Dead Letters Anthology (11 page)

“I know you’ve still got it.”

I chuckled. “I don’t know what your deal is but it’s not my circus and not my monkeys.”

“Oh, it most certainly is your circus. Keep screwing around and it’ll make a monkey out of you. Save yourself a hell of a lot of time and trouble and send me Mike’s mail. I’ll give you an address.”

“Okay,” I said, “let me get a pencil and something to write on.” I put the phone down, counted to five, and picked it up again. “Go ahead.”

“M. Parris, 89 Sixth Avenue…”

As she spoke, I typed the address into Google Maps, enlarged it, then pressed for street view.

“Could you repeat that back to me, so we can be sure you have it right?” She was trying not to be impatient now.

“No,” I said. “Street view shows nothing on Sixth Avenue except warehouses and garages.”

“You think you’re funny?” she barked. “We can use Google, too. We’ve got your phone number and we know you’re in London. You want the circus? Well, the circus is coming to town and when we’re through with you—”

I hung up and shut my phone off. Then I sat staring at the blank screen, wondering if I should take out the battery and break the sim card in half like in the movies.

No, I should turn my phone back on and call the police. Better yet, take this misdirected piece of mail to the nearest police station and make a report. I reached for the envelope and stopped.
Officer, I want to report that a woman called me on the phone and threatened to take me to the circus.

I burst out laughing. Talk about thinking crazy shit when you get cancer. Speaking of which:
Yes, officer, I was diagnosed today. Two years, they said. Yes, I’ll be having chemo but it hasn’t started yet. Scared? To be honest, I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. Would I say I’m in shock? No, not exactly. Drugs? Ibuprofen and antacids. Oh, you mean drug-drugs…

That was assuming they’d even take that much time with me.

I picked up the card again. The Eternity Club. Room 47. My gaze fell on the sheet from the hotel notepad.

“Stella” –– 47.

WEDS

6:00 pm

I looked at my laptop screen, just to make sure. Yeah, it was almost two pm on a Wednesday.

Maybe this was the craziest shit I’d ever thought in my life but I couldn’t believe it was just a coincidence.

* * *

Like anyone else, I can over-think things. I spent most of my adult life analysing data for insurance companies until I took early retirement. My first brush with cancer felt like a wake-up call; you know, time to smell the roses. I don’t think I over-thought that. All told, I’d say I’m thorough but not obsessive… usually. But today wasn’t exactly usual.

In my whole life, I’ve never had anyone threaten me, on the phone, in person, whatever. Even when my son’s father and I got divorced, there wasn’t a whole lot of drama. Things got heated sometimes but not to the point of circus metaphors.

That thought didn’t make me laugh. I grabbed the magnifying glass from the silverware drawer (okay, where do you keep yours?) and studied the black card, which was apparently at the centre of the issue. The front really was featureless except for a few scratches. Fingerprints finally occurred to me. Far too late to be useful, of course; I’d handled the thing too much. I really was a crap detective.

Even as I was thinking that, however, something else occurred to me. I’d been living in the UK for twenty years, long enough that I have to stop and think as to whether someone has a British or North American accent. Things can become so familiar that they’re completely transparent. Which was why it hadn’t registered on me right away that Michael Parris’s so-called daughter was from Massachusetts. I hadn’t noticed right away because I’d grown up in Massachusetts myself.

One more for the not-a-coincidence file?

The question of what to do – or if I should do anything at all – remained. Then my gaze fell on the hotel notepaper again and I realised I actually had decided what to do.

“Google, don’t fail me now,” I muttered, turning to the laptop.

A minute later, I was fuming as I scrolled through a multitude of links to church groups and fellowships. When you’re not religious yourself, it doesn’t occur to you that words like eternal make some people want to pray.

So should I take that as a hint? Since we were filing things under not-a-coincidence, and I’d just been told what I’d been told.

I took time to consider it and decided that there was nothing even remotely liturgical about this card or the tag attached to it, or the two pieces of paper that had come with it. All the Eternity Clubs on my laptop screen were groups of people. This Eternity Club had rooms, at least forty-seven, maybe even more.

Yahoo gave me the same results; so did all the others. Disappointed, I went to my homepage just to have something other than a list of prayer groups in front of me. I smiled at the cute animal of the day but I didn’t feel it. Maybe if I changed the background to a lighter colour, I thought, it might lift my spirits. But as I was about to move the cursor, I saw something I’d used more times than I could count.

I clicked on the box under
Search For Things To Do In London Today/Tonight
and typed
The Eternity Club
.

The image that appeared on my screen didn’t last even five seconds before it flipped to 404: Page Not Found. But that was okay. It had lasted long enough for me to see the address was in Soho. Not surprising; most private clubs were.

* * *

I slipped my laptop and, after a moment’s thought, the power lead, into a shoulder bag and made sure all the windows were locked before I left the house. Tim was still puttering around in the front yard. I considered asking him to let me know if any angry strangers came around asking for me and then decided against it. I’d have to come up with a reason and I don’t like telling stupid lies; worse, the truth sounded like a stupid lie. So I just tried to look busy as I hurried off to the bus stop.

But since there wasn’t really any hurry, I took the number 29 bus southbound toward central London. Depending on the time of day, it can take anywhere between forty minutes to something over an hour to get from my neighbourhood to the edge of Soho. I sat on the upper level and stared out the window at nothing in particular. And then for no reason at all, I remembered I hadn’t called my Macmillan nurse back.

I fished my phone out of my pocket and turned it back on. As soon as I did, it rang, and it was that number. Reject? No, Michael Parris’s fake daughter had probably already left a dozen messages on my voicemail. Maybe I could get rid of her once and for all.

“What,” I said, trying to sound both bored and badass.

“Look, you’re holding property that just doesn’t belong to you,” she said, doing her best impression of a reasonable person. “Suppose I had something that belonged to you. Wouldn’t you want to get it back?”

“I don’t know that I’ve got anything that belongs to you,” I said. “I don’t even know your name. Your real name,” I add as she starts to say something.

“It’s Michaela. My friends call me Mike.”

I caught a very slight hesitation between the first two words. Maybe that means nothing or maybe she had to stop and think of something that would go with the nickname Mike. “Nice try,” I told her and hung up. Immediately, I dialled my Macmillan nurse. Naturally, I got her voicemail. I left a message. The moment I hung up, the phone rang again.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded before I could even say hello. “That card means nothing to you. You can’t use it for anything.”

“But you can?” I said.

She stumbled and stuttered.

“Tell me what it’s for and I’ll consider mailing it to you,” I said.

“It’s – it’s private,” she said. “I can’t divulge that information. You’re not – it’s not—”

“Okay, let’s try something easier,” I said. “Who’s Karen?”

“Why are you being such an asshole?” she demanded.

I hung up again, not because I was offended but because it was a good question and I didn’t have an answer.

I turned my phone off so I could think undisturbed. Why was I being such an asshole?

It didn’t take very long for the answer to come to me: cancer, of course. This was a weird little episode in which I had randomly acquired some measure of control and it was completely unrelated to cancer or my suddenly foreshortened lifespan.

Okay, I was taking my problems out on someone else. But it served her right; she was lying about who she was to get her hands on the late Michael Parris’s mail. And let’s not forget she had threatened me. With the circus, but still. She could have offered me a reward instead. A hundred pounds – even just fifty – and I’d have sent the goddam envelope to her by overnight mail.

Well… after I found out what the Eternity Club was. And that would depend on what it was.

* * *

I found a table in a cafe near a power outlet and plugged in my laptop so I could enjoy free electricity along with the free Wi-Fi. But it was hard to concentrate. I kept double-checking the Eternity Club’s address on Google Maps, and then worrying that I might have misread it. I was tempted to go there now just to make sure and then return at six but I told myself to wait. It wasn’t just that it seemed like the right thing to do; it was all I could do not to put my head down on the table and nap. Part of it was cancer fatigue – that fucker tires you out. But another part was the drama I’d stepped in with this strange woman. I made a mental note to get a new cell phone number.

Meanwhile, I was in a coffee shop; if I was tired, I could caffeinate myself.

By the time I packed up and headed out into the heart of Soho, I couldn’t have slept on a dare. I left my cell phone off.

* * *

The thing about London is, it has no grid. Streets wind and wander; you can start out thinking you’re going one place and end up somewhere completely different, with no idea how to get back. It’s part of London’s charm and it can drive visitors crazy, particularly those from the US. After twenty years, I was used to it. I still got lost, I just didn’t stress about it.

I thought for sure I’d get lost looking for the Eternity Club. It was in a nookish cranny called a close (as in close by, not close the door), the kind of place you could walk past dozens of times and never notice. But I went right to it, as if I’d been there a thousand times before. The outside of the building was painted dark brown, with equally dark windows too high up for me to try peeking through. No street number, no doorbell, not even so much as a discreet “Members Only” sign. Just a door with an old-fashioned lever-type handgrip instead of a knob, also painted dark brown.

I tried the door; it wasn’t locked.

The reception area decor was also done in shades of brown. It was softly lit by wall sconces. Pleasant, but I was going to need my reading glasses if I wanted to see anything.

“Oh!” said a voice. I blinked and realised I was standing in front of a reception counter. The young guy behind it looked surprised for a moment, then quickly covered it with a professionally warm smile. I thought he must have been standing on something because the surface was about six inches too high for me to lean on comfortably. “Welcome to the Eternity Club.”

I’d expected to be politely thrown out, not welcomed. “Thanks,” I said, feeling awkward.

“Your card?” he said.

“Of course,” I said and took my time getting it out of my shoulder bag. “Say, you don’t have a step-stool or something, do you? I’m having trouble seeing over the top.”

He surprised me by bringing me a tall white leather barstool. “Will this do?”

“Sure,” I said as I struggled to get up on it. I hate barstools but I finally managed to get comfortable. Only now the counter was about three inches too low. Apparently awkward was mandatory.

“You mean this?” I said, putting my card down on the counter, tag and all. I thought the hole would get some kind of reaction –
I’m sorry, this card is no longer valid
or just
What the hell did you do that for?
But he didn’t bat an eye. I mean he really didn’t – he had kind of stare-y eyes, although he didn’t look weird or anything. He was quite attractive, fairly tall with olive skin and some artful gold highlights in his short, dark hair.

He reached over to take the card but I didn’t let go. “What are you going to do?” I asked him.

“Pardon?”

“I’d rather not let that out of my possession.”

“I just need to check you in and, if necessary, update the provenance.”

Whatever that meant. “You’ll give it right back?”

He nodded and I let go, watching as he swiped it through something next to the keyboard on his desk. “Here you go,” he said, handing it back to me. I made it disappear quickly, in case he changed his mind.

“Now what?” I asked.

“You can go through,” he said, tilting his head at a door to his right.

“Go through to where?”

Now he did bat an eye, both of them in fact. “To your room.” He looked at a screen I couldn’t see. “Number 47.”

“That’s my room?”

“That’s what it says here.”

I don’t know how I got the nerve – cancer, probably – but I lunged forward, grabbed the flat monitor, and twisted it around so I could see the screen. I only saw my own picture before he grabbed it back and put it out of my reach. “Excuse me,” he said a bit huffily.

“How’d you get my picture?” I demanded.

Abruptly, the door to his right opened and a tall woman with dark brown skin and a headful of short dreadlocks appeared. “You’re early,” she told me. It was like an accusation.

“Who are you?” I asked but as soon as I did, I knew.

“Stella,” we said in unison. “Come along,” she added, a bit sternly, and I obeyed. I had a hunch it would have been foolish not to.

She took me down a carpeted hall to an old-fashioned brass open-cage elevator, which we rode down, getting off at -4. I followed her through a series of hallways until we came to a rich-looking door marked 47.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” she said, although it wasn’t a question.

“I’m glad somebody figured that out,” I huffed. “Is that guy at the desk a new hire?”