“Forget something?” a woman asked behind her.
Rachel turned. A straw hat with holes in it cast a shadow over her face but Rachel could still see that she was beautiful.
On the bed was a big canvas tote, orange flowers with stitched leather handles. “Do you like the bag?” Rachel asked idiotically. “I could change the colour. Maybe you’d like fish instead of flowers.”
Esme smiled and handed her her laptop.
“How can my computer be in your room?” Rachel asked and then she laughed, a little hysterically.
“How can you see me on your stairs? Go teach your class,” Esme said.
“I will. I just want to look out the window a moment longer.”
The ribby horses munched grass. Rachel traced her finger along the carved woodwork around the window where the red paint peeled and peeled.
“It isn’t called The Red Arcade here,” Esme said at last.
“Why not?”
“The name moved across to your hotel years ago. Even though it is here that there are blind arcades on the outside of the building, painted red. The arcades are symbols. Each arcade represents a different dimension, a doorway to another hotel. Although right now there are only two. At other times there were more.”
“Can you show me? I’d love to see the building from the outside.”
“You already know what it looks like,” Esme said.
Rachel nodded. “The front yard is mainly sand. You swept this morning, to spruce things up for when the bus comes. Leaves blow in from the trees that edge the sea.”
Esme nodded. “I have to help Margit serve the lunch. The driver hasn’t stayed over in years and she is so excited. Did you get all that?” she laughed.
“I think so. Can’t I come to lunch too?” Rachel asked. “It feels like somewhere I’ve always wanted to live only I didn’t know it.”
“If you stay, you’ll become like Annielle.”
“The driver said she went mad because she left the hotel to go to Dream.”
Esme shook her head. “It’s the staying that makes you crazy, not the going.”
“It just feels so amazing, so much like what we all long for over there. We can sense it but we can’t quite touch it and it breaks our hearts.”
“But you can,” Esme said.
“I can what?”
“Touch it.”
Esme placed her hand over Rachel’s hand, still on the peeling red window frame. She exerted a little pressure.
“You feel it, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is what you must go back and teach.”
Big Ears
JOEY WANTED TO GO HOME. He wanted to go home so bad it made his teeth ache, but home was back with Sally, balanced on a tightrope wire he didn’t have the shoes for, and the thing that frightened Joey most was large and very hairy and had just taken up residence on the opposite bench. It leered, drooling. Joey tried his best to ignore it, warming his hands around his coffee cup.
Joey did not notice Rickie when she walked in. He didn’t look up when she ran off a long complicated order at the take-out counter, inverting syllables like a dyslexic push-me-pull-you. Then Rickie did a Python 007 routine and slithered over to his table. She snuck in beside the drooling hairy thing, scaring it half to death. It was none the wiser for it. Those types never are.
She cleared her throat and lowered her voice as far as it would go, which was a fair distance. “I believe the Sourpuss Parade just turned left on Main Street,” she said, staring him right in the eye. “It was no more than five minutes and change ago. You can still make it if you’re quick.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t? Tell me what isn’t?” She did look like the sort of person who laughed a lot; a big round face nestled in large quantities of cheerful black curls.
“Me. Right now.” He felt too tired and beaten for the old game: extract female sympathy for your miserable condition and go on from there. So what were his motives in telling her the truth?
“You catch on quick,” she replied, “for a turtle on reds that is,” and went to wait for her order.
And why was she bothering? She’d been up all night; he knew that already. The mix of beer and bennies that had propelled her this far not yet worn off; the mile a minute chatter she’d entertained her friends with all night had just enough gas left in it to spill over onto him. She didn’t really care, and he didn’t hold it against her. But she was cute, very cute. “All you got to do is ask,” she said, coming back with an enormous paper bag. Mind reading powers as well, it looked like.
Joey spoke up, pride notwithstanding. “Okay, okay, I’m asking.”
Rickie gave him a Camel filter. “When you’re finished you can have one of these.” She reached into the bag and brought out a cheeseburger.
“That’s a pretty good hat trick,” he admitted, lighting the cigarette greedily, “considering when I ate last.”
“It is,” she boasted, “although I know a few others.”
“It shows,” he said. Joey wastefully put out his Camel only half smoked and carefully unwrapped his burger, took an enormous bite. It tasted almost as good as a brand new reed would have, for his exiled saxophone. Almost.
Half the burger gone, the drooling hairy thing shrank a little, its ugly grimace distending into an almost smile, appeased by Rickie’s gifts. Joey managed to ask, “Where’re you having so much fun, anyway?”
She gave him the card to a private club, and he asked, because she seemed more than just a club kid, what she played, and she said, “I just sing, but I’m learning the guitar, although I haven’t taken it on stage yet. But it’s a cool place; Mojo comes every Thursday, and you should come.”
“What makes you think I’m a player?”
“I’ve seen your picture in the trade papers, Joey.”
“You mean you read?”
She rolled her eyes, pulling the card away, but Joey took it back and put it in his pocket.
Mojo. Mojo’s first derivative world beat recording had sustained a moderate success, and Joey felt bitter. If he went to this place, Joey guessed, he’d be surrounded by musicians ten to fifteen years younger, and a few of them, like Mojo, who was white, would have better club dates and recording contracts under their belts than he’d ever had, even with his twenty years of dues. He thought he wouldn’t show. “I’d love to come,” he said, surprising himself, “but my best lady’s in hock, and I wouldn’t want to show with a lesser companion.”
“How much?” she asked.
“Seventy-five bones,” he replied wearily, wiping cheeseburger grease off his chin.
She did something miraculous then. Reached into her jeans pocket, and pulled four crumpled twenties off a roll. “Here,” she said, “don’t spend it at the bar. Show by eleven. By sun-up you’ll have enough to pay me back.”
He took the card out again. The Rainbow Bridge. Prop: Carlos Cienfuego. “You mean you actually get paid at this place?” He was revealing everything now, and to a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty-eight. So much for sounding older, wise, cooler than hell. But she seemed the one with all the wisdom this morning. Maybe they’re like that now, he marvelled.
“Ten dollar cover at the door, and people come, because the music’s real good and doesn’t stop till morning. At least some nights it’s real good.”
He stared at her. “How come you got so wise?”
“I want to get to heaven,” she said. “You have to save one life. That’s the entry fee, I heard.”