror film.

When those are your problems, no one gets crazy about semantics.

Everything over the next few days had a similar air of hazy definition and disaster. Whatever had happened was
called
a wedding, but it didn’t feel like one. Not that Scarlett had any real frame of reference for how weddings were supposed to be. She had never attended one, never developed any particular fascination for them, harbored no particular like or dislike of any kind. But she didn’t think they were supposed to be like this. They weren’t supposed to be secret, unseen events where the aftermath looks a lot like the before except everyone is gloomy and tense all the time, like they’ve just heard that there’s been an outbreak of plague in the town upstream.

Chip and Lola took up temporary residence in the swanky Peninsula Hotel. They made a brief appearance on Sunday afternoon, during which they both looked very stressed-out. Monday arrived just like it always did, creeping in during the night like the neighbor’s cat, come to illicitly drop dead mice by the bedside. Scarlett opened her eyes and saw Lola’s empty bed, instantly remembering what a few hours of sleep had blanked away. She looked at the clock. Six A.M. She had another half hour of sleep to go, but something had woken her.

It was a hand, shaking her very gently. Lola’s hand, specifically. Lola was sitting on the other side of Scarlett’s bed, facing the windows. She had pulled her hair up into a twist so severely that it was pulling at the skin around her face.

“When did you get here?” Scarlett asked groggily.

“A few minutes ago. But we’re all having breakfast together.”

“What, now?”

“Half an hour. You get ready for school. I have to go wake up Marlene.”

An unpleasant breakfast of burned bacon and undercooked pancakes was spread out over two of the small dining room tables. It looked like no one had slept well, and the sight in front of them wasn’t helping. Spencer slumped in his seat, his hair still soaking wet from his shower, a faint trace of stubble around his jaw. Scarlett’s father was wearing one of his thrift store cowboy shirts again—a subdued black one with white piping—but he had misbuttoned it. Scarlett’s mom’s curls were as frazzled as her own for once, and she was furiously passing around the wet pancakes, trying to nudge Marlene into eating.

“What brought you back?” Spencer asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon or something?”

“I’m back to work,” Lola said. “Towels don’t fold themselves. No honeymoon, at least for a while. There’s a lot going on.”

Spencer laughed mirthlessly to himself and shoved a piece of badly burned bacon into his mouth.

“How long are you staying at the Peninsula?” Scarlett asked.

“A few more days,” Lola replied. “Just while we get everything…settled. Then Chip has to go back to school. He’s already missed a lot of classes.”

“You can always come and stay here,” her dad said a bit hesitantly. “You can have the Empire Suite.”

“I think we need…some space.”

“You mean there’s no way in hell Chip is going to come and stay here,” Spencer said. “It’s not really his standard of living.”

“Chip would be very happy to stay here,” Lola replied. “But I didn’t think you would appreciate having to live with him.”

“Good call,” Spencer said. He pushed himself away from the table. “Scarlett, if you want a ride, the car will be here in five minutes.”

“It’s okay,” Scarlett said, looking out at the gray sky. “I’ll walk.”

Scarlett cut across Central Park and made her meandering, diagonal way up the forty blocks past the joggers and the dog walkers and the moms with the big strollers. She had dressed carelessly, throwing on a pink shirt and an old blue skirt of Lola’s that didn’t really fit her right. It was a horrible day, too. Cloudy, but refusing to rain. Just gray, gray, gray. The leaves were just starting to shrivel and detach apathetically from the trees. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she was late.

Scarlett stopped at the park gate and looked across the street. Frances Perkins looked like the big red loony bin more than ever. Today would be terrible. She would tank on her International Politics quiz. Her French homework was half-baked.

What she needed to do…was skip. Just walk away from school. You can’t lose if you don’t play.

But skipping—that wasn’t in her. She was programmed to obey. Scarlett staggered into the building. The computer screens in the hall seemed too bright, and had too much information on them—this activity was being moved to a new room, this class had completed such and such a project, the jazz band was performing at fourth period lunch if anyone wanted to go. The day went every bit as badly as Scarlett suspected, and she developed a massive headache in third period that never went away. But Biology brought the worst news of all. She blinked and stared in front of her, at the word EXAM written on the board.

“If you’ve had a good look at the syllabus,” Ms. Fitzweld said, “you’ll see that your grade is based on five exams over the course of the year, and the first of these will be next Monday.”

“I hope you study,” Max said, leaning close. “I always try to sit next to a winner. There’s no point in cheating otherwise.”

“Max,” Scarlett said calmly, “I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up right now. I will kill you dead.”

“You just violated the no-tolerance violence policy in a huge way.”

“It’ll be worse when I put my pen in your eye.”

Surprisingly, he backed off. But she could feel him watching her the whole period.

“Oh, Martin,” Dakota said, putting a hand on her shoulder after class. “You are structurally unsound right now. I have some of those big chocolate chip cookies from Fairway. Here.”

It was like she was six years old all of a sudden. But Dakota was right. This is what she needed. She took a big bite of the cookie, feeling the warm chocolate smudge around her mouth.

“Married,” she said, spitting crumbs by accident as she walked down the hall. “Married? What does that even mean?”

“Some people get married at eighteen,” Dakota offered. “I mean, no one I know, but people do. People used to do it all the time.”

“She doesn’t even like him that much! She broke up with him a few months ago. She’s just bored. You don’t get married when you’re eighteen because you’re
bored.
”

Scarlett ate the rest of the cookie in three angry bites.

“She can undo it,” Dakota said after a moment. “It’s not like it’s forever.”

“It’s
kind
of forever,” Scarlett replied. “She said she’s not going to, you know, get divorced.”

“She’s saying that now. She’s only been married for five minutes. Once they realize what they’ve done…”

“Once they realize what they’ve done, Lola will be rich. She probably already is.”

Scarlett said it without even meaning to. It just came out of her mouth, a total surprise, like a frog had just sprung forth.

“There is that,” Dakota said quietly. “Do you think that…that Lola…”

“Married for the money?” Scarlett said unhappily. The words hurt. She didn’t even want them out in the universe. “No, but…I can’t think of why
else
she’d do it, either.”

Being a good friend, Dakota just left that alone. But it was there, the only possibility left standing in Scarlett’s mind.

“Well,” Scarlett said, leaning against her locker, feeling the metal give gently against her weight, “at least you’ll be happy about one thing. I almost went to Chelsea’s show with Eric. But then all this happened, and I never called him.”

“You’re right. That is a good thing.”

“And I guess it makes me seem all aloof and over it, right?” Scarlett added, trying to smile. “That’s supposed to make you more attractive to guys, when you don’t seem to care. They like a little abuse.”

“We love it. We need a spanking.”

That was from Max, who was heading for his usual music room by Scarlett’s locker. He had stopped a few feet off to unabashedly listen to the conversation. Dakota reeled around on him.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

“Don’t ask him that,” Scarlett said. “He doesn’t mind.”

“What she said.” Max nodded at Scarlett.

“Go. Away,” Dakota told him. “I am not kidding. She is not okay right now.”

Max obeyed this time, perhaps a little too quickly.

“See?” Dakota said. “You just need to use a little force with him. Now come to my house. We’re going to watch TV.”

“I’m not always going to be like this,” Scarlett said. “I’ve been useful to you, right?”

“Many times,” Dakota said, leading her along. “Sometimes, we all get a little broken.”

A little broken. Scarlett wondered about that. At what point do you get so broken that it’s time to just get thrown away? She had a feeling she was going to find out.