The Last Checkout

by Peter Besson

  Her thoughts came to an abrupt stop like a startled squirrel hitting a brick wall.

  She’d completely forgotten.

  She put her ear to the door and listened closely. Nothing but the hum of the house. Maybe Meat Mountain had figured out how to make less noise than usual, or, more likely, he must be asleep on his chair. Satisfied, Nikki inched the bed away from the wall. Low behind the headboard, the wallpaper seemed to buckle a bit. She traced her fingers over the paper. There. She punched the wall. Her fist disappeared. She rummaged around and pulled out a large bottle of pills. Her stash in case of a real emergency. She’d hollowed out part of the wall when her parents had remodeled her room to give her a new, more positive (meaning less suicidal) outlook. To bring more cheer into her life, her mom had said. So, very cheerfully, Nikki had put aside a strip of wallpaper for herself and afterwards, when everything had been redone and cleaned and polished and spit-shined, she’d cheerfully scraped a hole into the wall behind her bed like a prisoner attempting to escape Alcatraz and put in a cache for when it all got to be too much.

  Which was now.

  She unscrewed the top and shook out a handful of white pills.

  “Just getting a glass of water.” Meat Mountain had gotten up when she’d emerged from her room. “Be right back.”

  Tom peered down the long hallway. It was a straight shot to the wide-open kitchen. He could keep an eye on her from here. Besides, he’d already gotten up once now. “You’re just getting water?”

  “Pretty sure that’s what I said. My toilet-drinking days are over.” Either he didn’t understand or he didn’t get paid to show any emotion. Most likely both. “Can I get you something?”

  “I’m good.” He lowered himself back onto the squeakily protesting chair. “Don’t take too long.”

  “I’ll try to keep filling-of-glass-and-drinking-resulting-contents to a time-efficient minimum.” She thought she might have seen a neuron firing behind his eyes. Then again, highly unlikely.

  She turned and glided down the hallway, the swinging movement of her butt followed with substantial interest by the bodyguard.

  The kitchen was a cathedral built for the culinary arts, a shining hall of metal, marble, and dark wood, but for Nikki, it had always been a cold and empty room, more mausoleum than the bustling warm gathering place she thought a true kitchen should be. She couldn’t think of one instance of her mother having ever cooked in here. Getting more ice for her next drink was about the extent of her kitchen-appliance skill. The only real cooking had invariably been done by an army of catering staff when her parents were hosting parties—not for fun, certainly not, but for schmoozing and hobnobbing with the people who could help extend her father’s influence. The sort of parties she’d been paraded around at as proof that even her father had a soft, human side, or at least at one time he’d had one. She’d always felt like an adornment, just the right piece to complete the picture of a model family. Nikki fished in her front pocket and pulled out the handful of pills. Guess her father hadn’t gotten the perfect accoutrement he had wished for after all.

  Nikki grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap. She weighed the hand with the pills.

  She knew she was ready.

  ***

  On the horizon, an orange line crept across the sky, cutting light from darkness. The first stray rays of morning sun spilled over the city, painting the tops of the tall buildings a rich copper and dipping the dark alleys below into a featureless black.

  Ansel felt the warmth of sunlight on his face, his closed eyes bathed in glowing liquid amber. He didn’t move, but waited, waited for the morning to burn the chill from his bones. He’d been sitting here, on the roof of Hotel Terminus, through the night, cradling Romer’s stiffening body in his arms. He opened his eyes, blinking into a glorious new day. The sun, punching through a thick layer of pollution, bled red across the clouds and the slowly awakening city, greeting living and dead alike.

  “Sun’s up, Romes.”

  Romer lay across Ansel’s lap, his head in the crook of his friend’s elbow. The early morning light burned some of the deathly pallor from his face. He looked almost as if he were simply sunbathing.

  “Billions of years. Every single day a sunrise. Sorry you had to miss this one.” Ansel squinted into the brightening day, watched the world wake up from its gray slumber to the full technicolor glory it was capable of. “And Romes?”

  Romer lay silent, mostly because he was dead.

  “Thanks.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HOPE

  Ansel sat in the back of a taxi, Romer’s suitcase across his knees, the picture of Romer and the glowing woman in his hand.

  She’d been Romer’s fiancée. She’d died of an overdose sixteen years ago. Romer had never forgiven himself, since he’d been the one to introduce smack into her life. She’d taken to it faster than he ever had, he’d told Ansel with ill-concealed pride, as if she’d been his greatest pupil. It had escalated rapidly, scaring even Romer, who’d wanted to ease off their ever-increasing dosages but got caught in a white squall of pleasure that ended when her breathing stopped one night in a hotel room in Puerto Vallarta. They’d come down to Mexico to try the fabled black tar in their quest to experience every facet heroin had to offer, but, by accident, had stumbled across the purest china white Romer had ever seen, with the brilliance of snow in sunlight. He knew—somewhere in the back of his head where the small voice of reason had been banished to, and whence it had been railing against the furious noise of the chemical torrent ever since—that they were heading into unknown, dangerous territory. Drowning by now, the voice urged caution, sowed doubt, but he didn’t listen, and so that night in the hotel, as he lay at the edge of oblivion, his better judgment died along with her.

  When he woke up the next day, he’d startled the cleaning crew who’d huddled around them trying to decide what to do with those two dead gringos in bed together. She lay next to him, a body, a thing, the glow around her gone, the person she used to be having fled sometime during the star-filled night.

  And now Romer had gone after her.

  Ansel wiped at his eyes. He wouldn’t wallow, he told himself; he had too much to do.

  Last night a sweat-drenched Romer, grinning through his withdrawal pains, had handed Ansel a piece of paper and a key and asked him for one last favor.

  Romer had been siphoning money off Morton’s accounts for years. Many, many years. For every angle he’d found for Morton, he’d found two for himself, and over the years, he’d grown wealthy—not sufficiently wealthy to save his own life, it seemed, but wealthy enough for him to dream. Despite all the misery in his life, he’d always had hope that one day he would beat it. The addiction, the suffering, the pain. One day, he’d emerge made pure, absolved of all failings and hurt. For that day, Romer had bought himself a sanctuary, far from the city where the gray of the concrete sputtered out and gave way to greenery.

  The taxi crunched to a stop on the circular driveway of a crumbling mansion, half-reclaimed by vegetation but still undeniably beautiful.

  “Wait here,” Ansel said to the taxi driver, and got out.

  The mansion seemed to have been forgotten by the world, dreaming of summer afternoons in cool shade, of drowsy, slow existence unbound by time or necessity. Vines crept over the façade in a lover’s embrace, and thick bushes and gnarled trees surrounded the main structure and led to an expansive English garden in the back.

  Ansel saw a bird dart between the leaves, a song bursting in the air. A bee buzzed through the potpourri of wildflowers that sprang up in unruly clusters. He wouldn’t have been surprised if a horse had stepped through the brush, chewing some morning hay.

  It was a magical place, a slice of paradise, and it had been waiting for Romer to leave Hotel Terminus—for the day he didn’t need drugs anymore. A home for a new beginning.

  The house would have to wait a little while longer.

  The key Romer
had given him fit perfectly. Ansel turned the lock and opened the door. A palatial, sweeping entrance hall greeted him, with white-washed walls flowing into a vaulted ceiling, through the cavernous living room and out to the back, where a wide bank of windows overlooked the lush garden, which stretched away like a living green carpet. Sunlight bounced about the house as if playing catch with itself, lighting dust and insects up with heavenly fire. The door fell closed behind him with a heavy thud. A dense silence settled all around him.

  Ansel stood transfixed, blinking through the floating lightness, lulled by the deep slumber the house seemed to be trapped in, a suspension of time caught between two moments where all possibility and all eternity lay.

  With the slow reverence befitting a sacred place, Ansel set the suitcase in the middle of that magnificent house and laid the picture on top of it.

  “Welcome home, Romes.”

  ***

  Huntley regarded the countdown on his monitor with curiosity. Mr. Grayson seemed to have departed the hotel very early in the morning. It was strange, Huntley thought, but in the few days since Ms. Forlan had begun her brief visit with them, Mr. Grayson had spent more time off the premises than in the last twelve years combined. It was none of his concern, certainly not, but despite having to occasionally kill one of the residents, Huntley felt himself responsible for the well-being of his guests. And something seemed to have happened to Mr. Grayson.

  Huntley had known Mr. Grayson from his first days on the job, when the laws and practices of sanctioned suicide were still being explored and refined and the Last Resorts were the testing grounds on the border of legality and experimentation. Huntley had recently come home from the endless wars in the Middle East, where he’d been a special forces operator trying to negotiate the minefield of perpetually shifting allegiances between different tribes and religious persuasions. The deadly quagmire, the unpredictability of people’s motives had left him with an ever-increasing detachment from the affairs of his fellow humans. Under the constant threat of death, where any false look, any miscalculated move might be your last, some of his brothers in arms cracked; some became vicious and cruel; and others, like him, withdrew into a growing awareness of fatalism—what would happen would happen. Nothing more. Nothing less. For Huntley, being this close to death—eating, sleeping, breathing death every day—turned out to be a liberating experience. He found a sense of equanimity he’d never known before, a curious impartiality concerning life’s affairs, and so it was rather odd he found himself looking at the red numbers counting down the time remaining for Mr. Grayson to get back to the hotel and realizing he would not look forward to checking him out, were it to fall to him.

  Huntley glanced up and saw Mr. Grayson swing open the door and step into the hotel, crossing the invisible line separating life from death, resetting the countdown. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Huntley felt relieved. No decision had to be made. Not this moment.

  “Mr. Grayson.”

  Ansel didn’t seem to have heard. He turned sharply at the concierge desk and headed down the corridor with the discreet ‘Employees Only’ sign next to it. Huntley stood frozen, caught off guard. He hadn’t expected this—not from Mr. Grayson, not from anyone in the last dozen years.

  “Mr. Grayson.”

  Ansel marched on.

  Huntley, caught between duty and the necessity for calm reserve, started after Ansel, quickening his pace. “Mr. Grayson.” A bit louder, but not loud enough. Ansel pushed open the door at the end of the corridor and walked straight through the anteroom. Morton’s secretary, startled by the doors opening unannounced, gawked as Ansel strode by and kicked open the next door, the big, heavy, expensive one leading to Morton’s office.

  Morton sat behind his desk, recording numbers into his projected budget—big numbers, thanks to Douglas Forlan III. He was about to hit ‘enter’ and see a sum he’d always hoped to amass one day, a sum big enough for only one worry to be left— how to spend it all—when the door flew open.

  Morton startled. His hand crashed on the keypad, garbling his tidy spreadsheet. His secretary wouldn’t just barge in like this, he thought, and looked up.

  Not his secretary.

  Ansel Grayson.

  Ansel charged through the open door and around the desk, grabbed Morton by the collar, lifted him out of the chair and wham!—slammed him against the wall. Morton exhaled with a wheeze.

  “You son of a bitch.” Ansel’s face was mere inches from Morton’s.

  “Mr. Grayson.” He coughed. Over Ansel’s shoulder, he saw Huntley standing in the door, and behind him, his timid secretary peeking around the door jamb, her hand on the telephone receiver, most likely calling the police. He waved them off. “Everything is fine. Thank you. Thank you all.”

  Not quite convinced, but with no further instructions forthcoming, the secretary hung up the phone. Huntley nodded curtly and closed the door.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” Morton had regained his composure, even though he was driven hard against the wall. His mocking smile had returned.

  “You know exactly why I’m here. You’ve checked out Romer.”

  “As you very well know, Mr. Grayson, the time will come for every resident. As it will for all of us.”

  “You’re a bastard. You got who knows how much money for Nikki, and now you’re closing shop. We’re just dead weight to you.”

  “That is why you came to us these twelve years ago, Mr. Grayson, isn’t it? Because you were dead weight and needed our help disposing of it?”

  “Help? All you’ve done is rip us off with charges and fees and renovations that never happen.”

  “But Mr. Grayson, if you’re not satisfied, you’re free to check out anytime.”

  Ansel grabbed Morton tighter around the collar and slammed him back against the wall. “These are people’s lives, you shit.”

  “No, they’re not, Mr. Grayson. They’re nothing but deaths in waiting.” The bemused smugness Morton generally displayed for the world at large drained from him faster than water through a sieve. “Why would anyone care about ‘the lives’ of people who clearly do not care about them themselves? The world owes you and the likes of you nothing.” A cruel indifference took hold of him. “Is it my responsibility you are a failure, Mr. Grayson?” Too stunned to resist, Ansel allowed Morton to delicately pry his hand from his throat, finger by finger. “A failure like all the other complainers and whiners. All this talk and hand-wringing, all the lamentations about how tragic life is, about your endless fill of calamity, but all the while, not one of you has the pluck to do what is necessary.”

  Despite the interstellar coldness he felt toward Ansel Grayson, the utter disregard for him as a person—for everyone in this Last Resort, the whole whimpering, sniveling mass of them—he noticed the heat of anger rise inside of him. “And so you hang on, using up what little resources the planet has left to offer. You’re feeble, bloodless vermin, scuttering about, blaming everyone but yourselves for what’s ailing you. An endless parade of long-faced victims crying over their wreck of a life. Enough already. Put an end to it.” Morton adjusted his collar where, seconds before, Ansel’s hands had nearly strangled him. “You, Mr. Grayson, are everything that is wrong with today’s society. You should thank us for having the fortitude to do what you are too cowardly to do yourself. What should have been done yesterday.” Morton straightened up, full of cold, indignant hate.

  Ansel needed no convincing of his dislike for Morton, but as he stared at the man, this foul distaste gave way to a barely contained murderous rage. He’d been taken aback by Morton’s tirade, but now he advanced, his eyes boring into Morton’s. “You benefit from people’s misery and call it a virtue? You prey on the defenseless, suck every last drop of profit from them before you shuffle them off to the furnaces, and you say you’re helping them? You parasitic piece of shit.”

  None of what he said seemed to have an effect on Morton. He might as well have been yelli
ng at the wall. But Ansel couldn’t stop the words, even though he knew they’d make not one iota of difference. He’d lost a friend, and the person responsible for his death stood before him, unimpressed by Ansel’s turmoil. “Chet Romer. Remember? That’s just a name to you. One of your guests. I suppose he wasn’t useful to you anymore, so he was checked out. Came as a big surprise to him. But really, it shouldn’t have, should it? People only exist for you as long as they turn a profit.”

  “That is the way the world works, Mr. Grayson.”

  “Not quite.” Ansel pulled a handful of papers from his back pocket and slapped them against Morton’s chest. “Some people keep on giving even after they’re gone.”

  For the first time, Ansel saw a hint of uneasiness in Morton’s eyes. Morton hid it well as he un-crumpled the pages, but when he started reading, Ansel saw a deep-seated panic begin to take hold of him.

  ***

  The night before, a profusely sweating Romer, barely able to control his hands or his emotions, had tried to explain what he was about to do while hammering away on his laptop. Few people knew, but all the Last Resorts had been set up as corporations to limit legal liability. There were too many moving parts in a business whose main product was death. The judicial implications were staggering, not to mention the ethical considerations regarding the killing of, admittedly, willing participants, and when the government had ruled suicide a lawful or even patriotic act, the door had been flung wide open for lawsuits from pesky relatives to clog the justice system for eternity—and longer if the lawyers had their way. But if a corporation was behind it all, no one in particular could be held responsible. Like a magic trick, any individual legal liability vanished behind the sacred shroud of corporate protection. All the guests were shareholders: On each check-out contract were a few paragraphs of legalese no one ever read but which, once signed, turned every suicidal guest into a valued owner of stock in that grand business of punching the ticket. Now it was simply an entity called “Last Exit” or “Final Destination” or “Hotel Terminus”—with the crucial distinction of “Inc.” tacked onto the end—that was killing itself. Over and over again, shareholders handed each other the door—alive going in one end, coming out feet first at the other—all the while keeping the Last Resort in a perpetual state of self-annihilation. As a welcome side effect of the nature of the business, most ‘shareholders’ didn’t stick around long enough to exercise any rights the corporation might grant them, even if they had known about them.