“My attire would suggest it’s likely.”
“Okay, great. Well, I have a reservation for eight rooms.”
“I just checked my system and I didn’t have a single reservation left.”
“Hmm. Weird. You’ll need to check again. Search for the name: Dean. James Dean.”
And I just look at him, thinking how easy it would be to add him to my collection of corpses. “I don’t have the time for this.”
“No, I’m serious.” The kid holds his arms out, blocking me from walking around him. “All eight rooms should already be paid for under your PornHub account.”
I release the luggage cart momentarily and push the kid out of my way, then continue pushing it into the hotel. He follows me through the lobby like a gnat on the back of my neck.
“Okay,” he says, “I apologize for that. Sometimes it makes people laugh.”
“What do you want?”
“Funny you should ask, actually.” Again, he’s standing in front of me, preventing me from continuing forward, but now he’s reaching into the front of his pants and I’m convinced he’s either about to pull out a dick or a pistol. I’m oddly indifferent to either outcome.
Except it’s neither a dick nor a pistol, but a yellow sheet of paper I immediately recognize as the scent sampler card of a traveling bootleg cologne hustler. I’ve encountered these types many times over the years, usually lingering behind fast food restaurants or inside shopping malls, and not once have any of them exceeded beyond a stereotypical douchebag persona. The kid in front of me now shows no promise of exception.
“Tell me,” he says, “what kind of cologne do you usually buy?”
“Oh, fuck right off.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t have time for this. Nobody has time for this. But I especially don’t have time for this. Leave. Now.”
“Now, c’mon bro, you’re gonna wanna hear me out.”
“I seriously doubt it.”
“Listen, bro, all right, just listen. I’m here to change your life, all right, bro? Change your life. You ain’t never smelled so good ’til you met me. Now I got a variety of scents here, tell me what you usually prefer, and I’ll hook you up. Trust me, bro.”
“Dead skunk.”
“What?”
“The only scent I prefer comes from rubbing the rotting carcasses of skunks against my naked body. So unless you have a dead skunk stored away in that backpack of yours, please fuck off. I’m very busy.”
The kid’s smile only trembles for a moment, then regains stability. “You’re one of those weird ones, huh?”
I want to look at him and wink and tell him he has no idea, but I’m not a movie character so I just tell him to fuck off again and continue pushing the luggage cart through the lobby. The kid remains persistent and I remain impatient and the corpses remain remains. The only reason the kid doesn’t notice the smell probably has to do with him constantly surrounding himself in the awful bootleg colognes he sells for a living. I don’t delude myself into thinking he always strikes out with potential customers. It would not surprise me to hear these cologne salesmen make more than the pitiful amount the hotel has decided it’s fair to pay me. At the mall, he probably hits gold. But I can’t understand why he’d think it’s a good idea to take his pitch to a hotel lobby at one, two in the morning. His desperation is evident even with that shit-eating grin plastered over it. He needs money. He needs help. He needs a savior.
I am no one’s savior.
“You have five seconds to get the fuck out of here or I’m calling the cops,” I tell him, and he’s giving me a Judas look.
“You can’t even smell a few of them? At least give me that, bro.”
I sigh. Every ounce of my body aches with exhaustion. I glare at the cologne hustler like he’s responsible for everything that’s happened to me, then lean down and pull the bedsheet up, revealing Detective Garcia’s haunted face staring straight up at us, a deep gash in her neck.
“Does it look like I give a shit about hygiene at the moment?” I ask the kid, but he’s already backing up, muttering something unintelligible, then he’s gone, out of my life, maybe running to the police station, maybe fleeing the state, it doesn’t matter, he’s just some asshole pushing bootleg cologne to irritated strangers, nobody’s gonna give a shit what he says.
And if someone believes him, so what.
It’s hard to care. It’s so hard to care about anything.
I flip the sheet back over Detective Garcia’s face and push the luggage cart into the elevator. None of this feels like I’m breaking the law. It’s just more work, mechanical and draining. It doesn’t matter how you spend your nine-to-five or your eleven-to-seven or whatever the fuck because it doesn’t change the fact that you’re still trapped, still confined, no room to breathe, no room to operate your thoughts without the fear of failure. Handling corpses is no goddamn different than anything else this hotel’s required of me. But even after all this, I don’t see an Employee of the Month plaque in my future.
One of the little league coaches joins me on the elevator ride, presses the third floor button. His face is covered in white powder and he doesn’t show any indication of giving a damn who notices. He asks how I’m doing and I tell him okay, I’m doing okay, and just as I exit the elevator on the second floor, I swear to God he hoots like an owl at me, but before I can turn around the doors have already closed and he’s gone.
I stash the luggage cart of corpses in the laundry room down the hallway, then pound my fist against Hobbs’s door. I don’t slow down until a neighboring guest pokes his head out and tells me to shut the hell up. I apologize and he tells me to apologize to the whore he’s about to bang and I say, “Sorry, whore,” and he tells me he’ll have my job and I tell him all right, then come take it, motherfucker. But he doesn’t respond, just stares at me like I’ve lost my mind and closes the door, and I have never felt more like a gangster in my entire life. I am attracting unwanted attention and I don’t care—even though I should, I don’t, I can’t, I’ve cared so long I’ve gone and overdrawn my giving-a-fuck account.
Either Hobbs isn’t in the room or he’s passed out in there, drunk or dead. I don’t know much but I do know nobody’s ever gotten many answers out in some hallway. I insert my master key into the lock and open the door. Darkness greets my presence.
“Hey,” I whisper. “Hey, you in here?”
No response.
No one’s here.
I don’t flip on the light switch on the likelihood that Hobbs is outside smoking a cigarette. If he happened to glance at his window, he’d know someone was up here snooping around, and the plan would be ruined. Instead, I sneak back down the hallway and retrieve the luggage cart, then smuggle it into Hobbs’s room under the cover of shadows. A straining series of grunts and Jesus Christ-s later, the three corpses are secured inside Hobbs’s closet. It’s not the most conspicuous corpse storage, and it’s not supposed to be. The bodies only need to remain undetected until the police arrive.
The gears in the elevator squeal on the way down. The sound reminds me of owls mating. Maybe a few of ’em sneaked in through the roof and got themselves trapped in the elevator shaft. Good. Hopefully they starve in there and rot for eternity. The smell will haunt the guests for weeks, months. I’ll be long gone. A new state, a new country, a new world, anywhere but here.
Hobbs is sitting in the lobby when I reach the ground floor. He nods at me, grinning his tobacco-stained teeth and gripping the neck of a plastic Pepsi bottle. “Eye Sick! Thought we saw your car out front. What the hell you doin’ here, man? Ain’t tonight your night off?”
Before I can respond, a woman enters the hotel, eyes narrowed at me, jaw grinding. “Oh wow,” she says, pointing an accusing finger at me, “you mean to tell me somebody actually works at this goddamn hotel?”
“That’s an accurate statement, yes.”
“Don’t you get smart with me, dickhead! Do you have any idea how long I
’ve been waiting at that bar for someone from your stupid hotel to come pick me up? Huh? Do you?”
It takes a moment for her identity to click. The woman who’d called earlier, in the beginning of my shift. The one stranded down the street. I’d assumed she had been abducted or murdered by this point.
“As I told you, ma’am, it’s just me here, so nobody could have picked you up.”
“Sounds like a bunch of bullshit excuses to me. I hope you realize I am expecting a full refund for my stay tonight.”
“That isn’t going to happen.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not getting a free room, lady. You’re lucky I don’t kick you out right here and now. So just stop. Just…stop. Go to sleep. Piss off.”
All the fight drains from her system at once. “Okay. I’m sorry.” She lowers her head and boards the elevator.
Hobbs starts clapping. “Christ almighty, Eye Sick, that was fuckin’ poetry.”
I don’t share his enthusiasm. Once upon a time I had dreamed of speaking to the guests in such a matter. Now, it feels underwhelming. Too many complications in life have dulled my sense of pleasure. I fear I won’t even gain satisfaction when I turn in my resignation tomorrow.
The bathroom door down the hallway opens and the cowboy steps out, straightening his straw Stetson. He belches before saying, “Isaac! You really are here. How wonderful.”
When I look at the cowboy, all I see is him strolling into my apartment and slicing Detective Garcia’s throat as casual as someone might act brewing that first pot of coffee in the morning. This man is not a man but a monster. A devil in human flesh. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He pats me on the shoulder and I stiffen, fearing the possibility of a blade hidden within his grasp. His sister’s already stabbed me in the back plenty—surely it runs in the family.
“What’s going on?” I ask, because clearly something is.
“Well,” the cowboy says, “we were just driving by, heading out of town once and for all, when we saw your eyesore of a car parked out here, so we thought we’d stop and give you a proper goodbye. After everything we’ve been through, hell, I reckon we owe you at least that.”
I listen to his words but I can’t hear them, can’t understand them. “What are you talking about?”
Now Hobbs is standing next to his brother, showing off his brown teeth. “We’re packin’ it up, Eye Sick. Movin’ on. Our time here’s done expired.”
“You’re…you’re checking out?”
“Already done, my friend,” the cowboy says. “Checked out this afternoon. We were on our way out of town tonight when we saw your car. Thought, hell, Isaac doesn’t work tonight. He’s made it abundantly clear he don’t work on no Saturdays.”
“The…the other lady called off.” I clear my throat, sweat trickling down my spine. “Did you say you already checked out?”
The cowboy nods. “Yeah, well, I figured we had outstayed our welcome here.”
“What with my brother killing himself a cop and all,” Hobbs says, and the cowboy elbows him in the gut. He doubles over and grunts. “Shit, Billy, that hurt.”
“Good.” He looks back at me, serious. “Listen, kid, I know we’ve been hard on you and all, and I’m sorry for that. Life’s been stressful as all hell lately. Our Amazon account has been swamped with orders, which is great, just a lot of work needed to be done. Now, our stay here did not go over as ideally as I’d liked, but I think we all had a heck of a time, don’t you think?”
“I, uh, I guess?”
The cowboy smiles and rustles my hair like I’m some grade-schooler saying goodbye to his father. “Excellent. Also, about the money you stole from us. I want you to forget about it. Shit happens.” He laughs. “Hell, put me in your place and I’d’ve probably pulled the same shit. Except, of course, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to go get mugged.”
I push his hand away from me and tighten my fists. “You mean, you wouldn’t have made your sister mug you. Wouldn’t have made your sister hold up a knife to your throat and threaten to murder you.”
Both brothers stare at me, silent. Fuck them. I step forward and they step back.
“You wouldn’t have made your own goddamn sister trick you into falling in love with her. You wouldn’t have made her break your heart. You’re far too much of a tough sonofabitch to ever let anything like that happen, right? Right?”
The cowboy coughs out a nervous laugh. “Isaac, now, hold on, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hobbs matches my step forward and shoves me back. “Yeah, Eye Sick, why don’t you watch your fuckin’ mouth, huh?”
I return the shove. He’s not expecting the retaliation and stumbles harder than I intended. The cowboy wedges his way between his, holding up his arms as a offer of peace. “I don’t know what Key’s told you, but I advise you to calm down and allow us to explain.”
“Explain what?” The anger building up is hot enough to boil. “Explain how everything that’s happened to me has been your fault? Explain that you set me up to steal the wallet, that you forced your sister—the mother of your niece—to attack me in the parking lot? What if I had defended myself? What if I had killed her? Did you ever even think of that, you stupid shit? Did you ever stop and consider how much danger you were putting her in?”
Hobbs explodes with laughter. The cowboy lowers his head, shaking it slowly and rubbing his temple like he’s sporting a headache. “Isaac…”
Hobbs cuts him off. “Eye Sick, you dumb motherfucker.”
“Shut up, John,” the cowboy says, then to me, “Look, you can think what you want. The truth is, you’re right, we all fucked you over. But I never once forced my sister into anything. That whole mugging scheme, you think that was my idea? That was reckless, careless, completely stupid. By now, I would hope you know me better than that. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still partly responsible, and for that, I do apologize, and so does John.”
Hobbs shakes his head, waving his index finger back and forth. “Hell nah, I ain’t sorry for shit. If Eye Sick here was such a good goddamn Samaritan, he would’ve never snatched my wallet in the first place. The way I see it, he got everything he fuckin’ deserved, and you know what? I think he may have gotten off lightly. It’s his own damn fault blood was shed here. I sure as hell didn’t throw no sumbitch off the roof. That was all you, Eye Sick. Think about it, boy. You’re the real asshole here. You’re the one owing us apologies, not the other way around. Nuh-uh.”
The fight in me deflates. The urge to bash their faces in with my fists subsides. The black hole of the hotel swallows my energy. I debate retrieving Detective Garcia’s gun from behind the front desk and putting a hole in each of them, then maybe turning it on myself. Just get it over with already. Finish it once and for all.
Except I still have a plan. They may be leaving, but before I left on Friday morning I made sure to extend their stay until next week. Which means they’re still technically in the system. Which means the bodies up in room 209, they belong to the Hobbs brothers.
I got you, you fuckers. I got you.
A drunk little league coach stumbles into the lobby, dripping with water from the pool. “We need some towels,” he says, drooling. “We need, like, a million towels. Also, I think one of us had an accident in the jacuzzi. It was me. I shit in the jacuzzi. I’m sorry. Towels?”
And the urge to inflict violence on every last soul in this building returns. The urge to drench the floors and walls with gasoline and light a thousand matches. The urge to fetch the dead cop’s gun and make everything beautiful.
It doesn’t matter that I’m in the middle of a dramatic conclusion to a terrifying situation. A guest needs towels. A guest in need of needing needs, needs to need like he needs to bleed.
Needs.
I will never not be a slave to hospitality. I will never leave here. Outside this hotel there is nothing. I cannot leave my home. I cannot leave my mother’s womb. Instead of
telling this guest to roll around in the grass to dry off, I know I will get him a stack of towels, because it is not just my job but my only real reason to exist. I was not conceived, I was coded. I don’t get to decide whether I live or die. Night auditors are not given the ability to make their own decisions. We just do. We service. We are handymen of comfort. Mechanics of sleep. These thoughts aren’t new. They’ve been engraved in the land since the big bang.
I glance at the Hobbs brothers, no longer feeling the intensity we’d been sharing a few moments ago, and lower my head in defeat.
“Okay,” I tell the little league coach, “I’ll get you some towels.”
“All the towels.”
“Okay. I’ll get you all the towels.”
Before I head toward the laundry room, the cowboy grabs my shoulder and whispers, “I really am sorry, Isaac. I want you to know that. And when the lady gave me our bill this afternoon, I saw how much you’ve paid just to let us stay here, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. All the shit we did to you, you still pulled through for us. If we’re ever in the area again, I’ll buy you a beer or something. Deal?”
I mouth the word “Receipt?” without actually saying it. The little league coach’s own voice interrupts my confusion. “Hey, wait a second, I know you, don’t I?” He points at Hobbs. “You look familiar as hell. Where do I know you from?”
Hobbs shrugs. “I get around, man. I don’t know.”
The little league coach squints, then laughs. “Oh shit. I know who you fuckin’ are.”
“All right.” Hobbs laughs with him. “Care to enlighten me, brotha?”
The little league coach whips a cell phone out of his shorts pocket and dials a number. Somehow it isn’t destroyed from soaking in the water.
Behind me, the cowboy whispers, “John…I think we should go…”
And behind the cowboy, the automatic doors slide open and Kia Hobbs runs inside, face bright with excitement. She doesn’t acknowledge her brothers, but looks straight at me, and gestures outside. “Isaac, dude, you aren’t gonna fuckin’ believe it.”
“What?”
The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel) Page 25
