Get in Trouble: Stories (11 page)

Billie checks her hair in the women’s bathroom in the lobby. Melinda is always trying to get Billie to wear something besides T-shirts and jeans, and, sure, she looks different right now but Billie, looking in the bathroom mirror, suddenly wishes she looked more like herself, forgetting that what she needs is to look less like herself. To look less like a fifteen-year-old crazy liar.

Although apparently what she looks like is a sidekick.

The maître d’ at the Golden Lotus asks if she has a reservation. It’s now five minutes to six. “For six o’clock,” Billie says. “For two. Paul Zell?”

“Here we are,” the maître d’ says. “The other member of your party isn’t here, but we can go ahead and seat you.”

Billie is seated. The maître d’ pushes her chair in and Billietries
not to feel trapped. There are other people eating dinner all around her, dentists and superheroes and maybe ordinary people, too. Costumes are definitely superheroes, but just because some of the hotel guests aren’t wearing costumes doesn’t mean they’re dentists. Although some of them are definitely dentists.

Billie hasn’t eaten since this morning, when she got a bagel at Port Authority. Her first New York bagel. Cinnamon raisin with blueberry cream cheese. Her stomach growls.

People who aren’t Paul Zell are seated at tables, or go to the bar and sit on bar stools. Billie studies the menu. She’s never had sushi before. A waiter pours her a glass of water. Asks if she’d like to order an appetizer while she’s waiting. Billie declines. The people at the table next to her pay their bill and leave. When she looks at her watch, she sees it’s 6:18.

You’re late, Paul Zell.

Billie thinks: maybe she should go back to the room and see if there are any messages. “I’ll be right back,” she tells the maître d’. The maître d’ could care less. There are superheroes in the hotel lobby and there are dentists in the elevator and there’s a light on the phone in room 1584 that would flash if there were any messages. It isn’t flashing. Billie dials the number for messages just in case. No message.

Back in the Golden Lotus no one is sitting at the table reserved for Paul Zell, six o’clock, party of two. Billie sits back down anyway. She waits until 7:30, and then she leaves while the maître d’ is escorting a party of superheroes to a table. So far none of the superheroes are ones that Billie recognizes, which doesn’t mean that their superpowers are lame. It’s just, there are
a lot of superheroes and knowing a lot about superheroes has never been Billie’s thing.

She rides the glass-fronted elevator and opens the door of Paul Zell’s hotel room without knocking, which is okay because no one is there. She orders room service. This should be exciting because Billie’s never ordered room service in her life. But it’s not. She orders a hamburger. She drinks a juice from the minibar and watches the Cartoon Network. She waits for someone to knock on the door. When someone does, it’s just a bellboy with her hamburger.

By nine o’clock Billie has been down to the business center twice. She checks e-mail, checks FarAway, checks all the chat rooms. No Boggle. No Paul Zell. Just chess pieces, and it isn’t her move. She writes Paul Zell an e-mail; in the end, she doesn’t send it.

When she goes upstairs for the last time, no one is there. Just the suitcase. She doesn’t really expect anyone to be there. The jeweler’s box is still down at the bottom of the suitcase.

The office building in the window is still lit up. Maybe the lights stay on all night long, even when no one is there. Billie thinks those lights are the loneliest things she’s ever seen. Even lonelier than the light of distant stars that are already dead by the time their light reaches us. Far down below, ant people do their antic things.

Billie opens up the minibar again. Inside are miniature bottles of gin, bourbon, tequila, and rum that no one is going to drink unless Billie drinks them. What would Alice do, Billie thinks. Billie has always been a Lewis Carroll fan, and not just because of the chess stuff.

There are two beers and a jar of peanuts. Billie drinks all of
the miniatures and both normal-sized cans of beer. Perhaps you noticed the charges on your bill.

Here is where details begin to be a little thin for me, Paul Zell. Perhaps you have a better idea of what I’m describing, what I’m omitting. Then again maybe you don’t.

It’s the first time Billie’s ever been drunk, and she’s not very good at it. Nothing is happening, that she can tell. She perseveres. She begins to feel okay, as if everything is going to be okay. The okay feeling gets larger and larger until she’s entirely swallowed up by okayness. This lasts for a while, and then she starts to fade in and out, like she’s jumping forward in time, always just a little bit dizzy when she arrives. Here she is, flipping through channels, not quite brave enough to click on the pay-for-porn channels, although she thinks about it. Then here she is, a bit later, putting that lipstick on again. This time she kind of likes the way she looks. Here she is, lifting all of Paul Zell’s clothes out of the suitcase. She takes the ring out of the box, puts it on her big toe. Now there’s a gap. Then: here’s Billie, back again, she’s bent over a toilet. She’s vomiting. She vomits over and over again. Someone is holding back her hair. There’s a hand holding out a cold, damp facecloth. Now she’s in a bed. The room is dark, but Billie thinks there’s someone sitting on the other bed. He’s just sitting there.

Later on, she thinks she hears someone moving around the room, doing things. For some reason, she imagines it’s the Enchantress Magic EightBall. Rummaging around the room, looking for important, powerful, magical things. Billie thinks she ought to get up and help. But she can’t move.

Much later on, when Billie gets up and goes to the bathroom to throw up again, Paul Zell’s suitcase is gone.

There’s vomit all over the sink and the bathtub, and on her sister’s sweater. Billie’s crotch is cold and wet; she realizes she’s pissed herself. She pulls off the sweater and skirt and hose, and her underwear. She leaves her bra on because she can’t figure out how to undo the straps. She drinks four glasses of water and then crawls into the other bed, the one she hasn’t pissed in.

When she wakes up it’s one in the afternoon. Someone has left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door of room 1584. Maybe Billie did this, maybe not. She won’t be able to get the bus back to Keokuk today; it left this morning at 7:32. Paul Zell’s suitcase is gone, even his dirty clothes are gone. There’s not a sock. Not even a hair on a pillow. Just the herbal conditioner. I guess you forgot to check the bathtub.

Not that Billie notices any of this, thinks about any of this for a while. Billie is almost glad her head hurts so much. She deserves much worse. She pushes one of the towels around the sink and the counter, mopping up crusted puke. She runs hot water in the shower until the bathroom smells like puke soup. She strips the sheets off the bed she peed in, and shoves them with Melinda’s destroyed sweater and skirt and all of the puke-stained towels under the counter in the bathroom. The water is only just warm when she takes her shower. Better than she deserves. Billie turns the handle all the way to the right, and then shrieks and turns it back. What you deserve and what you can stand aren’t necessarily the same thing.

She cries bitterly while she conditions her hair. She takes the elevator down to the lobby and goes and sits in the Starbucks. The first time she’s ever been inside a Starbucks. What she really
wants is a caramel iced vanilla latte, but instead she orders a double espresso. More penance.

Billie is pouring little packets of sugar into her double espresso when someone sits down next to her. It isn’t you, of course. It’s that guy Conrad. And now we’re past the point where I owe you an apology, and yet I guess I ought to keep going, because the story isn’t over yet. Remember how Billie thought the room key and the bus ride seemed like FarAway, like a quest? Now is the part where it starts seeming more like one of those games of chess, the kind you’ve already lost and you know it, but you don’t concede. You just keep on losing, one piece at a time, until you’re the biggest loser in the world. Which is, I guess, how life is like playing chess with someone better than you’ll ever be. Because it’s not like you’re ever going to win in the end, is it?

Anyway. Part two. In which I go on writing about myself in the third person. In which I continue to act stupidly. Stop reading if you want.

Conrad Linthor sits down without being asked. He’s drinking something frozen. “Sidekick girl. You look terrible.”

All during this conversation, picture superheroes of various descriptions. They stroll or glide or stride purposefully past Billie’s table. They nod at the guy sitting across from her. Billie notices this without having the strength of character to wonder what’s going on. Every molecule of her being is otherwise engaged with processing a thousand lifetimes’ worth of misery,
woe, self-hatred, heartbreak, shame, all-obliterating roiling nausea, and pain.

Billie says, “So we meet again.” She can’t help herself. It’s the kind of thing you end up saying in a hotel full of superheroes. “I’m not a sidekick. My name’s Billie.”

“Whatever,” Conrad Linthor says. “Conrad Linthor. So what happened to you?”

Billie swigs bitter espresso. She lets her hair fall in front of her face. Baby bird, she thinks. Leave me alone. Wrong smell.

But Conrad Linthor doesn’t go away. He says, “All right, me first. Let’s swap life stories. That girl at the desk when you were checking in? Aliss? I’ve slept with her a couple of times. When nothing better came along. She really likes me. And I’m an asshole, okay? No excuses. Every time I hurt her, though, the next time I see her I’m nice again and I apologize and I get her back. Mostly I’m nice just to see if she’s going to fall for it this time, too. I don’t know why. I guess I want to see where that place is, the place where she hauls off and assaults me. Some people have ant farms. I’m more into people. So now you know what was going on yesterday. And, yeah, I know, something’s wrong with me.”

Billie pushes her hair back. She says, “Why are you telling me all this?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. You look like you’re in a world of hurt. I don’t really care. It’s just that I get bored. And you look really terrible, and I thought that there was probably something interesting going on. Besides, Aliss can see us in here, from the desk, and this will drive her crazy.”

“I’m okay,” Billie says. “Nobody hurt me. I’m the bad guy here.”

“That’s unexpected. Also interesting. Go on,” Conrad Linthor says. “Tell me everything.”

Billie tells him. Everything except for the part where she pees the bed.

When her tale is told, Conrad Linthor stands up and says, “Come on. We’re going to go see a friend of mine. You need the cure.”

“For love?” Billie’s lame attempt at humor. She was wondering if telling someone what she’s done would make her feel better. It hasn’t.

“No cure for love,” Conrad Linthor says. “Because there’s no such thing. Your hangover we can do something about.”

As they navigate the lobby, there are new boards up announcing that free teeth-whitening sessions are available in suite 412 for qualified superheroes. Billie looks over at the front desk and sees Aliss looking back. Aliss draws her finger across her throat. If looks could kill you wouldn’t be reading this e-mail.

Conrad Linthor goes through a door that you’re clearly not meant to go through. Billie follows anyway and they’re in a corridor, in a maze of corridors. If this were an MMORPG, the zombies or the giant fruit bats or the gnoles with their intricately knotted, deadly ropes would show up any minute. Instead, every once in a while, they pass hotel cleaning staff; bellboys sneaking cigarettes. Everyone nods at Conrad Linthor, just like the superheroes in the Starbucks in the lobby.

Billie doesn’t want to ask, but eventually she does. “Who
are
you?”

“Call me Eloise,” Conrad Linthor says.

“Sorry?” Billie imagines that they are no longer in the hotel at all. The corridor they are currently navigating slopes gently
downward. Maybe they will end up on the shores of a subterranean lake, or in a dungeon, or in Narnia, or King Nermal’s Chamber, or even Keokuk, Iowa. It’s a small world, after all. Bigger on the inside.

“You know, Eloise. The girl who lives in The Plaza? Has a pet whale named Moby Dick?”

He waits, like Billie’s supposed to know what he’s talking about. When she doesn’t say anything, he says, “Never mind. It’s just this book—a classic of modern children’s literature, actually—about a girl who lives in The Plaza. Which is a hotel. A bit nicer than this one, maybe, but never mind. I live here.”

He keeps on talking. They keep on walking.

Billie’s hangover is a special effect. Conrad Linthor is going on and on about superheroes. His father is an agent. Apparently superheroes have agents. Represents all of the big guys. Knows everyone. Agoraphobic. Never leaves the hotel. Everyone comes to him. Big banquet tomorrow night, for his biggest client. Tyrannosaurus Hex. Hex is retiring. Going to go live in the mountains and breed tarantula wasps. Conrad Linthor’s father is throwing a party for Hex. Everyone will be there.

Billie’s legs are noodles. The ends of her hair are poison needles. Her tongue is a bristly sponge, and her eyes are bags of bleach.

Two wheeled carts come round the next corner like comets, followed at arm’s length by hurtling busboys. They sail down the corridor at top speed. Conrad Linthor and Billie flatten themselves against the wall. “You have to move fast,” Conrad explains. “Or else the food gets cold. Guests complain.”

Around that corner, enormous doors, still swinging. Big enough to birth a Greyhound bus bound for Keokuk. A behemoth.
A white whale. Billie passes through the doors onto the far shores of what is, of course, a hotel kitchen. Far away, miles, it seems to Billie, there are clouds of vapor and vague figures moving through them. Clanging noises, people yelling, the thick, sweet smell of caramelized onions, onions that will never make anyone cry again. Other savory reeks.

Conrad Linthor steers Billie to a marble-topped table. Copper whisks, mixing bowls, dinged pots hang down on hooks.