by Tony Abbott
I started at the first page and tried to read the other stories, but kept drifting back to Marnie and the blue sedan. But it always ended without ending.
For the moment I was alive and free. How long I would be either was anyone’s guess.
It was almost as if he knew.
I put away the ladder, hammer, and nails, and sat in the backyard for a long while. The sun was nearly down, but it was still hot. I was sticky in my shirt. A swarm of tiny bugs hovered in the fading sunlight. Their high-pitched whine was the loudest thing except for two men a street or two over pounding, moving boards, pounding, yelling loudly, pounding again. They’d have to stop soon, I thought. Darkness would stop them. It would be night.
I went back in the house, put the magazine, the postcard, my pajamas, and toothpaste in my backpack, grabbed my pillow, locked up, and walked over to Mrs. K’s house. As I was crossing the yard, I saw Dia and (I guessed) her mother on the sidewalk. They turned to look at me. I was suddenly embarrassed to be seen carrying my pillow as if for a sleepover. Whatever.
The room Mrs. Keene had made for me was small and neat. The light on the nightstand was already lit when we said our good-nights and she left for her own room. The walls were decorated with framed photographs, old black-and-white ones and more recent ones of colorful flowers and birds. I took out the magazine and set it on the nightstand and propped the postcard against the base of the lamp.
My mind was a jumble of questions.
I wanted to ask Dad what was going on. Did he even know? Why did he have to drink so much, anyway? And why was Mom so cold? I mean, she wants to understand, but she doesn’t. How am I supposed to? This postcard didn’t have anything to do with anything, did it? Why would Grandma hide a postcard of the Hotel DeSoto, which her father supposedly owned? And this story? Was any of it true? Was Grandma really Marnie? You cried at the hospital and before at the funeral, Dad. Are we splitting up this summer? Is Grandma’s funeral just a convenient way for that to happen? Is that why I’m down here? Am I an up or a down?
I could hear him answering with an edge in his voice, “Dump all that junk, will you? Get to work. I don’t know what the postcard is about. I don’t know about your mother. Or my mother. Or my father. I don’t know about Emerson Beale or Grandma or Nick Falcon or Marnie. I don’t know about the story. I don’t know anything about anything. Dumb stupid bozo car!”
The darkening room closed in on me. It remained hot.
Except that maybe Dad wouldn’t yell this time.
Maybe it was different now. Wouldn’t anyone go off the deep end who was close to someone and she died? And you could never talk about her because she was nutty, but now you had to clean up her stuff and sell her house and shut it all down and that part of your life was over?
I got up and slid the window up. The air was warm, but fresher. I sank back down again. Tiny bugs whirred and spiraled in the lamplight, all of them making an eeeee sound, as if heat had a sound and the bugs were making it and they knew it and they liked making it. I watched them and watched them, leaning on my elbow, until I saw something else happening.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Staring down at the magazine on the nightstand, I realized that the eyes of one of the menacing dagger men were glowing. Glowing! That part of the picture was nearly black in the rectangular shadow of the postcard, but his eyes shone in a very tiny, but perfectly round spotlight. I moved my hand over the magazine, and the spot of light played across my fingers. I knew what some part of my brain had already guessed: that the light wasn’t actually coming from the attacker’s eyes.
But where it actually was coming from was odd enough.
It was coming — I knew because I followed the tiny beam back up with my fingers — it was coming from the postcard.
The moment I moved the card, the light disappeared. But when I held it up to the lamp, there it was again, a tiny twinkling light. There was a hole in the card, a puncture so small and yet so perfectly round, it looked as if it had been put there on purpose with the tip of a needle.
My heart fluttered. The hole had been been poked through the window of one of the upstairs rooms of the hotel, as if that room were important. As if something might be found there. My hands trembling, I turned the card over and studied the II pressed into the message area, and the words air conditioning with the dots under them in the description. Were these clues? To some kind of mystery?
I could hear Hector say, “Mystery? You said yourself there’s no mystery, just wacky people. Dude, the heat is so getting to you.”
Maybe it meant something. Maybe not. Maybe the postcard contained a clue. Maybe it was random. Maybe “Twin Palms” was just a cheesy story with no ending. Maybe the boyfriend died and never finished it and the postcard was just a postcard and the hole was just a hole. Maybe the hotel was just a crummy old hotel lucky to be torn down. Maybe none of it was connected, after all.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But here was Grandma’s writing on the page: your Marnie forever. And here was Nick talking about a postcard. And here — right in my hands — was a postcard with a tiny light saying, “Look here! Look here!”
The more I looked through the pinhole, and the more I knew that I was free of Mom and Dad for a few days, the more I realized I was wondering just how to get to the Hotel DeSoto.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was another sunny day in the Sunshine City when I woke. Mrs. K served watery eggs for breakfast, sunny-side up, of course. While she was making them, I glanced around for mail or magazines with her name on the subscription label. No luck.
“I’m going to keep working until the hospital opens,” I told her.
“Let me know when, and I’ll get us a taxi,” she said.
I wasn’t sure how I would deal with that, but I went back to my house and started cleaning up, tossing three ratty folding chairs into the Dumpster, along with two old mattresses from the garage and a dozen broken garden pots and brittle plastic rakes from the shed. Big rolling trash cans were out and full all along the street, so I emptied two garbage bags of trash into our can and rolled it to the end of the driveway. I swept and hosed the patio and sponged the kitchen counter, too. There, I did some house cleaning. What a good son. And grandson.
I heard the sound of a mower and saw Dia cutting another lawn down the street. Maybe her own, for a change. I had to talk to her about finishing our grass, but I wasn’t ready yet. Besides, I was thinking of only one thing. Visiting hours started at ten. I had, give or take, two hours before my father would wonder where I was. I didn’t think I would need that long.
Wait? Was I still thinking of actually going to the Hotel DeSoto? Hadn’t I complained to Hector that everyone here was nuts? Was it happening to me now?
I stood unmoving over Grandma’s desk. I hadn’t managed to call Randy Halbert yet, so he’d probably come over soon. The house was still a mess, no matter what I’d done. Dad was in the hospital, for crying out loud. Family Services might come any moment. Forget it!
Besides, did I really care about this old postcard? Grandma was gone. The pinhole could have gotten there for any reason. And the II. Even if the card actually was a clue, what was it a clue to? Chapter II of the story? Yeah, right. I would find that after sixty years. Not to mention that the writer was already dead. Not to mention that the hotel was being demolished, so I’d never get close to it, anyway. It’d been sixty years. Sixty years! Come on!
Through the back window I saw Mrs. K hanging laundry. The air smelled of heat and lemon blossoms and clean wet clothes. Sunlight slanted down through the trees to the backyard, lighting up the grass as if it were under a spotlight. It wasn’t quite the same lime green as on the postcard, but it was close. The dark undersides of the palm leaves swayed, and their sharp leaves, stringy where they had dried and strips had pealed off, clattered in the breeze. The trunks sat like fat elephant legs.
“Whatever.” I breathed out loud. “It’s stupid. I’m going to the hospital.”
/> The hospital. I thought about Dad lying there all busted up. He had come down to Florida to bury his mother. He did it, and now what? He needed something, didn’t he? Besides her dying and his broken leg and banged-up head and closing up her house and going back to Boston and to Mom. Was that all there was now? Sell the house and go back?
In the hospital, he had started to say something.
He had said: “. . . without her . . . I feel . . .”
He didn’t finish. But I knew what he was going to say.
Empty. “Without her . . . I feel . . . empty.”
I opened my backpack, took out the pajamas and toothbrush, slipped in the card and the magazine, and cinched it closed.
“So . . . I’m going to the hotel?” I asked the room.
“I’m going.” I had two hours. I could go and be back in time to be at the hospital when visiting hours began. Then I could tell Dad: “I’m trying to reach Mom, but hey, you remember that funny old postcard? I know it was nothing, but I followed up on it. It turned out to be nothing, too, but hey, you never know.” I think he would actually like that I did it. It would be something of his own about Grandma. Mine, a little. Ours, a little. But mostly his.
I made sure the back door was locked. I checked if Mrs. K was still out there, didn’t see her, then went to the front door and slipped out quietly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tried to slip out quietly.
“There you are, dear!”
Crud. Mrs. K was in the front yard now. Man, she moved fast! She was on her knees in the flowers by her lamppost, a little trowel dangling from her gloved hand. “Hospital time? I’ll get my bag.”
It just came to me. “No. It’s early. And you don’t have to. Dia . . .”
She looked at me blankly. “Dia?”
“Dia . . . is coming . . . with me,” I said. “She wanted to come with me. On the bus.”
What? Where did that come from? I amazed myself with how fully I was into the truth-bending thing (which now seemed a lot more like lying).
Mrs. K looked confused. “Dia?” she repeated.
“The lawn mower girl. The girl who mows our lawn? Dia Martin. I’m going to Dia’s house now,” I said, using her name in a polite way, to make Mrs. K think I was polite.
“Oh. Are you sure?”
I smiled. “Yes. She’s waiting for me.”
“Will I see you for dinner?”
“Definitely,” I said. “It’s a date.”
“Don’t forget to leave lights on,” she said.
“It’s kind of early for that, isn’t it?” I said.
“You never know.”
“Okay. I will.” I turned, then turned back. “And thanks. For taking care of me.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Say hello to your father.” She smiled and plunged her trowel into the dirt at the base of the lamppost.
I had done it. Three minutes later, I was on my way to the bus stop. Dia was now in somebody’s side yard blowing up an inflatable pool for some small kids who were jumping up and down around her. They didn’t look like her brothers or sisters, so I guessed she was babysitting. I still had to talk to her about finishing the grass, but maybe now wasn’t the time. She caught my eye, made as if she was going to say something, probably remembered what a dork I had been and how I had shooed her away from my yard, then made a face and looked away.
Yeah, sorry, I thought. I should have minded my own business when you were cutting our grass. Maybe Dad wouldn’t have yelled at me.
Never mind. He was sad. He’d been drinking. He’s not going to do that anymore. Enough. “Enuf !” I said.
I passed on to the corner, looking back once to see her following me with her eyes, her cheeks puffing out from behind the growing plastic pool. I found the right bus from the map at the stop and minutes later was on my way downtown.
It’s not like I was going into the hotel! I wouldn’t actually be able to go where the pinhole pointed, since it was on the top floor, but so what? I was just going to look at the place. It would be crawling with workers. I would walk by. Notice stuff. Then I’d show Dad the clues I found on the postcard and wasn’t that strange? He’d like how it was all about Grandma. I think it would mean something to him. Then I’d tell him about the cleaning up I had done. Perfect.
The moment I got off the bus, I was sticky again. The perspiration dripped down my eyebrows and into the corners of my eyes. It stung as if someone had sprayed Windex in my face. I also had the feeling someone was watching me, but who even knew I was here? Maybe just a kid on his own was strange.
I walked a few blocks from the bus stop toward the Pier, until I stopped at the corner of Central Avenue and 2nd Street.
And there it was. The Hotel DeSoto. A strange thrill went through me as I pictured young Nicky Falcon and his father on the sidewalk in front of it. Surprisingly, the hotel still looked a lot like it did on the postcard. It was surrounded by a high chain-link fence now, but it was still standing in its own proud sort of way. As if it had survived a lot of years, and even now it wouldn’t just crumble away to dust, not yet.
I held my breath as I moved along the opposite sidewalk to where the photographer must have been standing, then matched the card against the actual building. One of the trees was much bigger than on the card. The other had been cut down. There had also been some construction since the picture was taken. The card was sixty years old, after all. The patio was gone. The short wall in front of the courtyard was gone. The red awning, gone. For some reason, that struck me. I liked imagining the sound of the breeze making the canvas squeak.
The sidewalk in front of the hotel was chewed up, too. Wired onto the fence was a large poster with a computer sketch of the luxury mall that was going up. The DeSoto Galleria.
Normally, I wouldn’t mind that. Normally, I would say, “Mall? Yay!” But I didn’t like this. Whatever else the postcard might mean, here was a piece of the past being taken away, and it struck me as not a good thing. I thought of the lobby in Emerson Beale’s story, the mahagony counter, the tufted cushions, the gold-painted columns. Had those things already been taken away? Had they ever been there in the first place?
A half dozen workmen came out the front doors of the hotel, locked the fence behind them, and walked to the corner. I found myself wondering if the hotel was empty now.
“What? I’m not actually going in. I can’t go in the hotel.”
Then why was I already starting to cross Central Avenue? No way. I stepped back to the sidewalk. A policeman slowed his car at the opposite corner, pulled over, and called to the man who had closed the fence. There was some shouting and a laugh. Then the light changed. Cars went by. There was another laugh, then a slap on the roof of the car, and the policeman drove away while the workmen headed into a coffee shop.
The light changed, and I crossed the avenue to the other side. I walked casually down the sidewalk in front of the hotel, then stopped to look up at the whole thing.
A yellow caution tape was knotted here and there along the fence, and a No Admittance sign hung on the gate the workers had come out of.
“This is dumb,” I said to myself. Dumb or not, my heart was racing, and the hair on the back of my neck was bristling.
I felt the texture of the postcard between my fingers, glanced at it, looked both ways, saw no one in particular, and slipped under the caution tape.
I slipped under the caution tape! I could have ducked back under it again and walked to the corner and then gone to visit Dad in the hospital, but I didn’t. I eased my way to where the fence passed the tree and in two steps was up over it and onto the tree’s lowest branch. I dropped down on the inside.
Hurrying to the hotel’s double doors, I looked behind me, still saw no one watching, then slid between the doors and into the lobby.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The giant open room was hushed and hot and seemed to pull me deep into it with my first step. The sound of the street outside grew muffled and distant.
I gulped for air as if I were trying to swallow the whole room. The only light was from high narrow windows facing the street and were still draped with thick green curtains. It felt like the land of the dead in there.
A few pieces of old furniture were scattered around the lobby. Two soiled sofas of what had once been lime green. A half dozen battered chairs, ripped and stained and sunken. The counter of old polished wood was still visible under a giant paint-splattered canvas sheet. There were stacks of wall trim and molding by the front doors. Sledgehammers were leaning here and there against the walls or on the floor amid electric saws and crowbars and tool chests. The ceiling plaster had crumbled and was lying in gilded chunks around the floor. An elevated machine braced up the ceiling to keep the rest of it from falling, because the massive columns were lying side by side on the floor like giant sticks of chalk, strapped together with bands of steel. Maybe they were going to be saved?
A smell of something earthy caught my nose. Two potted palms, dead and brown, lay on their sides, their soil splashed out and mixing with the rest of the rubble.
Off the left of the lobby behind the registration area and next to the elevator were stairs leading to the upper floors. It was on those stairs that Nick Falcon had first seen the kid he later called Mr. Tall loping down from the floor above. Had he really become the weirdly tall man I’d seen at the funeral? A second caution tape was strung loosely across from the registration desk to the stairs. It was all pretty ghostly. The smell of age and dust and must and mold was everywhere, but the lobby was like Beale had written about it.
Okay, I’ve done it. I was going now. The workmen . . .
I turned toward the doors and saw where Nicky might have stumbled in that day to see Marnie. A single willow. Nearby were the remains of what I guessed was the newspaper rack that Nick’s father had sent him in to check. Now it was no more than slats of wood and shelves lining a broken stand.
I paused. “Hey, Nicky,” I whispered to the quiet, dusty room. “They’re tearing it down, where you first saw her. The morons.”