The Hotel Neversink

by Adam O'Fallon Price

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “I’m not a fool—”

  “I know, and this is why I’m entrusting the hotel to you.”

  We sat in silence and I helplessly observed how the cancer, and the treatments for it, had sapped him. The great arms that had once snapped the vacuum tube were withered and spotted with bruises that did not heal, purple welts beneath the papery skin. In the cold morning light he was oddly translucent, like a jellyfish. If he’d taken off his shirt, could I have seen his heart beating in that thin chest?

  “Thank you,” I said, finally.

  “It is nothing for thanks. You are like me, that is all.” I knew I was, but it was strange to hear. “You are tough and proud. And you will do whatever it takes for this business to continue growing, for our family to prosper. Your brother has the far better deal.”

  “Does he?”

  “Oh, yes,” my father said. He coughed extensively, leaned forward to open the door, and spat out into the green, manicured expanse. “He is a fool. He is happy.”

  As we searched for the Schoenberg boy, I was besieged by these memories. And I could not help but wonder if this was divine punishment for giving Abraham up. Perhaps my father was right, and Abe truly was a curse from God. When I returned in last light with the distraught search party, the hotel felt vacant, abandoned. No guests checking in or checking out, no noise from the recreation or dining rooms, no sounds of distant splashing coming through the high walls of the natatorium, no old men drinking tea in the parlor—nothing. Our security man, Saul Javits, tipped his hat gravely at me as we crossed each other’s path beneath the grand staircase, his face etched with the fearful sorrow I felt on my own.

  I sat on a hall chair to steady myself as I thought again of my father and his dying wish to be buried beside this place he had built, where he had at last found the success that had eluded him for so long. Would it now be taken from him?

  In the empty dining room, I traced a finger on the cool brass rail running its perimeter. Overhead, the enormous iron chandelier my father had salvaged from a distant estate sale hung with fantastic weight. I could see the team of men he assembled—my uncle and three others, Joseph running around their legs—hoisting it on temporary scaffolding, my father below them pointing and nodding at his own good judgment.

  A faint and familiar bitter taste had filled my mouth—mule hoof, I realized, brought back by the day’s remembrances. I went behind the bar, poured cherry wine into a cup, swished and spat in the sink. Another sip I took and swallowed, raising my cup to the chandelier. No, I thought—all of this will not be for nothing. As Zsolt gave his life for our family, my father gave his life to this place, willing it into existence and doing what was necessary for it to succeed. As will I. The children will grow up here. Soft as cream.

  2. Leonard

  1950

  You’ll never find me here, thinks the boy. He is hidden, could not be more hidden. Even with his eyes wide open, it is black all around, here in his perfect hiding place the man told him about.

  The kid seeking him, his new friend Lenny, was supposed to count to a thousand—those were the rules they made earlier, after playing in the pool and the hot grass of the hotel’s lawn. They were bored, poking an anthill with sticks, watching the tiny creatures swarm with rage. It was the boy’s idea, hide-and-seek—his favorite game—on a grand scale. Lenny seemed doubtful, but the boy said it’ll be fun, pointing out Lenny’s advantage as the son of the hotel owners. You know every inch of the building, he said, to which Lenny proudly assented. Stay out here and I’ll hide. Count to a thousand.

  He hasn’t gotten to play hide-and-seek for quite some time. His sister is getting older and has expressed a preference not to play “baby games,” but also, the Boston apartment where the boy and his family moved two years ago is too small. He shares a room with his sister. Everyone stands in the hall waiting on the tiny bathroom, tiny even to him. Even if you wanted to, there’s nowhere to wedge yourself while the other person counts, nowhere you can escape to. Their previous home, in Worcester, was a maze of rooms, including a musty basement and a storage space under the kitchen floor, accessible by attaching a small rope to the pull and yanking upward. He would sometimes stay there for hours, cozy in his small, secret place—especially when his father was angry and yelling; were it not for his mother’s beseeching calls, he could have stayed there all day. Like his namesake, deep in the whale’s gullet.

  He roved the hotel, looking for a perfect spot. He hid first beneath the overhang of a dining room tablecloth, only to be shooed out by a peevish busboy. Upstairs were just rooms, locked doors. Back downstairs, most places seemed off-limits to children playing games: the ballroom, currently under renovation; the lobby, full of guests checking in; the riotous pool area, packed with families, his own among them. Fewer secret places than he would have thought in this vast building. He sneaked outside to spy Lenny kneeling on the hill, eyes still dutifully covered by his hands.

  Around the hotel he went, casting an appraising eye at the long hedges that ran alongside the hotel walls (too obvious), a dense patch of shrubbery between buildings (too painful to climb into), and the dark woods past the green, sloping lawn (not in the spirit of the game, and a bit scary). Turning to run back inside, he was surprised to find someone standing behind him. A man. The sun floated behind his head like a halo, and the boy couldn’t quite see his face. In a quiet voice, the man said, “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you playing a game?”

  The boy felt slightly embarrassed, childish, when he said, “Hide-and-seek.”

  “Oh, I like that game. Are you hiding or seeking?”

  “Hiding.”

  “Hiding is the best fun,” the man said, and when he smiled, the light glinted off white teeth. “I know a good place.”

  He whispered in the boy’s ear, and the boy nodded: a good hiding place, indeed.

  That was a while ago—feels like thirty minutes, though he knows it’s probably just five or ten. He imagines Lenny walking through the hotel, poking into hampers, looking behind plants, peering under chairs. The thought gives him a giddy thrill, and he hopes Lenny never finds him. There is nothing like being the little thing inside the big thing—he thinks again of hiding in that small cellar, the musty guts of the beast. He would be happy to be here all day, in the cool dark, inside the inside. He would be happy to hide here forever. So he is disappointed when the door opens, a little mad that Lenny has found him so easily. But a light comes on, a yellowy light that seems to radiate from the figure in the door, and the boy sees it is not Lenny.

  Leonard Sikorsky, his mother called, and he knew he was in trouble. He was “Lenny” most of the time, and “Len” when she was sad and stroking his hair, but “Leonard” was saved for when he’d done something wrong, forgotten a chore as he so often did. He’d been playing hide-and-seek, looking for the boy—Jonah—in a copse of firs near the pool area, when he heard his mother calling for him. Inside, he was sent with a smack on the butt to help his bubbe Amshe in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for two tortuous hours as the brilliant day faded through the window. After dinner he did his homework, listened to a Dodgers game crackling through on the radio, and went to bed. He’d completely forgotten about Jonah.

  Now, sitting in the wooden chair, in the corner of his mother’s office, Lenny fidgets with his hands as he guiltily recounts the previous day. The detective—a real police detective with the badge and hat and everything—nods at Mr. Javits, the hotel detective, who wears a gray suit and looks a little like Len’s own father. Mr. Javits says, “Did you see the boy, Jonah, again?”

  “No. I forgot we were playing. Do you think he’s still there?”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever he was hiding.”

  Mr. Javits pats him gently on the back. “Lenny, how long would you wait if you were Jonah? Would you still be hiding the next day? Wouldn’t
you get hungry at some point?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  The real detective shifts in his chair and clears his throat. “Had you seen him before?”

  “I met him the day before yesterday. On Wednesday. He told me they’re from—” Lenny thinks hard for a moment, reaching for the complicated word. “Massachusetts.”

  “We know,” says the detective. He makes a little note in his book, with a bored expression that reminds Lenny of how he feels in class sometimes, when he wants to be on the playground.

  Mr. Javits says, “That’s good, though, Lenny, good memory.”

  They ask him a few more questions, and he’s set free to join the search party. A party: it sounds fun, though he knows it’s all about Jonah’s disappearance, which is not fun. Still, it doesn’t scare him. He thinks Jonah just left. Jonah was a strange, nervous boy, and Lenny has no problem imagining him growing bored waiting to be found, walking down the hill, down the road into town . . . Here, his imagination fails him, having never been past town: the hardware store, the five-and-dime, the soda shop where his father sometimes takes him for a treat—past that, is there a forest? Maybe a wolf got him! Rrrahwr! He scampers down the second-floor hall and lies on his belly, peering between the bars of the thick wooden banister to spy on the scene below.

  In the Great Hall, so-called, a crowd has gathered and continues growing. Len’s father, Henry, moves here and there, talking to cops and gesturing at the throng: hotel guests and employees, and residents of Liberty, fed for free by Amshe, having been summoned by Len’s mother, who put out word of a missing boy this morning. The crowd, perhaps a hundred people extending, unseen, into the lobby, mills with the hesitating expectancy given off by large groups.

  Everyone seems to be there, and Lenny makes a game of picking out the familiar faces. Uncle Joey, up from the city, always on the verge of raucous laughter, now grim and silent in the corner. Sander Levin, the young bartender, whom Lenny has only ever seen in his white tuxedo jacket, naked-looking in short sleeves. Lenny’s older brother, Ezra, who winds his way quickly through the room and disappears, upset at the interruption in his summer bird-watching routine. The custodian, Michael, and even a couple of the dark-eyed maids, stand at the edge of the group, and Lenny wonders who’s going to work at the hotel that day. Anyone?

  The policeman who’d asked him questions exits the office and walks down the stairs to the landing, eleven stairs from the bottom, Lenny knows, having counted them all before, having made games of jumping down two, three at a time. Lenny’s mother walks through the crowd and climbs the stairs to stand by the cop. She wears a dress with yellow flowers on it and a sad look, sadder than he’s ever seen. The officer murmurs something to her and takes a step back, hands clasped at his waist. The man is waiting for her to take charge—everyone looks up to his mother, even the police. She raises her arm, and the crowd grows quiet.

  “Hello, I’m Jeanie Sikorsky. Thank you for coming today, and for taking the time out of your weekend to assist us with this matter. I speak here for myself and also on behalf of the Schoenbergs, who are currently working with the police to provide information. Yesterday afternoon, around one thirty, their son, Jonah, went missing from the hotel grounds. He was last seen playing on the north lawn, about a hundred feet from the outdoor pool. Today, we are going to sweep the grounds, starting at the south entrance located down on Onawanda Road, head up the hill to the hotel, then move north to the river and surrounding forest. This is Officer Bates. He will be in charge of the search, so if you have any questions, he can assist you.”

  The officer nods, and Lenny’s mother looks down at all of them, the same way she sometimes does at him—not disappointed, but conveying the sense that she knows he can do better, which usually makes him want to. She says, “Let’s go find Jonah.”

  The crowd voices its approval in a loud, massy mumble. Lenny hurries down the stairs, and within five minutes everyone is walking down the long drive to the base of the hill on which the Neversink sits. He walks beside his mother, though it’s somewhat difficult to stay by her in the crush; everyone wants to be near her, seems promoted by her presence. Even Lenny does, when she reaches down and squeezes his hand. Despite the occasion for the search, he feels happy, happy to be here with her on this strange day.

  After a few minutes he asks his mother, “What do you think happened to him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But we’ll find him.”

  She looks down at him, her lips knitted up tight. “I hope so.”

  “But where could he have gone?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “But,” he protests, pushing a thin, sappy branch from his face as they walk between two gnarled pines, “why would he run away from the hotel?”

  His mother expels a breath. “He didn’t run away, Leonard. We think somebody took him.”

  They trudge on through the woods, up the slow, sloping hill, over a blanket of pine needles, between trees, down little dips and around fallen logs, through the humid air, nearer and nearer to the Neversink, and Lenny thinks about Jonah. He hadn’t considered that the boy could have been taken. How could that be? Who would do that, and why? That the boy isn’t here means he is somewhere else, taken there by someone. But who would do that? Like the sounds of insects and animals skittering close but unseen in the brush, he senses there is something about the boy’s disappearance he doesn’t understand. Someone bad has taken Jonah; that is enough.

  As he walks, he imagines ogres and monsters, a nameless thing that steals and devours little boys. He imagines being Jonah, what he might have felt, and a wave of guilt once again overtakes him—it was his fault for not finding the boy, for not seeking! He races forward with a ragged intensity, gets too far ahead of the group and is spooked by the soft rustle of footsteps in wet leaves. What if he’s next? He runs back and looks up at his mother’s face, and somehow he knows they won’t find Jonah. Overwhelmed with these thoughts, a hot lethargy descends on him. When they’re in the vicinity of the Neversink, he asks his mother if he can please go home and rest. She nods, and he feels her watching as he crosses the north lawn to their house, what everyone calls the cottage. Now, he watches her from the kitchen window, and when his she disappears over the crest of the hill, he hurries back across the grass to the hotel. Marveling again at the emptiness and quiet, he hurries to the bar for his real prize: one of the bottles of lemonade that Sander stashes deep in the cooler, away from the pilfering fingers of children. But there are no bottles, just a condensed puddle of water in the usual spot. He leaves the bar and clomps down the service stairs to the basement, to dry goods, where the extra bottles are kept.

  The room is dark and cool, a mass of shelves surrounded by the old mortar and brickwork of the building’s foundations. He grabs a lemonade off the bottom shelf, but it slips from his hand and rolls onto the floor. He picks it up, and in front of him is Jonah Schoenberg.

  “Hi,” says Jonah.

  He looks the same as he did the day before, wearing the same clothes—striped T-shirt, shorts, sneakers. His brown hair is mussed, falling over one eye. A scrape on his knee glistens black in the room’s dull yellow light. Lenny says, “Everyone’s looking for you.”

  “I know, I’m hiding.”

  “So you’ve been down here the whole time?”

  “Yes,” he laughs, “you finally found me!”

  “I’m sorry it took so long.”

  “It’s okay, I like it here.”

  “Everyone is worried.”

  “My father’s only worried about money.”

  Lenny’s head throbs, and he feels slightly queasy. In his vision, the room seems to swell and contract, distorting in sections the way the world outside does when you look at it through the thick, uneven glass of the hotel synagogue’s windows. He knows he should be happy at finding the lost boy, but something seems wrong. “Why’d you stay down here?”

  The boy shakes his head, and Len
ny can’t tell if he doesn’t know or is keeping it a secret. “Well, anyway,” Lenny says, grabbing another bottle of lemonade for Jonah, “come on. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “This is where I live now.”

  “What about your parents?”

  He shrugs and looks down at his feet. “They still have my sister.”

  “What will you do here?”

  “I’m happy.” The boy looks up again, smiling. “I get to watch everyone. I ride the elevator up and down, look in all the rooms. It’s fun.”

  “I don’t feel so good,” says Lenny. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Pushing out of the room and back down the hall, shivering his way through the basement exit, a nauseating pain has encircled Lenny’s head, and he feels he might throw up. To keep his gorge down, he bolts half of the foaming, sour lemonade in one greedy swallow. Outside, under the white sun, it rushes back out of his mouth in a cloying spume. The day’s wet heat somehow does not abate the chills running through him, and his mind is cloudy, confused. It seems to him that this has already happened, that he’s remembering the lemonade, Jonah, even the humid air through which he stumbles. Everything is shimmering and changing in size, and, again, it’s like he’s looking at something through heavy glass, or, perhaps, like something is looking at him.

  When he wakes, he’s in his mother’s bed. She sits beside him, mopping his brow with a cool, damp cloth. He tells her that he found the boy. “Where?” she asks.

  “In the basement. He’s hiding.”

  “You’ve had a bad dream.”

  “It was a good dream.”

  Three days later, the fever breaks, and after another day, he is strong enough to get out of bed. The doctor comes that morning, pronounces him on the mend. Fit as a mildly feverish fiddle. Lenny’s mother and father go to work at the hotel, and Ezra wanders off with his binoculars and notepad. Len puts on clothes, the fresh air bracing on his bare chest after days spent beneath blankets. Across the hot grass of the hill he walks, across the sloping north lawn where he last saw Jonah. Entering through the service doors, he again walks the long, cool hall of the basement. The storage room is empty, save for the dry goods it contains, and he isn’t sure if he’s pleased or disappointed; the thought of the boy living down here now had been both sad and a comfort. He’d been hoping it wasn’t just a dream—he’d wanted to speak to Jonah more.