"What's he doing here?" Pete Reese asked.
"He's come to take you away."
Reese looked up, startled. "What?"
Lara turned to the group. "Mr. Reese has been selling our lumber to another construction job. When he found out that I was checking the reports, he decided to tell me there was a problem."
"Wait a minute," Pete Reese said. "I...I...You have it wrong."
She turned to Conroy. "Would you please get him out of here?"
She turned to the others. "Now, let's discuss the opening of the hotel."
As the hotel grew nearer completion, the pressure became more intense. Lara was becoming impossible. She badgered everyone constantly. She made phone calls in the middle of the night.
"Howard, did you know the shipment of wallpaper hasn't arrived yet?"
"For God's sake, Lara, it's four o'clock in the morning."
"It's ninety days to the opening of the hotel. We can't open a hotel without wallpaper."
"I'll check it out in the morning."
"This is morning. Check it out now."
Lara's nervousness increased as the deadline grew closer. She met with Tom Scott, head of the advertising agency.
"Do you have small children, Mr. Scott?"
He looked at her in surprise. "No. Why?"
"Because I just went over the new advertising campaign and it seems to have been devised by a small retarded child. I can't believe that grown men sat down and thought up this junk."
Scott frowned. "If there's something about it that displeases you..."
"Everything about it displeases me," Lara said. "It lacks excitement. It's bland. It could be about any hotel anywhere. This isn't any hotel, Mr. Scott. This is the most beautiful, most modern hotel in New York. You make it sound like a cold, faceless building. It's a warm, exciting home. Let's spread the word. Do you think you can handle that?"
"I assure you we can handle it. We'll revise the campaign and in two weeks..."
"Monday," Lara said flatly. "I want to see the new campaign Monday."
The new ads went out in newspapers and magazines and billboards all over the country.
"I think the campaign turned out great," Tom Scott said. "You were right."
Lara looked at him and said quietly, "I don't want to be right. I want you to be right. That's what I pay you for."
She turned to Jerry Townsend, in charge of publicity.
"Have the invitations all been sent out?"
"Yes. We've gotten most of our replies already. Everybody's coming to the opening. It's going to be quite a party."
"It should be," Keller grumbled, "it's costing enough."
Lara grinned. "Stop being a banker. We 'll get a million dollars' worth of publicity. We're going to have dozens of celebrities there and..."
He held up his hand. "All right, all right."
Two weeks before the opening, everything seemed to be happening at once. The wallpaper had arrived and carpets were being installed; halls were being painted and pictures were being hung. Lara inspected every suite, accompanied by a staff of five.
She walked into one suite and said, "The drapes are wrong. Switch them with the suite next door."
In another suite, she tried the piano. "It's out of tune. Take care of it."
In a third suite the electric fireplace didn't work. "Fix it."
It seemed to the harried staff that Lara was trying to do everything herself. She was in the kitchen and in the laundry room and in the utility closets. She was everywhere, demanding, complaining, fixing.
The man whom she had hired to manage the hotel said, "Don't get so excited, Miss Cameron. At the opening of any hotel, little things always go wrong."
"Not in my hotels," Lara said. "Not in my hotels."
The day of the opening, Lara was up at 4:00 A.M., too nervous to sleep. She wanted desperately to talk to Paul Martin, but there was no way she could call him at that hour. She dressed and went for a walk.
Everything is going to be fine, she told herself. The reservation computer is going to be fixed. They'll get the third oven working. The lock on Suite Seven will be repaired. We'll find a replacement for the maids who quit yesterday. The air-conditioning unit in the penthouse will work...
At six o'clock that evening the invited guests began to arrive. A uniformed guard at each entrance to the hotel examined their invitations before admitting them. There was a mix of celebrities, famous athletes, and corporation executives. Lara had gone over the list carefully, eliminating the names of the freeloaders and the hangers-on.
She stood in the spacious lobby greeting the newcomers as they arrived. "I'm Lara Cameron. So nice of you to come...Please feel free to look around."
Lara took Keller aside. "Why isn't the mayor coming?"
"He's pretty busy, you know, and..."
"You mean he thinks I'm not important enough."
"One day he'll change his mind."
One of the mayor's assistants arrived.
"Thank you for coming," Lara said. "This is an honor for the hotel."
Lara kept looking nervously for Todd Grayson, the architectural critic for The New York Times, who had been invited. If he likes it, Lara thought, we have a winner.
Paul Martin arrived with his wife. It was the first time Lara had seen Mrs. Martin. She was an attractive, elegant-looking woman. Lara felt an unexpected pang of guilt.
Paul walked up to Lara. "Miss Cameron, I'm Paul Martin. This is my wife, Nina. Thank you for inviting us."
Lara gripped his hand a second longer than necessary. "I'm delighted that you're here. Please make yourself at home."