The mobile house phone lights up on the table and begins beeping. Some guy wants to be connected to room 317. I connect him without responding, my mind far away from hotel duties.
Kia wipes her mouth with a napkin and chugs from the water pitcher. “You know, I’ve seen you.”
“You’ve seen me?”
She points to the ceiling, smiling. “On the roof.”
Oxygen leaves my lungs and I can no longer breathe. I spin around and head back into the kitchen, thinking I can’t ever talk to this girl again. I’m going to have to call the police and have her escorted off the premises. I wash the bowl I used to stir the waffle mix in the sink and try not to think about how many times the girl in the other room has watched me masturbating. Maybe if I stay in here long enough, she’ll be gone by the time I come out. But the question is whether or not I really want her gone, or if I want to watch her eat waffles until we both grow old and die together.
I’m not given a choice. Once I finish washing the dishes and exit the kitchen, she’s absent from the table. The plate and syrup and water pitcher are also missing, and for a moment I become convinced tonight has all been some kind of fever dream and Kia’s entire existence has been this ongoing hallucination gradually fueling my schizophrenia.
Then I hear her vomiting in the lobby bathroom and my heart calms. The sound of her gagging serves as the equivalent of a baby’s crib mobile. Peaceful. Soothing. Jesus, that’s fucked up.
The hotel phone rings again. I answer it, half-hypnotized by the pleasant lullaby of puke. “This is the front desk. How can I help you?”
“Are your computers broken?” a woman asks.
“Uh…what?”
“Are your computers down? Are they broken? What’s going on?”
“No, the computers here are working just fine, ma’am.”
“Where’s the other guy at?”
“What other guy?”
“The other front desk employee.”
“Ma’am, I am the only person working this shift. There is no one else here.”
The woman is silent for a moment, then sighs loudly. “Shit.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, rushing behind the front desk. The computers seem fine.
“I just received a phone call from the front desk. He told me your computers were down and he needed to reenter my credit card information.”
Shit. The guy who called while I was talking to Kia. I hadn’t asked him for the guest’s name before connecting him over. “You didn’t tell him your credit card number, did you?”
“Well, of course I did. You guys asked for it.”
“No, ma’am. I’m the only one here, and I definitely did not ask for it.”
“I just don’t understand this. You guys just called me.”
“Nobody from the front desk called you.”
“Then how did they get through?”
“I…I don’t know. Maybe some kind of glitch in our system.” I don’t tell her the real reason, that I’m a shitty employee and an even shittier human being.
“This is unacceptable. Let me speak to your manager.”
“Um.”
“I said, let me speak to your manager.”
“Um,” I say again, because my brain’s swarmed by the memos management posted last year when this same exact scam was hitting local hotels. The memo informed us all that if we didn’t confirm the first and last name of a guest before transferring a caller over, we would receive an immediate termination, no exceptions.
Part of me wants to just hang up on this guest and start browsing the job listings online. Get away from the hotel, escape the cowboy’s switchblade. But another part of me—the lazier part that just wants to continue sitting around every night jacking-off on the roof and watching horror movies on my iPad—wants to fix the situation before it becomes an even bigger issue. Before this lady drags Javier into the picture.
“Hello?” the woman says. “Are you there?” She sounds out of breath, like she’s getting out of bed and putting clothes on. Shit, she’s planning on coming down here. If I can convince her to stay in her room and calm her down over the phone, then I still might have a chance.
“I apologize, ma’am, I’m still here. I was just talking to my manager.”
“No, let me talk to him.”
“Of course, ma’am, of course. However, first we need you to hang up with us and call your bank, okay? It’s crucial that you cancel your credit card before whoever you gave your information to uses it.”
“Now, hold on a second—”
“Ma’am! They could be emptying your account right now, right this very second. Please, cancel your card, then call the front desk and you can speak to my manager.”
“Oh, well, okay…”
“Thank you, and once again, ma’am, I do apologize.”
As soon as she hangs up, I’m calling the Other Goddamn Hotel, desperately praying George isn’t too drunk to answer the phone. It picks up after only two rings, which is always a bad sign.
“Thank you for calling the Other Goddamn Hotel. This is Chad. How may I help you?”
“Where the fuck is George?”
“Uh. George called off tonight. Who the fuck is this?”
I hang up. Well, there went my only plan. At this point I may as well sit back and wait for the executioner to drop his axe. Plop, down goes my head. Maybe poor children will use it as a soccer ball. Recycle the waste.
The gagging continues from the bathroom. But instead of a mentally ill girl emptying her stomach, I hear what possibly may be my last hope. Insert Star Wars reference. Insert a desperate night auditor left with no other options. Insert the word “fuck.”
I grab the mobile and sprint across the lobby. I don’t knock before opening the bathroom door, but the stall is locked, securing her privacy.
Between gagging, Kia says, “Occupado, you stupid bitch.”
“It’s Isaac. Open the door.”
She laughs, and it’s a painful, exhausted laugh. “What? Get the fuck out of here.”
“No, seriously, I need your help. It’s an emergency.”
“Dude, fuck off.”
I pound on the stall. “Please.”
Silence on the other side, then a heavy sigh followed by the toilet flushing. The door unlocks and swings open and she’s standing in front of me, hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face red and swollen, wet with vomit.
“What? Jesus Christ, what the fuck do you want?”
“I screwed up and connected a scammer to a random guest, and he stole her credit card information. Now she’s pissed off at me.”
“Okay?” She looks at the toilet, grimaces, then looks back at me, grimacing again, like I’m just as vile as whatever she just vomited. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“She’s going to call back any second, and she’s expecting to speak to my manager.”
Her eyes widen, paranoid. “Shit, I thought you were the only one here.”
“I am…but the guest doesn’t know that.”
When she doesn’t catch on at first, I hold out the mobile, and she backs away into the stall, shaking her head. “No, no, hell no. No way.”
I step into the stall with her, holding the mobile between us like a fragile jewel. “It won’t be that bad. I promise.”
The smell of vomit hits me and I try to breathe out of my mouth. “She’ll be pissed off, but all you have to do is apologize a lot and say you’re gonna give me a stern talking to or something. Just say whatever it takes to calm her down.”
“I’m sorry, Isaac, but I can’t.”
“After I gave you waffles? Come on, you can do this.”
“No.”
The mobile lights up in my hands. We both jump. She shakes her head harder and backpedals until she’s against the wall.
“You can do this,” I whisper, then answer the phone and shove it against her chest.
She grabs the phone, but leaves her eyes on me, annoyed. She presses the mobile a
gainst her ear and I notice just how bad the scars are on her fingers.
“Uh, yeah, hello?” Kia says, clearing her throat. “Yeah, uh, that’s me, yes, uh-huh, right, right. Yeah, okay.” She nods to the invisible guest. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…yeah. Yeah. Yes. Of course. Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure. Okay.”
She hangs up the mobile and hands it back to me. When she doesn’t say anything, I lean forward and say, “Well?”
She shrugs. “Well what, man?”
“Well what did she say? What’s happening?”
She relaxes against the wall. “Ah, she’s cool, don’t worry about her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, man. She got her card taken care of. Obviously the same card she gave you guys for her room, so it probably won’t work now. But I said she can stay here tonight for free, so, like, whatever, I guess.”
“Shit, I can’t comp her stay.”
“Hey, you asked me to talk to the bitch, so I talked to the bitch. Don’t be so ungrateful.”
I tuck the mobile back into my pocket, brainstorming game plans that won’t result with Javier asking a million questions. Fuck it. Maybe I’ll just heavily discount the stay then put my MasterCard on file, eat the charge for my own stupidity.
Except my card was recently stolen, so what’s the use in living.
“Thank you,” I say. “You really did help.”
“Uh, okay.” She rolls her eyes and points to the door. “Now do you mind getting the fuck out of here?”
Back in the lobby a line of guests waits to either check-out or call me an asshole. As I listen to their abuse, Kia slips out of the bathroom and escapes the hotel, and I don’t expect to ever see her again.
Part 12
But the next night, barely ten minutes after the 3-11 shift walks out the door, Kia’s knocking on the front desk, shouting that she needs more towels because her husband’s giant cock sprayed their entire room with cum. In the back office, I’m sitting at Javier’s desk, thinking oh shit, not again. I rush to the laundry room, grab a stack of towels, and sprint back to the front desk, only to find Kia standing there, laughing her ass off.
I drop the towels on the front desk and wait for her to stop. “How did you even get in here?” I’ve already locked the doors, so maybe she slipped in when someone walked out.
“I transformed into a cloud of fog and drifted through the cracks.”
“What are you, a vampire?”
“That would make things perfect, wouldn’t it?” she says. “It’s why I have to puke up my food, my body can’t process it. But I just love the taste so much!”
I’m silent, suddenly terrified.
“So,” she says, “are they gonna fire you or what?”
“Looks like I’m home-free.”
“Awesome.” She holds out her tiny fist and I tap it with my own. “So I guess you owe me more waffles then.”
I laugh and immediately feel guilty when she doesn’t laugh with me. “Yeah, okay, no problem. But I can’t until, like, two in the morning. I have too many reservations left to check in, so I don’t really want any of them seeing me making waffles and risk them mentioning it to the morning shift. Plus, what if they want some? There’s only so many people I can make waffles for before waffling out. I’m only so strong.”
She nods, thinking it over. “All right, then what should we do to kill time?”
“Uh. I don’t know. There’s a TV in the dining area.”
“We could always go masturbate on the roof.”
“Um.”
She giggles, then slides over the front desk, nearly kicking me in the face as she sweeps her legs across. “Relax, I’m just fucking with you. Jerk-off wherever you please. It’s a free country.”
“What, do you live out in the woods or something? Where’ve you seen me? How many times? Do you…watch…all of it?”
“I live nowhere and everywhere, and I watch until you finish.”
“Why?” I feel violated, yet hard at the same time. What a fucking creep I am. What fucking creeps we both are.
“I dunno. How often do you see someone doing that on a roof in the middle of the night? You kinda have to watch. Like a car crash. You know?”
“I’m not sure if I should feel insulted right now or not.”
Kia shrugs and starts exploring the back office, picking up random objects and sitting them down without really inspecting them. Like she’s performing on stage, like I’m her audience. “So, what do you do around here when you aren’t pulling your meat?”
“I guess I read a lot.”
“Who do you read? Like Bukowski or some shit?”
“You know Bukowski?”
“Are you a dirty old man, Isaac?”
I clear my throat, sweating in undesirable areas. “I like more genre stuff. Mostly horror.”
She laughs. “You must regularly jack-off to The Shining.”
“Only irregularly.”
It warms me to see her smile. Warms me like the whiskey in George’s flask. Maybe the world is not so miserable, but it probably is.
Just to remind me of my place in the universe, the front desk rings and some guy immediately calls me an imbecile for not properly installing the toilet in his room.
“It just won’t flush!” he says.
One of the oldest complaints in the book, an issue typically solved by utilizing the miracle of the opposable thumb. “Sir, have you tried pushing all the way down on the flusher?”
“Of course I’ve tried that! How dare you insinuate I’m some kind of moron? I’ll fucking sue your ass and take you for every last dime your pathetic minimum wage job offers.”
“Sir, please go try again. Humor me, okay? Just press all the way down.”
The guy sighs. “All right, whatever.” Pause. In the background, I hear the toilet flushing. A few seconds later the line goes dead. Not so much as a single “thank you” or “fuck you.”
“So,” Kia says after I return to the back office, “do you often have to teach adults how to flush toilets?”
“About once a night.” I yawn. Fear convinces me any moment now Hobbs and his brother will poke their heads down here and try to screw with me. Maybe they’ll have a baseball bat again, and maybe they won’t just take it out on me this time. But I can’t push her away. I’ve dreamt of her being back here with me so many nights, I can’t ruin it now. It’s happening, it’s actually happening, and if I do anything to fuck it up next time I jerk-off on the roof I’ll follow my cum to the pavement. Splat, splat. “And what do you read?”
“Books written by dead people.”
“Dead people who write books or people who used to write books but are now dead?”
“What do you think?”
“Well, ghouls penning novels would be pretty rad.”
“Ha, you said ‘rad.’ One quarter in the asshole jar.”
She holds out her hand and doesn’t move or say anything until I steal a quarter from the cash register and drop it into her palm. Satisfied, she shoves the coin into her pants pocket.
“I wasn’t aware your hand was the asshole jar.”
“The more you know…”
I imagine a shooting star exploding out of her head. “Does that mean your hand smells like ass?”
“Only on Fridays.”
“I think my uncle had that same medical condition.”
Kia sniffs her hand for affect, then grimaces. “Shit, what’s today?”
“Well, it’s not Friday, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“Oh.” She lays her hand down in her lap. “It must be some other day.”
“Yeah. One of those.”
She catches me staring at her fingers and quickly hides them in her jacket pockets. “It’s rude to stare.”
“I know. Sorry.”
She rolls her eyes. “Go ahead and ask.”
“Ask what?”
“Saying ‘ask what’ when you damn well know ‘what’ is a good way to owe more money to the asshole jar, a.k.a
. my ugly, fucked-up hand.”
“Your hand isn’t fucked-up. I think it’s beautiful.” The words sound like a lie, but they’re not. There’s something wrong with the wiring in my brain.
“And this isn’t a Nicholas Sparks novel, so stop trying to have sex in the rain. That’s how a motherfucker catches pneumonia, man.”
“All right, fine. What happened to your fingers? Is it…uh…from the bulimia?”
She nods, stuffing her hands deeper into her pockets. “When I first started purging, I would use my hands. First just two fingers, then I learned three or four is the way to go. Anyway, yeah, my teeth really did a number on them. These days, though, I just use a toothbrush.”
“I’ve read that’s highly dangerous,” I say, not realizing my implication before it’s too late to take it back.
“You’ve been reading about bulimia?” She raises her brow, maybe amused, maybe deeply offended.
“I read about a lot of things.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, that’s so.”
“What else do you read about when you aren’t stalking me?”
“Owls.”
“Owls?”
“An owl killed one of the front desk girls a while back. They’re dangerous creatures and they must be stopped.”
She waits for a punch line that doesn’t exist. “Owls?”
I nod. “I’m one of the few who’s onto them. All the rest of you people have been fooled.”
She laughs, more relaxed now, and rubs her scarred fingers through dirty hair. “Have I been fooled, too?”
“Evidently.”
“The horror!”
“You laugh, but this shit is no joke. Do you know owls are a symbol of death?”
“Are they now?”
“Yeah, like, the Romans would freak out if they heard an owl hoot. Like an omen. Supposedly, an owl’s hoot meant someone was about to die. If an owl hooted while perched on your house, you were supposed to kill it and nail the corpse to your front door.”
“Shit—for how long? A night, a week, what?”
The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel) Page 10
