Hotel Angeline

by Kathleen Alcalá

  “Bunker?” asked Alexis.

  “Last stand! Nobody gets in! Nobody gets out!”

  “Otto, it’s me,” Alexis muttered.

  “He may think we’re in Berlin,” whispered Mr. Kenji, “but everyone’s on edge since the break-in.”

  “Break-in?”

  “Spies! Infidels!” Otto called.

  “Curse you, Otto, get back up here!” Ursula called from somewhere upstairs.

  “Have the police been back?” asked Alexis.

  “No,” said Mr. Kenji.

  “Then who was here?”

  Deaf Donald passed them, brandishing Ursula’s pirate broadsword and wearing what was possibly a pair of women’s leggings as a headband.

  “Ursula’s been advising us on defensive attire,” said Roberta.

  “OK,” Alexis muttered, now noticing that Roberta had various kitchen utensils stuffed into the wide elastic waistband of her jersey skirt, “You are going to tell me what is happening here. Now. And I don’t want to hear about Berlin, or anything else. Tell me.”

  “We’ll show you,” said Mr. Kenji. He dragged the chair back in front of the door and then headed upstairs. Roberta followed, then Alexis.

  “Watch out for the trip wire,” Kenji advised as they neared the top step. Alexis saw a line of pink knitting yarn stretched across the staircase. It wrapped around the banister and led up to the ceiling, where hung the tiny silver creamer.

  “Hey,” said Alexis.

  “Brilliant, right?” said Roberta.

  “Ready to pour a point-five percent solution of sulfuric acid on any intruder,” added Mr. Kenji.

  “I don’t even want to ask,” said Alexis.

  “When the koi die, I can’t bear to flush them. Dissolution is better for the environment.”

  Alexis looked at him, and decided, quickly, to let whatever that meant go.

  “Ow, dammit, hurry up!” Ursula called.

  They stepped over the trip wire and turned the corner to find the old pirate hanging upside down from the ceiling, her peg leg poking through the retracted attic staircase, which hung partially open.

  “Who would have thought those springs were strong enough to suspend a person,” mused Mr. Kenji.

  Otto and Deaf Donald stood to either side of Ursula, yanking on her thighs.

  “How did this happen?” asked Alexis.

  “We were all watching the news downstairs,” said Ursula, her voice strained from her blood-filled head. “If it wasn’t for Deaf Donald hearing the intruder, we probably never would have known.”

  “Deaf Donald,” Alexis repeated.

  “He felt the vibrations in the floor—footsteps, coming up from the basement. We figure he got in through a basement window.”

  Alexis looked at Donald. “Nice work.”

  He smiled.

  “We mustered arms and headed upstairs, where we found him trying to break into LJ’s room.”

  “I tried to drop the attic door on him,” said Otto, still yanking at Ursula’s impaled leg, “but it missed.”

  “And my roundhouse missed, too,” said Ursula. Though upside down, she reached and massaged her lower back. “It’s been a long time since those jujitsu classes.”

  “Three decades,” said Roberta disapprovingly.

  “OK, but so he didn’t get in?” Alexis was already moving past the residents.

  “No, but he got out the front door before we could catch him. That’s why we’re on lockdown.”

  “I ordered them to raise the flag so all would know the danger of entry!” Ursula gasped, her face a bloated beet.

  “Never!” Otto cried, simultaneously yanking viciously on Ursula’s leg.

  There was a splintering crack and Ursula toppled to the floor.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” Alexis asked.

  “Well, not a good one,” said Mr. Kenji.

  “He was a man,” said Roberta, “Pluto always twitches around men, and he was sure twitchy.”

  “Anything else?” asked Alexis.

  The residents looked at one another.

  “He was damn fast,” said Ursula.

  “Or maybe your kick was slow as Log Cabin maple syrup,” chided Roberta.

  “You—”

  “OK, great,” said Alexis. Her mind was spinning. So, it wasn’t just the police now. Someone else was after LJ’s information. Her mom’s body was safely out of the hotel; now she had to figure out what LJ had left for her on the disc. Maybe it would make her world make sense again.

  Or you could just run, she thought again, remembering that urge, thinking about Mexico . . . but as she looked from one odd face to the next, she realized that wasn’t, and had never been, an option. These residents were trying to defend what was theirs, and what was hers, too.

  “Listen, you guys did great,” said Alexis, and she watched as these words ignited smiles around the group. “I want you to keep it up. I will be right back. But if the police do come, let them in. Nobody else. Defend the bunker.”

  “Achtung!” Otto exclaimed.

  “Mr. Kenji, I need to borrow your Discman.”

  Mr. Kenji’s face lit up. “Do you need any of my mix CDs? Polynesian Disco Funk? It’s great for self-reflection. I invented the genre—”

  “No, thanks. Another time. I just need the player.”

  Alexis ran upstairs to her room and grabbed the Gone With the Wind movie case before Mr. Kenji was back with the Discman. She left out the back door, the CD and the player in her bag. She needed to find somewhere safe to listen to the disc, and until she knew what LJ had left her, she couldn’t have any run-ins with the police.

  The undersides of the evening clouds were gathering twilight, but the sun had lowered below that ceiling, orange beams splaying across the tops of buildings. As Alexis headed away from the hotel, one such beam lit the tower atop a nearby landmark—Saint Ignatius chapel at Seattle University. Her mother had taken her there often, to sit in the calming silence.

  There was no longer a voice in her head, but she wondered at those sunbeams, guiding her, and wondered if her mother’s spirit, now a part of the oceans and the universe beyond, were reaching out to subtly guide her. Probably not, but it was a nice thing to believe.

  She’d go with it.

  CHAPTER 21

  KIT BAKKE

  AS ALEXIS SAT IN THE gloaming light, LJ shouted in a stagy, hysterical voice from the spinning disc: “Good people of the world, if there are any of you left, which I am beginning to doubt, unite! Please! You have nothing to lose but your infantile fantasies. There is no Man Upstairs who will make everything come out right. It won’t happen! God has left the building. The Fascists have taken over and will see you rot in Hell. Fight back! Confront the Truth! Reality will set you freeeeee.”

  LJ went on like this for way too long. Alexis couldn’t quite follow the thread of his argument, if that’s what it was. He clearly was giving a speech, as if to fire up millions of misguided masses. What a crock he is, she thought, but what a sweetie, too. Then she remembered her last sight of him, lying all bloody and burned on the Fremont curb, and her tears came more freely than his stream-of-consciousness conspiracy theories ever had.

  She blew her nose and tuned back to his words, now turned down a couple decibels.

  “I gotta tell you something, kiddo. This is about your dad. He was the best man, the best. Well, Mao was really the best, but he was in China. Busy freeing a billion Chinese from the running-dog reactionaries. Mao was a poet, too. A poet and a genius. God I wish I’d gotten to China in the old days. What a rush! Red flags everywhere. My Little Red Book’s still around here somewhere.” Alexis heard some rustling and then some screechy sounds. “Damn, wish I knew how to play this!” Then more silence and then she heard LJ clearing his throat.

  “Poem by LJ. Title: The Revolution Cometh.

  Red Sun Rises

  Orange Flames Lick the Sky

  Stormy Waters Raging Below

  Feed the People’s Ri
ghteous Wrath!

  Victory Is Ours! Venceramos!”

  Alexis felt the tears start again, but worked to keep her attention on LJ’s voice. It was a shaky lifeline, but it was all she had. “Come on, LJ, pull it together. What about my dad?”

  More screechy sounds, then LJ intoned, “Which came first, the omelet or the egg? Shit, it’s time for the Truth. People, get ready. A Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with the Sweep of a Single Broom. I loved your dad, Alexis, and your mom made me promise never to tell you about him. But now’s the time. Break an egg, break a promise. The Revolutionary Life is never easy. It ain’t over till the fat lady gives her cake to the Starving Serfs.”

  Alexis heard him take a deep breath, some more rustling sounds, a short silence, and then a crash. “Never get that tree pose right!”

  “Come on, LJ!” Alexis was getting exasperated, but immediately felt guilty. How bad is it to be exasperated at a dead person? She was even feeling a tiny bit angry at her mom. All this breaking news was overwhelming. She felt a little sick to her stomach.

  “OK, kiddo, here it is. The Truth, man, and nothing but. Maybe the only time in the History of Man, I mean . . . People. Truth ain’t as easy as it sounds. Your dad and me, we were comrades. He was always better than me, but we were a team. I learned a lot from him, but not enough, not enough. You, Alexis, you are so like him, it knocks me out. All the good parts of him are right there, in you. And you’re a girl, too. It’s spooky sometimes. Like I’m here to protect your back—the way I didn’t protect your dad’s.

  “We were into a very big action. Stun the Man, that was the plan. We were the fifth column, working from inside. We were going to bring down all the evil forces of Imperialism. TKO. Out in one. Buried so far in the heap of History that nothing could revive it. Capitalism dead! Exploitation a faint memory! We were saving the world!

  “Your dad took a lot of the risk on himself. I can’t tell you the whole scoop, ’cause then I’d have to kill you.” Alexis heard him cough and cackle—his version of a laugh. “But imagine the most devastating blow to the Capitalist, Imperialist running dogs and their lackeys you can possibly conceive of, and that’s exactly what we were doing. Ten times over. It was totally cool.

  “So there’s your dad, leading the way. We were in the prep phase, doing dry runs, weapons practice, collecting fake IDs, safe houses, getaway cars, learning the routes. Partying, too. That was always in the mix. Drugs, sex—FBI, CIA, they trained themselves to tolerate rock ’n’ roll, but never the drugs or sex. Against their stupid rules, but it worked in our favor. They couldn’t infiltrate us. Brilliant, if I do say so myself. By the way, kiddo, watch out for that J. Edgar Hoover—people think he’s dead, but he’s not. He’s a Cylon.

  “Anyway, I’m avoiding the hard part, chica. Don’t want to tell you about this. Where I let him down. Big-time. But I can do this. . . . So he had a weapons run to make. Stolen car. Car full of shit. The plan was to make the drop-off and then ditch the car. Done it a hundred times before. Well, maybe not a hundred. Gotta stick to the truth, promises . . .” His voice faded off a little and Alexis had to strain to hear.

  “The drop-off went fine, but the ditching, oh God, the ditching was the big fuck-up. The plan was for him to drive the car onto the ferry and go right off the other end, into the water. I’d pick him up in the Duck Boat. I had a part-time job driving the tourists around in a Duck Boat. But I screwed up. Oh man, I screwed up big-time.” Alexis heard him take a big gulping breath. “I forgot if he was going off the Bainbridge or the Bremerton ferry and ended up driving the damn Duck Boat around between both docks. It was dark. I . . . I don’t know, kiddo, I don’t know.” Alexis could hear him sobbing. “I think I ran over him.”

  Now Alexis was sobbing, too. For about five minutes she’d had a dad, and now she didn’t again. And he was a good guy, too, cool and brave. Damn LJ—damn him for being an idiot and damn him for telling her. Damn the whole fucking world. God, life was unfair. Hers in particular. What a mess.

  “So now you’ve heard the worst,” LJ was whispering now. “I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to make up for it. The worst mistake of my life. My best bud. My comrade in arms. I’m nothing like him. Not even close, Alexis. I’ve tried. Mao knows I’ve tried. I’ve spent years on this bridge project. Trying to make up. Trying to keep the revolutionary fires burning. In your dad’s name and the names of all the oppressed and fighting peoples of the world.”

  LJ sounded as if he were trying to wind himself back up. He went on muttering about selfless communism, the interests of the masses and the evils of capitalism, but all the capital letters and exclamation points were gone from his voice. Then Alexis heard the screeching sounds again.

  “Damn. Wish I’d learned to play this. The least I could have done.”

  The screeching stopped and she heard some plucking sounds and LJ’s voice, for the last time, “maybe I can make it work like a guitar.”

  CHAPTER 22

  JULIA QUINN

  ALEXIS DIDN’T MOVE. THE DISCMAN clicked off, and she didn’t move. She just sat there, trying to digest what she’d just heard.

  LJ had killed her dad. Not on purpose, but still. And the crazy thing was, she wasn’t even mad at him. How could you not be mad at someone who killed your father?

  Maybe because that person had spent years trying to be a father to her. It all made sense now. Well, maybe not sense. Nothing LJ did made sense. It was kind of what made him LJ. But he had always been there for her. Even just the other night, when he’d helped her to find clothes to wear to see her uncle at the Sorrento. He’d been there for her.

  Alexis pulled the headphones off and rubbed her ears. She looked up at the tree. There was a tree in the middle of the chapel. What was up with that? It was totally in the wrong place. She supposed some thoughtful New Age yoga-type person thought it would be cool to stick a tree in the middle of a chapel, but to Alexis it was just wrong. It should be outside. How was a tree supposed to live on its own?

  She stood up, making her way slowly back outside. She was just like that tree. She needed help.

  Linda’s stepdad. He hated her. No, he more than hated her, but she had nowhere else to turn. He was the only lawyer she knew, and she had a pretty good feeling she needed a lawyer.

  She started walking toward the bus stop, then stopped. The papers. The ones she’d found in her mom’s room about the hotel. She needed to go get them. If Linda’s stepdad was going to help her save the hotel (and that was a big if) she was going to need those papers.

  When she got back to the hotel, everyone was still up in the hallway. Ursula was waving a plunger at Mr. Kenji, and Otto was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, with Habib on his head.

  No one seemed to find any of this the least bit odd. Alexis had to stop and smile, because she didn’t either.

  “What are you doing back?” Donald yelled. He was trying to wrestle the plunger from Ursula before she accidentally took out Mr. Kenji’s eye.

  “I forgot something,” Alexis said. “Forget you saw me.”

  “Forgotten!” Otto said with a salute. “I can keep secrets, you know.”

  Alexis gave him a thumbs-up and ran to her room, where she’d stashed the papers. She took one look at them, as if she needed reminding that lawyers did not write in English, and shoved them in her bag.

  Then she ran back out, barely pausing to say good-bye. She needed to get to Linda’s apartment. Fast.

  “Alexis?” Linda gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  Alexis tried to smile. Well, maybe not smile, but some kind of expression that conveyed something other than panic. Linda did not look happy to see her. Alexis once again gave silent thanks to the random person who’d held the front door open for her when she’d arrived at Linda’s apartment building. She had a feeling that if she’d buzzed up, Linda would not have let her in.

  “I need to talk to your stepdad,” Alexis said.

  “Are you crazy? He hates you.”<
br />
  “I know that. But I need a lawyer.”

  Linda just stared at her.

  “What about your mom? She likes me, kind of.”

  “She’s out of town.”

  Alexis lost it. “I witnessed an explosion, I just found out that my dad was run over by a duck, someone broke into LJ’s room, and my uncle is trying to steal the hotel. Oh, and I un-faked my mom’s death and enlisted your help to hide the body.”

  “You un—”

  “Whatever the hell you call the opposite of faking your death. Please, Linda, I need help.”

  “OK.” Linda swallowed and slowly opened the door to Alexis. She looked younger all of a sudden, and Alexis wondered how much of her tough-guy personality was an act. Linda looked furtively over her shoulder. “Just don’t tell him—”

  “Don’t worry,” Alexis assured her impatiently. “I won’t say a word.”

  Linda gave a jerky nod and finally opened the door all the way. “Kenneth!” she called out, then cleared her throat. She said it louder. “Kenneth!”

  “I’m in the living room! What is it?”

  “Uhh . . . you know my friend Alexis?”

  There was a long silence. “Yes?”

  Linda grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down the hall to the living room. When they could see the back of Kenneth’s head, she said, “She’s here.”

  Still Kenneth didn’t turn around. He just stared at the TV, which was flickering some cop show Alexis didn’t know. “Why?” he finally asked.

  Alexis thought maybe it was time she spoke for herself. “I need help.”

  Slowly, Kenneth twisted around. Alexis could see that he was holding a drink in his hand. “What do you need?” he asked, but he didn’t really sound like he cared.

  Alexis took a deep breath. People like Kenneth Whatever-the-Hell-His-Last-Name-Was-Because-It-Wasn’t-the-Same-As-Linda’s always made her nervous. Maybe it was the suit. Or the way his dark hair was so neatly trimmed and combed. He was too polished. He was the Man.

  Alexis fought an extremely ill-timed giggle. What would LJ say?