Security: A Novel

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  During Henri’s tirade, Brian tried to take Tessa’s arm. She wouldn’t let him. So he gestured to a reception armchair with one shoulder high in aggravation and the other low like a supplicant’s. Tessa is now sitting down. Brian again examines her cut as if he might have missed something the first time.

  The Killer has been wandering the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. It’s methodical wandering. He’s traced each floor’s layout, a predictable square on either side of the elevator’s long hallway. Door after numbered door, slowly, taking his time, passing every guest room. He is now passing Room 1016.

  Vivica, in the entryway of Room 1516, is making progress with the stain on the carpet.

  “No hospital,” Tessa says to Brian. He throws his hands up and goes to the lobby’s modern fireplace (white marble, deep—children could have a tea party in it), where he hits his head against the mantel for show, only it hurts worse than he planned. He hides a wince from Tessa as she tells Henri, “I can call a repairman out tonight.”

  “Repairman will not come! Repairman will say tomorrow, and I will waste a day in the dishes. They are not to use when dirty.” Henri reaches for the dirty Ginsu knife, which Tessa placed on an end table.

  Brian points at him. “You touch that knife again, I’ll kick your ass.” The threat wouldn’t work on a man who knows threats. The effortful tone is all wrong.

  But Henri whimpers, “Mon Dieu.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Tessa says. She presses her bandage, and her fingers come away sopped red.

  “How about this,” Brian says. “If I fix the dishwasher, will you go to the hospital?”

  Tessa looks out the long windows at his motorcycle. “Not on that.”

  “I said already we’d take your car.”

  Henri stares at Brian like he might be Jesus. “He can fix her?”

  Tessa gets up and goes to the main elevator. “Yeah,” she says, “he can fix anything.”

  Tessa’s a difficult person to get to know. Conversations about family or childhood get brushed aside as unimportant, irrelevant, dumb. The past is over, she’ll say. Haven’t you read any self-help? You’re supposed to live in the present. She sidesteps and counters with questions of her own that focus conversation back on the questioner.

  But there are files. Some of them are juvie files, but then there are bribes.

  Tessa was found in a Dumpster when she was two days old.

  Tessa’s holding the main elevator open. As he gets in, Henri is describing the dishwasher in detail to Brian, who looks at Tessa like he wishes she’d look at him. When the elevator . . .

  Camera 4

  . . . disappears with Brian and Henri and Tessa inside it, Franklin darts from the stairwell and scurries across the foyer like a tweed rat. He shuts himself in his office, placing the large pair of scissors in his desk.

  Camera 12

  . . . passes the second floor, Tessa sees Delores wiping her eyes en route to the housekeeping office. Tessa moves to make a note and says, “Damn it. My clipboard.” Brian hides a snicker in a fake sneeze.

  The Dumpster was in Spokane. Tessa went into foster care. She had twelve homes in eight years, all in northern Washington State. When she was eight years old, she went to live with Troy and Lorraine Domini. Troy and Lorraine had two other foster sons, twin boys, Mitch and Brian, ten years old. Tessa lived at Troy and Lorraine’s until she turned eighteen, and then she went to UCLA. Yet she is not over being abandoned in a heap of trash, wrapped haphazardly in a white blanket patterned with blue and yellow ducklings, her hair light then, and wispy, her mouth a round, wailing hole in the police photographs—no one gets over that. Tessa needs to be liberated from those memories. She should confide them. And if she won’t confide them, there are files.

  But information from files can be as irritating as it is illuminating. Files don’t mention, for instance, that even in an elevator with an annoyingly verbose chef describing every conceivable challenge involved in creating the perfect cherry coulis, Brian is jocular. His eyes laugh. Tessa bites her lower lip to keep from laughing with his eyes. Their bodies, even with a considerably wider body between them, possess a kind of visible static. Tessa’s hips seem overactive. They tick outward or rest on the elevator’s railing, in turns. The blood on her hand has pooled past the bandage. Brian picked up his jacket before getting in the elevator, mostly—it seems—so he’d have pockets to shove his hands into. His hands are so far in his jacket pockets that they make conspicuous forward bulges. He is fit, but not so fit as to seem vain.

  It doesn’t seem fair that men preoccupied with being fit are naturally assumed to be vain.

  The Killer is boarding the secret elevator on the twelfth floor. Vivica, on the fifteenth floor, is telling the stain in Spanish that it is no match for her, and she is right.

  There is no thirteenth floor.

  Tessa sees something from the glass elevator that makes her forehead furrow. Henri doesn’t notice, because he’s ranting to Brian about the unstable flavor of cherries. Brian notices Tessa noticing something and says, “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought—the closet at the end of the hall—” She huffs and blows a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Forget it. I’m sleep deprived.”

  “The profile, I tell you,” says Henri, “it has a volatility that the common mouth does not comprehend. To add cinnamon is to make them too sweet, liquor and it is overspicy. I try vinegar. I get desperate, monsieur—I try vinegar! And this fucker Destin says he ruin me, says I am mad. Who made me mad, this I ask you!”

  The glass elevator passes the fourteenth floor. At the south end of the hall on the fourteenth floor, in the secret elevator, the Killer presses his controller’s single button, and the cleaning closet’s shelves shift sideways. He looks through the slats in the cleaning closet door to make sure the glass elevator has passed. He must have seen Tessa glimpse him. He’s holding a knife much sharper than the one with which Henri accidentally sliced Tessa’s hand. It’s a knife the length of two of the sets of scissors Franklin used to disable the dishwasher. The Killer walks the fourteenth floor, methodically checking the door of each luxury room. They are all locked. Downstairs, . . .

  Camera 5

  . . . Franklin picks up the phone in his office. He looks at the receiver in bewilderment and joggles it a few times to confirm the landlines are not working. He laughs an unpleasant laugh that reminds the ear of a weasel. He takes a cell phone from his top desk drawer. Cell phones are against hotel protocol. Charles Destin himself made it clear he believes cell phones compromise employee productivity and, by extension, guest satisfaction. He dictated that all employee cell phones and other devices be deposited in the break room lockers on the second floor. Franklin presses his phone’s screen to blue it, taps, and puts the phone to his ear. “Tell the boss I messed with the dishwasher . . . Yeah, little things adding up to big things, like he said . . . And—uh—the phones. I got the landlines down, too.” Franklin is lying. The Killer disabled the landlines. “Yeah, later . . . No, I’ll wait till it’s dark . . . Right, nobody gets hurt—hey, we’ve got flashlights . . . Yeah.” It’s easy to infer that Franklin is on the phone with Cameron Donofrio, or, more likely, an associate of Cameron Donofrio. Donofrio Properties is the principal rival of Destin Management Group. Charles Destin has long suspected Cameron Donofrio was infiltrating and sabotaging his properties. To a sane mind, Destin’s paranoia seemed like so much rich-boy bullshit. The revelation of Franklin’s call makes one wonder about Destin’s reasons for building a hotel with the most sophisticated surveillance capacities ever attempted in the private sector. How much they had to do with catching the mole, Franklin, in a conversation like this one. “All right . . . Yeah, I’ll report later tonight.”

  Camera 17

  . . . Delores hears the intercom in the housekeeping office. The office is next door to the housekeeping storage area, where Delores is discarding a bulk bottle of expired shampoo. She crabs down a ladder and hurries toward the tinny
voice. She wouldn’t hurry toward the voice if it weren’t Tessa’s. Delores hates men. Delores has a right to hate men, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating for a man to whom she is supposed to listen. Delores’s office has the only security feed anywhere in the hotel besides the twentieth floor. It’s a tiny television that streams motion-activated activity from everywhere in Manderley. Delores is supposed to have this television on at all times. The television is on, but Delores has taped her to-do list over the screen, in order to stick it to the head of security, who told her she was very important, his number two, the last line of defense. Delores is the only person in the hotel—besides security—who knows about the secret elevator. If her to-do list weren’t taped over the screen, Delores would see the Killer boarding the secret elevator on the fourteenth floor. She would see her number two, Vivica, still warring with the bloodstain on the fifteenth floor. Delores hates men because her husband beat her for ten years. She tried to leave him four times, and he found her four times. The fourth time, she shot him. She didn’t kill him. This is all in her police file. Her lawyer got her off. She limps slightly because her husband broke her tibia with a baseball bat when she was twenty-two. She was pregnant at the time. She limps into the housekeeping office. “Hi, Tessa. Sorry for the wait. I’m here.”

  Tessa kicks the glass elevator’s door frame, probably cursing its slowness, and speaks into the emergency phone, which can access the intercom system if one has the proper pass code. “Del, how’re you doing?”

  Delores says she’s fine.

  “I saw you crying, hon. I’m on the elevator,” Tessa says. The elevator sings its soft note for the nineteenth floor. Its doors slide open. Tessa signals Henri and Brian to go ahead. Henri rushes for a quartet of sous-chefs; they’re sitting at a table playing Go Fish. “Don’t let Charles get to you,” Tessa tells Delores. “You know how he can be.” Brian leans against the elevator doors to keep them open. Tessa signals again that he should go ahead. Brian shakes his head and smiles—at her, then at his feet.

  “I’m fine now,” Delores says. She wipes her tears, determined to make the statement true since it’s Tessa who’s asking. “Really, I’m okay. Why’re you calling on the intercom?”

  “The landline isn’t working. Electricians probably nicked it.” She asks Brian, as if it is a long-dead habit to always ask Brian, “Is that possible?”

  Brian says, “It’s possible. I doubt it, though. Electric and phone are kept separate for just that reason.” He adds, for false modesty’s sake, “But I’m no expert.”

  Tessa says, “Del, would you do me a favor?”

  Delores sounds relieved, agreeing. She’s a large, fifty-two-year-old hausfrau, but her emotional maturity arrested at fifteen, when she got married. The psychologist who evaluated her for her competency trial noted she was most tranquil in the domestic sphere, and that domestic duties aroused her maternal side, which had been frustrated by the miscarriage she suffered after her husband broke her tibia with a baseball bat. It is obvious that Tessa also arouses Delores’s maternal side.

  As when Tessa says, “I accidentally—look, don’t freak out—but I cut my hand down in the foyer—”

  “Oh my God! Are you—”

  “But I’m completely fine. There’s some blood on the marble. I’d really appreciate your cleaning it. Will it stain?”

  Tessa knows the answer. She’s asking so Delores can tell her, with confidence, “No. No, Tessa, it’ll wipe right off with a little ammonia. The seal on the floor’s still nice and fresh, and marble only stains easy if it’s porous.”

  Tessa smiles. She likes hearing Delores be confident. “Awesome. Thanks. Wear gloves. The whole blood-and-puke protocol—keep OSHA happy.”

  Delores laughs. It’s an old joke between them how much Henri hates OSHA and how much Delores loves it. “Will do, kid,” Delores says. “You get that cut fixed.”

  “Bye.” Tessa hangs up.

  Brian gestures to indicate Tessa may pass him exiting the elevator, so she does. The ballroom rises around them. It feels like emerging from a mountain’s long, narrow crevasse into the vastness of an enormous cave, only it’s bright, and warm, and the finished pyramid of a thousand champagne flutes glistens like a waterfall on their far left. Long, athletic legs take two minutes to cross from one end of the ballroom to the other. Tessa’s legs are athletic, but not long, and Brian keeps pace to stay beside her. The chandelier up here is simple so as not to distract from the cherubim mural. Tessa picked this chandelier. Destin picked the seven-million-dollar pinecone in the foyer.

  “This place is something,” Brian says. “I read about it. Supposed to be the safest hotel in the world, right?”

  “Something like that.” Tessa pauses halfway through the tables to move a salad fork to a surprising position. She makes a sour face and moves it back. “Yeah, that’s the idea. Starlets can come here to recover from plastic surgery, that kind of thing.” She walks, and the clicks of her boot heels sound like cracking bones. Brian nods to show he’s listening, to show he knows she’s not done talking. “Charles really wants the government bigwigs—political figures, diplomats. That’s where the money is.”

  They’re on the wooden dance floor now. Their steps are louder.

  Brian says, “We should get your hand taped up. Before I deal with the dishwasher.”

  “It’s done bleeding, I think.”

  “If you duck out of the hospital—” He reaches for the small of her back when she makes a sharp turn around the grand piano. The grand piano’s not on the bandstand yet. Tessa doesn’t see Brian reach, or feel it, because she executes the turn perfectly, and Brian’s hand goes back in his jacket pocket. He doesn’t look embarrassed about having reached. He doesn’t look like he even noticed doing it. “I might go all big brother on you.”

  “Oh no,” Tessa says. “Not that.”

  “Don’t smile or anything, Tess.”

  “I won’t.” She is.

  “Don’t smile. You’re annoyed with me, so don’t smile.”

  “I’m not. Not at you. I’m thinking of a joke.”

  “Yeah?” Brian’s smiling, too. “Tell it to me.”

  “Why’d the rabbit cross the road?”

  Brian doubles over, laughing so loudly it startles Henri at the other end of the ballroom, where he is ranting at his underlings in French. It startles Justin and Jules in the kitchen, where they are staring at the dishwasher in utter confusion.

  Brian’s laugh at half a joke makes it easy to identify with utter confusion.

  Tessa pushes into the kitchen, which is huge and industrial. Its sheer size and its Tetris game of tables, cabinets, tools, and appliances ensure that neither Henri nor the sous-chefs saw Franklin tampering with the dishwasher.

  The kitchen’s size also means that Brian’s laughter echoes through it as he and Tessa come inside. Tessa’s mashing her lips together so she doesn’t laugh, her effort not to laugh worse than a laugh, because it means if she did laugh, it would be genuine. Not professional or proper or polite or cautious. It would honk like a Canada goose, obnoxiously endearing. She treats her past like a secret. She becomes very, very, very upset if someone mentions her upbringing in the foster system. She says, You’re trying to use this. Don’t you dare try to use it. Quit trying to crack me like I’m a vault in a bank! She throws things.

  Such behavior breeds suspicion that emotional trauma resides in those memories, and therefore, leaving them alone is the proper approach if one wishes Tessa to relax her defenses and allow one to love her. But her efforts now to stifle laughter, combined with Brian’s helpless laughter, added to Justin’s and Jules’s looking up from the dishwasher and performing the same addition as I am, arriving at the same sum as I have and sharing a glance of excitement at Tessa’s odd mixture of perfect ease and paralytic unease with this young man—these phenomena put together suggest that Tessa’s upbringing in the foster system included periods of great happiness. Her refusal to discuss them could be indica
tive of a desire to keep those memories closed off and sacred—a place she can go where no one can follow her.

  In the entryway to Room 1516, Vivica gives a final daub with her rag. She pumps her fist in the air and gives the conquered stain a smug middle finger. Behind her and around the corner and down the hall, the cleaning closet door folds open. The Killer steps out of the secret elevator, onto the fifteenth floor.

  CAMERA 33

  Vivica reaches deep into her apron and pulls out a miniature hair dryer. She stuffs the bloodstained rag into her apron pocket, does likewise with the carpet cleaner—the bottle’s handle overhangs the pocket like a baby kangaroo innocently surveying its surroundings—and tips onto all fours to plug the hair dryer into the nearest outlet. She aims the nozzle and turns it on “High.” Only when the carpet is dry can a stain-fighter tell if any discoloration remains, if her enemy has been truly vanquished. This is the final step of Vivica’s stain-fighting procedure. Tessa once told Vivica she should patent the process and teach classes. Tessa wasn’t kidding. Vivica is petite and thin, her dark hair always in a tight bun. The errant gray strands in her hair emphasize how lineless and youthful her face is.

  The Killer is passing the main elevator. He turns left. His feet are fluid, silent. The hair dryer is loud.

  Camera 33

  Tessa introduces Brian to Jules and Justin. Handshakes. A discussion takes place. Pointing and gesturing at Tessa’s hand. Justin and Brian agreeing on something. Jules pointing to herself and offering an alternative. Tessa agreeing with Jules. Brian rolls his eyes and throws up his hands, but good-naturedly. Justin and Jules laugh. Tessa succeeds at not laughing, again, barely. Jules grabs the first aid kit from its special cabinet on the wall. She studied nursing but found she disliked the hours. She and Tessa leave the kitchen. Brian watches Tessa leave, his expression that of a stupid, forlorn puppy. He asks Justin a question and squats to the dishwasher’s controls. Justin produces a toolbox from a stainless steel cabinet beside the walk-in refrigerator. Brian’s head is no longer visible. High-capacity dishwashers are mounted on stainless steel countertops, to make loading more ergonomic. Brian’s head is underneath the countertop. It would be unfortunate if the dishwasher crushed Brian’s pretty-boy smile. Justin rifles through the toolbox and passes a flashlight to Brian’s protruding hand.