The Last Descent

by Jeff Soloway

  “If he does clear Grant, will you tell Doby? Right away? And also show her the email from Freddie?”

  “I’ll tell her everything. I promise. But it shouldn’t matter. Give me the address and you’ll have cut Grant away, guilty or innocent. You’ll have made your life your own.”

  “Is that the best way to live? On your own? I’ve never lived alone.”

  “I don’t know the best way to live.”

  “You always know.”

  “I know I get lonely.”

  “Sit down.”

  I did. She grasped my hand.

  “Meat lives in Camper Village,” she said. “Number Twenty-three.”

  “Thank you.”

  I glanced down at the bed and saw the notebook page. That little lyric gush—all that was left of Jewel’s voice. Victoria wouldn’t care. I’d show it to Magda tomorrow.

  “What is it, Jacob?”

  “What were you doing when you heard Jewel was dead?” I asked. “Were you at home?”

  “In our apartment, all alone. I had just finished my book and was hunting through our shelves for another. Not to read, just to read around in. That’s what I do when it’s late. Then Grant called.”

  “What did you do afterward?”

  “I cried,” she said. “Not for her. I cried because I was angry with Grant and afraid at the same time. Don’t worry; I only cry when I’m alone. I’d been alone all day. I don’t teach on Sunday. I don’t remember what I did after that. I couldn’t have read. I probably watched TV. What did you do after you heard? I mean, when you were alone.”

  “I slept,” I admitted.

  “I wish I could have. Now I have to ask you something. Swear you’ll tell the truth, no matter what.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you lie to that woman you said you loved? What was her name? Not Jewel. The one in all those airport-hotel rendezvous.”

  “Pilar. Yes, I lied to her.”

  “I mean big lies.”

  “Just one big lie. That was enough. It was…it was a real doozy.”

  “What was it?”

  “Why do you want to know? I’ve never lied to you.” Not yet.

  She said nothing. Suddenly I knew why she wanted to know—she had another decision to make.

  “Pilar was an orphan,” I said. “So I told her my parents were dead too.”

  “Oh.” I had told her all about my parents, who were dead only to each other. “That’s quite a whopper. How’d you think of it?”

  “It’s not like I planned it. The words just dropped out of my mouth. It was like a secret password. I guess she didn’t know any other orphans. It bought me months of total trust and openness. I felt sick.”

  “Really. The whole time you were with her?”

  “Okay, mostly when I was alone, but I was alone most of the time. We only saw each other a few times a month. By the time I told her the truth, I loved her so much I was sure she’d forgive me.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Good for her. I bet she found a straight shooter to love.”

  She never did, but that was not a story I was ready to tell. I wanted to hold at least one secret from Victoria, something I could look forward to unburdening myself of someday. “Of all the things I’ve done,” I said, “that’s the one I’d most like to forget.”

  “How could you lie to her if you loved her? Are you as bad as Grant?”

  “I hope not. I did love her, I’m sure of it. It must have been the wrong kind of love.”

  “There’s only one kind of love. But there are lots of different excuses for screwing it up. I’ve heard them all.”

  I took up her hand without realizing it. “No, there are so many kinds. Think about what love meant when you were a schoolkid—that you were too bashful to talk to someone. Then in high school, it was love when you were fantasizing about one specific person all the time. Now that we’re adults, real love is supposed to require commitment: children, a marriage, a mortgage, or at least shared credit-card debt. With Pilar I combined the last two—I fantasized about commitment. But with you, it’s different. I just want more time with you.”

  “I’m not done with my questions. Were you in love with her when you told that stupid lie—I mean the moment you told it? Don’t give me various possibilities and definitions of love. There’s one answer to this question, and only you know it.”

  “Not when I lied. Not yet. I had just met her.”

  I released her hand.

  “Good.”

  I glanced at the door; I noticed for the first time that she had shot the old-fashioned, cast-iron bolt lock. She was staring straight ahead at the room’s geologic wall. Her eyes were cast down, her face clenched in concentration, a line on her cheek drawn straight and deep as a knife wound.

  I waited. Suddenly, her face relaxed, smoothed, brightened. She had made her decision. But though I believed that she was ready for me at last, I didn’t make my move. There was something more I wanted and maybe I could get it.

  “I don’t want you to go back to him,” I said. “Not ever.”

  “I told you, I have my own room.” She stood up. “Now what?”

  “Well—first, sit down.”

  “No, I have to leave. I need to sleep. You should too. You’re jet-lagged. We’re on Pacific time. Believe that? In the middle of the desert. I’m going back to my room.”

  “But what about…”

  “What?”

  I stood up. She backed toward the door. The bulging pink walls seemed to close around us both.

  She darted forward, bounced up on her toes, and kissed me, so quickly I had no time to bend to her, to lift my hands to her body, to give her any of sign of affection or welcome. I just felt the strike of her lips.

  “Now let’s see what we dream.” She unbolted the door and left.

  Chapter 15

  I wanted to sleep. I had consciously explored every angle of the situation—Jewel’s, mine, Victoria’s, Grant’s—so thoroughly that I was ready to see if my subconscious had any new ideas. But my simmering mind wouldn’t permit it. Was Victoria asleep next to Grant right now? I wished she hadn’t told me she had her own room; now I had to worry that she was lying. I remembered that Doby had ordered me to keep an eye on Grant in case, as she put it, he tried to ditch. What if he had? Too much to hope for, plenty to feed my fantasies.

  I dug out my favorite all-natural sleep aid, my old copy of Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors. Its impenetrable sentences and oblique psychological allusions usually crush my will to remain conscious, but that night I found the story all too comprehensible. It ends with Lambert Strether, that icon of sexual repression, rejecting his only chance at love. He refuses to risk the nobility of his loneliness. Detractors might say he’s simply finding heroism in social anxiety, but wasn’t he also saving his mind for more profitable pursuits than this endless brooding on love? I understood why Glenda admired virgins.

  I finally slept. At eight the next morning, I left my room for Grant’s. His room number was listed in our press packet.

  Housekeeping carts were already parked along the hallway and the purring of vacuum cleaners emerged from a few open doors. At regular intervals, I passed machines providing fancy, or at least upper-middle-class, snacks: gluten-free trail mix, Newman’s Own chocolate chip cookies, macadamia nuts, Vittel water. Snacks that could plausibly double as outdoor adventure supplies. No charge; all you had to do was swipe your card key. But I soon discovered that all the slots in all the machines were empty, until the fourth machine I tried finally gave up a resealable baglet of pain-in-the-ass unshelled pistachios. My breakfast.

  I took the elevator down to the second floor. Here no carts were out yet. I assumed that this unfashionable floor was reserved, at least in the off-season, for nonpaying, nonwriting guests, such as visiting contract employees.

  Grant’s room was at the far end of the hall. Maybe it was empty. If Grant had fled the hotel, he woul
d be as much as admitting his guilt, no matter what Jewel’s email meant. I could call Doby and set her rangers and the state cops—not the locals—on his trail. Then I would go and give Victoria the news personally. I would have her, as Magda had said, free and clear.

  When I was a child, my favorite trick to fight disappointment was to imagine the worst possibility. Later on, anything less than catastrophe would seem lucky. So I mentally constructed a Grand Chalet room like mine, but with Grant in it. He hadn’t run away at all. I flung open the imaginary door, saw Grant’s face, felt my stomach twist as my hopes collapsed. I imagined this several more times. Now if it happened for real, I’d be ready.

  But that wasn’t the worst. The worst would be to see, also in the room, still asleep in his bed, Victoria.

  Grant’s door was next to a fire door emblazoned with warnings about the terrible consequences of touching it. All Grant’s had was a hanging Do Not Disturb sign. I knocked.

  No answer. Could he be at breakfast? Not him, not this early. He was probably asleep. Or they were asleep. Or he was asleep and she was awake and refusing to open the door. How could I blame her? It was her right to sleep where she wished and to answer the door when she wanted. I decided not to knock again.

  An elevator bank was nearby. I sat on a leather bench and got to cracking pistachios. I would watch his door and wait to see if he came out for breakfast.

  A cart emerged from a nearby room and turned in slow hesitant lurches, like a car making a left through pedestrian traffic. The Latina woman pushing it stopped by the door next to Grant’s. She sighed and pulled out a card key.

  I approached and pointed at Grant’s door. “Do you know if he’s in there?” I asked. “He’s late for a meeting.”

  “Mr. Grant always sleeps late.” She smiled and wagged her head in fond disapproval. She must be his regular maid.

  “They’re going to fire him this time,” I said.

  “You want me to knock?” she offered. “I can say the sign fell off the handle.”

  “Well…”

  “He won’t mind. We’re friends.”

  I wondered what Grant had done to cultivate her over the months.

  “Housekeeping!” She pounded on the door, much harder than I had. My heart lunged with each pound.

  Still no answer.

  “I could enter,” she said.

  “Isn’t the door locked from the inside?”

  “No. See? That light tells me it’s not locked.”

  She was about to insert the card key when I blocked her hand. “He’s probably tired,” I said. “He got in late.” I lowered my voice. “We’re also supposed to meet his wife, Victoria. Have you seen her?”

  She hunched over her cart to whisper back, a plane flying in under the radar, “She’s not in this room!”

  “Really?”

  “Different room.” She motioned down the hall.

  “No!” I slapped my forehead, much too loudly. I didn’t care. “Has he been playing around again?”

  “Don’t say it! He’s my friend.”

  “And mine. Please take care of him. Let me know if he’s doing something stupid.” I took out my wallet. I didn’t even know how much I had. Turned out to be sixty dollars. I wasn’t sure how much I had left in my bank account. I tried not to wince as I gave her forty dollars.

  She seemed, if not impressed with the money, at least pleased by it. I could tell she approved of my concern. Grant must have taken some trouble to charm her. Good policy for a man with two women.

  I had to capitalize on her goodwill. “Last week,” I asked, “did Grant have anyone in his room? Another woman? I’m afraid his wife will catch him.”

  “No, his wife was here with him!”

  “Last week?” Impossible; Victoria had clearly said she was in New York when she found out Jewel had died. Had Victoria lied? “I thought his wife was home in New York last week. Did you see her?”

  “No.” She looked suddenly doubtful. “But I heard Grant yelling at some woman. Who else would he yell at like that?”

  I could think of someone.

  “Open the door or no?” She glanced down the hall. Her work was calling.

  “Please,” I said.

  She slipped in the card key. “Housekeeping!” she called, louder than ever. She turned the handle.

  A door opened beside us. Not a room door—the fire door. Grant stepped inside, dressed in a white T-shirt, flannel pajama pants, and slippers. Cold air streamed into the hallway.

  “Hey, Sonia.” Grant nodded at the maid, stared at me. He was holding a lighter and pack of American Spirits.

  “I was looking for you,” I said.

  “Went out for a smoke. Got to hit a meeting now.”

  Sonia disappeared into another room.

  “Doby?” I asked.

  “What the fuck, right? Not even eight-thirty, she’s already here.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Why?”

  “You brought me here to help you, right? I need to know what’s on those videos.”

  Grant shouldered past me and opened his door. I managed to catch, over his shoulder, a glimpse of his bed: sheets and blanket coiled and crisscrossed, pillows floating atop like marshmallows on a frothing cup of hot chocolate. But the bed was otherwise empty.

  Grant turned and faced me through the doorway. I could now see more of his room, and nothing in it was Victoria’s.

  “I hope you’re trying to help me,” Grant said. “I know you’re trying to sneak one by me. She won’t stay with me. She was in your room last night, wasn’t she? Don’t lie, you don’t have to. I don’t know what you did; I don’t know what you said. It’s not my right to know. Just promise me you won’t lie to her. Can you do that?”

  “I already promised her.”

  “Good! And you won’t lie to Doby either, right? You could. But Victoria’s harder to fool. I know her.”

  “When did Victoria first catch you?”

  I got ready to step back, to avoid a swing. But all he did was shrug. “You know when you’re in trouble? Not when every night they’re asking where you’ve been, but when they stop asking. Grant’s Rule. But what would you know about that? You’re an angel.”

  He shut the door in my face. I examined the fire door. Despite the block-letter warning, nothing shrieked or flared when I pushed at it. I stepped out on a concrete terrace and sucked in a lungful of freezing air. Metal stairs led down to a half-empty parking lot loaded with dull, dusty pickups and shitbox sedans—employee parking. A security camera was perched on an electrical box. I looked down and saw that I had stomped on a rat’s nest of cigarette butts—probably all American Spirits. Sonia wasn’t cleaning up for Grant out here. I had to use my card key to get back inside. My fingers were almost too numb to get it out of my wallet.

  I met Sonia in the hall on the way back. She was restocking the empty snack machine. She noticed my interest, yanked away a little plastic trash bag from her cart, and arranged a care package full of cookies, trail mix, and premium dark chocolate M&Ms.

  Chapter 16

  Down in the lobby, I asked the concierge—his name tag read PIERRE, though only his tie was French—to arrange a rental car and charge it to Grant Flanders. Somewhat to my surprise, he agreed. Grant’s name had more power than I expected. When I told Pierre my plans, he even gave me the access code to Hermit Road, which is off-limits to everyone but NPS bus drivers and backcountry permit holders—and Grand Chalet guests, apparently. I also asked for tips on navigating Camper Village. My Hyundai was delivered minutes later. Grant’s name wasn’t quite powerful enough for a midsize.

  Camper Village was my first stop. It was technically adjacent to the Grand Chalet, but the border between them was protected by a mile-long Fauxdobe wall. Little cacti adorned the top of it, to deter wall jumpers. I had to drive all the way out to Tusayan’s main road, turn right into the thickening gravy of morning Grand Canyon traffic, and then take another quick right off the next rot
ary.

  The road soon degenerated into gravel and cut through a grove of pines that protected tourists from the down-market view. For years, Camper Village had been a private RV camp where you could park your mobile home, dump your waste, and pay a few dollars for a shower. The old business was just barely hanging on. I passed by a ring of ancient vehicles, several with sagging green awnings that shaded, at this hour of the morning, no one.

  But under its new, Grand Chalet–friendly management, the rest of Camper Village had been transformed. In place of rows of oversize parking spaces and hookups was a new neighborhood of perma-trailers housing local workers. The project had been billed as Tusayan’s first affordable-housing initiative and was relentlessly touted as one of the chief benefits of the Grand Chalet’s development. The homes, however, looked like oversize doghouses, low-roofed and ugly. The few ornamental touches, like the bright blue trim on fake shutters, were feeble and pointless, lipstick and Brylcreem on the inmates of a late-stage-Alzheimer’s ward. All the metal in view—on the gutters, on the doorknobs, on the cars parked outside—was red with dirt or rust or both.

  In the tiny front yards you saw a few of the rusty tricycles, discolored plastic play-kitchens, or dented wiffle-ball bats that you always find around poor families’ houses, but many more of the yards were empty of all but dirt. Most Camper Village renters were childless workers, many of them newly arrived, many more hoping to take their savings and move on to somewhere better. Those kids who were stuck here had cultivated a reputation. Pierre had told me to watch out for delinquents throwing dirt clods. He added, a bit more sympathetically, that the town had built a gorgeous playground with Grand Chalet money, but it was across the highway, and since the adults worked weekends, there was no one to drive the kids there.

  Here, where the Grand Chalet’s ramparts were visible above the naturally spiked border wall, social stratification had taken on an Old West aspect. These cheap prefabs were like ranch outbuildings—the cook’s hut, the blacksmith’s shop, the hired-men’s quarters. But the manual laborers of old had been replaced by today’s service-industry poor: housekeepers, gardeners, desk clerks, bar backers, tour-bus drivers.