She considers the bandage for almost a minute. Nods her thanks.
Jules nods in return and says nothing.
The Killer sets his mask over the shower door. It hangs there like flayed skin. The bathroom window is open, and the pulsing-red sun is nearing the sea, turning the water violet, throwing soft golden light. A blob of Caucasian giant is all that can be seen. The Killer folds his rinsed coveralls over the shower door and shuts off the spray. There is a second pair of coveralls hanging on a hook, where the bathrobes usually are. The Killer’s bare arm reaches around and pulls the clean pair inside. His arm is sleeved in tattoos—a melt of mauve and black ink, unidentifiable as any kind of design.
The same golden light bathes the ballroom. Its entire west wall is windows. They back the bandstand, ending at the two doors—storage room to the right when facing the bandstand, kitchen to the left—that split off to make the room’s overall shape an octagon. Tessa is walking toward the kitchen with a clutch of bloody paper napkins. Jules is walking toward the storage room with a cheap folding chair in each hand. She got the folding chairs from the long table, where the representatives of Destin Management Group’s fund-raising arm sat to write the descriptions of the silent auction items. Tessa was doubtlessly pissed that the folding chairs remained in the dining area.
Jules opens the storage room door. Her bloodcurdling scream fills the ballroom.
CAMERA 34, 33, 31, 12, 59
Justin drops two clean plates. By the time they shatter, he’s almost out of the kitchen.
Brian beats Justin across the ballroom, to the storage room, holding a soapy glass.
Tessa beats them both to where Jules is gaping at the storage room floor.
“It’s cherries,” Tessa says, laughing, and puts her arms around Jules in an anomalous show of affection, before Justin arrives and takes over. “It’s canned cherries, Jules. A pallet must’ve leaked.”
There are rooms in Manderley Resort that do not have security cameras. Not many, but a few.
Jules is laughing now, too. “Cherries?” she says, her nails buried to the cuticles in her husband’s biceps.
“Cherries,” says Tessa, grinning at Brian, who seemed primed, in running toward Tessa, to leap between her and any danger. It was a giveaway in his posture—canted forward, reckless but with a goal. It was in his face—panic, thick and animal. He’s still trying to make it subside. He’s breathing hard, shoving shaking hands into his jacket pockets. He remembers the soapy glass when his right hand won’t fit. He looks at the glass like an embarrassment.
Brian grins back at Tessa but says, “Cherries? You sure?”
“What else would it be? Hey, Henri?”
Henri, also attracted by Jules’s scream but disinclined to run, is in the doorway of the kitchen.
Tessa asks him, “Could you spare a sous-chef to clean this up? There’s a mop spigot in here. It won’t take five minutes.”
Henri puffs up like a cranky bird. “We are all busy.”
Tessa doesn’t puff. She doesn’t need to. Her voice does all the work. “This room isn’t food storage. It’s speakers and extension cords for the stage. I count at least two-dozen pallets of cherries in here. I understand you have a system for the pantry, but you can’t put your overflow in with electrical equipment, and this is why.” Her eyes, too. Her eyes can be depthless when she wants them to be. “It’s your mess. Clean it up.”
Her eyes were depthless when she stared past a straining neck, palmed a contorting shoulder blade, ran another hand down perfect vertebrae to a strong ass, and cupped. Stared at the ceiling, where she was seeing someone she wished were with her instead.
She looks at Brian. Stares, really. Her hips move like a clock’s third hand. Brian looks back at her. He’s put the glass as low by his side as he can, humiliated to be holding it. He licks his lips. Tessa bites her lower lip.
This has lasted three seconds.
“What else would it be?” Tessa says again, turning to Justin and Jules. They shrug, disinterested in that particular question, but Jules’s mouth is an intrigued little moue and Justin pumps his eyebrows at Brian, as if to say, Well, well. Brian doesn’t notice. He’s making room as a sous-chef squeezes by. The sous-chefs all look alike, which is counterintuitive, as all four of them have dyed hair and elaborate tattoos and strange piercings. Their efforts to appear distinct from one another have accomplished the opposite: they are a mass. And an individual split off from the group—receding, now, into the storage room—is androgynous, anonymous, forgotten amidst his tribe’s collective desperation to be remembered. Running water is heard.
“Blood,” Brian says. Does he say it so Tessa will turn to him again? If so, it works. “She thought it was blood. Looks like it.”
Justin says, “And the cherries are clots and brains! Ehh-heh-heh-heh!”
Jules smacks his arm. She’s snorting. “Shut up, Cryptkeeper.”
“Nobody even remembers that show,” says Tessa in solidarity.
“You do,” Brian says. “You loved that show. You’d make me tape it and then watch it with you once the house was asleep.”
Jules and Justin are quiet. Tessa turns her head, slightly but conspicuously, to regard the sun over the ocean. Brian taps the soapy glass against his outer thigh. There’s the tink of glass against denim, the swsshk of a mop on sticky tile.
“Mademoiselle?”
Tessa says, “Yes. Henri, what’s up?” and takes long strides to where he stands in the kitchen doorway.
“The phone,” Henri says sullenly, “it calls for you.” He releases the door when Tessa props it open with her boot heel.
She pushes the intercom button on the wall-mounted phone; it’s right inside the kitchen, bright red. Tessa insisted on the kitchen phone being red, so as to cut through confusion in a real emergency. She said it would be a pity if Manderley burned down because the phone blended with the wall. “This is Tessa.”
“The floor’s clean down here, pumpkin. Thought I’d tell you.”
“Excellent. Thanks, Del.” Tessa checks her watch. “Where’s Vivica? The big ballroom cleaning’s tonight.”
“I had her do a walk-through when she got here, and she found a stain on fifteen.”
“Stain? Where on fifteen?”
“The carpet right inside 1516.”
Tessa’s brow darkens. “What kind of stain?”
“She said it looked like one of the electricians cut himself.”
“The electricians weren’t on fifteen today. Charles and I did room inspections yesterday, and there were no damn stains on the carpet.” Tessa didn’t approve of the white carpet. That was Charles Destin’s choice. He wanted white everything. He said it would look rich. Tessa said it would cease to look rich the minute a guest spilled a cup of coffee, a glass of liquor, or an entire room service meal in his or her rich white room. Destin exercised his power of veto and told Tessa that spills were her concern, not his. He told her he pays her very well to clean up spills. He does pay her extraordinarily well. Tessa says, “We need Vivica up here. You, too. The ballroom takes precedence over the guest quarters, even the luxury suites. I can handle 1516 being out of commission, but a dusty piano?”
“I’ll get Vivica right away.”
“I’ll get her.” Tessa massages her forehead. “Please come get started. Okay?”
“Sure thing, Tessa. I’m on my way.”
Tessa kicks the kitchen door wide.
“This is not me!” Henri shouts. “This stain, it is not of me!”
Tessa never yells. But here’s her version. “It’s not?”
“I stop giving samples to the workers when you say. I stop this even though they are virgin palates who can—”
“Henri, if you are lying . . .”
“I do not lie.” He puffs up again. A wheezy fart amplifies across stainless steel appliances.
Brian uses the excuse of the glass he’s still holding to edge past Tessa and rinse it, tray it, wash his soapy hand. “Is this
what your average night’s like?”
“This is slow,” Tessa says. “I have to go to fifteen and check on a cherry stain—”
“This is not the cherries! Unless they steal! They steal the cherry coulis, mon Dieu!”
“I’ll come with you,” Brian says. “If that’s okay.”
“I’ll be back in—”
“I’d rather come with you.”
There’s a pause. Then Tessa laughs lightly, her eyes closed. “It was a puddle of cherries, Bri.”
“Not cherries! Zut, alors!”
Tessa points. When Tessa points, it is a signal to stop whatever one is doing. And if one can, to hide. “Henri, I swear to God, if you don’t chill out, cherries are not the only thing that can be canned. Got me?”
Henri shrinks. His sous-chefs exchange disloyal sneers.
Brian holds his chin and aims an expression of glee at the ballroom. It is, I agree, a great deal of fun to listen to Tessa be authoritative.
“Let’s go,” Tessa says.
Jules leaves Justin by the dance floor, where the two of them were pretending to examine place settings while actually eavesdropping on the kitchen. Jules excuses herself by explaining she needs to check her underpants for “fear splatter.” This makes Justin laugh uproariously. Brian, overhearing, grimaces in disgust. Jules crosses the ballroom in a southeasterly direction. Her body multiplies behind the champagne flute pyramid, then vanishes into the door marked “Ladies.” She locks the door behind her. Her face changes, becoming a cartoon of fear: bulging eyes and all twenty-eight teeth. Her hands go to her hair and pull. She squeaks at the pain, careful to do it quietly. The ladies’ room contains a sitting area with padded vanity chairs and mirrors framed in oversized bulbs. Jules leans over one of the chairs, braces her hands on the vanity counter, and breathes erratically at her reflection: she is of French Polynesian and British descent, pale, bleach blond, fine-boned, expertly contoured with cosmetics. She gropes an orange container from her blazer pocket and beats the childproof cap against the counter edge until it pops. Capsules erupt. Saying, “Shit, shit, shit,” she dry-swallows two, sweeps those on the counter into a pile with her palm, and pinches them into the container a couple at a time. She combs the chairs, crawls on the carpet, recovering capsules as if they were pearls. She misses one behind her; she stands and steps on it. Her psychiatrist has told Jules on several occasions she must be patient—antidepressants aren’t effective right away; take them daily at a designated time and sure, okay, here’s some Xanax for anxiety. Jules’s psychiatrist has also repeatedly told her it would be wise to inform Justin she is taking psychotropic medication and seeing a psychiatrist—keeping it a secret isn’t good for the marriage—but Jules has told no one. Jules stuffs the pills back in her blazer. She then glowers at her reflection until it consents to smile, and it’s a smile for a toothpaste ad. For any ad. Anyone would buy whatever she’s selling. She leaves the restroom, walks to Justin on the dance floor, snuggles to him, and singsongs, “Skid-mark-free.” He laughs again.
The Killer is leaving Room 717. He takes a left turn at the main elevator and presses a finger to his right hip pocket, where he’s clipped his controller. When he opens the cleaning closet door, the shelves have already moved aside. He gets on the secret elevator, nudging Vivica with his shoes to make space. Vivica is dead, but she wasn’t when the Killer left the secret elevator. Her bloody handprints are smeared all over the dull walls. Destin did not insist on white for the secret elevator. He insisted only that there be a secret elevator; he is paranoid he will die in a hotel like his father did, and he built Manderley the way he did so as to negate that possibility. The Killer holds one of the hotel’s paper laundry convenience bags in his left hand, his knife in his right. The bag contains his blood-soaked coveralls. He presses the controller’s button—the cleaning closet shelves slide over—and presses the button for the second floor with the tip of his knife.
“This thing takes a while, huh?” Brian is referring to the main elevator, outside of which he and Tessa are waiting, on the nineteenth floor.
“Don’t get me started,” says Tessa, then starts anyway. “Charles wanted a glass elevator because he liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Sadly I’m not.” Tessa checks her watch. “He had it modeled after the illustrations in the book, but the fact that it’s diamond shaped means there’s a bunch of stabilizing cables and winches that make it a death trap unless it moves so slow, it’d practically be faster to take the stairs.” Tessa watches the buttons for the floors light up as she speaks. “You said you wanted to talk to me, right?”
“Yeah,” Brian says. “When you’ve got a free minute.”
“This is as close to a free minute as I’m gonna get, Bri. We’re less than a week from the party. I sleep here, when I sleep. Say what you need to say.”
“When you’ve got a free minute,” Brian says again.
“Same old Bri. Wanting all my attention.”
“Oh, pot. Nice to meet you. I’m kettle.”
A loud giggle bubbles over from the dance floor. Justin dips Jules almost to the gleaming wood. Henri is playing classic French croons, concertina piping through an ancient portable stereo.
“They’re pretty great.” Brian nods at Justin who is pulling Jules vertical again.
Tessa turns back to the elevator floor numbers successively lighting: 16 . . . . . . . . . 17. She says, apropos of nothing, “They go to Justin’s parents’ place in Reseda for Christmas Eve. Then they go to Jules’s parents’ place in Ventura for Christmas Day.”
. . . 18 . . .
“What do you do?” Brian asks her.
Tessa works on Christmas. She doesn’t say so. She says, “Any year now,” and presses the “Down” button again. Tessa works on Christmas, even if someone invites her somewhere. If someone invites her somewhere, she tells him to go see his family.
“I watch movies,” Brian says. The pointed roof of the diamond-shaped elevator appears. “On Christmas.”
Delores is in the elevator. Tessa pastes on a smile and says, “I work.”
Camera 17
The Killer steps onto the second floor. He tilts his head and listens, standing inside Delores’s office. The Killer can hear tearing sounds. Delores’s office opens into the employee break room, containing a long table, a kitchenette, and employee lockers. Outside the break room is a hallway, off which is the housekeeping storage area. The secret elevator opens behind cleaning closets on each floor except for the first (the secret elevator opens directly into Franklin’s office on the first floor), second (it opens into Delores’s office), eighteenth (into the south wall of Room 1801, the nondeluxe penthouse), nineteenth (into the kitchen’s walk-in refrigerator), and twentieth (behind my chair). The Killer puts down his paper laundry convenience bag on Delores’s desk. He keeps his knife. The tearing sounds are coming from the housekeeping storage area, where Franklin is unwrapping miniature soaps, wetting them with a liter bottle of water, and glomming them into a large soap clump, which he presumably intends to leave for Delores to find. Franklin is on a ladder, his back to the Killer. The Killer watches Franklin, whose hair sticks up in odd porcupine spikes and whose eyes flash every time he tears through a soap wrapper.
Camera 3
Delores is apologizing to Tessa—this is Delores’s favored greeting to Tessa—before the main elevator’s doors have fully opened. She sees the young man at Tessa’s side and becomes guarded. Tessa introduces Brian. Brian smiles but doesn’t offer Delores his hand. He slouches to appear smaller. His smile doesn’t show his teeth, and he allows Delores a wide perimeter, but holds the elevator door open with his motorcycle boot. Delores scurries around him, as she does all men, like they might bite. Delores hands Tessa her clipboard, while Tessa puts her bandaged palm at the small of Delores’s back and tells Brian to wait for her; this won’t take long. Delores listens to Tessa’s description of what needs to happen in the ballroom to
night. Tomorrow the band will be setting up. This is the last opportunity to clean the bandstand without any instruments or equipment on it. The musicians will make a mess. Tessa will tell Vivica to join Delores. Delores tells Tessa she didn’t see Vivica on the fifteenth floor. Tessa reminds Delores that 1516 is outside the main elevator’s sightlines. Delores allows how that’s true, and she and Tessa split up, Delores walking toward the storage closet. Tessa is returning to the main elevator, and to Brian.
Camera 34
Justin begins dancing with aggressive pelvic movements—in the vernacular, “grinding.” Jules pushes him, gesturing at the three other people in the ballroom, who are ignoring Jules and Justin completely. Justin’s posture becomes conciliatory, apologetic. His hands find Jules’s waist, circle it, drop an inch or two so they skim the tops of her buttocks, and Jules pushes him again. Justin and Jules haven’t made love in more than two months. Jules’s psychiatrist has told Jules to tell Justin about her medications not least because a side effect of SSRIs is a waning sex drive, which a mate may take as personal rejection if he’s unaware his depressed/anxious partner’s neurochemistry is being adjusted. Justin leans to Jules, probably asking—for what seems like the hundredth time—what the hell he’s supposed to do, or what he’s supposed to have done. Jules’s peppy comportment slips for scarcely an instant, before she’s grinning and waving at Brian, who, by the elevator, has been observing this tête-à-tête with curiosity—and maybe a glimmer of sad understanding. Brian waves back, and Jules snuggles to Justin again. Justin joins the farce, calling “Helloooo” to Brian, as if they’re at opposite ends of an abyss.
Franklin thinks his prankster persona endears him to people. Franklin believes he’s had an especially hard life, because he is gay. He majored in theater. He did theater in high school, too, but he also played baseball. He was a star catcher. This makes one want to laugh, but laughter is impossible, given the circumstances. Franklin came out to his parents when he was eighteen, and his parents reacted with nonplussed nonshock, and Franklin—channeling some character in some script—began a soliloquy about how their lack of acceptance shattered his heart, raped his mind, impaled his spirit with daggers the length of his long, hard life. None of this is in Franklin’s personnel file. A more thorough background check became necessary for Franklin, due to his tendency toward pranks. He has established a shaky peace with his parents, who, when interviewed, turned out to be sedately liberal Episcopalians who owned a split-level in Pasadena, thanks to Franklin’s father’s success in advertising and Franklin’s mother’s greater success in selling Mary Kay cosmetics. It makes one thirsty to remember the taste of Franklin’s mother’s raspberry lemonade. It makes one nostalgic for summer, though it’s summer outside.
Security: A Novel Page 5