When it all got to be too much, Teddy abandoned the karaoke lounge and fled into the moodier atmosphere of the piano bar at the opposite end of the hotel. It was a quarter past one in the morning, and he needed to take his mind off the fact that Gracie and Luke were far along into their wedding night. Teddy felt gnarled up on the inside, and the despondent piano music captured his sad heart and reeled him in on its tender melodious waves. The dim bar was furnished with scarlet velvet sofas and love seats. The golden patina of the brass bar rail glinted with metallic ruby reflections from the chandelier lights. Teddy sat down on a bar stool and listened to twinkling jazz from the piano.
“This is my favorite part of the song…”
The red-headed keeper nodded over at the piano player. She closed her eyes and swayed to the gentle jazz rhythm that sounded like wind chimes in the rain. She had the worn, detached demeanor of a keeper who had been around seven, maybe eight hundred years—enough to realize that life in the lower dimensions was hard, but it was a lot harder if you didn’t stop to enjoy its finer points. She adjusted herself on her barstool, and gazed right at Teddy.
“My name’s Sally,” she said with confidence. “You don’t look like a regular around here.”
Teddy acknowledged her with an awkward wave. “Teddy. And I’m not a regular. My assignment’s on her honeymoon, and tonight’s her wedding night.”
“Yeah? Sounds romantic.”
“Not really. Her husband’s messing around on the side.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Silence parted them—that moment of hesitation and reluctance that always creeps into the conversation whenever two strangers try their hands at small talk.
“So which one is yours?” Teddy asked.
“That one,” Sally said, nodding over at the source of the music.
“The piano player?”
“Yeah. His name is Jason. ”
Teddy looked over at Jason. He was a young guy, probably not more than three or four years older than Gracie. He had a trusting face and gentle aura that sparkled out of his soft piano playing.
“He looks like a nice enough guy.”
“Yeah, he is. That’s the problem,” Sally said. “He’s gonna die tomorrow.”
So much for their attempt to make innocuous small talk. “Geez, sorry. I didn’t know.”
“That makes two of us. I just got the word from the Dimension Council.”
They both fell silent. Teddy felt foolish. Where do you take the conversation after that revelation?
“So how’s it gonna happen?”
The red-headed keeper glared over at Teddy, but quickly softened her gaze. She understood. The concept of death in the lower dimensions was as much a mystery to mortals as it was to their keepers. The only certainty was that the Dimension Council knew more than anyone.
“See this guy at the bar?” Sally nodded over to a rugged man hunched over his drink at the far end. “He wants my assignment’s SUV. He’s gonna ask Jason for a ride home, saying it’s because he’s too drunk and all, and cause Jason’s such a nice guy, he’s gonna help him home. Only Jason’s not gonna make it home, and that guy’s gonna have a new Jeep Cherokee by morning.”
The keeper propped her elbows up onto the bar. “And there’s nothing I can do about it.” She held her face in her hands, as if she wanted to cry, but didn’t know how.
“Where’s his keeper?” Teddy asked, nodding over at the rugged outsider.
Sally shrugged. “Doesn’t got one. Showed up here a few weeks ago, and he’s been nothing but bad news ever since.”
Teddy studied the rugged man. He looked worn-down, shattered from the inside out, and ready to make use of someone else’s better fortune.
“Look at him play,” Sally said, turning her listless eyes back to Jason. “The way he cares about the music even though he knows no one is even listening. But I always listen. Every night I sit at this bar and listen to his whole set. All four hours. I like to pretend that he knows I’m here, and that he’s playing for me.”
“You care about him a lot?”
“Yeah. Probably too much.”
Teddy suddenly recognized the pain in her face and thought of Gracie.
“The Council said I’m gonna stay on with him. Help him through the next life, you know. Supposedly he’s gonna be a great leader the next time around. Gonna be an influential advocate for victims of crime. He’s gonna help a lot of people in his next life. Even though it means he has to give up his life this time around.”
“He seems like a good guy. I’m sure you’ll do a great job helping him.”
“Yeah,” she signed. “He’s such a good guy. I just hope he doesn’t forget how to play the piano. I really loved hearing him play.”
The piano whispered to silence. Sally swiveled off her barstool, clapping with admiration—an acknowledgment that it was the last note she’d ever hear Jason play. Teddy watched the tears streaming down her face. It was too bad that Jason couldn’t see Sally clapping because it was clear that she was his biggest fan.
Jason stood up from his piano bench and gave an appreciative “good night” into the microphone to an almost empty lounge. Jason carried his sheet music to the bar where the bartender served him a complimentary rum and Coke. The outsider lurked at the edge of the bar and surveyed Jason with his merciless intentions. Teddy didn’t stick around to witness the rest. He tossed a good-bye salute to Sally, even though she didn’t see it. She was too focused on getting her assignment through the difficult night, and the whole encounter reminded Teddy of why being a keeper was sometimes harder than being a mortal in the spatial world.
Teddy left the piano lounge and wandered around the first floor lobby of the hotel. It was a ritzy joint, the kind of baroque opulence that Puffy Ellington would have admired, especially considering the fact he was probably picking up the tab. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, but the brilliance of the crystal chandeliers illuminated the entire hallway like high noon. The hotel lobby had the early morning verve of a casino. Valets, attendants, luggage porters, bell boys, room service runners all shuttled out of the elevators like little elves, dressed smartly in their red-vested uniforms, complete with gold buttons, pressed black pants and stark white shirts. The switchboard blinked and sang at the concierge’s desk. Expensive luxury cars and limousines appeared under the carport every fifteen minutes and the revolving glass doors circled with a steady flow of high-rolling businessmen and enamored couples. A rowdy group of beautiful yuppies chortled louder than necessary as they reclined in the reception sofas with an unlimited supply of champagne. Listening to their gaiety and fanfare, Teddy felt like the loneliest soul in the universe.
Teddy wandered around the entrance lobby with a sullen heart and aimless gait. At one point, he even counted the number of times the same bus boy—a squirrely high school kid—scurried through the lobby and into the elevators with his silver room service tray. He wasn’t more than sixteen, and Teddy guessed he’d rather be jiving at a dance club on a Saturday night than gophering fried cheese sticks, bonbons, and overpriced brandy to couples in matching robes. Teddy lurked around the main lobby for almost an hour. He overfed the Goliath goldfish swimming around in the fresh water aquarium, figuring an early death due to obesity was better than a life sentence circling the same four walls of a fish tank. Teddy barely acknowledged the other keepers hanging around the hotel. They were a tight-knitted clique used to seeing new keepers loitering around with their vacationing assignments, and they were more happy to ignore the aimless “new kid” keeper from the mainland.
Teddy glanced up at the enormous starfish wall clock. It was three o’clock in the morning. Since time was a construct of the lower dimensions, the only thing it told Teddy was he had at least seven more hours of watching the hotel maid vacuum the floor runners. Gracie was a late sleeper and the morning after her wedding night would certainly be no different. Teddy sunk lower in his side cha
ir and feigned sleep. It felt better than watching groups of boisterous women, arriving from Midwestern cities like St. Louis or Minneapolis. They trounced through the revolving doors in undersized bathing suits and garish beach wraps while chasing after the promotional promise of “Living-it-Large in Hawaii.” One of the women,, the smallest, thinnest girl of the group, was wearing a black knee length trench coat, tinted sunglasses, and a silk head scarf reminiscent of a 1960s incognito movie actress. She filed in behind the herd. Through lazy eyes, Teddy briefly considered what kind of a woman wears sunglasses at three o’clock in the morning. She was dressed like she didn’t want to be recognized, but there was something about her high-heeled gait that reminded Teddy of that bony harpy, Misty Winters.
Wait a second. That was Misty Winters.
Teddy shot up from his seat. Gracie’s back-stabbing best friend was back for sloppy seconds.
Misty approach the front desk. The front desk attendant passed her a room key and signaled for the bellhop to load her five pieces of designer leather luggage onto the trolley. Clearly, Misty Winters intended to hang around the entire seven-day honeymoon. The bellhop guided the trolley into the elevator. Teddy slipped in behind them.
The doors closed with a ping. The elevator lifted up to the second floor, stopped with a chime, and opened its doors. They chimed closed, then re-opened, chimed, then closed before ascending up to the third floor, stopping, chiming, opening its doors, and pausing before closing them again.
Misty Winters’s rodent face pinched up in annoyance every time the elevator doors opened on the wrong floor. “I said the fifteenth floor,” she insisted to the bellhop, who stood helpless as they both watched all the buttons on the floor panel illuminate themselves.
“Excuse me, young man. But what do you think you’re doing?” It was Sheldon, Misty’s sniveling keeper.
Teddy ignored him and proceeded to press all the floor buttons except the fifteenth floor. The elevator cab stopped on the fourth floor, opened its doors, paused, then closed them before ascending and stopping again at the fifth floor.
“Youuuuung maaaaaan” Sheldon insisted with his nasal drawl. “Just want do you think you are doing?”
“Why is it doing that?” Misty stomped her stiletto heel and demanded an explanation from the befuddled bellhop. She didn’t wait for an answer, and instead lurched forward and pressed the “Close Door” button over and over. Her polished long nails clicked, clicked, clicked against the plastic dome of the floor button.
“You stupid machine,” Misty cursed. The elevator doors closed on cue, but Misty watched in horror as the elevator continued to stop on the fifth floor, sixth floor, seventh floor… She pounded on floor number “fifteen”, and suddenly the whole cab grinded to a halt. Teddy had thrown the emergency stop switch. The lights flickered, and the cab swung from side-to-side before settling to a complete stop.
“Holy hell, what kind of an elevator is this, anyway?” Misty cowered in the corner, lips quivering, and peered up at the elevator’s ceiling like a laboratory mouse listening for the rattling lid of her cage. The bellhop, on the other hand, was more afraid of being stuck in an elevator with a woman who could break out into tears at any moment than he was of being suspended eight stories in an elevator shaft.
“That’s unconscionable misconduct, youuuuung maaaaan!”
“So is letting your assignment fly three thousand miles to make an X-rated version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Gracie’s husband.”
“That’s none of my business and neither is it yours,” Sheldon replied with an upturn of his pointy nose and puny face.
“None of your business? What do you mean none of your business, you little sh—”
Teddy quickly considered whether or not he could make both Misty and Sheldon scream by short circuiting the electricity that powered the cab’s interior lights. But it was short lived; his prank was interrupted by the bellhop’s keeper.
“Is there a problem here that needs solving?” asked the bellhop’s keeper, a hefty direct woman, who rested on her cane, and didn’t appreciate Teddy’s interference either.
“I’m making a note of your recalcitrant behavior to the Dimension Council,” Sheldon threatened with wormy conviction and pulled out a small notebook, like he was writing up a grade school demerit.
“Well, be sure to make a note of this, too,” Teddy retaliated by pounding on the alarm button. A shivering ring peeled out throughout the elevator shaft.
“C’mon, now. Both of you,” the bellhop’s keeper insisted. “Move outta the way, and let my boy get out on the eighth floor.” She flipped the switch and revived the elevator cab. The doors chimed and re-opened. “He’s just trying to earn a living, you know, and this chicken noodling fooling is delaying my bridge game.”
The keeper ushered the bellhop out of the elevator cab and onto the eighth floor.
“Hey, where are you going with my bags?” Misty shouted after the bellhop.
“I’ll be sure to meet you up in your room, ma’am,” the bellhop called into the elevator. The bellhop looked lost and confused, but certain of one thing—it was better to be outside the elevator than inside it with Misty Winters, even if it meant carrying all five designer suitcases up seven flights of stairs. The elevator doors closed between them, and Misty pouted all the way up to the fifteenth floor.
The moment the elevator chimed and the doors opened, Misty rushed to escape, but tripped and collapsed onto her knees. Both Misty and Sheldon shrieked with harmonious squeals. Misty recovered with a glare backwards at her misstep, the same way all mortals do whenever they stumble because a keeper decided to get revenge through tripping.
Then, like a mandate from the Dimension Council, the adjacent elevator doors opened, and Luke Ellington stepped out.
“Hey, babe,” he cried out with glee and swept Misty up into his arms.
It was obvious that Luke had arranged and paid for Mistress Misty’s Licentious Lair of Lust, sequestered in the far west corner of the fifteenth floor, only two floors below Gracie and Luke’s honeymoon penthouse suite.
Teddy started forward until Lou suddenly appeared and backed him away with force.
“Must I be your eternal babysitter?”
Teddy glared at Lou with disdain. He was wearing a grass hula skirt, festive luau tank top, and innumerable rainbow ruffled leis that crowned his neck like a roll of lifesavers candies. It was damn hard to take Lou seriously in a grass skirt.
“I don’t need your babysitting, Lou. Besides, you’re already failing at that job.”
“Oh, no? Are you telling me you wouldn’t mind the eternal pigeon duty that you’d be socked with the moment you slap this tattletale squirt?
“I resent that, Mr. Castellini,” Sheldon countered.
“Yeah, what are you gonna do about it, Shelly?” Lou breathed down on him like an indomitable bully.
Sheldon curled up his nose in protest and scratched a lengthy demerit into his notebook.
“He might be an uptight whiney little pissant,” Lou continued, turning back to Teddy, “but he’s right about Luke and Misty. So lay off him.”
“No, I won’t lay off him. Don’t either you get the fact that it’s your job to keep your mortals from screwing around and lying about it. Isn’t that obvious? Both of you? Don’t you get that?”
“Trust me, Teddy. There’s nothing I’d like better than for Luke Ellington to quit his ‘I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours’ escapades with Misty Winters, especially if it means shutting the two of you up. But life’s not that simple. And neither is being a keeper.”
“It’s called Free Will, youuuung maaaan,” Sheldon interjected with righteous conviction. “All our assignments have the right to exhibit their Free Will—whether we like it or not.”
“See?” Lou turned to me. “You think I enjoy hanging around this nerdy suck-face any more than you do?”
Sheldon pursed his lips like he was sucking in air from a helium balloon, then exhaled out with peevis
h disdain. “That offends me!”
“Good, Shelly. It’s supposed to,” Lou replied.
“And no one likes you either,” Teddy added, just for good measure.
Sheldon barely blinked his tadpole eyes. He simply pulled out his pocket notebook like an old-fashioned Western gun draw and metered out his threat. “The Dimension Council will hear about this,” he warned. “Oh, yes, they will.”
Sheldon slip back into the elevator, disappearing behind the shimmer of the cab’s reflective golden doors.
“Look,” Lou chided Teddy, “all I want is a little peace and quiet, so I can blissfully sip my coconut martinis by the pool and dance a few hulas.
“Oh, boo-hoo-hoo, Lou. I really feel sorry for you. Especially considering the fact that it’s your assignments who’s causing all the inconvenience.”
Luke suddenly exited the suite. He glanced down the hallway, right then left, like a criminal embarking on a heist of corruption. He was barefoot, wearing only a hotel bathrobe and carrying a silver-plated ice bucket. He was in a hurry and passed through Lou and me on the way to the vending machine room.
Love, Greater Than Infinity (Book 1: New Adult Romance) Page 7
