by Alan Russell
Am tried to hide his disappointment. “Was Tim Kelly talking with any other women last night?”
“He didn’t seem to feel the need,” said Cat.
She patted his knee again.
XXIII
Because they shared a name, declared one of the Bob Johnsons, they were brothers. Loud agreement came with his pronouncement and loudest of all from Carlton. The rumba line had solidified his feeling of belonging. A few drinks hadn’t hurt, either.
“It’s the best name in the world,” said a skinny, and rather sentimental, Bob Johnson.
“The best,” said fat Bob Johnson, holding up his glass for yet another toast.
“The best,” agreed Carlton, who was rapidly forgetting that he had another name.
There were rules to the fraternity that Carlton had already learned. You didn’t greet your brother with “hello”: you shouted, “Bobby boy!” Everyone was “Big Bob.” And when two Johnsons were together, it was “Johnson & Johnson” time.
“I’ve got two boys,” said tall Bob Johnson. “And I think it’s a damn shame only one of them could get my name.”
There was commiseration and maybe even a tear or two. Then there was another toast and more contemplation on that great name of Bob Johnson.
“Did you ever stop to think,” said fat Bob Johnson, “that Bob spelled backward is Bob?”
They contemplated the wonder of that palindrome and drank to those special three letters. No one observed that “Boob” worked the same way. Carlton found that his glass was empty. Again. He wandered over to the bar. Ahead of him, pouring herself a healthy tumbler, was one of the three Bobbie Johnsons (though this one spelled her name “Bobbi”) and the prettiest, to his thinking. Four years ago the Bob Johnson Society had opened their doors to Bobbie Johnsons. He thought of offering a greeting, but he decided that it wouldn’t do to shout “Bobby boy” at her. There wasn’t anything boylike about her.
She was around thirty-five, Carlton guessed, and nothing at all like Deidre, for which he was grateful. Bobbi was a big woman, tall and heavy. She didn’t put on airs. She might have had a few extra pounds, but not an ounce of that was artifice. He watched as she mixed her drink with her finger. Then, with evident satisfaction, she sucked on her flesh swizzle stick and finally pulled it free from her lips with a Jack Horner yank.
Carlton found himself getting aroused, and that surprised and horrified him. The passion had mostly disappeared from his marriage years ago. There were times he wondered if it had ever been there. Carlton had been consumed by his work for so long, he had forgotten his feelings, his needs. He had heard some psychologist explain it on the radio once. What was the word she had used? His drives had been—something. Then he remembered. Sublimated. That was the word. But he didn’t feel sublimated now. And he knew that was terribly wrong. But there was something about big Bobbi that attracted him. Maybe it was her open manner. He had noticed her talking with others, had immediately liked her friendly and homey ways. Bobbi was a bit like Dolly Parton, at least before Dolly got thin. Like the singer, she wore a loud blond wig, and her lips were painted a garish red. So intent was Carlton on staring at her that he didn’t avert his eyes when she turned around.
“Why, hello there, big bad Bob!”
Usually Carlton was tongue-tied around women. But he felt a welcome in her words, an adrenaline shot from her address. By gum, he felt like big bad Bob.
“Ah, the belle of the Bobs.”
Her big, red lips opened, and a horse-laugh came out of them. “I kinda like the sound of that one.”
“I kinda like the sound of you.”
“Fast on your feet, are you?”
“Just so long as I’m not so fast when I’m off of them.”
Was he, Carlton, saying those things? And was she laughing so hard at what he was saying? Was she patting his shoulder? She was.
“Didn’t see you last year,” she said.
“Didn’t know you were going to be in attendance,” he said.
“These things are so much fun I wouldn’t miss them,” she said. “Only problem is, now I got myself a beau, and his name’s not Johnson. It’s Gresham.”
“I’d break it off right now,” said Carlton.
“Would you? I’m thinking I could be one of those liberated women and keep my name. That way I could keep coming to these soirees.”
“Ol’ Gresham probably wouldn’t let you out of his sight. I know I wouldn’t.”
“Do talk,” she said, then managed an all-too-obvious look at Carlton’s left hand. “So why is it that all the good men are either married, gay, or not named Bob Johnson?”
“I’m not gay,” Carlton said, then added thoughtfully, “and I’m not married, either.”
He was suddenly somber, reminded of the terrible thing he had done. Bobbi noted his downcast face. “Didn’t mean to get you blue, darling,” she said. “It’s just that I noticed the gold on your hitching post.” She tapped one of her thick red fingernails on his ring finger.
Surprised, Carlton looked at the ring. He had worn it enough years that he never noticed it anymore. The ring was an indictment of his crime. If only he could shed it, he thought, shed it the way a snake shed its skin. “My wife died—recently,” he said.
For once, Bobbi’s smile left her. “I’m sorry.”
Wasn’t it the height of hypocrisy to still be wearing a wedding ring? “I suppose I should retire this,” he said.
Almost ceremoniously, Carlton removed the gold band. Then he poured himself a few fingers of Scotch. Bobbi stepped next to him and raised her glass to his. “To new beginnings,” she said.
They clinked glasses, then ambled off together. Behind him, Carlton left his ring at the bar.
XXIV
The quiet continuity of rust-colored guest room doors was broken by the yellow Do Not Cross police tape in front of room 711. The mustard marker of tragedy was out of place among the trappings of the Grande Dame. While the barrier could easily be removed, its presence was reminder enough to make Am and Sharon pause before proceeding. They regarded each other silently. Little had been said between them since they’d left the Breakers Lounge. Sharon figured Am was angry at her for rising to that cocktail waitress’s bait. Or was it the other way around? She didn’t like women having to truckle to men, didn’t like it that some women felt it necessary to be provocative and competitive. Women in business had it twice as difficult as men. They were supposed to play by male rules and yet act like women. If that wasn’t enough to make any woman schizophrenic, there were also the male egos to deal with. Figuring out what was right or wrong could be a full-time job if you let it. Sharon had decided it was easier to be like her male colleagues in that regard: act and think about the consequences later. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
“Shall we?”
She pointed to the yellow tape. Am looked at her cocked head and her extended pose. It was almost as if she were asking him to dance. He nodded. Together they removed the strip-taped barrier. Am used his pass key to open the door, and this time it was his turn to motion. Sharon entered the room first.
It was somehow different without Detective McHugh being its centerpiece; that, and they had arrived with new expectations. On their prior visit they had been swept along by their theory and had expected the grateful police to act quickly on their pearls of wisdom. Now they came a little humbled, hoping for no more than a clue.
From appearances, the room was little changed from when Tim Kelly had taken his long drop, the only ostensible difference being that his luggage had already been removed. Sections of newspaper were scattered over the carpeting. Yesterday’s news, thought Sharon, checking the date to make sure. Towels had been dropped, one in the entryway, another balled and crumpled on a chair, and a third on the bathroom floor. A long trail of dental floss had been left in the sink.
“Is it de rigueur for suicides to floss before dying?” she asked.
“It’s not without precedent,” said Am.
“Socrates,” Am cited. “He bathed before he drank his poison to save someone from having to wash his body.”
Where did this guy, who looked as though he should have been cast in a Frankie and Annette film, learn about things like that? But instead of asking, instead of allowing their conversation to take a personal turn, Sharon said, “Looks like Mr. Kelly might have taken his bath, too.”
There was a large puddle of water on the tile floor, but the liquid pool was closer to the sink than the bathtub.
Am rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Over time drainage takes care of most runoff or spills,” he said, “so either this happened recently or there was a lot of water on the floor last night.”
He examined the faucet, then looked for leaks under the sink. Nothing appeared amiss.
“Maybe he didn't make it to the toilet,” Sharon suggested. The speculation offered, she didn't appear inclined to reach any definitive conclusions.
“Be my guest,” said Am, nodding his head to the floor.
“I'm only an intern, remember?”
Sighing, Am bent down and sniffed the puddle. “Water,” he said.
“So maybe he was just messy.”
“Quite possible,” said Am. “Some guests don't feel like they've gotten their money's worth unless they leave as much mess as possible.”
They walked out of the bathroom and made their way to the middle of the room. Virtually every accommodation in the Hotel was designed to take full advantage of the ocean, with the rooms opening up to the west. The walls were covered with sea scenes, and the room motif was an interior designer's version of the Mediterranean. Am thought the ten thousand dollars it cost to decorate each room was largely superfluous: center stage always had been, and always would be, the Pacific.
The ocean was a magnet that both of them tried to ignore. Officiously and diligently, they looked through trash and under the bed. They stuck their heads in the closet and scouted all the bureau tops, but their efforts only prolonged the inevitable. Within five minutes Am and Sharon were standing on the balcony and looking at the ocean.
“Clear day,” said Am, scanning the blue horizon. “We might get a green flash.”
“Is that anything like a hot flash?”
He shook his head, remembered that she wasn't a local. “Sometimes a green flash bursts on the horizon right after the sun sets into the ocean. People are afraid to blink, because it only lasts an instant.”
Suspecting a tall tale, Sharon said, “And I suppose at the end of the green flash there's a pot of gold?”
“It's not a myth. It's a natural phenomenon that has something to do with a prismatic effect and the reflection of the sun. But it isn't the science that's fun, it's the looking. You can watch a hundred sunsets and not see a green flash, and then boom, one day it's there.”
Am had heard some old-timers claim the green flash didn't occur as often anymore. Rose-colored (or was that green-colored?) glasses might have had something to do with such sentiments, but drifting L.A. smog couldn't be helping the green show. The flash only occurred when the horizon was clear; it couldn't be seen under conditions of cloud or smog cover. If pollution worsened, Am wondered if the green flash would become a myth, would be the snipe hunt for future generations of Southern Californians. Time to start a committee, he thought. Save the Green Flash.
He wasn't the only one lost in ocean thoughts. Sharon had always thought that there was no real life west of Philadelphia, but in her heart she had been afraid that San Diego would be this beautiful. She wasn't used to having views, or much of anything, capture her. But for the moment, she was held.
“I keep looking out and expecting Botticelli's 'Venus' to rise from the surf,” said Am.
The admission sounded too personal. Am changed the tone of his voice and suddenly played the tour guide. He stretched his arms to take in the expanse from La Jolla Cove to Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Underwater ecological reserve,” he said. “No fishing or collecting. That, and the fact that this is a placid beach, brings a lot of scuba divers.”
One diving class was coming in from the sea. Out of water, the divers looked ungainly. Burdened by gravity and their flippers, tanks, wet suits, and buoyancy compensators, they were veritable fish out of water. Most of the divers crawled on all fours to get beyond the surfline.
“Watching the divers come in always reminds me of an evolution film,” said Am, “man’s distant forebears crawling out of the drink. The only difference is we get to see them convert to two legs and walk upright right in front of our eyes, rather than waiting millions of years.”
They watched the divers struggle to their feet and shed their carapaces. Then their attention shifted back to the ocean. They let it do the talking for a minute, the boom of the surf awakening thoughts that usually slept.
“Maybe McHugh was right,” said Am, his words slow and reluctant. “Maybe Kelly got the Pacific blues.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The ocean is a curative for most,” he said, “but some people prefer rivers or lakes. They like being able to look to an opposite bank, knowing where a body of water starts and finishes. Psychological terra firma. Oceans aren’t that way.”
Am pulled at his lip thoughtfully, his eyes still looking outward. “I still don’t think Tim Kelly committed suicide, but maybe he just forgot his way. Contemplating an ocean is like trying to take a measure of God. In the scale of an ocean, it’s hard to find yourself. Look too long and you can get lost. It’s conceivable that he experienced rapture of the depths from right here.”
Did they both feel that pull? Was that what happened to Tim Kelly? Had he watched the ocean, and listened, and heard a Siren’s call?
Gulls swooped down on the watchers and awakened them from the fathoms. The birds were looking for handouts. Sharon reached into her purse, but Am put a light hand on her arm.
“Throw any food to them and before long we’ll feel like extras in The Birds.”
Am was as slow to withdraw his hand as she was to let her arm drop. A languidness descended on them, an unwillingness to move. For a score of moments they let themselves bask, creatures drawing strength from the sun. The warmth kissed their faces. It felt good, too good. Am had to struggle the hardest to break the spell, had to play tricks on his mind to convince it that he wasn’t too tired. There was still work to do. And the matter of a death.
Opening his eyes, he saw Sharon standing on her tiptoes, leaning over the balcony and looking down. From seven floors up it wasn’t his favorite view. The sand was far away, not Waikiki far, not nosebleed high like other megalith high rises, but high enough to die.
“I hope you don’t have acrophobia,” said Am. Her leaning over the railing made him uncomfortable.
“Was Kelly a big man?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m five six,” she said, “and I’d find it pretty hard to drop unintentionally.”
“Ditto,” said the six-footer.
Sharon had planted her shoes inside of the hollowed clay cylinders that lined the balcony. Her momentary scrabbling caused Am to take note of the decking and her footholds. The wood was scraped, almost grooved, the indentations made along the worn surface. Near to where Sharon was standing were two missing cylinders. The decorative rounds were ubiquitous in Southern California architecture, almost as common as glass bricks. Natives called them red doughnuts. Aesthetically the cylinders were attractive, but Am would have preferred more traditional balconies. Even when plied together with generous amounts of adhesive, the doughnuts eventually loosened, and separated. It wasn't a question of gravity calling, but one of just when the calling came. A rainstorm at the Hotel invariably resulted in a small avalanche of the tiles. No guest had been struck yet, but Am wasn't taking bets for the future. Normally the top tiles loosened first; however, in this instance they had fallen from the bottom left side of the balcony. If the missing tiles weren't soon replaced, more
of the clay doughnuts would drop.
Sharon raised herself from her beach viewing in time to see Am making an entry on a notepad. She looked at him hopefully, but he shook his head.
“Just another work order for maintenance,” he said.
XXV
In theory, at least, guests are supposed to be able to flag their desires to the housekeeping department through their door signs. The typical makeup of these signs has one side requesting privacy, with the reverse side welcoming maid service. To further eliminate any confusion, the Hotel words its signs in five languages: English, Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. As if giving international significance to Do Not Disturb and Please Clean Room weren't enough, the Hotel's signs feature two distinct drawings: on the one side a slumbering guest and on the other a smiling maid brandishing a duster.
To some Hotel employees, these signs were about as closely regarded as the fifty-five-mile speed limit on Interstate 5. In particular, the engineering department has never regarded the Do Not Disturb signs as significant obstacles. Maintenance workers have learned to knock at the guest room doors (although there are a few engineers who think the knocking part is optional), look both ways, and then quickly turn a sleeping guest into a dusting maid. Voilà! In five languages the engineers find themselves encouraged to enter.
The human race distinguishes itself from animals by stating that we’re tool users. No one could deny that “Cotton” Gibbons was a tool user, although it would have been hard to amplify on that. Cotton’s neck was about the reddest in San Diego County. He drove to work from El Cajon in a jacked-up Chevy pickup that had one of the country’s last “Guns Don’t Kill, People Kill” bumper stickers. His sole window decal was the message “Insured by Smith & Wesson.” But for all of Cotton’s social shortcomings, he was a tool user par excellence.
His nickname had been bestowed early in his career at the Hotel, the result of his frequent refrain of “I don’t cotton to no fools” (typically words aimed at management). What Cotton did cotton to was wiring, and plumbing, and fixing. His world was one of circuits, pumps, capacitors, and compressors. He patched and repaired, greased and lubed. His fraternity spoke a language of augers, casings, conduits, and ballcocks, joints, coil fins, valves, and sequencers. Cotton and his engineering brethren were never seen without their tool belts, ever weighing down the propriety of their pants, and their dirtied uniforms (clean at the beginning of the shift, but a sign of dishonor if still unstained more than thirty minutes into a workday.).