Read Searching for Grace Kelly for Free Online

out the people who served—the waiters and bellmen and hosts—and ask Laura to think about where they came from, what the lives were like for the people who were not sitting there enjoying the restaurant, but rather working in it. “You always need to remember that there are many, many people less fortunate,” she would say. “We all have an obligation to help those who need it.” Laura would dutifully relay all of this to her father on the evening of their return, resulting in his inevitable comment to Marmy, “Mother’s been playing Eleanor Roosevelt again.”
    â€œAre you listening to a word I’ve been saying?” Dolly asked.
    Laura jolted out of her reverie. “I’ve told you, there isn’t anything more to tell,” she said.
    Dolly had been relentless. She’d spied the encounter with Box Barnes and had, from the moment they’d left the club, wanted to know everything: every word exchanged, how he’d looked up close, smelled up close, whether his mouth was truly as kissable as it looked in pictures. Laura had elected to take a name-rank-and-serial-number approach to parsing out details. The truth was she’d been embarrassed by the whole interlude: how he’d obviously caught her staring, but mostly how she had walked into the Stork Club feeling worldly and sophisticated and left feeling unmasked, the little girl caught prancing about in her mother’s heels and pearls.
    â€œYou’re being very circumspect about the whole business,” Dolly was saying. Laura arched an eyebrow. “What? Don’t look at me that way, Laura Dixon,” Dolly shot back. “I’m in secretarial school, remember? I take dictation with big vocabulary words all the time. I’m not stupid.”
    â€œI would never think you were stupid.”
    Dolly shrugged. “Just drop it. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. You just better be ready soon.” They both giggled. “So, how was the tour?”
    â€œUneventful.” The tour. Still foggy from the brandy, Laura had dragged herself out of bed and gotten dressed just in time to make her nine a.m. appointment for the Barbizon orientation, once again finding Metzger behind the desk, pinched and vinegary. Did the woman ever go home? There was still no sign of the elusive Mrs. Mayhew, presumably still “off premises,” and no explanation as to why she hadn’t kept Laura’s appointment. And so Laura and Metzger had spent the better part of an hour exploring the hotel, like Mrs. Danvers and Joan Fontaine death-marching through an all-female Manderley. Laura had received her “Court Circular,” which listed that week’s activities, from dramatic readings (this week, from the works of the ailing Wallace Stevens) to a backgammon tournament. The swimming pool had looked surprisingly inviting, if a tad over-chlorinated—the whole potted-ferned area reeked of bleach—and they’d briefly lingered to watch an aggressive badminton match between two ponytailed girls. After the sundeck, the solarium, the recital rooms, and the dining room, they’d finished on the mezzanine, where a latticed wooden railing overlooked the expansive lobby below.
    â€œI noticed,” Laura had inquired of Mrs. Metzger, “last night when I was leaving, that there were a few girls milling about here, all dressed up. Was there some special occasion?”
    â€œThat’s the way it is every evening, most noticeably on Saturdays,” Metzger had replied, her raven-black eyes honing in on a group of girls sitting in the lobby lounge below. “Rather than wait downstairs, many of the girls choose to stay up here, so they can survey their dates arriving. That way, if a gentleman doesn’t appear as she’d hoped, a girl can simply not go down at all.” She’d turned to Laura, her face still as inscrutable as it had been yesterday behind the desk.