—
IT’S A SPECTRAL wisp of a film, film more in the sense of a substance coating your pupils than it is a stream of images that moves before you. It’s all felt more than seen; tension darkens each frame; by the end you can see neither into these siblings’ lives nor out. Neither, it seems, can they. The film seems to be a judgment upon the written word and the stranglehold it assumes. Woe to those who believe in what is written, and woe to those who don’t.
I put this to Aisha and she shook her head.
“It’s a puppet show,” she said. Yes, it’s that too. The film’s siblings are played by two feminine-looking puppets and voiced by a singer and a puppeteer, both friends of A’s stepfather. The sister towers over the brother; she’s wooden. The brother’s made of metal, and his face is one of the most arresting I’ve seen, composed entirely of jagged scales — scales for eyelids, a button-shaped scale for a nose. When he opens his mouth to speak, it’s as if the sea is speaking.
I’d decided to show the film to my own sister Odette, and as I waited in the lobby of Hotel Glissando I used the free Wi-Fi to watch it again in miniature, on my phone. A man tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up: He was a black man about my father’s age and half a head shorter than me. Those sideburns: I’d seen them (and him) before, but couldn’t think where. The man was talking. I pulled my earphones out.
“… looking well, Freddy. How have you been?”
“Yeah, really well, thanks. And yourself?” I hadn’t a clue who he was, but as long as one of us knew what was going on I didn’t mind chatting.
He nudged me with his elbow, winked. “You’re surprised to see me, eh? Thought I was dead, didn’t you?”
When he said that it all came back to me; this man really was supposed to be dead. He was my godfather, and I’d last seen him at my christening. I might have gone to his funeral but I’m not sure: I’ve been to so many they all blur together.
“Gosh, yes! So you’re alive after all? Excellent. How did you manage that? I mean, you went—”
“Sailing, yes,” he supplied, beaming.
“Right, sailing, you were circumnavigating the globe in your boat, and then there was that Cuban hurricane and bits of the boat washing up on various shores—”
“I ditched the boat pretty early on, Freddy,” my godfather said, serenely. “Sailing isn’t for me. I only came up with the idea to get away from the wife and kid, really, so once I got to Florida I just let the boat drift on without me.”
“So you let your family think you’re dead, er — Jean-Claude?”
“That’s right. I’ve been living here at the Glissando for years.” His hand moved in his pocket; I could guess what he was doing, having seen others perform the same ritual — he was running his finger around and around the outside of his room key card, doing what he should’ve done before he checked in and became subject to the rules. Before assuming ownership of a key you should look at it closely. Not only because you may need to identify it later but because to look at a key is to get an impression of the lock it was made for, and, by extension, the entire establishment surrounding the lock. Once you check into Hotel Glissando there’s no checking out again in your lifetime: I imagine this is a taste of what it is to be dead. In many tales people who’ve died don’t realize it until they try to travel to a place that’s new to them and find themselves prevented from arriving. These ghosts can only return to places where they’ve already been; that’s all that’s left for them. Depending on the person that can still be quite a broad existence. But whether its possessor is widely traveled or not, the key card for each room at Hotel Glissando is circular; if you took the key into your hand and really thought about it before signing the residency contract, this shape would inform you that wherever else you go, you must and will always return to your room.
“It’s nice and quiet here and every morning there are eggs done just the way I like them,” Jean-Claude said. “Jana divorced me in absentia and remarried anyway; she’s fine. And just look how well my boy’s doing!” My godfather opened a celebrity magazine and showed me a four-page spread of his son’s splendid home. Chedorlaomer Nachor’s House of Locks! Sumptuous! Mysterious!
“Chedorlaomer Nachor’s your son?” I waved my phone at Jean-Claude. “Did you know he’s in this film I’m watching?” The film had ended while we’d been talking; I played it again. Jean-Claude’s gaze flicked suspiciously between me and the screen of my phone. “All I see are puppets.”
“Yes, he’s the voice of the brother—” I waited until the silvery face was the only one on-screen and then turned up the volume. Jean-Claude listened for a moment and then nodded.
“What’s this film then?”
“Oh, it’s my… girlfriend’s. Well, she wrote and directed it…”
Jean-Claude gripped my arm. “You know my Chedorlaomer?”
“Well, not personally, but… why, do you want to be… you know, reunited?” I hadn’t missed my chance after all. Here was a service I could provide to Jean-Claude and his famous son. This would effect my own reunion with my mother, who would acknowledge my existence once more. But Jean-Claude had no wish for a reunion; his accountant advised very strongly against such sentiments. Instead he wanted me to rescue his son from the clutches of a dangerous character.
“Dangerous character?”
“Her name,” Jean-Claude said darkly, “is Tyche Shaw.”
“Really?”
“You’ve heard of her?”
I tapped my phone screen again. “She’s the voice of the sister!”
Jean-Claude flipped through another magazine until he found photos of Chedorlaomer stepping out hand in hand with a tall, buxom black woman. Her hair was gathered up to bare a neck that tempted me to B-movie vampirism. I wouldn’t have guessed she was a puppeteer, and neither would this magazine’s caption writer: Nachor’s mystery lady… Do you know her? Write in!
“Freddy,” Jean-Claude said. “I’ve been watching you for a few days now.”
“Watching me? From where?”
He pointed to a potted palm tree behind the farthest phone booth. “There’s a chair behind it. Yes, I’ve been watching you, and you look well, you do look well, but you also look as if you’re lacking direction…”
I didn’t dispute that.
“Would you like a bit of gainful employment, Freddy?”
“Well… yes.”
“Good! I’ll pay you this—” Jean-Claude wrote a number on the front cover of the topmost magazine. “If you break those two up as soon as you can.”
The figure was high; I had to ask why he was so invested in the breakup.
“I made some inquiries, and I found out some things about Tyche Shaw,” Jean-Claude said, his eyes turning to saucers for a moment. “Don’t ask me what they are, but let’s just say she’s not the sort of person my son should be seeing. Save him. If not for the money then at least out of human decency.”