Duffy pushes the stroller toward the desk and the husband jogs over after he finishes loading all the crap onto the luggage trolley that Zeke is holding steady.
“I thought you were in…I don’t know…St. Tropez or something, living on some rich guy’s yacht.”
That was the plan, Alessandra thinks. “I lived in Europe forever,” Alessandra says. “Italy most recently, but also Spain and Monaco.”
“Honey?” Duffy says to the husband. “This is Ali Powell, my BFF from high school.”
Zeke is lingering over by the door with the trolley, listening to every word, Alessandra can tell. If Zeke tells Adam that she used to go by Ali, she’ll never hear the end of it.
The husband reaches across the desk to give Alessandra a strong Silicon Valley handshake with intentional eye contact. “Jamie Chung,” he says. “Nice to meet you, Ali.”
Alessandra, she thinks, but she can’t bear to correct him, because she doesn’t want to seem pretentious. “I’ll be checking you in,” Alessandra says. “I’ll just need an ID and a credit card.”
Jamie Chung slides a California driver’s license and a purple Reserve American Express card across the desk. “So you know Duff from high school?”
Duffy swats him. “We were best friends!” she says. “We were inseparable. Ali practically lived at my house. She was the one who held my hair that time I got so drunk on tequila—”
“Aha!” Jamie says. “You’re the reason my wife can’t drink margaritas.”
I didn’t give her the tequila, Alessandra thinks. I held her hair! But again, she keeps quiet.
“My parents loved Ali, my mother especially.” Duffy lowers her voice. “She used to talk about adopting you. She wanted to give you a nice normal home.”
Alessandra won’t take the bait, won’t mention that she had both a mother and a home, and she won’t give in to her rogue impulse to lean across the desk and say to Jamie in a stage whisper, I had an affair with Duffy’s father the spring of our senior year.
Instead, Alessandra says, “I’m going to comp your first night.”
“Oh my God, thank you!” Duffy says. “Aren’t you just the summer Santa!”
Ho-ho-ho! Alessandra thinks. “I never got you guys a wedding present, so…”
Duffy’s brow wrinkles. “You didn’t?”
Alessandra shakes her head. Of course Duffy wouldn’t keep track of things like wedding presents; she might not even have set up a registry, she might have just asked guests to donate to Rosalie House. Though from the looks of her diamond ring, the whopper diamond studs in her ears, and her Cartier tank watch （probably a push present—oh, how Alessandra loathes this term）， she might be more materialistic now than she was then.
“How about upgrading us to a suite as well?” Jamie asks. “If you have one available?”
They have seven suites available but Alessandra is so taken aback by Jamie’s brazen request—it’s a Taser to her sensibilities—that she says, “It looks like the suites are all spoken for.”
“It’s just, with the baby…” Jamie says.
“This is Cabot!” Duffy says, pulling a cherubic little baby in a sailor suit from the stroller.
Cabot Chung, Alessandra thinks. He’s a beautiful kid, at that most photogenic age for babies—what is that, six months, seven? Alessandra waggles her fingers at him. She’s so unmaternal that this feels campy, but she goes all in with her gushing while inwardly she fumes. She offered Jamie and Duffy a free night but Jamie asked for more, so it feels like she hasn’t given them anything at all.
She makes a show of tapping on her keyboard. “I’m going to work some magic and slide you into a suite after all,” she says. “I’ll have Zeke set up a crib and babyproof the room.”
“Thank you!” Duffy says. “You’re amazing! Can we take you to dinner one night while we’re here so we can catch up?”
Alessandra peeks at her phone; there are two texts from a number she knows is Dr. Romano.
“I’m tied up all three evenings that you’re here,” she says. She activates the keys for suite 216 and slides them across the desk. “But I’m sure we’ll find time to chat.”
“I can’t wait to text my parents and tell them I saw you,” Duffy says. “They won’t believe it!”
“Please give them my best,” Alessandra says.