Hotel No Tell

by Daphne Uviller

  “You know him? And who’s ‘we’?” he interrupted.

  I ask the questions! I wanted to snap. I was dying to flash my badge and let him know he could talk to me as a fellow professional. Though, truth be told, a member of New York’s Bravest was not likely to be impressed by an employee of New York’s Awfully Capable, as my colleagues—most of them former Finest—sometimes glumly labeled themselves. We were a law-enforcement agency that worked mostly undercover, or at least behind the scenes, and as a result found ourselves having to offer lengthy introductions to people even as we were arresting them.

  “He’s the nephew of the hotel’s owner. ‘We’ is me and a guest.” I pointed down the hall toward Samantha Kimiko Hodges’s room. “The woman in 505 heard him and, no, I don’t know who was in the room with him,” I added as he opened his mouth to ask. The mouth went nicely with the lashes.

  “What did you hear?” Lashes cocked his head at me, unsmiling. Clearly he was not distracted by anything on my face.

  “A groan, a few groans, and then I went in. He was already upside down. He said my name and then passed out. I haven’t been downstairs to see who the room is—or was—registered to.” As I spoke, I realized that something was bothering me. “We only heard him two minutes ago. I don’t understand how you guys could have gotten here this quickly.”

  The hero frowned. “You don’t really mean two minutes. We got the call about ten minutes ago.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said flatly. “Unless …” Unless Jeremy had a heart attack and grabbed the phone himself before he yelled out to us. Unless the unidentified companion called—and then left. Where was she? Who was she?

  “I need to get back in that room,” I told Lashes, emerging from the spell of his well-placed features.

  “Why?” He crossed his arms comfortably, letting me know that I was not going back in anytime soon.

  I glanced over my shoulder, dug out my badge, and flashed it. To my utter humiliation, he leaned forward to study the crest, as if it potentially was a fake ID.

  “Undercover,” I murmured, knowing Pippa would kill me, possibly even fire me. “Please don’t blow it.”

  “Is that a pigeon?”

  “It’s an eagle. May I?” I asked haughtily.

  He stepped back and made a grand gesture toward the door. “Be my guest.”

  I strode past him, daring to make eye contact. He held my gaze … and then winked. He actually winked. Oh man. Minor blows to the ego aside, I did love my job.

  Jeremy was already on the stretcher, an IV bag resting on his chest, syringe packaging littering the floor. Next to the paramedics’ discarded cellophane were the scraps of paper Jeremy had been clutching. I bent down and swiftly pocketed them. As I did, I noticed something else on the floor, peeking out from under the nightstand. An orange prescription vial. I grabbed it and took a quick look at the label. Black lines had been drawn across it, obscuring the patient information.

  “Is this yours?” I demanded of the paramedics. The tattooed one, who reeked of cigarette smoke, looked at me impatiently, then did a double take.

  “Presumed OD!” he called to his colleague. “Ambien party.” He turned to me. “You know how much was in here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, move it out!” he yelled, and off rolled Jeremy Wedge. I really hoped, if only for his kind uncle’s sake, that it wasn’t the last time I’d see him.

  * * *

  I hurried back along the corridor to 506, home away from home for my sloppy friends from Down Under. I prayed they were all sound asleep so I could get a call in to Pippa.

  Something, or someone, was blocking the door. I threw my shoulder against it and peeked inside. Blotchy was crumpled in a heap on the floor, his arms encircling a puddle of vomit. The woman was flat out on one of the beds, and Ringlets was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hey, wait!” I yelled down the hall to the last of the rescue circus piling into the tiny hotel elevator.

  Lashes said something to his buddy and they both jogged toward me, their clonking gear making them look like giants overtaking a miniature village. I pushed the door open a little wider and directed them inside. Ten minutes later, two more teams of paramedics had filled the corridor to capacity and hotel history was made as all three guests were ferried off to the hospital to be treated for alcohol poisoning.

  At nine-twenty, barely an hour after I first followed the Rocky Horror Show enthusiasts up the stairs, the last ambulance pulled away. Hutchinson McKenzie, wan beneath his perpetual tan and glistening with sweat, had waited for his father to arrive, then jumped in a cab bound for the hospital. The fear in his eyes was genuine, and for once I felt sorry for him.

  I sank down on the stone ledge outside the entrance, watching Asa and Ballard through the frosted-glass entrance as they made nice with concerned guests in the lobby. The air was cooling off and there was a handful of stars defiantly outshining the city lights. A couple with matching spiky gray haircuts slipped into Babbo for a late seating. Joggers picked their way through an ever-shifting obstacle course of dog leashes. The air was noticeably crisper than it had been three weeks earlier and the city seemed to be breathing a collective sigh of relief after a particularly wet summer.

  I leaned back and felt exhaustion flow in like a tide. I flipped open my battered cellphone and left a message for my brother, trying to find words that apologized for my absence without piquing his interest and eliciting a barrage of questions later. Then I pulled out the scraps of paper I’d grabbed off the floor of room 502 and smoothed them out. A coffee-stained taxi receipt, a credit-card receipt from Ansonia Pharmacy for deodorant and hair gel, and a crumpled piece of hotel stationery with a phone number on it, which I promptly dialed.

  “You’ve reached Large Tomato Walking Tours. Our offices are now closed.…”

  I hung up and dialed Pippa.

  “Zuckerman,” she answered curtly. “Should you really be calling me?”

  “Absolutely,” I said confidently, one moment before spotting Lashes rounding MacDougal Street and heading straight toward me on Waverly. “Actually, no.” I casually flipped my phone closed, hanging up on my boss, and shoved the receipts back into my pocket.

  A rush of unfounded excitement, the kind I figured I’d been required to check at the door of thirty, washed over me, and I braced myself. He probably forgot something inside. A hose, maybe. Or perhaps he had to use the bathroom. Or was curious about our room rates. Maybe he—

  “Hi,” he said, coming to a stop in front of me. He delivered a lopsided grin, apparently not in the least concerned about a wayward hose. “I’m Lieutenant Fisk. Call me Delta.”

  “Call me Ishmael,” I replied instantly, then clamped my mouth shut. Three years in a relationship had, it appeared, severely hobbled my flirting skills.

  He looked confused. “Is your name Ishmael?”

  I resigned myself to explaining, but he broke into a big smile.

  “I’m messing with you. I’ve read Moby Dick three times. Firefighters have a lot of time on their hands. So are you off work from your pretend job now?”

  “Yes, but …” I tried to clear my head and catch up.

  “Are you single?”

  I gaped at him. Cheeky. Pippa would have called him cheeky.

  “It’s a fair question. We’re both adults. I’m about to ask you out. But I won’t if you’re not single.” He crossed his arms.

  “You’re very …” I sputtered, looking for the right words.

  “Practical. I’m almost forty and I’m practical.”

  “You’re forty?” I said before I could stop myself.

  “Do you edit yourself at all?” He grinned.

  “Do you?”

  “Actually, yes. Do you want to go rock climbing with me?”

  “You’ve concluded I’m single?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never been rock climbing.”

  “No time like the present.”

  “You wan
t to go rock climbing now?” I laughed. I was on the verge of growing rather practical myself, about to point to my watch and shake my head reprovingly, like a schoolmarm, when I remembered that in the belief system of the Sterling Girls, it was sinful to decline an opportunity for urban adventure, which carried with it myriad benefits: no woods to get lost in, no chance of avalanche, no need to engage in risky hitchhiking.

  “Yes. Now. At Aviator Sports. Less crowded than Chelsea Piers.”

  And so, two hours after Jeremy, Blotchy, Ringlets, and The Girl moved their party to St. Vincent’s, I was not ten feet below Orchard Street but rather thirty feet above Flatbush Avenue, proving to myself that I was game for trying new things, even if they occurred after ten-thirty, the hour at which I regularly turned into an exceptionally grumpy pumpkin.

  “To your right, your right, grab that red foothold to your right!” Delta shouted up, regarding me from an angle I’d never imagined permissible on a first date. “You’re doing great, Zephyr, really great! Almost there!”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled to the wall.

  I couldn’t tell whether I was having fun. Reaching the top of a cliff, even a fake cliff in a former airplane hangar, using only my hands and feet, was thrilling. It was an endorphin high unmatched by biking, Rollerblading, or even sitting with friends drinking coffee. It was a high intensified by the fact that I was loopy with exhaustion. But the stress of doing something new, something that required a harness around my butt in the presence of a man whom I’d known so briefly that I’d not yet had the chance to see him in daylight, was dampening the thrill.

  “Okay, now the blue! Reach your right hand out for the blue hold!”

  I grasped the highest handhold on the wall and heard cheers rise up from Delta and the paid-to-be-enthusiastic employees on belay, into whose unfamiliar hands I had casually placed my life. I peered down at them and attempted a smile. Delta grabbed a hold and nimbly maneuvered up the path next to mine, reaching me in about ten seconds. It had taken me a good five minutes to summit the gray plastic-derived compound mountain.

  “You’ve done this before,” I observed.

  “I have.”

  “I think you do this to show off your quads.”

  “And my biceps, too, don’t forget,” he said.

  “And your biceps,” I agreed.

  We looked at each other with matching stupid smiles.

  “Can I kiss you?” he asked.

  “Well, you haven’t taught me how to get down, so I don’t have much of a choice.” I wasn’t surprised by his question, but I had to stall. I really wanted to kiss this guy, right here, right now, but I needed to gird myself. This would be The First Kiss Since Gregory. I needed to open a new page in my mental album, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was ready.

  I leaned back and studied him. Ninety percent would do.

  Three stories above southern Brooklyn, we kissed. And, oh, I’d forgotten how a first kiss is a species unto itself. With first kisses, it hardly matters whether they’re good; they’re inherently exciting even if they’re wet or limp or tentative. But Delta’s lips weren’t sloppy. They were firm, gentle, obviously experienced. Due to circumstances, it was a hands-off kiss, which made it all the more gentlemanly and at the same time all the more exciting. I fought off the sensation that I was cheating on Gregory.

  Hoots and cheers floated up from our two protectors below. We pulled away.

  Delta grinned at me.

  “So is this your MO?” I asked. “Firefighter impresses first dates by taking them climbing and smooching at the top?” I wasn’t complaining.

  “Zephyr, I swear I’ve never done anything like this. I mean I’ve rock-climbed before. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I teased him, and he had the good grace to blush.

  “But you just seemed game.”

  “Swear on the fireman’s code of honor?”

  He laughed through his nose. “I swear.” He kissed me again. And right there, under the fluorescent lights, a whole world of kissing and groping and sleeping around reopened itself to me. Freedom.

  “Do you want kids?” I suddenly blurted out.

  He looked startled. “You don’t edit yourself.”

  “No,” I agreed, feeling my face grow hot. “I guess I don’t. I think I used to. Maybe.”

  “Do we have to sort out the kid thing now?” he asked with mock seriousness. “I try not to visit that subject until I’ve known someone at least twenty-four hours and/or have slept with them. Otherwise, it’s really a moot point, you know what I mean?”

  I rolled my eyes, more at myself than at him. “Yes, I know. Forget I said anything. It’s an issue of mine at the moment.” I wanted to wave my hand at him, but it was still glued to the blue hold and beginning to cramp. “So how do we get down from here?” I eyed the floor warily. It was farther away than I’d realized.

  “Although,” he said lightly, ignoring my question, “if I’m gonna be hanging out with an undercover, we can’t talk about work, so maybe we should talk kids.”

  I clenched what few parts of my body remained unclenched. “If you ever say ‘undercover’ to me again, I’m leaving,” I snapped. And although it was an absurd threat given the circumstances—me hanging on for dear life somewhere above Flatbush Avenue—the panic in my eyes must have been evident. He looked contrite immediately.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m kidding. I promise I won’t jeopardize your job, even if I never see you again.”

  Was that a threat? My God, what had I done? A moment of hubris in the fifth-floor hallway because of some long lashes and strong shoulders and I’d blown my cover with a complete stranger. When would I learn how to control myself?

  “But,” he added quietly, “I hope we do. See each other again.”

  My fingers were aching and now my left calf was also cramping. “Me, too,” I said, although what I wanted was the kissing, not the talking. I nodded toward the floor. “Can we go down now?” I practically whispered.

  He nodded reluctantly, as if he’d blown it, and showed me how to rappel. We bounced down the wall and finally reached terra firma. At the bottom, we avoided looking at each other as we unclipped and joined the line of nocturnal climbers waiting to return their gear.

  A heavy-breathing blond woman with runny makeup was in front of us, waiting to hand in her harness. She reached into a fanny pack and extracted an orange vial, unscrewed the top with her palm, and popped a pill into her mouth.

  She turned to us and held out the vial. “Percocet?” she offered pleasantly.

  We declined, and she tapped the couple in front of her, eager to share her bounty with others who might be in need of some hospital-grade pain relief.

  “Gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn’t it?” Delta quipped, but I was distracted, thinking again of the vial I’d picked up in room 502. I had accepted the paramedic’s immediate assessment that Jeremy had attempted suicide. It explained—sort of, in a hurried, sloppy calculation kind of way—why the room he’d been in had not belonged to a young beauty but rather to Mr. and Mrs. Whitcomb of Akron, Ohio. He had merely wanted to find a place to die.

  But that assessment did not explain why the label on the vial had been redacted to the point where it resembled an FOIA file. The names and numbers had been crossed out, leaving only the drug information legible. And it didn’t explain the scraps of paper in Jeremy’s hand; why would he have gone through the Whitcombs’ garbage before trying to kill himself in their room?

  I thrust my harness at Delta. “Would you mind returning this for me? I have to call my boss.”

  “At eleven-thirty on a Saturday night?” He looked hurt. “If the kiss sucked, just say so.”

  I was startled. I’d forgotten how carefully one had to tread immediately after starting up with a new person. Were we starting up? I had no idea. I only knew that we had kissed. Couldn’t we keep it simple? I felt a wave of longing, not so much for Gregory himself but for our hard-won familiarity. I wouldn’t have had
to explain Pippa to him, or my need to check in with her at impossible hours.

  “No, no, I swear, you’re great, the kiss was great.” In fact, I had no idea if he was great. Why was this so complicated? Could I simply come out and tell him I’d like a bit of no-strings fun until I found someone who shared my vision of the future? Was that actually what I wanted? “It’s just that I have to call my boss with anything—” I stopped short.

  “I know, you can’t talk about your work.” Delta cocked his head, and I fought the urge to run my fingers along the taut tendons of his neck. “Go. If you’re there when I come out, great.” His voice was flat.

  I’d screwed up. The call to Pippa could have waited another few minutes. But at that moment, as interested as I was in smooching Lieutenant Fisk, he of the beautiful black hair and superior musculature, I was even more interested in the Greenwich Village Hotel. Maybe, I thought as I threw him an apologetic glance and headed for the front door, if he’d still been wearing his yellow-striped firefighting garb, I wouldn’t have been thinking about Jeremy Wedge, the garbage in room 502, and a bowdlerized prescription label.

  Chapter 3

  The second time I met Macy St. John was in August 2007. She was supine on my friend Lucy Toklas’s couch, holding an upside-down can of whipped cream to her lips while training her glassy-eyed gaze upon the pages of Valley of the Dolls. Every few seconds—pfft—she’d inject another dollop into her mouth, never taking her eyes off the book. When it came time to turn a page, she’d use the hand holding the whipped cream to do the job, then put the nozzle back in position. Pfft. Pause. Pfft. Pause. Pfft.

  Macy was thoroughly ensconced in a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t Lucy’s fault and it wasn’t Macy’s first breakdown. An alabaster-skinned, flame-haired, blue-eyed sprite who all but glowed in the dark, Macy was a former book editor, and one of some renown. She’d steadily worked her way up from editorial assistant, acquiring increasingly successful books. Then she published John Douglas’s memoir, Praying with the Mamas, an insider’s story about growing up in a fundamentalist polygamist enclave in Texas. The book topped the bestseller list, and Douglas made the media rounds from Lopate to Oprah. It was a heady time for Macy—lunches in Bonanza Books’ executive dining room, drinks at Elaine’s, an enormous budget at the Frankfurt Book Fair—until The Smoking Gun posted a piece questioning whether Douglas’s memoir was truthful. It turned out John Douglas was really Isaac Fishstein and the book had begun as a dare by a friend at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and had gotten a tad out of hand.