Chapter 42: Panic at the Plaza

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The skyline of New York City looked strangely somber from the plane, missing its iconic Twin Towers. It had been twelve years since Rachel had last stayed at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Knowing this concert would likely be the last she'd perform in before giving birth, she figured it was worth the splurge. In a strange turn of events, Fletcher had to stay behind at Pentecost Manor with an unfortunate case of the stomach flu, but Laura Pentecost had volunteered to come along in his place. Rachel found the young woman's sudden interest in seeing her perform to be suspicious, but after her promises to Pettigrew to be on her best behavior, Rachel kept quiet. Because Laura would be coming along for the trip, Fitzgerald came too, and Tony stayed behind with Fletcher.

At just sixty degrees, it was unseasonably cool for the week before Labor Day when they arrived in NYC. After checking in, Rachel had wanted to do some shopping in the city. It was a real bummer that Laura Pentecost was the only shopping buddy she had to choose from on this trip. It was a good thing Pettigrew and Fitzgerald were friends, because they had no opposition to trailing along through Bloomingdales with the two women.

"Are you wearing the same dress you wore to the last concert in Chicago?" Laura asked casually as she sifted through hangers of colored silk blouses.

Rachel squinted at her over the fixture. "That's generally how these shows work."

Laura shrugged innocently. "I was just curious."

"You weren't even at the concert in Chicago," Rachel reminded her as she walked over to the next fixture.

"No, but I heard about it," Laura said carefully, following Rachel's steps. "The critics raved about you."

Rachel smiled smugly to herself. "Of course they did. I knocked it out of the park at that show."

Laura cleared her throat. "Well, I think the press goes a little easier on a woman when she's pregnant."

Rachel glared at the woman between two ivory trench coats hanging on the rack. "How would you know?"

"Oh, I wouldn't, but my mother would."

Rachel let out a bitter laugh. "You know, I really wish you and Mommy Dearest would stop meddling in my personal affairs."

"You are living under our roof, Rachel."

"That wasn't my choice."

"It wasn't mine either," Laura said before allowing her voice to soften, "and I know we got off on the wrong foot, but maybe we could put that all behind us?"

Laura's attempt at sincerity was somewhat pathetic, and Rachel felt she could read right through it.

"Look, I don't know what caused this sudden interest in getting to know me better or sucking up to me, or whatever it is you're trying to do," Rachel said skeptically, "but if you think being seen in public with me and pretending we're besties will help improve your image and get you more attention, I'm not gonna play along with your bullshit narrative."

Laura shook her head with a weak smile. "I'm not trying to improve my image. The critics hate me no matter what I do. I'm not stupid enough to try to change their minds."

For a second, Rachel felt bad for her. She remembered what it was like to be caught up in that ruthless, cutthroat world of an early career in Hollywood. As irritating as Rachel found Laura Pentecost to be, she wasn't as bad as she could have been considering her upbringing.

"I'm sure it's tough," Rachel said curtly, "having everyone compare you to your mom."

Laura looked over in surprise. "Yeah, it blows."

Rachel snorted irreverently. "I don't have parents, so I can't help you there."

Laura's face was stony as she said in a careful voice, "I know you wouldn't let the same thing happen to your daughter one day."

It was the first time such a thought crossed Rachel's mind.

And she was sure it would keep her up that night.

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Back at the hotel room after lunch, Rachel found herself sitting on the chaise by the windows, attempting to remove the nail polish from her fingernails while singing along to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean."

"Aubergine is not my color . . ."

Frank and Scott looked over at her in annoyed amusement.

"What?"

"Maybe you should save your singing voice for the show," Scott suggested with a smirk.

"We don't like this color anymore," Rachel said as she roughly swiped another cotton ball over her pinky finger.

"We?"

"Yeah, me and little poppyseed," Rachel said with a pat on her belly.

Scott shook his head. "Yesterday it was sugar cube, now it's poppyseed."

"Frank doesn't like the name Arelzia."

"It sounds like a migraine medication!" Frank defended, looking imploringly at Scott.

Rachel gave an exaggerated sigh. "Well, we want to figure out a nice name, we just have to find one that Daddy likes, too."

Scott rolled his eyes as he picked up the room service menu. "You want to order dinner here, or do you want to eat out somewhere?"

Just then there was a knock on the door of the suite, which Scott answered. It was Laura.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"No, not at all," Frank waved nonchalantly toward the window. "Rachel was just taking that… stuff off her nails."

"Oh, that's actually perfect," Laura said brightly. "Rachel, do you want to come down to the salon and get your nails done with me?"

Both men stared expectantly at Rachel. Under the pressure, she agreed, but she instantly regretted it.

"I'll see you down there in ten minutes!" Laura smiled as she closed the door behind her.

"Boy, shopping really brings women together," Scott muttered to himself.

"I'm not her friend," Rachel said emphatically as she finished removing the polish from her left hand. "She just wants to use me for clout."

"What about dinner?" Scott asked, looking let down.

"It'll have to wait until I get my new nails," Rachel said, wiggling her fingers at him as she stepped out into the hallway. Scott exchanged glances with Frank before he reluctantly followed her.

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"So, I know the media has taken a sudden interest in you recently because of the pregnancy," Laura said casually to Rachel as she watched the manicurist file her nails, "but when you were just starting out, how did you rise so quickly into stardom?"

Rachel smirked over at Laura where she sat beside her. "Oh, you wanna know the secret to my success, is that it? Well, I will say this: I got a lot of places in Hollywood by being a bitch," Rachel laughed sardonically, "and it looks like you got that part down already."

Laura didn't look offended in the slightest. "My mom used the same method."

"And you see how prolific she is?" Rachel pointed out. "Look, I'll never say I regret becoming famous, but it's made things a lot more complicated for me the older I'm getting. I finally met a nice man, and I'd like to settle down, but I can't just live a normal life with him even if I tried."

Laura was quiet for some time as the manicurist rubbed lotion over her hands. When she finally spoke, her voice was uncertain. "You're going to marry him?"

"I don't know yet," Rachel said quickly. She looked suspiciously over at Laura. "Why so surprised?"

"I just always saw you as the type who never wanted to settle."

"I'm forty, Laura. People change."

The young woman looked incredibly guilty.

"What's the matter?" Rachel asked.

"My mom always told me to never get married."

"Can you blame her? She failed five times at it," Rachel snickered. "At a certain point you have to question whether she was the problem."

Laura looked down thoughtfully.

"Another piece of advice for navigating the Hollywood rat race," Rachel added lightly, "Don't let anyone else tell you what to do with your life. Not even your mother. If you want to date casually, date casually. If you want to get married, get married. And fuck everyone else."

Rachel thought she could see a small smile being held back on Laura's lips.

"I like that color for you," Laura said as the manicurist began to paint Rachel's nails with a deep turquoise polish.

"Frank will hate it," Rachel laughed. "But they're not his nails. They're mine."

Laura smirked.

}0{

Dinner with their entire group turned out to be surprisingly fun. Ironically, the presence of Laura Pentecost had not entirely ruined her trip, as Rachel had been expecting. Ricky was thrilled to show them around Little Italy, pointing out all of his favorite spots and lesser known tidbits about the area that only someone who worked in the city for years would know. At Rachel's insistence, Pettigrew and Fitzgerald sat with them at their table, and they spent over two hours enjoying the offerings of Casa D'Angelo as a party of six.

Upon returning to her suite that night, Rachel found that a present had been left for her at the door.

"Läderach Chocolatier, wow!" Rachel exclaimed with a happy shimmy as she tore open the wrapping on the box of chocolates.

"What is that?" Frank asked suspiciously as he looked over her shoulder.

"Must be from a fan," Rachel shrugged. She started to open the lid but Frank firmly snapped it back into place.

"We don't know who sent them," he said as he opened the door to their suite and nudged her inside.

"What?" Rachel turned around, hand on her hip. "You think they're poisoned?"

He gave the box a percipient once-over, checking all sides before tucking it under his arm. "Come on, Rachel, this was one of my rules when I worked for you. Never eat anything sent to you by an unknown fan," he recited lazily as he walked over to his dresser to shove the box inside.

Though she wasn't happy about it, Rachel knew he was right.

"Can I trust you not to touch that?" Frank asked, gesturing to the drawer where he'd hidden the box of chocolates as he headed back to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm just gonna go check the lobby."

Rachel narrowed her eyes. "By yourself?"

"Fitz is coming with me."

"That's Scott's job, Frank."

"Scott said he'd stay up here to keep an eye on the hall."

Rachel threw her arms up in the air. "Why don't you keep an eye on the hall, and Scott can go check the lobby?"

He adjusted his jacket as he stood by the door, unknowing of what to say.

"You don't trust him, do you?" Rachel guessed.

"It's not that I don't trust him," Frank said, strangely breathless. "It's that I can't sleep at night until I check these things for myself."

Rachel was quiet as she stared up at him, wondering if this ran deeper than what he was letting on. The thing was, she believed him. Both of them seemed to have trouble sleeping when they were traveling, and she knew they were kept awake at night by the same unlikely yet feasible scenarios.

"Okay," she consented, placing her hands on his chest to lean in for a kiss. "Don't stay out too long."

}0{

The first room Frank visited was Fitzgerald's. Having not registered his own guns with the hotel for the trip, Frank had to borrow pistols from either Fitzgerald or Pettigrew if he wanted to walk the lobby while armed.

"She's been asking me a lot of questions about you," Fitzgerald said in a low voice to Frank as they entered the elevator.

Frank slowly turned to stare at his friend. "Who?"

"Laura."

Frank shifted uncomfortably as he turned his attention to the control panel.

"Has she, uh, tried to corner you again since the first time?" Fitzgerald asked.

Frank shook his head. "No."

"I told her to leave you alone."

Frank glanced at him from the side. "She seems to be friendlier with Rachel now."

Fitzgerald's words were weighted with incertitude. "I didn't tell her to get closer to Rachel."

Frank flashed him a concerned look as the elevator doors opened.

"I'm keeping an eye on her, trust me," Fitzgerald assured him.

They walked the length of the grand lobby together, keeping a casual distance as they surveyed the crowd. The glitz and glamor of The Plaza was quite a sight to behold in the evening hours, as the elegant entryway was filled with bustling guests and uniformed staff, deliveries and tourists. Hundreds of unfamiliar faces, with unknown motives, and untold stories. Frank could practically feel the muscle strain behind his eyes from his obsessive observations.

"Do you ever feel like sometimes you could look at everyone in your life and justify a reason for why they'd be targeting you?" he asked Fitzgerald out of the blue, his voice notoriously calm despite the heaviness of his question.

"Not really…" Fitzgerald slowed his pace, staring intently at Frank as they came to a pause in the middle of the long, carpeted hall. "Are you …okay, Farmer?"

Frank hated hearing that question. It was even worse hearing it from another man. A stable, professional, unflappable man who seemed to have his life together. Frank instinctively straightened his posture, attempting to conquer the feeling of helplessness that had taken over him in that moment.

"It's just . . . making me crazy," he forced the words out flippantly before he started to walk in the opposite direction.

"What?"

"Just . . . everything. Having to travel for these fucking concerts. Having to tell her she can't eat a box of chocolates because they might be poisoned. Having to borrow your gun to come down here and walk around for twenty minutes just so I can sleep tonight."

He could feel the intensity of Fitzgerald's eyes on him as they continued walking through the hotel. The man was quiet for a long time before he finally said something.

"You're getting . . . help, aren't you?"

Frank never felt more fragile in his life. "Yeah," he whispered, feeling the tightness creep into his chest as he scanned every face that walked past.

"Frank?"

He finally met the man's gaze.

"Go back to the room. Stay with Rachel. Scott and I can handle this stuff."

His heart began to pound without a single shred of exertion. "I can't."

"Frank, go."

He felt in that moment that he was Rachel, and Fitzgerald was him. And it was 1992. And they were in the Fontainebleau in Miami. And all he wanted to do was make his own decisions. But the bodyguard wouldn't let him. And when he tried to close his eyes, he saw Nicki Marron's corpse lying on hardwood floor, and the face of Greg Portman staring at him from across a dark room, and the fire escape maps on the backs of the doors of every hotel room he'd ever stayed in, and the way Ronald Reagan smiled when he shook his hand for the first time, and the Twin Towers sinking down on the skyline as if their steel frames were made of silk…

With a short nod of acknowledgment, Frank stalked off in the other direction. As soon as he was alone in the elevator, he began to hyperventilate.

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Rachel woke up to the sound of Frank entering the suite. Though all sounds were muffled coming from the sitting room, she could tell he was pacing aimlessly around in there. She went in and out of sleep for a time, waiting for him to come into the bedroom. When he finally came in, she peeked through half-closed eyes to watch him remove his suit jacket and she noticed that he was armed. She couldn't bring herself to question it in her sleepy state, distracted as she was by the suspenders. What was wrong with this man that he insisted on dressing himself like it was 1930? She'd be damned if it wasn't sexy as hell, though. The promise of pleasure was palpable in the air, just from his presence alone.

She stirred under the sheets, drawing his attention as he continued to undress, and she couldn't tell if it was her imagination when his fingers trembled slightly on the buttons of his shirt. The pattern of his breathing was off, as if he had sprinted three times down the hall and back before entering their room. She narrowed her eyes in the dark room and lifted her head slightly to watch him fumble around with his pajamas for a few seconds before getting frustrated and throwing them onto the floor. Completely naked, he slipped under the sheets beside her and gathered her body desperately against his as if she were a life preserver in the ocean.

Normally, she would not have questioned such a gesture, assuming it to have been an erotic impulse of the moment. But that pattern of his breathing was not normal; she immediately sensed something was wrong.

"Are you okay?" she asked him hesitantly.

His voice barely sounded like his own. "I don't know."

She clutched his shoulders. "What happened down there?"

"Nothing." He practically had to choke out the word.

Rachel struggled to sit up with his added weight where he still clung to her, his fingers digging into her sides, breathing rapid and uneven.

"Jesus, Frank," she hissed in the darkness. "You're having a panic attack."

He protested weakly, "No, I'm not."

She switched the light on. "Like hell you aren't." She began to fiercely rub his arms in an attempt to calm him down.

"I don't know… how to make it… stop," he forced out the words between shudders, his eyes squeezed shut.

Rachel leaned down to kiss his forehead, her tears falling into his hair. "Just ride it out, baby. There's nothing else you need to do." She planned to stop kissing him after the first three kisses, but her brain seemed to have short-circuited, and she just kept kissing him over and over. "It'll be over soon. I'm right here. It'll be over before you know it."

Comforting Frank Farmer took every ounce of energy she had within her. Eventually his shudders ceased and his breathing evened out. When he finally opened his eyes to look up at her, he looked like he was waking up from a coma.

"Don't you dare try to hide that from me again," Rachel admonished, deep down knowing she had yet to listen to her own advice.

She figured he probably knew it, too.

}0{

The next morning they both looked rough.

If they'd been a married couple, Rachel figured, they would be looking like this pretty much every morning. Between the two of them, they'd likely only slept four hours total. She made the mistake of asking Frank if he had ever heard of 'Xanax' when they first woke up. He couldn't even summon the energy to look at her like she was crazy.

He stared out the window behind her, his blue-green eyes somehow sickly against his pale face. She was worried about him. It was a weird feeling to be genuinely worried about Frank Farmer. Rachel hated the feeling.

"Do you want me to order room service?"

He coughed and shook his head.

"You have to eat, Frank."

He turned away from her and placed his hand over his eyes.

She sighed heavily and lifted herself from the bed. "It's a good thing we don't have anything going on today. Maybe we can just focus on getting some rest."

She saw his reflection in the mirror as he removed his hand from his eyes and stared at her in confusion. "Isn't it your dress rehearsal today?" he asked in a hoarse voice.

"Oh, shit." Rachel chuckled emotionlessly to herself as she tossed her hair up into a bun. "Yeah, you're right. I forget everything these days, I swear." She moved to the dresser to select a bra. "About time I hired someone to manage my schedule, don't you think?"

If she hadn't just been conversing with him, she'd have sworn he was carved from stone. She walked over to the bedside again and leaned down to kiss his lips. He was cold. "Do you want to come in the bath with me?" she asked gently.

"No," he rasped, then cleared his throat. "I'll take a shower when you're done."

"Hot water, honey," she said, running her hand through his hair. "Okay?"

He closed his eyes and gave a noncommittal nod before burying his face in the pillow.

So this was what Herb Farmer had to deal with during the teenage years.

}0{

Frank asked to be left alone for that day. As much as Rachel hated to leave him in the bedroom by himself after seeing him in such a state, she had no reason to fight him on it. When Fitzgerald came to the suite to reclaim his firearms, Rachel pulled him aside to question him about Frank's behavior last night.

"He was pretty tense," Fitzgerald recalled, "but he gets like that sometimes."

Rachel's eyebrows knitted together. "Did he tell you anything that might have been bothering him?"

"He was saying some strange things. About how he thinks everyone is targeting him, or something along those lines. Paranoia." Fitzgerald's voice was a calm contrast to the seriousness of the topic. "I know that he's been in therapy for several years . . . I assume for PTSD?"

"Yeah." Rachel took a deep breath and nodded.

"He probably wouldn't like that we're talking about this, but I know he's been through some shit." Fitzgerald's stately face was strewn with sympathy. "I know you have, too."

Rachel nodded again, looking over her shoulder at the bedroom door. "We've started seeing a counselor together." She surprised herself by being so open.

Fitzgerald gave her a tight smile. "I think that's a good thing."

"I know my life is kind of a mess right now," she admitted shakily, "but I really want to try to keep things as stable as I can for him. And for myself."

"Your life isn't a mess, Rachel. Trust me, I've seen messier."

Rachel almost laughed. Being the bodyguard of Pentecost Manor must have been quite the circus. "You'll keep an eye on him for me, won't you?" she asked.

Fitzgerald nodded. "Of course." He shifted awkwardly for a moment as he opened the door to the hall. "Do you, uh, want me to keep these from him?"

He lifted the pistol. Her heart skipped a beat.

Slowly, she shook her head. "No," she whispered, meeting the man's eyes. "No, I think that might make things worse."

"Understood."

}0{

Rachel attended lunch with Scott in the hotel, using it as an opportunity to fill him in on the situation that had unfolded last night. She refused to leave the premises without Frank, and judging from the fact that the bedroom door had not opened even a crack since that morning, she would be stuck at the Plaza until dress rehearsal time.

She had judged too soon.

The second she arrived back at the suite after lunch, Rachel was shocked to see Frank fully dressed in his signature suit and tie, looking as if nothing had happened. She exchanged an uncertain glance with Scott before acknowledging his change of ensemble.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"I'm going to go downstairs and eat something," Frank said as if it were obvious.

"We just finished lunch," Rachel gestured to the door. "We would have brought you something back."

"It's alright," he shrugged her off, "I need to get out of this room anyway."

She didn't know whether to find his sudden casualness perturbing or comforting. His lips barely brushed her forehead with a swift kiss as he passed her on his way through the door.

Scott shook his head idly. "He's resilient."

"Can you go with him?"

"I doubt he wants me to."

"Just linger," Rachel insisted. "Please?"

Scott rolled his eyes as he put his suit jacket back on and moved out the door. "I guess it's what I do best."