You Don't Love This Man (37 page)

I approached one of the staff members sitting idly behind the ticket table, a young man whose face was hidden beneath a baseball hat and mirrored sunglasses. “I need some help,” I told him. “There's a girl who's sick, and we don't see anyone with her.”

“Here we go again,” he said, sighing. But he rose dutifully, and followed as I led the way. And when we made our way back to where Miranda and the girl had been sitting, there they were, in the exact same spot. Just waiting.

 

W
HY DID
I
EXPECT
people would be there to meet us? The quaint childhood belief that your particular life is the main and
only show never really goes away, I suppose. But not a soul noted our presence when Miranda and I stepped into the Sycora Park Suites. The fountain in the atrium ran at its relentless pace, the water cascading down through the tiers in a glossy white sheen of a piece with the light jazz playing on the lobby speakers and the ringing concussions created each time the lobby bartender set a rack of glassware on the bar. We encountered no one as we made our way around the atrium to where the elevator sat waiting for us, its glass panels glinting in the lobby lights like the facets of an oversized jewel. The door was open, and Miranda stepped in, but I hesitated. A hollow male laugh rang out from somewhere beyond or behind the front desk.
I could leave her now
, I thought. But Miranda said, “Come on. Take me up.” So I stepped in, the doors closed, and the entire scene went silent. The fountain churned as we rose above it, and people moved through the lobby, but they were just mute images now, falling away.

“Is Mom angry?” Miranda asked. “Is the schedule ruined?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “Most of the schedule didn't involve you.”

“I missed the photos, though.”

“There aren't wedding photos without a bride. They'll get them afterward.”

As the elevator continued its ascent, it filled with the bright natural light that filtered down through the hotel's glass roof, and it was within that strange radiance that Miranda turned to me, looking surprised and a bit disappointed to discover that the world rolls forward just as easily in our absence as in our presence. “That's probably better, anyway,” she said doubtfully.

“Your entrance will be more dramatic,” I said.

“I guess people like it that way.”

The elevator chimed softly, and we stepped out and headed down the hall. To our right ran the long row of room doors, and to our left, the half wall one could peer over to look into the abyss. We were only steps from Sandra's room when Miranda, as if remarking on nothing more than another of the day's mundane tasks, said, “So I wrote you a note.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking I might not give it to you,” she said. “But I guess I wrote it for a reason.” She pulled a folded envelope from her pocket and thrust it toward me.

“When did you write this?” I asked.

She shrugged. “This afternoon.”

“Do I need to read it now?”

“No. Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after. It's not important.”

She seemed unhappy with whatever was in the envelope, but we had reached the room by then. When Miranda knocked on the door, Sandra opened it immediately. She looked first at me, but without any recognition—as if she didn't even know who I was. When her eyes flicked to Miranda, though, she gasped. “Get in here. Where have you been?” she said, taking her daughter by the arm. I heard the voices of others within, but I never saw them, because the door was already swinging shut. “I was taking care of something,” Miranda said, but by that point she, too, was only a voice. And with a metallic strike that echoed down the hall, the door closed, and I stood there alone.

I recall holding the brass handrail in the elevator to steady myself as it carried me to the lobby. My legs felt weak, but I put one foot in front of the other as I stepped from the elevator and tried to remember what it was I needed to do next. My tuxedo was in my car, but heading out into the heat seemed impossible.
Instead, I made my way to the middle of the lobby and sat on a park bench placed near the fountain, probably to further the atrium's pleasure dome effect. Something was off—I had stopped sweating during the Brewfest, but now that I was in the air-conditioned lobby, I felt warm again. A trickle of moisture gathered along my hairline, and I thought I might be sick. I told myself that simply couldn't happen in the hotel lobby on Miranda's wedding day. Once seated, though, I felt I no longer had the ability to move at all, and intending to spend a moment gathering myself, I closed my eyes.

The next thing I felt was a hand on my arm, gently shaking me. “Hey,” I heard Catherine say. “Are you okay? Wake up.”

I didn't know how long my eyes had been closed, but it seemed an effort to open them. I still felt as if I might be sick, and could not, in that state, say anything. All I was able to do was smile weakly and nod.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “Can you speak?”

I shook my head.

“Are you going to pass out?”

I managed, with great effort, to shrug.

“You should lie down.”

I felt that if I did that, I might never get up again, so I shook my head.

“Stay here,” she said.

I closed my eyes. When Catherine returned, it was with a glass of water in one hand and a plate with a sandwich and potato chips on it in the other. “Do you think you can eat?” she asked.

I drank some water and tried a bite of the sandwich. My body had shut down for a few minutes, it seemed, and now was starting slowly up again.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Everyone's where they're supposed to be,” I said, and took another bite from the sandwich. “This is good.”

“You need it,” she said. “But now that some of the color is returning to your face, I should tell you that I have news. They found the dye pack.”

That stopped me. But then I thought, Every time I try to eat. So I took another bite and finished chewing before I said, “Where?”

“In a Dumpster behind the wine distributor,” she said. “An employee was taking out the trash, and when he lifted the lid, everything inside was purple.”

“It exploded in the Dumpster?”

“It sounds like it.”

“Any money in there? Did he ditch the whole bag?”

“Annie said it was only the dye pack.”

“Who is Annie?”

“The woman with security.”

“Jesus. I completely forgot about the woman,” I said.

I returned to my speculative version of the drama. Did he really have enough time to make it two blocks before the dye pack exploded? Did he sift through the money while he walked, moving fast, until he felt the one strap of bills that was different? But if that alley was where he stopped—whether surprised and angry, or pleased to find what he'd been looking for—it was true: he would have been only twenty yards from three or four Dumpsters, from piles of discarded boxes, and probably near one or two open truck beds, too. “He picked it out,” I said.

“I guess so.”

Regardless of whether it was luck or skill, I was astounded. It was a wonder. “He picked it out.”

Catherine did not seem as impressed. “Can I make a personal observation?” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

“You're kind of a mess. Where are you going to clean up?”

“I was planning on home.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“No. What time is it?”

“Too late for you to go home,” she said. “Where are your clothes?”

“My tuxedo? In the car.”

“Give me your keys,” she said, extending her palm.

“What are you even doing here?” I said. “Why do you follow me?”

“I'm not following you. I have a room here.”

“Why do you have a room? You live ten minutes from here.”

“I don't want to worry about how much I should or shouldn't drink at the reception, or how late I should stay. It's easier to have a room.”

I extricated the keys and dropped them into her palm. “How responsible of you,” I said.

She handed me a plastic card—her room key. “It's 514. And you really need to clean up. You're pretty ripe. I'll bring your tuxedo up in a bit.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

She turned, walked to the front of the lobby, and stepped out through the sliding doors. I sat there, eating my sandwich in silence. I drank more water. Could I stand and walk? Could I even make it up to this room? I stood. The world did not tilt. It was just there, waiting for me to navigate it. And as I made my way across the lobby, I thought:
It's alive!
I may even have smiled a bit at that,
though I also realized I couldn't remember what happens in the story once the monster stands up. The next images that came to mind were of villagers and torches, as if there were no middle to the story at all. And I couldn't recall how the ending turned out, either. There was more than one version, I reminded myself. But no matter the version, he gets away, doesn't he?

 

W
HEN
I
STEPPED OUT
of the shower, I discovered my tuxedo and its attendant paraphernalia—including a plastic-looking pair of shoes and some cheap cuff links I didn't need—on the hanging bar next to the hotel room's door. There was no evidence of Catherine, though—I saw no suitcase or bag belonging to her, no papers on the table, no sign even of a moved chair or wrinkled bedspread. It was just an empty room that held me and two suits.

When I had the tuxedo on and had adjusted the cummerbund, straightened the tie, and squared the shoulders, I looked at myself in the bathroom's still-steamed mirror. I looked very much like myself again, I decided—the way people expected me to look. They would be pleased.

While hanging the jacket of my other suit, I removed two items from the pocket: the envelope Miranda had handed me on our way to Sandra's room, and the transfer form Catherine wanted me to sign. The envelope from Miranda wasn't sealed, and the note I removed from within was written on a couple sheets of yellow legal paper.