The Last Checkout

by Peter Besson

  They were the last of their kind. Survivors condemned to die.

  Two doors down from Ansel’s suite, behind a door unable to hold back the stink of alcohol, were Henry Barnett’s rooms. Henry had been drunk every waking hour of his adult life, and his body thanked him for it with bloating, ruptured blood vessels, and a nose bigger than a prizewinning Idaho potato. His main room resembled a liquor store, except here the bottles were empty, littering the floor and turning the simple journey from bed to bathroom into a perilous obstacle path promising twisted ankles and broken hips. Henry was an old-school drunk, a class act. Every morning he dressed in a suit, went to breakfast, drank it, dropped his glass when the first black-out of the day hit, then woke up drooling and confused before proceeding to the bar to replenish his perilously low blood-alcohol levels. He’d lost everything to drink. Wife, kids, job, respect, the will to go on—but he’d never lost the desire for one more, and he still had a fortune stashed away from when he’d been a hot-shot real estate developer. Now there was nothing left to do but see which would give out first, his liver or his bank account.

  Leah Dawson, across the hall, was a nymphomaniac. She had stopped aging sometime in her forties, either through sheer will or her immense sexual appetite, and now she prowled the Hotel Terminus nearly every night for new conquests. Her body, never fully clothed and invariably revealing smooth skin and ripe curves in surprising places, expressed itself to the fullest. It burst with desire, like a fruit at the tipping point of sweetness. Leah was expected to drop any day from sheer exhaustion, but she continued stalking the male occupants of the building with unflagging tenacity. She might have had a hand in the occasional death at the hotel: Old men, barely fit to climb a flight of stairs, would find themselves locked in place by her solid thighs, unable to escape given their feeble state, and so she would ride them mercilessly into paradise. Most died with hands clutched to their chests and smiles on their faces. It was rumored she’d been dropped off years ago by her husband in a shady sort of deal—bumbled paperwork, illegally signed affidavits, and money changing hands under the table, ending with Leah trapped in this Last Resort—and she’d been trying to make the most of her time here ever since.

  At the east corner of the building, Olga Petrovsky spent most of her days locked in her suite, a dazzling affair of crystal lamps and frescos, depicting scenes from Greek mythology, that stretched to the ceiling. She was the heiress of some vast Eastern European fortune built on the unglamorous business of toiletry items and the fanatical ambition of Russia in the greater expansion war of 2024; seems even soldiers about to die had to wipe their behinds with something. Everyone in the Hotel Terminus was damaged, of course, but Olga, she was… damaged. She used to be beautiful, a long time ago when she still cared about those things, but one day—perhaps after one too many advances by a man who saw nothing but her money or her body, blind to all but her outside appearance—she called it quits on life. The whole damn thing. Wanted nothing to do with it anymore. All her life she’d been defined solely by what she possessed, be it wealth or body, and now she needed to find out who she was without those things. So Olga started cutting herself. Superficially at first, criss-cross patterns across her thighs and arms that bled and stung, shifting the sensation of herself in new ways. But soon something inside her made her push harder on the blade, deeper, until metal bit into flesh with hot pain and she felt herself come undone in her own torment.

  Next, she began to cut parts off. A bit of flesh here, some skin here. Toes were an easy start; fingers followed—careful to keep enough function in her dominant hand to continue on her path of self-erasure—soon an ear, then larger chunks, and so, piece by piece, one cut at a time, Olga tried to vanish, to disappear her bodily self in order to discover what was left in the end.

  The suite next door to Ansel housed Chet Romer. A high-powered lawyer who had found heroin much more to his liking than boardroom meetings and judicial trials, Chet was in his forties, but the way he looked—all crumpled up like a raisin thanks to his ongoing love affair with Aunt Hazel—he could get the senior discount anywhere. The Hotel Terminus’ management had made a huge miscalculation with Romer. He was a seasoned junkie, way too experienced to overdose, and the all-inclusive package of the penthouse suites assured him an endless supply of smack, which he gratefully took advantage of. Death would have to wait until he’d had his fill, or the poppy fields of Afghanistan dried up entirely. Until then, he spent his time searching for the few veins that still managed to pump blood through his parched body—an ever-shrinking resource for Chet—and once he found one that hadn’t collapsed yet he flooded it with dose after dose of federally-guaranteed pure and potent heroin, eliminating the danger of ODing on street heroin cut with new, adventurous chemicals. Looked at this way, Chet might have been the only guest who’d checked in to live longer.

  Over the years, trapped inside their small slice of existence, the perms at the Hotel Terminus watched a near-endless stream of people enter the building and corpses leave it, as if they alone were stuck in slow motion while the rest of the world spun out of control. For whatever reason, they were unable to take the final step, to fulfill their end of the bargain they’d struck when they checked in. It wasn’t for fear of death. They had seen it, smelled it, tasted it too many times. After a number of years, even the question ‘will I die today?’ loses its bowel-loosening existential dread and turns into something more like ‘well, if I don’t kill myself before dinner, I could finish that book, or have one more martini, or squeeze in a round with Leah’—just another thing one does or doesn’t do, an activity quite easily picked up another day. Even death transforms into a routine, a rut, and since no one in the Hotel Terminus was allowed to leave for an extended time, life described ever closer circles, the people mere shadows of what they used to be, following a script no one had written for them. Every morning Ansel would catch Henry’s whiskey glass, in the afternoons Olga would draw blades across new shivering territory of her body, come evenings Leah would roam the hotel to track down new victims, and every night Romer would come teasingly close to an overdose without ever stepping over.

  And every day, at four fifteen in the afternoon, Huntley would put up the sign ‘Will return in 15 minutes,’ leave his concierge desk with measured steps, and take the elevator to the fifth floor. There, he would pause for a moment before the door to room 516. Then he would straighten and, disregarding the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, he’d slide his keycard into the lock and enter, gently letting the door fall closed behind him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NEW ARRIVAL

  Ooops. Almost missed the glass.

  Ansel caught it with his fingertips and put it back on Henry’s table. Henry—mouth wide open, drool on his lapel—threatened to topple off his chair. Ansel nudged him back into place, patted his shoulder, and lit another cigarette. On the way out of the dining room, he nodded at Huntley. Got an impeccably courteous nod back.

  Just another day.

  And, like every day, Ansel sensed himself at the threshold. An equilibrium of sorts. He could take it or leave it. Life, that is. Tea or coffee. Red wine or white. Left or right. Stay or go. It was all an existential shrug. A weariness that had settled in his bones. Nothing had mattered twelve years ago when he’d still thought it did, and nothing mattered today, and, like most days at about this time, he caught himself thinking, ‘Why not?’—and then, ‘Why not today?’—and he really didn’t have an answer.

  Ansel realized he was standing in his room, staring at the chandelier. He found himself in the same spot more and more often, lost in dark churning thoughts, not sure how he’d gotten here. The chandelier was a spectacular piece of crystal, a cascade of shimmering ice dropping from the ceiling like a frozen waterfall that had somehow managed to survive the last hundred-odd years to grace the suites of the upper floor. It was set high into a frieze molding, its air of sophisticated elegance betrayed only by the sturdy workman-like hook that replaced the cen
tral hanging crystal.

  Ansel selected the 1-3/4” from a collection of ropes hanging at the wall, snapped it briefly because he liked that sound, and began to competently tie a hangman’s noose. He double-checked the knot against the large diagram tacked to the wall, and, satisfied, stepped on a chair and fastened the rope to the hook.

  Ansel jumped off the chair and slowly walked around the contraption, admiring his handiwork. Morning light struck the chandelier and broke into a million little sun pieces, transforming the crystals into a coruscant miniature galaxy suspended in air. And in the middle of it all, the rope.

  The noose.

  Ansel stood, quiet.

  Again, he rummaged on the inside, trying to find anything sticky that would keep him here, that would prevent him from stepping on the chair, putting that noose around his neck, and then simply kicking off the chair. But, just as before, all Ansel could dredge up were dark things, painful things, and, down below, buried under all the misery and suffering, the deep sharp searing wound that would never heal, no matter how many times the sun set and rose, and would set and rise again until the end of days—regardless, the pain would still be there, changeless. His eternal companion.

  Unless…

  Ansel took one final drag on his cigarette. Really let the smoke burn his lungs.

  He exhaled. Blue haze all around him.

  One foot on the chair. Then the next. The feel of the rope, boiled and stretched to eliminate recoil. He slid the noose around his head. Settled the knot behind his neck, off to the side a bit, hoping the chair would be high enough so the fall would break his neck first and spare him the agony of being strangled slowly.

  Ansel pulled a necklace from his collar. A filigreed golden V dangled at the end of it. He caressed it, kissed it, and let it fall back on his chest.

  He was ready.

  Now.

  This was the—

  Behind him, the door to his suite swung open with a bang.

  “Jesus.” Ansel almost lost his footing but caught himself at the last moment. “Christ.” He turned his head clumsily, aware of the danger of a misstep, but he only caught a glimpse of what was behind him out of the corner of his eye.

  A young woman stood frozen in the doorway. She was somewhere in her twenties, still delicately gawky in the all-elbows-and-knees way, wearing a tight red dress with a handbag slung around her shoulder, and carrying a small suitcase. Caught in mid-step, she hesitated, as if trying to decide what the proper decorum might be for interrupting a man on a chair with a rope around his neck.

  “Hello?” Ansel spun around awkwardly. His balance on the chair, not good to begin with, turned precarious.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “This must be the wrong—I have…” Her voice. Like velvet.

  “What…” Ansel contorted some more. It wasn’t easy with the rope and the chair and the chandelier and—too far. His foot slipped. The rest of Ansel followed. He tumbled off the chair, but the rope caught, tightening around his neck.

  “Gggnnnngnn!”

  “Oh my.” The girl gawked.

  With the momentum from the turn and the slip, Ansel began to swing from side to side. His hands grabbed frantically at his throat, trying to loosen that damn rope. He kicked his feet and the swinging increased. The more he fought, the worse it got, until it looked like he was performing a peculiar high wire act.

  Ansel panicked. He couldn’t go like this. He wanted to see—no, he had to see, before he blacked out, who that person with the angelic voice was. That apparition of beauty—well, as far as he was able to tell, she was beautiful. With her face swaying wildly back and forth, in and out of focus, growing fuzzy around the edges, it was hard to tell. Shadows crept into his field of vision, constricting it to a tunnel. He was passing out.

  “Oh, oh no,” that blurry darkening angel said.

  Ansel slowly turned blue in the face.

  No… air…

  He wriggled, he kicked, he writhed and thrashed and chink … The chandelier detached from the ceiling with a noise that was almost dainty, especially coming from something so impressively large.

  “GnnnooHHH!” Ansel found air to breathe again, right before the whole damn chandelier—elaborate metal frame construction and thousands of slivers of shining crystal, all of it—came crashing down, shattering on the concrete floor into a blinding shower of glittering sunlight.

  “Oh no,” she gasped, hands covering her mouth.

  Ansel flailed and squirmed in the broken glass like a man drowning in diamonds, trying to get that rope off his neck. When he finally did, he hurled it far off into the corner. He hacked and spit, drawing huge breaths, but there wasn’t enough oxygen in the entire room.

  “Oh no. Are you all right?”

  Ansel massaged his neck. A deep, red welt coiled around his throat. “I’m—What in the—” He coughed. “Who are you?”

  Behind the woman, a porter appeared, carrying two more large suitcases. He was a big, round Mexican-American, huffing from all the extra weight—his, mostly. “No no. Wrong room, miss. Your room.” He nodded down the hallway. “Down there.”

  “I’m so sorry. I was…” She looked at the door. Her keycard. The door number. Her keycard again. And then down the hall. “I must have… The door was… I didn’t…”

  “You did,” Ansel said. “What you didn’t do is see the sign.” He pointed to the tag on his doorknob: ‘Do Not Disturb—Checking Out.’

  “Sign always on door, señor,” the porter said.

  “Well, Manolo, this time I meant it.” Ansel sounded almost hurt, like a five-year-old caught telling a fib. He groaned and picked himself off the floor, brushing glass and dust off his shirt.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Ansel waved her off. “Ah. This place is a dump.” The blurry edges around his vision receded, the black stars gradually winking out, so Ansel finally got a good look at the intruder—or should he think of her as his savior? Teary-eyed from strangulation, he blinked at her, and still, even without the heightened awareness of near death, she made his mind stumble. He knew he was staring, but the image of her in the doorway stirred an echo, and a shard of pain dislodged from his heart. She might have been young, but judging from the delicate wrinkles etched around her mouth, and the furrow between her brows, she’d done more than her fair share of living. Ansel had to tear his eyes away from her, force them somewhere else. He looked around, at the sea of broken glass he stood in the middle of, then up, as if expecting the chandelier to be there, but it wasn’t. Just a large hole ripped out of the ceiling.

  “So much for hanging,” he said.

  The porter, ever so helpful, dropped the suitcases, reached into his back pocket, drew out a pistol, and held it out for Ansel. “If you want to…” He shrugged. “You know.”

  Ansel looked from the gun to the woman standing in his doorway.

  “Oh… Thanks. But I have… it’s the…” Ansel pointed vaguely to his head, the chandelier, who knows what exactly.

  The porter aimed the gun at Ansel’s head. “I can do this.”

  Ansel flinched, holding up a hand. “Thanks, Manolo. But maybe…” Ansel glanced at the girl. “…Maybe some other time.”

  “However you need, Mr. Ansel.” The porter shrugged, stuck the gun into the back of his pants, and picked up the suitcases. “I show you room, miss.”

  “Thank you.” She hesitated. “Right. So… I’m so sorry. Again.”

  “Oh. Well.” Ansel waved her off with a gesture that seemed to say, ‘No worries, I hang myself every day.’

  An awkward moment. Ansel and the young lady looked and didn’t look at each other. Uncertain what good manners required in case of interrupted suicide—move closer? Move back? Shake hands? Wave? Laugh?—they started and stopped in what appeared to be the shy dance of two social phobia sufferers trapped in an elevator together. Eventually, realizing the impasse, she backed out of the room, leaving Ansel sta
nding amid the destruction.

  He felt rooted to the spot, unable to move. Emotions he had thought long dead tumbled inside, one chasing another, each more contradictory than the last. Before he drowned in turmoil, Ansel jerked himself back to reality. He rushed to the door and stuck his head out.

  At the other end of the hallway, Manolo the porter opened the door for the young lady. She turned and glanced back. Their eyes met.

  “What’s your name?” Ansel called out.

  “I won’t be here that long.” She shook her head, smiled shyly, mouthed ‘Bye’ and disappeared into her room.

  Ansel lingered in his doorway, staring down the hall. He replayed what had just happened in his head. The vision of a beautiful young lady, a red dress, the blurry mirage of an angel just in time to rescue him—even though most of it wasn’t true. The corroded ceiling had simply given way, spilling him to the ground in a shower of glass, delaying his death by a day.

  He closed the door.

  A moment later, the door opened again, and Ansel’s hand removed the ‘Do Not Disturb—Checking Out’ sign.

  ***

  She had no idea why she hadn’t told the man down the hall her name. Come to think of it, ‘I won’t be here that long’ takes longer to say than ‘Nikki Forlan.’ And just because she planned on rebooting in the next few days didn’t mean she should forget about politeness or common courtesy. Death didn’t render everything that came before it meaningless. Or did it? Didn’t it all amount to a big fat zero when tallied up in the end? There wasn’t a single thing one could hold on to, nothing one could point to and say, ‘this is it, this will mean something,’ because the universe was one enormous swirling cycle of change where nothing was fixed, everything moved and transformed and metamorphosed, and trying to find meaning was as hopeless as trying to grasp smoke. It was enough to drive anyone who thought about it too long bonkers, run for a bottle, or go ahead and flip the switch already.