Man in the Empty Suit

by Sean Ferrell

  I shook my head. “So where do I start?”

  “Seventy told me to pass on one piece of advice. Keep an eye on that door.”

  His thumb jerked toward a door near the bar, one of the kitchen entrances. I tugged at my drink as Yellow shuffled out of his seat and patted me on the back. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He was no help. “So I just sit here and stare at the door?”

  He started walking toward the stage. The record was skipping, and with increasing panic the Fifth Dimension repeated a promise to fly up and away in a balloon. As I watched Yellow fiddle with the record player, the Drunk took his opportunity to slide one seat closer. By the time I realized he was moving in, it was too late. He had me. His silence and blank stare made me assume he was in the midst of a tremendous blackout. Once he was closer, his eyes regained some focus. He brought a very full glass with him and placed a hand over the mouth, then laid his head down on his hand, as if it were a pillow. I pretended not to see him.

  “Not enough women at this thing.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess that’s the truth.”

  The Drunk smiled up at me. “You have no idea what’s coming.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes darkened, sobered for just a moment, and then they closed. When they reopened, they rolled as before. He pointed at the bottle of twelve-year-old whiskey, which was just within reach. “You’ll want to refill the flask.”

  I took hold of the bottle. “You would know.”

  He chuckled at that. I was surprised at my own revulsion toward him. He was, of course, me. But I’d always stayed away from him, as if he were contagious. Even just the previous year when I’d spoken to him in the hall, it had taken effort. This puzzled me now. I could see through the beard, the dirt. It was my face.

  I carefully poured scotch from bottle to flask. It sounded like someone urinating into a cup.

  He closed his eyes. “Wake me when she gets here.”

  “What? Who?”

  At that moment the door beside the bar opened, and in walked a woman. She was tall and pale, a tight red dress hugging her figure and revealing just enough of a tattoo that wound down her left arm—interlocking parrots, nesting, staring, raising their wings. They looked so alive I could practically hear their voices. Brown hair fell around the woman’s face in large curls; green eyes ignored the room. I spilled whiskey over my hand and onto the bar.

  The Brats scampered toward me. “Liquor spill, liquor spill.” One of them shouted, “Lick her spiel,” to the amusement of no one.

  I put the bottle down and leaned back as the Brats swiped white towels. One knocked into the bottle, which almost toppled over. With deft ability another caught it against his wrist and righted it. They mopped up the spill and squeezed out the towels into tumblers.

  I held my flask before me; whiskey dripped onto my suit, and I stared at the woman. Unsure of how I could have missed her during all my previous visits to the hotel, I watched the way she flowed around the tables. She was as incongruous as a flame in an ice cube. Around me packs of teens chased one another with cups of water and utensils. Card games sprouted here and there among the twenty-somethings. Their favorite was a memory game where a younger self sits with a deck, flips up one card after another as Elders try to recall the order. Everyone younger than me was occupied with self-amusement. It suddenly seemed like so much masturbation.

  One of the Youngsters behind the bar held out a folded paper to me, soaked with whiskey, ink bleeding through. “Is this yours?”

  I took it and read the message through the wet cover, words typed with a dying ribbon: “If it’s dark, I’m gone.”

  “No,” I said, and dropped it to the bar to float on the spilled liquor.

  “Must be mine,” muttered the Drunk, who fished it out of the tiny puddle and pocketed the note without bothering to read it, a desperate awkwardness in his grasp.

  He was focused on the woman, and silent, as were all those older than me. I realized then that Elders had stationed themselves so that they could vicariously relive the vision. Smiles were sprinkled around the tables, and all conversation had ceased.

  Seventy followed her into the room. His hand snaked under her tattooed arm and around her waist, comfortable, if somewhat arthritic, and he steered her to a septuagenarian-occupied table in the corner behind the bar. I wondered if I might have hired a nurse. Perhaps not a bad precaution.

  The Drunk closed his eyes and sighed as if ready for sleep. “Check out the nose.”

  “What? Yes, it’s very attractive.”

  “Not hers. Yours. Don’t forget to check it out.” He took his glass, a swirling mess of brownish gold and ice with a piece of napkin in it, splashed some at his mouth, and then stepped sloppily from his chair. “I gotta run. It’s about to happen, and I want to see how it all goes if I don’t do something about it.”

  I’d reclaimed my revulsion of him. He made no sense. Yellow was right. He was useless. After he’d stepped away from the bar, I looked for the woman. She sat at a table with two others, Seventy and one slightly younger, who watched her with wet eyes. She said something inaudible and reached out to stroke his arm. I did, in fact, look at her nose. It sat on her face in just the right place and at just the right angle. She turned back to Seventy. He leaned in close to her, and she gripped his wrist. At first I thought she was tickling his arm but finally realized they were looking at the place on his wrist where Sober had revealed a tattoo. The woman’s eyes were dark and wet, and they seemed near tears. She nodded, he patted her arm, and then he pulled his cuff over what they’d been examining with such tender fingers.

  When I could look away, I spotted the Drunk’s glass, napkin bits floating inside. His mumbled exit replayed in my head. Drink lifted almost to my mouth, I froze. I was about to break and not break my nose outside the restroom. That must have been what he’d referred to. I rushed to cross the ballroom to the exit near the restrooms. I stopped halfway, turned in place, and wondered if I was really about to leave a room with a stunning woman I’d never seen before just so I could witness myself do something stupid. At a nearby table, an Elder in a double-breasted tailcoat with wide cuffs and a matching high collar of velvet, looking like a French aristocrat in a low-lit brothel, winked at me and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch her for you.”

  I knew he would.

  Through the crowd beyond the doorway, I could see the Pilaf Brothers and the Nose Savior waiting in the line to the men’s room. I stopped and watched. Pilaf Brothers, first one, then all three, turned to look at me and laughed, eyes full of serious recognition. I’d never noticed that all three of them wore slightly similar ponchos, like gauchos, one clearly still dusty from some South American trail, and I wondered if they rode around as some kind of trio. They put the plates down. They weren’t casual. This wasn’t pleasant. They were burdened by necessity, a gravity to what they did. The air quivered with it. Rice sprinkled the carpet like fleeing maggots.

  They walked away, glanced at me over their shoulders, muttered Spanish floating through the air, and I watched now as my slightly younger self debated over the plates. All it would take was the subtle kick. Eyes locked on the sliced almonds on the floor. He was about to do it. For an instant I thought I ought to stop him. My nose would break again, but I would recall the act of stopping what had once happened. In essence I would have three true and parallel memories, and I could barely handle the two I had at the moment. I needed to debate this with someone. Where was the Drunk? All the other Elders were leaving me on my own, but he had been willing to give advice. Repulsive and helpful was better than nothing.

  The Savior moved the plate aside. An instant later Nose, wrapped in his red-and-black hanfu, stepped from the bathroom and tripped lightly at the edge of the rug. He wasn’t helped by his wooden sandals. Nose turned and looked over his shoulder. Savior watched him; recognition dawned that he’d spared only the break but not the memory of the pain. I wa
tched his memory twin as he recalled both breaking and not breaking his nose.

  At the other end of the hall, a cackle and a shout. “I told you I could barely remember it.” The Drunk. I tried to see him through the swarming Youngsters, could make out only his back as he charged away through the crowd. He’d wanted me here. Something needed to be discovered. He wasn’t simply giving tips, he worked toward a goal. Another game run by another Elder. I stepped forward. The Drunk had suggested I look at the nose. I took hold of Nose’s shoulders.

  “Pardon me?” He pulled back a moment, as if I weren’t holding my own face, as if there were something untoward in holding oneself against a wall and grasping for a body part. His skin was slick with sweat, and he smelled like the toilet he’d just thrown up in. His eyes showed he’d been crying. I didn’t recall that, ignored the reasons he might have cried and the reasons I would have forgotten.

  “Let me see your nose a moment.”

  “Get your hands off me.”

  “I don’t want to overstate things, but this could mean life or death.”

  He stopped moving, his head at an unnatural angle, a fly in a web, turning turning turning to keep my hands from a solid hold on his cheeks. “Who for?”

  “You, eventually.” The words came out smoothly, doubled by a new paradox I was forming. I was too aware that I hadn’t done this before, too aware that Nose was supposed to be in the ballroom by now, holding a drink and laughing. My investigation was obviously going to be crossing earlier paths. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d be messing with my own head to a large degree. I’d have to learn to live with it. “Me, more immediately.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “You don’t need details. Let me see your nose.”

  He held still in the awkward pose. I became distracted by the parrot pattern in the trim of his robe. I’d forgotten that detail. An inside joke between me and me. Behind me Savior watched, uncertain now whether he might have destroyed some major timeline as a result of moving the dish. He hadn’t chased after the Drunk as I had when I’d been him. Another change.

  I looked up Nose’s nose. I examined both sides. “It’s not broken.”

  “Why should it be?”

  I turned in time to see Savior disappear into the bathroom, hand over his pale face. I rushed past the line after him, ignoring complaints and epithets.

  Every stall, urinal, and sink was occupied, as was almost every inch of floor space. I didn’t recall the bathrooms being so full, but of course I had begun avoiding the first-floor restrooms after my thirtieth year, probably just because of this. Youngsters stood shoulder to shoulder, some with drinks. The room smelled of urine and alcohol. A group of obviously young teens stood near the last stall, watching in awe as the over-twenty crowd drank and guffawed at unfunny inside jokes. Other than a lack of music, it was a club scene. Again I worried about why and how teens were there. More immediately, though, I had to reach Savior, who’d managed to sequester himself in the last stall. I followed him, stepped on my own feet several times, heard curses in dead languages I’d forgotten I had learned, and bumped into one elderly version of myself, paunched and pale, who patted my shoulder.

  “Good luck. It’s worth it, I think,” he told me.

  I gave a false smile and a nod. “You would know.” I shoved my shoulder against the door, and the latch popped under my weight.

  “What the hell? Get out of here.”

  I stood over Savior as my memory spiraled along a different path. When I’d been his age, I hadn’t run to the bathroom. I’d followed the Drunk, headed to the bar, gotten a drink, even spent a moment talking to Nose. I could recall that this hadn’t happened, even though the act was already done.

  I pointed a finger at Savior, more accusingly than I’d intended. “Look, you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. And you didn’t. You just wanted to spare yourself a little pain.”

  “That’s right. I just—”

  “But it doesn’t work. You’ve changed things. You’ll start calling it a memory paradox soon enough.” As I mentioned them, I ran through a list in my head of the things I’d seen so far that were different from my own memories. “It’s like the kids being here.”

  “They shouldn’t be here?”

  “Did you come here as a kid?”

  “Shit.”

  “Someone must have given them a ride, and they’re here, and that’s it.”

  “What if we—”

  “Don’t even think about trying to stop yourself from doing what you just did.”

  “Further complications?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Shit.” It was his mantra.

  “Let me see your nose,” I said.

  “All right.”

  He was too stunned even to wonder why. I looked it over, and my own mind began to stir. I hadn’t found what I’d expected. His nose was unbroken.

  He watched my eyes as my hands fell to my sides. “Is it all right?”

  “I don’t know why, but yes.”

  “What’s wrong with that? It’s why I moved the plate.”

  “I know, but it didn’t work for me.”

  “How come?”

  I didn’t know. “Shit,” I said.

  I stepped out of the stall. Youngsters toe-deep in urine tried to act nonchalant, failed, almost tripped in their attempts to follow me to a mirror. I leaned over the sink and examined my own nose. There, along the right side, was the bump and slight twist. Barely visible, but there. I felt it with both hands. My nose had been broken. When I’d been Savior’s age and moved the plate, I hadn’t spared myself anything. But this Savior had. Somehow he had been spared the break.

  The mirror filled with my faces looking over my shoulder, puzzled or smiling, depending on where they fell ahead or behind me on the line of my life. Elders seemed to have arrived like tourists. Questions and admonitions to be quiet flowed around me. I kept my head tilted back and looked at the bridge of my once-broken nose.

  One Elder—easily in his sixties, powdered wig and knee-high stockings speaking volumes of an ill-conceived trip through the eighteenth century—joined me at the sink. “Really far out, huh?”

  I walked away from the sink. Savior called for me to stop, but I ignored him. Let the Dandy fill him in, or not. I needed to find Seventy.

  I STRUGGLED TO get out of the bathroom. Youngsters called after me, demanding answers. Elders called good luck. Echoes of “You would know” bounced off the tiles.

  I returned to the ballroom. The woman was gone. The table in the corner where she’d sat was vacant except for four dying drinks. One was a tall, milky tumbler that smelled of coffee. A Brown Russian? My lactose intolerance burbled at the thought. This had been her drink. The other three were watery whiskeys, which I poured together and drained in quick gulps. Coin-shaped ice pieces caught in my throat.

  When the whiskey was gone, I took stock of the party. Tables were surrounded by me, in various stages of drink. Food was disappearing quickly. I finally noticed the acidic taste in my mouth; I hadn’t eaten. A fist of hunger wrapped around my stomach.

  I made my way to the buffet tables outside the ballroom. I was nearly too late. Sterno warmed empty, sauce-crusted trays, and the hall stifled with chemical fumes and heat. I filled a plate with what remained of the tray of overcooked Swedish meatballs and found a basket of breadsticks near an overturned soup station. I couldn’t recall getting to the food later than this. I made a mental note not to do so again and promised myself that next year I would hide a fork underneath the first table. I repeated the promise to myself several times. Occasionally this worked. Repeated promises sometimes stuck, and I sometimes kept them. I’d once managed to hide a half bottle of vodka in an empty planter for the Youngster who’d dreamed of finding one there. Still repeating my promise to leave myself utensils, I placed my food on the floor and crawled under the tablecloth.

  Apparently my future self had remembered my wish and been benevolent. There was a serving b
owl, rather large, and for a quick instant I hoped I’d had the foresight to put a roll under there, too. Pleased with myself, I lifted the bowl. Beside the fork and knife that I had hoped for lay a black revolver with a wooden handle, its barrel hole large enough to have an echo.

  Crouched there in the dark with my utensils and firearm, I resolved never to emerge from underneath the tablecloth. I reached out blindly and felt for my plate but found someone’s foot instead. Just beyond the tablecloth’s hem stood a pair of highly polished shoes. They were handsome, much better than what I was currently wearing with my expensive suit. I recognized them as the pair I’d worn out last year.

  Without meaning to I said, “Nice shoes.”

  “Thanks.” The clatter of china. The other knelt down and handed me my plate of coal-lump Swedish meatballs. It was Savior. “How goes it?”

  “Fine,” I lied. I put the bowl back over the gun.

  “What are you doing under there?”

  I shrugged. “You know. Getting away. It can be”—I waved nonspecifically—“out there, you know.”

  He nodded as if he understood. I was tipsy and could tell from his blurred eyes that he was, too. Had I done this back then? Had I found myself under a table? Even tipsy I think I would have remembered it. What changes were spiraling away from that unbroken nose?

  “The whole nose incident,” he said. “What was that all about?”

  I shrugged again, as if to say, How should I know? or to imply that he should already know. I couldn’t make him any more confused than I was myself. I wanted to say, I have a gun. Instead I said, “Look, I just want to eat these meatballs and be done with it.” I lifted the fork from the floor and tried to spear one. Impervious to tines, the meatballs spun away, ricocheting around the plate.

  “If there’s something major happening, I can help.”

  “I know you mean well,” I lied. We both knew that Savior was only in it for himself. He had created a huge paradox simply to avoid a broken nose, which I still had. I’d been selfish. He was selfish. Had been and was, the ends of my maturity spectrum, and I was probably lying to myself about where on that spectrum I fell now. So depressing it was funny. I smiled. “Nothing you can do because there’s nothing to do. Everything’s fine. I just … well, it’s rather busy up there.” I pointed toward the underside of the table.