Chapter 25: The Reopening

For nearly a month the Lakeshore Tower had run half dark.

Two floors of rooms were closed, the restaurant had been boarded up, and the ballroom sat under dust sheets.

On Monday at noon it opened all at once.

I stood in the lobby on the marble in the black turtleneck and a charcoal coat.

I did not have to say one word to the people who ran it.

The housekeepers had pressed the carpets.

The cooks had been in the kitchen since four.

The bellmen stood in a row with the brass luggage carts polished until they looked wet.

Three hundred guests came through the revolving door.

They were the same people who had applauded on the roof, in daylight now, in wool coats, holding the cream invitations I had signed myself.

Nobody could look at me directly.

Everyone wanted to.

"Welcome back," the night doorman said to each of them, holding the door. "Welcome back."

He was not wearing the Gaines livery.

Sixty people had voted on new jackets, and they had picked dark green.

The cooks said it was the color of their old aprons.

At twelve-ten I climbed the steps of the reception desk and took a pair of kitchen shears from the pastry cook.

"Larkspur Partners owns the note on this building," I said. "It does not run it. These people do."

I held the shears out to the housekeeper who had read her layoff email aloud in the ballroom.

She took them in both hands.

She looked at the long gold ribbon across the restaurant doors, and then at me.

A tear ran straight down her face, and she did not wipe it.

"I'd rather you did it, ma'am," she said.

"It's yours."

She cut the ribbon.

The room clapped, truly clapped, for twenty seconds, and the cooks shouted from the back.

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