Next Life Might Be Kinder

by Howard Norman

  “Nobody knew anything, I bet,” Elizabeth said.

  “Three employees, who will remain anonymous, said, without provocation, things like, ‘Sounds like something bellman Padgett would do.’ ‘Sounds like’ is speculation, and we can’t legally follow up on that. Between you and me and the moon, we came down hard on Padgett. He’s a squirmy bastard, that one, I don’t mind telling you. We didn’t break his thumbs in a dank room with a single light bulb overhead. He didn’t outright confess. But he did it, all right.”

  “Yes, he did,” Elizabeth said.

  “With each employee, we related only that there’d been a violation,” Derek said. “We used the words ‘illegal entry’ and ‘damage to personal property,’ on advice of the hotel’s attorney. During his interview, I said to bellman Padgett, ‘There are fifty-four long-term residents in this hotel. On the night of the violation, there were also twenty-seven short-term patrons. We haven’t mentioned anyone by name, so why would you even mention Mr. and Mrs. Lattimore, out of the blue?’ See, because he had—he had mentioned you out of the blue. He squirmed, the squirmy bastard. That’s when he owned up to the dustup you mentioned, at the dance lesson. He exhibited a lot of vitriol about that.”

  “Can’t he just be sacked?” Elizabeth said.

  “Legally, we still don’t have the grounds. But Mr. Isherwood cut his hours in half.”

  “What about the lindy lessons?” Elizabeth said. “I want to continue with them, and see no reason I should have to put up with Padgett’s creepiness.”

  “Mr. Isherwood will speak with Mr. Moran today. A firm warning to keep things on the up-and-up or we’ll make the ballroom unavailable.”

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

  Derek slipped the affidavits into his satchel, took a sip of coffee, set the cup down, stood, and said, “Night or day, I’m locatable.”

  When Derek got to the door, Elizabeth said, “Alfonse Padgett should not have a master key to the rooms.”

  “Hotel policy is that all bellmen do,” Derek said.

  Elizabeth got up from her chair, accidentally knocked the coffee cup off the table, but continued right over to Derek, who stood at the door he’d half-opened already. She took him by the arm and pulled him with definite insistence over to the chaise longue. She threw back the quilt and pointed at the long gash with the stuffing in view. “That’s Padgett’s calling card, Derek,” she said. “Isn’t there anything that can be done about him having a key?”

  “I’ll speak to Mr. Isherwood again,” Derek said, staring at the chaise longue, “but I can’t promise anything. However, I have a follow-up interview with bellman Padgett right after his shift today.” Then he left our apartment.

  “Maybe we should move,” I said. “The apartment above Cyrano’s is up for rent, I saw the notice of that. It’d be fine.”

  “Absolutely not. This is our first home, Samuel. I’m not going to let some Beelzebub chase us out.”

  Thinking back on this, I realize that her use of the word “Beelzebub” must’ve meant that on some level she felt that Alfonse Padgett was more ghastly horrifying than just some creep.

  “Plus, my mind’s made up,” Lizzy said. “I’m going to take lesson number three next week.”

  “Forgot to tell you, I already went and paid Mr. Moran so I could take lessons, too,” I said. “Coming into it late’s not a problem. I’m only two behind.”

  “Thank you, darling. I know you wanted me to feel I didn’t need you in this situation, but in a marriage it’s important to stay close and see to each other’s safekeeping. It’s marriage logic. I’ve got the Boswell Sisters album. I’ll catch you up.”

  I always felt the Essex was a dignified hotel. Elizabeth did, too. It had what we felt was a European or old-world quality, as she put it. I had never stayed in hotels in Europe, but as a child Elizabeth had stayed in London, Paris, and Amsterdam hotels when her family went to those cities on holiday. We both liked sitting in the lobby of our hotel, people-watching, reading magazines, having a coffee, looking out at the snow or rain through the big windows. “Just relaxing before we go upstairs and the next thing happens,” as Elizabeth once said. I was in the lobby far more often than my wife. But we both could sketch it in detail, from memory, on a napkin.

  A hotel with permanent occupants and a familiar staff constitutes a neighborhood, and any neighborhood may, like a person, have a violent aspect to its character lurking under the surface, and given the right conditions, it can show itself. I thought about this when, two mornings after our late-night conversation with Derek Budnick, I went down to the lobby at about seven A.M. and saw that Alfonse Padgett had a raised yellow-black bruise under his right eye and a bandage holding a thick piece of gauze across the bridge of his nose. On closer inspection, as I walked by the bellman’s station, I saw that his jaw was swollen and black-and-blue as well. This was clearly the result of Padgett’s second “interview” with Derek. Derek himself was sitting on a corner sofa, reading the morning paper. Walking toward the lift, I saw that Derek had bandages on the knuckles of both of his hands. House detective Budnick was ambidextrous.

  Elizabeth Was Arrested by a Constable at Age Nine

  TODAY, WHILE EATING dinner in my cottage, hoping the dark curtain of rain out to sea didn’t sweep in and make landfall, so I could go down to the beach and see Elizabeth, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a question: did we have a good marriage? It seemed an impossible question—what did “good” even mean, married as we were for so brief a time? We were literature-obsessed, radio-obsessed, espresso-obsessed. We made love at any odd hour and lived on the daily elixir of moods and books and being broke and those dance lessons and hotel life. Much life packed into a given hour, and then hours of doing nothing but talking. I mean, our life in the Essex Hotel was just 209 days.

  We had not met each other’s parents. A month after our wedding, my mother had a stroke and lasted only days, and much to my chagrin, her will instructed that she be cremated immediately and her ashes scattered in the sea off Vancouver, so I had no chance to say a proper goodbye. At least my mother and Elizabeth had spoken three or four times on the telephone. My father hadn’t been in the picture, though naturally Elizabeth asked me about him. I told her I’d seen him only once since I was two. She wanted me to tell her about it. So at the kitchen table in our apartment, I said, “I was ten. My mother sat me down and said I was going to a hockey match with my uncle, who’d come in from Vancouver. This uncle was my dad’s brother, Irwin. I had no interest in hockey. None. I could ice-skate pretty well—”

  “You’re obviously not a Canadian male,” Elizabeth said.

  “I have a Canadian birth certificate and driver’s license,” I said.

  “Those don’t matter. You didn’t play hockey. It’s okay. I still love you.”

  I continued the story. “So my uncle Irwin got me all bundled up and we went to the arena. He led the way down the aisle and sat me next to two men. Both of these guys were wearing suits and fedoras. One of the men wore a gray suit. The other fellow had a dark suit on. That turned out to be my father. ‘Sammy, you might remember Lawrence, your father.’ My uncle actually said that. Truth was, I didn’t remember him. But I looked up at my dad. He had that nice suit on and the fedora—very handsome guy, really. But my uncle had to differentiate for me. In fact, he never told me the other guy’s name at all. Never introduced us, I distinctly remember that. The one in the gray suit just sort of stared straight ahead, all lost in the hockey match. Pretty soon a vendor comes up the aisle, and my uncle orders hot dogs all around.

  “He sends some money down our row to the vendor. The vendor sends the hot dogs back. My uncle hands me a hot dog. Then he reaches past me to hand my father a hot dog, and when my dad reaches out, I see there’s handcuffs connecting his wrist to the other guy’s wrist. My dad gets a kind of weird expression on his face, like, ‘Oh, I forgot,’ and leans back and pushes his sleeve down over his wrist and goes back to watching the game. So my uncle’s got
this hot dog in midair, so he hands it to the guy my dad’s attached to by handcuffs. So now that guy’s got two hot dogs.”

  “A criminal, your dad,” Elizabeth said.

  “Definitely, but I never learned the details. My mother was shut of him by that time.”

  “Not a good memory, Samuel. That hockey game.”

  “Mostly I remember the fedoras.”

  We had talked about visiting Lizzy’s parents in Hay-on-Wye, and had even marked possible dates on the calendar. I had spoken with Elizabeth’s mother and father only once, on the telephone. It was on the day after we got married, accommodating for the time difference. The conversation proved not at all stilted; there was lots of good humor. “Welcome to the family,” her father said, “though it’ll be a better welcome when you visit here and the aunts and uncles get a look at you, and a few of the neighbors.” Her mother said, “There are a thousand things to know about Elizabeth. I mean, other than the things you’ve already gotten to know.”

  I said, “Just start with one, please. We have to start somewhere.” It was nice to hear Elizabeth’s father chuckle on the line. Lizzy said they had a telephone in the kitchen and another in the upstairs bedroom.

  “All right, then,” her mother said. Elizabeth, sitting on the chaise longue, was looking at me quizzically. “When Elizabeth was nine years old, the constable came to the house to deliver a summons for Elizabeth’s arrest. Nine years old almost to the day. I say, ‘Well, what’s this all about?’ Constable Teachout says, ‘It so happens that your daughter Elizabeth failed to properly sign out a book from the Hay-on-Wye Public Library, just by the Swan Hotel, center of town.’ Constable Teachout was all in a huff. ‘Well, we certainly know where the library’s situated,’ says I in a huff right back to Constable Teachout. Well, by ‘failed to properly sign out’ he meant that our Elizabeth stood accused of stealing a book. Which turned out to be true, she had stolen it, but it didn’t lessen the pain of the accusation. And from Constable Teachout, a man we’d known since he was a boy!”

  After I’d cleaned up after dinner, the weather cleared, so I walked to the beach. When Elizabeth arrived and set out her eleven books, I said, “Why’d you steal a book from the Hay-on-Wye Library, Lizzy?”

  “Have you been speaking with my mother? She hasn’t been telling you tall tales, has she?”

  “No, the day after we were married and we talked from the hotel, she told me then.”

  “But you decided to bring it up tonight, of all things?”

  “I’m very curious about it.”

  “Why? Because you think these books here on the sand—that I stole them?”

  “Not at all. I’m just curious.”

  “I was only being polite. Mrs. Kelb, the Hay-on-Wye librarian, had a bad cold that day, Sam, and she had the fireplace all blazing. It was a one-room library, and it got overly warm in there some winter days. Anyway, Mrs. Kelb dozed off at her desk. I was already late for piano, and she’d fallen asleep, head down right on the desk, and I didn’t want to wake her. So off I went with the book. Later, she caught me out to the constable. A little overboard, don’t you think, sending a constable to a child’s house? It was done to put the fear of God in me, I’m sure. You know what part of that story my mother couldn’t tell you, because she didn’t know? See, I had to write out an apology to Mrs. Kelb and deliver it in person, which my mum and dad insisted on, the honest way. Mrs. Kelb accepted my apology. And when she went over to the card catalogue, I drooled some spit into her teacup. Tea which she’d just poured.”

  I was laughing so loudly I thought Philip and Cynthia might’ve heard me inside their house. “Want a divorce,” Elizabeth said, “knowing what I’m capable of since age nine?”

  “No.”

  “Sam, I can name the very book.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  “I loved that book as a kid, too.”

  “Tell me how Maximus Minimum is. How does he like the cottage? Where is his favorite place to sit?”

  “He prefers the kitchen counter and at the foot of the bed. Since we left the hotel he’s gone kind of inward. He seems to be thinking more. Or something. He’s enjoying the countryside, though. A few days ago, a mouse was in the kitchen. He practically did a midair somersault to get after it. The mouse wiggled out under the kitchen door.

  “While Maximus sat staring at the door, I drove to Vogler’s Cove. When I came back, he was still staring at the door. Also, I forgot, he’s no longer interested in the catnip toy. But generally I’d say he’s acclimated well, Lizzy. So much more room to move around in the cottage.”

  “I guess he couldn’t come down here, huh?”

  “Well, you know, he’s an indoor cat.”

  “He likes his routine, doesn’t he? Does he still sit close to the radio, like he’s listening to it?”

  “Since he got to the cottage, if the radio isn’t on, he yowls. Loudly. So I leave it on, tuned to one station or another. In the kitchen. And I mean day and night. He’s like a still life, Cat with Radio.”

  Since we had so little time left this evening, we only spoke about this.

  They Crossed Over

  With Dr. Nissensen, January 23, 1973:

  Dr. Nissensen was nursing a cold. He had a humidifier on, but the sound didn’t interfere with our conversation. He was wearing a woolen vest under his sports coat.

  “I saw this program on television,” I said the moment I sat down. “It’s called They Crossed Over. The guy whose show it is, he’s a charlatan.”

  “I’ve never seen it. Describe it for me.”

  “This guy’s name is David Korder, about forty, average-looking. But so obviously average-looking. Supposed to be a kind of everyman, I suppose. Regular fellow with this astonishing gift of being able to contact loved ones who have—”

  “Crossed over.”

  “And the dead are sending messages, sending signals of some sort, exclusively to this David Korder. He’s the only one who can hear these messages and deliver them to the grieving family’s attention and decipher the messages for them. I hate the guy. He’s such a fake, and he’s got all these vulnerable people in the palm of his hand. I can’t even imagine how much money he makes off this. I mean, he’ll never run out of messages, will he? His show will run for a century.”

  “And the grieving people, do you think they are chosen beforehand?”

  “Have to be. Maybe they have to audition, prove they’re the most desperate to contact their loved one who died. The thing is, David Korder’s pet word is ‘closure.’ ‘Let’s see if we can find some closure here.’ He shuts his eyes. He ‘sees’ a mailbox, so he says, ‘Did your father’—or sister or wife or whoever’s crossed over—‘did he have a mailbox?’ A mailbox! And the family falls apart. They look at each other and can’t believe their ears. ‘How could he know that?’”

  “I think you’re equally disgusted by the charlatan David Korder and the people who volunteered to expose their neediness and naïveté on television.”

  “All of the above.”

  “You appear to distinguish yourself from these television grievers.”

  “Distinguish?”

  “Well, in your experience with Elizabeth, you don’t need any spiritual broker, no middleman. You don’t need a David Korder to contact her. You are privileged in that.”

  “It’s good you’re sitting down, because you aren’t going to believe this: I agree with you. I think Elizabeth is privileging me.”

  “And less privileged grieving persons become so desperate, they volunteer to go on television and fall victim to a charlatan because their departed loved ones don’t know how to communicate with them. I see.”

  “Here’s my problem, though. I’ve become addicted to this program. I so seldom watch television. Hardly ever. An old movie maybe three times a week. I listen to the radio. I’m a radio person.”

  “Would you suggest I watch this program?”

&n
bsp; “That would give it a larger audience—no.”

  “That’s funny, Sam. But for the sake of deepening my understanding.”

  “It’s on Sunday at five P.M.”

  “Sunday, after the religious programs.”

  “The same lineup, yes. And Korder’s got a preacherly sanctimoniousness about him. Know what else? He’s on the lecture circuit. I read about it.”

  “What, conducting mass séances in a stadium?”

  “Not quite that, I don’t think.”

  “I trust you realize, using other people’s vulnerabilities as a kind of business venture is hardly new. But let’s get back to your addiction, so called. How does it manifest itself?”

  “My neighbors Philip and Cynthia, whom I mention a lot. Last Sunday they invited me for dinner at five-thirty, because they wanted to eat early so we could go down to Liverpool to hear an all-Beethoven concert, a string quartet with a good reputation. I really wanted to go with them. Nothing I love more, if the musicians are good.”

  “Ah, but They Crossed Over was on at five. Couldn’t you have simply begged off dinner and joined them later for the concert?”

  “That wouldn’t feel right.”

  “So, in this instance, you forwent—”

  “Forwent?”

  “You opted out of both a pleasant dinner and a Beethoven concert.”

  “The small pleasures of life replaced by an addiction. I know.” I poured myself a glass of water from the carafe on Dr. Nissensen’s table.