by Lola Swain
“We’ll condition them…Pavlov’s dog. I have two weeks and the wolves will show up every single night, at the same time. They will come to expect it.”
“Oh, that’s a good one,” James said.
“Thanks. The only thing I have to work out is their confession. They must die, but Bobby Allen must also be exonerated.”
“And how will you not interfere in their deaths? How will you ensure the Laws are not broken?”
“Because it is not me who’s doing it. It’s—”
“The wolves,” Adelaide said.
“Yep.”
“Do you think you can pull this off without getting yourself or the others hurt?”
“I have to,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, her face cracking as she smiled, “make it happen.”
“I felt it shelter to speak to you.”
Emily Dickinson
The two week plan that became known at the Battleroy as Operation Try A Little Tenderness, unfolded the day James and I met with Adelaide, during a meeting I held with the others.
Little Andy Larabee and Mica Morrison were in charge of staying in the barn with the wolves and training them for the mission. They used scraps of meat as the bait and Andy Larabee to represent animals who lived on the other side.
Perry Alden was in charge of stealing the steaks that Anthony, me and Judah Roderick took to the wolves every night at nine o’clock. After they fed, we’d command them over to the main grounds of the Battleroy.
Dr. Newlander was in charge of meeting us at the property line by the woods with the meat. Once the wolves arrived, they lay down at the line with the meat in front of their noses and waited for anything to come out of the woods.
May Gaspar was stationed at the front desk and listened and watched for any mention of Brandt’s or Nellie’s name. A very important job, May took her position very seriously, hardly ever leaving her post unless it was to join Tony for dinner or a walk.
Jonas Dashiell was in charge of bringing any questions we had to Adelaide and informing her of our progress.
Perry’s girlfriend Mary McDonald, along with Jennie-Lynn and Tara, were in charge of scouring the papers every day and instructed to come to me with any news on my case, any item that mentioned Brandt or Nellie and any words written about Bobby Allen.
Céline and Patrick were in charge of the staging of Room 165 which had not been occupied since my death. They cleared the room as much as they could without arousing suspicion. Patrick hid a portable tape recorder under the bed that he stole from the guest in Room 609 who caused a big stink about his missing property to Mr. Conway.
For thirteen days, every second of everyone’s time was consumed with the plan. There was an excitement in enacting this revenge, in being part of the plan. The others gladly toiled as hard as I and not because they all had the same sense of justice, but because they wanted to be part of it, included in a community action that benefitted one of their community members. Connection is good for the soul in any state. It was exciting to belong and the sum of all of the parts equaled a compelling force. We were an amalgamation of warriors who worked in concert to bring down a couple of the biggest bags of shit in history.
And on February 13, 1968, we all came together in the ballroom for an amazing party catered by Heinrich who spent four nights sneaking around the kitchen and hiding food in order to put out his most elegant banquet. We danced and sang for hours. Anthony and May Gaspar could not resist the touch of one another and he passed his official job as caretaker of the wolves to Andy Larabee.
“Well, Pearson, you pulled it off,” James said after the party when we were back in the library.
He pulled me down onto the floor beside him.
“I never had a doubt,” he said.
“Never?”
“Okay, I had a few,” he said as he leaned back against the wall and I rested my head on his chest.
“I’ve not pulled anything off yet,” I said.
“You will.”
“And if I don’t?”
“And if you don’t, Sophia,” James said and sighed, “you still accomplished a hell of a lot more than most.”
“There is no second place here, James. The plan must work, if it doesn’t, they go free and Bobby Allen does not.”
“Yes,” he said. “By the way, you know you still owe me two secrets.”
“I do?”
“Have you forgotten already? I sailed across the library on my ass after you released the bone?”
“Ah, okay. Hit me with it.”
I looked up at James’ face and his jaw tensed.
“Why do you love me?”
“What?”
“Just what I said. Why do you love me?”
I sat up and stared at him, but he stared straight ahead into the fire.
“That’s not a secret,” I said and bit his earlobe.
“Really, I want you to tell me. Not just my cock, but me. The truth, Sophia.”
I looked at James and smiled.
“Were you ever able to sit next to someone and feel every muscle in your body go slack? Where you didn’t rehearse the most inconsequential sentence in your head a million times before you said it because you feared you would piss the other person off or make yourself look foolish? Where you didn’t suck in your gut or arrange your body to look most appealing?”
“I—”
“No, don’t answer that.”
“Okay,” he said and smiled. “Go on.”
“Well, I was never able to do any of that until I met you. That’s why what I feel for you is better than just love. I like you, James. I like the person that you are. And what’s more, I like the person that I am with you. My entire being used to be one big charley horse and now, it is relaxed.”
“That is, without a doubt, the best compliment anyone has ever given me.”
“Good,” I said and smiled. “It’s true though. It’s not just the staggering gifts your cock gives, it is the whole of you. You are my friend.”
“Yes, I am. And I would do anything for you, Sophia. Just to see you smile. And just to make all of your charley horses go away.”
“Will you do me a favor?” I said.
“Absolutely,” James said and untied the belt on my robe. “Anything you want.”
“Hold that thought,” I said and hugged his waist. “First, I want you to tell me a secret.”
“But you still owe me another secret,” he said.
“I will tell you another secret, whatever you want, but please tell me just one.”
James ran his fingers through my hair and closed his eyes.
“When she was alive, my mother always called me her little amoeba,” he said and sighed. “She told me that amoebas are independent and strong, they don’t need anyone to do anything for them and they make it all on their own. That is what my mother loved about me.
“When she died, I was fifteen-years-old. I went to the store and bought a beautiful card for her funeral. I couldn’t think of my own words to express my devastation, but I felt that if I left something for her, she wouldn’t forget me. I signed the card: ‘your little amoeba.’ I don’t know that I want to talk about—”
“Please, James,” I said and rested my head on his chest.
“Okay,” James said and twirled my hair around his finger. “My father hated the relationship between my mother and I. He felt that my mother was weak and that it would rub off on me. But he was so fucking wrong. Anyway, my father read the card and after her funeral, he called me into his office. He said that an amoeba is neither independent nor strong. That an amoeba is nothing but a single-celled blob that always proves to be the weakest link in any chain and accomplishes absolutely nothing. I spent my life proving my father wrong.”
I sat up and looked at him. He stared into the fire as he blinked back the tears in his eyes.
“I want you inside me now,” I said as I lay back and opened my robe.
“That’s all it takes?�
� James said and shifted his body on top of mine.
“Less than that, actually, but I’m glad you shared that with me.”
“You still owe me a secret,” he said.
“Just shut up and fuck me.”
That night after he fucked me, I wrapped my legs around his waist and we slept entwined.
At eleven o’clock the next morning, after Heinrich woke James and I, my hands shook as I buttoned my dress and I felt doubts about my plan.
“Sophia, whatever is running through that mind of yours, make it stop. You look an absolute wreck and you are supposed to be leading us,” James said as we walked down the hall to the lobby.
When we entered the lobby, I took a deep breath and looked around. There they all were, my team. They were arranged by the front entrance, posted at the front desk and perched around the fountain. Waiting.
“Nothing’s happened so far,” Céline said as she walked toward us and hugged me. “Some of them have been here since dawn.”
“Good morning, everyone,” I said. “Thank you again for everything you’ve all done. Here’s to a great day.”
“Sophia,” Andy Larabee shouted from the front entrance, “is that them?”
I looked out the window as a handsome man helped a beautiful woman out of a Jaguar.
“No, Andy, that is certainly not them,” I said and smiled.
“Look at Conway,” James said, “he looks more frazzled than you.”
Mr. Conway paced behind the front desk. Every time the door to the lobby opened, he stopped whatever he was doing and watched. He was a sweating, hand-wringing mess and we all knew why.
“I can’t stand this,” Judah Roderick said. “I wish someone would give me a Valium.”
“No Valium, Judah,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”
“What time should we have the dogs over here?” Anthony said.
“Um, well, if everything goes as it should, after dark some time,” I said.
“And if it doesn’t go as it should?” May Gaspar said.
“It will,” James said. “Everything will go as it should.”
“It has to,” I said.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” James said.
“Than—”
I closed my mouth as I watched a peeling yellow cab stop in front of the hotel. As the passenger door opened, I walked to the window and one of the hotel’s senior bellhops, Scott Williams, walked outside to greet the cab.
“Holy shit,” I said.
She backed out of the cab with a considerably larger ass than she had the last time I saw her, but I knew the way her hair hung limply against the back of her fur coat that it was her.
“Is it?” James said.
I held my hand up and waited for her to turn toward the front of the hotel.
“Look at me,” I said.
She held her hands out into the open cab and I held my breath. For a moment I thought a child was going to jump into her arms. She stopped and turned toward the entrance of the hotel and looked up at the sign. Her face was as round as the moon and she looked doughy and as if she was covered in wax.
“Yes,” I said.
The others stampeded toward the windows and watched.
“Oh my goodness,” Céline said. “Is she wearing…sequins? And during the day!”
“That fur she’s wearing has to be the most ticky-tacky thing ever,” Tara Holderman said and clucked her tongue. “It’s yellow for Christ’s sake!”
“She looks as if she pulled absolutely everything out of her closet and stuffed her body into it. She’s wearing a stole as well,” Jennie-Lynn said and giggled.
Scott Williams said something to Nellie and she put her hands on his chest and pushed him back a step.
“Mr. Conway is watching,” Anthony said from behind us. “He sees.”
I turned around and Mr. Conway stared out the window from the front desk. He wiped his face with his handkerchief and bowed his head.
“He dumped you for that?” Perry Alden said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Worse, Perry, my friend,” Patrick said. “He killed her for that.”
“Where is he?” James said.
“Still in the cab,” I said.
“I can see him through the back window,” Heinrich said. “He appears to be asleep.”
Nellie turned around and shouted into the cab and then threw her hands in the air. She slammed her hand on the roof of the cab several times and turned around and looked at the hotel. The bellhop came back inside and stood beside the fountain and waited.
“What’s going on out there?” Mr. Conway shouted across the lobby from the front desk.
“Seems the mister won’t get out of the cab, sir,” Scott Williams said and looked outside.
“Well, we cannot have this!” Mr. Conway shouted across the lobby. “T-tell them we can’t have this. Tell them to leave.”
“No!” we all said in unison.
“Sir?” Scott said and tugged at his gloves.
“We can’t have a scene,” Mr. Conway said.
“Get out of the cab, Brandt,” I said. “Get out of the fucking cab.”
The cab driver got out of the cab and sat on the hood of the car and lit a cigarette. Nellie and he spoke for a moment and she walked back to the passenger side of the cab and stuck her head inside.
“I hope she stands up soon,” Andy Larabee said. “I’m looking at the ass-end of a bus.”
Nellie backed herself out of the cab and looked around. She walked toward the hotel and opened the front door.
“A little help, please?” Nellie said to Scott.
“Yes, ma’am,” Scott said and walked outside with Nellie.
I looked at Mr. Conway and he shook his head as he came out from behind the front desk and walked toward the window. He almost knocked Andy Larabee over as he wedged himself between the couch and an end table and stood next to me.
“Brandt’s not getting out,” Céline said. “What the hell is wrong?”
We all stood at the window and watched as Nellie paced the front entrance and flipped the multiple fox tails on her stole.
“Good grief,” Anthony said, “this is maddening.”
I watched Mr. Conway looking at them. He opened and closed his mouth like a guppy.
“Just go away,” Mr. Conway said under his breath. “Go away, go away, go away.”
“I think he’s speaking to you,” James said and nudged me.
“No, he’s certainly speaking to you. He finds your Old Spice offensive.”
James smelled the arm of his shirt.
“This is not Old Spice, smart ass. Besides, I lifted it from that dashing Italian man. I thought you liked it.”
“I do, it’s very sex—”
“Sophia,” Patrick said, “I think he’s coming out!”
I turned back toward the window and saw two slippered feet resting on the asphalt outside the cab. Nellie bent down in front of him and bobbed her head as if she was giving him a large piece of her deranged mind.
“Couldn’t that fucking cow move?” Judah Roderick said.
“That’s why he can’t exit the cab,” Céline said. “You know, I once fucked an astronomer from Austria—”
“Here we go,” Patrick said and chuckled. “Lollipop tits, if we had a nickel for every story you told us that began with I once fucked, we’d own this place.”
“Would you please let me finish, this is very relevant,” Céline said.
“Go on Céline, it seems we may be here for a while,” I said.
“Well, when I look at this big ass sticking out of the car, I think of the astronomer. He was very famous for—”
“Having the biggest penis in Austria?” Tara Holderman said and giggled.
“No,” Céline said, “although he was very well endowed. No, he was famous for—”
“Fucking his mother?” Judah said.
“Oh, here comes Dr. Freud,” James said.
“There is nothing wrong with
consensual intercourse between two members of the same gene pool,” Judah said and flicked a piece of lint off James’ shoulder.
“Judah,” I said, “I don’t think you’re even in the same tidal pool as the rest of us. Let Céline tell her story.”
“You have all taken the funny out of it now,” Céline said.
“Oh, Christ, just tell the fucking story,” Patrick said. “You, Austria, some guy with a great big cock who looked at stars…”
“Fine,” Céline said and looked out the window. “As I was trying to say, my lover was extremely famous because he located a new star in the galaxy. This was quite an accomplishment and the honor of naming the star was bestowed upon him. One night, he showed me his star. He was tickled because his was the biggest star discovered. This star has an extremely wide girth between its points. It is a very fat star.”
“A fat star?” I said.
“Oh, yes,” Céline said and wiped some condensation off the window. “The Austrian named his star Ginormica King. And that is what looking at that ass reminds me of. Ginormica King.”
“Very nice story, Céline,” I said and glanced at Mr. Conway whose forehead was wet with sweat.
“She’s moving!” James said.
Nellie moved away from Brandt, but his face was still hidden from the darkness inside the cab. He swung his legs back and forth. He wore pajamas. Pajamas and slippers.
“He must be sick,” James said
“Let’s hope so,” Anthony said. “This could prove easier than expected.”
Nellie extended her arms toward Brandt and he gripped her hands. She pulled him out of the cab and he rested unsteadily against the door.
“What the hell?” Mr. Conway said.
Scott Williams retrieved a single suitcase from the back of the cab.
“Check them in!” Mr. Conway screamed across the lobby at the reservation clerks.
An old couple gazing into the fountain next to us looked up and stared at the usually soft-spoken Mr. Conway.
“Sir?” Tommy Chartrand said from the front desk. “Check who in?”
Mr. Conway pointed outside.
Nellie grabbed Brandt around the waist and pried him away from the cab. He shuffled his feet as Nellie dragged him toward the front door.
“He must think he’s Keith Richards with those dark glasses,” Mica Morrison said.