8
Joe's boots echoed on the hardwood floor of the lobby of the Mammoth Hotel. The lobby had high ceilings, a cavernous sitting area overlooked by a massive mural, dozens of empty overstuffed chairs. Two check-in clerks huddled around a computer monitor behind the front desk and looked up at him as he approached.
"Can I get a room?"
The clerk said, "Sorry, sold out," then smiled to show he was kidding.
"Very funny, Simon," the other clerk said in a British accent, then to Joe: "Don't worry, we're at the end of our season. There are plenty of rooms available. We get a little punchy when the end is near."
"When the end is near," Simon mimicked with an intonation of false doom while he tapped on a keyboard.
"You know what I mean," the other clerk said.
Joe drew his wallet out and fished for a credit card. Although the state had sent him his credentials, a state credit card wasn't in the package. He'd need to ask about that, and soon. The familycredit card had a low maximum, and Joe didn't know the limit.
The two clerks worked together with a jokey, easy rapport that came from familiarity. Joe noted that both wore Zephyr Corp. name badges with their first names and residences. While both were undoubtedly British, their name tags said "Simon" and "James" from Montana.
"You aren't really from Montana," Joe said, while Simon noted the name on his credit card.
"How did you guess that?" James asked slyly.
"Actually, when you work for Zephyr long enough and get hired on in the winter, you can claim Montana or Wyoming for your residence," Simon said. "Better than Brighton, I suppose."
"Definitely better than Brighton," James said.
"Or Blackpool, James." To Joe: "You've got a reservation," Simon said, looking up from the screen.
"I do?"
Simon nodded. "And it's covered. By a Mr. Chuck Ward from the State of Wyoming."
Joe liked that and appreciated Ward for taking care of details.Simon handed over the keys to room 231.
"Are you familiar with the hotel?" Simon asked.
Joe was, although it had been a long time. Despite the years, the layout of the building was burned into his memory. ROOM 231, ALONG with the rest of the rooms and the hallway,had been renovated since Joe was there last. The lighting wasn't as glaring and the walls not as stark as he remembered, he thought, musing how years distorted memory and perception.It was still a long hallway, though, and he struggled down it with too many bags. A sprinkler system now ran the length of the ceiling, and the muted yellow paint of the ceiling and hallwaywalls was restful. Still, it gave him a feeling of melancholy that was almost overwhelming. While they could change the carpeting and the fixtures, they couldn't change what had happenedthere more than twenty-five years ago, or stop the memoriesfrom flooding back to him.
His room was small, clean, redone. A soft bed with a brass headboard and a lush quilt, a pine desk and chair, tiled floor in the bathroom, little bear-shaped soap on the sink. There was no television. A phone on the desk was the only nod toward the present. Otherwise, the room could have been something out of the 1920s, when the hotel was built. He looked out the window and was pleased it overlooked the huge stretch of lawn known as the parade ground.
He sat on the bed, his head awash with overlapping thoughts. He tried to convince himself the meeting had not gone badly, that he hadn't embarrassed himself, that he'd learned a few things to help him carry out his assignment. That was true, but he couldn't get over the moment when Portenson said, "Cut the charade, Joe," and he realized they had all been waiting for him to fess up.
Joe stood and surveyed his room. There was a two-foot space between the bed and the curtained window. He stared at the space, thinking it must have been larger once, since that was where he'd spent his time when he was here last. His parents had put down blankets and he slept there on the floor. But it had seemed so much bigger at the time, just like the room had seemed bigger, the hallways longer, the ceilings higher, the lightbulbs brighter. He could recall the musty smell of the carpetand the detergent odor of the bedspread. He remembered pretending to sleep while his father drank and raged and his mother sobbed. It was the first time in his life he'd been without his brother, and his brother was the reason they were in Yellowstonethen. But most of all, he could remember the feeling of loss in the room, and what he thought at the time was the dawningof his own doom, as if his life as he knew it was over after only eighteen years. And not so great years either.
Long after his family had stayed at the Mammoth Hotel, Joe saw the movie The Shining. In one scene the camera lingers on an impossibly long, impossibly still hallway when a wave of blood crashes down from a stairwell and floods the length of it. At the time he had thought of the hallway of the Mammoth Hotel.He thought of it now. He needed a drink.
Joe dug through one of his duffel bags for a plastic bottle-a "traveler"-of Jim Beam and poured some into a thin plastic cup. He remembered the hum of an ice machine in the hall and grabbed the bucket.
He opened the door cautiously, half expecting the wave of blood he'd imagined to slosh across the floor. It didn't, and he felt foolish for letting his mind wander. As he stepped out there was a bustle of clothing and a sharp cry from the end of the hallway where the stairs were. He turned in time to see two men scrambling out of sight from the landing down the stairs. He glimpsed them for only a second; they were older, bundled in heavy clothes, not graceful in their sudden retreat. He hadn't seen their faces, only their backs.
Puzzled, he considered following them but decided against it. Their heavy footsteps on the stairs pounded into silence and they were no doubt crossing the lobby. Had he frightened them? He wondered. What had they been doing that they felt it necessaryto flee like that when he emerged into the hallway?
Joe filled his bucket and went back to his room. Although he generally liked solitude, it was the quiet of being outside, where he could see, hear, and feel the landscape around him, that drew him. It was different in a huge, virtually unoccupied hotel, where he longed for the hum of conversation behind doors he passed, and the assurance that he wasn't totally alone on his floor. He paused at his door and shot a suspicious glance back where he'd seen the men. There was no one there now, although the empty hotel seemed clogged with ghosts. The mammoth dining room was the only restaurant still open in the village and it was a short walk from the hotel. AlthoughJoe disliked eating alone, he had no choice so he grabbed his jacket and the Zone of Death file to read over, yet again, while he ate. Simon and James were still at the desk when he descended the stairs.
Joe asked Simon, "About a half hour ago, did two old men come running across the lobby from the stairs?"
Simon and James exchanged glances. Simon said, "I rememberthat, yes. But they weren't running when I saw them. They were walking briskly toward the front doors."
"Do you know them?"
Simon shook his head.
"Were they Zephyr employees?"
James laughed. "Who knows? It's the time of year when the nutters really come out, you know? We don't pay any attention to them unless they bother the guests. Were they bothering you?"
"Not really," Joe said. As joe crossed the street to the restaurant he noticed a park ranger cruiser at the curb. The door opened and Judy Demming got out.
"Del Ashby asked me to give you something," she said, poppingopen the trunk with a remote on her key chain.
Demming was out of uniform, in jeans, a turtleneck, and a sweater. She looked smaller and more scholarly in street clothes, Joe thought, her eyes softer behind her glasses.
"Were you waiting for me?" Joe asked.
"I just pulled in."
He followed her around her car as she lifted a cardboard box out of the trunk.
"All of those e-mails printed out," she said, holding the box out to him. "The ones you said you wanted to look at."