Annabel left her uncle’s office and peered into the lobby, wondering what had detained him. The reception manager, a neat middle-aged Bavarian woman called Marta, was tending to a newly arrived guest—a bespectacled, spinsterish-looking young woman dressed in a mouse-colored suit, her hair pulled back severely into a bun. She presented a Polish passport but spoke in French.
As Marta checked her in, the elevator doors opened and a man rushed out in a gust of self-importance, barking in tortured French, “My room key has disappeared!”
Herr Wilbert, who’d checked in last week, was a wine importer from Berlin who brought his wife and children to the Grand Hotel every August. He was a rotund man with apple-red cheeks, and he looked as if he should be a jolly fellow by temperament; but he was one of those guests who never entirely settled down.
Glaring at Marta as if daring anyone to accuse him of forgetfulness, he said defensively, “I always keep my key on the desk. That stupid room service waiter must have taken it!”
“I’ll order you another one right away,” Marta said, and she picked up the phone and gave the instructions to her assistant. Marta smiled politely at Herr Wilbert and asked, “Will you be having breakfast on the terrace? We can bring your key to you when it’s ready.”
Annabel had discreetly slipped behind the counter to collect Herr Wilbert’s mail and hand it to him, which he accepted with a grunt. Meanwhile Marta gave the waiting Polish girl her key and said, “Your room is ready. It is rather small and does not have a view, I’m afraid. This is our busiest time of year, and you were the last reservation we took.”
Annabel knew just which room this girl would get—small, dark, and facing the parking lot, it was used only when the hotel was truly filled up, and even so, it usually went to a guest’s maid or butler.
The Polish girl nodded resignedly; she wore the expression of someone who expected to be treated dismissively. She had only one small suitcase and a battered typewriter valise.
The red-cheeked wine importer, unreasonably annoyed at having to wait for a newly minted key while a mere girl got hers, exploded with, “Ich habe keine Zeit zu verlieren!”
The Polish girl stiffened at the mere sound of German being spoken. Annabel understood enough of the language to glean that he’d declared he had no time to waste.
But now Oncle JP returned to the lobby with an air of efficiency, having resolved a delivery problem. Herr Wilbert grabbed his arm and said, “I want my key now!”
“Of course!” Oncle JP said instantly. “I’m so glad to find you here. I’ve been keeping some special information for you about a new winery opening next week. I’m not supposed to give out this brochure until they open, but for you, I think you’ll want to know about it.”
They stepped aside and became engrossed in the brochure.
Marta hurriedly finished up with the Polish girl, saying, “Your employer paid for his room but hasn’t checked in.”
“Yes, he has been delayed,” the girl responded. “He is a film director. He will surely telephone to let us know when to expect him. Please send for me the moment he calls.”
So, Annabel thought, the poor thing isn’t even on vacation. And yet, at least her boss had put her up here, at the Grand Hotel. Most such clerical types were booked by their employers into cheaper, backstreet inns in the rougher parts of the towns or cities nearby.
It wasn’t long before Marta retrieved the new key and handed it to Oncle JP.
“Alors, Monsieur Wilbert!” Oncle JP announced, beaming. Herr Wilbert clapped him on the back. But Annabel didn’t like seeing her uncle bow his head deferentially to a guest who called Oncle JP my good man in a particularly patronizing way, as if speaking to his personal valet, before finally marching off to join his family for breakfast.
Guessing her thoughts, Oncle JP said quietly, “When guests get angry, they are usually just afraid that they aren’t being respected. They arrive here with more than suitcases—they bring their troubles, too.” He said to Marta, “Send a little box of fresh chocolates to Herr Wilbert’s room—he likes that.” Then he checked his pocket watch and said to Annabel with a bright smile, “Let’s go meet that man from Hollywood!”
They bypassed the elegant guest elevator made of polished mahogany and glass and wrought iron. Instead, he and Annabel went into the plain but more spacious service elevator and rode to the suite level, just beneath the penthouse.
“The president of Olympia Studios is called Sonny Stanten,” Oncle JP explained as the elevator ascended. “He is here with his wife, Adelaide, and their two daughters. The older one is Linda, who is married to a man called Alan, who is also a vice president of the studio.”
Annabel dutifully absorbed this information. Everyone at the front desk, pool, and restaurants was taught to know the proper pronunciations of the names of their guests.
“The younger daughter is called Cissy,” Oncle JP said, frowning at a small notepad. “We have been given strict instructions that she is to be fed nothing but chicken soup. It is some sort of diet, I’m told. Have you ever in your life heard of such a thing? Morning, noon, and night, nothing but chicken soup, sent up to her room!” He looked disgusted at this attitude toward food. “For ‘her health,’ they say. No doctor I know would recommend it!”
“It must be some Hollywood diet,” Annabel offered. She’d heard plenty of gossip about movie and theatre people, first at her parents’ portrait studio, and later at the theatre office where she worked.
“MGM put Judy Garland on such a diet—she’s the girl who sings in that big new musical that will be shown at the festival, The Wizard of Oz,” she explained. “And poor Greta Garbo ate nothing but raw carrots and cabbage until her director, Ernst Lubitsch, insisted that she go out and eat a big juicy steak to put ‘roses in her cheeks’ before they shot their new movie that’s coming out this year—it’s called Ninotchka.”
Oncle JP listened with a puzzled look, as if earnestly trying to understand the habits of an exotic species called actors. “I heard from our room service supervisor that a woman guest named Miss Marlene Dietrich asked for something called Epsom salts. Ever heard of that?”
“She must have sprained an ankle or something,” Annabel suggested.
“No,” Oncle JP said in a droll voice. “She drinks them.”
“Oh! To make her feel less hungry, perhaps,” Annabel said, but she shuddered.
As the elevator slowed to a stop, Oncle JP continued, “These men from Olympia Studios were very pleased to hear that I have you on our staff—an American girl who speaks both English and French.” He smiled at her with affectionate pride. “You will be a real asset this summer. Most of these Hollywood people don’t speak French at all,” he added incredulously, as if he could not imagine living on earth without the music of his mother tongue.
When they stepped out of the elevator, the penthouse doors were already flung wide open, revealing the mogul’s family and their servants rushing to and fro. Annabel could see trunks and suitcases everywhere as the butler and maid scurried to unpack them.
In the center of the main sitting room stood the matriarch called Adelaide, a stout woman laden with heavy gold jewelry, perfume, and a fur-trimmed wrap, even in this summer heat. She seemed to be directing everything, while two yippy white dogs were snapping at the ankles of every passing bellhop and servant, then jumping up and down on every gold-satin-covered Louis XVI chair in sight. Annabel held her breath, wondering how this lovely furniture, not to mention the bellhops, would survive the season.
“Linda!” Adelaide shouted at her eldest daughter. “Stop tying up the phone line.”
Linda, taller and slimmer than her mother, was dressed in a more fashionable outfit of silk and linen that looked straight out of an ad for Coco Chanel’s new “resort wear.”
“Of course I had to get all new clothes, once we stopped in Paris,” Linda was saying, gesturing with a cigarette-in-its-holder, as if she could be seen by the person on the other end of the phone. “Everything that seemed so chic back home suddenly looked positively horrid. I tell you, the minute you look in a mirror in this country, suddenly you just see everything that’s wrong. Well, darling, you can kid yourself anywhere else—but not in France.”
Adelaide turned to a harried maid and said sharply, “Put the hatbox there, not there!”
Annabel whispered in panic, “Oncle, I don’t have to work for these women, do I?” She imagined herself as some sort of ladies’ maid to such an exhausting family.
“No, no. Come this way. Sonny Stanten said he wants to explain your duties to you himself,” Oncle JP said, as the matriarch, who’d given him a flicker of a glance, now tilted her head to indicate that her husband was in another room.
Annabel followed her uncle down a brief, plushly carpeted interior corridor, passing a bedroom where other maids were busily unpacking trunks; and then a bathroom whose door was wide open. A plump young guest was visible, sitting in her underslip on the wide edge of the tub, her face streaked with tears. She looked to be sixteen.
“That’s the younger daughter, the one they called Cissy,” Oncle JP said quietly. “The one who’s on that strict diet.”
Cissy was making a strange, low moaning noise that sounded like “Ahh-whoa-whoa-whoa!” over and over again. A severe-looking woman dressed in a nurse’s white uniform, poised at the counter before an open black bag, turned briskly, brandishing a hypodermic needle. But before administering it, something caused her to look up and, seeing Annabel and Oncle JP, she kicked the door closed.
At the end of the hall was the master bedroom suite, which had its own sitting room, fitted out with generous white leather chairs and yellow brocade curtains. Two men were ensconced around a low, glass-topped coffee table spread with sheaves of paperwork. Both men wore three-piece dark suits instead of the usual pale flannel sported by men of leisure.
“We’re scheduled for cocktails with the distributors from Berlin today,” the younger man was saying, completely indifferent to the pandemonium in the other rooms.
The portly elder man glanced up and nodded to Oncle JP. “Ah, it’s you. And this is—?”
“My American niece. Annabel, this is Mr. Sonny Stanten.”
Annabel thought it a bit incongruous that it was the older man who was called Sonny. He had thinning grey hair and wore reading spectacles halfway down his long thin nose, which gave him the look of a dormouse in a fairy tale. Except for his cigar. Without removing it, he said brusquely, “Good. We need somebody American around here. Can she type?”
“Of course,” Oncle JP said smoothly. “As I mentioned to you on the telephone, she was a secretary in an important theatrical agency in New York City.”
The younger man, who Annabel later confirmed was the son-in-law named Alan, now studied her with renewed interest. “Then you must be an important girl,” he said in a teasing tone as silky as cream. His bristly mustache twitched into a smile; he wore a red carnation in his buttonhole, and he looked as if he spent a good part of his day appraising women.
“Fine,” Sonny said, turning his sharp gaze to Annabel, with a keen look that was all business. “I need a girl to take care of two of my people. One is an actor—Jack Cabot—who thinks of himself as a director and a producer, to boot. I only put up with him because he convinced my best actress, Téa Marlo, to delay renewing her contract with me unless I let her star in Jack’s little independent movie and distribute the damned film! So we’re premiering it here.”
“Oh!” Annabel perked up at the names Jack Cabot and Téa Marlo; they’d been paired in two other movies for Sonny’s studio and were the hottest thing since John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. Sonny allowed a smile, proud that these stars were his.
“You like Cabot and Marlo, eh? Well, maybe we’ll pick up some European distributors; they like this arty stuff,” he grumbled. “So, girlie, if you see any Frenchie reporters, tell them this new movie is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s called Love Isn’t Easy—you got that?”
The son-in-law said perfunctorily, to no one in particular, “A much better title than what the screenwriter wanted to call it—Love Is a Pain.”
“Screenwriters are a number-one pain, and actors come in a close second. I’d rather raise racehorses,” Sonny muttered. “But we made it into a good movie anyway.”
Annabel had met men like Sonny in New York. They were brash, confident, and aggressive, unafraid to gamble on a hunch, but they had surprisingly delicate egos. If somebody crossed or insulted them, such men worked themselves into a lather, and they were prone to proclaiming their grudges to anyone who’d listen—a bartender, barber, or secretary—like a dog worrying an old bone.
Sonny said briskly, “Okay, Mam’zelle Annabel, here’s your schedule. In the mornings I want you working with my dipsomaniac screenwriter, who wrote that script for Love Isn’t Easy because it was based on his unpublished short story. He’s still under contract, so I’ve got him doing rewrites on some other scripts now. He swears he’s on the wagon, but nobody believes him. I picked him up cheap after he got dropped from MGM and was loaned out to work on that infernal Gone with the Wind. He got kicked off that movie, too.”
“Well,” said Alan, “every screenwriter in town has worked on Gone with the Wind.”
“But this one can’t type for beans,” Sonny said to Annabel. “And he’s got handwriting nobody can read. I hope you can. Go to him in the mornings and type whatever he gives you. He says he’ll lay it out for you on his desk. Look over his correspondence and his calendar, too. He’s hopeless with that stuff. And—most of all—make sure he doesn’t take a drink. I don’t know how much work he’ll have for you today, but try to get started and learn the ropes.”
Annabel couldn’t help liking Sonny. His blunt manner was somehow like a breath of fresh air, filled with verve and energy. It might be fun to be a part of all this, after all, working on exciting films with big stars. Perhaps a door was opening somewhere.
“You’ll assist the actor in the afternoons,” he continued. “Make sure Jack Cabot shows up for all the promotional events we’ve lined up for him, especially the interviews. He’s always trying to duck out of interviews. Look over his correspondence and his calendar, too.”
But then Sonny eyed her keenly and said, “Report to me about every single angle he’s working. I want to know who Jack’s talking to and what nonsense he’s filling Téa Marlo’s head with. I can never tell what she’s thinking. The woman is an enigma.”
“Don’t forget, Jack Cabot is meeting with us at lunch today,” Alan reminded him.
Sonny said, “Right,” then turned to Annabel to amend his orders. “So just go to meet Cabot around three o’clock today; say hello. Then, starting tomorrow, your mornings are with my screenwriter, and your afternoons are with the actor at two o’clock. And at the end of each week, I want a full report on both men. Got that?”
It now dawned on Annabel that Sonny had been using this confidential, engaging tone to ensure her loyalty; in fact, it sounded as if he expected her to be some sort of a studio snoop. She felt suddenly apprehensive.
“Absolument,” Oncle JP said with a brief bow. “Please let us know if there is anything else you need.” He guided Annabel to make a professional exit, politely ignoring the family hubbub that was continuing unabated in the front room as the mother and daughter ordered the servants around, barely noticing Oncle JP and Annabel as they departed.
When they were safely back in the service elevator, Oncle JP rubbed his hands together and said with satisfaction, “This should be ‘right up your street,’ as you Americans say, because of your experience in that New York theatrical agency. Sonny will pay extra for your secretarial services, of course. Do your best, and then you will develop the reputation of being a competent and reliable secretary whom others wish to hire.”
Oh, swell, Annabel thought dispiritedly, her brief hopes for a glamorous future dashed.
“A typewriter is a typewriter is a typewriter,” she muttered. If Gertrude Stein had been a secretary, that surely would have been the extent of her poetic response to the world.
“Pardon?” Oncle JP said mildly.
“Oncle, why did he ask me to ‘report’ on the actor and the screenwriter? I’m not a nanny and I’m not a spy!” she objected. She knew from her theatre work that gleeful gossip was the plague of the entertainment industries, and low-level flunkies were only too happy to be given an official reason to snitch on their betters.
“Of course you’re not a spy,” Oncle JP agreed. “Trust your old uncle, who has been working at the Grand Hotel almost as long as that old frog sitting on the fountain.” He was referring to a stone frog carved onto the rim of an ornate fountain in a side garden.
She felt slightly ashamed of her own ingratitude. Oncle JP was the most hardworking person she’d ever met. At sunrise every day, at his doctor’s suggestion to maintain the health of his heart, Oncle JP jogged up to the top of the plateau called the Mound in the center of the Cap. The military brass up there all knew him well, for he’d served with one of them.
Then he would return to his apartment in the nearby fishermen’s village of Saint-Pierre. Patiently he’d feed his little granddaughter, Delphine, her breakfast, then bring her to the next-door neighbor in their apartment building, a kindly older woman who looked after the child in the summer. Having done all this, Oncle JP would report to work earlier than most of the staff at his prized Grand Hotel. He was indisputably the heart and soul of the place.
Moreover, her uncle had gone out of his way to let her know that she was wanted on a personal level. When Annabel had first arrived, he’d already booked her into the nice place at the rooming house so she’d have her privacy, but she had a standing invitation to join him and his granddaughter every week for Sunday dinner.
“You are family,” he’d said. “Always come to us whenever you wish. Your joys are our joys; your troubles are our troubles. You are not alone. We will always be here for you.”
* * *
So how on earth could Annabel complain today, when her uncle was so pleased to have found her a spot of work that he thought would reinforce a path toward her future security?
Now Oncle JP said reassuringly, “Just type what they want you to type, and see that they get their work done. Then we can tell Sonny that your clients are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. If they are not, you come to me, and I will handle it. These guests are the kind that may never come back here again; but they will talk about this experience they’ve had at our Grand Hotel, for years to come. That is how reputations are formed.”
Annabel nodded. “Yes, Oncle JP. What rooms are my clients staying in?”
“Ah! The actor, this Jack Cabot, he is staying in the Villa Sanctuaire,” Oncle JP replied. “The screenwriter is in the Jasmine Cottage. I’ve already had a typewriter sent down there. But as this Sonny fellow said, today is more of a get-acquainted session. So go and see what you can do for the writer, and if you have free time afterward, then report to the poolside for the rest of the morning, because we have a shortage of bar staff there, today of all days. I will send someone down to relieve you there as soon as possible. Take a late lunch up here; and if you have time to bring Delphine into the garden for some air, that would be good. Then go to help the actor. Let me know how it all went when you’re done.”
Annabel found it interesting that Sonny had placed her clients in the two cottages that belonged to the Grand Hotel—perhaps to keep them away from the rest of the guests, for whatever unknown reasons. These cottages were the most private and yet the most simple accommodations, for they stood at some distance from the main building. Sometimes they went unoccupied for weeks, because most guests preferred the convenience and immediacy of the hotel rooms and their proximity to the convivial bars and terraces and services.
Even before the elevator doors opened onto the main floor, they heard raucous shouting coming from the lobby.
“Now what?” Annabel wondered aloud as she stepped out.
The lobby was completely jammed with newly arrived Hollywood guests dressed in bright colors and awash in cologne. Everyone was chattering nonstop in loud, excited voices that seemed to ricochet off the walls and ceilings, making the lobby clang like a great bell as people clamored to get to the front desk and be sure that they were getting the best rooms. The women’s voices were high and shrill as they greeted each other with exaggerated affection. The men boomed jovially, their voices flying like billiard balls crashing into one another.
“Hey, get a load of this pretty little elevator!” a dapper young man called out.
Everyone seemed beautiful and bursting with vitality. Dazzled, Annabel would have liked to stay and see if she could recognize any movie stars beneath their stylish hats and behind those fashionable sunglasses.
Oncle JP looked slightly alarmed by his loud new American guests. “Are they all drunk?” he asked, baffled by the voices that were so different from the low-key murmurs of his usual European clientele.
“No, just—giddy,” Annabel explained. At his blank look she added, “Excités.”
A look of comprehension crossed his face, and Oncle JP shook his head. “Ah, yes. This season, it’s the Cannes Film Festival that has our guests all excited. But last summer, for some crazy reason, they’d all been told that the Earth was going to collide with the planet Mars. I will admit that it was hanging very near and red and bright in the sky at the time.”
“But people didn’t actually believe that Mars would hit the Earth, did they?” she asked.
He nodded vigorously. “Oui, they wanted to believe. That season our gentlemen guests ordered telescopes and set them up on the lawn, to calculate exactly when the end would come. Some of them bought binoculars and watched from the rocks. The women, meanwhile, all demanded at the same time to see the hairdresser, so we had to hire extra coiffeurs. And bring in seamstresses to alter all the ladies’ new gowns. In fact many jewelers came to the hotel with great big boxes to display their most expensive pieces, and they made a tidy profit, too.”
At Annabel’s puzzled expression, Oncle JP explained, “The guests were all competing to be the most beautiful corpses in history when the end came. Like the pharaohs.”
“But—the world didn’t come to an end,” she said, amused. “What did they do then?”
“Enfin, when the designated tragic night arrived, the guests all ordered the most expensive caviar and pheasant and champagne we had. They dined, danced, and drank until dawn. Passed out on the lawn, binoculars around their necks! Not until the next day, when the sun burned bright in the sky, did they realize that Mars, the god of war, had decided to let them all live—at least for another year.”
Annabel glanced up sharply, wondering if her uncle was, in his subtle way, trying to warn her of something more than just this humorous aspect of human nature.
But all he said was, “Ah bon. Go help your poor scriptwriter. He sounds like a man who could really use some kindly assistance.”