The Hotel Neversink

by Adam O'Fallon Price

  The writer in her rebelled against the maudlin quality but felt it was probably unavoidable, given the circumstances. She sealed the note in a plain envelope and stood the envelope in a crack in the island’s surface, supported at the back by an overripe, wrinkled pear. She didn’t want the note to get missed, lost in the macabre shuffle that would follow the discovery of her body, hopefully by her neighbor, a prim scold she’d never gotten along with. In the utility closet, she found a length of nylon cord she’d bought for tying up carpets in the last move. The iron chandelier overhead was obviously perfect, provided it could hold her. Her legs shook the chair beneath her, and for a moment she almost lost her balance, but she steadied herself with a hand on the chandelier. Tugging it first, then putting nearly all her body weight on it, she found it unfathomably secure, fixed to the ceiling with ancient screws of ferrous green. She tied the cord many times around the chandelier’s base and began looping a knot on the other end, the one where her neck would go.

  As she did, it occurred to her that this was the first time in over a year that the crushing fatigue was gone. Her vivid aliveness in this moment was a terrible joke, but it was also undeniable, as was the grim euphoria that seized her when she worked her head through the noose. If only there had been someone there to kill her every minute of her life, she thought—a great line, and true. But even this would lose its novelty, become one more draining thing. That was it, then, all she had to do was kick out, it didn’t have to be graceful or practiced, and how could it be? Everyone was an amateur at this—another good line, she thought. Too bad she’d never use it.

  Standing on the chair, facing the gray square of her flat’s living room window, her view angled down toward Seven Sisters Road. An endless surge of cars, interrupted now and then by people trudging through the drab wet. The pavement flickered blue, reflecting the snazzy signage of a new falafel automat called Izmir. On the left edge of the vista sat the Tube station, constantly feeding on new victims while disgorging old ones. She looked away, at a picture of Marie on the wall, wanting that to be the last thing she saw. She pulled the noose tight around her neck, tensed one leg, and prepared to kick out with the other. This was okay, this was good.

  The doorbell rang.

  The doorbell rang again. Using the cord for balance, she stepped down from the chair and answered it. “Alice?” Charlotte’s voice crackled up.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ring me in.”

  “I’d rather not, if it’s okay.”

  “I’ve been calling; this is ridiculous.”

  “Charlotte, I’m not decent right now.”

  “So what? When am I decent?”

  She held her thumb to the talk button, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Charlotte couldn’t come up, obviously, and Alice felt that the sight of her agent, damp from the weather and crowds she would have traveled through to check on her disturbed, errant client, would do her in. A passing horn split itself into two versions, one through the window and its staticky twin through the call box. Charlotte said, “Let me up.”

  “No.”

  “Goddamn it. Do I need to call the police?”

  “And tell them what?”

  “And tell them that I think my friend is going to kill herself.”

  With a mocking look, the noose swung back and forth, bothered by hot air from the nearby vent. When exactly, Alice wondered, did your life become so ridiculous? She took a deep breath and pressed the button. “Why would you say that?”

  “Oh Alice, come on. Because of how you’ve been acting. Because of a million things you’ve said and done over the last year. Sorry if I’m wrong, but yeah. If I have to stand out here in the rain, that’s what I’m worried about.”

  “I’m not going to kill myself.”

  “Fucking promise me. You promise.”

  She didn’t want to promise. She wanted Charlotte to go away so she could get on with it, but she didn’t see how to make that happen without saying the words, so she said them. “I promise.”

  “Come to the window, let me see your face.”

  Alice went to the window and looked down. Two stories below, Charlotte peered up, her red face smudged by worry and wet, the swim-cap hair sleek like an otter’s back. Behind her sat the Tube entrance. Charlotte waved and Alice waved back, and Charlotte called up, “Come in on Monday. Promise me.”

  “I will, I promise,” Alice said, knowing that she meant it, knowing that ending things now would be different from two minutes earlier. But why, what really was the difference? She didn’t know—there probably wasn’t one—and yet she submitted to her sense that it mattered, or to the fact that a part of herself still drew those distinctions.

  Charlotte crossed the wet, blue expanse of the road, and Alice stood at the window, watching her enter the Underground, swallowed up. The stairs leading down, the black hole in the earth, made her sick to look at. It flooded her with a sensation that existed in some far border region of memory and sense. She always recoiled when this sick feeling came over her, but this time she did not turn away.

  She allowed herself the full memory, to the extent that it still existed in her mind: roaming around the hotel, somehow coming across the basement door and the stairs leading down. Descending them, she descended into the darkness of her own memory, the place where all the lights went out. No, there was an outline there, if she was willing to look. She remembered opening the storage room door and hearing it snick shut behind her. The gray man—for the first time in years she let herself see him. She let that murky underwater light click on, and let him move toward her. She let him look at her face, just as she looked at his. She let him put his arms around her, forty years after he had the first time.

  Now, in the bedroom, she pulled on a pair of old jeans and a cable-knit sweater. She tied her hair back in a rough knot, with the false, frightened resolve of a hiker about to take her first tentative step onto the Appalachian Trail or the pilgrimage to Santiago. Into a shoulder bag she threw a bottle of water, a granola bar, a legal pad, and pen. The apartment door creaked open with a surprised, rising note, as though it hadn’t expected her to walk through it again. Outside it was raining harder, and as she crossed the street, the canvas TOMS she’d quickly thumbed on plashed in a rut, soaking through instantly. The Tube entrance was in front of her, breathing out heat. The circle with its red and blue, like a hospital sign, warned her away. Why was she doing this? Because a long time ago she’d gone underground, and even though she’d survived, some part of her hadn’t come back up; because she sensed a truth down there, perhaps some new story left to write; and because, now, staying aboveground was a nonstarter too. The only way forward, it seemed, was down.

  She held her breath, grabbed the handrail, and forced herself to go down one step at a time, passed by a stream of Londoners who regarded her, if at all, as some kind of cripple or defective. Well, what if she was? Her heart thudded wildly in her chest as she reached the bottom, but she pressed on toward a fare kiosk embedded in the tile wall. She managed to get her credit card in but was unable to make sense of the machine’s buttons—hieroglyphic squiggles she stabbed at in vain. A rough terror seized the nape of her neck and pulled her toward the white tile ringing the exit. But she couldn’t go back—she knew what was there: the jealous noose swinging in the empty room. She slumped against the wall.

  “Ma’am?”

  Standing over her was a Sikh man, his silken hair wrapped up in a pink turban. He said, “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Do you need some assistance?”

  “Yes.”

  He let her use his card and gently led her through the gate. “Where are you headed?”

  She hadn’t thought to answer this question beforehand. Which way was Charlotte’s? She shook her head, stumped. “Where are you going?” she said.

  He cocked his head. “Me? I’m going to work. Lewisham.”

  “Right, me too. Lewisham.”

  She clung to his arm, an
d he helped her down another flight of stairs to his platform. On a wooden bench they waited, and she felt like more of a child than she could ever remember feeling. A train’s faraway approach shook the platform, and her heart was the same, juddering at a remove. A wet spot condensed around her feet; the tracks she’d made on the platform’s dirty concrete were already vanishing. “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Phil.”

  “I’m Alice.”

  “Good to meet you.”

  “Thank you for this.”

  “No worries.” He took his phone out, then sighed, seeming to remember it didn’t work down here. “You okay now?”

  “What do you do, Phil?”

  “I’m a med tech.” She’d noticed the green scrub pants, but everyone wore scrubs these days. “University Hospital.”

  “Is it interesting work?”

  He laughed. “It’s okay. Mostly getting the OR ready for surgery or whatever. You?”

  “I’m a writer. Was, anyway.”

  “I ever read you?”

  “I don’t know. Alice Emmenthaler?”

  He shook his head, the long, delicate nose tapering to nothing at the tip. “Sorry, I go in more for sci-fi, stuff like that. You famous?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No shit.”

  They sat in a silence broken by the whine of metal scraping metal. Phil opened his mouth, then paused as though trying to decide whether to go on. He said, “Let me ask you something, you being a writer and all. Tell me if this sounds like a book. About two years ago, me and some of the other techs started keeping a photo collection of objects that got pulled out of people’s bodies in surgery.”

  “Really.”

  “I don’t just mean from out of their arses, pardon me, though that does happen. But things people swallow, or get stabbed with, impale themselves. We have to bag and dump the stuff, and me and my mate Keithsey decided hey, let’s start taking photos. Like, this one woman, older bird, comes in with a stomach complaint, right? Turns out it was this tiny toy xylophone. Must have somehow swallowed it when she was a kid, had it in there fifty years, no worries, then one day the high-C starts jabbing her.” He looked up at the distant glow of the train’s headlight in the tunnel, a moment before Alice saw it. “I’d be canned if they found out; it’s pretty out of line.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  He grinned and leaned in. “Thing is, we started an anonymous Twitter, and we’ve already got like a thousand followers. So I’ve been thinking, what if we made a book out of it, like a coffee table book.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m serious. I’ve got some of the photos on my phone here, if you want to see.” He pulled them up, proud like a little boy. Pictures of small objects, lovingly photographed, covered in the murk of the human body: a whistle, a can of grapefruit juice, an army figurine. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s disgusting,” she said. “I think it’s great.”

  He smiled at her reaction, at the smile on her face, and she realized he’d been worried, that he was reaching out to someone who seemed in need of help. “Hey, if you’ve got time, you could even come by the hospital, and I could show you our little collection.”

  The train emerged from the tunnel, its yellow light cupped in front like a gift it was bringing from stop to stop. For the first time in so long, the moment she was living in was a new one, and the stale air she breathed was fresh, fragrant as spring. The only way forward was down.

  “Yes,” she said. “Show me.”

  15. Noah

  2010

  When Alice Emmenthaler e-mailed asking if she could interview me about the Neversink, I was surprised. We’d met once or twice at family things, but we’d never been at all close—she was about fifteen years older than me. I knew who she was, of course, but I was a little surprised she’d even thought to e-mail me. And besides, I wasn’t sure what I could tell her that would be useful. I didn’t know if she knew my story, but in a nutshell: I got out as quickly as I could, and I stayed away. I wrote back saying as much, and she said, well, she was going to be in LA anyway for some business meetings, so would I mind getting lunch. I never mind getting lunch, I said. Where and when?

  We met at a Moroccan place near my apartment, in Los Feliz. She looked younger, different than I’d thought from Googling her dust jackets and promo shots. Some people have an energy in person that photos don’t capture. I ordered some fruit tea and we sat on the sidewalk, Ernie flattened out at my feet. I’d been up late the night before, doing an improv set, and I guess I was loopy, because when she asked about my life I told her everything: how I’ve been in Los Angeles for a decade since college, screenwriting and performing, and bartending at the Vermont, how my girlfriend moved away last year and I live with my dog in a little dump in Eagle Rock; how I actually dressed up as the Captain Morgan’s pirate for a stretch to make some extra cash—three hundred for a night out at Footsie’s or the 4100 Bar, taking pictures and lining up buttery nipples on my cutlass for bachelorette parties; how, for this, I attended the Tisch conservatory at NYU and still pay five hundred a month in loans; and how, in spite of how bleak all of that might sound, I’m happy here. As the song goes, I love LA.

  Small talk out of the way, it seemed, she set a minirecorder on the table and said, “So, Noah, what was it like growing up there?”

  “Liberty or the Neversink?”

  “Both.”

  “I don’t know. Weird, but also normal, I guess.”

  “How so?”

  “I mean, you know how, when you’re a kid, however things are is normal. You could be growing up on Mars and think that was how it was for everyone.”

  “Weird how, though?”

  “Well, you’ve been there.”

  “Yes, I have. I’m going back to do some more research, too.”

  “It’s a creepy place anyway, and then I got older and learned more and more about the history of it—” I trailed off, unsure where I was going with that. Ernie shifted at my feet as if to remind me of where we were—in Los Angeles, on a beautiful day.

  She said, “Did you ever see anything strange? Hear about anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Related to the killings.”

  “Not really. They’d basically stopped by the time I was a kid.”

  “Were there any theories about who it might have been?”

  “Of course. There was always speculation. My dad seemed to think it was an out-of-towner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like someone from the city who visited the hotel on holidays, maybe had family in the area.”

  “What do you think?”

  “What’s the book going to be about, exactly? Are you playing detective, trying to crack the case?”

  “Not in a legal sense, no. I’m just trying to put things together to my satisfaction. About the killings and what happened to me. But I also want to weave in a history of the hotel through the decades and our family. I’m still figuring it out.”

  As she described the project, she poured more tea and took a bite of the coiled pastry I’d ordered, the powdered sugar dusting her fingers. Looking at her, I got this weird feeling we were meant to meet up, that this was something important and preordained. When she finally paused, I told her as much, and it was obvious she thought this was stupid. I don’t really believe in destiny, but it does feel like sometimes things just line up. Probably all that LA good-energy stuff rubbing off—I know actors who do this thing where they pretend they’ve already gotten the part before they audition, because it helps them line up their chakras or whatnot. It takes an adjustment to move here from the Northeast, where everything is negative and ironic and self-deprecating, to get used to this culture of what is—to be honest—sometimes extremely silly optimism. But it’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed out here—because you can choose to be happy, to not lug around your history and family and life story like an overpacked
suitcase. The way my father, who depresses the hell out of me, does.

  I said some of this, and she said, “What’s so depressing about Len?”

  “How much time do you have?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  We wound up getting dinner at Casita del Campo, one of my favorite spots. Around the second pitcher of margaritas, the recorder was off and we were just talking. About the world and comedy and LA and writing and so on, and so on. I asked her what had compelled her to write about the Neversink, and she told me how she’d almost killed herself three years before. And how the thing that had saved her was this idea that she had to go down, keep going down. That’s how she put it. She said she realized she had to dig into the story of what had happened to her and the hotel and everything, that this would be how she’d move on.

  I said, “You should try my technique—just run as far away as possible.”

  “I did try that. It wasn’t working.”

  Her black eyes reflected the light from a decorative sconce over the table, and I felt this overwhelming desire for her approval, to please her. “Seriously, Alice. I’ll help however I can.”

  After dinner we went back to my apartment and I walked Ernie, then we listened to music and smoked a little grass—I like calling it grass, it’s so dumb and seventies, and it made her laugh, a pleasing low tone. I put on this Can album, Ege Bamyasi, that I really like to listen to baked, and my mind drifted back to her description of herself in that room, how it had ruined her in certain ways forever—irretrievably, that was what she’d said. The thought of a perfect, happy little kid being damaged in that way made me start crying—wailing, like I was the hurt child in Alice’s story.

  “Noah,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, come here,” she said, and she held my head in her lap while it shook.

  We had a good time that week. In some ways—and I told her this after one too many beers by the pool at her hotel—she felt like the older sister I’d always wanted and had never had with Suse, who’d always been distant. That’s very kind, she said, and looking me up and down added that I was like the groundhog she’d never had. Funny stuff, I said, maybe you should be the comedian. The next night I bartended, and she came in, ordered a French 75, pretended not to know me at first. On the tip line, she wrote “LOL.” We drove her rental out to Malibu and bought cherries from a roadside vendor in Topanga Canyon. I ate them from the bag and threw the pits down the sloping hill, thinking how nice it would be if one of them took root and a cherry tree grew there.