The Summer Job

by Cesare, Adam

  Fuck, Christine thought.

  “Could you at least tell your staff to be on the lookout for him?” Jane said, braver now, stepping in when Christine needed her for a change.

  “If your dog is in this building, you have my word that he will be found and returned to you. You’re welcome to look in the meantime, just please try to be mindful of other guests. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I’ve got a lot on my plate.”

  “Thanks for your time,” Christine said, trying to affect a voice that instead said Thanks for nothin’ in a Brooklyn accent.

  They did look through the hotel a second time, stopping back at the room to check to make sure that Bert hadn’t been crawled up asleep under the drapes or snuggled into a closet. He was nowhere.

  Jane looked out the window of the honeymoon suite and then opened the sliding glass door that opened onto a small balcony. Christine followed her out, the terrace so narrow that both of them could barely fit at the same time.

  “What if he got out the back door?” she said, looking over the edge. Below them was a stretch of parking lot and beyond that was the woods. It was noon by the time they had put a hold on the search.

  Christine had unpacked a bottle of Three Buck Chuck from their luggage and poured them both a glass of the wine. She sipped hers now, knowing that it would help her come up with whatever genius words of consolation she would say next.

  “I don’t think that’s the most likely scenario,” Christine said. She looked at Jane, following her gaze out into the woods. The tops of the trees swayed gently with the wind, the leaves making a sound like a dollar store rain stick.

  “Not likely to turn out well for Bert,” Jane said, a tear running down her chin into her wine. She lifted the glass and drank down the tear.

  “There are plenty of guests, some of them with kids. They may have found Bert and decided that there’d be no harm in little Bobby and Suzy playing with him a bit before contacting the front desk about finding a dog.”

  “And if Bobby and Suzy decide they want to keep Bert forever? Those little fucking brats.” Jane laughed, but she wasn’t buying the fantasy. Christine could tell.

  Jane’s glass was empty. It was the hotel’s glass, a crystal tumbler that had been placed next to the sink to be used for tap water. It was able to hold a lot more wine than most wineglasses.

  Christine went back into the room for the bottle and topped both glasses back up.

  “It’s not even one o’ clock,” Jane said as she took the glass.

  “You should rest now. It’s been a long half a day,” Christine said. “Today was supposed to be about R&R and wine anyway. I know it’s a shitty situation, but maybe try to get some sleep.”

  “And you’ll keep looking?” Jane asked, going to the duffel and unzipping it.

  “I’ll do my absolute best. If all else fails, I’ll knock door to door. If Madam Brant has a problem with that, I’ll knock on her too.”

  Jane giggled, the tic-tac sound of pills against plastic jostling as she took out her day planner pillbox. She opened up today and popped a Benadryl. She took Claritin for allergies, Benadryl for sleepy time and allergies.

  They kissed until she fell asleep, the sun still spilling into the room through the glass door.

  “Please find him,” Jane said with her eyes still closed.

  Christine waited until the sound of her breathing had changed before pulling her arm out from under her neck and setting to work.

  How Bert got loose was a mystery that Christine planned to solve. As she opened the door to the hallway, the sound of the lock being thrown and the bolt retracting awakened something in her mind.

  Was it the sound she’d heard and disregarded when she’d left this morning to work out, possibly leaving the door open? Or was it the sound from before that, from the dreams she’d had last night?

  *

  Christine knocked on every door on the second floor since it seemed highly unlikely that Bert would brave the stairs or take a ride on the elevator.

  Most of her knocks went unanswered, but the rooms that had been occupied had been sympathetic. There were a few pinched faces offering variations on “Aw, I hope you find him!” but no Bert sightings.

  When she was done canvassing, she decided to up her detective game by seeking out members of the staff herself. Her first stop would be the front desk, the one place she was guaranteed to find someone to grill. She stopped at the top step before descending the staircase into the lobby.

  A grown woman of forty-two years, she felt only slightly embarrassed to be peeking around the corner, checking that the coast was clear, but she’d much rather suffer a minor embarrassment than be forced to interact with Victoria Brant again.

  There was an unfamiliar face behind the desk.

  It was a younger, prettier face.

  Young people could be assholes, but it was slightly less likely because the weight of the world’s bullshit hadn’t flattened them yet.

  Christine went unnoticed as she watched the girl, remaining still on the bottom step leading into the lobby.

  She was pretty, with fair skin and chestnut hair that most people probably called red, but it wasn’t really. The girl had dyed a silver streak in her hair that had started to grow back to marginally red. The streak was the best evidence that Christine had that the girl would be helpful, or at least tolerable.

  The girl twisted one of the golden pens Christine had used to sign the guestbook, watching the ballpoint pen go in and out.

  Twenty-something and bored, Christine remembered what that was like.

  Just as Christine had decided to stop watching her, the girl ducked under the entrance to the desk and walked towards the back door, the quickest way out to the parking lot.

  Leaving the front desk unattended? This girl was tempting fate with her boss. Christine liked that.

  She waited a few more moments, and then followed the girl out into the parking lot. As she opened the door, she tried to put a look of mild surprise on her face, not a look that gave away the fact that she’d been following her.

  Walking through the door, she turned to see the girl lighting up a cigarette, a few inches from her. This did surprise her.

  “Kids still smoke?” Christine asked. “Don’t you all do Twitter and Facebook instead?”

  “I don’t smoke,” the girl said, putting her lighter back into the pocket on her apron. She wore a uniform just like Daisy’s, only it suited her better. The name Claire was embroidered above the left breast.

  Christine looked at the cigarette in Claire’s hand, then back at the girl.

  “What I mean to say is that I don’t smoke regularly,” she said, seemingly mystified by her own statement. “Or I guess I only recently started smoking regularly. Sorry to sound so weird, but I kind of only just now realized that I’ve become a smoker.”

  “Well, it’s good to know that it won’t be too rough a transition when you start the patch.”

  “My friend used to smoke,” the girl said, not even acknowledging Christine’s lame joke. Not out of rudeness, but because she was so deep in thought that she hadn’t heard it. “These were the kind too. Newports. I guess she got me into them. She hasn’t called me the entire time I’ve been here.”

  “Sounds like a shitty friend, no offense,” Christine said, adding the “no offense” as punctuation, as she often did.

  “Not the best,” Claire said, knocking some ash off with a tap of her finger. It was a practiced maneuver.

  “Sorry to bother you on your smoke break, but have you seen our dog around?” Not my wife’s dog, but our dog. Had the events of the afternoon forced Christine to take co-ownership of Bert?

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Your boss didn’t talk to you about him? Ask you to keep an eye out?”

  “Sorry, no,” Claire said, giving a frown like she meant it.

  “Figures,” Christine mumbled and then spoke up. “He’s a min pin, black and brown.”

  “
Didn’t mean to ask a stupid question like that. I would have remembered seeing any dog. I didn’t even know the hotel allowed them. That’s probably something I should know.”

  “He went missing from our room and we’re not quite sure how.”

  “What room are you in?” Claire asked, seeming to snap out of her initial fog and finally engage Christine.

  “The honeymoon suite, second floor.”

  Claire made a sound to express deep thought, flipping the cigarette over between two fingers. “If he did get into the hallway, from the second floor he could take the stairs down into the lobby,” she spoke just as much to herself as to Christine. “That means he could have gotten out the front door if we left it propped, which Daisy usually does on nice days, but it’s unlikely that he’d get by without anyone seeing him.”

  Christine interrupted Claire’s detective monologue. “Were you working the desk this morning before the manager?”

  “No, I was burning orders of corn beef hash. Our chef didn’t come into work this morning, so they had me step in. Before I started working here, I’d only ever cooked Pop Tarts and ramen.

  “If your dog didn’t leave the hotel, there’re actually a few places on the first floor that he could have gotten into, some staff-only places and the dining room that we use for group functions. You said you talked to Ms. Brant about this?”

  “Yeah, but she was less than helpful, kind of rude. She actually looked like she was having a rough time this morning. Puffy eyes.”

  “The kind of rude part sounds like her,” Claire said and looked around the parking lot to make sure no one was around to hear, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her show an emotion other than menopause.”

  Christine laughed.

  “Is your husband out looking?” Claire asked.

  “Wife, and no, she’s upstairs sleeping it off. Bert’s her dog.”

  “Oh, cool,” Claire said. It was a much better response than she’d gotten from anyone else in Mission regarding their nuptials. “If he got out of the building, it’s almost a certainty that he went out the front door, since this one,” she indicated the door they were standing near, “is never propped open. If you wanted to take a few laps around the town to see if anyone picked him up, I could check the rest of the rooms on the first floor for you.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Christine said.

  The young girl bent at the knees and stubbed her smoke out against the gravel, then rose up.

  “I really mean thanks,” Christine continued, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “This was supposed to be a nice time, but it hasn’t started out that way. If I can find Bert, maybe I can salvage it, but beyond that there’s no way that this is going to go the way I wanted it too.”

  “He couldn’t have gotten far. You’ll find him. Traffic’s minimal, so that shouldn’t really be a concern,” Claire said, not elaborating on that, the idea that Bert would snap and pop under the wheels of a car like a balloon tied to four twigs. Christine winced at the thought. “What was your name again?”

  “Christine.”

  “Don’t worry. And don’t let Ms. Brant scare you off. The people around here are mostly quite nice. Even the cook isn’t bad, and he’s caused me all kinds of aggravation today. It’s different from the city, better in some ways.”

  Christine thanked Claire again and then set off around the side of the building, walking up the driveway to the sidewalk. She walked up and down Main Street until it began to get dark. As she looked, she asked everyone that she came across, stopping into all of the businesses including the historic post office.

  Nobody had seen Bert, but they had all been kinder and more encouraging than she’d expected.

  The post office had been nice, all original, polished wood and small town charm. This didn’t help alleviate the fact that as she walked back to the hotel, she still had no dog.

  The streetlights were on as she stepped onto the long stretch of walkway that led to the hotel. In the distance, beyond The Brant, she could see the near total darkness of the woods, the shadows that in her mind were swallowing up Bert as she watched.

  It made her want to scream.

  Chapter Twenty

  Victoria Brant replaced the bristle brush on the desk of her boudoir and looked at herself in the mirror. It felt odd, preparing for this meeting the same way a younger woman would to go see a gentleman suitor.

  She was not a younger woman, though.

  The bags under her eyes were not from lack of sleep. They’d just accumulated gradually over the years and never left, until the act of covering them with concealer felt as natural a part of waking up as brushing her teeth.

  Facing the world had become a production.

  It had been a long day, and reapplying her makeup and re-combing her hair was necessary for the walk she was about to take. Not only did she run the risk of running into guests or members of the community while she was on her way out, but she needed to look composed.

  This wasn’t makeup. It was war paint. She’d applied it with a heavier hand than usual, so that it could be noticed in only the moonlight, if that was what was required.

  It had taken over an hour to have not a single hair astray, not a single eyelash bent or broken, not a single wrinkle or dark mark not spackled over. Usually she would ask Daisy to help her with such an exhaustive effort but tonight she needed to do this alone. She needed silence to think.

  Whatever Daisy’s virtues, silence was not one of them. Even when she wasn’t talking, she liked talking. One of her favorite things was to use that whore-of-a-girl’s cell phone to send text messages to Claire. It had gotten so bad that she’d begun sending texts without letting Victoria read over them first, so she’d had to take the phone away.

  Victoria went to her closet and took down her boots. Using a tissue, she brushed off the fine layer of dust that had settled over them. It had been so long since she’d gone walking in the woods.

  Was she afraid? Had the fissure become that deep and wide that she’d relinquished every acre of forest over to the children? It saddened her to think of these questions, frightened her to think of her answers.

  Without Roy, they were outnumbered and without a guard dog.

  Sitting down to put on the boots, she reminded herself that weakness was a state of mind, that they were not playing a numbers game.

  Her feet had swollen throughout the day and the boots wouldn’t slip on. She unlaced the boots all the way down to the second loop, the leather and fabric tongue hanging loose.

  It had been a long time since she last looked at her feet critically. She seemed to have lost her ankles over the last few years. She weighed herself every day, and she’d only gained five pounds or so over the last decade. Victoria Brant wasn’t getting fat. Age was just melting her body down.

  Lacing up the boots, she wheezed with exertion as she pulled the stings tight. They hurt as she stood.

  “When I get back I’m going to cut these off with scissors,” she said. Talking to herself was not a habit, but it was not something that ashamed her. When praying, she was not addressing anyone in the room, so why should her mundane observations about her boots be any different?

  The thought reminded her to pray. She didn’t like the fact that she had to be prompted to pray. It should have been reflex.

  Walking into the bedroom, she drew the curtains, laid out her mat, scratched a symbol into the air in front of her, and prayed.

  Mouthing the words she knew so well, hymns that she had adapted, translated and added to herself, she could not get the image of Roy’s white chef’s outfit from her mind.

  In her mind it was no longer white, though, not purely. It was streaked with mud, dirt and blood.

  She couldn’t tell if the image was a vision or a hallucination, or if it made much of a difference either way.

  *

  Victoria Brant stood with the back door propped open, watching and listening to make sure that no one was in the parking lot. When she
felt comfortable enough, she walked in a straight line from the back door to the edge of the woods.

  She didn’t carry a compass or a cell phone. She didn’t own either. What she did carry was a pocket LED flashlight, the kind small enough to fit on a keychain.

  There were no keys around the ring so she looped it around her middle finger to keep a firm grip on the two-inch chrome tube.

  Every aspect of the woods felt foreign, even though she could still see the lights of the hotel behind her. That was her hotel and these used to be her woods.

  Strange shadows crept across the forest floor as she walked. She’d catch the occasional blue-green glow of a pair of eyes watching her from the darkness. The first pair had startled her, but it wasn’t animals that she was worried about.

  She wondered if she was being watched. There was no way that she wouldn’t hear any pursuers, but that didn’t mean that David did not have some of his people lying in wait, watching her from behind the trees.

  Patrick Dwyer knew that she was coming out here. He’d stopped by earlier this morning to deliver a box of groceries and hadn’t found anyone to deliver them to. Roy always took in the orders, talked with Patrick for a while. The two of them were friends in the way that loners get to be.

  “I don’t mean to be bothering you, Ms. Brant,” Patrick said after knocking on her office door.

  Victoria put down the envelope she was holding and motioned him inside. When he shut the door behind him she knew that what he had to say was community business. Also that it was probably not good news.

  “Did Roy call in sick this morning? Because he’s not in the kitchen.”

  Patrick had stayed with her while they figured out their next course of action. There had even been a moment while they were discussing the possibility that Roy was dead that Pat had put his hand on her shoulder.

  In retrospect, that was too informal a gesture, but she hadn’t brushed him away or reprimanded him.

  “I’m going to have to meet with him, alone.” Her own words came back to her now, seeming to echo through the night, bouncing off of trees and scaring birds from their roosts.