Check-in Between
by Chris WiltzSocial psychologists call them limbous periods. Few people, if asked, can really remember the details of their day-to-day lives. The drive to work, the workout at the gym, even the commute home – venting the day’s frustrations by driving too fast with the stereo volume too high – are all parts of the incoherent blur that makes up our daily lives.
No one remembers the mundane, only the significant and monumental. People remember the day they met their spouse at the gym but never their workout the day before. Or even the workout before that. Those are limbous periods. They’re those moments in our lives, those parts of our days that are so routine that we basically ignore them. People drive the same route to work everyday, likely even changing lanes in the same places. They do it day after day for weeks, months, and years and sooner or later they find themselves driving with their eyes closed. Once something loses its novelty it ceases to be worthy of our attention.
That’s what working front desk at a hotel is – one long limbous period, especially if it’s the Malner Hotel; a semi-historic, nearly rundown hole in the wall hidden away inside of a major American city. For the casual passerby this means nothing, but for the Malner itself it means that it is surrounded by any number of well-known and comfortable franchise hotels, and for Kendrick it meant that customers were rare, ennui wasn’t, and even worse than ennui was his cousin “The Nagging Sense That Something More Glamorous Was Happening Elsewhere.”
Kendrick never specifically remembered any of his daily routine that led him to work. He had a notion, the same notion any one with a routine has, that he did follow a routine. He knew his brand of toothpaste, what time he woke up (6:15am), what he ate; he even knew how much gas he had left in his tank. But ask him any details about his morning routine or his drive and he’d tell you it was “nothing eventful.” He thought about it from time to time and attributed it all to the fact that he never slept enough. Who ever slept enough? The difference between Kendrick and everyone else wasn’t that they slept more; it was that the rest of the planet was profoundly addicted to caffeine while he, on the other hand, detested it. Years of his mother’s old wives tales had thoroughly convinced him that too much caffeine caused acne. Better safe than sorry. Better to not do something and wonder about than to do it and find out your mother had been right about something, even if it had been over a year since you’d seen her face to face.
Kendrick liked to ignore people that rang the bell. Why the hell do it if he was sitting right there? It wasn’t 1905, so it wasn’t like bell ringing was a habit for most people. And even then, surely it wasn’t a substitute for a good ol’ fashioned ‘excuse me.’ He was sure this sort of rudeness was a routine, because no instance of it ever felt particularly shocking or even rude to him. If anything it was just an annoyance, a bump in an otherwise straight and empty road. Rooms only cost fifty dollars for a whole day, but the man ringing the bell looked like he hadn’t seen fifty dollars in quite some time. You got used to seeing these types. They were harmless for the most part. What they can’t scavenge or beg for they do without. Most of them spend their money on the obvious: liquor, drugs, fast food… but the ones with any survival instinct ended up at places like the Malner. One night in a soft bed could recharge them for months of concrete and metal gratings.
The man’s hand, resting on the bell as though he were trying to hide it, was ripe with scars. There were as many possible scenarios as there were pedestrians to speculate them, but the truth was that they came from beating open the boarded up windows of abandoned buildings – pounding open a shelter to sleep in.
Kendrick’s duty to oblige overcame his desire to be a prick.
“Needa room.” Scarhands’ voice wasn’t as slurred as Kendrick had expected. It was more weary than anything else…if anything else.
“You need a room?” The best tactic when someone states the obvious is to repeat what they said. Scarhands dug into his pocket and produced a wad of meticulously folded bills.
“If I give you seventy-five can I stay a little longer tomorrow?”
“Check-out is noon the following day so with the seventy-five you’ll get to stay ‘til about one-thirty.” Kendrick thought he might have spoken too quickly. Scarhands’ face remained unchanged.
“It’s fifty for a day and fifteen dollars an hour but I suppose the rest should buy you another half hour.”
“Are you s’posed to do that?”
“What?”
“Charge people for less than an hour?”
“Well, the management’s pretty lenient as long as you got enough money so we tack on half hours here and there.”
The Malner wasn’t the type of hotel that people came to spend relaxing, sun-soaked weekends. In fact neither was the city. The Malner was far more upscale than any place that charged solely by the hour, but of course the beauty of being higher up on the ladder is that it’s a lot easier to stoop down. They’d deny it to any customer, but any employee of the Malner knew that it made most of its money though hourly charges.
Scarhands wasn’t in the mood for lengthy explanations. Kendrick’s excuse was enough to convince the man to start flipping bills out of his wad.
“Here, make it an even $80. I’ll stay till two tomorrow.” The man slid four twenties across the desk. They were the color of lettuce and just as crisp. The counterfeit pen said the bills were real, but Kendrick still had to wonder how a derelict got his hands on four twenties. It was probably just the expectation of five handfuls of dirty ones and loose change being slid across the desk. It occurred to Kendrick that the man could have exchanged the money at any gas station or liquor store, but just as quickly he had to wonder how this man had managed to beg his way up to eighty-plus dollars. A question best not asked aloud or pursued.
“Fill this out please.” He handed the man a clipboard of registration forms. Scarhands immediately produced his own pen. Kendrick searched for a room key while the man filled out the form. It was best to give vagrants rooms closer to the ground floor and facing away from the main street. That way if anything crazy happened, if he got drunk and decided to flash the people below, not too many people would see or hear and the front desk could respond quickly.
“What’s this?” Kendrick looked up as the derelict pointed at the form with his dirty, bent-up pen.
“Just check the purpose of your visit, business or pleasure.”
“What’dya need to know that for?”
“It’s just a survey. If management knows more about who comes here the most they can cater to them better.”
“So if more people check pleasure you’ll get a heated pool and some massage girls in here, and if more check business you’ll put mini-bars in the rooms?”
“The massage girls would be nice either way,” Kendricks added. Scarhands gave an agreeing sigh.
“What if it’s neither?”
“Just check one, it doesn’t matter.” 45 would be a good room to give him, Kendrick thought.
“No, but what if it’s neither?” Scarhand’s face was, as far as Kendrick could tell, one of genuine concern.
“How could it be neither?”
“Easy.”
“Easy? Either you’re here to do something or to do nothing. Business or pleasure.”
“What if I want to do something but call it nothing?” Like what, sleep and watch porn? Kendrick thought cynically, but something kept him from thinking out loud. Something about the man’s question was very sincere. There wasn’t any of that old man philosophical pandering you saw in movies behind his statement. And he was much too old to be trying to be a smart ass. Smart ass was an invention of Kendrick’s generation – everyone older than him told him so.
“What are you planning on doing here exactly?”
“Whatever I need to.”
“Looks like you need to sleep.”
“I’ll do that if I have to.” Most men crawl under a blanket of self-pity or anger when they’re drunk. Only a very rare breed of men become daring, articulate philosophers. Those are the kind of derelicts that like to have conversations with passersby. When they’re drunk they don’t want money, they don’t want food, they just want someone to listen to their theory about whatever and hopefully pass it on. That’s how bums get tenure. These are also the type where it’s best not to confront them with questions; it’s best just to listen or at the very most feed them material that leads the conversation to a quicker end.
“Here. Just check pleasure.” Kendrick didn’t wait. He leaned forward with a pen of his own and checked the box for the man. Scarhands seemed to begrudge it but upon seeing Kendrick produce a key he immediately exchanged the clipboard.
“Room 45 is up the small stairs. Make the first left down the hall. Checkout is at 2pm. We don’t have room service, but if you need something to eat there’s a 24/7 diner up the street and there are places that deliver in the yellow pages. If you need any additional amenities to your room, please phone the front desk. Welcome to the Malner Hotel.” Kendrick had mastered the little speech perfectly. It was exactly as it had been told to him, free of any personal inflection. He knew that he had memorized it perfectly because he said “a number” instead of “a bunch” or “a couple.”
“Welcome to the Malner, mister, uhmm, “ Kendrick took a quick glance at the clipboard, “Faris?”
Faris nodded cordially. “Fah-ree.” Kendrick nodded back. Faris skipped steps on his way up, and floated down the hallway. He must have convinced his body that only one more burst of energy was needed before it would be rewarded with hours of blissful rest. One more push before reaching the summit.
Strange drunk, Kendrick thought. He didn’t smell like alcohol at all.
“We’re gonna have to get rid of that candy machine.” Martha almost caught Kendrick in the middle of a word puzzle, “Too many bums walk in here and use it, makes everything look bad.” “You mean I’m gonna have to stop eating in the ‘cafeteria’?” Martha smirked at Kendrick’s comment. The “cafeteria” was the small lounge area – two couches and a coffee table – next to the vending machines. For Kendrick lunch was usually a canned iced-tea and some granola bars, Twizzlers if he was in a festive mood. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had Twizzlers.
Martha looked like she could have been the spokeswoman for a brand of frozen dinners. She was plump though not a large woman and she wore a motherly air like a favorite perfume. But she wasn’t your mother. Martha was more like your girlfriend’s mother. For the most part she was as warm and amicable as any parental figure, but something about her – the way she never completely laughed at your jokes, and the feeling you got that she’d get very angry if you talked to her the way she talked to you –you instinctively kept at a distance. Martha wasn’t much unlike the Malner, friendly and inviting to a point and always kind, as long as you obeyed the unwritten rules and didn’t overstay your welcome.
“S’better anyway,” she said. Kendrick could feel her eyes trying to peek over his shoulders. “All that vending machine food isn’t good for you…nothing that costs less than ten dollars or isn’t on a plate and free is good to eat.”
“Makes sense.” Being curt might get her to go away. He wasn’t afraid of her seeing the puzzle; he was afraid of the help she would offer if she saw him hard at work at it. Part of playing the mother role is that you have to treat everyone else on the stage like a child.
“Don’t you have someone to cook for you?” Martha asked.
“Don’t need anybody – I got money.”
“Not working here you don’t.”
It was Kendrick’s turn to smirk. “I can cook a bit…I get by when I have to. I usually just don’t feel like it.”
“Bet if you had to fast you’d cook more.”
“Fast?”
“Yep. Having a real religion gives you an appreciation of things…when God says you can’t eat, you learn to appreciate good cooking when you can.” Martha had crossed the room and was giving the vending machine a disappointed stare. The company only refilled it once every month, but with the stragglers who came in with their loose change it emptied out pretty quickly.
“I swear it’s like they take the almond bars first ‘cause they know I like them.”
“It might be easier to just tell people the machine is for guests only.”
Martha flashed a skeptical glance in Kendrick’s direction.
“You wanna stand guard all day and tell people that? They’ll have their money in by the time you catch them. Then you’ll have to argue with them over how they’re going to get their seventy-five cents back.” She had a point.
“How does a black woman become Jewish anyway?”
“It’s easier than you’d think.”
“Really?”
“Yep. You see, both my parents were Jewish.” There was that humor of hers. When Martha made a good joke it felt like the moment your whole body submerses in a hot tub – shocking and new, yet comforting and familiar.
“When’s the last time you had a home cooked meal anyway, Kenny?” She loved to call him Kenny for some reason.
“The holidays.” he replied.
“No, I mean the last time you just had a good meal at home. Y’know, a warm plate, a glass of your favorite drink, and some Letterman?”
He started to respond, but then it occurred to Kendrick that he couldn’t really remember the last time he’d eaten at home. What did he do? Watch TV? Go straight to sleep? What had he done last night? I must be tired, he thought. I need to buy some sleeping pills.
“I guess I can’t remember.” Kendrick’s voice conveyed more of his surprise than his confusion.
“That’s pretty sad, young man.” If it had been anyone but Martha the inevitable dinner invite would come next, but this was Martha. Where did she live anyway? For all of the questions she asked, very few ever came her way, just another part of her corporate-mother charm. Kendrick had thought for a time she might live at the hotel; She was always there when he showed up and when he left. There was something in the way she talked about the world though, more like she was an active participant rather than a passive onlooker in a hotel tucked away in an antiquated district. Martha had her own situations, which was why she was only casually interested in everyone else’s.
“If you see Nicolette, tell her I need to see her.” Nicolette was the maid on duty during most of Kendrick’s shift. As far as he could tell they were the same age. They never spoke outside of weak greetings and nods. The most they ever spoke was when relaying orders to one another.
Kendrick nodded in compliance, but Martha was already off to other business. The boss doesn’t need any sort of verification that the employees will do what she says. He looked down at the fill-in puzzle in his lap. The hardest part was done; all that was left to do was fill in the obvious words, a menial task to make victory more complete, like those basketball games where the losing team can’t possibly catch up but etiquette requires that the clock be run down anyway.
Kendrick dropped the puzzle on to the floor beneath the desk. He’d go back to it when he really didn’t have anything to do. Right now he was more concerned with figuring out why he couldn’t form a complete picture of his apartment.
Nicolette was wearing lipstick today. It was a sharp, deep red hue that contrasted with her face even more sharply than it did her beige and gray maid’s uniform. It would look perfect once she stepped outside. Even under the shadow of the buildings around it the hotel always seemed to catch some of the best rays of sunset. You couldn’t see the sun, but you knew that it was reaching over the skyscrapers and washing the streets with purple oil, a shiny gloss that even complemented the view from a first-floor lobby. The purple would move at first, flowing along the street from east to west, then it would settle and slowly turn black. The city would be held in a thick, black bubble only briefly before the scattering light of orange halogen streetlights punctured it. Nicolette’s lipstick might have looked out of place in broad daylight, but it was completely at home inside the city’s sunset dance.
“Hot date tonight?” Kendrick asked teasingly.
“Nope,” Nicolette was checking her reflection in the lobby windows. “But it is a special occasion.”
Kendrick didn’t follow up on her statement. For some reason he always felt he was prying when he asked Nicolette too many questions. She was always so aloof, as though her time at the hotel was just a pit stop she made on her way to more sensational things. On top of all that, he always felt guilty about holding her up when she was getting ready to clock out. How would you feel if every time you were getting ready to head home from work some person – some stranger who just happened to work with you – started showering you with small-talk questions?
“You know I’m not going to be working here much longer?” She sounded happy. He couldn’t blame her.
“Martha said she needs to see you.” His voice sounded a bit empty to him. He couldn’t deny he was feeling a bit of surprise at the news, regretful surprise.
“I talked to her already, saw her just a few minutes ago.”
“Oh..just making sure.”
“That’s how I know I’m not going to be here much longer.”
“She fired you?” Kendrick asked. Why fire the only maid you seemed to have?
Nicolette just smiled.
“No, it wasn’t anything like that; it was just –“ her voice trailed off and her smile widened. “It’s complicated.”
“So I take it that it was more of a mutual decision?”
“How so?”
“Martha wanted to let you go but you don’t mind because you don’t like it here and you’re ready to leave and try new things anyway?”
“I like working here. But…” Nicolette went into her thoughts for a moment. The whole time the smile never left her face. Here she was losing her job, but her face was that of a fiancé reminiscing about the night she was proposed to. Perhaps she was in denial. How much did he really know about her anyway? She could be the type that never really realized the serious consequences of a situation until they had already happened. Falling out with her boss might be amusing now but when it came time to pay her rent she’d see the truth. Then she’d break down into sadness in the comfort of her own home where no stranger behind a desk could see it.
“I can’t really explain it. Best I can say is I don’t need to be here anymore.” Kendrick didn’t really like her explanation. It sounded conceited. He wondered what had happened. Maybe she thought her life as it was to be too plebeian and had decided she’d best go off and try something daring before it was too late, pick a fantasy and chase it for a while before she ended up stuck here.
“So the lipstick is to celebrate that you don’t need to be here anymore?”
“Sure, you could say that.”
“I guess all you need is a black dress and a cigar.” Kendrick tried to sound funny but everything came out flat.
“I can do close to that.” She went behind the desk and straight into the door marked “Staff Only” into the little changing room. Everyone kept their stuff in there, but it was so small that only one or two could use it at a time. Then again, as far as Kendrick knew “everyone” wasn’t more than three or four people anyway. And that was only if Greg, the security guard, used the room.
“Don’t let anyone in here while I’m changing, okay?”
Kendrick nodded. Should he do what Nicolette was doing? Did he have some dream, some fantasy or wild adventure that he should be trying to chase before it was too late? He wasn’t sure. Lots of people had what most would consider boring and mundane jobs but led very fulfilling lives, if only for the little amount of responsibility their job required of them. You could flip burgers forever and be happy. All you had to do was love flipping burgers, everything you did besides flipping burgers, or both.
He couldn’t say he loved working at the Malner though. It wasn’t an awful job, but it wasn’t a dream job either. What did he do when he wasn’t here? He had a vague notion that he watched a lot of Law & Order, but that might have more to do with the fact that Greg was always pacing around with that portable TV of his. He’d heard that familiar “dung-dung” sound come from the little handheld box more than once.
He liked dogs a lot. He though maybe he should breed dogs for a living, move out to the country and start a cocker spaniel farm. Loud, yelping cocker spaniels everywhere. The puzzle on the floor drew his attention again. He picked it up and filled in some of the few remaining blanks. One of the words was laguna but they’d spelled it wrong. L-A-C –U – N – A. Maybe lacuna was a real word too. He’d look it up later.
Nicolette popped out of the staff room with a small puff of smoke floating behind her. She was wearing a generic black cotton shirt and a long multicolored skirt that nearly covered her feet – still in the flat maid’s shoes. The skirt was light green and had darker, leaf-like patterns all over it. Each pattern had specks of earth tone colors within it – an autumn forest wrapped around her waist. Her lipstick was as deep and red as before and some of it had found its way around the filter of the lit cigarette between her fingers.
“What do you think?”
What had he been thinking about? “Looks nice,” Kendrick replied. “You usually leave here in that maid’s outfit.”
“Yeah, I’ve decided I’m going to dress how I want to dress from now on.”
“You didn’t do that before?”
Nicolette took a long drag from her cigarette. Actually, upon reconsideration a solid black shirt did look a bit strange with that skirt…the red lipstick wasn’t really helping either.
“Why wouldn’t you dress the way you want to?” Kendrick continued. Nicolette seemed to be thinking of an answer. “I mean outside of work anyway?”
“Hey, watch this.” She took another drag of her cigarette and puffed out three smoke rings, each smaller than the other. She waited a second for them to line up into a ghostly, gray bulls-eye and blew a straight line of smoke right through the middle. It didn’t look as impressive as it would sound when he relayed the story, the line and the bulls-eye collided into a whirling mash and floated into the ceiling tiles…but still.
“That was very Bugs Bunny of you.” Kendrick said.
“Damn. I was going for more Daffy Duck,” she replied in mock disappointment. “He always had so much more flair than Bugs, don’t you think?”
Kendrick shrugged and looked down at the puzzle for a moment. When he looked back up Nicolette had already gathered her things and was heading toward the door – places to go, people to see.
“I should be more like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“You know, just trying things for the sake of it, like with the smoke thing, you know that you can’t turn the smoke into an arrow and make it stay in the air or do anything like that, but it’s cool to try anyway just to see how close you can get.” Kendrick had never really associated smoking with being elated.
“You did a pretty sweet job as far as I’m concerned.” It might have been the first time he had smiled at her directly.
Nicolette returned the smile and headed out of the door. They’d never said goodbye before, but somehow he expected one this time. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he wanted her to turn just so he could see her face one more time. It was so illuminated, secretive. She stopped in the open doorway and threw her cigarette out ahead of her. It made an orange beeline out into the night, then flickered out like a firefly.
“By the way, Martha told me to tell you to check on room 45.”
“The guy just checked in.” Kendrick replied, confused and hoping there wasn’t an enormous, disgusting mess that needed to be cleaned up. An image of Faris mooning pedestrians from his window flashed in his mind.
“You’ve got to check the room she said.” Nicolette answered. “It’s 2pm.”
Disbelief shot Kendrick’s gaze straight down to his watch…2:02 pm.
“How’d that hap---?” The lobby was empty, its windows shining with glare from the early afternoon sun. He looked down at the puzzle, figured he might as well finish it after he checked the room. Today was going really slow. No customers. Nothing to do.
Room 45.
No noise, no smells, no water running out from underneath the door, no smoke. All could be taken as either good signs or apocalyptic ones. Ruminating over the possibilities was really no good though. The best things to do in these sorts of situations was to take a deep breath, stick the key in the lock, focus your gaze straight ahead, and in one motion whisk the door open and step inside.
Kendrick did, and as soon as it happened he felt his stomach fall down to his feet, stop, and recoil up into his throat like a boulder on a bungee cord. A strong gust of wind rushed up from the floor and into his nostrils, filling his eyes with tears. His sides and armpits tickled from the gust.
Bringing his hands up to wipe his eyes was like placing a palm over the hose of a vacuum; both his hands slapped his face before he regained control of them. The natural reaction was to back away, but it seemed as though Kendrick’s entire lower body had gone completely limp. His legs were tingling with the electric, prickling sensation of having fallen asleep. The best he felt he could do was collapse to the floor.
But he didn’t collapse at all. His muscles went limp as he had commanded, but his legs swept backward from underneath him and his body floated down to the floor with the same ease and swinging motion of a heavy piece of paper. Kendrick shielded his face, waiting for the inevitable rug burn, but it never came. Instead he found himself hovering less than an inch above the brown carpeting. The falling sensation was still there but Kendrick found that his body had become acclimated to it. He reached for the open bathroom doorway and found that doing so propelled his body forward like an ice cube sliding on a kitchen floor. He grabbed the inside frame of the door and was preparing to shoot himself back into the hallway when something across the room caught his eye.
It was on the wall above the bed, just below the generic, contemporary, abstract painting in its generic, contemporary frame. It was a silver panel the size of a paperback novel with two square buttons on it. The lower button was a dull red but the upper button – the one that drew Kendrick’s attention – was glowing a bright, electric green. As soon as he saw that panel his plans to launch back into the hallway were forgotten.
Kendrick got a good grip on the doorway with both hands. In doing so he turned laterally and brought himself parallel with the wall, pushed himself back and forth a few times to gather momentum, and then shot himself forward as hard as he could. Kendrick closed his eyes after his head hit the other side of the doorway, but he knew that he was now tumbling through the air uncontrollably. The falling sensation intensified. He kept his eyes shut, knowing he would probably get sick if he opened them. Images of planets and stars falling past him flooded Kendrick’s imagination. He felt like an astronaut whose lifeline to his space shuttle had just been cut. Now all he could do was drift through space until he was swallowed by a black hole or broadsided by a comet.
But neither happened. Kendrick’s feet hit square and firmly against something solid. The wall, he thought, and his first impulse was to push off again. The feeling of a well-cushioned bed against the top of his head told Kendrick how lucky he was. He had pushed off the wall and was darting straight downward. His arms flailed, desperately trying to find something to cling to, and were finally able to usher up a good enough handful of bed sheets and mattress to keep him from sliding onto the floor. He opened his eyes a bit and found himself looking right up at the panel. His squinted vision stretched lines of sharp, green light out from the square base. He reached for it and the resistance against his outstretched arm almost sent another face slap his way. Instead he was able to control his arm enough to smack his hand flat and blunt against the lower half of the panel. The green light went out and a piercing, red glow from the lower button shot out from between Kendrick’s fingers.
Everything stilled. The tickling sensation stopped, the numbness lessened, and the popping in his ears came to a satisfying end. His body became heavy again and the aged bedsprings creaked a little under his weight.
There was a translucent blue envelope on the counter when Kendrick returned to the lobby. His name was cursively inscribed in glowing white ink. A folded letter was visible inside but he couldn’t make out what it said by holding the envelope up to the light.
“You look like you just jumped out of a plane.” He jumped when he heard Martha’s voice. She motioned at the envelope. “That’s for you.”
“What is it?”
“Did you check on that room yet?”
Kendrick almost pressed for more information about the envelope, but something in Martha’s eyes told him that whether or not he had checked the room was more important than anything that could be in the envelope.
“Yeah, something was wrong with the room.” Why was he so calm about it?
“He didn’t steal the towels, did he?”
“I don’t think he did.” In all the chaos he had forgotten to actually check the room. “Nope, he didn’t.”
“Good, cause we need those towels. You can’t have a hotel without a mother load of towels.” She caught herself before she went too far into a tangent. “Had that guy checked out already?”
“He should have. He wasn’t in the room when I went in there.”
“Did he leave the key?”
Kendrick looked back at the key rack – only one set. “Nope.”
“I’ll make a note to get a replacement made.” Martha looked behind Kendrick to the key rack for a moment. “Well, if he ever comes back we can just give him the same room.” She smiled at her small joke.
“Yeah…about that room – “
“What about it? Was it upside down or something?”
Something about that last sentence threw Kendrick’s entire train of thought. He didn’t think Martha was just exaggerating.
“As a matter of fact –“
“Listen, can you do one more thing for me?” Martha’s “can you” meant “you have to.”
“Okay.”
“Two things actually.”
“Sure.”
“First, get a comb and take it to that nappy head of hair you wore to work today.”
“I was fine before I went into that room” Kendrick’s voice trailed off a bit when he saw the time on his watch: 1:18pm. The day was going really slow.
None of this seemed to register with Martha. “Second, I need you to clean the pool.”
“What about the pool boy?”
“He’s not here. He’s gone.”
Just his luck that the pool boy would clock out early. “Was he sick?” Kendrick asked.
“It was time for him to go so I sent him home,” Martha responded very matter-of-factly.
“Doesn’t Nicolette usually do the maintenance?”
“Same story with her. I sent her home two days ago.”
The pool looked awful - green and murky like a pond you’d come across in the woods. Unfortunate beetles had fallen in and were desperately swimming to safety around small islands of algae and loose leaves, a thin film that appeared to gasp for air as bubbles stirred up from below the surface every now and again. There was a small collection of the beetles belly up and gathered near the filter – those who had survived the long swim only to find out that the walls of the pool were too high to escape. Kendrick had no idea how to clean the pool. Was the skimmer supposed to take care of all of this? It seemed to him that it would be better to just drain the pool, but he could hear Martha protesting that idea even as he thought about it. No doubt draining the pool required someone to actually swim to the bottom of it. Who’d want to do that? Maybe if he just got all of the debris out of the water…
The water retched in protest when the skimmer penetrated the surface. It was much thicker than he had expected, almost sludge. He found out the hard way that the algae and dead beetles were acting as a protective coating to hide the foul odor just under the surface of the water. Kendrick had walked over any number of storm drains and sewer covers and this smelled ten times worse. It smelled like the bottom of a garbage disposal – somewhere between sour milk and rotten fruit.
The pole came back thick with a tar-like substance, but only so far. The skimmer came to an abrupt halt just before the netting could surface. Moving the skimmer back and forth didn’t help; it stayed fixed as though it were frozen and gave less and less as it moved. He eased his grip for a moment and found that the water could support the skimmer on its own, neither letting it rise or sink, like a block of ice holding a pick.
Almost as soon as Kendrick noticed this though, the skimmer shot down into the pool. He was barely able to grab the handle before it shot out of reach and found himself teetering on one foot over the edge of the pool. The pole bent from his weight. He found his footing again but he relaxed too early, and the pole snapped back like a whip and threw Kendrick into the air.
For a moment he saw the pool - dark, livid, and uninviting. Then he saw the sky; the cold blue of late summer, washing itself into a gradient as it folded over the horizon. Then it all exploded into a grotesque flash of green and brown as the sludge opened up and swallowed him. There was a taste of cigarettes. It stung his eyes. It forced itself down his throat and rode up his nostrils. He vomited but soon found that there was nowhere for it to go. The blue light above him was getting darker and darker, farther and farther away. Something solid brushed against his back – the bottom of the pool. “Kick,” his body told him, “get back to the top,” It screamed.
But it was all too overwhelming. Kendrick was lost in gravity – all at once being held down and drifting aimlessly. He couldn’t see blue anymore, only a cacophonous, brown slime – burning his eyes yet forcing them open. A dead beetle floated into his mouth. A school of bubbles clouded his vision as his stomach gave out again and then another voice – a different and familiar voice – broke through the muddy paste. It was a commanding and warm voice – one that he felt even more compelled to obey than his own.
“Breathe,” it said. “Just breathe.”
Kendrick’s lungs wouldn’t listen; they were balled up into dissenting knots, fighting against the outside like frightened cats.
“Breathe.”
Nothing.
“Take a deep breath.”
Kendrick shut his eyes – the stinging was vicious – clenched his teeth and sucked in as much of the sludge as his body would let him. His body rebelled violently, throwing him into a fit of heaves and gasps. The rotten stench flooded his senses.
“Breathe.”
He couldn’t.
“Breathe….breathe!”
He felt a breeze wash over his face – a fresh gust of air like stepping out of shower. He was shivering and choking but he could see blue again – everywhere. When his vision finally cleared he saw Martha looking down at him, examining him like a fisherman might examine the catch of the day.
There was sludge everywhere, reeking and shining under the sunlight. It was too hard to distinguish between where the odor of the pool and the inviting scent of the warm afternoon were coming from so Kendrick did nothing save turn on his side and close his eyes and close them.
“I need you to go get that envelope from the front desk.” Martha’s voice came and Kendrick’s eyes snapped open to the hazy sunlight flooding into the lobby. She had almost caught him dozing off.
Kendrick rummaged through the desk and once again found himself holding the translucent blue envelope. The letter inside seemed to float as though it were surrounded by liquid. His clothes smelled especially fresh today – wrinkle-free too. These must have been part of the batch he took to the cleaners.
“Open it,” Martha said.
The envelope came off like skin. It peeled away in small, uneven, and wet sections that fell to the countertop in gelatinous, blue clumps. The letter was dry though. The message inside was only a date written in exquisite blue ink:
Kendrick waved the note at Martha. “What’s this?” But as he looked at the note more and more of it started to come back to him. It was as if each character and digit was its own letter…its own story.
“This was…a few weeks ago.”
“Three weeks,” Martha replied, “ remember?”
He did remember. And suddenly, as he remembered, he also understood.
“Is this my two weeks’ notice?” Kendrick asked.
“It’s your two moments’ notice.” Martha said. “Everyone gets one sooner or later. Greg the security guard will get one if I can ever get him off his ass.”
Kendrick nodded. He thought it was out of habit, but something told him it was more.
“People like you are special cases. So was Nicolette, but she didn’t take nearly as long as you – and she didn’t start slipping away either.”
A knowing smirk crossed the woman’s face. “You were forgetting, weren’t you?”
“I suppose so,” Kendrick replied.
“Sure, you suppose. You were, but that’s okay. That’s why you’re a special case. We can’t treat you like Mr. Faris and his altophobia. Believe me, it’s better when you can just give someone a room and send them on their way, but sometimes you have to take special steps. The forgetting is a side effect. I’ve worked here so long I have to keep a journal sometimes just to keep track of myself.”
So many questions. Kendrick wasn’t sure which to ask first - if he needed to ask any of them at all.
“Think of it this way,” Martha said, “Instead of an epiphany, just say you came to a realization. No need to be melodramatic about the whole thing. It happens all of the time: someone will be in the bathroom, at the grocery store, doing whatever, not really paying attention and then something will occur to them, something big.”
“But…”
“But it’s up to the person to act on it. We’ll see how you fair now – try not to remember so much as feel what happened here. Everyone has their own time – you forget because no one else needs to know.”
Kendrick couldn’t stand going to job interviews; he hated wearing dress shoes. They made his feet as nervous as the rest of him felt.
As he pulled across the crowded intersection he found the woman he had seen across the street. She was crossing the intersection, walking in the opposite direction. He liked her outfit – her skirt with its leaf-like patterns in it. You see the most interesting-looking people in the city.
Traffic was moving slowly. Kendrick hated going to interviews even more when it was scheduled around lunchtime. It was too easy for your mind to wander at this lethargic pace. And he needed to focus. After today everything could be different.
Everything could be different? The thought hadn’t occurred to him before.
©Chris Wiltz
Lately, every day in Chris Wiltz's life has been an episodic battle to balance the forces of early morning corporate dronery with late-night burgeoning romance and an ever-pervading desire to be in grad school. He thinks your first college degree should be free and that every college-age individual in the country should stage a nation-wide nonviolent demonstration to make this a reality. Despite his life-long love and fascination with science fiction and horror, his favorite fictional character is Peter Gibbons from Office Space. When he's in a really suggestive and sensual mood he writes erotic fiction stories such as the one found here. Currently residing in Rochester, NY Chris Wiltz can be reached at clwiltz at ameritech dot net.-
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