by Kaden, John
Beyond the Clubhouse, a lush garden fanned out in all directions. Dozens of tiny bungalows dotted the landscape, and in the distance, he saw the golden glow of sunshine reflecting off a small, marshy lake.
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath, then headed across the parking lot, toward the tinted glass doors on the front of the Clubhouse.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, and reached out and grasped the handle and pulled it open.
He stepped into a cool, air-conditioned lobby with a vaguely tropical theme. Sleepy elevator music filled the air. It may not have been paradise, but it was certainly quaint. Almost reminiscent of some off-the-strip theme hotel in downtown Vegas — a place desperately clinging to the glamorous ambiance it had already lost decades ago.
Milton drank in the atmosphere for a minute or two. He wasn’t getting any “Ah-ha!” moment, but the place did feel vaguely familiar.
To his left, a chipped marble sign pointed the way to the reservation desk. To his right, a broad archway opened up on the Silver Rose Night Club and Lounge.
Milton stood at the crossroads, turning his head side to side, contemplating which direction to turn. Truthfully, a drink didn’t sound half bad. A quick cocktail to soothe the nerves, he decided, then a trip over to the front desk to inquire about lodging for the night.
Though it was only late afternoon, the lounge marinated in a dusky gloom, accentuated by the thick haze of cigar smoke that wavered through the air. A scattering of patrons sat off in the corners, quietly minding their own business. Milton winded between the high-top tables and potted palms and stepped up to the long, dark-stained bar along the far wall and took a seat on one of the stools. The bartender, a gaunt-looking man with a drooping mustache, crouched down below the counter, restocking his fridge.
“Afternoon.”
The bartender looked up and smiled tightly at Milton. “Welcome, sir. What can I get for you?”
Milton laid a ten dollar bill on the counter and said, “Oh, a scotch and soda, I believe.”
The bartender mixed the drink and set it on a red napkin, then slid the ten-spot back to Milton. “No charge for members,” he said.
Damn it, Milton thought, afraid he might get asked for a club card or something. “Oh, uh… how do I become a member?”
“You already are, sir.”
“No, I… I don’t think so.”
“I know so,” said the bartender. “Everyone here is a member.”
“Oh,” Milton said, glancing around at the weary denizens huddled over their cocktail glasses. “Well, then keep the ten as a tip. I insist.”
The bartender gave a slight shrug, then took the bill and stuffed it into an empty glass by the register. He didn’t seem very talkative.
“Lovely little spot,” Milton said, pressing ahead regardless.
“It has its days.”
Milton lifted the scotch to his lips and took a sip. It felt good going down. Just like old times.
At the far end of the bar, a cocktail waitress busied herself with side work. She was brunette, early thirties maybe. She wore a black skirt and a tight-fitting top with a little vest covering it. Around her neck she wore a red sequined bow-tie. She whipped her head around in a blur of brown hair and hustled back across the lounge, tending to a customer.
Milton followed her with his eyes, a charge of adrenaline shooting through his old body. This is definitely the spot, he thought. He drummed his fingers on the lid of the cigar box, feeling apprehensive all of a sudden.
“Say,” he said, turning back to the bar, “how long has this place been—”
—But the bartender was gone; the metal door leading to the kitchen was still swinging on its hinges.
Milton took a napkin from the bar and dabbed the sweat off his forehead with it.
“Afternoons are such a drag in this place,” said a breathy female voice from behind him.
Milton turned and found himself face to face with the pretty cocktail waitress. She stood there with her hip cocked to the side, and from her apron she withdrew a slim pack of cigarettes and removed one and put it between her glossy maroon lips. Milton, without even thinking, reached into his jacket pocket and took out the hula girl lighter and flicked it open. He held the flame up to the waitress’s cigarette, and she took a long drag and blew the smoke from the corner of her mouth.
“Thanks, hon.”
“Sure.”
They stared at one another for a moment or two. Milton worked his jaw, trying to think of something to say to her. He’d had a million questions in his mind on the drive up here, but they all seemed to have flown out the window.
“We don’t get much action during the off season,” she said, blowing another plume of smoke. “What brings you?”
“Just visiting.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Neither, really.”
The waitress stepped back and studied him, running her eyes up and down his stooped frame. “Honey, I can smell bullshit a mile away. You came here looking for something. Everybody who comes here is looking for something. What is it? Girls? Wait, no, no… Gambling? I’ll bet that’s it. You look like a poker player if I ever saw one.”
“No, no. God, no,” Milton said. “Little bit of solitaire, I suppose, but—”
The waitress burst out laughing. “You are too cute, you know that? Absolutely adorable.”
Milton reddened in the face and said, “Thanks. I guess.”
A coy little smirk turned up the corner of her mouth. “Maybe you’re here for something else, then? You know, I saw you watching me earlier. Are you lonely, mister? Is that it? Looking for a little company?”
“I… I just wanted a drink,” Milton said, holding up his scotch as if it were Exhibit A. “I don’t think I’d be interested in what you’re selling.”
“Who said I’m selling anything?” she said, putting on a pouty face. “Maybe I just wanted a little company myself…”
Milton just shook his head. This was way too bizarre. He flicked his eyes around the lounge, certain that everyone must be staring at him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, then. I’m at least twice your age.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Milton narrowed his eyes on her. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’m not interested. I think I’d best be on my way. Is there a phone around here where I can call a cab?”
“It’s too early to leave,” said the waitress. “The night is still young.” She reached across the bar and picked up a matchbook from a little dish next to the ashtray, then unfolded it on the bar and scribbled something inside. “In case you change your mind,” she said, sliding the matchbook across the counter.
Milton pulled it to him and read the note inside:
#19
“I don’t underst—” he started to say, but as he looked up he realized she had already left. He glanced over toward the far wall of the lounge and watched as she slipped through a side door, with one last look over her shoulder before she vanished.
“Damned craziest thing,” he muttered to himself. A slew of questions toppled through his mind (the red bow-tie!), all the things he should have asked her, but didn’t because of how flummoxed he’d gotten. Are you lonely, mister? She was crazy, this place was crazy, and he was crazy for coming here. There was no trace of June here. There was no trove of fond memories to be found here. It was just a sad, seedy, second-rate resort whose best days were long behind it. Case closed. Time to call a cab and get the hell back to Miami.
Milton tipped back another slug of scotch and spun around toward the bar, and what he saw there brought the liquor right back up his throat.
“No—” he said, wiping away the scotch that had dribbled down his chin.
Her pen.
She had left her pen behind on the counter.
Milton watched with a mounting sense of dread as the little sailboat inside glided back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…
XI
His knees almost gave out as he lurched to his feet and wheeled around toward the side door. “Wait! Come back!” he shouted, and the patrons of the lounge paid him no mind. He left his half-finished drink on the bar and took off, lumbering through the joint as fast as his aching legs would allow, desperate to catch up with her. She knows something, he thought, anger flaring up inside him. She’s hiding something…
He swung the side door open so hard it crashed back into the wall, then he veered left down the long corridor that led away from the lobby. There was no sign of her, but this was the way she had gone. An arrow on the wall pointed toward the rear entrance, toward the gardens, and Milton followed it.
Halfway down he passed by a little cigar shop, nothing more than a niche set back into the wall, and his heart just about burst out of his chest when he saw the Sweet Life banner hanging across the top of the display shelves. The grinning fisherman stood in his skiff like the boatman on the river Styx.
“Oh, Jesus,” Milton said, side-stepping away from it.
He stumbled the rest of the way down the corridor, waves of anxiety prickling his skin, and when he reached the end he pushed open the door and burst out into the cool, clear night. Confusion fell over him as he gazed up at the pitch black sky. Have I really been inside that long? It didn’t seem possible. He’d only just arrived a few minutes ago.
He spun wildly around, searching for the waitress, but she was nowhere to be found. The paved walkway led him further away from the Clubhouse, deeper into the vast courtyard, where it eventually branched off into a tangle of pathways that curved away in all directions. Milton followed one, and then another, and then another, and within sixty seconds he was disoriented and lost.
“Damn it,” he said, realizing that he had left the cigar box sitting on the bar inside.
He turned slowly, intent on retracing his steps and finding his way back to the lounge, but all the branching pathways looked identical. He couldn’t even see the Clubhouse anymore. Everything was hidden behind a veil of foliage and palm blades.
He wandered aimlessly forward through the network of pathways, peering into each bungalow as he walked past. All the windows were dark. The entire courtyard was dark. Nobody seemed to be home… or else they were all sleeping.
Milton shuffled over to the nearest bungalow and banged on the door. The hollow thud rang through the air and seemed to quiet the night sounds.
No movement inside, no answer.
He pounded his fist harder this time and yelled, “Help! Somebody help me!”
Dread rose up like black bile in his throat and he pressed his back against the bungalow door and buried his face in his hands, realizing that he had made a horrible, horrible mistake by coming here. He choked out a sob and whispered his wife’s name, praying for his beautiful angel to come and rescue him.
A light-hearted giggle cut through the night and Milton froze.
He swiveled his head, looking up and down the walkway. The cocktail waitress from the lounge appeared around the bend, stumbling drunkenly, arm-in-arm with a young man in a light blue suit, a cigar smoldering in the corner of his mouth.
Milton stepped forward, on the verge of calling out to them — but he stopped himself when he saw the young man’s face. The man kept the brim of his hat pulled down, but the features were still recognizable. It was him — Milton — only forty years younger. And even though his first thought was that this must be a dream, he still did not speak or move for fear of being seen. He shimmied across the facade of the bungalow and hid himself around the corner as they traipsed by, laughing and whispering to one another.
When they were safely past, Milton crept out onto the walkway and followed them at a distance. If it was a dream, then by God he was going to take control of it.
Deeper into the garden they walked, until they reached a faraway bungalow at the very edge of the grounds. Milton sidled up behind a palm trunk and peeked his head around, watching them.
The younger Milton keyed the locked and opened the door for the waitress, then he ducked in behind her and shut the door. The light came on inside, spilling out through the crack between the drawn curtains in a long, thin line of brightness — the only illumination in the entire courtyard save for the rising moon.
That sliver of light beckoned him and he felt his feet slipping across the concrete pathway, leading him closer and closer to what he knew was bungalow 19. He stood outside in the darkness, his feet crushing into the flower bed, and looked through the crack between the draperies. The thin sliver of light from the bedroom sliced straight down the side of his face, gleaming like a golden hair across his dilated pupil.
He watched his younger self recline on the bed with his tie undone; then he leaned to the right, shifting his perspective through the curtains, and saw the waitress standing at the foot of the bed, undressing herself. Her cheeks were pink, and she laughed in a delightful sort of way at something young Milty had said to her. She removed her little red bow-tie, then unfastened the brooch pinned to her vest — Milton couldn’t get too close of a look, but he somehow knew that it was in the shape of a treble clef, gold and ruby, and he had a creeping suspicion that it had been a gift from him — and she set both objects inside a very familiar looking box that rested at the edge of the dresser. Her odds and ends box. The Sweet Life cigar box.
With a playful growl, Milty reached out and snatched her by the wrist and pull her to him. She collapsed on top of him and they rolled sideways on the bed, their lips locked together, their hands frantic and groping.
Milton’s heart broke into a million pieces as the truth played out in front of him like a private booth show at the adult cinema, and this one didn’t even take a quarter. This was what June had wanted him to see — what a lousy sonuvabitch of a husband he had been.
It was revolting to watch.
Every deep kiss, every feverish grope, every squeeze, every squeal, every moan drove another railroad spike of guilt into his chest. His entire life with June, thirty-nine beautiful years of marriage and five long years without her, suddenly felt like a disgusting sham.
He had betrayed her trust, and, somehow, she knew it. She had led him here, after all. As the full devastation of that fact crept into his bones, he saw a wicked replay of all the different ways in which June had been a wonderful wife to him.
He wondered if she had always known, or if the truth had only presented itself to her upon her passing, from the all-seeing, all-knowing vista of the afterlife? He guessed the latter. If she had known what a bastard he had been during all those years of marriage, she had certainly kept it well-hidden.
Milton pressed his hands to the glass, feeling sick to his stomach as he watched them rollick around on the bed, basking in the afterglow.
The waitress — Donna, of course — straddled young Milty on the bed and whispered into his ear, and in that moment, like a lightning bolt shooting off in his brain, Milton remembered.
It came to him unformed, an embryonic memory that gestated quickly, expanding itself with dismal clarity in his mind.
He remembered what she had whispered to him.
He remembered the whole sordid affair.
This wasn’t the first time they had seen each other; no, no, it had been going on for more than a year. Always sneaking away during his travels, holing up in one of these seedy little bungalows or some dive motel like teenagers hiding from their parents. She worked the lounge and the backroom poker games. That’s where he’d met her. She had shacked up here during the slow season, hiding from her own demons. She had a jealous ex-boyfriend and Milton had a wife, but the whole cloak-and-dagger routine was just another part of the rush — knowing how wrong it was made it so much more exciting.
But this night…
Milton remembered this night.
It was the night she told him she was pregnant, the night she threatened to go to June and bust the whole affair wide open and ruin everything good in his life. Soul mates, she told him. That’s what
we are, and you know it. You feel it. We deserve this, we deserve each other.
From outside the window, Milton watched the visage of his younger self darken as Donna whispered in his ear... can’t go on forever, you know that, you do. You said it, you told me you’ve never been this happy. Right? So why go home? Why go to her when I’m right here, right here with your baby inside me... waiting, Milty, waiting for you to come to your senses...
A black cloud of anger formed in that younger Milton’s eyes as she explained that his marriage with June was over, that she would put an end to it once and for all. I’ll tell her, Milty. I’ll tell June. I’ll tell everyone I know. You know I will. I’m so tired of this... so tired of keeping us a secret.
Milton screamed and battered his fists against the window frame, but the couple inside carried on regardless. They were screaming and yelling at each other pretty heavily by now; their quiet whispers giving way to an all-out verbal slug-fest. Milton stumbled over to the door and turned the knob, desperate to get inside and stop what was about to happen, but the door was shut solid.
“Don’t!” he cried, lunging back to the window, almost losing his balance and toppling over. He gripped the windowsill and smashed his fist against the glass, but he didn’t even put so much as a crack in it.
Young Milty’s face went slack, staring up at the ceiling, a thunderstorm of dark thoughts brooding inside of him. Donna sobbed and pounded on his chest with all the angry passion of a jilted mistress, screaming through her tears that she would tell June everything, that June was a controlling bitch, that June didn’t deserve him—
—and then it happened; with brutal quickness, Donna was on her back and Milty had her pinned to the mattress, digging his fingers into her throat and bearing down with the full weight of his body.
Milton pounded the glass, sobbing, choking, desperate to act, yet unable to do anything but watch helplessly as his younger self, in a blind, drunken fury, choked the life out of a young cocktail waitress named Donna.