Tales from The Lake 5

by Tales from The Lake

  “Stop telling me what I have to do.”

  It comes out like a growl, in a voice you don’t recognize: coarse, worn, suffused with grief that reads like rage. That sounds more like, more like—

  (that one)

  (right in there)

  (that voice behind that door)

  That door, there, at the very end of the hall, the dead end cast in half-darkness, beyond where the lights start to flicker and pop and buzz. That door painted red, when every other door you’ve passed so far has been first fresh new black, then tired old blue-gray, then bare blank wood scarred here and there from paint remover, stripped to the skin and waiting for primer. That door, from which that smell proceeds like a wave, like a wall.

  Kyle’s face lights up when he sees it; he takes two big strides forward even as you recoil, heaving, hugging your belly for comfort. He’s almost close enough to touch it now, fist lifting, poised to hammer—

  But before he can, it just stops, all of it. The music, the noise. Even the smell seems to twitch away, impossibly fast, there and then not. You’d think it’d make you feel better, but it doesn’t.

  The new normal, you remember, annoyance abruptly gone. Feeling your entire body shudder all over instead, hit in every part at once with a single massive, crashing wave of cold fear. Thinking, as what sounds like a series of locks begins to open, slow but steady, utterly deliberate: That’s it, all right, you asshole—oh, shit. Now you’ve gone and done it!

  “Kyle, we have to go,” you tell him, already turning and yanking his arm hard enough to hurt as you do, not waiting for protest. “Jesus, let’s go, now—”

  “What?!”

  “Just fucking GO, Kyle! Run run run run—”

  And you do, thank God, back past the unfamiliar part of this floor, back through those double-doors, back through the un-renovated portion and into the newly-finished sections, borne by your own furious momentum. Slamming into walls hard enough to bruise, rounding corners so sharply they graze your hip, half-falling at least once as your legs go out from underneath you, only to be jerked back upright with Kyle’s arm ‘round your waist. Past three separate sets of elevators (one more than usual) whose doors jolt gently back and forth as if jammed, interior lights red-filtered, distant alarms piping in through static-clogged speakers. The air coming out of the AC vents licks you like a ghost-tongue, hot and gross; the fans judder and shake, groaning painfully, hitting the same notes that—person—behind the red door’s music used to, back in what you couldn’t possibly have known were far simpler times. And everything drumming, inside and out; you can’t tell what’s your body, your ears, your mind. You can’t tell where you are, or how you got there.

  Here, Ida, we’re here, let me just get my key—don’t black out! Stay awake, Ida, we’re almost back inside . . . we’re home, honey, I swear to you. We’re home, at last . . .

  A stitch in your side tightening, just begging to be ripped wide open. The baby kicking, for sure this time—just once, like knocking.

  Your door opening, soft as a kiss, before Kyle can even touch it, and oh, but it’s dark inside. Darker than it’s ever been.

  “Come in,” a too-familiar voice tells you, that same laughter in every word, so happy it could cry. “I’ve been waiting for you, you know—a long, long time. Waiting for someone to hear, to care enough to come. And now I’m glad, so very glad . . . ”

  . . . you finally came to meet me.

  THE MIDLAND HOTEL

  MARGE SIMON

  I am a hotel of many rooms. Each one of them is a living cell. I play host to travelers, victims of fate or fortune. They know my breath beneath the spray that masks the decades. For every window, I have three curtains: the outer one for privacy, the other two secure the dark from light. My bathroom floors are tiled as white as baby teeth. My beds wear brocade, to complement the polished walnut floors. I am impeccably clean.

  Of interest, I was spared from the Nazi’s bombs during the Blitz. I was to be host to Hitler, once he conquered England. It amuses me that my former owners didn’t know this. It is doubtful Adolf would have lasted long within my walls. Accidents can happen.

  For some guests, my rooms become a restive place for the afterlife. It is almost always by choice.

  ***

  The salesman on my top floor is in his fifties, booked for a convention in London.

  This is what he tells his wife. She can’t reach him here. No one can. Not his boss, who is young enough to be his son. Not his son, who only calls when he wants money. His wife doesn’t want him coming home without notice. His boss told him he was done. His boss doesn’t lie.

  The salesman avoids my mirrors, wall and ceiling both. He is chinless; the space in his smile is from a tooth he couldn’t afford to fix. His remaining hair is now combed over to hide a barren dome. It’s been a long time, jerking off to porn with only fantasies for company. I provide a haven for privacy. I give him the privilege of a sturdy shower rod. I know what a man can do with his own belt. It doesn’t always work, this type of suicide. The belt breaks, he falls into the tub, smashing his head into the spigot. Teeth jammed down his throat, he chokes—a pathetic, garbled cry that still echoes in these walls.

  ***

  In room 209, a woman sips her tea. She has come here to visit –and hopefully marry—her fiancé, longtime resident of Manchester. When they met at a London bistro, he’d assured her he was rich, or she’d never have slept with him, never have left home. He didn’t meet her at the station. There is no one by his name in the directory. The number he gave her is a pay phone.

  She is dressed in white tonight. Silly of her to try it on again, this useless bridal gown. It still fits. It’s only been two months but the test was positive. Slowly she undoes the buttons. There is a pair of sewing scissors on the table. They will do. She goes to my window and draws the curtains. She takes the scissors into the bathroom. Placing a towel under her feet, she begins sawing on her wrists. She doesn’t expect it to take so long.

  ***

  A couple step inside. They are here because their marriage counselor said this trip would rekindle the love in their marriage. The man has a mistress in Brighton who he thinks she doesn’t know about. He also has no plans to change that situation.

  “This isn’t the same room,” she says. “This is the fourth floor. You promised it would be the same room we had on our wedding night.”

  “So?” he says, hanging up his coat.

  “So nothing.” She sighs, taking off her shoes. They match her eyes, her dress.

  “Did you bring the wine?” he asks.

  She nods, points to the carryall. “Let’s open it!”

  “Before dinner? Don’t you want to wait?”

  “I’m not hungry. Really.”

  “If that’s the way you want it, fine. I’m not hungry either. Happy anniversary.” He drains his glass and pours another. Lies back on the bed, eyes closed.

  She stands looking out my window, listening to his snores. With a sigh, she pulls shut my curtains. From her purse, she withdraws a prescription bottle of sleeping pills. This time she will take them all.

  ***

  The young man on my top floor is from Ethiopia. He has taken off his clothes. His back and shoulders are covered with tattoos of American rock stars. The television is on an MTV channel. He struts up and down, playing the air guitar. His cell rings. It’s his girlfriend in Trieste. He doesn’t tell her when he’s coming home. Or that his next stop is London, then Los Angeles, where he plans to join a rock band. They don’t talk long. Her crying makes him nervous. He goes back to miming a guitar. Later that night he will be at the rail of my balcony, looking at the lights below. He won’t see the helicopter out of control until it’s almost on top of him. When a propeller blade decapitates him, he won’t feel a thing. But he didn’t have much in the way of feelings in the first place. Rock on.

  ***

  On my first floor, there is a door that leads to another room. There is a brass bed in this
room with a sharkskin coverlet. It is a rich man’s private room, made to his specifications. In this room, he holds certain interludes known only to a faithful concierge. Ostensibly for spiritual meditation, a cloistered cell has been added. This is to maintain his family’s bond with God. It is one of earnest worship, for praying hard goes hand in hand with playing hard. To this room, the gentleman brings his fashionable young men. Sometimes he entertains them in a game or two of whist. He courts their affections with opiates and wine. At last, he enjoins them in communion with the flesh. Sometimes a vein, sometimes another game, according to his whim. But how his victims praise him to the end. Each leaves his shrieks of love within my walls.

  FAREWELL VALENCIA

  CRAIG WALLWORK

  The man arrived at the hotel’s foyer breathless and uneasy. He placed his suitcase down and removed his glasses to wipe away the blood that smeared each lens. His optometrist had informed him only three months ago that his myopia was now over -6.00 D. Without his spectacles anything at a distance of more than a few inches would be rendered blurry and malformed. For this reason, he failed to notice the young bellboy that arrived beside him, proud as a telegraph pole and with skin a similar shade. The bellboy’s name has been removed from this story for legal reasons, and no other description will be offered save to mention that he had a cleft lip. It was a birth defect that resonated with the man long into the night and reminded him of a fawn-coloured curtain being lifted.

  The bellboy reached for the man’s suitcase, and with the reek of humus and sleep deprivation on his breath said, “You must be Mr. Clemens. Your room is ready, sir. But first we must check you in.”

  “Outside, a man fell from the sky,” the man replied.

  “It happens a lot, sir. You’ll get used to it. Please, follow me.”

  The bellboy led the man through the foyer. Its parquet floor had been polished that morning attaching to their footsteps a sound similar to a cork being removed from a wine bottle. The only other noise came from an old gramophone that played dancehall music. The man was guided to a lonely reception desk. The bellboy palmed a silver bell, its trill assembling from beneath the desk a pale woman with brick-red hair and butane eyes.

  “Mr. Clemens. How was your journey?” asked the woman. The man could smell Marlboro and birth control on her breath.

  “I have blood on my shirt,” he replied.

  “You can change shortly. This is Yamal Mishra, your bellboy. He will take you to your room. It has a garden view.”

  “I asked for a room without a view.”

  “I can assure you, sir, the garden is ill-kept and mostly briar and thistle. It’s impossible to see any flowers.”

  “Will there be birdsong?”

  “No, sir. We have killed all the indigenous birds in this region. Our groundskeeper is ex-military and served as a sniper in the war. Shall we get you checked in?”

  The woman retrieved a heavy ledger from beneath the desk. The sound it made hitting the walnut veneer was not too dissimilar to gunshot and caused the man to jump slightly on impact. The receptionist handed him a fountain pen and pointed to the next available space with corresponding date. The man glanced briefly at all the names. They read thus:

  Burt Reynolds.

  Marie Currie.

  Mahatma Gandhi.

  Neil Armstrong.

  The man signed and returned the pen.

  “A man fell from the sky,” he reiterated. “He landed on the steps outside the hotel.”

  “It happens a lot, sir,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”

  The woman shut the ledger and placed it back beneath the desk. She took a key from one of the holes in the rack behind her and handed it to the man.

  “May I ask the title of the music playing?” he asked, tendering each word as if they had been stretched out on a torture rack.

  “Valencia by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. By request of the proprietor of the hotel, Mr. Balcazar. It’s from where the hotel derived its name.”

  “Does it change?”

  “Change? No, sir. The song is played twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Doesn’t that get annoying?”

  The woman’s jaw stiffened.

  “Mr. Balcazar was a great man,” she said, eye twitching. “Annoyance cannot be factored into it.”

  The man turned to the bellboy whose face remained passive.

  “Breakfast is served at 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. in the grand dining room,” continued the woman. “Lunch 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Dinner is served between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Your table is #501, the same as your room number. We ask all our guests to remain at their table during meal times. There is no need to leave for a toilet break as the chairs also serve as a commode. You must not talk to any of the other guests during your stay with us. Most are depressed and anxious, a combination that makes for a very dull conversation. It is best to eat alone and spend your time mulling over your own regrets, not anyone else’s.”

  The woman feigned a smile that cracked her foundation cream and revealed teeth smudged red with lipstick.

  “When did you last masturbate?” she asked.

  “Yesterday,” replied the man.

  “We encourage all our guests to masturbate at least three times a day. It helps to relax the body in advance of the procedure. Beside your bed is a small cabinet. Inside you’ll find various magazines and accoutrements to assist.”

  “Accoutrements?”

  The woman smiled. The bellboy smiled. The man did not.

  “If there is anything else you need, please ring and we’ll endeavour to assist the best we can. Do you have any questions, sir?”

  He asked, “When do I die?”

  The woman snapped her fingers, alerting the bellboy to pick up the man’s suitcase. She replied, “You’re scheduled for termination tomorrow evening. 9:00 p.m. Please bathe before then. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Then all that is left is for me to do is welcome you to the Hotel Valencia. We hope you enjoy your brief stay with us before you are terminated.”

  ***

  The bellboy opened the door to room 501. A clinical smell hung in the air similar to that found in dentists or hospital corridors. The bellboy stepped over the divide and was consumed instantly by the darkness lurking within. The man waited at the door patiently.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, but the bellboy did not respond.

  The man looked down the long corridor where doors equal in detail, and coated with the same white gloss, flanked a tongue-red carpet. He hoped to see another person so he could inform them he had lost his bellboy and suitcase. But there was no one there. The man edged forward, pushing his nose further into the room.

  A burst of sunlight compelled him to squint. When he opened his eyes he saw the bellboy silhouetted by sunlight bleeding in from the window behind him. At that exact moment, a rotund figure descended past the window accompanied by a laboured cry. A dull thud followed as the body landed on the ground below. The man pointed towards the window.

  “There,” he said. “Another one has fallen from the sky.”

  The bellboy looked out the window.

  “I believe that is Mr. Van Gogh from room #623.”

  “The artist?”

  “Impossible, sir,” replied the bellboy. “The real Van Gogh suffered from vertigo and would have requested a ground floor room.”

  “Tell me, Yamal Mishra; why must we refrain from using our real names?”

  The bellboy was about to answer when the groan of a poorly fitted floorboard announced the arrival of a woman. She introduced herself as Madam X and had hair the color found under the nails of coalmen and an Eastern European accent. The bellboy became more subdued and scuttled toward the door. Before leaving he cranked back his lip and whispered a word toward the man that sounded a lot like, Run.

  “I assume the room is to your liking?” asked Madame X.

  A surly looking chest
of drawers glowered in the corner. Bedside a small cabinet, which presumably contained tools to aid relaxation, a single bed mummified in white cotton sheets lay supine. There were no pictures or mirrors on any of the walls. Another door led to a small bathroom where inside a shower, toilet and sink huddled together against prison tiles.

  “It’s fine,” replied the man.

  Madam X sat down on the end of the bed and patted the space next to her, the pallor of the linen complementing her skin.

  “Will you join me, Mr. Clemens?”

  Bedsprings whimpered as it took the full weight of his frame. He had been meaning to start a diet but the critical voice in his head convinced him the damage incurred to his body over the years from over-indulgence and lack of exercise was irreparable. And to what purpose would it serve if he did? A longer life, maybe to garner interest from the opposite sex? He had passion for neither, and yet he found the proximity of the woman a tonic to what had been a lonely five years since his wife’s death. For this reason, he consumed the perfume of talc and a scent similar to a butcher’s shop on her skin, and allowed the quince and cocaine on her breath to loiter at the back of his throat.

  “To assure we are absolved of any legal disputes following your death, I need you to agree to the terms and conditions relating to the contract sent to you two months ago.”

  “I spoke to the gentleman on the phone before I arrived,” said the man. “I made it clear that you could do what you wanted to my body after I am dead.”

  “Be that as it may, renunciation of your mortality requires more than just a pleasant conversation, Mr. Clemens.”

  The man nodded. Madam X produced from her inside jacket a small handheld device. She asked the man to place his finger upon its screen.

  “Your fingerprint will act as a digital signature allowing us to inject you with a lethal dose of pancuronium bromide, which in turn will cause paralysis of your diaphragm and the rest of the respiratory muscles eventually leading to your death by asphyxiation. Once death has been confirmed by our on-site physician, your body will be taken to the infirmary where an industrial incinerator will reduce your remains to ash.”