“I’d kiss you if we weren’t in the equivalent of South Gate Mall,” she said with a tired smile as she touched my hand. “Be careful.”
“At the China Palace?”
“In Disneyville.”
5
I had already packed my blue carry-on for a couple of nights and had my Chicago Cubs baseball cap in the front seat of the Nissan Sentra. I look like a big-eared dolt in the cap, but it protects my ever-growing forehead from burning under the Florida sun and even though it was close to seven at night, the sun was still huge and hot in the sky behind me as I headed east on Fruitville for I-75.
I had delivered the bag of Chinese food to Sally and got twelve egg rolls, three of which sat in a brown sack on the seat next to me. Another one was in my hand. I had also bought four egg rolls for John Gutcheon.
I drove past Target and the malls on my left and right and headed north on I-75. Traffic wasn’t bad for three reasons. Rush hour was over. It was summer and the snowbirds had left, reducing the population of Sarasota and the entire state of Florida significantly. People who worked were already home and people who didn’t were in their air-conditioned homes or at the beach on the cool white sand ignoring the ultraviolet index.
I was on my way to Orlando armed with three photographs and wearing a Cubs cap. I listened to a talk-show guy who badgered his callers, made crude jokes, and kept saying he was just using common sense while he got the history of Israel, Iraq, France, and the United States almost completely wrong. I chewed on egg rolls and kept to a few miles over the speed limit.
There was construction on I-4 from the Tampa interchange to Orlando. I-4 is four lanes, two lanes in each direction, and it always seems there are as many trucks as cars. Still, it only took me a little over two hours to get to International Drive, a street of glitz, restaurants, hotels, a water slide, plenty of places that sell T-shirts and souvenirs, and a Ripley’s Believe It or Not house built at an odd angle, as if it had just been dropped from outer space.
The hotel wasn’t full, but all they had for me was a room at almost two hundred a night. I didn’t have a credit card, but I had taken all my cash with me. I paid a day in advance and got a receipt I could show Kenneth Severtson. The young woman behind the desk did a great job of ignoring the fact that my luggage was a single blue carry-on.
When I got to my room, I threw my cap on the table, took the John Lutz novel I was reading out of the carry-on, and went down to the atrium lobby, where I used the house phone to connect me to Andrew Stark’s room. No answer. I asked for his room number. The young woman on the phone said they weren’t permitted to give out room numbers.
I went down to the lobby. There were plenty of wroughtiron seats at tables and tastefully upholstered chairs scattered around the area. I found a chair in the atrium facing the door to the hotel and sat with my paperback open in my lap.
Little kids ran screaming in their swimsuits heading for the pool. Families went by speaking German, French, and something I couldn’t place.
Stark, Janice Severtson, and the kids came in a little after nine-thirty. Stark was carrying the little girl, Sydney, who was sleeping. Kenneth Jr. was walking slowly with a less-than-happy look on his face. His mother was definitely a beauty, but there was something less than ecstasy in her face. She was carrying a colorful shopping bag with a picture of Shrek on the side.
Stark was a good-looking if slightly beefy-looking man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair. He was at least twenty years older than Janice Severtson.
There wasn’t too much I could do to be inconspicuous. I don’t have the kind of face people remember in any case. It’s a blessing in my work and in my private life.
I managed to get on the elevator with the four of them and smiled.
“Floor?” I asked pleasantly.
“Seven,” Janice Severtson said, closing her eyes.
I hit the “seven” and “eight” buttons.
When we passed the third floor, she opened her eyes and looked at me.
“I know you,” she said.
Stark turned to face me. He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt with buttons and sleeves that came down to his elbows. He was also wearing muscles and a scowl. His face was sun-browned. His brown eyes were firmly focused on me.
“I don’t…,” I began.
“Sarasota YMCA,” she said. “Downtown. You work out there.”
So much for my keenly developed internal storehouse of names and faces. How could I not remember someone who looked like Janice Severtson? How could she remember me?
“I do,” I said with a grin. “Every morning before I go to work. I’m the men’s wear department manager at Old Navy in Gulf Gate. Brought my wife and kids here, for our annual week of torture.”
“I know what you mean,” she said.
“Who’s that?” the little boy asked, looking up at me.
“A friend of your mother’s,” said Stark with more than a touch of suspicion.
“You a friend of my daddy’s, too?” the boy asked.
“No,” I said, holding out my hand to Stark. “Pleased to meet you.”
“He’s not my daddy,” the boy said.
“He’s your grandfather?”
Stark’s jaw was tight now. I ignored him and looked down at the little boy, who was shaking his head no.
“He’s Andy,” the boy said.
“I think we’ve bothered the man enough,” said Janice Severtson.
The elevator stopped at seven and they shuffled wearily out.
“Nice to meet you,” I called as the doors closed.
When the doors opened on the eighth floor a few seconds later, I got out quickly and moved to a spot on the atrium landing not far from my room where I could see them moving slowly toward their room.
After they went in, I stayed at the railing for another hour, pretending my novel was a sketchbook when anyone went by, keeping an eye on the door to the room I was watching on the seventh floor. I even drew a crude stick figure and a tree on the inside cover of the novel at one point. My watch hit eleven, and I went to my room and set the alarm clock for five in the morning. I shaved, showered, shampooed, brushed my teeth, and watched a Harold Lloyd silent comedy on Turner Classic Movies. Harold wound up running around an abandoned ship being chased by a murderer and a monkey in a sailor suit. The movie was short. I went to sleep. Everything was going just fine.
By seven in the morning, I was eating the free Continental buffet breakfast at a two-person table. When I finished, I slowly drank cup after cup of coffee with USA Today in front of me. A little before nine, Andrew Stark, Janice Severtson, and the kids came down. The kids were bouncing and arguing. The adults were just arguing. I couldn’t hear them, but it looked as if the brief honeymoon was in trouble.
I followed them out after they breakfasted. The rest of the day was moppet heaven for the kids and nightmare alley for me. They went on and saw everything at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park while I watched from a discreet distance. I don’t know what I was watching for. Possibly signs of intimacy in front of the children. A stolen passionate kiss and a little groping while the kids were in the Muppet Vision show, or maybe I was hoping for a chance to catch Janice Severtson alone.
We watched the Beauty and the Beast show, the Hunchback show, the Honey I Shrunk the Kids show, the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, and had lunch at Disney’s Toy Story Pizza Planet Arcade. By the time we hit Voyage of the Little Mermaid, I was strongly considering calling Kenneth Severtson and telling him that I was on my way back to Sarasota.
They went on The Great Movie Ride and ended the day with The Making of Tarzan. I wished Stark would carry me or better yet, that Janice Severtson would carry me.
They stopped for dinner at a seafood restaurant. I didn’t eat. The chance of being spotted was too great and I didn’t put much faith in talking my way out of an accidental encounter with, “Well, we meet again. Small world after all.”