by Peter Besson
“I know. Everybody is.”
“Are you going to help me?”
There it was again. The tangling of lives, the stickiness of human relationships he’d avoided for so long. Over the years, he’d developed an armor around himself, encased himself in casual indifference and watched his heart go silent. Now she stood before him, and, like a flicker from a past he’d wrestled into silence, she tucked her hair behind her ear. Different hair. Different woman. But still, his heart shivered. And deep below, the pain unfurled like a sluggish dragon.
Ansel closed his eyes. He knew it. He didn’t want to, but he knew the answer he would give her. There was no way he could not be there for her.
“Yes,” he said. When he opened his eyes, he found her looking at him, completely unguarded. This was her. Looking at him. Seeing him. He felt himself uncoil, his being opening, straining against his self-imposed severity.
The lights flickered with an electric buzz, followed by a deep rumbling they didn’t so much hear as feel in their stomachs.
“Ah,” Ansel said. “Perfect timing.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s go.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room.
***
Another rumble. The elevator hiccupped and its lights strobed, but it continued on its way up. Nikki held on tightly to Ansel’s arm. They’d been holding hands ever since he’d grabbed hers in the morgue, and somehow they’d both forgotten to let go. Not that she wanted to. It had felt good, her hand in his. It felt like she was touching something real, concrete, like an anchor steadying her in the gray seas. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
He wouldn’t say more as he pulled her out of the elevator on the top floor, nor when he opened the door to the stairway and dragged her up several flights of stairs, not even right before he kicked the door to the roof open. Not that he could have said anything that might have prepared her for what she now saw. It was something that only made sense because they were in a hotel with people determined to kill themselves. Even then, Nikki hadn’t expected this.
Jutting out from the roof was an absurdly tall metal spike, reaching several stories high into the sky, as if the Eiffel Tower had broken through the roof of the Hotel Terminus and now served as its lightning rod. Above the spike, lightning bolts raced across thunder-dark clouds, powerful, primordial elements at play. It was an image straight out of an old horror movie, where the mad scientist tries to harvest the energy of the lightning to bring the dead back to life. Only here, it was the exact opposite.
A large group of people had gathered around the spire. Music blared from a boombox. Drinks were handed around. People were dancing.
Nikki stood awestruck. “What is this?”
“Sizzle party. The big cook-off.”
“Annssssel. New girl.” Henry, the drunk, staggered by them.
“Henry.” That was all Ansel had to say. Suddenly he was holding a beer. So was Nikki.
“What’s everybody doing here?” she said.
“Tempting fate.” He pointed at the spire scraping the storm clouds. At the base, a crowd of people held on to the metal contraption, looking fearfully into a night sky that crackled with electricity. “Let the planet take care of you. Playing the cosmic lottery.”
“Wow. People are nuts.”
“Come on.” Ansel grabbed her hand and dragged her closer to the spire. They almost bumped into a bare-chested young man with numerous burn scars on his skin, snaking over his body like frozen lightning. Nikki couldn’t help but stare. “Jasper,” Ansel said. “He’s up here every time. Also gets struck every time. But he keeps on doing it. Says it’s like talking to God himself.”
“Better,” Jasper said. His smile was twisted by a stiff scar running across his mouth.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Ansel said. He turned to Nikki. “You wanna catch the big one, touch the spike when he does. Pretty amazing, really.” They were right next to the base of the spike, close enough to touch it. Nikki craned her neck, squinting against the lightning chasing through a black sky. Thunder crashed overhead, rolling closer.
Ansel smiled. “Can you feel it?”
Electricity bristled all around them. Strands of Nikki’s hair floated upwards. “Yeah. Oh my god.”
A blinding flash of light. Another thunderous rumbling. The storm churned right above them. Lightning branched sun-bright fingers across rain-dark clouds. People oohed and aahed.
“Wow,” Nikki said.
“What do you think?” Ansel said.
Unsure, Nikki reached out toward the metal. She curled her fingers in anticipation, afraid to touch but irresistibly drawn nonetheless. If something like fate existed, why wouldn’t it work tonight? Maybe this was the night she’d spent the last six years waiting for, right here with this stranger who seemed so inexplicably familiar. Was it simply the shared death wish? Was that all it took for two people to feel close, the knowledge that they’d entered their final days? She scanned the sky for what might come. The hot searing flash of death delivered by a lightning strike; an airplane tumbling out of the clouds and incinerating them on impact; the metal spire, for no reason, falling over and burying them—anything that would count as her fate. This night seemed to hold all possibilities, bristling with an elemental force she was unable to resist.
She touched the spire.
The metal was shockingly cool to the touch. She noticed herself shake, squeezing her insides together in expectation, a prickling sensation of sheer delight and terror. Her eyes wide open, ready for anything, she beamed at Ansel—a wild smile across her lips, trembling from pure adrenaline rushing through her.
“Holy shit,” she said.
It was unbearable. The unknowable. The ecstasy. The fear of annihilation. Ansel must have seen it in her eyes, because he smiled back. Or perhaps he just remembered that he had promised he’d be there with her.
He held out his hand. Nikki hesitated for a second. Then, with a grateful smile, she took it.
A stillness settled in Ansel. He’d stared death in the face every day for over a decade, and after some time, it came to be trivial, like brushing one’s teeth. But this particular tranquility had nothing to do with death; somehow, that straightforward, honest touch of Nikki’s hand had shrunk the world and shifted the center of everything to the space between them. Nature roared around them in a fury. A massive lightning bolt raced across the clouds, forking into a brilliant upside-down tree of fire. Thunder followed at once, crashing right above them, but below, where they stood, in the eye of the storm, there was nothing but peace.
This is it, Ansel thought, and was surprised his final moments wouldn’t come with any appreciable lucidity. There was no grand understanding, no veil was lifted. It became distressingly clear to Ansel that ultimately, we know nothing; not why we are here, why we love or hate, what the point of it all is, or even if there was one to begin with, or what we truly are in the end. It all just seemed to happen. There was no reason to anything. We did what we did, and that was all there was to it.
Nikki must have sensed it too—the unraveling of any sense of meaning, the awareness of floating, of being released into a vast sea of potentialities. She let go of the metal spire and slid her arms around Ansel’s neck.
Maybe this was the ‘yes’ the dead wanted? The emphatic ‘yes’ before the final ‘no’? The possibility of everything…
She kissed him.
And with that kiss, Ansel felt his inner scars crack open and bleed anew. The pain sighed. It knew: Its time would come. It would blossom, it would be born again to rend his heart apart once more.
But none of that mattered in this moment. What mattered right now was the embrace of a young, beautiful, warm, breathing, absurdly real woman, her hands on his neck and face and the smell and taste of her lips and tongue and her.
High above Nikki and Ansel kissing, another streak of lightning sizzled through
the sky, closer, hotter than before. At the same instant, Jasper, on the other side of the spike, touched the metal.
Crack! Lightning struck the spire. Millions of volts of electricity surged downward, all seemingly aiming for Jasper.
“AAAAEEEEIIIYYYYYYY!”
Jasper yelled and tumbled to the ground, hair and skin smoking.
Ansel and Nikki didn’t notice. They were with each other, and things beyond the grasp of skin and mouth and touch were of no interest. When they resurfaced, they touched foreheads, eyes locked.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah. Wow.”
On the other side of the spire, Jasper struggled up to a sitting position. A brand new and still-smoldering burn criss-crossed his chest. He gawked at it, smiled a gap-toothed smile, and waved at the other people.
“I’m okay,” Jasper said.
With a last boom! the heavens opened up. Rain streamed down as if poured from buckets—very large buckets. In seconds everyone was drenched.
“Oh, that feels good.” A light steam rose from Jasper’s skin.
Ansel and Nikki gazed up to the sky. They wanted to feel, see, smell this moment. The ozone-charged air. The water splashing on their upturned faces. The feel of the other’s body pressed close…
They laughed.
Uninhibited, free, joyful.
Laughter.
***
She was so light. He didn’t remember that women could be this light. This elongated grace of smooth limbs. If he thought of his own body, or men in general, he always had the image of rough-hewn, splintery wood in his head. Nikki in his arms was a pliant arch of silken flesh. All naked, all before him. His eyes took her in with unrelenting curiosity. He considered every little detail about her—the elegance of her neck, the firmness of her collarbone draped with skin like scaffolding, the swell of her breasts and the valley between, the gentle rise of her hips, the small freckle on the inside of her thigh, and the fragrant darkness between her legs. It all seemed a revelation to him, as if she were Eve, freshly created and first of women.
They kissed. Let their hands rove. Let their bodies do what they desired. Tender at first, exploratory, learning each other, and then Ansel inside her, more urgently, forcefully, until it was all legs and arms and mouths and skin on skin. Nikki arched her back and reached for the nightstand.
“The house gun.” She groped for the drawer.
Ansel, on top of her, seemed to surface back to reality. “What—”
“Don’t stop.” She grabbed his ass and pushed him deeper inside her. Moaning, she extended her other hand, grabbing, fumbling, until she finally got a hold of the handle and pulled the drawer open. She rummaged around, shivering with waves of pleasure, then barely managed to pull out the 9mm Ruger P95, standard issue of the hotel. Orgasm approaching fast, she cycled the slide, fumbled with the safety and pushed the gun, grip first, against Ansel’s chest.
A strange mixture of pleasure and confusion ran over Ansel’s face, but Nikki nodded, emphatically, overwhelmed by the rising climax.
Ansel raised an eyebrow. You sure? Did she really mean for him to…?
“Yes. Yes!” Nikki threw her head back, giving in to her body.
Ansel, continuing to thrust, nudged the muzzle under Nikki’s chin.
“Do it do it do it DO IT DOIT!” She spat the words from between clenched teeth, clawing Ansel’s back.
He pulled the trigger, but his hand slipped. Intentionally or not, he didn’t know.
Even though the muzzle blast was right next to her left ear, singeing her face and turning her world from stereo to mono, the only thing Nikki felt was her orgasm, bucking her, a scorching surge of pleasure close to pain.
The bullet missed her by a hand. It slammed through the wall next to the bed, missing any larger structures inside but tunneling through decades-old drywall until it punched through into the room next door. It had just enough energy left to shatter the lamp on Romer’s nightstand.
Romer didn’t flinch. He was dead asleep on his still-made bed, a spent needle on the comforter beside him. But at least now the room was dark. Ansel had turned the light out for him.
CHAPTER SIX
DYING TOGETHER
Strolling down the hallway, Morton fought the urge to whistle. Yes, the industry of suicide seemed to be on the decline—things had been better when they were worse, Morton thought with a smirk—and the planet would still benefit from a massive reduction of people crowding it, but a small step forward is still one in the right direction.
Morton held another white envelope in his hand. It contained the final pedantic list of all the expenses Hotel Terminus had incurred with Ansel Grayson’s stunt with the chandelier. It included a detailed estimate on the devaluation suffered by the loss of such an irreplaceable object—not that Morton had any intent to replace the chandelier; that would be cost-prohibitive and, more importantly, leave no room for the fabrication of numbers—and a much more expensive cleaning operation than even he had foreseen. In total, however, he’d managed to only shave off another day of Mr. Grayson’s stay, but one day less for a perm was still a good enough reason to whistle.
The problem had always been the perms, those people left over from the years when Hotel Terminus was established. Nobody’d had any idea back then about the costs, the rules, the whole business of letting people take themselves out of the game. Unsure about the market and hampered by laws of commerce and incorporation, the Last Resorts’ initial rates had been way too low, which wasn’t a problem in the beginning. People were impatient to end it all and hope for the best on the reboot. The turnover rate was greater than an hourly motel at happy hour.
Except for those few indecisive ones who were still hanging on. With the room rate locked in from their first day, their riches allowed them to stay longer than anyone could have anticipated when suicide was all the rage. Now they were still here, squatting in the most desirable suites, clogging up the system and preventing Morton from raising the rates to the exorbitant heights they should be. Like what Nikki Forlan had paid. A handsome chunk of change, most of it funneled into Morton’s retirement account. Not much longer, and he would be able to shutter the place, lock it up for good and walk into the sunset of a St. Martin beach, parasol drinks under a generous umbrella waiting for him, and no sign of death anywhere.
Smiling, Morton could almost feel the tropical sun on his face, hear the surf murmuring softly as it broke on the sand, as he bent down and pushed the envelope underneath the door.
***
Something woke Ansel. He looked around the room and saw the white envelope someone had slid underneath his door. Then he heard whistling, outside his door. Faint to begin with, the whistling died with receding footsteps.
Ansel sighed. He already knew what the envelope contained. The final statement of his imaginary charges, dreamed up by Morton. This made it official. Black on white: He was about to check out. Or be checked out. His choice.
He rolled out of bed, careful not to disturb Nikki, sleeping next to him. The singe mark on her left cheek, though it would hurt for a bit, gave her smooth skin a red glow, as if her dreams made her blush. Ansel regarded her for a long time. Shreds of remembered touches, feelings, and tastes surfaced. Words, spoken in the deep of night he couldn’t recall anymore, but drawing him closer into her orbit nevertheless. He felt the inner tug, the want, the desire for more.
He lit a cigarette. Can’t start killing yourself too early in the day. He picked up the hotel phone. There wasn’t even a ring on the other end before Huntley answered. He must have a hand on the phone at all times, Ansel thought. Or maybe he’s just really really fast.
“How may I help you, Mr. Grayson?” Huntley’s voice was as pleasant and unperturbed as a purring kitten by a fireplace.
“Could you tell Morton to go fuck himself when he gets back down?”
“My pleasure.” Still the kitten by the fire. “Anything else, sir?”
“You know what the weather will be like today?”
“Sunshine all the way. It’ll be a glorious day, sir.”
“Thanks, Huntley.” He hung up.
***
Romer didn’t remember turning off the light. Hell, now that he looked at it and saw what was left of it, he didn’t remember smashing the light. There were plenty of things he didn’t remember anymore, nor did he care to. Like most of the perms, he tried to simply navigate around that universe-sized hole in his chest and pretend it didn’t exist. Sometimes it worked. But it usually took a lot of… that was it. He remembered something now… and there. A needle, on the bed next to him, waiting to be filled with breakfast. As he fiddled with the black-crusted spoon and the candle on the nightstand, Romer noticed something peculiar: a hole right behind the destroyed lamp. About fist-sized.
He removed the lamp and peered through the hole. It was considerably smaller on the other side, but he still saw what appeared to be a naked female leg dangling from Ansel’s bed. Romer picked up his phone and dialed Ansel’s number.
“Hello?” He could clearly hear Ansel through the wall now.
“Am I not checking out fast enough for you?”
“Shit. Sorry, Romes. Didn’t mean to.”
“Guess you’re still here.”
“For another glorious day.”
Romer shifted the phone receiver in his hand to get a better view through the hole in the wall. That young female leg wasn’t moving. “What’d you shoot at? You smoke her?”
Ansel’s face, or a bullet-sized part of it, came into view. “Nope. But she wants me to.”
“What? Since when did you do that?”
“I’m not. I don’t think I am. No. I’m not. What am I going to do, Romes? I can’t kill another person.”
“Hell, you can’t even take care of yourself.” Romer cradled the phone receiver against his cheek and shook some heroin from a baggie onto the spoon. “Whatever you do, stop shooting at me.” He lit the candle and held the spoon over it. “I’ve got plenty to live for.”