by Peter Besson
“Do you know why I don’t check anybody into room 516? Why I haven’t for the past nine years?”
The man pulled a face at Huntley. Who gave a shit? He’d just told the bastard that the love of his life had been raped and cut up right there in front of them.
“There used to be a young lady checked into that room,” Huntley continued, undeterred. “A wonderful, radiant, beautiful young woman. Alena. She had her heart broken. Some foolish escapade or other with a man. Immaterial. Fleeting. A trifle, really. But she thought she couldn’t go on. So she checked into the hotel. Had enough of it all and here was her answer, in that building with the big bold neon letters. Terminus. The end.” Huntley regarded the razor in his hand, the moonlight shimmering blue-cold on the steel, the simple craftsmanship of the blade. “Now the problem was, she was just young. So young. Didn’t know any better. Made a rash decision, then came to regret it. But that didn’t matter. Not to the system.”
Huntley sat on his haunches by the man’s side. “I even took it upon myself to talk to Mr. Gallagher. Determine if there was a way out for the young lady. If there was something… anything that could be arranged. She was simply confused. She actually wanted to live. But there was no give in the rules. You check in, you give away your life. A done deal. All that’s left now is the actual dying, whenever it will happen. But happen it will.” He paused for a moment. If he closed his eyes, he could still see her: Alena. So young. So exuberant. Glowing with life. And the clinging. The holding on. And then, in a wash of red, the sigh…
Huntley shook his head. Cleared his throat. “With the money gone, the young lady didn’t have a choice but to check out. But much like you, she didn’t have the nerve to go through with it. So it fell to me.”
A quick flash of metal. The man looked stunned. He couldn’t believe the amount of blood gushing from his neck where Huntley had slashed it. Right through the carotid artery. And on the side opposite Huntley, so he wouldn’t be spattered with it. The man tried to hold the blood in, but it just gurgled through his fingers.
“You see, I don’t get pleasure from ending lives,” Huntley said. “Mostly, I feel nothing. Not because I don’t care, but because I imagine myself in the role of the facilitator. I end misery and pain. I provide the resolve where there is none.” Disbelief in his eyes, the man toppled over, his life bleeding out around him onto the floor while Huntley continued speaking. “I want to believe that, in the end, I make things better. For everybody. With the exception of the girl in room 516. She made a mistake. And it cost her her life. The only death I regret.”
Huntley took out a handkerchief and meticulously wiped the streaks of blood from his razor. The man bubbled his last breath.
“With you, sir, I believe I helped you end a long spell of suffering. May your next life be better.”
Huntley closed the man’s glassy eyes and, without another look back at the body soaking in a lake of blood, left the room.
***
A crimson sun struggled up from the horizon, searing hot through layers of smog and pollution to burn off the remnants of last night’s deluge. Steam rose from the streets and wrapped the downtown in gauze, leaving only the taller buildings sticking out of the mist. Concrete blocks floating in a sea of rose-colored ether—the relentless destruction of the planet brought with it an unexpected beauty.
Ansel stood on the balcony and added to the foulness of the city by blowing the smoke of his first cigarette of the day into the warm air. Like so many other mornings, he was surprised to find that, buried deep under the accumulated debris of a lifetime’s worth of hurt and regret, gratitude at still being alive stirred, bashful, as if afraid to call attention to itself. It hadn’t been suffocated after all those years, but Ansel also knew it would eventually fade into the background, crushed again and again by the sheer weight of what had been piled on top of it.
There was a moan behind him. Ansel glanced over his shoulder.
Nikki. She lay in her bed, in her underwear, where she’d passed out in the process of dragging Ansel to bed. From the looks of her, she was battling a massive headache, and the headache was winning.
Ansel stubbed his cigarette out against the windowpane.
“That how you treat other people’s property?” Nikki’s voice sounded like she’d taken a file to her vocal cords last night.
“What do I care?” Ansel said. “I’m suicidal.”
Nikki tried to smile, but that called for more exertion than she had energy for. And if those goddamn midgets would only take a break from jackhammering her skull on the inside, she might feel better. Just keeping her eyes open required an almost superhuman effort. As she shut them against the barbarous assault of daylight, she caught sight of Ansel heading for the door. “Wait, what?” She sat up, suddenly wide awake. “Where are you going?”
Ansel paused, perplexed at the question. He’d left his room every morning for as long as he could remember, without having to justify doing so. And, since checking in, he hadn’t given thought to a single day past breakfast. It was nonsensical to plan anything if you might off yourself right after morning coffee. He frowned. “I don’t know. I’m gonna walk around, I guess. Breathe some. Think about checking out. Come close to doing it. Then maybe another young woman will burst in and bungle things up for me. Who knows. I’m fresh out of chandeliers, though.” If he was honest with himself, though, he knew what he wanted to do right now: leave. Give her space to think. To come to terms with what lay ahead for her. To do—
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “When I do it.”
That was it. That’s what he didn’t want. The one thing out of a bazillion possible things: another death. Another responsibility. More entanglement. Just when he was ready to cut all ties, to step off the chair for good.
“In the end, that’s what we all are,” Ansel said. “Alone.” He forced himself say the next part. “Good luck.”
“You’re an ass.”
“I know.” He opened the door.
“Why’d you stay the night then?” Nikki said.
“Too lazy to get to my room.”
“Not just an ass. A real dick.” She struggled to get up, clutching the sheet to her chest. “It’s been nice knowing you, Ansel Grayson.” She was wobbly on her feet, trying to get her bearings. “No, hang on. I left out a word. Not.” She fought with tears. Half-naked, brutally hung-over, and so dead alone she could physically feel thick walls all around her, locking her in. Invisible, but no less real for her. Crushing in on her.
“I lied.” Ansel shook his head. “Well, not really. I am lazy.” How much was he willing to share of himself? He felt that pain moving around inside, the great beast that had slumbered for so long. Still, he said, “I stayed because I wanted to make sure you’d wake up.”
And closed the door behind him.
***
Ansel never missed breakfast. The routine had established itself over the last decade, and it gave Ansel an opportunity to reflect, a chance to wonder if today would be the day he would fulfill the contract he had with Hotel Terminus that required he’d leave only as a corpse. Sitting at his table, eating between taking drags of his cigarette, the morning light a blue haze around him, Ansel found himself musing what type of self-destruction he would choose. Would it be the razor? A bath with a toaster? What would electricity feel like as it burned its path through your body? Would he simply step through the trapdoor on the balcony and enjoy the three-point-five seconds of weightlessness it took for him to hit the concrete splat-pad twenty stories below? Or would it be as simple as getting the house gun next to the Bible and punching a hole in his skull?
And inevitably, thoughts about ending it all woke the pain from its slumber. He tried to shut it down, appease it with the belief that ‘it’ll all be over soon,’ but the pain, once woken, moved restlessly, settled in his heart and broke open old scars. Those scars that should have healed years ago but that, on some days, when Ansel lay on the
ground, wincing, curled into a tight ball of agony, were as fresh as though everything had happened only yesterday.
And now, as Ansel sat at the table, fork and cigarette in hand, holding his breath, waiting, waiting for the pain to twist around his heart, he thought of her. She was never far from him; he caught glimpses of her everywhere, when he least expected it. Twelve years of forgetting; twelve years of not being able to forget. Then, last night, he’d seen a small piece of her again. The way Nikki had tucked a strand of hair behind her ear at the bar… in her room, laughing, hanging on to Ansel as they slow-danced to too-fast music… it had reminded Ansel of the way she used to absentmindedly put her hair behind her ear, not realizing Ansel was watching her, mesmerized by the gesture that held so much grace, such delicacy…
That day on the beach.
He remembered the sun hanging low on the horizon, barely skimming the ocean surface.
She sat next to him, hugging her knees against the wind whipping inland.
For the thousandth time that day he thought he would love nothing more than to halt time at this precise moment—she could never be more perfect than right now, next to him on the beach, cold from her morning swim but refusing to dry off. She tucked that untamed tangle of black hair behind her ear and Ansel blinked, in awe at the spectacle of nature and beauty and how it was all right there in front of him…
Ansel remembered to breathe. He stubbed his cigarette out in the half-eaten breakfast, stood up, and surveyed the murky room. There was Henry, the drunk, about to pass out. Olga, sporting a bandage around her hand, the blood soaking into a Rorschach of pain; she must have cut off one of her few remaining fingers the night before. Romer, pale, his trembling hands making a coffee cup rattle softly on the saucer.
Ansel nodded his greetings and, on the way out of the dining room, casually caught Henry’s whiskey glass just before it hit the floor.
***
“Dad!”
Ansel stopped dead in the hallway.
In the elevator, all the way up to the twentieth floor, he’d been trying to get the sound of crashing waves out of his head. The blinding sun, the sand on his skin, the scent of her… he’d been caught in another endless loop of fragmented memories he was powerless to stop, but now, Nikki’s voice snapped him back to the present.
“Hey!”
Her door at the end of the hall was open, leaking sounds of shuffling feet and labored breathing, a sense of bodies wrestling for control.
“No!” She sounded angry, but also helpless. Resigned. “I didn’t want you to… get your hands… Dad!” Well, the anger was back with full force.
Ansel could simply take a step to the right; his door was so close. He played with the idea of slipping into his suite, closing the door behind him and then…
Then what? What would he do? Check out? Finally? Could he really kill himself without knowing if Nikki needed, or even wanted, his help?
He stood in the hall, half-turned toward his door, but unable to move. What if she was truly in danger?
“Help! Somebody! Hel—”
Her screaming was cut off as if someone had put a hand over her mouth.
That did it.
Fine, Ansel thought. I’ll get involved.
A hulking brute held Nikki in a viselike grip, one meaty hand clamped over half her face. She was wailing, squirming, hitting, flailing, but that clod of a man was made out of concrete. She kicked his shin repeatedly, but that did as much good as kicking the wall. No give. Another man—a well-put-together older man in a tailored suit, with smooth, rich skin and impeccable salt-and-pepper hair—carelessly threw Nikki’s few belongings in her suitcase.
“Stop it, dad.”
Douglas Forlan III didn’t stop it. He didn’t usually listen to anyone else, and he wouldn’t start today with his irrational, hormonal daughter who needed to get her shit sorted out once and for all. He flung the last bit of clothing in a suitcase and slammed it shut. He was about to motion to Tom, the mountain of flesh that was his bodyguard, to take his daughter and the suitcases away, when he happened to glance at the picture on the nightstand—the picture of Nikki in her ice-skating costume, holding a trophy. The picture of bliss.
Douglas Forlan III did stop now. He remembered that day as if it were yesterday. It was yesterday. Where had that girl gone, the girl who had flung her arms around her dad’s neck and held on, never wanting to let him go? All that happiness ready to burst inside of her? She was here, in a Last Resort, and he was forcing her to come with him so she wouldn’t—he couldn’t force himself to complete the thought. No, she wouldn’t. Not while he drew breath.
“Anything I can help you with?” Ansel said.
Everything stopped. Nikki, her father, and Tom, the bodyguard, all turned their heads at once, as if asked to pose for a picture. This was a family affair, and an intrusion was about as welcome as a traveling shoe salesman.
Ansel stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, surveying the scene. It was a tableau of grief and desperation. Ansel was a bit fuzzy as to how that big lumbering clod with his arms locked around Nikki fit in, but it seemed clear enough that daddy had come to rescue his little girl.
“Who the hell are you?” Douglas snapped.
“I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”
Douglas threw Nikki a look that said it all. Another one of those. Drugs, or sex, or both.
“Okay, ‘friend.’ How about you mind your own business?”
“That’s not the sort of guy I am,” Ansel said.
“Let me help you with that then.” Douglas nodded at Tom, who deposited Nikki to the side like a doll.
“I’m good, thanks anyway.” Ansel waved him off. “But if you—”
Wham! He found himself slammed face-first against the wall, one arm twisted behind his back, way way up so it really hurt. If Tom did any more twisting, Ansel was sure his arm would pop out like a turkey leg. “Ouch! What the—”
“Zip it if you want to keep the arm,” Tom said and yanked Ansel toward the door. “Thanks for stopping by.” He was about to toss Ansel out of the room when he found his path blocked by Huntley, who casually stepped into the doorway. Only the slightest lift of his right eyebrow gave any indication he might be encountering anything out of the ordinary, or that he was annoyed. Possibly both. “May I be of any assistance?”
“If you don’t mind moving.” Tom tried pushing Ansel past Huntley, but he wouldn’t budge. Only the eyebrow went up one more millimeter.
“Get out of the way if you know what’s good for you,” Douglas said.
Huntley did a rapid mental check of the situation: Ansel in an armlock by that big but slow heap of meat. A well-dressed man, too soft to pose any danger, holding Ms. Forlan’s arm tightly while gathering up her suitcases. “In case there was some confusion at Ms. Forlan’s check-in, or if the rules, carefully explained to you, weren’t properly appreciated at the time, might I explain them in detail to the present company? That way we can clear up whatever misunderstanding may have caused this little tiff.”
“It’s not a ‘tiff’ yet,” Douglas hissed through clenched teeth. “But if you don’t get out of our way, I can promise you, it will be. I’m taking my daughter home.”
“Very well. Provided you remember the house ordinance concerning the hotel perimeter, she is free to leave the establishment—for the allotted time. And not one second more.” Huntley enunciated every word very clearly, as if talking to a group of imbeciles.
“I told you, Dad, I can’t leave. That’s the whole point.”
Ansel, doubled over with pain, his shoulder about to give out, managed to pipe up, “Eight hours. Then they come after us.”
He held up his free hand, with the metal armband around the wrist. On it, blinking in big red letters: 08:00.
Douglas looked from it to Nikki’s. Same armband. Same numbers. 08:00. His face darkened by several shades. Anger creased the pampered skin on his forehead. He threw Tom
a look and jerked his head in Huntley’s direction.
Go fuck this guy up.
Tom didn’t need an invitation to violence. It was something he very much enjoyed sharing with other people, and he adhered closely to the Good Book: It was surely more blessed to give than to receive. He dropped Ansel like an afterthought and advanced straight on Huntley.
Tom looked like he knew what he was doing—chin tucked, shoulders forward, elbows tight, fists up—the easy fighting stance of people familiar with dishing it out.
But Huntley played that game, too. And he played it rather well.
When Tom threw a punch, Huntley slipped it easily—not to the side as most would, but he unexpectedly ducked under Tom’s fist and, with a straight line beating a curve any day, he rammed his head back up, right under Tom’s hefty chin.
Crack! Right on the sweet spot.
The flesh-mountain trembled. His knees buckled. No matter how big, nobody wins the fight against human physiology. Or, as it turned out, against Huntley. He viciously kneed Tom in the groin, and the bodyguard dropped. On the way down, Huntley, ever generous, gave him another gift: a knee to the temple.
Tom flopped on the ground. Bleeding, dazed, he fumbled for the gun inside his jacket. He almost got it untangled but Huntley, moving at lightning speed compared to Tom’s turtle-stuck-in-mud tempo, wrestled the pistol from Tom’s grip, cracking bones in one swift move, stepped on the big man’s throat, racked the slide, and aimed the gun at his head.
Everyone froze. The only sound was Tom’s wheezing as he bled on the carpet.
Huntley was barely out of breath. “I’m going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave the premises.”
Tom, pinned to the floor by his neck, threw an imploring gaze in the direction of Douglas, who looked like a kettle about to boil over.
This was not what Douglas Forlan III had expected. He expected to get what he wanted. What he did not want was his bodyguard beat up, rolling around on the ground like a bitch in heat; he did not want the man with the gun get the better of them; and he sure as hell did not want to leave his daughter here. But, from the looks of it, with the bodyguard whimpering and his daughter showing no indication of coming with him, his wants didn’t matter today. This helplessness, familiar to most people, was a strange, incongruous sensation to Douglas Forlan III. And he didn’t like it one bit. He had to get out before he exploded. He let go of Nikki’s hand and dropped her suitcases. “We’re leaving.”