“What do you do with the ash?” asked the man, feigning interest so he could briefly look into her eyes.
“In the summer we use it to control pond algae, and in the winter we scattered them along the steps leading to the hotel to help melt the snow.”
The man nodded and placed his fingerprint on the machine. A beam of green light rolled down the screen. Madam X returned to her feet leaving the man forsaken and insecure.
“Can I ask one more question?” The woman nodded. “Why must we never use our real names?”
A smile settled across Madam X’s face, buckling her brow and rendering her expression akin to a person suffering from wind. “It’s the first stage of detachment. Those that attend hotel Valencia must do so under their preferred pseudonym to help them uncouple from what they were. We have found that most people assume the name of someone respected in history. It is better to die as a somebody rather than a nobody, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Clemens?”
The man did not respond.
***
In the dining room, small speakers attached to the walls played Valencia on loop. As described by the receptionist, a hole had been punched through the chair’s seat, beneath which a blue bucket sat waiting. To his left, and hunched over a bowl of soup, sat a morose looking woman in her late fifties with dishwater hair and ashen complexion. The man happily concluded that the tarnished gold wedding ring upon her finger probably marked the last time she smiled. He looked around the room where about half a dozen other people sat eating their meal like tiny beetles. He glanced to his right and found a woman staring back at him on the next table. Her eyes were intense, and, for this reason, he assumed she was unhinged. He was about to turn away when she whispered, “They will make you into a pair of shoes.”
To avoid engaging in conversation the man began cleaning his cutlery with the napkin.
The young woman hissed to attract his attention.
“Did you hear me?” she asked. The smell of garlic and gingivitis travelled within each of her vowels. “My name is Helen, after the daughter of Zeus and Leda.”
“We’re not supposed to talk to each other,” he whispered from the side of his mouth.
Surreptitiously, a waiter arrived beside him, causing the man to drop the knife. Bending down to retrieve them he noted the waiter’s shoes. They were not standard attire. The black leather had been distressed, and as he lent in closer he noted what looked like human hair sprouting from the heel.
“Your onion soup, sir,” said the waiter, placing a bowl upon the table. “Would you care for new cutlery?”
The man resurfaced, beet red and wheezing. “I’m fine.”
“Splendid, sir.”
As quickly as he arrived the waiter slipped away without a sound.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” Helen whispered. “His shoes.”
The man refused to say anything and began eating the soup.
“I am in the room next to yours. I plan on relaxing myself around 8:30 p.m. Once I’m finished, I’ll bang three times on the wall. Use one of the glasses from the bathroom to assist in hearing me through the wall.”
The man stared at the soup. An oily residue floated on the surface.
“What makes you think I care?” he muttered.
Helen leaned toward him, her eyes fixed to the chicken Kiev before her. “You only realize what love is when you lose it. Same with life.”
***
At exactly 8:36 p.m., the man was lay upon the bed when he heard a woman moaning followed by a high-pitched squeal similar to a pig being lowered into boiling hot water. A minute later there were three bangs on his wall. The man retrieved the glass from the bathroom and placed it on the wall. Through the rush of blood in his ears, he heard the faint breath of Helen.
“Are you there?” she asked.
The man banged on the wall as a reply.
“You may not care what happens to you after you’re dead,” she continued, “but it’s immoral what they’re doing here. I have a contact in the hotel staff who tells me they are skinning the bodies to make shoes for wealthy people. They sell the meat to a local butcher for sausages and other savory produce. Meet me outside the back of the restaurant in half an hour. There are no cameras there.”
Helen stopped talking and the man returned to the bed. Four inches of brick separated them, but he could still smell her through the air vents. He wondered for a moment if the heady mix of sweat and vaginal fluid would make for a popular scented candle aimed at lonely men.
Before the man had contemplated ending his life, he was gainfully employed at a large chemical company as a Breath Odor Evaluator. The position required him to smell the tooth cavities and tongue fungus of various individuals, an unattractive but essential job to aid the company in establishing how well its new super-cavity-cool-mint toothpaste eliminated the stench of those with poor dental routines.
The man’s acute sense of smell had been a gift, and at times, a hindrance. As a child he would breathe only through his mouth around adults and teachers as their proximity brought with it odors that turned his stomach: mostly coffee and cigarettes, and in the case of his Geography teacher, Mr. Bradshaw, cannabis. With his mouth agape, he had adopted an expression that rendered him apathetic and docile. Combined with a reticence to talk he had been referred to the school pastor who, as fate would have it, had a penchant for German sausage and smoked mackerel.
Endless psychometric testing was undertaken, and though his grades were good and reports positive, he was labelled socially awkward and advised to seek employment that required little to no contact with human beings. The man applied for a bank loan, and, on leaving college, set up his own business creating scented candles. His gift in detecting the subtle scents found in nostalgia allowed for a flourishing venture where the burning of wick could conjure up memories of swimming baths or the seaside. He had candles that released pheromones and hints of cologne and dry-cured meats for single women seeking the company of men. There were candles for rainy days, sunny days, and days where the mild aroma of a passing carnival still germinated the air. His susceptibility to strong scents, especially perfume, meant that being in the presence of a woman irritated his nose and brought on vile headaches, and had it not been for a young woman by the name of Rose Hemlock joining the lab in the summer of 1984, the man had resigned himself to a long and lonely life as a bachelor.
Rose fell into the two percent of the world born with the ABCC11 gene, a condition that prevented her armpits from producing odor. With no need for perfume or body spray, she had remained unmemorable to most men, a scentless flower that added a certain irony to her name. But the man found her desolate skin rousing, and, for once in his life, allowed him to be close to another person with mouth firmly closed. They married the following summer.
He detected the cancer before the doctors. A smell like that of sour wine lingered on the bed linen and Rose’s breath shortly after their twentieth wedding anniversary. His first thoughts were that she had turned to drink to counterweigh the boredom of marriage, but when he tackled the subject, Rose had not detected the smell and was still very much in love with him. When the bathroom began to smell like rotting fish, the man insisted she see her doctor. Several tests revealed an undifferentiated cancerous mass in her uterus. Rose was informed it was at stage 4. Until that meeting with Helen outside the hotel kitchen, no other number had weighed so heavily upon him.
“We must be furtive,” Helen said, eyes darting back and forth as if she was watching a tennis match.
The man reverted to mouth-breathing to manage the stink from the refuge bins outside the kitchen area. He was aware his expression might be interpreted as indifference toward what Helen was going to disclose, so to neutralize this he widened his eyes and exaggerated every movement of brow.
“The bellboy, Yamal Mishra, have you met him?”
“He showed me to my room,” replied the man trying his best to suppress the bile rising to his throat.
“He is
not a real bellboy.”
“He looks like a bellboy.”
“It’s a guise. He is, in fact, a reporter working for a newspaper in the city. He took the job a few months ago after receiving an anonymous letter detailing the horrid truth of this hotel. Do you smoke?”
The man shook his head.
Helen fidgeted and scratched at her arm, revealing the number four tattooed on her wrist. “I could kill for a cigarette right now.”
“You smoke?” The man had not detected smoke on her fingers or breath.
“No. But whenever I get nervous I think it’s appropriate to try.”
“I still don’t understand why this has anything to do with me,” he exclaimed. “I told Madame X that I have no instructions or requests regarding my remains.”
“And if you end up in a pie, and that pie is then served to a child, do you not care that it’ll be eating human flesh?”
A shadow passed by the restaurant’s window, forcing Helen to grab the man by his arm and pull him down beneath the ledge and out of view. The smell of her skin reminded him of overused pillowcases and teeth.
“Come with me,” she whispered.
“Where?”
“We can escape before it’s too late.”
“It is too late. That’s why I am here.”
She pressed her fingers to his chest.
“Do you know how it feels to have your heart removed?”
The man reflected on the final days with Rose. The squeaky wheel of a meal trolley. The fusty stench of the oncologist’s breath. The hum of a table lamp. The beep from the machine. The man could still feel every raised vein on his wife’s phantom hand before it relaxed and slipped from his.
“My boy was three years old when he was diagnosed,” she continued. “I held him for five hours in my arms until he closed his eyes for the very last time. I can say, in those final moments, I offered him a much better place than this hotel will show any person.”
The man asked, “Then leave, if it troubles you so much.”
“They do not allow you to leave. The bellboy told me that the groundskeeper will shoot anyone attempting to escape. He’s ex-military. Once Madam X scans your fingerprint you are the property of Hotel Valencia. There are no second chances if you change your mind.”
“Change your mind?”
“Instead of death, you opt for life.”
The man heard the faint sound of Paul Whiteman crooning about orange trees from the hotel speakers.
“The bellboy tells me there is a changeover of staff between 4:00 a.m. and 4:15 a.m. The reception will be abandoned for fifteen minutes, as will the grounds. There is weakness in the fence that runs along the lower garden. It can be seen easily, as it faces a cherub fountain strangled by ivy. I am scheduled to be terminated at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. Meet me there at 4:00 a.m., and let’s escape together.”
The man raised the sleeve of her jumper to reveal the number four tattoo.
“What’s the significance of the number four?” he asked.
“It’s the number of years my boy spent with me. I want this number to mark the beginning of my life, not the end of his.”
The man had spent so long planning his end he had never considered the prospect of living it again. He had sold his home, paid off the mortgage and settled all bills. Subscriptions had been cancelled and all the money he owned donated to cancer research. A resignation letter had been drafted and sent to his boss. Any clothes that were not on his back had been dropped off at the charity shops. There was nothing for him beyond that fence.
“What name did you assume?” asked Helen.
“George Clemens,” said the man.
Helen thought for a moment to establish who in history had the same name, but failed to draw a comparison.
“Who was George Clemens?” she asked.
“He was a lab technician where I worked. In the summer of 1984, he had a cardiac arrest while cleaning out some beakers. There were only two other people in the room; a young woman called Rose Hemlock and myself. She and I ran to help George, and though neither of us knew CPR, we tried for eleven minutes to resuscitate him. George never spoke of his personal life, nor did he have a bad word to say about anyone who worked at the lab, and though he never seemed to feature in our working day, he was there for nearly most of it, unassuming and constant.
When the paramedics came and took away his body, Rose and I were told to go home, but neither of us wanted to, so we ended up at a small cafe. We talked about George and shared what little bits we knew about him. An hour passed, maybe two. By the end we were talking about ourselves, where we grew up, what interested us, that kind of thing.”
The man leaned in and lowered his voice, “You see, I never had a hero. No one had ever done anything to change my life. But the day George Clemens died, he changed mine forever. That’s why I chose him.”
***
The man awoke the next morning with a start, fevered and disorientated. A thin slice of sunlight slipped through the curtains. The hands of his watch gestured toward 6:46 a.m. He dressed quickly and made his way to Helen’s door. Knuckles rapped the white gloss as his voice called her name, and when there was no reply, he ran to the reception desk where the woman with butane eyes stood proud. He passed her toward the dining room with the impetuosity of a gazelle.
“Breakfast is served at 7:00 a.m.,” said the receptionist. “You cannot enter the dining room until . . . Mr. Clemens. Mr. Clemens?!” Crossing the dining room threshold, he heard her pick up the telephone receiver.
The grand hall with its ornate gold cornicing, corbels and hand painted ceiling depicting angels strumming harps, jarred with the horror of seeing the staff carving slithers of meat from the torso of a human being. Upon seeing him, they turned and rushed toward him with various cutleries in hand. The man bobbed and ran around tables in a bid to avoid capture, but the years of poor nutrition and lack of exercise slowed him enough to be struck upon the head with a silver ladle. The murk of unconsciousness crept in around his vision, and, as he fell to the floor, the man saw tattooed upon the sole of the waiter’s shoe the number four.
***
When he opened his eyes for the second time that day, he was met by the familiar cleft lip of the bellboy.
“They’ve moved your termination forward,” he said quietly.
A fluorescent tube of light mounted to the ceiling cast a sallow veneer on all the walls. Leather straps ran across his wrists and ankles binding him to a leather chair.
“Helen?” he croaked. The bellboy shook his head.
“She knew too much. They feared she would escape and tell people what is going on here. They fear the same of you now.”
“Don’t let me die like this,” the man pleaded.
The bellboy looked behind him toward the door, pre-empting the arrival of Madam X.
“We must be quick. I can untie you, but I cannot guarantee you’ll make it off the grounds. The injection will be far less painful than what they’ll do should they capture you.”
“What are my options? Helen mentioned a vulnerable spot on a fence in the lower garden?”
“Too risky in broad daylight. The groundskeeper will shoot you in the leg to slow you down.”
“Then I’ll hide out in the hotel until 4:00 a.m. when there is a change in shift.”
“They have sniffer dogs trained to find the most creative of escapees. Only last Tuesday they tore to bits a resident hiding in the air vents.”
“Then there is nothing I can do,” he resigned. “I will accept my fate.”
“There is something you can do. It may not be the answer you were hoping for, but I know it has proven successful in the past.”
The restraints began to cut into the man’s wrists and ankles as he squirmed to every word delivered. The bellboy then untied the straps and embraced the man. With head pressed to his chest, Yamal Mishra offered his parting words.
“Do you know why humans pursue happiness?” he asked. “We
are born to solve puzzles, Mr. Clemens, and happiness is the greatest of them all.”
***
He had made it to the roof of the hotel without being seen. A mist skulked across the unkempt grounds of the hotel as he looked down over its ledge. The absence of birdsong foreshowed the time he and Rose visited the site of Auschwitz where rooks endured the winds that shook the trees bordering its perimeter, their courteous beaks remaining mute as though hushed by the dead. Headlamps of a cab pushed through the mist in the distance; another resident inward bound and ignorant of the horror awaiting them.
The man peered down and observed the bloodstained steps below him that led to the entrance of the hotel. Palms prickled with sweat, and once hollowed by grief, his heart filled with a fire that sent from his open mouth clouds of breath resembling the tail of wild horses. He shuffled forward inch by inch until the ballast of his frame relented, and a wind that held no scent embraced him as he fell. He did not speak, cry out or repent, but remained solemn and dignified as the ground grew larger with every passing second.
***
When the gray-looking man arrived at the hotel’s foyer, he was gasping for breath, hands shaking and skin smudged with blood. Yamal Mishra, the bellboy, arrived promptly with chin extended and smile crooked and uneven. He handed the man a small tissue and lent in to grab his suitcase.
“You must be Mr. Mandela,” he said amiably. “Your room is ready, sir. But first, we must check you in.”
“A man fell from the sky,” stuttered the man as he wiped his face.
“It happens a lot, sir,” said the bellboy. “You’ll get used it.”
THE BOY
CORY CONE
“Alex,” Corrinne says, watching her son wander among the playground equipment. “Where are you going?” She hides her cigarette behind her back when he turns his head. His look says, don’t bother me, Mommy, I’m having fun. He turns away, and she puts the cigarette back to her lips and puffs. It’s sunset, but Alex can play a little longer. The other families at the playground have already left, and he has the entire area to himself. His own special time.
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