The Orville: Sympathy for the Devil

PROLOGUE
Orville: Sympathy for the Devil

The hotel was as luxurious as any high-end lodging that New York City had to offer. Founded by John Jacob Astor IV just a decade before, the nineteen-story French Beaux-Arts construct had, however, been somewhat controversial. It was built on Fifth Avenue, directly across from the opulent homes of the Vanderbilt family, which were doomed to be dwarfed by the towering height of the St. Regis. The Vanderbilts, along with a handful of other fabulously wealthy landowners, immediately set out to crush the project by any means possible: lawsuits alleging disturbance of the peace due to the blasting required for excavation, accusations of inadequate fireproofing, and even the suggestion that the hotel was in violation of early twentieth century libation laws, which forbade the holding of a liquor license by any establishment within two hundred feet of a church. All attempts failed. The 5.5-million-dollar hotel opened to great fanfare on September 4, 1904. As the years passed, its prestige and popularity only grew more robust, and soon it had become a staple destination for convenience and comfort among business travelers and pleasure-seeking vacationers alike.

On this particular day, the opulent lobby crackled with energy, as guests and travelers hurried to and fro, bathed in the light of the elegant overhead chandeliers that as yet showed little tarnish. A calendar hung on the wall behind the front desk, displaying an intricate etching of well-to-do city dwellers strolling the paths of Central Park, beneath bold block type: APRIL 1914.

The clerk smiled as he offered a fountain pen to the man standing on the other side of the desk. “It’s wonderful to have you with us again, Mr. Beechcroft. I hope you and your family have been in good health.”

The well-heeled gentleman beamed with a prideful glow as he regarded his smartly dressed, freshly-scrubbed-looking wife, son, and daughter. “Please,” he said with a rich but gentle baritone, “the pleasure is all ours. At this point, I wouldn’t dream of staying anywhere else in the city.”

“Even if he wanted to, I wouldn’t let him,” his wife chimed in.

Mr. Beechcroft took his cue. “Now you know who runs the household.” A warm chuckle rippled through the group: patrons and manager enjoying an easy, benign familiarity.

“Don’t worry,” said the clerk, with a playful wink to Mrs. Beechcroft. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“We stayed at the Plaza two years ago just to sample something new, and I must say, we—”

A wave of murmurs interrupted the man’s frivolous entry into the frivolous exchange. Everyone turned at the sound of the commotion. In the entryway, a frantic, desperate-looking woman pushed past an indignant bellman, half running, half stumbling toward the reception area. Her apparel suggested generous wealth, with a fitted, high-waisted dress trimmed with frothy passementerie, elbow-length sleeves and long gloves, topped with a large hat featuring a deep crown.

No one was paying any attention to her finery. What caught the crowd’s interest was the bundle she held in her arms.

It was an infant.

Swaddled in soft pale-lavender fabric, the child flitted his gaze about with the combined mixture of curiosity and fear that all newborn babies seem to exhibit. There was, however, no confusion about the mother’s expression: terror. She moved to the center of the grand lobby, her eyes darting about with visible panic. She quickly scanned the bevy of nonplussed patrons, evidently searching for something, or someone . . . so it seemed. At last, she set her manic sights on the clerk behind the front desk, and barreled toward him. The clerk and the surrounding onlookers all reacted with expressions of stunned surprise as she attempted to deposit the child into his arms.

“Please!” she cried, hands trembling, eyes wet. “Take my baby!”

“Excuse me?” The clerk tried to resist the forced offering, gently pushing back, but the woman was implacable.

“Please, take him! Keep him safe!”

“Ma’am, who are you?”

“Please, I’m begging you!” Fiercely persistent, the woman pushed the infant across the countertop so that the clerk had no choice but to receive it.

“Ma’am, can you please tell me what’s—”

But the woman ignored him. Her green eyes blazed like emeralds as she brushed quivering fingertips against her baby’s cheek. “I love you,” she said with a heated whisper. “With all my heart. And I’ll come back for you. Do you hear me? I’ll come back.”

The clerk now spoke with a more firm tone. “I need you to tell me what’s going on—”

“Take care of him.” What should have been a desperate plea in fact sounded more like a barked order. Her fiery gaze implied that, should the clerk falter in his new and unsolicited role as the boy’s caretaker, there would be dire consequences. For now, however, she allowed herself one last longing glance at her abandoned offspring, her mind doing its utmost to take and preserve a permanent, cleareyed snapshot despite the emotional fog of the moment.

And then at last, bringing a cool burst of air gusting in through the gilded front doors, she was gone. “She didn’t even tell me what his name is,” said the clerk, still cradling the infant in his arms. The child was now blissfully slumbering, completely unaware of the drama unfolding around him in the small, cramped office. The incommodious, utilitarian room shared few features with the resplendent lobby mere steps away. Three other members of the St. Regis’s staff hovered over the sleeping baby, expressions of concern and curiosity etched on their faces.

“Maybe he hasn’t got a name,” said the concierge. “

Harry, what am I supposed to do with him?” said the clerk.

“There’s no way I can keep him. My mother is still sick, and I can barely take care of her.”

“There’s always the orphanage,” offered the bellman.

The maid grunted out a guttural blat of derision. “You can’t leave him there. Have you ever seen the insides of those places? They’re rat-infested prisons is what they are. He’d be better off if you just dumped him on the street.” Then, a flicker of inspiration ignited in her eyes. “Wait a minute,” she said. “What about the Vogels?”

The bellman raised an eyebrow as he lit up a cigarette. “Well now, there’s an inspired idea.”

The concierge appeared left out. “Who are the Vogels?”

“They’re the couple staying in 1207,” answered the bellman. “They’re in from Berlin, and they, ah . . .” He paused and glanced at the maid. She dutifully took the baton:

“One of the girls overheard Mrs. Vogel and her husband talking last week. They . . . recently lost a baby.”

“Oh my goodness,” uttered the clerk. “That’s horrible. How?”

“Typhoid.”

“Oh, Lord. Those poor, poor people.”

“I wonder . . .” mused the maid, “I wonder if we should ask them.”

The concierge, who had been leaning casually on the edge of the accounting desk, suddenly rose to his full height. “That,” he warned, “is not a wise notion.”

“Why not?” said the maid, whirling to face him.

“If you do that, you’re admitting to eavesdropping. I know you’re trying to help, but if they take it the wrong way, you could lose your job.”

The maid appeared undeterred. “I’m willing to take the gamble.”

“So am I,” said the clerk.

# # #

The gamble turned out to be a good one. Thus, the maid and the clerk stood back and smiled with the beaming aspect of a team of carpenters or painters immediately following the completion of time-consuming work. The Vogels were an unassuming but kindly-looking couple who appeared to be in their mid-thirties. Gunter and Ilse Vogel, he with sandy brown hair and a plump physique, she with a lighter shade and a trimmer figure, sat close to each other on the flowered sofa, gazing down at the stirring child whom she now held. Ilse’s eyes sparkled with fresh tears as she spoke in heavily accented but nonetheless fairly fluent English.

“He is so very beautiful,” she cooed. “The most precious child in the world. It has been such a long time waiting for this day. Whoever may doubt that the Lord hears all prayers . . . should only look into the eyes of this miracle.”

Gunter appeared to suddenly remember that he and his wife were not alone in the suite. He glanced up at his benefactors. “What you have done for us . . . it will be impossible to repay. How can we ever thank you for this?”

“Don’t thank us.” The clerk smiled. “You said it yourself. God has blessed you. Thank Him.”

“The boy came to us with no name,” the maid chimed in. “Not that it’s our business, but I’d love to know . . . do you have any thoughts at all about what you might call him?”

Gunter and Ilse Vogel exchanged a pair of resolved grins. “We decided long ago,” he shared, “that if we ever had a boy, we would name him Otto. After my father.”

“I wish he were alive now,” said Ilse. “To see for himself. He would be so proud to share his name with you . . . Otto.” The infant’s eyes fixated quizzically on his new mother as she spoke. “He will have the best life we can give him. He will be educated and cared for, but most of all, he will be loved. And he will grow up to be a good man. God bless Otto.”

“God bless Otto,” said Gunter.