Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel

by James Markert

  “I had my reasons.”

  “I don’t care about your reasons, Dad. I spent my entire childhood trying to impress you with paintings you simply could not appreciate. Now, what is the water in that fountain? And why was Mamma drinking it?”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Try.”

  “Vitto, it’s too hard to explain things I’ve never fully understood myself.”

  “What did the earthquake do to that water?”

  “Nothing. The water has always been the same. The earthquake did nothing.”

  “It restarted that fountain.”

  Robert pounded his chest with a fist. “I restarted the fountain, Vitto. With the turning of some knobs. Just as I turned it off the day your mother died.”

  Vitto pointed out toward the front of the hotel, toward a stream he couldn’t see. “And what about that creek? Your River Lethe?”

  “Stories, Vitto.”

  “I know that, but the changing of direction. The water flow. You sent me down there with a boat to see for myself.”

  “To get you to believe.”

  “In what?”

  “This.”

  “What is this?”

  “It’s not the first time a river or creek has changed directions, Vitto. Uncommon, yes, but the earth rumbles, shifts, moves under our feet. The land has been changing for centuries. That creek has changed direction before.”

  “So that had nothing to do with the water in that fountain?”

  “No.”

  Vitto stepped closer, his voice more stern. “What is coming from that fountain, and why did Mamma drink from it?”

  “I didn’t know she was drinking from it. We promised each other we’d never drink from it.”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” He raised his arms incredulously, defeated. “I don’t know.”

  “Water is life,” Vitto muttered, staring out toward the ocean. “Or is it death?”

  “We live, Vittorio!”

  “This isn’t the Garden of Eden,” said Vitto, “or the Elysian Fields. What was it about that water? From the beginning, what made you not want to drink it?”

  “The stones that make up that fountain, they were there before we built the hotel. They fell from the sky one night. There was a storm—thunder and lightning so great the heavens rumbled. The locals thought them to be meteorites. We used them to make a fountain, and then we placed more stones around it. We built the fountain first and then built the hotel around it.”

  “More unbelievable stories.”

  “Your mother, she had no memory when I met her. And near the end of her life it had gotten so bad again that she could remember very little.”

  “Again? What do you mean again?”

  Robert looked away, refocused, and replaced his hands on Vitto’s shoulders in a posture of dominance. “Listen to me, son. There was something in her, memories that needed to come out. Horrible memories she’d suppressed since her childhood. She knew the water would bring them out, but she also knew they’d do her in.”

  “Like what it’s doing to you now.”

  Robert didn’t deny it. “I didn’t know she was drinking the water until it was too late. She couldn’t handle the memories. You remember the months leading to her death?”

  “Yes, she spoke little, cried a lot, and wandered about the grounds like a woman who’d lost her mind.”

  “I didn’t realize it until it was too late. I was too preoccupied with my work. I was deep into a depression of my own.”

  “Why?”

  “She kissed me that night like she did every night.” Another redirect. Robert choked up, then composed himself. “Instead of saying good night she said good-bye. I was half-asleep and didn’t even notice.”

  “She came to my room too,” said Vitto, remembering. “Here I was, a man grown, and she comes in to kiss me on the head in the middle of the night. She told me she’d always loved me and that she was finally free.” He took a step back, eyes wide. “She was telling us good-bye. We’re fools.”

  Robert nodded slowly, shoulders sagging, as if he agreed that he’d been a fool. As if he had carried this guilt for years and was only now letting it surface. “Vitto, do you remember the outlandish story she told that night?”

  “No, what story?”

  “At last call. Her final . . .” And then Robert must have remembered. “You weren’t there.”

  “I skipped last call that night.”

  “Yes, you were angry. You’d had an argument with Valerie. She was concerned about Magdalena’s well-being, concerned that she might . . .”

  “We both skipped last call because of that argument.” I buried that argument too.

  “And perhaps that’s why Magdalena told it.”

  “Told what?”

  He waved the question away as if it was nothing. “Just another one of her imaginative stories, Vitto. You know, one of those stories she would tell that took over the entire game, the kind that would be bandied about by the guests after she returned to her room and discussed the next morning too. It would have been, too, if not for what she did that night after everyone was in bed. It’s just that . . . I should have seen the finality in it.”

  Vitto watched his father, looking for cracks in the façade. He was holding back as usual. “What was the story she told?”

  Robert touched his head, fingers to his wrinkled temples. “I . . . I don’t remember it all.”

  Vitto believed him. Magdalena’s stories were not that easy to remember unless you had a memory like Vitto’s. They went this way and that, forward and back, twisting upon themselves, and often they left the listeners confused. No doubt Magdalena’s last story had been like that.

  But as his father continued to speak, Vitto’s mind shifted from the fuzziness of the past to the clarity of the here and now. He gazed into his father’s eyes, so intensely blue and alive, but framed by the skin and flesh of a rapidly aging man. He felt weak in the knees and suddenly nauseated.

  His mother had begun drinking the water in the months before she jumped. And she, too, had appeared increasingly older and frail over the course of those months. Valerie had been the first to point this out, but he’d been too stubborn to listen. He’d assumed she was sick from lack of sleep, lack of eating. But that wasn’t it, was it? It was the fountain water. While it was bringing back the horrible memories Robert spoke of, it was also killing her, moving her life forward at an accelerated pace.

  He glared at his father. “You’re dying.”

  “We’re all dying, Vitto.”

  “You’ve led them all in here like lambs to the slaughter.” Vitto laughed. “The water, this magical water you’ve still yet to explain—it’s restoring their memory yet shortening their lives. And you’ve known this!”

  Robert didn’t deny it. “The earthquake did one thing, Vitto. It made me see the truth—the same water that helped kill your mother could bring pleasure to others. Like me.” He gestured toward the hotel, to the gathered guests in the distance. “Like them.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Look at them, Vitto. Happiness abounds. This is what Maggie would have wanted.”

  “But you’ve no right to play God. It must be their choice. You’re bringing them here so that they can die.”

  Robert’s voice swelled with passion. “I’m bringing them here so that they can live!”

  Vitto grew light-headed, mumbled, “For their last call.”

  Father and son watched each other as Robert whispered, “Yes, for their last call.” But in those words Vitto’s argument had finally taken root. “You’re right, son. They must decide for themselves.”

  “Yes, they should,” came a nasally voice behind them.

  They turned simultaneously to find the reporter Landry Tuffant standing in the grass, taking notes on his p
ad.

  Nineteen

  By the time Vitto realized the potential damage Tuffant could bring down on both Robert and the hotel, the reporter was in an all-out sprint toward his car.

  Vitto gave chase but slowed after twenty paces. What would he have done with the reporter had he caught him? He couldn’t hold him hostage, and he really didn’t want to lay hands on the man. He was fortunate no charges had been filed after he’d nearly drowned him. But what was done was done, and now they had to quickly decide how to fix it.

  “So this is what you and Juba argued about last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is why Father Embry has been watching things so closely?” Robert nodded, an uncharacteristic worry in his eyes. “We have to tell them.”

  “No one has died yet,” Robert said. “In the eyes of the law, we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “We have to tell them.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “They’ll have to take your word for it,” said Vitto. “Just as they trusted you that the water would restore their memory. You’re the great Robert Gandy. They’ll believe you.”

  “If the police come—”

  “When, Dad, not if. You saw him. Landry Tuffant thinks his father was murdered here. He thinks Mamma . . . He wants to bury us.”

  “Then let him try.” Robert inhaled ocean air, and his chest swelled with sudden pride that Vitto couldn’t deny he felt too. “Find Juba and the priest. And Valerie.”

  “Did she know?”

  “No. But just a few months ago she was helping me dress and spooning food into my mouth. She, more than anyone, needs to be told before the rest of them.”

  * * *

  They met inside Robert’s room to discuss the best way to inform the guests that the water that was restoring their memory and giving their lives back was quite possibly also killing them. They needed no more proof than to look at how frail Robert had become over the past few months. He’d been drinking the water longer than anyone, and probably more of it as well.

  Valerie admitted that she’d noticed her father-in-law’s physical depletion over the past months but had been afraid to verbalize it, probably because of how Vitto had reacted when she suggested the same thing about his mother years ago. And then, as if to steer them away from that past, that pain, Valerie said, “Beverly’s mother, Louise. She’s still feisty, as we all know, but you can see it on her too. She’s aging quickly.”

  “And Cowboy Cane.” Juba glared at Robert; their argument had come to fruition, and he’d proven himself right.

  “Don’t.” Robert held up a hand. “I know, Juba.” He faced Vitto and Valerie. Father Embry stood quietly to the side, wide-eyed and every so often crossing himself and mumbling prayer. “But how do we tell them?”

  “Individually,” said Vitto. “This is too personal to do otherwise.”

  “We don’t have that luxury anymore,” said Valerie. “That reporter can come back at any minute, and think of the anger from these guests if we’ve yet to tell most of them. They can’t hear it from a third party. They’ll think Robert is a murderer”—she looked at him—“when I truly believe his intent was the exact opposite.”

  Robert nodded, eyes wet. Vitto wanted to reach out to him but couldn’t. And then Valerie did, with an ease that showed why she, like Juba—was this why the two of them had always gotten along so well?—was the glue that held them all together.

  “Juba,” Valerie said now. “Call everyone together on the piazza. I’ve been the one bringing them their trays of medicine every morning. So I’ll be the one to tell them.”

  “You?” asked Vitto.

  She nodded toward Vitto and Robert. “The two of you have the bedside manner of a two-by-four.”

  Vitto couldn’t disagree. “But how? What exactly will you tell them?”

  “That sometimes miracles come with a catch.”

  There was an old church bell in the corner tower closest to the ocean that Robert used to chime when he needed all of his guests to gather. But since none of the current guests had heard it and probably would not know what it meant, they decided to have Juba call them in. And it worked. Even though it was many hours before last call, they still responded. Everyone trickled in eventually—Cowboy Cane coming from as far as the tennis courts. They gathered on the piazza, clearly curious about the sudden gathering.

  Juba had them all squeeze in tighter around the fountain, where Valerie stood atop the rim. As they noticed the serious look on her face, the atmosphere quickly transformed from jovial to solemn. Some guests began whispering and surveying the crowd to make sure no one had passed away. It had always been openly discussed that the water had magically restored their memories and minds but could do nothing for their aging hearts and lungs and other physical ailments they had brought with them.

  The whispers quieted, and Valerie got right to it. “We have a serious announcement to make, ladies and gentlemen, and not much time, as you’ll no doubt appreciate once you’ve heard what needs to be said. We’ve all witnessed firsthand what this fountain water has done to our minds.” She paused, and the crowd nodded in unison, sharing glances but apparently eager to have the other shoe fall. “We’ve accepted this benefit, even though we’ve had little to no explanation as to why and how it has occurred, because it has spun life in our favor. Now it seems we’ll have a similar lack of explanation in regard to the other side of this coin.”

  “What is it, Valerie?” Mrs. Eaves asked from the front row. “We’ve lived through hell, all of us, because that’s what losing memory was for us . . . so we can handle the truth.” She eyed others in the crowd. “Because many of us sense what you’re about to tell us, and I for one appreciate the honesty.”

  Valerie nodded, sighed as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Robert Gandy had a feeling this fountain water could restore your minds and was eager to help and share the benefits with you all, as outlandish as it had seemed at first. But, well, he also had a hunch that the same water could also cause harm.”

  “In what way?” a man asked from several rows back.

  Cowboy Cane said, “Earl, it’s getting us to the finish line faster than we would get there otherwise.”

  Baldheaded Earl looked shocked by the news, but many to most didn’t. They could probably feel it in their bones and notice it in the mirrors every morning when they brushed their teeth and combed their hair and patted on their colognes and perfumes.

  Valerie looked out over the crowd; Vitto had never admired her so much for her courage. Her voice calmed them. “It’s true. Robert was unsure of the repercussions at first.” Vitto didn’t know if this was true, but her love for Robert was obvious, and she wasn’t going to throw him to the wolves. “But this effect has clutched him deeply enough for him to realize and fear that the same could be happening to all of you.”

  Whispers permeated the crowd. Someone quietly sobbed.

  Cowboy Cane said to everyone, “So basically we have a choice to make, folks—our bodies or our minds. I know which one I’m choosing.” He turned away and began to politely burrow his way through the crowd, his wooden tennis racquet held high.

  A man with salt-and-pepper hair and a bushy matching mustache said, “Where you going, Cowboy?”

  “Back to the tennis courts,” said Cane. “Me and Rufus were in the middle of a set.”

  The rest of the crowd looked at one another as if wondering what to do. Then, in a trickle at first and then a steady flow, the guests began peeling this way and that, most seemingly returning to what they’d been doing before the gathering.

  “Well, I’ll be . . .” Vitto said under his breath, right about the time the sirens began approaching outside the hotel’s entrance. And then it became obvious that, while a good majority of the guests were neither surprised nor disheartened by the announcement and might even be relieved that they could go on with their newly found lives of aging faster, not everyone felt that way. Some were standing in shock
, some crying, some clearly angry, and one in particular had already exited his first-floor room with his suitcase in hand. Mr. Franklin—if Vitto remembered the name correctly—shook a few hands and headed toward the entrance just as Landry Tuffant hurried in with four policemen flanking him, clubs pulled as if they’d really need to use them on Robert and his elderly guests.

  Their arrival instantly added a level of anxiety to an already tenuous situation. Beverly was one of the ones still standing near the fountain, stunned over the news, while her grandmother Louise seemed unbothered. John stood between as if he was about to do something stupid and untimely, which turned out to be true.

  A police whistle blew, shrill enough for most in the piazza to cover their ears.

  “There he is,” Tuffant shouted, pointing at Robert. “He’s a murderer. He’s slowly poisoning these poor souls.”

  The coppers moved in, and Robert stretched out his hands, offering his wrists for cuffing. But if he wasn’t going to put up a fight, Vitto would. He stepped in front of the first copper, the chubby one who acted like he was in charge of things but who in reality looked like a teddy bear in way over his head, as antsy as the elderly guests surrounding him.

  “What crime do you accuse him of?” Vitto screamed over the throng.

  “Euthanasia,” shouted Tuffant. “Assisted suicide! He’s a regular Nazi!”

  Officer Tubby nodded as if to second the accusation and attempted to move around Vitto with his wrist bracelets. “You’ve no proof of anything,” said Vitto. “We’ve lost no one in the months they’ve been here, Officer. Not one.” He eyed Tuffant. “You’re taking a foolish man’s word over the truth.”

  Tuffant yelled, “He tried to drown me in that water yesterday.”

  Officer Tubby paused, unsure of what to do. Robert, uncharacteristically, stood passive, ready to be taken if that’s what was decided. Mrs. Eaves, in an attempt to ease the growing tension, crossed over to the piano and began playing Mozart, but for once the music seemed unequal to the task of soothing the agitated guests. Many seemed angry toward the reporter and the coppers and were speaking on Robert’s behalf, while others who’d been on the fence before began to look at him accusingly.