Later, he’s alone and out of toast, orange juice, cash that amounts to more than reasonable cab fare and also, potentially, one of his watches. This is what happens when you let strangers into your home when your words are plastic promises, and you hunger for only contortions of the flesh and a buzz in your ears. There is no maturity with age; you only learn, as Paul has, to choose partners who know exactly who you are. He thinks about work, and so he thinks about the Miskatonic and its Candle Lighters and shrouded parties. He decides to skip a shower, figuring that the hotel deserves his stink to freshen it up.
You don’t have your driver take you to get coffee if you want it made right. Before he leaves, Paul sticks his dad’s revolver into the front of his pants and tucks his shirt over it. It gives him more power than a pen and a job title, that’s for sure. According to Johan’s hushed updates, there has been a second killing. A former bellhop who didn’t speak much. It won’t be much longer before it’s in the papers “for our best interests,” as Johan put it. The guy who was killed lost his eyes and had a half-moon sliced into his head. When Paul slips on his sports jacket, he’s confident no one will notice the gun.
Like a true Providence native, Paul walks, minding the remnants of puke on the sidewalk, courtesy of the club across the street where Paul ends most nights. For a man twice divorced, there is nothing better than having an apartment a few skips and a hop away from a couple of the more lively joints in the city. Paul knows all of the owners. The only downfall is that this neighborhood makes it hard to sleep, with Paul’s thirst and arousal in constant need of maintenance. There was a period, six years ago, when he thought his diminishing drive to do anything besides play golf and eat apple pie meant he was getting old. Now, his appetite could rival any college boy’s in town.
Paul has to remember that working for assholes doesn’t make you the bad guy. If he had been elected mayor in a different world, then he would have owed big favors to all sorts of awful men with deep wallets, and he would, in some ways, have had to tolerate them. Just like he now has to tolerate Johan, who will get him something more than mayor, if only Paul could properly imagine what that might be and if only Johan would tell him that he is anything more than a lucky candidate for a once in a lifetime opportunity. The motherfucker’s tried to butter up Paul so much, it’s a miracle he can still walk without slipping and cracking his skull.
Half promises, half words, and half ideas. It’s going to be a cup of the icy black stuff for Paul today. No cream, no sugar, it’ll be bitter and nasty enough to wipe his thoughts clean.
Paul spots a familiar bum on Waterman Avenue outside the Bean Machine Café, “Namaste Nicky.” Paul bows to the Jesus-bearded homeless man wearing a Patriots-themed beanie. The same jacket he wears all winter is tied around his waist. It’s surprising to see that Nick’s arms are teaming with the promise of muscles.
“Poli Paul, what the fuck you doin’ to this city!” Namaste gives Paul a high five, and Paul’s comfortable with high fives; hell, he wishes they were the norm for all conduction of business. He’s known Namaste for some five years now, having met the guy right when he was about to begin funding his siege for the Rhode Island capitol. He doubts Namaste is the bum’s real last name, but that kind of ambition, to reinvent yourself, it’s something Paul can respect, at least as much as he can respect a man who slinks off to pump his veins full of melted morphine twice a day.
“Well, my friend, that’s all because you weren’t eligible to vote me in. I’m getting a coffee to wash the puke out of my mouth. Want one?”
Nicky’s already folded the paper sign he holds at the intersection into his jeans. He hides it when Paul comes around. While Nick doesn’t ask for money, he always seems to hang around just long enough for Paul to hand him a ten or twenty. He keeps meaning to buy a bottle of something nice and get drunk with Nick by the river. “How’s work?” Paul asks, and Nick’s green and yellowed grin tells him all he needs to know.
“Lot of people not showing up like they used to, which means more corners for me. Guess they walking down to Florida or something. Warwick, maybe.”
“Fuck Warwick. Who chooses that place over the city? And why would the other guys go south in the summer?” Paul asks. Nick’s talking about the other homeless men who occasionally come out of the woodwork. Half of them mix in so well with the visiting country bumpkins from twenty minutes out of town that people new to the city probably don’t even realize Providence has bums.
“Hey, Warwick has a lot more bakeries. I’m lucky if they throw out pizza here.”
As far as Paul knows, Nick’s lived in Rhode Island his whole life, and, given that they’re both pushing fifty, he often wonders how close their lives came to intersecting when they were growing up. Guy never went to school, but there’s a lot to learn from him. You have to be street smart if you never have a roof over your head. There is no real difference between the toll that shooting heroin and running a city takes on you, except maybe the quality of your teeth.
Walking into the café, Paul can feel the eyes of the girls at the counter fluttering at the contrast between him and Nick. When Paul goes to pay, Nick squeezes a hand past him and deposits some coins in a tip jar, grinning at the girls like he’s a dog with no bite.
Later, as a driver for the Miskatonic takes him to work, Paul tries to figure out what really fueled Nick’s smile, hovering over the sugary caramel macchiato Paul bought him. What’s Paul missing out on? When’s the last time that guy even got laid?
What makes conducting an interview interesting is that, for the first time in a long while, Paul feels like he’s the boss and he can control something. Also, he has only interviewed maybe half of the Miskatonic’s new employees in the past five months. Johan hired the rest, discreetly. All the drivers, custodians, kitchen staff, and various strangers disguised in the royal velvet attire of the Miskatonic report directly to Johan, and so Paul hardly knows their names. He doesn’t even get to pick the cook who makes his lunch.
Randal, the hotel’s bartender, who has been there for years, says the last manager of the Miskatonic was the quitting type. Whatever that means.
“New boy is waiting for ya.” Cassandra smiles at him while scanning a guest’s credit card. The guy, an Indian kid with big eyes, is standing by his office door. He straightens up when he sees Paul, and that fucking handshake is coming, from somebody inferior, no less.
The interviewee doesn’t have a sports jacket or tie, but hey, kids do it differently these days. They think they can impress you with what’s inside their head. “Hap Malik,” the kid says, and Paul takes that hand and squeezes it like a doorknob, applying more pressure than he should so that he feels less awkward. Kid’s got shifty eyes, probably wishes he were at the beach. When’s the last time Paul went to the beach? As he sits down at his desk, feeling the thrill of telling somebody to take a seat, Paul forgets he has his gun tucked into his pants until the everlasting moment when he has to reach over his shirt and adjust himself in plain view.
Paul will keep a steady face, but as far as he’s concerned, unless this guy’s a total lunatic, he has the job. Hap seems nervous, sweating lightly. Paul figures that, like any other college kid, Hap probably can’t wait to be somewhere else with a cold beer and a pretty girl.
Chapter 5: The Extinct Giant Sloth
The phone vibrates on the table, causing Hap’s glass of sweating water to ripple as if something earth shaking were approaching. There is nothing outwardly evil about the restaurant on Broadway with the black star save for its chicken wings, which have too much fat on them. He prefers them fried and crispy so that they crackle between his teeth. There are two locked back rooms just near the bathroom across from the table for two where he sits alone. Hap wonders why there is a need for locks.
One of the doors has a seven-pointed star with a dash in its center; each of its points leads to a half spiral of seven more circles descending in order from bi
ggest to smallest, forming a near psychedelic sphere. It would be more ominous if there weren’t about a hundred other semi celestial shapes scattered around the restaurant’s walls. The owners appear to be former Rhode Island School of Design students, and any association it has with the Miskatonic is probably nonsense.
Hap watches as the caller ID for “Mr. Jones—Boss” goes to the missed call notification screen, followed by a buzzing voicemail alert just as the waitress comes by and asks him if he’s all set. “I think I have a job,” he mutters. The waitress congratulates him hesitantly while his eyes remain fixed on his phone’s screen.
Congratulations indeed. He’s lucked out. He’s kidding himself if he thinks he’ll call Mr. Jones back, right? There is nothing worse than sounding awkward on a phone call; he’s blown off plenty of job offers in the past because of that alone. He’s sure he always aces the interviews, maintaining eye contact, offering a firm handshake and displaying an aptitude for answering bullshit questions, so that’s still good enough for him and his confidence. Almost deleting it, Hap raises his phone to his ear and the voicemail dashes all hopes of peace. Mr. Jones wants him to come in for training with Luke as soon as he can. Hap stares at his water and his soggy wings, wishing he could take comfort in the idea of getting drunk.
Instead, he pays his bill and wanders, retracing his footsteps along his and Tiff’s old street. He half wants to raise a middle finger to his and Tiff’s old apartment, especially to her roommates, but there were too many decent memories there.
Hap’s somewhat aimless wandering leads him to a place he should have visited six weeks ago: the abandoned house just before the busiest road on Federal Hill. With black windows and scratched and faded white shingles, it occupies a desolate lot between an apartment building and a valet parking lot for an Italian restaurant. The haunted house, that’s what Tiff and him used to call it.
On Halloween, Hap and Tiff would always make a point of admiring the swirling leaves that somehow added a wicked, spiritual essence to the house. At that time of year, you could count on finding at least a couple of jack o’lanterns carved, lit, and scattered among the weeds in front of the house. It’s as if the concerned denizens of the city felt a need to guide the lost spirits that inhabit the place. He and Tiff would always joke around, walking by it, imagining what might be crawling around behind those windows. About who, or what, might be watching them.
As weirded out by the place as she was, Tiff might as well have said, “If I ever disappear, this is where they’ve taken me.” At the time, Hap would have asked her “who,” and now he will find out soon, somehow. He slips through a scraggly gate, minding the glass from broken bottles sprinkled along the walkway. Kids have definitely broken in here before. Probably partied and scared their girlfriends, like inferior versions of him and Tiff. Or maybe this place is some kind of hellhole. Maybe there’s a witch inside, collecting young girls.
“Hey, buddy!”
Hap knows it’s a cop yelling at him before he even turns around. Past the front gate, he’s not even within five feet of the damn house. It’s like cops train their voices to that same gruff alpha male tone. Hap turns sheepishly back to the fence. Like a shark that’s silently snuck up on its prey from the deep, there’s a white Providence police car pulled onto the curb. Hap’s brother, Derek, told him about how these hick cops in their hometown pulled him over one time and asked him where he was hiding “the bombs.” Derek got the shit kicked out of him, and their parents didn’t know what to believe. Hap’s dad pressed charges, but it never seemed to go anywhere. The lesson learned and repeated over and over by everyone else with dark skin was that cops are not your friends.
“I, uh, thought I saw a dog trapped in there, howling at the window.” Hap is a concerned, confused citizen, jerking his thumb behind him as an attempted display of compassion.
“Oh boy, huh?” The cop in the driver’s seat turns to his partner. Some kind of coded exchange plays out between them, or at least that’s what it feels like. Whenever Hap thinks of cops, he always assumes they have everything planned out, but maybe they’re just winging it like everybody else. The cops step out of their car in that slow, hesitant way that cops like to strut. “We’ll check it out,” the driver says, black sunglasses blocking out his face. Why couldn’t they find Tiff?
“Cool.” Hap steps aside as they walk past him. He then mumbles that he has to get to work. He’s not going to stand around and give them any more of an idea about who he is and what infamous case he’s related to. He shouldn’t give the eyes of Providence any reason to linger upon him.
With the summer solstice having passed, the night is a herald for the looming, darkest days of the year. Hap realizes just how utterly alone he is while reading the news on his phone in an apartment without food and so much as a sheet for the bare mattress. He’s hungry, but there’s a clot separating the hole in his stomach and the impulse to grab something and shove it into his mouth. The wings and bagels will sit, for today, rotting in his belly like whatever’s sitting undisturbed in that crumbling house. There’s no way she’s there, right? The cops would’ve reported it by now…surely somebody would text him if she were found.
Hap’s new aptitude for waking up early is useless, as Paul tells him to come in around four o’clock the next day. The first thing Cassandra, the blonde at the front desk, does is tell him that since Luke recommended him, he gets to be Hap’s mentor. Having a clueless kid show him around is only the most unproductive start he could imagine, but it’ll be temporary. What’s even worse is when Cassandra, with a smirk, tells him he has to go try on a uniform.
“You’ll learn where all the AC vents are and stand in front of them when you’re not busy. Trying not to sweat’s the priority around here in the summer,” Cassandra says, and Hap can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic. He notices a ventilation duct along the ceiling, directly above Cassandra’s head; it’s what adds the invisible wind effect, tickling through her movie star hair. Do they intentionally pick somebody with hair like hers to work the front desk? They choose pretty faces to represent themselves while they scurry around in their back offices. That guy Mr. Jones was straight ugly, with a nose like a tomato and a haircut like a Goodfellas spoof artist.
Employees have their own locker room tucked behind a thin metal door opposite a kitchen. Hap wonders how many hidden rooms a hotel can really have. The locker rooms are separated by a thin tiled wall, and that’s about the only degree of organization to the place. Maid carts seem to be scattered at random; it’s a storage closet, as well as a locker room, with stacks of toilet paper decorating one wall, mops and garbage bags cluttering up another. How anybody makes it through here without tripping is an Olympic feat.
Hap is in his underwear, trying on a pair of cotton pants from a shelf full of milk crates containing uniforms and even spare belts and shoes. That’s one plus for this gig at least. He doesn’t realize there are separate changing stalls next to a cluster of showers until a bubbly brown-skinned maid walks in on him pulling up his pants.
Hap finds that his bellhop pants don’t have any pockets, which means no room for his cellphone and wallet. Hap thinks about asking Cassandra what he’s supposed to do with his phone, but he’s an employee now; he’s not supposed to be on his phone. The wallet’s another thing but screw it. He folds his regular clothes around his phone and wallet and stuffs them into an open locker. He’ll have to buy a lock.
Hot and itchy with what feels like a ten-year-old’s birthday party hat strapped across his head, Hap begins reconsidering the idea of burning down the Miskatonic the second he finds proof it has something to do with Tiff’s disappearance. Unless they’re keeping her hostage in a neglected room. There is no right decision to make. He’s choking, drowning from each and every possibility.
“Hap, thanks for coming by.” He nearly bumps into Mr. Jones, who’s heading into his office with a covered silver platter of food. “I’m sure Luk
e will show you around, warm you up,” he says, not even feinting interest in him before disappearing into his office. Could he really be responsible for something happening to Tiff? The guy seems exhausted as if he doesn’t want to be here at the Miskatonic anymore than Hap does. Could there really be a monster hiding beneath his skin?
Hap doesn’t make it to the center of the lobby before Luke’s shouting his name, coming up to playfully punch him on the shoulder. “I’m gonna give you the quick look and see, man.” Luke’s mouth gets so wide every time he talks that Hap wonders if it’s possible to see what’s in his stomach. “We’re like waiters who don’t have to wait on the slow-ass kitchen staff. Faster we move bags, faster the guest is settled, faster we get our tip. When it comes to that, every man’s gotta do his own thing, though. Nobody wants to see two bellhops helping one dude, ‘less he’s got a moving van out front; you feel me?”
Hap nods, wondering if Luke is showing off for Cassandra and the other desk girl. He’s certainly talking loudly enough. Great, this guy’s a typical college clown. Hap should have expected as much.
“Map by the elevator tells you where everything is. Except where the hookers are, but let me tell ya, you’ll learn how to spot those disease-bags soon enough.” Luke’s nodding to a floor map between the two silver elevator doors adjacent to the great glass one. Hap didn’t even notice it the night he spent getting lost within the hotel. A map? There’s a fucking map of the hotel, and he didn’t even look at it. He’d slap himself in the head for being so stupid, but then his hat would fall off.
“People are always gonna ask you about stuff that’s labeled right on the map, but it’s easy. They usually wanna’ know about the ballroom, or the barbershop, or the bar around the corner or, occasionally, the Garden Room, but that’s only for special events, and they put up signs for those.” Of course, the map won’t reveal anything criminal. Or haunted.
Moon Regardless Page 5
