Odd Adventures with your Other Father

by Prentiss, Norman

  Jack was so caught up in his web of technical explanation, it’s like he almost lost sight of the horrors he implied. On some level I already understood, the instant I smelled that foul odor that seeped onto the wooden podium. But another part of me didn’t want to admit it.

  “That fake thing outside the theater,” I said. “That publicity stunt. You’re telling me that it’s . . . ”

  “Yeah. No hidden speakers, because that wasn’t a recorded growl. And those wires and metal rods weren’t intended to control a lifeless puppet. They were a supplement to the bars of the cage—little shackles and wires fastened to the creature’s skin to keep him from getting away.”

  I felt sick, my breaths in short gasps that warned of an oncoming asthma attack. Assuming I accepted Jack’s premise, there still wasn’t any reason for it. Where did the creature come from? Why did they use it in a movie? And why torture the thing by exhibiting it outside in a sweltering hot cage?

  I wheezed for a few more seconds, waiting it out like I always did.

  “You okay?” Jack said. He patted me on the back, showing a sweet affection he rarely displayed in public. We were in New York City, though. Nobody would care.

  “Yeah. It’s under control. I’ll be glad to get back to our hotel.”

  “Uh huh.” Jack looked around, uneasy.

  I realized we’d missed our cross street. We’d have to double back.

  Jack pulled out his business card, Sullivan’s Hotel information scribbled on the back. “I thought we’d walk a little more. Kind of scope his place out. If you’re up to it.”

  #

  Sullivan was booked at The Paramount on Forty-Sixth Street. One of the earliest Times Square hotels, a bit neglected at the time, but a palace compared to our Hotel Splendid. Almost twenty stories high, with a series of tall marble arches at street level. We loitered in the attached coffee shop and watched through glass doors into the hotel’s small lobby, or out the full-length windows onto Forty-Sixth.

  “Do you think he’ll pull up in a limo?”

  “He’s not that kind of star anymore.” Jack stirred a plastic spoon through his lukewarm coffee. “A taxi, at the most. He’ll probably walk.”

  “Yeah, we’re not far from the Rialto. I’m getting another Coke.”

  Jack made a face like I was wasting my money—he’d be able to nurse the same drink for an hour or two, just to keep his spot at the counter. But the shop had those Cokes in little glass bottles. They always tasted better that way.

  When I got back to the counter, Jack had lifted a Village Voice to half-cover his face.

  “You’re taking this amateur spy thing too far.”

  “Crossing the street,” Jack said. Out the front windows, a guy in mirrored sunglasses and a tweed beret stepped in front of a parked tour bus. The disguise wasn’t working: all the movies I’d seen, I could recognize Sullivan simply from his the way he walked. Plus, he wore the same suitcoat and pants he’d had for the movie premiere.

  “The satchel,” Jack said. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  Sullivan carried one of those big leather briefcases, wide at the base and curved to shut at the top. The brass clasp looked like it had an extra lock on it.

  “I wasn’t sure he’d keep it with him,” Jack said.

  “Maybe it’s leftover posters from the signing.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re still trying for that interview, even if he has that thing in the room?”

  We switched our perspective to the glass doors facing the hotel lobby. As Sullivan waited at the elevators, his arm twitched where he held the satchel. He set it on the ground beside him, and I got this creepy notion it would slither across the floor on its own.

  A loud hiss came from the milk steamer on the espresso machine, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  I’m not sure if Jack noticed my cowardly twitch. “That’s why I wanted you here,” he said. “So we could take precautions.”

  He outlined his plan. We’d wait a few minutes, finish our drinks, then take a leisurely stroll around the block. Jack would call Sullivan from a Times Square phone booth—

  (Yes, Celia, a phone booth. Only about five or six millionaires had “portable phones back then. Those phones were each as big as a shoebox.)

  —from a phone booth (as I was saying), being sure to get the room number in case I needed it, too.

  “I’ll do the interview, and get out,” Jack said.

  “You’re going to ask questions about him, right? Not the manikin?”

  “Whatever makes the best story. Don’t worry, Shawn. You’ll be stationed nearby, so you can come to my rescue. I’ll figure out a way to warn you.”

  “Just yell ‘Help!’” I suggested.

  “Something like that.”

  #

  After he set up the meeting, Jack bought me a People and Newsweek from a street-side newsstand. He gave me his Voice, too.

  “I won’t need all this stuff,” I protested. “If you’re not out of there in an hour, I’m coming after you.”

  “The way that guy talks, that’s barely one question. Don’t mess up my interview, Shawn.”

  We crossed the Paramount lobby to the bank of four elevators. Sullivan’s room was on the third floor.

  Upstairs, the elevators opened onto a small alcove with a padded bench and an art-deco coffee table with a courtesy phone. A black-and-white photograph of the Empire State Building hung over the table. Pretty standard decor for an NYC hotel, I imagine, but the image was shot aslant to give a more artistic impression.

  Jack studied the photo a lot longer than it deserved. He didn’t even bother to visit the real building with me earlier today, so he shouldn’t care about a photo.

  He borrowed the magazines for a moment, staring at the covers before he handed them back.

  “Room 314 is down here.” Jack led the way, stopping to note the wallpaper’s texture and any other design touches. Another photograph, this time of Times Square, hung between two wall sconces. The night image was overexposed, car headlights stretching in bright red or white lines to match neon advertisements. Further down, Lady Liberty posed for another black-and-white photo. The angle made it look like her torch had grown too heavy for her; she was drunk and ready to topple over.

  Jack lifted his forefinger to his lips then pointed around the corner. “That’s the room. I want you to wait by the elevators.”

  “You’re gonna be a while?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry to drag you into this, but I need some backup—in case something funny happens. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, okay?”

  “All right.” I smiled, even though I knew I’d have a pretty boring wait. This was a big break for Jack: he’d never had the chance to interview someone famous like Grant Sullivan. I needed to support him.

  “It’ll be like a stake out in one of those cop shows,” Jack said.

  “Mason for Hire.”

  “There you go.”

  I told him to be careful. He wouldn’t be Jack if he’d listened to me.

  #

  I tell you, that leather-padded bench wasn’t as comfortable as it looked. I kept shifting positions, moving my newspapers and magazines around. There were a few awkward moments when the elevators dinged and other hotel guests stepped into the alcove, but for the most part they barely glanced at me. Apparently, I didn’t look like a bum who’d wandered in off the street. I looked like I was waiting for somebody—which was true enough.

  When I found myself rereading a golf article, I knew this would be a slow night. Here’s how I read magazines: I race through it the first time, totally absorbed in stories that interest me. Movie and play reviews in the Newsweek, Musto’s gossip column in the Voice. Celebrity stories in People, instead of boring stuff about regular folks who found a rare baseball card in their attic or something. Trouble is, the strategy leaves nothing for me to look forward to on the second skim-through. I kept my ears open for any sound of alarm further down the hall,
or for the approach of Jack’s carpeted footsteps after a successful interview, but the place was silent. I was bored out of my mind.

  Or maybe just out of my mind. I’d stared at that black-and-white photo often enough to memorize it. I’d counted the number of floors visible in the shot, imagined climbing stairs to the top of the tilted building. I’d tried to recognize shapes in the wispy clouds behind the building, but didn’t come up with anything good: oh, that’s a stretched cotton ball; oh, that’s a gray mustache.

  Then the clouds got darker. The effect was subtle, like the softening of lights in a restaurant, and I thought maybe the hotel programmed their hallway lights on a timed dimmer for the later hours. Then the light seemed to flicker.

  As I said, I’d pretty much memorized the photo, and I’d seen the actual Empire State Building earlier that day as part of my tour . . . but there was something even more familiar about that photo now. The flicker of light, the grain of the image like a scene from an old movie.

  At the bottom of the frame, a humanoid shape covered in fur clung to the side of the building. In comparison to the skyscraper, photographed in long-shot, the figure was tiny—maybe it had been there all along, and I hadn’t noticed it.

  The image began to flicker again as, arm over arm, the figure began a slow ascent.

  Jack’s tricks could sometimes sneak up on me. It was a long day, and I was tired and bored and maybe a little tense, too. Eventually, it occurred to me that Jack knew how long I’d been waiting. He was sending images from one of our favorite films, to entertain me.

  Except that wasn’t Kong climbing the building. The torso was round like a coconut, and the limbs had a loose, snakelike quality as they gripped each ledge.

  A 1933 biplane circled the top of the building. and the manikin continued to climb. The image straightened, centering the building in the frame—I felt dizzy, as if I looked out a window and the hotel itself had tilted.

  Another biplane entered the picture. I wondered what Jack and Sullivan were doing in his hotel room. I suspected Sullivan had launched into a repetitive story, freeing Jack’s mind from note-taking and allowing him to concentrate on projecting the Kong parody to the elevator lobby. Jack did a good job with the details. The manikin held a tiny Fay Wray figure in his left hand.

  The creature’s face was turned away. I stood from the bench and moved closer to the photograph, my feet unsteady as if I walked on a sea-tossed ship. The manikin had climbed halfway up the section of building, and the image zoomed closer.

  The manikin turned its head toward me, staring out of the photo. Instead of a tiny rubber mask, its lion’s mouth fixed in a toothy growl, Sullivan’s face twisted in a malicious, lusty grin.

  That was my first clue the image wasn’t a simple entertainment. The second clue was the Fay Wray doll, fainted in the climbing manikin’s grasp. It wore Jack’s face.

  #

  I raced toward Sullivan’s room, doing my best not to stumble. The wallpaper, which Jack inspected during our earlier pass through the corridor, split with dark cracks. Only an illusion, but disorienting all the same. The carpet surged into false ripples, threatening to trip me.

  Instead of electric lamps, a set of wall sconces morphed into torches with tall flame heads. The Times Square picture between them was a blur of smashed electronic billboards. A Kong-size manikin copied Sullivan’s distinctive masculine walk as it stomped over stalled cars, Jack motionless in one giant, furred paw.

  I hurried, trying to ignore the images, but as I got closer to room 314, it’s like Jack lost control. The carpet and wallpaper jolted into a strange burst of geometric shapes and colorful flowers, like some movie simulation of a drug trip. In the last photo, the Statue of Liberty was a cartoon, her body spiky with animal fur. Instead of standing, she sat—the way Kong once sat at his mountaintop lair, pulling loose clothing off Fay Wray and sniffing as if he’d accidently torn off layers of skin. The Jack doll was shirtless and limp, eyes closed. Cartoon Sullivan licked his lips, visibly aroused.

  The door to 314 was covered with long strands of hair. I waved my hand as if to brush them aside, and Sullivan’s eyes peered through the parting—the same intense stare he summoned to flatter each of his fans.

  Was this Jack’s warning that Sullivan waited on the other side, aware I was coming? I put one hand over those eyes, anchored my shoulder against the door, and reached for the handle.

  Please let it be unlocked. Jack would have taken care of that detail, wouldn’t he? If he’d been able . . .

  #

  I twisted the knob and pushed the door open. It swung inward with no resistance.

  The trippy hallucinations ceased the moment I crossed the threshold. Lights were on in the first half of the room. It wasn’t exactly a suite, but it was large for a New York room. The lit side had the restroom, a long closet with sliding mirror doors, and a separate area with a business desk, small table and two settee chairs. On the table, a room-service bucket iced an open champagne bottle. Jack’s notebook lay next to an empty glass; the other was almost full, as if barely touched.

  A king-size bed occupied the far end of the room, next to the window. Closed floor-length curtains blocked light from the ever-busy street, but the lamps in the front section allowed me to see well enough.

  Jack lay across the bed, apparently asleep. His shirt was folded neatly beside him—it would have been crumpled on the floor if he’d removed it himself.

  Sullivan leaned over the bed. He wore a large furry costume, dressed like the film’s manikin. His hands were covered with latex gloves, enamel claws glued to each of the fingertips.

  The hands groped at the hem of Jack’s trousers, working to unhook his belt buckle.

  He was too preoccupied to notice me. I let the door close silently, then slipped my hand around the neck of the champagne bottle. Ice clicked faintly in the bucket as I lifted the bottle.

  As I walked silently behind the costumed Sullivan, I pressed my thumb over the lip of the bottle to keep the remaining liquid from dripping out.

  I used extra force to swing through the cushion of his mask and the thick wiry mane sewn into its rubber scalp. Just before the bottle hit, his illusory costume flickered away. Hard glass thunked directly against the back of the actor’s head, and the blow vibrated up my forearm. A naked, semierect Sullivan slumped to the floor.

  My thumb popped off the lip of the upturned bottle. Champagne sloshed inside and fizzled onto the carpet—though the sound may have been Sullivan’s brain jostled in his skull, blood dripping out his ear.

  I stepped over Sullivan to get to the bed. Jack’s not hurt, I told myself. He’s asleep. He’s drugged.

  His skin was warm when I touched the side of his neck. He made a faint murmur when I shook his shoulders. I grabbed his legs and slid them off the side of the bed, then tried to lift his torso.

  He didn’t respond. His limbs were floppy like rubber. He was made of latex.

  I slapped Jack’s face to try to rouse him. “We’ve got to hurry. I’m not sure how bad I conked Sullivan.”

  “Shawn?” It was a whisper from deep sleep. One arm moved loosely, as if an invisible string lifted it by the wrist, then it flopped back to the mattress.

  I grabbed his shirt and pushed his head through the collar, guided his noodle arms through the sleeves.

  With my hands under his armpits, I lifted him from the bed. I hefted him to his feet, and his legs held—as long as I leaned him against my hip to support his body. With one tentative step, I pulled him along with me.

  I’m animating him, I thought. This is what it was like when Willis O’Brien moved his King Kong model, one frame at a time.

  “That’s it, Jack. One more step. Keep going.”

  Seemed like those first movements took forever. I led him halfway across the room, the whole time expecting Sullivan to jump up—the way his character climbed out of a collapsed mine, not a scratch on him; the way a hardheaded Mason bounced back from a pistol whipping. A dark swir
l spread beneath his head. It might have been a pattern in the carpet.

  “The satchel.” Jack’s weak voice conveyed a surprising urgency.

  “No way. We need to get out of here.”

  Jack’s body slumped limp and stubborn against me. Without a sound, the mirrored closet doors shattered into pieces. Shards littered the floor.

  “You’re not helping,” I said. His legs slumped lower, a sack of potatoes I dragged behind me to get closer to the room’s exit. Mirror shards tore at his pant legs, scraped blood from his exposed skin.

  “Quit it, Jack!” So many mirror shards, and the blood kept flowing from his shredded legs. Oh, God, I’d done this to him. I’d dragged him unconscious over razor sharp peaks of broken glass.

  I dropped to my knees and touched him. His legs were dry. The carpet was smooth beneath my palm.

  (Yeah, Celia, you bet I was mad—at him for tricking me, and at myself falling for it. But there wasn’t time to fight, you know? I had to do what Jack wanted, so he’d work with me.)

  The mirror pieces had fallen away from both closet doors, revealing the satchel within. I set Jack gently on the floor, avoiding the glamour of his false blood. When I reached for the opening, my fingers flattened against the intact mirror beneath Jack’s shattered projection.

  It was tricky sliding one of the doors open—I had to keep telling myself I wasn’t running my palm over broken glass. The satchel wasn’t where it had appeared in Jack’s glamour, but I found it easily enough. The bag was heavy. Something shifted inside as I lifted it.

  I had a tough haul ahead of me. The whole time I dragged Jack out of the room and down the long hallway to the elevator, I needed to devote one arm to pulling the heavy satchel along with us. Too bad I couldn’t call room service and request a luggage cart.

  I lifted Jack, propped him against my hip and stood him as straight as I could. His legs seemed a bit more responsive, which would help. His head lolled a bit toward my supporting shoulder, and his lips twitched. He was trying to speak, to thank me.

  “My notebook,” Jack whispered. “It’s on the table.”