by Kaden, John
“Enough,” he told himself. “Get a grip.”
He left the living room in disarray and headed back to his bedroom, and even though it was early and he hadn’t eaten anything for dinner, he flicked out the lights and collapsed on his bed and pulled the covers over his still-clothed body and tried to fall asleep. He promised himself it would only be a quick nap, but as the exhaustion of the day crept in, Milton allowed it to carry him off into a deep, heavy slumber.
The dreams that came quickly after were as ruthless as ever, and just like the night before, and many nights before then, he awoke in the early hours without a single memory of them, lying there in a cold sweat with his breath hitching and the unmistakable feeling that he had just been running from something (or maybe toward something).
VIII
When he next opened his eyes, the morning sunshine was pouring across his face. He lay still for a moment, taking stock of his situation. Everything, mentally speaking, seemed to be in working order: he knew who he was, where he was, and he knew that his beloved wife June was dead and gone forever. No delusions about that. Not today, at least.
He felt surprisingly good, considering the terrible night he’d had. His dismal encounter with Ralph tried to weasel its way back into his consciousness, and Milton swatted it away like a swarm of pesky houseflies. He wasn’t going to let that oversexed asshole ruin one of his lucid days. Won’t let the box, either, he decided. He was determined to steer clear of that rabbit hole, at least for one day. Maybe he’d take Jason up on the walk they never got to the other day. Sunshine and exercise: just what the doctor ordered.
He sat up, yawning, and went to rub the sleep out of his eyes — and something poked him in the cheek.
“What the—?” He looked down at his hand and realized he was holding something — the souvenir pen. Pen with boat. He shook his head, staring at it. Must’ve picked it up last night, he thought. Picked it up and carried if off to bed with me. He dropped the pen on the nightstand and chuckled at himself, feeling a bit silly for obsessing over it so much.
He slid over and set his feet on the floor and a light-headed feeling came over him. “Better eat something,” he told himself, remembering that he’d skipped dinner.
After a quick pit stop in the bathroom, he headed to the kitchen to make breakfast. Halfway through the living room he stopped dead in his tracks. He distinctly remembered knocking that thing to the floor last night, but there it was — the cigar box — perched neatly on the end table.
Milton took a hesitant step toward it, worrying that his mind wasn’t as sharp this morning as he’d thought.
He took another step and opened the lid. Everything was inside, all the trinkets that had spilled across the floor. He must have cleaned up the evidence of his little outburst sometime in the night — either that, or an army of invisible gremlins had marched out of the coat closet and picked up everything for him. But that seemed unlikely. Much more probable that he had been up — in the middle of the night — with the trinkets, and that he had no recollection of it. It was a weird thought, but it explained why he woke up holding the souvenir pen, at least.
Except …
Milton’s hand shot up and clapped over his mouth. Impossible. Everything else in the room seemed to fade back into the periphery, his eyes zeroing in on the pen that shouldn’t be there, the pen he had just set on the nightstand in the bedroom not five minutes earlier. The little sailboat inside moved of its own accord, sliding back and forth, over and over again, in front of the tiny seaside village.
Milton backed off warily, keeping his eyes trained on the box, afraid to let it out of his sight. He took one backward step after another, until he stood next to his bedroom door. Then, quickly, he diverted his eyes from the box and turned his head toward the nightstand next to his bed.
Gone. Just the lamp and his stupid old checklist. No pen.
Pinpricks of sweat broke out on his forehead.
He retraced his steps, advancing with caution toward the open cigar box, and peered inside. The objects sat in their neat little arrangement, the pen included — and the tiny sailboat rested on the far side of the village, unmoving.
“I’m slipping,” Milton told himself. “Slipping further and further every day. Jesus.”
In all his years, he had never known himself to be a sleepwalker — June certainly would have mentioned it at some point during their marriage. Or maybe this was just another symptom of the blight. Just one more thing it was taking away from him.
He reached out and flipped the lid shut.
The hunger pangs in his belly reasserted themselves, and even though he felt a bit nauseous after what had just happened, he figured he had better eat something anyway.
In the kitchen, he downed a glass of water from the tap, dropped two slices of white bread into the toaster, then went to the fridge to get some strawberry jam.
For the second time this morning, something stopped Milton cold. His hands fell limp at his sides and he stood stock-still in the center of the kitchen, staring at the refrigerator door. His grocery list had been erased from the wipey board, and fresh writing had taken its place. One simple, very odd phrase:
wear your best suit, milty
“Cripes,” he said softly.
It wasn’t the words themselves that sent a bolt of anxiety through him. Those words could easily have flowed from one of his strange, dementia-fueled fugues — a troubling possibility, but one that he could accept. It would have been great to chalk it up to that; to tell himself, well, I must have gotten up during one of my spells and thought it was my wedding anniversary, or something silly like that. But he couldn’t. No, it wasn’t the words that troubled him — it was the fact that they were written in June’s handwriting.
Milton traced his fingertip over the looping scrawl, rendered so perfectly he doubted he could have reproduced it so well himself. It was her. She had done this. She had sent him a message, his sweet June, his dearly departed. She had heard his cries for help from the land beyond, and she had answered them.
He grabbed a straight chair from the kitchen table and sat down facing the refrigerator. It was inconceivable, but the proof of it was written right in front of him. He wasn’t prone to “woo-woo” magical thinking, but the only explanation he could devise was that her spirit had worked through him somehow; used him, used his own hand to deliver the message.
“That’s crazy,” he told himself. But he didn’t budge. He just kept staring. “Absolutely crazy.” He looked around the kitchen, listening to the quiet surrounding him, checking to see if any other signs had been left for him. So far as he could tell, there were none.
He turned back to the refrigerator, to the message written on the dry erase board. Wear your best suit, Milty. If it was the work of his late wife, then he knew exactly what she meant by it. It almost brought a smile to his face. Almost.
His “best suit” happened to be ugly as sin. Powder blue seersucker with over-sized lapels; basically a leisure suit with slightly less class. Of course, it was the seventies, and most people looked fairly gaudy back then. It had always been a little inside joke between him and June; maybe that’s why she had bagged it and mothballed it and kept it in the far back corner of the closet. Milton was surprised at how quickly he recalled its location; he hadn’t thought about that godforsaken thing in decades. It was a vestige of his road days. His traveling salesman days.
He supposed he should go back to the closet and dig it out — if his dear wife was trying to tell him something, he would do well to listen.
His feet carried him toward the back bedroom, to the narrow walk-in closet next to the master bath. He pulled open the louvered door and a whiff of stale air escaped, tickling his nose hairs. All of June’s old dresses hung on the closet rod, drab with age and dust. He slid them aside with the back of his hand, clearing some space at the back of the closet.
There — looking as hideous as ever, mummified in a clear plastic garment bag — was the sui
t.
Milton’s hand trembled as he reached out and took it off the rod. He carried it back into the bedroom and laid it on the bedspread, then ripped the flimsy plastic down the middle and tore it off. The jacket was wrinkled and misshapen from so many years on the hanger, but Milton shook it briskly, then put his left arm through the sleeve and slipped it on. It was tight, but not too tight. He’d lost a lot of weight in the past few years, whittling down the stout frame he had carried through middle age.
Wear your best suit, Milty.
“How do I look, June?” He turned and caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked like a sad clown wearing hobo clothes. “Is this what you wanted to see, darling? Your idiot husband in his ratty old suit?”
He started to peel the jacket off, then paused — there had to be more to it. He patted down the side pockets and found them empty, then slipped his hand into the satin inner pocket and withdrew a little plastic bag containing extra buttons. Next he pulled the pants off the hanger and turned out all the pockets, finding nothing but some wads of lint that had formed back when the Bee Gees were still cranking out tunes.
“Nothing,” he said, with equal parts disappointment and relief. He regarded himself in the mirror again and his eye caught onto something: the lapel pocket. He wasn’t a man who usually kept things in the lapel pocket of a suit jacket (who was?), but he reached up and dug into it regardless, and struck something right away. He tweezed the object between his fingers and slowly drew it out.
It was a matchbook from a place called the Golden Shores Resort. In tiny lettering, almost too small to read, was the resort’s address: 1001 Silver Rose Lane.
A rush of nervous excitement swept over him. This is it, he thought. The place where Tropical Paradise Awaits. The place with all the answers. June had led him to it — he was as certain of that as he had ever been about anything.
The question was: why?
She wants me to go, he thought. And she wants me to wear my best suit.
IX
When Jason came over at 11:30, Milton was already showered and shaved and smelling strongly of Aqua Velva. They kept their visit short and sweet — Milton said he had a very important evening planned, and couldn’t wait to get to it. He’d made up a phony excuse about attending a Marlin’s game with his neighbor, Ralph, from down the hall (fat chance of that!), and Jason swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
“You look splendid,” he said, drinking in Milton’s new look. “A total turnaround since yesterday. It’s incredible.”
“I feel incredible,” Milton replied, gripping the matchbook in his pocket. “As clear-headed as ever.”
“Well, I hope you have a great time tonight. You gotta squeeze the most out of days like this.”
“I plan to. Haven’t been to a game in years. Should be a regular old blast.”
“Don’t let Ralph get you into too much trouble,” Jason told him, with mock concern in his voice.
Milton cracked an ornery grin and said, “I’ll try my best.”
As soon as Jason was out the door, Milton fetched his old Road Atlas from the kitchen drawer and searched for Silver Rose Lane. According to the map, the resort was way up north along the coast, a good two or three hours away.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number for Yellow Cab. He knew the fare would be pricey, but what the hell? How often did he go out for a night on the town? Besides, if this little trip did anything to jog his memory, the fare would be worth it. He hoped just seeing the place would give him the “Ah-ha!” moment he’d been craving for months now.
Twenty minutes later he stood on the curb outside his apartment building, waiting for the taxi to come pick him up. He had dusted off the powder blue suit jacket and ironed out the wrinkles as best he could, and even though it was obviously outdated, overall, it could have looked a whole lot worse. The pants had been a total bust, so he’d substituted his nice navy blue slacks — the ones he wore on special occasions. Tucked under his arm was the Sweet Life cigar box.
He didn’t have very long to wait. The canary yellow taxi came trundling down the street and Milton threw his hand up to flag it down, and the next thing he knew he was nestled in the back seat, watching the Miami skyline recede into the distance.
His driver was a middle-aged man named Lonnie. Lonnie had been highly dubious when Milton told him his destination — it was a long way to go for a one-way ride — but he had agreed to take the fare nonetheless. Maybe it was the excitement in the old man’s face that made it so hard to say no.
They blazed up I-95, past Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. Milton sat quietly in the back, thumbing the cigar box lid open and closed.
“You got family up this way?” Lonnie asked him.
Milton pondered this. “No, uh… I’m meeting an old friend at a… a special place, so to speak.”
“You should tell your friend to find a ‘special place’ that’s closer to Miami,” Lonnie said. “This must be awful important to you.”
“Very,” Milton told him, and left it at that.
As the miles ticked by, his thoughts turned to June. She was the real reason for this trip, not the box. The box was just a relic, a memento. But a memento was worthless without the memory it belonged to; that’s what gives an object its power, and that’s what Milton was searching for. Part of his life with June was missing, and he had a hunch that she was going to help him find it. She was sort of like a guardian angel, he reckoned. Her presence had felt close ever since this morning, and he was positive it wasn’t just the dementia playing with his head. Milton didn’t have faith in many things, but he had faith in June. She’d set this business straight.
He turned his attention back to the coast, where the thin strip of Jupiter Island glided by on the right. They were making good time in the light Saturday afternoon traffic. It wasn’t much farther.
Lonnie steered off the main highway and curved gradually away from the coast, leaving the business and residential areas behind and entering a low woodland area that stretched inland for miles.
Nervous butterflies swarmed in Milton’s stomach as he felt the taxi slow down to make another turn onto a narrow road with no center-line.
“It doesn’t look like there’s much out here, my friend,” Lonnie said. “Are you sure this place is near here?”
“Positive.”
Lonnie grunted. “They must not get much traffic.”
“It’s secluded,” Milton said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that was the case.
“Any landmarks I should keep an eye out for?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Lonnie said, scrunching up his face. “I thought this place was special to you?”
“Yes, but it’s… it’s been a long time. A very long time.”
Lonnie gave him an odd look in the rear view mirror, then turned back to the road, searching for their turn-off. Soon they came to a T-intersection that was so well hidden he almost missed it. The street sign on the corner read: SILVER ROSE LN.
Lonnie turned right and followed the winding lane for a quarter of a mile or so, then brought the cab to a sudden halt. “One thousand and one,” he said. “This is the address you gave me. One thousand and one.”
Milton sat forward and peered through the windshield like a kid whose parents had just brought him to Disney World for the first time.
Directly in front of them stood an ornate trellised archway, covered in jasmine and bougainvillea, with stencil-cut letters arcing across the top: Golden Shores Resort and Hotel. Heavy wrought-iron gates sealed off the rest of the driveway. Up ahead he could just barely glimpse the outline of the resort itself, nestled back in the foliage like a secret hideaway.
“Wonderful,” Milton said.
“If you say so,” Lonnie replied, eyeing the gates. “Looks like this is the end of the line.”
“Yes,” Milton said. “This is fine right here. How much do I owe you?”
“Two-hundred-seventy dollars, e
ighty-five cents. You want it on the card, yes?”
“Yes, all of it. And an extra ten for yourself.”
Lonnie shot Milton a droll look and handed back the credit card and receipt. “A strange destination for a man your age,” he said. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
“I’m old, not dead,” Milton shot back, blanching at the cab driver’s tone. “I’m as entitled to have a good time as anybody else.”
Lonnie shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“I will,” Milton said, and slammed the door. “Thanks for the lift.” He straightened up his suit jacket, tucked the box firmly under his arm, and started walking toward the gates. They must have been connected to a motion sensor, because as Milton drew closer they parted silently before him and opened wide. He heard the taxi idling behind him for a few seconds, then the crunch of gravel as it backed out and drove away.
X
Past the archway, the drive curved up and around through the trees. Milton walked under the dense canopy, listening to the birds chirp around him. He arrived at a circular drive leading to the entrance of the main building, a two-story art-deco structure, surrounded by a barricade of stupendously tall palm trees. Swanky lettering above the door announced the “Golden Clubhouse.”
Maybe it’s a private resort, he thought.
A small parking lot lay off to the side of the Clubhouse, only half-filled with cars. That was a good sign — it looked like they had vacancies. Milton hadn’t bothered to make a reservation. In fact, he hadn’t even thought about it. He figured he would just drive up, tour around the place for a while, then call another taxi and go home. He didn’t like sleeping in hotel beds anymore. He’d done that for enough years. But as he took in the beautiful grounds, he thought spending the night here might not be such a bad idea after all.