“Sorry, but you don’t seem to have a reservation tonight.”
“Well, that simply isn’t true.”
“I’m afraid it is. Are you sure Brenda made the reservation?”
“Of course I’m fuckin’ sure.”
“Maybe she made some type of mistake.”
He’s shaking his head, staring at me like I just killed his mother. “You made the mistake, boy. You.”
“I’ve done no such thing.”
Every time he talks, my face is assaulted with another blast of his breath. A few more sentences from him and I’m likely to pass out.
Hobbs pulls out his cell phone and dials a number, then holds it to his ear. It rings for a while and finally someone must answer, because he says, “Brenda! Goddammit, woman, wake the fuck up. What? It’s John. Wake up. No, I don’t give a shit about any goddamn owls. Now, will you listen? I’m at the hotel. Yeah, the Goddamn Hotel. They’re saying they don’t have the reservation you made. What? No, I don’t fuckin’ know. Look, Billy’s on my ass about the latest orders, I gotta get this shit done tonight. No, Brenda, they don’t got it. That’s what I’m sayin’. Wait, what? What the fuck? Goddammit, Brenda. I ask you to do one fuckin’ thing and you can’t even do that. No. Ugh. Just go back to sleep, you worthless cow.”
He returns the cell to his pocket and looks at me, pissed off and not trying to hide it.
“Did you say something about owls?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrow, confused. “I guess the stupid bitch forgot to make the reservation. Can I just get a room?”
I nod, only half-there, the other half of me focusing on conspiracy theories. I’m sure he mentioned owls. But why?
I tell him the rate for tonight and he flips out again.
“That ain’t the usual rate.”
“Well, your usual rate is the associate discount.”
“So give me that, then.”
“Well, I can’t, considering you’re not an associate.”
“But Brenda is.”
“But she’s not here.”
“Come on, man. You know me.”
I shrug. “Sorry, but I would need her here personally, plus I can’t just give out the associate rate. That kind of reservation has to be made online. Hotel policy.”
“Well, ain’t that some shit.”
“It is indeed.”
He pauses, contemplating. He eventually throws his hands up in surrender. “All right, fine. Fuck it. I don’t have time for this shit.”
He throws two hundred dollar bills on the front desk, along with his license. I get him checked-in for the night, hand him his keys, and he’s on his way, dragging a bulky duffel bag behind him. Of course, he makes sure he gets one last word in before hopping on the elevator:
“Fuck your faggot hotel policies!”
Then he’s on the elevator, and momentarily out of my life. I wonder if tonight will be a night he falls asleep in his room or a night insomnia guides him around the lobby, looking for conversation. When he isn’t talking about Brenda’s most personal secrets, he’s talking about shoes. It gets him hard, I think, talking about the different brands and styles. Lately, whenever he starts talking to me, I just pretend I get a phone call and walk into the back office. Then I don’t return for at least an hour. Usually he’s gone by then.
Twenty minutes pass. He doesn’t come back down. Maybe I’m safe. Regardless, I need to refill my coffee cup. I walk around the front desk, heading toward the kitchen, but stop in the middle of the lobby at the sight of a wallet on the marble floor. On the front of the wallet, an owl has been stitched into the leather.
Because of course.
After scanning the area and ascertaining nobody is watching me, I retrieve it and stuff it into my pocket. I wait until I’ve refilled my coffee and have returned to the back office before I take the wallet out and flip it open.
John Hobbs’s ugly mug stares back at me. The wallet is thicker than I expect, coming from him. Inside, there’s a stack of cash. All one hundred dollar bills. I count it, heart racing, pounding against my chest, paranoid that someone’s going to walk in on me.
After I finish counting, I put the money back in the wallet, then stick it in my pocket. I sit down, staring at the wall. The hotel is silent. I can’t stop breathing like an asshole.
$4,500.
What the fuck is John Hobbs doing with that kind of cash?
I’m not even sure what he does for a living. He’s told me before, but his words tend to drift until they dissipate. Something about shoes, maybe. Nothing to do with shoes is bringing in this kind of money.
The thought of giving the money back to him enters my mind only briefly. He’s not getting any of this shit back. After all the nights he’s spent annoying me, talking and talking and talking, nigger this, faggot that, yeah, fuck him, he doesn’t deserve a good Samaritan.
I lock up the register, dim down the lobby lights, and head for the the Other Goddamn Hotel next door. I need to tell somebody about this. Fucking $4,500. Goddamn, son.
George is sleeping at the front desk. The paperwork underneath his face is soaked in drool.
I nudge him. “Wake up.”
He grunts, but doesn’t wake. I slap the front desk and shout, “FIRE!”
Nothing.
I try again. “DO YOU HAVE ANY ROOMS AVAILABLE?”
He screams and sits up, eyes wide, jerking his head around for the source of the disturbance. At the sight of me standing in front of him, he sighs and says, “What the hell, Isaac? Never wake an auditor from his nap. That’s hotel law.”
“Fuck hotel law. You gotta check this out.”
“Did you just say ‘fuck hotel law’?”
“Shut up.” I shove the wallet into his hands.
“Why is there an owl on your wallet?”
“It’s not mine. Open it up.”
He stares at the money for a long time. So long, I begin to think he’s broken down. Just the sight alone of so much cash has fried his brain.
Then he asks how much it is.
“Forty-five hundred.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“You know that asshole guest I’m always telling you about?”
“You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific.”
“The one who told me his girlfriend was molested by her father.”
“Oh, yeah. That asshole.”
“Anyway, that’s his wallet. Dude dropped it in the lobby.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
He tosses it on the front desk, unable to take his eyes off it. “What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m going to keep it.”
“You thief.”
“Some people deserve to be stolen from. Hobbs is one of such people.”
“True.”
“What do you suppose he’s doing with that kind of money?”
“I don’t know,” George says, reaching out and caressing the torn leather of the wallet. “He’s probably mixed up in drugs or something.”
I lean on the front desk, considering the idea. “He does look the type.”
George laughs. “And how do you know what ‘the type’ looks like?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I’ve seen movies.”
“So have I. And usually, whenever someone takes a drug dealer’s money, they get shot.”
“I’m not gonna get shot.”
“We’ll see.”
“I doubt he’s even a drug dealer, anyway,” I say. “Maybe he’s a drug addict, but I doubt he deals. Maybe he earned this money the legit way.”
“So what, now you’re gonna give it back?”
“Fuck no.”
“Good.” George opens the wallet again, fingering the bills. “The way I’m seeing it is, if you’re stupid enough to lose this type of cash, you don’t deserve to get it back. This is the price you pay for being an idiot.”
“And an asshole,” I add.
He nods. “And an assho
le.”
He runs into the back office and returns with his flask, which is the real reason I came over, anyway. Maybe that makes me a shitty friend. Maybe that isn’t even true. If I had to pick anyone to be my best friend, it’d be George. Hell, he’s my only friend, when I stop and think about it. Night workers don’t exactly have the strongest social life. They’re always working when everyone else is partying, or mini-golfing, or doing whatever it is that people do together for fun.
As we drink whiskey and recount the money, he asks me what I’m gonna do with it. I can tell he’s a little jealous, and a part of me thinks I should give him a small percentage, but I don’t, and I won’t.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess the smart thing to do would be to save it. But then again, how much do you suppose a down payment on a brand new Mustang costs?”
George laughs. “Assuming you get approved? Plus, ya know, the monthly payments, which I doubt you could afford.”
“I’ll worry about the monthly payments once the creditors are at my doorstep.”
George gulps down the last of the flask, which hadn’t contained much to begin with, and says, “You should rent every room at the hotel for a night, and spend the entire shift guest-free.”
“I think I’d be better off just quitting the hotel and living off the forty-five hundred for a couple months.”
“And when it runs out?”
“Kill myself, I guess.”
George nods, not smiling, but seriously considering the option. “Yeah. Yeah, that ain’t half bad.”
“Sometimes I have decent ideas.”
George snaps his fingers, leaning forward. “Or, you know what? You could totally fuckin’ buy an owl.”
“Shut up.”
“No, seriously. You tellin’ me a man can’t buy an owl for forty-five hundred dollars? Of course he can.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“I’m not being funny, man. You could buy one, keep it as a pet. It would be the ultimate tribute to Owl Girl, one of our own fallen heroes.”
“Fuck you.” I stare at the stitching on the wallet and fight the urge to faint. “Don’t you find it a little weird he has that kind of wallet? After everything that’s happened.”
“I find a lot of things weird. It’s a weird world.”
I check my cell. It’s nearly four-thirty. I should’ve already slid receipts under doors by now. Hell, I should be starting breakfast any minute.
“I gotta get going.”
“All right, man. Congrats on the stealing. You’re an expert thief.”
“Thanks.”
“Think about it, though. Hoot, hoot.”
“You’re an asshole.”
As I walk back to my hotel, my mind is racing with possibilities. There’s many ways I can spend this money. Maybe a Mustang isn’t the wisest idea, but then again, maybe stealing somebody’s wallet also wasn’t very smart. I never claimed to anybody that I was intelligent. But fuck it. Thanks to my lack of morales, I’m now forty-five hundred dollars richer than I was a few hours ago.
Hobbs’s bound to notice the wallet’s missing, eventually. The question is when. Has he passed out ’til morning? Or is he awake right now, already searching for it?
My body’s feeling pretty heavy from the whiskey, and I know if I go inside and sit down, I’m liable to fall asleep. But breakfast needs to be done, so I can’t afford to pass out until I get home. I linger outside for a few, hoping the cold will wake me up. By the dumpster, a deer cautiously eats something in the grass. There’s no sign of its herd anywhere, but that doesn’t mean anything. There’s never just one deer. There’s probably others, in the woods behind the dumpster, watching me. Staking me out. Forming a plan to murder me. Maybe this deer is just a distraction, and there’s a dozen others sneaking up behind me, preparing to feast on some juicy night auditor flesh. Are deer even carnivorous? Does it matter?
Someone in the parking lot screams, and the dumpster deer freaks out and sprints into the woods. The scream isn’t short-lived, but long and impossible to ignore. I follow the sound through the parking lot, to the back of the hotel. Someone’s on the cement, between two parked cars, shaking. I step closer and the screaming ceases. The body goes limp. Oh shit. I rush to the person, asking if they’re okay, asking what happened. I’m taking my cell phone out and attempting to dial 9-1-1 as I kneel down to inspect the body. Then the person sits up, ski mask over his face, and presses the tip of a blade against my abdomen.
“Put the phone down, cocksucker.” No, not a man. A woman.
I drop my cell. The blade digs deeper into my stomach and I’ve returned to reality. The blade hasn’t entered my flesh yet, but it’s cold against my skin, so it must have cut through my work shirt, at least.
I try to scream, but my voice is MIA.
The girl climbs to her feet, not moving the knife from my gut. “Empty your pockets.”
I don’t react. I’m too cold, too scared. This can’t be happening.
She slightly pushes her arm inward, and I feel something warm and wet drip down my stomach. The fucking bitch stabbed me. Shit, shit, shit.
I empty my pockets and throw the contents on the ground. Two wallets, a ring of keys belonging to the hotel, and my own car keys. She scoops up both wallets, ignoring the keys, and tells me to lie down, tells me to kiss the cement. And I do. I plant my lips against it. The parking lot is cold and wet and fucking dirty as hell but I kiss it like it’s my goddamn prom date. Of course, I’ve never been to prom and I sure as hell have never kissed somebody, but I imagine this is all very similar.
“Count down from fifty,” the girl says. “Don’t look up ’til you reach zero, or I’ll cut a lot worse next time.”
Next time?
“Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight…”
Her feet slap against the wet parking lot as she flees the scene. I stand up once I reach forty. Fuck her. Fucking thief.
I collect my phone and head inside the hotel. I’m so pissed, I can barely contain myself. I can’t call the police in case they test my system for alcohol. I can’t do shit. Not only did I just lose my own wallet, which contained my license and debit card, but I also just lost forty-five hundred fucking dollars that didn’t even realistically belong to me. Motherfucker. My shirt is ripped, as I suspected, and slightly stained with my blood. The cut isn’t very deep. It won’t require stitches. I rub a washcloth over it and slap a bandage down. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and give myself a long stare in the mirror. What I see is pathetic. I’m looking at a man who should have died at birth. Fuck everything. Fuck this whole goddamn world.
In the kitchen, the cook has already arrived, and she’s cursing me out in Spanish for not having the coffee or cold foods prepared. I curse her back in English, and neither of us know what the hell we’re saying to each other, but we get the gist of it.
Nearly an hour later, I’m scrambling back at the front desk, printing out my auditing reports, which should have been printed out before four, and it’s already six. Fortunately there’s only thirteen scheduled check-outs this morning, so I get the receipts slid under the designated doors in less than ten minutes.
I breeze through the audit pack, not really paying attention to the numbers, but reading enough to catch anything out of the ordinary. I’ve been doing this job long enough, I don’t need to read every line, every statistic. I know where to look and I know when a mistake has been made. A half hour later, I have all my paperwork documented and filed away. I pick up the hotel phone and call the Other Goddamn Hotel. George answers on the seventh ring.
“Thank you for—”
“We gotta talk.”
“Uh, right now?” he asks, hesitation in his voice, then he whispers, “My fucking boss came in early.”
“After work. Meet me at IHOP?”
“Yeah, all right.”
I hang up without saying anything else. A guest at the front desk waits for me to finish my phone call, tapping his fingers against the marble t
abletop, rolling his eyes and whistling. I want to murder him before he even speaks.
“You’re out of paper towels in the men’s restrooms.”
“Okay.”
He holds up his hands, flinging water at me. “How am I supposed to dry my hands?”
“Use your pants.”
His jaw drops and I turn away, not giving a shit about his reaction. I close my shift just as my relief strolls into the lobby. I’m outside before she finishes telling me good morning.
In my car, I’m punching the steering wheel and shouting every profanity in my vocabulary, fantasizing revenge plots and knowing I’m too chickenshit to actually do anything about it.
Fuck.
Part 7
George walks into IHOP around a quarter ’til eight. The restaurant’s only down the street, and we both get out at seven, so I’ve been sitting here a good half hour at this point. I’ve already gone through a pot of coffee. I’m too stressed to eat. I’m only chugging coffee because I don’t know how to do anything else.
I wave him over from across the restaurant and he sits down in my booth, on the opposite side of the table.
“You look like shit,” he says. “More so than usual.”
“I was mugged.”
“What?” His knee bangs against the bottom of the table and a drop of coffee splashes out of my cup.
“I. Was. Mugged.”
He tries to respond, but the server’s approached us, asking if we’re finally ready to order.
“Just keep bringing coffee,” I tell her, and George orders pancakes.
Once she leaves, George says, almost amusingly, “How the hell were you mugged?”
“In the parking lot. Someone pulled a knife on me.”
“Are you all right?”
“I was stabbed, but only slightly.”
“Only slightly?”
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Calm down there, Monty Python.”
The server returns, refills my coffee and sets a new cup in front of George, fills that one up. She tells him his pancakes are on the way. We barely even acknowledge she exists.
I throw some cream and sugar into my coffee and stir, watching the waves go crazy. For a moment, I swear the cream takes the shape of an owl, then vanishes.
The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel) Page 6