“Yes! Keep your nose down and do your job.”
“Okay,” Taylor says, rather reluctantly, swallowing all the questions she has. How many members are there? What is this place really about? Are there rituals? Will they somehow know if she talks to Sam about things? Does she even want to talk to Sam about things?
And then there are the questions she should be asking herself: Whatexactlyis she doing here? What are her goals? To make money, rub elbows with the wealthy? Find out more about what happened to Vivian? Hopefully stumble across her mom’s footprints?
Taylor feels a sudden silly determination to leave a mark here; to become a part of the place, to be distinct and necessary and special; not simply another Tara filtering in and out of the Knox’s doors.
She continues her wine inventory, escaping at one point to use the bathroom, which is located at the end of the hall. She takes her time walking past the restaurant’s wide, open double doors. Liam is pouring a glass of wine behind the backlit bar as classical music softly plays overhead. Could this be where the photo of Taylor’s mom at the bar was taken? Her eyes sweep the room. Well-dressed men and women sit at crisp, white-linen tables. The women all sport perfect blowouts, their manicured hands aglitter in diamonds. Funny enough, the women’s designer handbags rest upon their own designated seats as if they, too, are dining. While Taylor’s not sure if her mom’s photo was snapped here, shedecides that Vivian very well could have been a member. How could shenothave been, looking the way she did? And with that cache of designer handbags? Taylor can just picture Vivian perched at one of those tables, eating a salad alongside a Chanel purse.
Later that night, Taylor googles some of the wines whose names she remembers. There’s a $330 Gaja Barbaresco, and a limited-edition pinot noir that costs ten times that.Whoa.At her dad’s restaurant, she used to consider the $11 flagship margarita pricey.
She picks up her mom’s photo, unsuccessfully searching for clues that could match it to the decor in the Knox restaurant, when she’s interrupted by a knock at the door.
“First day commemoration drink?” Sam asks. Taylor follows him back to his apartment—his couch is bigger and more comfortable—and he uncorks a bottle of wine.
“A client gave it to me,” he says, as he pours into a coffee mug. “It looks good. It’s like a fifty-dollar bottle.”
As they clink mugs, all she can think about is how the wines at the Knox probably cost at least $50 aglass.
Over the next few days, Taylor is given more tasks. One day she completes a list of errands that keeps her out of the building nearly all day: bringing kitchen knives to get sharpened at Blackstone’s, dropping off a navy silk tablecloth at Anton’s Cleaners, purchasing George Howell coffee at its Downtown Crossing location, picking up vibrant bouquets at Rouvalis flower shop. Most of the errands seem specific to the building, though she’s also sent to Gucci to pick up a rather gaudy logo belt for someone named “Oliver,” to Townhouse Beauty Bar to purchase Marvis toothpaste, to the Beacon Hill Hotel to collect a Brioni shirt amember apparently left behind in the room, and to the vet to grab a prescription for the resident house cat (a Siamese whose name, she learns, is China). Another day Rose has her polish all the sterling silver trays in the beautiful parlor.
“Should I take off my shoes?” Taylor asks Rose, before she enters the room.
“No,” Rose replies, but Taylor can tell the question takes Rose pleasantly by surprise.
She wonders:Was Jerry’s sister Tara required to complete similar tasks? And if so, why would she have quit?Because so far, in Taylor’s view, the job seems pretty darn cushy.
She is allotted a key for the back door, so every morning she lets herself in and scurries down the hall to find Rose and await the day’s instruction. One rainy morning she nearly runs into Jerry and Eduardo, coming from seemingly out of the shadows. They are wearing the uniform she will adopt, once she’s allowed to officially start waitressing: a crisp white button-down shirt and black trousers, or, in her case, a black skirt.
“The servants’ quarters connect to the Knox building in the basement,” Eduardo explains, “so we just go down and up. No need to step outside at all on a crummy day like today.”
She adds this fact to her growing checklist of egress routes.
But not everyone lives next door. There’s a cadre of silent, near-invisible ancillary workers—cleaners and kitchen staff—whom Taylor never interacts with; they are there and then they are gone, just like the food they make and then the messes they clean up.
There’s so much she wants to know, but she tries not to ask too many questions. The place is an enigma—the building much bigger and deeper than it looks from the outside. It feels like a magical labyrinth, always changing beneath her feet. There are two sets of staircases. Two kitchens: the main one, and then theone upstairs, adjacent to Canton’s Restaurant. An inner, enclosed courtyard she still can’t figure out how to get to. Many doors that remain closed. Five floors—allegedly, though it’s hard to grasp that fact when looking at the building from the street. Taylor’s briefly seen the secret library Liam mentioned, and a couple of the scrolls, which are enclosed in glass displays she’s afraid to even breathe on, lest she sets off some alarm. How many more scrolls are there, and what is written on them?
Her working hours seem as ill-defined as the house and her current position. It’s generally understood she should show up at some point in the morning—eight o’clock is too early, ten too late. Evening cocktails in that beautiful parlor are apparently common, though Taylor has yet to witness that. Rose excuses her most days by late afternoon.
“They give you a long leash here,” Taylor notes one day to Jerry.
“Yeah, well, they do until they don’t,” he dryly replies.
Judging by the perturbed look on his face, Taylor wonders if he’s talking about the sister-who-shall-not-be-named. Although Tara quit—she wasn’t fired, right?
There’s a relaxed atmosphere; it’s not frenetic in the slightest. Is this because the senior members are away? Taylor enjoys having time to sip her morning coffee in the Knox’s main kitchen, to be able to even wait for the coffee to brew. The only time she hurries is by choice—down that dank, dark hall of the back entrance. The Knox oozes a casual sophistication, reminding Taylor of the art of nonchalance that celebrities perfect when snapped strolling around sunny Los Angeles with a Starbucks in their hand. The rich, it seems, do not rush.
It’s completely different from working in the hospital.
So maybe Taylor doesn’t need to rush, either. She hasn’t uncovered anything remotely related to Vivian, hasn’t found anytraces of her mom, but she hasn’t done much digging, either. The more immersed she becomes in the Knox with each passing day, the further away her time at the hospital seems. She’s looking forward to receiving her first paycheck, and she has to say, she doesn’t miss nursing at all. More and more, it feels as if it would be okay to simply close that chapter of her life.
She loves walking through the Knox’s expensive art-clad halls. She loves feeling the textures of the fabrics and furniture in the parlor room. She loves handling the superexpensive wine, even though she’s half terrified of dropping it. She loves feeling like she’s finally seeing the Boston that she always pictured in her head. The Boston to which Vivian belonged.
The Boston to which she, Taylor, now belongs.
The Knox
The society has hired a replacement for Tara: Taylor. Rose appears to have taken a shine to her, so I suppose she’sfine. Too commonplace for my standards, of course, but aren’t they all. She wears those recycled garments I can spot a room away. And oh dear, there was that wretched fake Rolex she wore to the interview—a tragic misstep. Mercifully, she had the good sense to ditch it.
