Free The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert Page A

thing left to do, after having introduced each of us individually to Habitation Louvois, was to introduce us to one another. And this he accomplished by convincing her to take me on as the manager of her new estate.
    * * *
    Even though M. Guinee’s fever was now weeks behind him, traces of it remained—in the grayish pallor around his eyes, and in the way the red jacket with the Erdrich crest slipped slightly from his reduced shoulders. He was more easily winded now, as he made his rounds, his pace much slower, and I felt as though he were following me, rather than I him. When he had finally delivered the last of the manager’s orders, we sat for a few minutes in a corner of the kitchen, where M. Guinee could safely rest, out of sight of his superior. Without his having to ask, one of the cooks brought him a cup of coffee.
    â€œIt’s been this crazy for months.” As M. Guinee raised the cup to his lips I noticed his hand twitching slightly; the coffee rose to the rim and a few drops slipped away.
    M. Guinee saw where I was looking and quickly lowered the cup, causing it to clatter and spill upon the table.
    â€œThere’s no end to what these people need,” he continued, nodding in what I supposed was the direction of the club room, where the international press corps was at the moment gathered, adding still more drinks to their expense-account bar tabs.
    â€œDo they drink this much at home?” he said. “Or is it something we drive them to?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    M. Guinee batted away his own question, indicating his lack of interest in an answer. “We had to buy more pillows,” he added. “Every one of them needs at least two pillows. What do they use them for? How many heads do they think they have? It’s the same with towels. I’ve never seen anything like it. They go through three or four of them a day. How wet can a person get?” All of this he said with a smile, but the smile failed to hide the true depths of his fatigue.
    â€œIt’s time,” he said, letting out a sigh as he slowly rose to his feet. “Let’s not keep Mme Freeman waiting.”
    M me Freeman and her lawyers had needed a week to complete the sale for Habitation Louvois. It turned out the estate was owned by a family for whom M. Guinee had once worked. M. Guinee had never actually worked there himself; by the time he came to know of it, the place had been uninhabited for years. But he had gone there once with his employer to remove a few pieces of furniture that had been left behind. His reaction upon seeing the place, M. Guinee said, had been virtually identical to mine. So moved was he by the experience that he had risked his job—and who knows what more severe punishment—by stealing the key to the gate. It was an indication of the disinterest with which his employer regarded the property that he never noticed that the key was missing.
    In the two decades that had passed since, M. Guinee had tried to visit Habitation Louvois at least once a year. But since coming to work at the Hotel Erdrich he had found it difficult to get away. When he decided to take me, nearly ten years had passed since he had been there last.
    â€œIf you kept it a secret all those years,” I asked that same day I received his note, “why did you suddenly decide to tell someone?”
    â€œIt wasn’t sudden,” he said. “I’d given it a great deal of thought.” We were in his room, and he had gone over to the small table by his bed and opened its one small drawer, picking through the few objects inside until he found what he was looking for. He held the key out to me, saying, “There’s very little I can pass down.”
    â€œMaybe you should give it back to its rightful owner.”
    â€œI’ve decided,” M. Guinee said, pressing the key into my palm, “that you are its rightful owner.”
    â€œBut why?”