Sonny walked past Bergdorf Goodman on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue and paused to look in the corner window, where a plastic blond mannequin, dressed in crisp white and black, looked coolly indifferent to the sweltering heat beyond the plate glass. He himself was wearing a tan tropical suit, matching shirt and tie, and brown loafers. Under his arm, he carried a brown leather Mark Cross portfolio with a gold-plated clasp. He looked at his watch: 1:23. He had made his appointment for 1:30.
He turned the corner onto Fifty-eighth, walked partway up the street, almost to the Fine Arts theater, and then crossed Fifty-eighth and walked past the fountain and small park outside the Plaza. Huge flags, only one of them American, hung limply over the entrance doors to the hotel. A dozen or more limousines were parked outside, their windows down, their chauffeurs looking pained by the heat. A doorman, uniformed in white trimmed with gold braid, hailed a taxi for a woman who waited at the top of the steps under the merciful shade of the hotel marquee.
Sonny glanced at her as he walked by and pushed his way through the revolving doors. Following the directions he’d received on the telephone, he walked past the Palm Court and to the left, and then went straight ahead and up a flight of carpeted steps to the mezzanine level, following the signs to the Terrace Room. His appointment was with a woman named Karin Lubenthal in the Catering Department. He had told her on the phone that he wished to make reception and banquet arrangements for his sister’s wedding next June.
The wooden sign was painted white, edged with gold, trimmed with a double scallop at all four corners, and fastened to the wall with a pair of brass fleurettes. It read:
The receptionist just beyond the door was a woman in her late twenties, wearing a wispy red summer dress, her dark hair cut in bangs on her forehead. A laminated identification tag was clipped prominently to the sash of the dress.
“I’m Mr. Morris,” he said. “I have a one-thirty appointment with Miss Lubenthal.”
“Yes, sir, please have a seat,” the woman said. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”
He sat in an upholstered straight-backed chair on the wall perpendicular to the desk. There were several brochures on the table beside the chair. One of them was titled Wedding, Plaza Style. It showed on its all-pink cover a bride all in white. The other was larger — some six by twelve inches, he reckoned — and was simply titled The Plaza, in elegant gold script lettering against a background that looked like marble. He was opening the first brochure when the receptionist said, “She’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”
“Thank you,” he said, and then, conversationally, “Do you all wear those tags?”
“Pardon?” she said.
“The ID tag. It is an ID tag, isn’t it?”
“Oh. Yes, sir. All hotel employees are required to wear them.”
“Why’s that?” he said, studying the tag more closely now.
“Well, for security,” she said. “We don’t want unauthorized people wandering around the halls.”
“I would guess not.”
“For security, that’s all,” she said, and shrugged.
A redheaded woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties came down the corridor, stopped several feet from where Sonny was sitting, smiled, and said, “Mr. Morris?”
He stood up at once and extended his hand.
“Yes,” he said. “How do you do?”
“Karin Lubenthal,” she said, and took his hand.
“Where’s your tag?” he asked.
“What?” she said, puzzled.
“Your ID tag.”
“Oh. In my desk drawer,” she said, still puzzled.
“Only checking,” he said, and smiled.
“I just finished telling him we all have to wear them,” the receptionist said.
“Well, don’t report me,” Karin said, and winked at her. “Won’t you come with me?” she asked Sonny, and then led him down a carpeted corridor to the office’s inner recesses. She was wearing a pleated white skirt and a navy blue blazer. She looked altogether nautical, and quite patriotic if you counted her red hair.
“So your sister’s getting married,” she said.
“Yes. You may think it unusual...”
“Not at all.”
“... for me to be handling the arrangements...”
“No, we get different members of the family all the time.”
“Both my parents are dead, you see.”
“I’m so sorry.”
They were passing conference spaces, or consultation spaces, he didn’t know quite what to call them, they certainly weren’t offices per se. Merely spaces partitioned one from the other...
“They died a long time ago,” he said. “I virtually raised my sister, which is why I’m here today.”
“Not at all unusual, won’t you come in, please?” she said, and smiled, and indicated one of the partitioned spaces, in which there was a desk and several chairs. She sat in the chair behind the desk. He took one of the chairs in front of it.
“First,” she said, “let me give you my card. People sometimes have trouble spelling the last name.”
“Thank you,” he said, and accepted the card, and glanced at it. Looking up again, he said, “Just the way it sounds,” and then took out his wallet and tucked the card into it.
She waited till he’d put the wallet back in his pocket, and then she asked, “Has your sister chosen an exact date yet?”
“No. It’ll be next June sometime, but... oh my,” he said. “Are we already too late?”
“No, no,” she said. “We sometimes get people who book two years in advance, but there’s still time, please don’t worry.”
“Phew,” he said, and smiled.
“How large a party will this be?” she asked.
“The exact figure isn’t set yet,” he said. “I expect somewhere between a hundred and a hundred fifty people.”
“I see you have both our brochures,” she said.
“Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to...”
“If you’ll open the back cover of the larger one... yes... and just flip back the flap there... that’s it... you’ll see a page with some floor plans on it...”
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“... and below them, a chart.”
“Yes.”
“If you’ll look at the floor plan...”
Sonny looked at it.
“... in the upper right-hand corner there,” Karin said, “just above the Grand Ballroom — I don’t think you’d want the Grand Ballroom, would you? It’s much too large for something like this.”
“I quite agree.”
“But the Baroque Room is very popular for wedding receptions. Do you see it on the plan there?”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“I’ll show you the room itself later on, of course,” she said. “That, and also the Terrace Room. You passed through the Terrace Foyer on the way in...”
“Yes...”
“... which is right here on the mezzanine floor, and also very popular for wedding receptions. Do you see the floor plan there? Just under the plans for all the other rooms? It’s separated from the others because they’re all on the first floor.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“Now if you take a look at the chart...”
“Yes.”
“Right there below the floor plans...”
“Yes,” Sonny said, and looked at the chart.
“You’ll see that the Baroque Room is almost twice the size of the Terrace Room — a bit more than forty-four hundred square feet as opposed to twenty-four hundred.”
“Yes. Sixty-three by seventy...”
“As opposed to sixty by forty.”