Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel

by James Markert

  For Vitto it wasn’t about the silence or lack thereof; it was about what his mind couldn’t stop seeing, so he thought it important to keep occupied. He knelt back down beside the creek, wondering now if his delay in floating the ship didn’t have something to do with how the water sounded different. It wasn’t just that the water was higher than normal. There was something not quite right about how the water was flowing.

  “Go on,” John urged. “Robert said it was the earthquake that did it.”

  “Did what?”

  But part of him already knew, already could tell. He lowered the wooden Viking ship into the water and let go. Instead of sailing off to the right, toward the monastery and the kidney-bean-shaped lake behind it like it was supposed to, it took off quickly to the left, toward the bend at the poppy field, and Vitto didn’t have the legs to chase it.

  Nine

  Vitto hustled back to the hotel with John beside him, huffing to keep up.

  “My mother told me a story when I was a boy,” said Vitto. “There’s a river called the Limia that starts in Spain and then flows through Portugal. Legend was that crossing it brought about memory loss. They thought it could be the real River Lethe. Then, about a hundred years BC, a Roman centurion led his troops up to the river. He wasn’t about to let this myth interrupt his battle plans, so he crossed the river and then ordered his soldiers to cross over one by one, calling each of them by name.” He felt the need to explain to John, who looked puzzled and out of breath. “In calling their names, he proved crossing the river did nothing to his memory.”

  John tripped over a dip in the ground. Vitto helped him up, and then the two of them walked side by side, panting up the winding road to where the newly arrived car had parked in front of the portico. A woman in a green dress pulled a heavy suitcase from the backseat and then helped the elderly woman into the hotel.

  “But what about that creek back there, Gandy?”

  “It couldn’t have suddenly changed directions.”

  “But it did. You saw for yourself. It was the earthquake. Sir Robert said so. Where’d the Sir come from anyway?”

  Vitto shook his head, his mind nearly as weary as his legs. “A number of British royalty visited the hotel in the late twenties. Then King George—the old King George, not the one that’s king now—invited him to London and knighted him.” Before John could ask why—Vitto didn’t exactly know why—he took the lead as they entered the arches beneath the front portico and entered the open-aired piazza. In the twenties and thirties, Sir Robert Gandy had been as popular in California as any movie star and the envy of some, and it hadn’t been at all uncommon for foreign dignitaries to come for long stays. The walls were adorned with crests and busts and paintings from too many countries to count.

  The new arrivals stood before the central fountain. The brown-haired younger woman was chatting with Robert and Valerie while William and the elderly woman stared at each other. She had her hands on her knees, lowered closer to William’s level, as if making a game of it. And then the old woman yelled, “Ouch! He pinched me!”

  “I did not,” said William, red-faced.

  “Did too, the little plague rat.”

  The younger woman stepped between them and ushered what must have been either her mother or grandmother away from the boy, who was crying now. Vitto made a move to comfort him, but that only caused his son to cry harder. Valerie picked the boy up and turned him away from Vitto, as if saving him from a rabid dog.

  “He pinched me,” the old woman said again, her thin white hair fluttering. “Yes, he did. He pinched me.” She made pinching motions with her hands. “Like a crab.”

  “He didn’t pinch you, Grandma,” said the younger woman, doing her best to calm her down, but obviously flustered herself.

  John, dazed and smitten the instant he saw the younger woman, held out his hand to her, as if introducing himself at this exact moment would help calm things. “Hi, I’m John. John Johnson. My friends call me Johnny Two-Times. But one John will . . .” But his voice was swallowed by the commotion.

  “The little crab rat pinched me! Right on the rear end. Got no decency.”

  Trying hard to regain control of her grandmother, the young woman turned away from John’s outstretched hand. She clearly hadn’t seen the gesture, but John must have assumed she was ignoring him, which was why his eyes glossed wet with tears. He lowered his chin to his barrel chest and stepped back from the action.

  Robert raised his hands—he still held his sculpting hammer in the left one—and encouraged everyone to calm down. A laugh bubbled up from Vitto’s throat, but he checked it before it left his mouth, let it settle as a grin. Just a couple of days ago, Robert had been acting like a four-year-old, too, and now he was the voice of reason. But it worked. William calmed, and the old bat stopped her accusations of being pinched, content to just glare at the little boy.

  The younger woman unfolded a newspaper, showing the advertisement Robert had paid to run in it the day before. “Have I come to the wrong place?”

  Robert kept his eyes on the old woman, who was whispering to herself, as he answered. “You’re clearly in the right place, my dear. You’re the first to respond.”

  Her shoulders sagged in relief, like this burden was no longer just her own. “I’m Beverly Spencer.” She gestured to her right. “And this is my—” Her eyes widened when she saw her grandmother giving little William the finger. “Grandma!” The old woman put her finger away, playing it off like she was straightening a crease in her long-sleeved blouse. Beverly closed her eyes, took in a deep breath. She opened them and forced a smile. “This is my grandmother, Louise. And she has what the advertisement said you can cure. I still don’t believe I’m standing here. My mother, bless her soul, always said I was gullible. But I’m at my wit’s end, Mr. . . .”

  “Gandy.” Despite the stone dust on his hand, Robert reached out to shake hers.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gandy.” She stared up at him as if in awe. Those who didn’t know Robert Gandy most likely knew of him and his hotel. She looked around the piazza, taking in all the colorful doors, each marking its room with artistic distinction. “Newspaper called it a hotel for lost memory.”

  Robert smiled, toothy and wide. “Senile dementia. Yes. What some doctors are calling Alzheimer’s.”

  Vitto bit his lip to keep his skepticism from ruining things. Besides, Valerie had just given him a look that could have killed a weaker man like John, who was standing on the periphery gnawing a fingernail.

  Nonsense or not, unexplainable or not, Beverly was clearly willing to give this place a chance. She folded her arms. “Well, I never heard of any Alzheimer’s. But dementia—she’s definitely got that.”

  “I have eighty-seven years under my belt,” said Louise, in a moment of lucidity. “That’s what I have, you . . . you critter.”

  Vitto laughed, didn’t know what else to do. That old biddy had just called her own granddaughter a critter. Or maybe she’d been talking to Robert.

  Robert stepped toward Louise, offered his hand. Louise looked at it, sniffled, and then leaned down and wiped her nose on his sleeve, leaving a trail there like a slug would on a sidewalk.

  Mortified, Beverly yelled, “Grandma!”

  “It’s okay.” Robert laughed, approached the fountain, and dipped a cup into it. He offered it to Louise. “Here, take a drink.”

  She grabbed the cup with gnarled, arthritic fingers that seemed to loosen upon touching the handle. She raised it to her mouth but then stopped to eye what was inside. “What’s in it?”

  “Water,” said Robert. “Just water. Drink. You’ll feel better.”

  Beverly added, “Think of it as medicine, Grandma.”

  That did it. Louise sent the contents splashing in Robert Gandy’s face and then handed the empty cup to Vitto, who’d sidled closer without remembering doing so. Like part of him had wanted a close-up view of the old woman swallowing just to see if this was really happening and not
some weird dream stockpiled from the war.

  Robert wiped his face as Beverly apologized again. A professional apologizer by now. Valerie shot her an understanding look as Louise put her hands on her hips and surveyed the perimeter of rooms that bordered the piazza. “This place is silly, Beverly. The doors look like candy.”

  Robert, a bead of water clinging to his right eyebrow, motioned toward the rooms all around. “You’ve got your pick, Mrs. Spencer.”

  “Call me Louise, and quit getting fresh. Joe will be here any minute.”

  Beverly whispered over her shoulder toward everyone except her grandma, “Grandpa Joe’s been dead for fifteen years.”

  They all nodded as one collective; they understood perfectly.

  Louise pointed toward the wing of rooms with doors in shades of red. Beyond the rooftop were the high-set olive terraces. “I’ll take that one.”

  “Which one, Grandma?”

  “The one I’m pointing at, Beverly. The one that looks like a plum.” She waddled in that direction; with her hunched turtle-shell back she was a good five inches shorter than her granddaughter. She looked back over her shoulder and said to Robert, “Once I get settled in, sonny, you can bring me up a cup of that medicine—with some Old Sam if you’ve got it. Or some red wine. On a tray.” As they walked, Beverly put a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder, and Louise immediately knocked it away. “Where’s my bag?”

  Robert looked around for the suitcase, then spotted it next to the fountain.

  Vitto cleared his throat loud enough to get John’s attention and spoke from the side of his mouth. “Get the suitcase. John! The suitcase.”

  John got the message, hurried to the suitcase before Robert could grab it. “I’ll get it, boss.”

  Vitto said, “Introduce yourself again,” then added when John looked confused, “to Beverly.”

  John nodded, hurried along. Beverly waited, thanked the towering John Johnson, and said, “Nice to meet you, John,” when he introduced himself again, insisting that he’d carry the luggage for her. Vitto moved past the fountain to eavesdrop, staying just enough behind them to hear but not seem obvious. Through the corner of his eye he saw that Valerie did the same.

  Beverly said, “What do you do here, John?”

  “I’m the chef,” said John, nervous, and then added, “Lunch will be ready soon.”

  “And what’s on the menu?”

  “Bread.”

  Beverly waited for more, but that’s all Johnny Two-Times said. Then, as if his nickname had taken root and suddenly grown to fruition, he said it a second time. “Just bread.”

  So you’re a bundle of words until the ladies come around.

  Vitto looked over his shoulder and caught Valerie watching him. Saw a hint of something that once was—the curl of a smile on the right side of her mouth—but then she turned away as if to hide it.

  Ten

  The sun bled orange across the horizon.

  Gradually it shrank to a red sliver, smashed flat by the approaching dark, and then ocean waves rippled it gone. Now a silver sliver of moon shimmered over the same water, begged to be painted.

  Instead of grabbing the satchel of paints and brushes Valerie had left outside his door hours ago, next to the easel and canvas Robert had pulled from the basement, Vitto sat stubbornly by the window of room 206 and smoked stale cigarettes. Smashed butts cluttered the windowsill; he only had one left from the packs he’d brought back from the war, and he savored it as his fingers shook. Across the piazza, his wife and son must have gone to bed. Their second-floor light had turned off an hour ago, thirty minutes after she’d stopped playing the violin.

  Something was definitely off-kilter. He and Val had nothing but good memories from the hotel, especially with having been married down there on the piazza, but their current relationship was tainting things in a hurry. Maybe he should up and leave. Or maybe he should have opened the door when she knocked earlier.

  “I know you’re in there, Vitto.”

  Of course I am. Where else would I be?

  If she hadn’t turned away from him earlier in the day when he caught her smiling, perhaps he would have opened it. But now he was back to room hopping.

  The back wall of room 206 featured a fresco of The Last Supper, painted by a Leonardo da Vinci copyist from Berlin back in the summer of 1903. Aside from the beauty of the painting and the coffered ceiling—each square mural told a story from the Old Testament—he’d always enjoyed the view from this room. To the right he could see the road leading to the hotel. To the left and over the rooftop he caught glimpses of the ocean his father used to swim in daily, almost religiously, after Magdalena’s death. And the cliff top, where every evening Robert would stand, gazing out upon the open water as if waiting for a lost ship to come back home.

  There were mouse droppings under the bed, and the naked mattress looked like it had been through a bomb blast—covered with dust and bits of plaster that had fallen from a ceiling that now leaked. If his father was really going to go through with this, he had months of work ahead of him, months of cleaning out and ordering and restocking. And the cost? Was it even safe to have guests here again—elderly ones at that?

  Vitto looked away from the bed. He didn’t plan on sleeping on it anyway. The chair would suit him fine, and he had transferred the thin blanket from 268. He hadn’t seen which room John had gone into earlier—he assumed it was one of the Caravaggio rooms again—but he could hear the big man snoring like a bear in hibernation. At night the ocean breeze picked up sound as if it had hands and threw it into the open windows.

  The newest arrivals had picked a room on the first floor, underneath where Valerie and William slept. The old woman had been true to her word and taken her “medicine,” which was why, an hour later, her granddaughter Beverly had run out to the piazza crying. She’d flung her arms around Robert, thanking him profusely as he took a break from chipping away at that stone.

  The fountain water must have worked on the old woman too. Which was why Vitto couldn’t stop smoking. Or drinking. He’d snatched a bottle of red from the cellar below the kitchen and had about finished it off. The idea had been to keep himself busy at the window, smoking to stay awake and drinking to keep his mind off things, but that plan was proving futile. Sleep tugged on his eyelids, and he couldn’t keep his mind off of the fountain down below. The constant, recycled flow of water, the slow splatter into the rippling cross-shaped pool, had hypnotized him.

  Hypnos, the god of sleep. He lived in a cave in the underworld where no light from the sun or moon could reach. Hypnos was the son of Night and the brother of Death. In front of the cave grew poppies and other plants that induced sleep.

  Just as he was about to doze off he heard the choked throttle of an approaching car. He leaned out the window. At the front of the property, blurry cones of light flashed in and out of the cypress trees, disappeared into a dip of hillside, and then reappeared a few seconds later, climbing the serpentine road toward the hotel.

  Vitto finished the bottle of wine, took a long drag to knock off the cigarette, and stepped out onto the gallery. Over the roof, the turnabout at the front of the hotel was visible. The car puttered to a stop. The headlights blinked out. A car door opened and closed, and then another. He waited, heard voices. Head muddled from the wine, he held tightly to the railing on the way down the spiral staircase to the piazza, where an elderly man and woman appeared in the shadows on the far side of the hotel, luggage in hand.

  “Hello.” The man’s voice echoed under starlight.

  Vitto approached, stopped beside the fountain, and beckoned them closer.

  “Is this the memory hotel?” the man asked.

  Vitto nodded despite his misgivings.

  “We’ve come from upstate.” The old man moved closer, tugging gently on the woman’s hand, coaxing her along. She shuffled like a shy child. “Drove all day. My wife, she’s sick. We saw the advertisement in the newspaper and left right away.”

&nbs
p; “How long have you been married?”

  “Sixty-five years.” He’d squeezed his wife’s hand as he said it, and she buried her head into his shoulder. “Sixty-five years,” he said again, this time with a catch in his voice. He was bald except for some white above the ears.

  His wife pulled a folded paper from her coat and read from it: “Amy, Norman, Charlie, Belinda, and Peter. Amy, Norman, Charlie, Belinda, and Peter. Amy, Norman . . .”

  “The names of our five kids,” said the man. “It calms her down.”

  “How long has she been sick?”

  “Two years.” He glanced at his silver-haired wife.

  She spoke softly, like what she needed to say was between them only. “Where are we?”

  “The hotel I told you about, Mary.” He patted her hand, both of them arthritic and liver-spotted. “The one we’ve been driving to all day. Remember?” His voice was calm on the surface but hardened beneath his clenched jaws. Worn out but unable to give up. “The one from the newspaper.”

  “We need to go to the hospital, Henry. Not the hotel. I’ve got to get to the hospital. I’m to deliver any minute.”

  He looked back to Vitto. “She has it in her mind that she’s expecting our firstborn.”

  “Amy?”

  Mary read from the list again. “Amy, Norman, Charlie, Belinda, and Peter.”

  Vitto grabbed a mug from the lip of the fountain and dipped it into the water. He reached it toward them, in a hurry to pass it off because he was already tempted to drink from it as well. “Here, take it.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” said Henry. “But thank you.”

  “It’s for her,” said Vitto, looking away. “It’s the medicine.”

  “Oh.” Henry’s eyes grew large, and he handed his wife the cup.

  She sniffed it. “I don’t want any. Smells like metal. Like guns. Where are we? We need to get to the hospital.” She turned to Vitto. “My youngest once came to me, tugging on my dress, and he says, Mommy, was I an accident? I said, Peter, what do you mean? Amy said I was an accident, he says, and I laughed. I told him, Peter, you were all accidents.” Vitto laughed. But then the old woman seemed confused again, anxious. “Henry, the hospital?”