Karen said, “I told you, Renner, you’re not welcome here any more. Tell him yourself, Nellie.”
Renner looked up the steps at Nellie, gazed into her eyes till she had to look away. “Nellie and I are old friends,” Renner said.
“That was a long time ago,” Nellie said. “Get lost, pal.”
“So anyway,” Renner said, “I thought I’d take soak in your hot tubs after I get done hunting, and I was wondering if you could get one of your hippie chicks to give me a massage. How much?”
Karen said, “Renner, if I hear this truck on my property tomorrow, I promise you I’m calling Sheriff Higgins.”
Renner laughed. “I promise you you’re not calling the sheriff, Miss Hope. I don’t think that would be very neighborly at all.”
While he was talking, Baxter came out the front door of the hotel, dressed in his formal three-piece-suit and carrying a leather attaché case. He walked down the steps, stood before Renner, set down the attaché case, and bowed. Then he looked up into Renner’s face and smiled politely.
“Who’s this, your butler?”
Baxter said, “I believe this is yours, m’lord.” He lifted the attaché case and handed it to Renner.
Renner took it by the handle and said, “What the hell is this? It’s moving.”
“If I’m not mistaken, you left it behind, m’lord.”
“What the hell is this?” Renner repeated. “Who the hell are you?”
Nellie and Karen sat on the top step to watch. Baxter bowed again, turned, and walked up the steps, past the Hope sisters, and into the hotel.
Nick Renner placed the attaché case on the bottom step and unsnapped its clasp. He lifted the lid and jumped back. The case was buzzing loudly, and a snake’s head, almost the size of a tennis ball, lifted out and darted a tongue in Renner’s direction.
“Jesus Christ!” Renner yelled. “Jesus!” He went for the shotgun on his gun rack, but by the time he could take aim, Karen was standing between him and the attaché case, her hands on her hips.
“I told you, Renner, no more senseless slaughter at Hope Springs. Get out.”
“You people are insane,” Renner replied. He put the gun back on its rack and stepped up into the cab of his truck. “Fuckin weird!” He turned on his mighty noise and fled.
Nellie tucked the mechanical toy snake back into the attaché case, laughing. “What was that all about?” she asked. “About the sheriff? Has he got something on you?”
Karen sighed. “He knows about my vegetable garden. That’s why I’ve let him hunt, not because you made some stupid promise to him twenty-five years ago.”
“You should get rid of that garden,” Nellie told her. “Then there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Don’t start in on that,” Karen snapped.
“How much do you smoke, anyway?” Nellie asked.
“It’s none of your damn business how much I smoke. I don’t need your criticism.”
“I wasn’t being critical, I just wondered. I’m concerned.”
“Concerned my ass. That is so lame. ‘I wasn’t being critical.’ There’s no way to ask how much dope a person smokes without being critical. How about you? How much do you drink? Huh? How many glasses of wine have you had already today? How long have you been a drunk?”
“Well there’s no reason to get bitchy. I was just saying….”
“Who’s a bitch?” Karen wanted to know. “Huh? Who? Huh?” She turned and went into the hotel, slamming the door behind her.
Nellie sighed. Her face was hot, stinging as if she’d been slapped with a wet hand. She held her wrap tightly about her shoulders and walked across the driveway and down to the smoking bridge for a cigarette before dinner.
———
Casey lit the kerosene lantern that hung on the hook by the smoking bridge. It was his favorite time of day. The trees up the valley had turned into silhouettes, soft against the gray sky.
“Hello, Casey dear,” Nellie said, as she approached the bridge. “Fancy seeing you here. Join me for a smoke?”
“No thanks. I have to light the lanterns and lamps.”
“Karen and I were just talking about you,” she said. “We think you’re wonderful. You’re going to make a fine innkeeper.”
“I’m just a simple piano player,” Casey answered, but he liked what she had said: innkeeper. Nice word.
From the smoking bridge, he walked over to the bathhouse, lighting lanterns along the path. He lit the two big lanterns at the top of the stone steps and the three solid lamps that rested on short wooden posts inside the bathhouse. Mist rose in the yellow evening lamplight from the long tiled baths and softened the shadows on the bathhouse walls. The place was warm and moist and fragrant with sulfur, and the flowing water gurgled sweetly.
Casey crossed the driveway to the hotel and lit the lanterns on the verandah, then entered the lobby. He lit kerosene lamps in the lobby, the library, and the lounge, then went up the grand staircase and lit lamps on the second and third-floor landings. With no guests in the hotel, he did not have to light the lamps up and down the halls. There were twelve guestrooms on the second floor and eight on the third. At one end of the third floor was Karen’s apartment, which had once been the master suite of her parents; the other end consisted of the staff dormitory. Casey walked down the hall to the dormitory and looked in. Lamps were already lit, and a few of the Yellows were playing cards. He said hello, and they smiled back.
He went down the back stairs, lighting two more lamps along the way. The stairs met the ground floor in a small hallway between the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen was already brightly lit with half a dozen lamps on counters and lamp stands. The place was warm and smelled of spicy curry. Diana’s helpers were at the long counter in the center of the kitchen, making salads and cutting bread. Diana stood at the giant twelve-burner stove, stirring a stock pot. Casey put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a friendly squeeze, and she leaned back against his chest and hummed.
“You smell like curry,” he told her. “And like garlic and onions and olive oil and sweat.”
“You say the sweetest things,” she said.
“Darling, you-oo-oo-oo scent me….”
She laughed. “Get out of here and let me cook,” she said.
The lamps on the dining room tables were already lit. The long table was set for the staff dinner. Dinner for thirteen.
Diana was responsible for only one meal a day. The staff were on their own for breakfasts and lunches, although she was usually in the kitchen, ready to make anyone a sandwich or offer a bowl of soup. But dinner was her main event, six nights a week. She was a superb cook, and the meals got better and better as she practiced for the busy times ahead, and as she trained her staff to put art and joy into their chores.
More and more each evening, as he came to the end of his lamp-lighting routine, Casey realized, in the warmth and the lamplight and the aroma and the fellowship, that he had found nearly everything he was looking for, and that more was on its way. He went through the dining room into the lounge. He finished at the piano, where he had saved two last lamps to light, one above either side of the keyboard.
Sitting on the bench, he imagined the audience he would soon be entertaining, guests standing around the piano with glasses in their hands and smiles on their faces. “Let me,” he sang to them, “live ’neath your spell….” He sang, “A house that rings with joy and laughter….” “This is the life,” he sang. “Nice work, if you can get it.”
He heard the triangle clang, summoning the community to dinner.
———
“Casey, how old are you?” Diana asked.
“Thirty-eight,” he replied. “And you?”
“Thirty-six. So I guess you could say we’re both grownups.”
They sat facing each other in bath number two. The water was 105 degrees. It was late, and everyone else had left the bathhouse for the night. In the past, Diana had usually retired early, but lately she fo
und herself taking long, late-night baths just to be in his company. Casey. She picked up his foot and placed it in her lap, the heel wedged into her crotch, and began kneading his arch with her thumbs.
After dinner the whole staff would do the dishes together, with Casey at the sink, leading the sing-along: “Take out those glasses and those plates!” Then, when the last pots and pans were dried and hung on the rack, and the counters wiped clean, and the kitchen lamps blown out, Casey would wander out to the lounge, and Diana would follow. They’d make music for an hour or so, old songs Diana could hardly believe she still remembered, new old songs every night. Where did he come up with all these memories? Tonight he’d played and sung “The Folks Who Live on the Hill.” Was he singing that for her? To her? Did he ever sing for her? Did he have any idea?
His face in the misty bathhouse lamplight was strong and beaded with sweat, but relaxed, serene. His eyes were closed and his head was back, resting against the edge of the bath. Diana pulled his toes, one by one. She slid her forefinger between the toes and massaged the sides of them, the tender valleys where they met. Come on, she thought. Your turn. Don’t fall asleep on me.
He must have picked it up. He began stroking her instep by his hip, then lifted her foot and began to squeeze. “Take my foot,” he sang, “I’m a strangler in paradise….”
If only he wouldn’t sing quite so much.
“So,” she repeated. “Grownups.”
“You make me feel so….”
She yanked on his little toe. “Shut up a minute,” she said. “I’m trying to build up some courage here.”
He stopped singing and opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Yes?”
“Yes. See, I was thinking, here we are, these two grownups, stark naked, worn out from a good hard day’s work, and all the children have gone to bed, and even the stars have gone to bed behind a blanket of clouds, and maybe it’s time for us to go to bed too, and for a change, I was just thinking, maybe we could, or even should, well no, could at least….Why don’t we sleep in the same bed together tonight, Casey? In your room. I want to be with you when you wake up and hear the first rain of the season hitting the roof over our heads.”
Casey closed his eyes again and sat silently for a minute. Then he stood up and said, “I want to sit in bath number one a little while. I need to cool down.”
“Okay.” Diana stood, hoping he would offer her a hand to steady her, hoping the hand would become an arm, an embrace. Nope.
Casey crawled out of the bath and crawled across the tiles on all fours, then flopped sideways into the water of bath number one, with a loud splash. When he was settled, Diana slipped in softly beside him and took his hand.
“You owe me at least some kind of response,” she said. “That took guts. I think I deserve to know why we haven’t spent a night together since the time you came here to tune the piano. We haven’t even had sex since then. Why is that?”
Casey had known this was coming. He didn’t know when it would happen, but here it was and he would have to deal with it. “I have this problem,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“What problem? With sex? Anything I can do to help?”
She put her hand on his thigh, and he picked it up and held it. “Not sex exactly,” he said. “It’s this addiction to romance. Hard to explain.”
“You better give it a try,” Diana said. “There’s nothing wrong with romance, and there’s no shortage around here so you’re not going to be caught without a stash. Let’s hear the real reason you don’t want to sleep with me anymore. We did it when we first met, and as I remember it was what I’d call pretty great. But since you moved in here at Hope Springs, no action. I can take rejection, but I want to know the score.”
Casey sighed. “I have this problem with marijuana,” he began.
“Who cares? We’re not talking about marijuana.”
“Listen. So I have this dope habit, but I keep it under control, perfectly under control. I smoke once a day, and that’s it. That keeps me cool. Okay?”
Diana withdrew a bit, pulled her body a few feet upstream. “Go on.”
“Well, I also have this thing about romance. And that one’s not so easy to control.”
“Meaning?”
God. Why didn’t she just let it alone? There was no chance they’d patch this conversation up in time for a goodnight hug. Casey just hoped they’d be back to square one by morning, in time to share the first bath of the day. He liked this woman so much.
“Meaning? Come on. Meaning?”
“I fall in love too easily….” Casey sang.
“Stop singing.”
“If I spend the night with you, I’ll want to spend tomorrow night with you.”
“Hey, no problem.”
“Then it becomes a relationship. And if I get into a relationship with you I won’t be free,” Casey told her. “I’m sorry, but I want to be free.”
“Free for what?”
“Free for….”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I think I have a hard time with commitment.”
“You think? Then maybe you’d better think again about being a hotel manager, because come the first of the year you’re going to be working your ass off. We both will. We all will. You’re going to be stressed out, and so will I, and we might need each other for comfort. Or are you saving yourself so you’ll be free to romance the guests? All those movie stars Nellie’s planning to lure here? Is that it? I don’t think it’s such a good idea, you know, sex with the guests. Not cool for an innkeeper. You better leave that to Baxter. Jesus, how did we get into this? I’m sorry. Forget I asked.”
Casey put his hand on her ankle. He felt her pull it away, but he held on. “Wait,” he said. “I don’t want to romance the guests. That’s not it at all.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Diana said. “Doesn’t matter who you fuck. Whom.” She yanked her foot away from his grip, and he felt he was losing the best friend he’d made in a long while.
Diana rose to her feet and climbed out of the water, onto the tile deck. As always, Casey admired her beautiful, bountiful body. She did not look at him as she dried off. She put on her yellow robe and left the bathhouse without saying goodnight.
Casey began to twitch. The day had had its ups, its downs.
It was a shame to have a day end on a down.
He got out of the bath and dried off and put on his robe. He felt the book of matches in his robe pocket. He blew out the lamps and walked out on the front steps of the bathhouse. The air was moist and cool, the heavens black and heavy. It would rain any minute.
He recalled an option from a hiding place in his mind that had never quite stayed hidden. The milk can on the smoking bridge. Where he had thrown his daily roach, after his daily smoke. Some of those roaches were longer than others. Any minute now the rain would fall, would fall into that milk can, and those roaches would be goners.
So if he was going to cheat the system, it had better be now. Right now.
Casey blew out the two standing lamps at the entrance to the bathhouse. Then he blew out the lanterns along the path from the baths to the smoking bridge.
———
From his ledge in front of the water house, Nqong trained his binoculars on the sleeping community far down in the valley. The hotel glowed softly in the moist night. He watched the bathhouse become dark; then one by one he saw the outdoor lanterns winked out, and the outside became completely dark. Then a tiny flame flickered, and a tinier spot glowed and dimmed, glowed and dimmed.
Nqong went into the warm water house, wiped off his binoculars, and set them on a shelf. He washed his face in each of the vats, took a sip from each of the taps, checked the thermometers, and held each of the glass tubes up to the lamplight. He went back into the cave and put his hand on each of the pipes one last time. He adjusted one valve a quarter of an inch counterclockwise.
Nqong donned his yellow canvas wrap and stepped back outside into the rai
n. Chilly drops fell on his bare skin. He stood in the wind and let the rain wash the dust from his body. He faced the north and lifted his grin to the black sky and let the raindrops tickle his teeth. The rock ledge beneath his bare feet was growing slippery.
Here comes fall.
6. Auld Lang Syne
The first serious storm of the season arrived in Santa Barbara about one in the afternoon on Monday, December 31. It barreled into town just as Joley Hope was leaving for Hope Springs, and it chased him relentlessly south to the city of Anacapa, where it caught up with him and began to pound his windshield. Then, when Joley turned east and took the highway up the mountainside to the tiny town of Tecolote, he found himself driving into sheets of rain, fighting a wind that seemed determined to shove him off the slippery pavement, into a muddy ditch or tumbling downhill, side over side.
This storm would be known for years thereafter as El Niño del Año Nuevo, the tempest that ushered in the nineteen-eighties. It claimed the lives of six motorists that New Year’s Eve night in Anacapa County alone.
When he reached Tecolote, Joley turned off on Tecolote Valley Road. The wind and the downpour did not let up, but at least the two-lane, pot-holed road was on level ground. Joley crept the last five miles of his trip, his headlights rendered useless by the rain, the windshield wipers frantic and futile. When at last he drove through the gate onto the Hope Springs driveway, he felt the relief a ranch horse must feel at the end of a day’s work, when it returns home and smells the fresh hay in the barn. Except that Hope Springs Creek smelled nothing like fresh anything.
He pulled to the side of the driveway and parked his BMW in front of the old hotel. He checked his Rolex: it had taken him four hours to drive less than a hundred miles, and night was approaching fast. He opened the car door and stepped out into the downpour, slammed the door and opened the backseat door, pulled out his raincoat, and shrugged his sopping body into it. Then he slammed that door, opened the trunk, grabbed his overnight bag, slammed the trunk shut, and trotted up the verandah steps to the front door of the hotel.
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