Waste (24 page)

“None of this shit holds a fucking charge. You got a receipt?”

“No, we didn't keep it,” Al said.

“Fuck. They won't take it back, then. No returns without a receipt.”

Al slammed the door. The Brothers Vine were going to have to change motels. Even with a
DO
NOT
DISTURB
sign dangling from the broken knob, you could smell the bodies from the hallway. The staff at the Dynasty was familiar with these smells. They would call the cops when the shift changed over in two hours. There were no real names on the registry.

“Should I grab the quilt?” Al asked.

“It's got that dude's ass all over it,” Tommy said. “I don't think that's gonna wash out. And the fucking dry cleaner at Helena's is still giving us funny looks after we had to drag that kid down to the woods. He just ain't saying nothing yet.”

They would need a new dry cleaner, too. One of the boys in front stumbled and face-planted into the orange carpet. Al booted him in the tailbone.

“Get up, get up,” Al said. “I'm gonna go grab the toolbox.”

Al turned and headed back to the room. When they had killed the giraffe, he remembered Kilkenny crying in the woods. The smell was similar then too, the animal shit hanging like a cloud that stuck to everything and followed them back here. Astor had told them it was part of the job. Al didn't bother looking at the purple body on the bed or the boy in the television screen. He had seen all of this before. Tom had seen it too, creeping around the edges of his vision when he shut his eyes at night.

The television still popped and crackled. Al grabbed the toolbox from the corner. He reached out a hand for the quilt, but the slumped body made his tattooed fingers retreat. Al didn't want to believe in ghosts—he had enough voices in his skull. The body lay with its arms spread wide open as if to embrace him. Al backed away from the bed and closed the door. Astor would want answers for this shit. He would want to institute some corrective measures. To make a point. They would need the other boys to prove this was all just one big misunderstanding. This was just another roadblock. The door slammed shut, leaving the two bodies in darkness.

Inside the television, Logan Chatterton's eyes were closed. He wasn't staring at anything.

27

The clerk didn't even look up when they stepped inside.

“He only stayed on the top floor, and he didn't even stay,” Elvira said. “He just comes and goes like he wants, never stays, never even writes to me. Because that's Ted. That's him.”

The Pillaros wasn't the tallest building downtown, but it was one of the oldest. Its windows were rarely washed, and its all-day breakfast was frequented by the early birds from the methadone clinic who liked to catch a meal at 3 a.m. Elvira Moon did not raise a single eyebrow amongst the staff when she barreled through the front doors with Jamie Garrison limping in pursuit. The rifle was shoved down his right pant leg; a temporary solution to his busted foot and the pain recoiling up his femur with each step. No one gave him a second glance.

“Don't take the elevator, he tries to get out that way every time,” Elvira said.

“I can't take the goddamn stairs! Get back here!” Jamie said. “My foot, we gotta go up the elevator! I said get back, Jesus Christ, like a child. Where did they find you?”

In the car Elvira had told Jamie all about Ted, about the pills she had started flushing down the toilet, about Ted's favourite foods, about the flavour of cake batter compared to actual cake. She could not stay on any topic for long. The pills had turned the water purple in the toilet. Someone had stolen her bowling ball. She needed it back. Elvira tried to show Jamie the crack Ted left inside her, but all Jamie saw was a frayed bathrobe and the fear inside her eyes, flickering on and off.

“I told you, he'll see us on the elevator,” Elvira said. “He's waiting. Can't go up that way.”

The Pillaros' halls only looked cleaner than the Dynasty's because of the lighting. Small chandeliers dangled every few feet from the low ceilings. The incandescent bulbs could not illuminate all the stains and broken doorknobs like the Dynasty's fluorescent glare did. Everything blurred in a haze around the edges as Jamie Garrison dragged his broken foot after Elvira Moon. She was still wearing the quilt like a parka. They were on the third floor with seventeen more to go. He could barely keep up.

“Now, I don't remember what room exactly, but there is only one room on the top floor, I think, because that's where we were. And there was a waterbed. Did you ever have a waterbed?”

They were on the fourth floor now, Elvira plowing ahead with the red and green quilt wrapped around her shoulders. Jamie had begun to count the spots that appeared before his eyes whenever he leaned too heavily on his right foot. After the third staircase, he counted twenty-seven big blotches and three smaller ones that disappeared before he knew if they were real.

“Elvira, we are taking the goddamn elevator now,” Jamie said. “I know, I know that he won't know we are coming. Right? Right? No, wait for me! You can't keep going!”

“But he'll just leave! We have to surprise him,” Elvira said. “He has a whole speech ready, and he'll tell me he didn't mean any of it, but that it had to be done, and then, and then…”

“Did you call him before we decided to come here? No,” Jamie said. “Let's just get up there. I will do the talking. I will sort this out. You just stand and—well, do something.”

“I do lots of things. I sew. I cook. I even do my own taxes. Deductible for children, deductible for friends, deductible for charitable donations…do you like dogs? You can't get a deductible on them, but if you run it through an organization they will let it go.”

The Pillar was quiet. Jamie pushed the elevator button while Elvira explained dog discipline and the best way to shave their bellies if they got infected with worms from eating their own shit or some other dog's shit. Ted never called her after he went to Arizona. This was where they had their honeymoon, she said. This was where love was supposed to live. The wallpaper was dark brown and small photographs of farms hung on the walls—all the old properties that the town had built over. The barns were gray and bent under the wind. Jamie pressed the button again with his thumb.

“He knows the elevators, he'll take the bigger one, and then he's gone,” Elvira said. “Ted knows the elevators.”

Jamie yanked Elvira into the tiny elevator before it struggled up the guts of the Pillar. Small feet scurried around the outside of the tube. Jamie hit another button. They were headed to the twentieth floor and the penthouse suite. He flexed his good leg and tried to stand on his toes. The right foot dangled limply above the floor. Jamie pulled the rifle out of his pant leg and let his hands get used to the weight. Elvira had stopped talking once they stepped into the elevator. Jamie tried not to think about the size of the Vines' hands. He hadn't even recognized the body the two bearded men had left behind in his bone can.

The elevator doors opened on the twentieth floor. The walls were a much darker shade of mauve. There was one door at the end of a very short hallway. All the light fixtures were made of fake pewter and stuck out from the walls at odd angles. The ice machine's hum cut through the artificial silence.

A skinny man in a robe waved at Elvira as she and Jamie stepped out of the elevator. Long, winding scars traveled up from his belly button and into webs across his chest. The man's skull looked shaved down to the skin. He grinned at them with a full mouth of discolored teeth and shook his ice bucket in the couple's direction. The elevator doors closed behind them with a ping. Elvira pulled the spoiled quilt up over her head and stuck her gaze to the floor.

“This isn't Ted. Look at the hair.”

“I wasn't—ahem—really expecting anybody,” the man said. “I think you might have the wrong floor. This is the honeymoon suite, the penthouse. You must have the wrong floor.”

Astor Crane gazed down the rifle barrel now tucked under his pale chin.

“But I suppose I could ask you all in for a drink. Would that help?”

The lone strand of hair on his head was red and stringy.

28

Elvira Moon ran down the hall into the honeymoon suite. The hotel staff still sometimes called it a penthouse despite the heart-shaped bed. This was where Ted Moon once walked away from her. Jamie could only watch her run. His leg was still screaming every time he moved.

“You gotta relax, buddy.”

Astor Crane laid a hand on the rifle barrel bobbing in front of his face.

“You seem a little too high-strung. How about—now, just swing that away from me. Just like that. There we go.”

“She said—fuck. She said they'd be here,” Jamie said. “Elvira! Hey, get back here!”

“Who would be here? No one on this floor 'cept me,” Crane said. “Hasn't been anyone else up here for months, really. I've got the place as long as I want. She probably isn't going to come out of there if you yell at her, you know.”

Jamie swung the rifle barrel down at the floor. He could barely hold it straight.

“You have no fucking idea the night I've fucking had,” he said. “Just back off, all right.”

“Well, after you graciously jammed that gun up in my face, how can I refuse?” Crane said. “Manners. You ever notice no one has them anymore?”

“Oh fuck off. It was a mistake, all right?”

The almost bald man turned to walk down the hall.

“Wait up!”

Jamie limped after him. The rifle returned to its original role as a cane.

“What happened to your leg?”

“I said I had a night,” Jamie said. “I just need her to help me find them. That's the whole problem—she can't tell one apart from the other.”

“You look a bit shaky,” Crane said. “You wanna sit down for a second?”

Elvira Moon lay naked on the heart bed.

“You gotta—what did you do with the quilt?” Jamie said. “She doesn't even realize she's got everything hanging out there, you know? I shoulda just waited there for them.”

Astor Crane carried his bowl of ice over to the bar. He plopped three cubes into three heart-shaped glasses and pulled out a bottle of Canadian Club. The suite's floor was littered with VCR cases and small ashtrays overflowing with bottle caps and cigarette butts. Prescription bottles were lined up neatly on a windowsill with a schedule taped to the glass above them. On the massive television screen in front of the bed,
The Wizard of Oz
played on mute.

“You bust in on me and start waving shit like that around, there is bound to be a misunderstanding,” Astor explained. “So I think before you run off with the princess and the pea here, you need to at least introduce yourself. Let's try this out, like human beings enjoying the early hours of a Sunday morning. Or is it Monday? Must be Monday now.”

Jamie set the rifle down on a pink loveseat.

“All right, but I can't really stay.”

Astor offered Jamie a drink. He took the strange glass but didn't sip from it.

“No, let's start brand new. My name is Astor. I live here. And you are my guest. So is your friend. Now, what did you say your name was?”

“Jamie. Does that work?”

“Jamie, yes, that works. You can take a sip of that, you know.”

Jamie wanted to spit it out, but swallowed instead. “Look, we can just get our shit and get out of your hair and then…”

“Very funny…”

“What?” Jamie asked.

Astor pointed to his fuzzy scalp.

“Come on, man,” Jamie said. “You know I didn't mean that.”

“Nobody ever does. Can you let me know when it's five thirty? I need to take another round of meds. Disgusting stuff, really. Horse pills.”

Jamie sat down on the loveseat and placed the rifle on the floor. He took a bigger sip and tried to avoid looking at Elvira. “Look, uh Astor, we aren't looking for you. Or anybody really. I'm looking for twins. Well, not real twins, like pseudo twins,” Jamie explained. “And I found you instead. And Elvira, well, she had it in her mind that they would be here.”

Astor remained standing. He gazed at the television while Jamie spoke. Dorothy skipped through red flowers with her three friends. The lion was a little out of step with the other two.

“Twins? You don't look like you're in any condition to be chasing some twins around. Look at your foot,” Astor said. “And you haven't shaved either, I can see that. You really think two girls are going to go for that…and the gun?”

Jamie swallowed his drink and crunched an ice cube in his mouth. “Not girls, they're old guys. Like forty-something. And they were supposed to be at the fucking Dynasty, but they weren't, and then I found her there, and she was out of her gourd.”

Elvira stood and began remaking the bed. Her long hands smoothed the sheets and tucked them under the upper ridges of the heart-shaped bed. Astor ignored her.

“My buddy says they call themselves the Brothers Vine or some stupid shit like that. Sounds like wrestling names to me. They could be wrestlers actually, I guess. Tatted up like crazy, too, but they don't ride bikes. Any of this ringin' bells?”

Astor leaned back on the bar. His skin looked transparent in the blue flicker of the television. The scars up and down his chest could have been rotten veins floating to the surface, like bodies in the water. Jamie sucked on another ice cube.

“Oh, I know they don't ride bikes,” Astor said. “Brothers Vine. Tommy and Al. What did you do, exactly, to piss 'em off, eh?”

“So everyone seems to know these assholes but me?”

“They can be pricks, I'll admit that. But they get things done.”

Elvira was finished with the bed. She leaned against one of the windows and looked outside. The sun was starting to emerge on the horizon. Little figures limped from corner to corner on the roads below. Elvira left the window and headed toward the bathroom. No one stopped her. On TV, Dorothy had fallen asleep within sight of the Emerald City, her red shoes matching her lips as she drifted off into another dream within a dream.