“Where am I staying?” Ryan asked.
“With your brothers,” Rachel explained.
“No! They’re going to scare me!”
“They won’t,” Lowell promised. “Don’t worry. Now why don’t you go check out your room.”
Ryan ran next door.
Tammy smiled. “How do you like it?” she asked.
“It’s perfect,” he said.
Two
This place was off the hook, Curtis thought. It was like the secret hideout of some James Bond villain, a fancy palace way out in the middle of nowhere with all of the best babes and food and technological luxuries money could buy.
Curtis loved James Bond. Especially the old movies from the 1960s, the ones with Sean Connery. They were way before his time, but there was something about their clean happy view of the world that appealed to him, something about the simple purity of the villains that spoke to him. He’d tried to read a few of the books—his dad was a big fan and told him they were great—but they seemed so boring compared to the movies, and no matter how hard he tried he could never seem to get into them.
Owen, he could tell, was not quite as impressed by the hotel. He liked the girls hanging out by the pool, liked the fact that they had their own room and their own satellite TV, but he didn’t like the fact that the resort was so isolated, so far from any city. He hadn’t said anything about it—Owen never did—but Curtis could tell that the remoteness made his brother uncomfortable. That was one of the things that he thought was so cool. It was the contrast between the no man’s land around them and this posh resort with its pools and waterfalls and tennis courts and golf course and fancy restaurant that was so fresh.
He and Owen were nothing like each other when you came right down to it. They should have been as alike as two peas in a pod, as their grandmother would say, but even physically they were light years apart. Curtis was tall and thin with thick wavy black hair and a dark complexion. Owen had black hair as well, but his was straight, and he was a good head shorter and a good ten pounds heavier. He was also, like their brother Ryan, extremely pale. Curtis wasn’t sure either of his two brothers had ever had a tan. Burns, yes. Tans, no. They were like their dad that way. Curtis was more like his mom.
He and Owen were very close, the best of friends really, but he wondered more and more often lately if that was not due to the fact that they were twins, and that fate and biology had thrown them together and made them partners. If there had not been that connection, if they met each other on the street right now and weren’t related, didn’t know each other, would they even have anything to talk about?
Curtis wasn’t sure.
“I’m coming down!”
He looked up to see Owen at the top of the slide, arms upraised. Before anyone could stop him, before their parents saw him and told him to sit, Owen pushed off, standing up as though he were skateboarding down the wet slippery slope. He fell halfway, landing hard on his butt, nearly tumbling head over heels, but he was unhurt and splashed into the pool laughing.
In books and movies, Curtis thought, there was always a good twin and a bad twin.
He wondered which one he was.
“I saw that!” their mom called from the far edge of the shallow end, where she, their dad and Ryan were rearranging lounge chairs. Her voice carried over all of the other voices and conversations around the pool area, causing strangers to turn around and look. Curtis felt his face redden in embarrassment. “You two are forbidden to use the slide! Do you hear me? You are forbidden!”
They nodded their acknowledgement, not daring to shout back, not wanting to draw any more attention to themselves.
“That was stylin’.”
Curtis glanced over to see another boy treading water right behind them. He had spiky hair and an earring and what looked like a small blue tattoo on his right upper arm.
“Thanks,” Owen said.
“How long’re you guys staying here?” the kid asked.
“Five nights,” Curtis told him. “What about you?”
“Came yesterday. We’ll be checking out Monday morning.”
“Five nights,” Owen said. “Just like us.”
The other boy’s name was David and he was a local. He was also sixteen, two years older than they were. He went to high school, and he could even drive, although he was here with his parents and didn’t have any wheels. The three of them chilled for a while by the side of the pool, checking out the hot chicks and the MILFs and anyone between thirteen and thirty wearing a bikini, before jumping back into the water to cool off.
David was on the swim team at his high school, and he sped across the length of the pool several times, turning around at different destination points before finally returning with a report. “Woman in the white one-piece,” he said, nodding toward the crowded cabana area. “Bush.”
Curtis swam across the pool and pulled himself up over the side. Directly in front of him, at eye level, was a lounge chair perfectly positioned to lend a view of the woman’s partially spread legs. Sure enough, he could see a few small strands of short black pubic hair sticking out from the edge of the bathing suit by her left thigh.
He was instantly erect, and he popped back down in the water and swam over to where David and Owen were kicking back by a fake rock outcropping in the deep end. “Boner time!” he announced.
Owen swam over to check it out. He returned, grinning.
“Rumor is,” David said, “that people go skinny-dipping here at night. Especially in that hot tub. I’m going to come back out around ten or so and see what I can see.”
Curtis glanced over at his brother; neither of them said a word. There was no way that their parents would let them out alone after dark. Hell, they’d probably be in bed and asleep by ten. On the other hand, they did have their own room. And if they closed and locked the door between their room and their parents’ . . .
But Ryan would be sleeping with them. And there was no way their little brother would keep his mouth shut about something like this.
David watched them, waiting for a response. When he saw that none was forthcoming, he shrugged and paddled over to the slide, pulling himself up. Sitting on the edge, he looked up at the top of the fake rocks where a father and his young toddler were about to go down.
“Excuse me!” the man called.
David ignored him, pretended not to hear, insolently kicked his feet in the water.
“Young man!”
David looked up at the sky, seemingly examining the desert clouds, humming a song.
“Will you please get off the slide so we can come down?” the man yelled.
Lazily, David got to his feet. Standing on the bottom edge of the slide, he paused for a good long minute. “Shi-i-it!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, jumping off. He hit the water hard, causing a noisy splash. Around the pool, adults glared at him with disapproval.
Curtis looked at Owen and grinned. Neither of them would have had the balls to do such a thing, not even if they were David’s age. But now they were friends with someone who did. They’d finally met someone cool. And he actually liked them!
This was going to be one badass vacation.
Laughing, the three of them quickly swam to the opposite side of the pool before the father and his son slid down.
David’s parents were in their room—Fucking, David said—but he’d commandeered a poolside table with an umbrella and four chairs, and there was a big bag of Doritos, a six-pack of Coke and a stack of towels on the table. They hopped out of the pool and sat around the table making fun of passersby while they drank the cola and ate the chips. Ignoring their mother’s admonitions about eating and swimming, they jumped right back into the water afterward, paddling hard in a race to the waterfall. David won by several lengths.
They treaded water for a few moments, catching their breath. Suddenly David, peering down beneath his kicking feet, frowned.
“What is it?” Curtis asked.
“There’s something under th
e waterfall. I think it’s a dead body.”
“Nuh-uh,” Owen told him.
“Look for yourself.”
Curtis didn’t want to look. They were in the middle of a crowded pool on a hot summer day, surrounded by kids and adults and a virtual army of hotel staff, but he felt cold suddenly and as alone as a little boy in a haunted house. Still, he and Owen both stared into the water, and beneath the foam and the bubbles, in the dark blue of the pool’s deep end, there did appear to be a dark sunken figure, an unmoving shape with the appearance of heft.
A body.
“I’m out of here!” Owen said, paddling over to the edge and pulling himself out of the water, his voice filled with panic.
Curtis followed his brother. He was just thankful that Ryan wasn’t there, that their younger brother was staying with their parents somewhere by the far shallow end of the pool. He clambered onto the concrete, wondering if he should find someone from the hotel and tell them or wait until he found his dad. He knew he shouldn’t start yelling; that would cause a panic.
“Wait a minute, you two!” David, laughing, was swimming after them. “Hold on!”
Owen, already ten feet away, stopped. Curtis turned around.
“It’s not a dead body. It’s just a patch on the floor of the pool. What a bunch of pansies.”
They looked again, and sure enough, from this vantage point, it was obvious that there was no body, that there’d been some sort of work done beneath the waterfall and the vaguely human shape was merely a replastering job.
Curtis laughed, pretending to enjoy the joke, but the laugh was too forced. He knew what he’d seen, and when he looked into his brother’s eyes, he knew that Owen felt the same. There had been something there. At the moment they’d looked down into the water below them, they’d seen a form far more solid than the flat shape now on the pool floor and much more clearly defined.
He would be dreaming about that figure tonight.
They swam around for a while longer, but then David’s parents came to get him—Must be all fucked out, he muttered as they entered through the gate—and Curtis and Owen swam over to where their parents and Ryan had staked out several lounge chairs.
“So what are our plans for tomorrow?” their dad asked. “There’s a lot to see around here.” He held up the magazine he’d been reading, and Curtis saw that the cover story was “101 Things to Do in Tucson.”
“We’re tired of driving around,” Curtis said. He kicked his brother under the water.
Owen nodded in agreement. “Yeah, why don’t we just stay around here? Swim and stuff.”
“Yeah, we’re tired of driving around,” Ryan whined.
“See?” Curtis said. “Even Ryan’s tired of it.”
“If we do stay,” their mother said, “you’re going to have to play with Ryan. No ditching him. No ignoring him. No teasing him.”
“No problem!” Curtis looked over at Owen, who grinned.
“I’m tired of driving around, too,” their mother admitted.
Their dad nodded. “All right, then. We’ll stay here. What the hey. We’re at an expensive resort. We might as well take advantage of it.”
“Yay!” Ryan said, bouncing in his chair.
Curtis was about to make fun of his brother but thought the better of it and smiled at his parents. “Yay,” he said.
Three
The meal was amazing. Almond-crusted catfish in lemon herb sauce with cayenne grilled vegetables and garlic mashed potatoes for him, mesquite-broiled chili-dusted chicken breast with chipotle rice, black beans and summer squash soup for her—and hot dogs for the kids.
They didn’t go out very often, especially since Ryan had come along, and when they did, it was generally at a Mexican or Italian restaurant that was family friendly and noisy enough that their children didn’t disturb anyone. So the Saguaro Room was a real treat. They wouldn’t be able to afford it more than this once—it was homemade sandwiches in the room and burgers at the Grille for the rest of their stay—but Lowell was glad they’d come, and having such a fine meal in such a fine restaurant was almost enough to make him forget that the opening mixer of the reunion was going on at the same time.
Almost.
Rachel even took pictures of their dinner. It looked too beautiful to eat, she said, and she quickly reached into her purse, whipped out her trusty Canon Sure Shot and photographed the table so she’d be able to remember their foray into the world of gourmet cuisine. Lowell often made fun of her penchant for documenting every moment in their lives on film, but the truth was that he admired her dedication. He sometimes wished he had that sort of focus, no pun intended, but he was terminally lackadaisical about such things, and if Rachel hadn’t been so committed to recording their trips and gatherings and family milestones, the entire pictorial depiction of their life together would have consisted of a roll of honeymoon photos and a few blurry baby snapshots.
He’d been afraid that they would be underdressed for the occasion in their shorts and light summer shirts, but to his surprise everyone, save a few elderly couples, was similarly attired. The food was formal but the atmosphere was not, and he decided that he could get used to resort living pretty easily. There seemed to be none of the pretensions of city life—it was like upscale Orange County without the emphasis on appearance—and that appealed to both the epicurean and egalitarian impulses within him. Though there were only a few other children in the dining room, neither he nor Rachel felt out of place here with their kids, and that too was nice.
Afterward, they walked back to their room along a winding gravel path outlined by low solar-powered lights. The sun was down, but the western sky retained a trace of orange that delineated the far horizon. Big black beetles tottered on too-thin legs across the path before them, attracted by the lights, and here and there could be heard the staccato scuttling of lizard feet on sand.
Rachel snapped a photo of a silhouetted saguaro, then made the four of them pose before a burbling Mexican fountain at the junction of two trails. It was night, but the temperature was still high, and Lowell was sweating as they made their way down the path. Below on the desert plain, he could see the glow of occasional ranch houses, and far away across the open country were clusters of lights of the towns they’d passed through on their way here. Somewhere to the south, behind the black bulk of the Catalina Mountains was Tucson.
They met an elderly couple walking arm in arm just past the tennis courts who greeted them with a friendly “Lovely evening, isn’t it?” but other than that they were alone, and Lowell found himself wondering if there were bobcats out here. Or coyotes. There were undoubtedly rattlesnakes, and probably a whole host of nocturnal predators with which he wasn’t even familiar.
Next time, he thought, they’d skip the trail and take the paved sidewalk. At least after dark.
The path ended at the small paved lot where the guests of Building Five parked their vehicles. They passed between a Suburban and a Land Cruiser, then walked along the open corridor toward their rooms. Bugs flew in and out of the light, moths and assorted flying insects bumping arrhythmically against the glass of the porch lamps next to each room door. Lowell took out his key card, ran it through the reader. A green light winked on, and he pushed open the door.
Or tried to.
The door gave less than an inch before stopping with a loud metallic rattle. The interior bolt lock was engaged.
“Who’s there?” a man’s gruff sleepy voice shouted from inside.
Lowell nearly jumped in shock.
Rachel did jump, and the panicked kids ran back down the corridor to the relative safety of the parking lot.
Lowell pulled the door shut, an action that sounded absurdly amplified in the still night air.
“I’m calling security!” the man yelled.
Lowell didn’t know what to do. “You’re in our room!” he called out. He glanced over at Rachel, who looked back at him with confused, frightened eyes. He expected the door to open and to be c
onfronted by an enraged Broderick Crawford look-alike, but instead his announcement was met with silence. Had the man gone back to sleep?
“This is our room! You’re in our room!” Lowell repeated.
“It’s my room!” the man yelled.
Silence again.
Lowell stepped back from the door, taking Rachel’s hand. Without a word, they retreated to the parking lot where the boys were huddled next to their car with anxious faces. “That guy stoled your room,” Ryan said.
“What about our room?” Curtis asked. “Is someone in our room, too?”
“I don’t know,” Lowell told them. “Come on.”
All five of them took the sidewalk directly back to the lobby. It was getting late, but there were couples on the lobby couches, cuddling under the low lighting, talking intimately. Lowell strode up to the counter, where a lone young woman spoke quietly on the phone. When she saw them approach, she promptly hung up and smiled. “Good evening.”
“There’s someone in our room,” Lowell declared.
The young woman—Eileen. Socorro, New Mexico. Two Years—was suddenly concerned. “A prowler?”
“Sort of. We went out for dinner, and when we came back and started to open our door, a man was in there and yelled at us, threatened to call security. He seemed to think it was his room.”
“He got in there somehow,” Rachel said pointedly. “I made sure the door was locked when we left.”
The desk clerk seemed to be at a loss. Her smile was back but it seemed strained, false. “Let me look it up.” She positioned her fingers on the keyboard. “What’s the room number?”
“Five twenty-two,” Lowell told her.
“Room 522?” she said, looking at her computer. “That’s Mr. Blodgett’s room.”
“It’s our room,” Rachel said, exasperated.
Lowell showed her the keys. “And so is 523.”
“Let me check. What’s your name, please?”
“Thurman. Lowell Thurman.” He glanced at Rachel and saw in her expression a mirror of the annoyance he felt.
The desk clerk typed his name into her computer. “This will just take a moment.” She smiled up at him then looked back down at the monitor. Her smile disappeared instantly and Lowell thought that the blanched expression on her face owed more to fear than embarrassment, though that didn’t seem to make much sense. “You’re right,” she said. “You were assigned rooms 522 and 523.”
The Resort Page 3