The four-bladed flying craft hummed upward into view above the balcony railing before it paused and hovered. Under the whirling propellers, the craft’s belly held a tiny black eye aimed inside her apartment.
The fifth marble connected, destroying one spinning blade and the support structure of a second. The flying object leaned hard to its left, its engine whining higher, faster as it fought for balance in the air.
Ed shot a sixth marble and missed, but it didn’t matter as the craft was breaking up, tearing itself apart as it faltered and went silent and fell from view.
“Sometimes ya just gotta remove a puzzle piece to see the picture better,” Ed drawled, getting up and going inside.
Preferring to shower, she nonetheless filled the large tub and bathed—a professional hostess requirement that had never made sense, but she had been trained to do. Still dripping wet with a warmed towel in hand, Ed stood inches from the full-length mirror.
“A tiny-nosed fox,” she addressed her reflection. “A beautiful fox,” she added, admiring her quick, intelligent eyes and offering herself her own ‘killer, winning sly smile.’
She glanced at her body just long enough to remind herself of its stirring sexual attractiveness—thin shoulders, full, upright breasts and nipples that needed only a slight circling with her makeup brush to further accent their ripe, round perfection. Her fourteen-year-old waist was thin and smoothed skinned. Turning to the side, she took in the lines and curves of what many customers called her ‘perfect bubble ass.’
“Eye and hair color?” She turned from the mirror and opened her carryall which she had earlier brought in from the walk-through closet.
After carefully removing and storing her cocoa-colored eye lens, she selected a vibrant, bold green. With her eye color changed, she pulled off the lazy curled blonde wig and washed and shampooed her bristled head in the sink. Next, she selected a wavy and shoulder-length redwood-colored wig. Since she had no clue about what kind of event she was working at 9:00 p.m., she spoke to her open suitcase of wigs, body paints, accessories, and makeup.
“Tempting secretary.” She selected a pair of thin gold-framed spectacles.
Before she left the bathroom, deciding no makeup would work best, she stocked her cocktail party purse with her fav breath mints and brush.
In the closet, there were two hanging rows of dresses, only a few of the style she thought would work. She pulled down a simple, dried-flower print dress that said ‘secretary on holiday.’ She selected a thin shoulder sweater and took both back into the bathroom where she sprayed a misting cloud of perfume and stepped through it before dressing, no bra and panties.
Up front in the living room, she checked the modern silver clock on the wall beside the bookcase.
A white card lay on the carpet before the front door. She picked it up.
Please visit Suite Seven prior to hosting tonight. 8p.m.
She chose three books from the shelves with splashy bold colors and titles and relaxed on the couch. Skim reading the first three pages of each, she selected one and dug into the clipped, lurid, and breathless story of crime and chaos in a book titled White Jazz.
“Snapshot poetry,” she told the room at twelve pages in.
Checking the clock, she saw that she had to leave soon.
“Have to be careful.” The story was sweeping her through the minutes quickly.
At a quarter to eight, Ed slipped into her four-inch black stiletto work shoes, mindful that they didn’t go well with the mousey secretary attire but knowing the seductive arch they gave her lower back and ass. She laced the stilettos, took up her purse, and headed out.
Walking the lawn along the shiny rail overlooking the atrium, she read off the suite numbers until she reached her destination.
5
The architecture said stern and heavy to Ed. The suite front was constructed with gray carved stones and the two side windows were blackened by the interior drawn drapes. A black runner of carpet led up a slight incline past two stone columns to the entrance.
The entrance to suite seven spoke to Ed, A church? No. A business? For sure it’s serious. She was reminded of small towns in movies set in England. The door had a brass kick plate and handle and the wood was polished, set under a curved black canvas awning.
“Rain? Here?”
Ed stepped back onto the lawn and looked up.
“Ah.”
The black fabric was splattered with bird-droppings.
She knocked twice, tried the door handle, and entered. The short foyer was fragrant with the thick, cloying scent of roses. Pale pink walls and lots of dark wood trimmed the dull green carpet. The carpet seemed to suck the sound from the room, muffling the music from an organ out of view. The song was familiar and sad.
There were upward explosions of roses about the entrance, rising from standing vases and others elevated on tripods. The roses had a white garland that looked a few days old or wilted by the high heat.
Ed walked to the centered dais that was lit by a green lampshade. A guest book rested beside a neat stack of memorial cards. There were packets of crisp fifty-dollar bills with ‘Mourners’ written on the bands. Beyond the podium, the room was sealed off by two closed black French doors. She saw her name in a bold, elegant font on the memorial cards and took one.
“Funny, that,” she tried a British accent.
A woman stepped through a pale green curtain to Ed’s left.
A mouse, Ed chose. An albino mouse with gray, smart eyes.
She wore a cheap and shiny three-piece black business suit. Her hair was a white cloud with tiny decorative flowers and she approached at a slow pace with her thick white hands clasped before her belly.
“You asked for me to come by?” Ed asked.
“Heavens no, Ms. Rang. My husband is in the theatre awaiting you. Show me your hands, lovely.”
Ed extended her hands and the woman examined them closely without touching, her eyes inches away. She asked to see Ed’s palms and fingertips.
“I’m Mrs. Thorngarten, to you,” the plump, long-nosed woman instructed. “Follow me.”
They entered a narrow hall that ran along the inside of the suite.
“He’s a bit of a nutter,” Mrs. Thorngarten said. “A bit sideways. His mum would settle him down by putting a clothespin on his little nasty.”
Ed tilted her lovely head to one side. “Thank you for sharing that?”
“One of the many afflictions in his brain basket is a dose of Trypophobia.”
“Trypophobia?”
“Fear of tiny holes. He sees them, and he goes bonkers—palpations, sweats, swarming nausea. If you are carrying anything porous in your purse, give it to me now. Anything with clusters of little holes has to be nipped.”
“No makeup sponge, nothing with holes.”
“Lovely. I see your skin is yummy smooth, no pores. Fortunate you.”
Coming to a simple door at the end of the hall, Ed asked, “I wasn’t told what he wanted to see me about. Can you help me with that?”
“You Muppet,” the words were hostile, bitter.
Chastised and confused, Ed bit her lower lip and followed the woman through the door.
She had seen rooms like this one before, in movies—those dangerous detective crime stories—white flooring, shining steel walls under painfully bright row lamps all along the ceiling, square metal drawers lined the far wall, and beyond, a chrome autopsy table. To the right were glass cabinets of supplies.
A pear of a man dressed in a white surgical gown sat at a dining table on casters parked between two industrial steel sinks. The table was set and served for two. He had skin the color of bread dough and his head was shaved to a black stubble. Black snakes of arm hair wove his pale skin. With his back toward Ed and Mrs. Thorngarten, his jaw pumped as he chewed a bite from a greasy, dripping, dead-smelling hamburger.
Ed waited, eyeing Mr. Thorngarten, squinting from the harsh lighting.
“Your rabbit,” Mrs. Thornga
rten told the man in an angry voice.
He swiveled around on his wheeled chair.
This one was easy for Ed. Sad dog with eye bags.
“Oh, mum, thank you,” his voice gargled with meat. “She is positively edible.”
“Thinks you’re bang tidy,” the woman said to Ed. “Means ‘holy hades, you are hot. Let us touch genitals immediately.’”
“That’s not on my menu.” Ed scrounged up a smile to take the edge off the words.
“A flaming Nora,” he agreed, his accent also British.
Ed added warmth to her smile at the confusing, possible compliment. Mrs. Thorngarten took out a cigarette purse and Zippo and lit up.
“Show me your hands,” he told Ed.
She approached, hands extended.
He examined without touching and approved, his eyes rising to the skin of her throat and face.
“Please take a seat,” he gestured to the autopsy table.
Ed heard the door behind her open and Mrs. Thorngarten’s parting shot. “Bloody sodomite. Last time I’m your fucking ponce.”
The door closed, leaving Ed alone with the portly man who introduced himself while taking off a shoe.
“Manny Thorngarten. Please excuse the missus. A bit of a shrew,” he turned around for another bit of his burger.
Manny told her to climb up on the cold steel table and she did so.
He rolled a cart of instruments and what looked like a cosmetics case over beside her.
“Marlaina said you might be willing to take part in some theatrics. Are you?”
“If the money’s good. It would be a first.”
“You’ve been in a cruel and violent accident,” he told Ed nonchalantly as though that was perfectly clear.
“Yes, it was terrible.” she played along.
“Do not speak again. You are dead. Lay back.”
Ed heeded the instruction and lay silent on the icy steel table while Manny went to work on her, utilizing stinging solutions on her face and neck.
“The Mehron scaring solution needs three applications before the skin fully indents,” he spoke while painting on her skin with a thin brush. “Please remove your shoes and blouse.”
Ed did so, cautiously, only after seeing him focused on his chemicals and brushes.
After some vicious carved scars marred the side of her face, throat and upper chest, she watched his hairy hands apply Mehron coagulated blood from small squeeze bottles. When he walked away, she watched him with her eyes turning, her head held straight. He opened a metal closet and took out a torn and blood-stained wedding gown on a hanger.
“Put this on,” he instructed.
Ed climbed off the table and did as told.
The lacy, frilled gown was a size or two too big for her, She noticed how the torn holes and blood stains aligned with her new wounds.
“Follow me, cupcake,” Manny told Ed, and she followed barefooted to the right side double doors.
Inside the new room were several caskets on display—a varying selection distinguished by their detailed fine woods and metal work. There was a simple rough pine coffin off to the side. Manny walked to the side of an ornate all-white model with its white satin bedding showing from inside the opened hinged lids.
“Hiney to the sky, if you please,” he told her. She assumed he wanted her in the casket with her bubble butt up, her face down. She watched him lock the casters for safety before she climbed up and in on the deeply-padded white satin.
“Sleep, the poor child’s meal,” he said as he unlocked the casters and rolled the casket with Ed laying inside.
She turned and raised her head from the soft fabric and watched the passing walls and then a doorway, her neck strained by the time the movement ended. Organ music was clear in the next room and underscored by the soft murmurs and whispering of voices.
A priestly sounding woman began with a greeting to the grievers, followed by a flowery description of Ms. Rang’s many fine qualities and gifts of kindness and caring. She spoke with sadness of, “A full and good, but much too short time on earth.”
“Interesting choice of lies,” Ed breathed into the satin.
She rose onto her elbows slowly until she had a one-eyed peek at the room which did, indeed, look like the suspected church. Three rows of pews with a scatter of faces, a few familiar from the midday dinner. Mrs. Thorngarten stood against the right side-wall scanning and muttering to herself. Ed was turning her head to get a glance at the speaker when a beefy hand took hold of the back of her neck and pushed her face down.
“You mutton, you’re dead,” Manny Thorngarten growled at her.
She heard the casters lock again.
The floral description of Ed’s fictionalized life concluded. The lighting shifted to a dimmed amber. She felt the casket shift and creak, absorbing additional weight. She realized that someone, almost certainly Manny Thorngarten, was climbing in with her from behind. Cold hands rode the rear hem of the wedding gown up the back of her legs to her lower back, exposing her naked rear.
The sexual intention was clear. She drove her heel upward in a blast of a kick that connected deep and solid. The crashing sound of Manny Thorngarten spilling from the casket and onto the floor was a pleasure.
Ed ignored his pained and wounded moaning. She ignored the gasps and chatter of the audience as she flipped over and sat up. Groggy complaints came from the seated observers. She climbed out, glared at the sad, frocked man at the lectern, and made her way up the aisle for the exit doors, ignoring the expressions of surprise and disappointment at both her sides.
“Sorry, sorry, I don’t do dead well,” she said to anyone who might hear.
She could still hear Mr. and Mrs. Thorngarten in a vicious exchange as she crossed the funeral home foyer and went out the front door.
6
Undecided if she wanted to return to her suite or not, Ed chose the stairs down to the lobby, inspired by an oddly-timed, unfocused appetite.
Lendall was again manning the front desk. He looked unsteady and agitated. His jaw was twitching from side to side as he chewed the inside of his cheeks. Rising onto her toes, Ed looked over the counter at Lendall’s grip on his paper bag.
“Flakka?” she asked.
“Oh no, that stuff is dangerous.”
He seemed serious.
She walked away and entered the hall to the dining room, hearing the desk clerk groan and crumble to the floor. Past the doors, the hall to the next door was warm with the drawing smells of cooking.
The kitchen was modern and filthy. Stains and spills and containers of foods and liquids were all about the counters and long central table. The restaurant-size steel stove and oven were lit under tureens of soups and sauces adding both sweet and bitter spicy scents. The main wood table had slabs of uncooked meats and wicker baskets of vegetables scattered here and there under the dangling pots and pans and utensils and skillets and knives.
Two gypsy women were scraping food from plates and platters into a low wooden box. A third sat on a chair to the side reading a celebrity magazine with a red marker in one hand.
Standing at the door taking it all in, Ed interrupted the women’s sharp and edgy accented conversation.
“Excuse me, can I get something to eat? Just a snack. Please?”
Three pairs of eyes drilled her. A silence fell.
The red marker circled an image before the magazine was set aside and the tired and lonely looking woman in her mid-forties spoke, “You are not to be here. Use the phone in your room.”
“Yes, I will,” Ed agreed.
Deciding to leave, her eyes bore deeper into the kitchen. Beyond a second-long table lined with plates ready to be served was a silver rolling cart. With a nude body on it.
“Who’s that?” Ed asked, meaning to say, Why is that here?
None of the three women tried to stop her from entering their kitchen further, but they eyed her closely as she passed along the first cluttered table to the next, to the dead bod
y.
As best as she could tell, the death of the woman on the silver table hadn’t been violent. There were no cuts or holes or bruises. Standing alongside the dead woman, Ed recognized her as Patricia, the ‘You know, umm, I don’t, well, I’m not sure’ midday dinner who had sat at the side table with the angry painter.
“Why is she in here?” Ed asked, over her shoulder.
Patricia’s toe was tagged and a folder of papers lay on her abdomen under the curve of her sagging breasts.
“The freezer is full. Backed up,” one of the women answered from across the kitchen.
“Need to see?” A second voice asked.
The dancing sound of jewelry and heavy shoes signaled one of the women approaching behind Ed. It was the magazine gypsy who passed dead Patricia on the gurney and unlocked the ceiling-high freezer door. She wore a purple shawl and a coarse woven dress of angular flowers in bold prime colors.
“Harlot, give me a hand,” the woman instructed. The many shiny bracelets on her wrist before a stump were held in place by a beaded rounding of string.
“What happened to Patricia?” Ed asked.
“Do I look like a doctor? Rumored to be a choking. No blame on the kitchen, though.”
“Who are you?”
“Cliantha, the glory flower.”
Ed decided her face resembled a cat. A worn out, angry feline. A thousand-mile stare of black eyes in a heart-shaped head.
“Whiskers would make it perfect,” Ed said, not meaning to do so out loud.
“Excuse?”
“Nothing.”
“From that mind, I agree. Get the door, whore.”
“I’m not a whore,” Ed fired back before she raised the crossing bar that unlocked the freezer and used all her strength to pull the tall steel door open.
Unlike the kitchen, the freezer was neat and orderly. It was also well lit. Shelves of crated vegetables, meats, and large sauce jars ran ten feet deep. Ed stepped aside as Cliantha rolled Patricia in, the cold bracing Ed’s face, arms, and legs quickly. Her first breath formed a frosty cloud.
The Girl in the Hotel Page 3