Security

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  Tessa’s smile deepens. “The best security is invisible security.”

  “But if security’s invisible,” Brian says, “how do you know when it fails?”

  Hate is a warm, welcome sensation.

  Tessa mangles responses and finally says, “Whatever. Fine.” She turns to the door of Room 1516. “Vivica’s our master stain surgeon. I’ll take a look. Then we’ll pop down to the second floor. I’m betting anything Viv took a fifteen after getting the cherries out.” Tessa slides the card key. The lock blinks green. “Then we’ll do a check on the progress upstairs. I have to pick a table setting tonight. I have to. One hundred seventy-­five possibilities—it’s gotten ridiculous. There, see?” She has opened the door and is pointing at carpet a half shade darker for being freshly dried. She bends and pats the fibers. “She’s a wizard,” Tessa says with no irony, while past the king-­sized bed and its white duvet, past the fireplace that divides the bedroom from a sitting area, around the door to the bathroom and inside the deep claw-­foot bathtub less than thirty feet from the entryway, Twombley lies in his black suit, his fair hair askew. He’s the centerpiece of a crudely pretty Rorschach. I see wings in the gouts of blood that sprayed the tiles all around him. He’s the caterpillar in the middle. He’ll wake up any minute and fly.

  “Remember the time you and Mitch—”

  “Lorraine’s bed.” Tessa hides an incandescent blush.

  “Had to be blue Kool-­Aid,” Brian says. “I said why not water, and you said, ‘It’s the Smurfs, Bri. We gotta drink blue Kool-­Aid.’ I scrubbed that comforter for a half hour.”

  “I did say I’d do it.” She nudges his chest, unbalancing him. “Don’t get all revisionist on me.”

  “Tess, you’re many things.” He stands and offers her a hand up. She takes it, and he pulls, too hard. She knocks into him, giggling. “But a stain wizard is not one of them.”

  Twombley was the only one who got away. McKeith and Rawlins were in front of him, on the twentieth floor. McKeith is facedown, the exit wound on the back of his head tacky and dark. Rawlins fell facedown, too, on McKeith’s left arm. They look like lovers sleeping in on a Saturday. Since Twombley was behind the two of them, he dropped and played dead, but the ruse worked only because of the flash grenade, which caused confusion—for the assailants, and for the five security team members on shift. Addison was on the other side of the twentieth floor, so while he took the fourth or fifth of his bullet wounds, Twombley scuttled through the chaos and into the secret elevator. He didn’t fire his weapon, or he fired it badly, or something. He must have hit “15” at random. He disgusts me a little, lying dead in a bathtub while Tessa and Brian laugh at fond memories.

  The Killer flips US Weekly facedown on the table, to keep his page, when the washer’s buzzing spin cycle clicks finished. He walks to the washer, removes his coveralls, and loads them into the first dryer. He goes to the housekeeping storage shelves and selects a box of dryer sheets. He steps toward the dryers, stops, turns to the shelves, and throws the dryer sheets back. He seizes a box of hypo­allergenic, chemical-­free dryer sheets. He walks to the first machine and tosses a hypoallergenic, chemical-­free dryer sheet onto the lump of his wet coveralls. He shuts the door and presses a button.

  Tessa and Brian are boarding the main elevator. Tessa presses the button for the second floor. She is asking Brian, “Why were we even in their room? We weren’t allowed in their room.”

  “Lorraine was showing a house. She tried real estate for about six months, remember? She bitched all the time about it taking up her weekends.”

  “God, yeah. I must’ve eaten enough Lucky Charms on that bed to gag a yak.”

  Brian laughs, loudly. He bends with the strength of it. It looks cathartic.

  The Killer has walked to the fourth dryer and opened the door. A hand flops out, limp, crimson, smoking. The Killer tucks it back in, closes the dryer door, but does not restart the machine.

  “Corn Pops,” Brian says, wheezing.

  “That was your poison, not mine. And Mitch and his Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

  “And you always took our toys! Those toys at the bottom of the—”

  “You gave them to me!” Tessa is hopping up and down. “You gave them to me of your own free will, both of you!”

  “It was extortion.” He points at her. “It was larceny.”

  “You were willing victims.”

  “God. God, yeah, we so were.”

  The Killer has left the housekeeping storage area and is crossing the employee break room. He arrives in Delores’s office, removes the piece of paper that covers the small television, and turns it on. The screen flashes on Justin, who is exiting the stairs at the first floor and squinting at the foyer, its rich white shine. He walks on his toes to the manager’s office, checking to see if Franklin’s in, and smiles broadly when he sees this isn’t so. Justin dashes across the foyer with the excitement of a schoolchild. The feed switches to Henri yelling at his sous-­chefs in the kitchen. Henri is turning purple and using copious French profanity. His sous-­chefs are all Californians. None of them speak French. They trade looks of derisive confusion, enraging Henri all the more. The feed switches to the ballroom. Delores holds a duster that rests on the end of a stick that can reach twenty feet above her head, to the bevels above the high windows. Jules is pocketing her phone, laughing at Henri’s eminently audible theatrics. Her face lengthens, becoming gradually more disturbed at Henri’s vocal volume and profane inflections. The feed switches to the main elevator. It is on the fourteenth floor, then the twelfth floor. There is no thirteenth floor. Brian’s and Tessa’s laughter has calmed. They’re each looking off in an imagined distance. They share a past. They’re watching it like a movie. Brian knew Tessa when she was young and innocent. If he was remotely decent, he guarded that innocence, as did his stupid dead twin brother, but then they abandoned her, both of them, so what right does he have to steal an eyeful of Tessa like the sight of her is a nutrient of which he’s been deprived?

  The Killer gets his coveralls from the dryer. He’s hurrying. He doesn’t run; he walks faster. He’s careful not to make noise. Justin’s right downstairs. He remembers his knife and the heavy quartz paperweight, and—he pauses, his masked head tilts—he goes back for US Weekly. He checks the TV. Brian and Tessa are down to the sixth floor. They are fidgeting. Tessa is fixing her hair, releasing its thickness from the knot at the nape of her neck, so that all of it tumbles around her face, setting off her bright eyes, and she plumps it with her nonbandaged hand. Brian takes off his motorcycle jacket and puts it over his arm. He has underdeveloped arms. He should lift weights. He is risking osteoporosis, like an old, frail woman. The Killer turns off the TV, reboards the secret elevator, et cetera, and Brian says, “You look good,” like that’s not the most obvious thing in the world to say, and Tessa says, “Thanks. You, too,” offhandedly, and . . .

  Camera 34

  . . . upstairs, in the kitchen, Henri has calmed enough to give his sous-chefs what he calls “une tentative finale” to craft the cherry coulis, reassigning flavor profiles and giving instructions in a mixture of French, and English so heavily accented that it might as well be French. The sous-chefs exchange low, anxious mumbles, trying to decode what their mentor is imploring them to do, as Henri has turned unctuous with desolation, certain his minions will fail him. Henri is a fuckhead, but so is Brian.

  Camera 33

  . . . upstairs, in the ballroom, Jules continues to be relatively worthless, shadowing Delores as the poor maid tries to dust and forming theories. “Do you think they were ever a thing?” Delores doesn’t answer. “No,” Jules answers herself. “No, I doubt it. He and his brother were pretty much the only family Tessa ever had, but”—she reaches to a table, folds a napkin into a rose, and holds it up—“I don’t think it was ever sexual.” Jules then folds the napkin into what looks like a vagina. “But it is now.” She titters.

  Camera 9

  . . . downstairs, in the lectur
e hall, Justin says, “Hey, sexy,” his voice deeper than usual. “Thanks for the video today.” His mistress says, presumably, that he is welcome. She’s a flight attendant named Charlene. Justin calls her Charlie or, more often, Sexy. Their dalliance began nine weeks ago. It’s been eight weeks since Jules started seeing a psychiatrist. It is legitimate to wonder, in one’s duller moments, whether Justin’s affair caused Jules’s mental problems or Jules’s mental problems caused Justin’s affair.

  Camera 42

  . . . downstairs, in the lecture hall, Justin says, “Hey, sexy,” his voice deeper than usual. “Thanks for the video today.” His mistress says, presumably, that he is welcome. She’s a flight attendant named Charlene. Justin calls her Charlie or, more often, Sexy. Their dalliance began nine weeks ago. It’s been eight weeks since Jules started seeing a psychiatrist. It is legitimate to wonder, in one’s duller moments, whether Justin’s affair caused Jules’s mental problems or Jules’s mental problems caused Justin’s affair.

  Brian’s hand ghosts the bottom of Tessa’s back as she precedes him out of the elevator, onto the second floor. Tessa’s saying, “Hey, Viv?” She doesn’t seem to feel Brian’s hand. He must not quite be touching her back.

  “Do you smell that?” Brian says.

  “Yeah. Somebody microwaved their dinner too long.”

  Brian sniffs, disturbed. Tessa doesn’t notice, as she is describing the layout to Brian. “We figured the business types and conference-­goers would be inspired being on the same floor as the real workers in the hotel, so we’ve got eight seriously lavish conference rooms behind us and to either side. For the huge-­deal CEOs, there’s a high-­ceilinged lecture hall off the lobby.” (There, Justin lazes in a back-­row business chair. He says, “Return the favor? What do you think I am, a freak?” and chuckles at an expected response. He says, “I don’t know—I’ve only got about five more minutes,” and takes a pair of clips from his pants pocket. They’re chip clips, for holding bags of pantry foods shut. He’s using them to clip his iPhone to the seatback in front of him. He puts a Bluetooth in his ear—“Better talk dirty so I finish fast”—so he can use both hands to pleasure himself, which he is now doing. I fervently hope he does not put the chip clips back in their designated kitchen pantry tub.) “I’d show you the space, except catering’s using it as a staging area for the party’s lobby décor, so it’s full of tables and extra seating and textiles and trays, and Justin promised he’d fillet anybody who went in there and screwed with the supplies, so—” Tessa’s tone and the rate of her words are painstakingly casual, as are Brian’s assent to them, his nods.

  But when Tessa stops chattering, he says, “That smell’s . . .”

  “What?” They pass the housekeeping storage area.

  “Nothing,” Brian says.

  Tessa walks into the break room. She frowns. “Vivica?”

  Brian’s hands are out of his pockets. He frowns, too, and sniffs.

  Tessa walks to Delores’s office, but sticks only her head in. She believes it’s important to respect others’ workspace. “Viv, are you—?” Tessa snaps her fingers—“She’s in storage”—and passes Brian in the doorway. “I bet she has her earbuds in, which is against—” A forbearing smile is on Tessa’s lips, ready to deliver a lecture about using personal cell phones and all other devices while on the clock. But the housekeeping storage area is empty. The alcove that houses the washers and dryers is not fully visible, so Tessa goes to check it, saying, “Vivica, really, I need you up—” But Vivica isn’t there.

  In the secret elevator, Vivica’s dead eyes stare at one of her smeared handprints.

  “Hey, Tess?” Brian is kneeling by a spatter of blood on the floor. It’s the size of two postage stamps, and the shape of Florida.

  “Franklin,” Tessa says to the blood. She takes a roll of toilet paper off the housekeeping shelves and holds down the outer corner with her thumb, winding a thick white wad around the thick white wad of her bandage.

  “Who’s Franklin?” Brian kneels and stops Tessa from wiping up the tiny puddle. “Hold on a second. Back up. Who’s Franklin?”

  “The hotel manager,” Tessa says, allowing Brian to continue holding her bandaged hand above the stain.

  “Your boss?”

  “He wishes. Why?”

  Brian appears to do difficult mental math, but he does it looking around at the space. He looks at the bloodstain. “How do you know this is his?”

  Tessa realizes what he’s getting at. She smiles—amused. Charmed, goddamn it. “It’s fake. The blood’s fake. Franklin likes to play practical jokes.”

  “Yeah?” Brian says, still holding her hand. “Like what kind of jokes?”

  “The sick kind. He promised to stop, but I think he kind of can’t help it.” Tessa laughs at Brian’s plain worry. “Okay,” she says. Dipping a finger in the red, she raises it to her mouth.

  Brian catches her wrist. “Tess, Christ, don’t—”

  “It’s fake! Franklin messes with Delores all the time. She’s his favorite target. Look at the soaps, the empty water bottle on the floor, the ladder right there. He was sticking the soaps together. He’s done it before.”

  “And to give his prank a one-­two punch, he squirts some fake blood on the floor.” Brian brings her dripping fingertip to his nose. He smells it. “Smell it,” he says. “Don’t taste it. Smell it.”

  Tessa does. Her lip curls in faint revulsion. “Right. So?”

  “So, they don’t usually bother to make fake blood smell like blood.”

  Brian releases her hands, steals the toilet paper, and wipes her fingertip clean while Tessa says, “Fine. One of two things happened. Either our head of security caught Franklin at it and intervened—”

  “Intervened?” Brian echoes. “And caught him how?”

  “I don’t know. That’s not my department. I’m design and logistics.” She steals the toilet paper back and wipes the stain, though Brian protests. “Franklin’s right now having his ass handed to him. Hopefully getting fired, though that’ll make the next few days a living hell for me, finding a replacement.”

  “What about the smell?” Brian says, standing when Tessa does. He watches her toss the bloody paper in the trash.

  “Ha!” she says. She reaches into the garbage can, most of her top half disappearing. She lifts out the soap ball. “That creep is fired.” She drops it, and a duo of thuds suggests it bounces in the bottom of the can.

  Brian repeats, “What about the smell? And you said one of two things happened.”

  “Someone cut themselves,” Tessa says, reorganizing the soaps on the housekeeping shelves. She spots the collapsed stacks of dryer sheets and fixes those. “Vivica. She came down for a snack, was checking on—I don’t know, something—in this room, she cuts herself, overcooks her food—”

  “You’re reaching,” Brian says.

  “What else would it be?”

  The buzz of fluorescent lights fills a telling silence.

  Brian says, “That’s not food. It’s meat, but it’s not.” He blows all his breath at the floor and forces himself to look up. “On the circuit. When there was a crash and gas spilled and a guy got burned—big-­time burned; we’re talking ass grafts to the face—this is how it smelled.”

  Tessa looks sick, but she stands up straighter. She turns and leaves the housekeeping storage area for the employee break room. She does so professionally, shoulders back, expression controlled, until she’s no longer in front of Brian. Then her forehead crimps, and she presses on her mouth. Tessa is an ambulant contradiction. She is at once strikingly strong and heartrendingly vulnerable. The paradox makes a natural protector desperate to protect her. The best security is invisible security. The most thorough safety is safety one’s object of protection doesn’t know about. She shakes her head at a dirty dish in the employee break room sink, rinses it, and sets it in the drying rack. This seems to focus her, and she rounds the long break room table to stand in front of the lockers. Employees are
assigned a padlock. Tessa turns her combination.

  Brian bangs his forehead on the housekeeping storage area’s wall, once, and goes to follow Tessa. He pauses at the table where the maids fold sheets. Runs his finger along the edge. His finger comes away flecked red.

  He looks around the room, his eyes landing on the dryers.

  Tessa pulls on her padlock, but it doesn’t pop open. Franklin cut off all the padlocks with bolt cutters, on orders from his phone contact, at a quarter after five o’clock today. He then replaced the employees’ padlocks (labeled with employees’ names) with other padlocks. He then hid the bolt cutters in a conference room on the second floor. Tessa tries her combination again.

  Brian is opening the first dryer. He wears the grim resignation of a man who feels foolish and yet knows he is right. The dryer is empty but still warm. He touches the ridges inside and spins them. He scowls, shuts the door. And looks at the rest of the row.

  He moves to the second dryer. He looks markedly different—threatening, worlds apart from the golden-­retriever-­like persona he’s been using on Tessa this afternoon. His lips pucker and his eyebrows angle and he opens the second dryer. It’s empty, cool. He checks the third, fast: empty.

  Brian inches sideways. He’s shaking his head. His lips are moving in false, rapid-­fire consolations that what he knows is inside isn’t inside. He’s reaching for the fourth dryer.

  The Killer is still on the toilet, on the seventh floor.

  The other Killer is still playing solitaire, on the twentieth floor.

  CAMERA 6, 13, 4, 5, 12, 33

  Brian grips the handle of the fourth dryer. If he finds Franklin’s body, he might not scream. He might hurry to Tessa, shush her, drag or carry her to the foyer. Maybe—barely—he could do this before the other Killer notices, summons the secret elevator to the twentieth floor, boards it, and presses the button for the first floor.