The Hotel Neversink

by Adam O'Fallon Price

  “Officer Lasky, you know him?”

  “Yeh, Teddy.”

  “He passed out upstairs in the hall.”

  “Oh boy. Ted got into it at lunch, huh?” Mikulsky chuckled and shook his head with evident pleasure—boys will be boys, after all—then wiped his face with his sleeve, replacing the mirth with a mock-serious frown. “I mean, how horrible. What can I do to help matters?”

  “You can help me move him, for one thing. And for another, in the future, you can supervise your men and keep them from behaving like a pack of animals.” Len felt a slight satisfaction, a very minor victory, in seeing Mikulsky’s habitually facetious look dissolve.

  “Okay, hold on,” he said, closing the door, not gently. He reemerged a minute later, in slacks and a half-buttoned shirt, barefoot. Having regained his sarcastic mien, he gestured lavishly toward the stairwell, saying, “After you.”

  They hauled Officer Lasky to his room, also located on the third floor, a minor fortune, and lifted him into bed. With surprising tenderness, Mikulsky rested Lasky’s head on the pillow and turned it to the side, saying, “So he doesn’t throw up.”

  “Great. Thank you.”

  Len started to walk out, but felt Mikulsky following him. The man walked a pace or two behind him down the hall, and when he spoke, there was a jaunty note of menace in his voice. “I gotta say, you got some nerve talking to me like that.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I’m the steadiest business you got right now. Every year, me and my ‘pack of animals’ put what—eight, nine grand in your pocket? I’m looking around, thinking, who else is booking this dump?”

  “Feel free to stop coming,” said Len. “Actually, I insist.”

  Mikulsky slurred on, apparently not having heard. “And besides that, I protect and serve the people of New York City—the fuck do you do?” Len moved into the stairwell and the wooden stairs creaked hollowly under his feet, with Mikulsky’s creaking right behind him. He wasn’t entirely surprised when, on the landing, his arm was yanked up behind his back, his face pushed into the floral wallpaper. The words were spat carefully into his ear. “You just run a goddamn hotel. Some lousy Jew innkeeper wants to talk to me like that?”

  “Let me go.”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t be back next year.” Mikulsky pushed him away, as though dispensing with a particularly odious piece of refuse, and Len half fell in the corner, taking a knee against a cobwebbed sprinkler valve. Mikulsky said, “I didn’t want to tell you, but we’d already decided to hold next year’s thing in Atlantic City. This fucking place has really gone downhill.”

  In accordance with Rachel’s wishes, Len didn’t take twenty thousand out of savings. As it turned out, it cost only thirteen. Mickey was able to negotiate Abbie Hoffman—“Ab,” as she called him—down to eight thousand, and John Sebastian down to five. And the money didn’t come from their savings account, technically, but rather from cashing out one of the several mutual funds his mother had randomly placed money in during profitable years, the banking equivalent of stashing cash in mattresses. He didn’t tell Rachel, trying to figure out how best to put it, or maybe just putting it off. But he didn’t feel guilty about it, either. Standing by and watching as his inheritance, spiritual and otherwise, slowly crumbled into a pile of dust simply wasn’t an option. And, he thought, given time and a chance to think about it, she might soften, though she showed no signs of softening yet—spade in hand, bent over the flower bed encircling the welcome sign out front, the muscle in her jaw under her ear pulsing as though she were chewing an especially tough piece of gristle.

  Javits put his ancient journalism chops to use and wrote out a press release for publication in the Sikorsky Times, a mailing circular started by Len’s father that still went out to over twenty thousand guests: “Woodstock Twenty-Year Gala Announced!” Javits used a couple of stock photos he’d found of Hoffman waving a book and Sebastian in tie-dye and glasses, strumming an acoustic with a pacific grin. The article copy was somewhat vague, since besides the presence of the two musicians (and other luminaries, the article insinuated), no real events had yet been planned—but it made reference to concert performances, speaking engagements, and a variety of “workshops,” a word that, Javits said, could refer to virtually anything: ceramics how-tos, ecological powwows, responsible investment seminars for aging hippies. A version of the press release was sent to the Hudson Valley Leader, and a small buy was slated for the Times at the end of the year.

  After conferencing with Javits and looking over the materials, Len walked the halls with a rare sense of ownership, rather than his usual feeling, which was closer to that of default overseer. Of course, he had chosen this—he had grown up at the hotel, had learned to do everything there with an expectation of taking it over, had done so when his father passed away and his mother became ill. This, as opposed to his brother, Ezra—a diffident, fey child who’d gone to Columbia and never returned for more than three days in a row. Ezra had gladly surrendered his ownership stake and received a modest trust income that supplemented his modest income teaching something Len could never remember—aquatic medieval semiology or a similar field, something so abstrusely academic as to seem like a parody of abstruse academia.

  No, he thought, grabbing a rag and bottle of Brasso from beneath the bar and polishing the railing that encircled the perimeter of the empty dining room—you chose this. But time and inertia have a way of blurring the clear-minded decisions you’ve made, obscuring cause behind years of effect, until it seems your life has always been this way and you never had a choice to begin with. So what, he thought, running the rag up and down the length of the long, cloudy pole, seeing his face warp in the reflection, so what if this was a cockamamie scheme? Was that the word she’d used? Something like that, but anyway, so what? It was something, at least. If nothing else, thirteen thousand was a bargain to feel the way he did now: like a man. The way his grandfather, Asher, must have felt when, after several ill-fated business ventures in the city, he’d bought a parcel of land in the Catskills and finally made his way—first as a farmer, then a small-time innkeeper, then as an entrepreneur, risking it all once more to purchase the hotel. At every step of the way, including immigrating to America, Asher had taken risks the family felt were foolhardy—what if he had listened to them? The railing glowed with Len’s labors, affirming his own decision, a worthy risk taken to preserve his grandfather’s legacy.

  Later, Rachel glowed as well, lit by an inner flame or simply the rare conjugal exertion. Len had surprised her in bed with a forcefulness she clearly found appealing, or at least surprising. When they made love she half smiled up at him, and he saw in a gasping instant how easy the whole thing could be: you did what you had to do, you worked and provided, you made your wife and family happy as best you could. She lay against him in their dark room, the northern wind outside rattling the shutters as though they were in a remote outpost, utterly alone in the world but for each other.

  “What got into you,” she said.

  “I don’t know. It had been too long.”

  “Yes, it had.”

  “I love you.” In the dim lamplight of the room, her face, though tired and lined with worry and perhaps now almost old, contained all of her, every moment over the past fifteen years—from coltish know-it-all college girl, to mother-to-be and bride, to young and proud then young and exhausted mother, to fully grown co-proprietor of a storied business, to a depleted woman in her middle years. She was still beautiful. But to Len, who had known her so long, her face was beyond beauty, beyond evaluating in those terms—it was beautiful in the same way water is beautiful. The beauty was inextricable from what it was, its value inextricable from its necessity.

  “I know you do.”

  “And you love me.”

  “Of course,” she responded after a very slight pause.

  “But?”

  “No, no but. I do love you.”

  “But.”

  “But I don�
�t love how things have gotten. I don’t love living here, stagnating.”

  “Stagnating.”

  She turned off her side and onto her back. “I don’t love seeing you drive yourself crazy. I don’t love Suse and Noah going to that hick school. Did she tell you her science teacher didn’t know Uranus had rings?”

  “I didn’t know that, either.”

  “You’re not a science teacher.”

  “Neither are you.”

  She sighed. “No. I’m not. Who am I?”

  “Rachel Sikorsky.”

  “Who is that?”

  “A mother, a wife. A businesswoman.”

  She turned to her side of the bed and was crying, he knew, but he could not bring himself to comfort her. Because what would he be comforting her for? For the life they’d built together? For their marriage and children? For these things he could not apologize. Neither could he stand her sobbing, so he rose to get a glass of water from the kitchen. In the hall, he first heard his daughter’s rock music mutely thudding in her unknowable, hostile lair. Then he stopped at Noah’s door and was relieved to hear soft snoring. Lately, the boy had been having night terrors, kept saying a man was entering his room and watching him. The therapist said it was sleep paralysis caused by stress and informed by the stories of children being snatched from their rooms, the park, the grocery store. Living here seemed to be taking its toll on everyone.

  The moon shone through the kitchen window in a soft pool at his feet. Although he’d been raised by devout parents and was observant, Len had never before felt God observing him. God had always struck him as less omnipotent than omnipresent, less a sentient force than an essential fabric. But now, looking at the white, liquid light, he was struck by the sense, perhaps wishful, of God as an intelligence out there, watching him. Here I am, God, he thought, here I am in my moment of need. Deliver something unto me, or failing that, me unto something.

  On Sunday, after a large breakfast with a subdued tone owing to the dual regrets of vacation’s end and the unspeakable revelries of the night before, the Polish Policemen’s League began checking out. Len thanked them at the front desk as they dropped off their keys; some returned the greeting and shook his hand, but many didn’t meet his eye. Word had clearly spread about the Mikulsky imbroglio.

  Sergeant Mikulsky himself appeared, bag in hand, around ten thirty, brow beetled beneath a flattened flattop. He handed Len the room key and said, “Len, I’m sorry about the other day. I was out of line.”

  “It’s okay, Sergeant.”

  “It’s not. I was a little tight, and I got defensive about my men. You know how it is. You keep with your own.”

  “I do.”

  “We’ve always enjoyed coming here.”

  “Please come again.”

  “We will, we will.” The handshake felt authentic, even if the words didn’t.

  At eleven, Len got Peter, the young bellhop, to man the front desk, and went around to check the three remaining unchecked-out rooms for late risers, among them Officer Lasky. As he passed the kitchen, Rachel stepped in front of him, wielding a piece of paper. “What,” she said in a soft tone, barely louder than a whisper, “is this?”

  He took it. It was the Sikorsky Times ad copy for the Woodstock festival. Javits must have left the materials lying around in his chaotic office, and Rachel must have found it on one of her penitent straightening jags. He said, “I have to get the rest of the policemen checked out, can we talk after?”

  “About what?”

  “What do you mean?” He nodded at the paper. “About the thing.”

  “If you went ahead with this, there’s nothing to discuss.”

  “Of course there is.”

  She stuck out an arm and held the frame of the doorway in which she stood. It looked less like she was steadying herself and more like she was single-handedly holding up the entire building. “Oh God,” she said. “You just don’t get it.” She pulled off her work smock, folded it neatly in two, and handed it to him.

  “That’s it? You’re quitting?”

  “Yes.”

  “No notice?”

  She laughed. “Would you rather fire me?”

  “You know Mama never fired anyone? Even the maid they caught stealing.”

  “So the legend has it.”

  “Where will you go? Where will Noah and Suse go?”

  “I’ve made arrangements. My parents’ place. It’s a little small, but it’ll work for a few months.”

  “You’ve been planning for this?”

  She stared at him with such penetrating pity that he had to turn away. Out the hall window, a young girl dipped her foot in the pool. How recently it seemed they had sat there, and yet how irretrievable it was. As she spoke, Rachel’s voice seemed to come from that girl. “This has been happening for years. Surely you saw it coming.”

  “No. I wanted to make it work. I wanted to make all of this work.”

  “Oh, Lenny.”

  She shook her head, wadded the smock up, and deposited it on the steel kitchen counter just inside the door. “I’ll call you soon,” she said, and kissed him. He watched her walk away, down the corridor and out the side exit, presumably toward the cottage, to explain things to the kids and pack whatever was going with them to Manhattan. But then, she’d probably already done those things. All that remained was the leaving.

  Completely at a loss for what to do next, he defaulted to the task he’d been in the middle of, moving up the stairs to the second floor. He knocked on Lasky’s room, 324. No one answered, so he turned the skeleton key in the lock and entered.

  The room was in shambles. Not the usual shambles the more slovenly guests occasionally left behind: food wrappers on the floor, clothes left under the bed, perhaps a forlorn condom dangling off the side of a wastebasket. The place was actually destroyed. The mirror had been pulled off the wall and shards of glass twinkled in the carpet. The wall to the right of the door had been gouged several times, as though the room’s occupant had been looking for something behind the floral wallpaper. The pillow lay ripped obscenely open, and a single small feather floated serenely past Len’s face.

  The image of that feather stayed in his mind as he wound his way downstairs, through the main hall, and past the lobby, where Peter stood in smiling conversation with another guest checking out. He felt like the feather, borne on unseeable currents, the strange winds of his life. In the parking lot, Lasky—red-faced, brush cut, clad in civvies— leaned against a car, talking to two other men.

  “Hey,” said Len, approaching.

  Lasky turned. “What?”

  “The room. Your room.”

  Lasky shrugged. “Boys played poker last night, got a little rowdy.”

  “It’s destroyed. You’re paying for it.”

  Lasky looked at his compatriots and grinned. “Fuck you. Place is already destroyed.”

  He threw his head back in a long, ragged laugh that lasted the length of time it took Len to cross the remaining distance between them and punch him in the mouth. Lasky dropped to the ground, and Len had just enough time to get in one more punch before the blows began landing on him. A sledgehammer fist on Len’s back dropped him beside the prone cop. The policemen surrounded his felled body, and two more quickly crossed the lot to join the fun, a migration witnessed only by the hotel itself. As it witnessed Rachel packing a toiletry bag in the cottage and crying softly to herself. As it witnessed Susannah and Noah in private conference by the station wagon, the elder explaining once again to the younger, with a touch of irritation, where they were going, and that, no, they wouldn’t be back for a while. As it witnessed Peter the bellhop looking in on Officer Lasky’s ruined room and regretting it for the sake of the new maid, whom he loved and who he knew would be spending the better part of the morning cleaning it up. As it witnessed Saul Javits napping in his office. As it witnessed Sander Levin driving up the long hotel road in his old Nova, parking, and pulling on his white jacket, specially dry-cleaned for h
is final shift.

  “Stop!” Sander yelled.

  The cops turned to see him, this anachronistic figure in white tuxedo and steel-gray hair. Almost in unison, they stepped away from Len, bruised and bloody and in blessed unconsciousness. Officer Lasky—mouth bloodied, eye swelling—and two others picked Len up and deposited him in the back of an off-duty squad car. Lights flashing silently, they drove in line like a funeral procession along the road twisting down Neversink Hill. Sander watched them go, then got back in his car and followed.

  Len came to on a metal bench to find Sander Levin sitting beside him. He touched his bruised face, and his hand came away sticky with blood. “I’ve ruined everything, Sander.”

  “No, you haven’t. Don’t say that.”

  “I’ve done everything wrong.”

  “Some things are beyond our control. The downturn in the economy, the boy’s body. You can’t help these things.”

  Len laughed, coughed. “Force majeure.”

  “What?”

  “Insurance companies call it that. Acts of God.” A bird fluttered down to the window outside, pecked at the dry crumbs of cement, flew off again. He said, “Rachel’s leaving me, Sander.”

  “Ach, Lenny. Ah, no.”

  “Thank you for helping me. Thank you for coming.”

  Sander sat beside him on the bench, put his arm around Len, felt the broad back heaving up and down.

  “I was thinking I’d stay on a little while longer. At the hotel, I mean.”

  “I’ll give you a raise.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat there for a while like that, two men in the darkening room, until it was time for Sander to leave and open the bar.

  12. Ezra

  1996

  The Neversink was closing, and Len was having a final night with friends and family, former employees. Did I want to come? I’d dithered on this point for several months. The last time I’d been, years before, it was too painful to see the state of the place, and this despite the fact that I’d never really cared about the hotel, certainly not like my little brother did. I’d never bought into the mythos surrounding it and my grandparents, never fancied myself the inheritor of an empire. When I left for school, I was happy to renounce an ownership stake in exchange for a modest monthly allowance. This supplementary money has come in handy over the years, allowed me to pursue my interests in academia—take positions not purely based on a paycheck or quick tenure—and indulge in the little pastimes and minor passions for which bachelorhood makes room.