“Right,” Howard said again. “Thanks.”
He wheeled his case towards the stairs but was intercepted by someone emerging from a pair of heavy wooden double doors to one side. “Howie Bloch!”
Howard winced, but couldn’t help smiling. At last, some normalcy. Something familiar. “Dean Stringer. How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Howie?” His mother had called him that, her soft voice plaintive as she mollified him after another of his father’s alcoholic outbursts. His mother’s own breath sour with bourbon and cigarettes and surrender. He’d always promised himself any marriage of his would never be like theirs. Instead he’d managed to make one so dull it had withered on the vine and died.
Dean Stringer smiled. “Howard, sorry. Good to see you, man!”
“You too.”
They shook hands, Dean’s grip firm and vigorous. “You believe this place? Like something from… I don’t even know!”
“It’s pretty weird.”
“The boss man says it’s important to be here this particular Halloween. Reckons it’s a perfect time for company growth.”
“Perfect time?”
“Alignment of stars or some shit.” Stringer laughed, shrugged. “Great location for us, though, right? Try selling these people Halloween décor, that’d be like selling snow to the eskimoes, am I right? Really test your skills, Mr Regional Sales Manager of the Year.”
Howard laughed. “That was last year.”
“Maybe this year too! You’ll find out in three days.”
“We’ll see.” Honestly, Howard doubted he would qualify. He worked well, always had, but the slow dissolution of life with Skye, particularly over the last few months as the breakdown gained momentum, had certainly affected his performance. It must have affected his sales, even though he had met all his targets. Someone else would surely have exceeded theirs by more.
“Drink!” Dean exclaimed. “Come on.”
“My bag,” Howard said weakly. “I’ve only just driven in, I feel… rumpled.”
“A drink first!”
The hotel bar was busy with Day & Gohn Inc. staff and the buzz of life and activity was like a bath in itself. Howard drank his first beer reluctantly, but soon relaxed and met others he knew well, new employees he hadn’t met before. He felt isolated among the crowd, but bourbon followed beer and in an hour he was warm and laughing, not sparing a thought for life beyond the job.
Dizzy and staggering, he fumbled the key into the lock of 315, left his clothes on the floor as he fell into bed a little after midnight. The sheets were so cold they felt damp, the high ceiling with pressed metal edges spotted with blackened mould and rippled with water stains, but he didn’t think much about it before sleep closed over him like a wave.
Howard woke from dreams of rolling seas and curdled stomachs. Of leaning over the sides of creaking boats with peeling paint, staring into gloomy depths where things unrecognisable looped and flew. His mouth was dry and furry, his head thick.
He staggered from bed, went into the small bathroom to piss, and winced at the yellow-stained toilet bowl, the rust streaked tub with its dripping shower head, lumpy with lime scale. But relieved, and revitalised with a long drink, though the water was bitter and hard, he returned to the room and its small window. His view looked south over the harbour. He smiled. The rain had eased, though the skies were still slate, and people milled in the street. Some buildings seemed to be shops with their doors open. Everything appeared more alive, more intact, than it had in the rain-soaked night before. Howard was glad of that. After a breakfast in the bustling hotel dining room – bustling only due to his fellow company staff – he headed into the main conference rooms and was soon lost in the business of sales districts, new products, electronic gadgets to hide around the house to turn it into a terrifying haunted experience. These were things he understood.
During lunch he was slapped hard on the back by Geoffrey Day, CEO. The man was tall and broad with a wide face and protuberant eyes. Not so pale as the desk clerk of the night before, Howard was nonetheless struck by their similarity.
“Good to see you, Bloch!” Day exclaimed. “All well?”
“Absolutely!” Howard lied, thoughts of Skye slipping back into the cracks between his thoughts, and hurried away.
By evening he was back in the bar, sampling the food and more of the booze. One day down, two to go, then the party. He began to relax. Dinner was ordinary, an uninspiring fish stew with hard, tasteless bread, but he and Dean had decided to go further afield the next day and explore the town, find restaurants to try. Thankful though he was to have Dean nearby, he had trouble connecting with anyone else, the faces all blurring into one seething mass. He shouldn’t be here, not really. He was made remote by thoughts of home and Skye. And that made him tense and bitter, hurt by the thought their marriage was done. They should have had kids. He should have insisted. He smarted that now they never would. But it wasn’t too late…
Avoiding conversation, Howard found himself on a weathered leather bench seat when a slim, dark-haired woman of young middle age sat beside him. He estimated she might be five or six years younger than his grizzled thirty-nine, and she retained an attractiveness that spoke of a youth turning eyes wherever she went. As general conversation lulled she smiled at him, held out a long-fingered, slim hand.
“Darya.”
“Howard. Darya is a lovely name.” He took her hand, glanced down at its icy coolness.
“I never could get used to New England winters. It’s why I went away. I’m always cold!”
“It’s barely autumn yet.”
She gave a shrug. “Yet already freezing.”
“And so damp here too,” Howard said.
“Always. It means ‘sea’, by the way.”
“What does?”
“Darya. It’s Iranian.”
“Oh, right. You’re Iranian?”
“No, my parents just liked it. I’m New England born and bred.”
Howard laughed. “Yet you never got used to the winters.”
“No, that’s why I went away.”
A silence fell, a moment of awkward strangeness following the awkward conversation. Darya flickered another smile and Howard sucked in a quick breath, tried to rein in sudden disorientation. “Drink?” he said.
Darya visibly relaxed, eyes crinkling. “Yes! Vodka and soda?”
“You got it.”
Dean stood at the bar, half a smile pulling up one side of his mouth like he’d been caught by a fisherman.
“What are you grinning about?”
Dean nodded back towards the table in the corner. “Chatting up the new girl, eh?”
“New is she?”
“I haven’t seen her before. No one I spoke to has. Must be new.”
Howard grunted. “And I’m not chatting her up.”
“What, because you’re married? What happens on tour, stays on tour, buddy. I won’t tell your wife.”
“Gee, thanks! How’s your wife?”
Dean grimaced. “Honestly, I don’t think we’ll be together much longer. I’m feeling a bit lost, truth be told. Long story, I’ll tell you later.”
Howard nodded, unsure what to say. He was certainly the last person to offer advice. Dean gathered up four glasses in a tenuous two-handed grip and returned to his table where several employees sat laughing and talking over one another drunkenly.
Howard waited at the bar and eventually the woman serving turned her attention to him. He startled slightly, convinced for a moment it was the desk clerk from the night before wearing a straggly ash-blonde wig. Their resemblance to each other was uncanny, but the woman had a kind of fatty lump just below her bottom lip and eyes a pale grey where the man’s had been sickly green. They must surely be related, though. Family business, Howard presumed. He ordered the drinks, bourbon and coke for himself, and returned to Darya.