John Lutz - Flame

The sun was bright out there, glancing off the sand and shooting silver shafts of light off the incoming waves. Made the room seem all the dimmer and cooler. A middle-aged guy in loud striped trunks was walking at an angle toward the beach. Two striding young girls in string bikinis crossed his path and he sucked in his stomach and held it until they were past. A lot of effort for nothing; it was obvious the girls were busy talking and hadn’t noticed him anyway. A short woman with lank wet hair, leading a sand-caked four- or five-year-old girl up from the beach, trudged toward the motel. A tired-looking man carrying a wad of white towels, and what appeared to be an inflated life-size plastic alligator under his arm, followed a few steps behind. The woman had on floppy rubber thongs, and her heels kicked up roostertails of sand; the man stayed well back and to the side to avoid them. She and the girl were both smiling and talking to each other. Family. Carver wondered what it would be like to have family around him every day. They veered slightly about fifty feet from his room. He heard the rumble of a sliding door. Then the woman’s laughter as they entered the room next door. The faint sound of the little girl bitching about something and tramping around. The father’s deep and reprimanding voice as he controlled his temper. A minute later the shower burst on and hissed and gurgled in the bathroom that shared a wall with Carver’s. The woman’s voice, and the little girl’s. Laughing. Sand being washed off. Family.

Carver hefted his suitcase onto the bed and opened it. Got out pants and shirts and arranged them loosely in the closet so the wrinkles would hang out. Then he carried his shaving kit into the bathroom and set it on the washbasin. He left socks, underwear, and miscellaneous in the suitcase. Since he didn’t know how long he’d be staying, there was no point in unpacking; it was, after all, only a drive of a few hours north on Highway 1 back to Del Moray.

He closed the suitcase and fastened the clasps, then placed it on the floor alongside the dark wood dresser. Sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. Home. At least for a while.

Leaving his cane leaning on the bed, he used furniture and the wall for support and limped over and pulled the cord that drew the heavy drapes closed. Sound from outside was muted and the room became almost dark.

He made his way back to the bed and stretched out on it on his back, lacing his fingers behind his head. Listened to the noises of the family next door. Missed his daughter. Missed his son, who’d been dead a little over a year now. Lump-in-the-throat time. He tried to push aside his emotions, but it wasn’t easy. Wasn’t entirely possible. Ever.

The mattress was softer than he would have liked, but it didn’t prevent him from finally dozing off.

When he awoke the room was completely dark and seemed cooler. He could hear the surf smashing away at the beach, over and over, ticking away eternity. The swells building size and momentum offshore and roaring in with freight-train speed to spend themselves in spreading white foam on the sand. There were unintelligible voices outside. Laughter. People walking nearby? More likely it was sound carried up from the moonlit beach by the ocean breeze. A distant gull, or perhaps a woman, screeched with a wild kind of joy and then was silent.

Carver glanced at his watch’s luminous green dial. Nine forty-five. It wasn’t like him to sleep at all during the day, much less almost six hours. His eyes felt grainy and there was a sour taste in his mouth. His tongue was coated and seemed swollen; he was sure he’d have difficulty if called upon to speak. No matter, he’d have nothing to say anyway; his mind was sluggish and didn’t want to engage gears.

He swiveled his body, shoving his stiff leg with both arms as if it were a completely lifeless appendage, and managed to sit up on the sagging edge of the too-soft mattress. There was a slight ache in the small of his back. No surprise there.

He switched on the lamp, then located his cane. Limped into the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face. Saw that he needed a shave but decided not to take the trouble. His shirt looked as if it had been wadded up and pressed in a vise, so he peeled it off and got a fresh one from the closet and slipped it on. The clean cotton was cool and soothing against his flesh. Made him feel like giving a detergent testimonial.

When he left his room he saw action in the swimming pool. The kid he’d seen earlier coming up from the beach with her family was straddling the inflatable plastic alligator, windmilling her arms in the water so her mother had to squint and turn away to keep chlorine out of her eyes. The mother glanced back during a moment of calm and the kid got her. Carver smiled. He wasn’t sure why.

He was sure he was hungry.

After lowering the canvas top on the Olds, he backed the car out of its parking slot onto Ocean Boulevard and drove to the Harp and Shamrock, an Irish pub he knew over on the North Federal Highway.

A thin blond man with a guitar and a beautiful tenor voice sang sad Irish songs while Carver had a hamburger, french fries, and a draft Guinness. He thoroughly enjoyed the calorie-laden fare, and was glad his therapeutic swimming meant he had no problem controlling his weight. After he’d finished eating, he stayed through a haunting song about Galway Bay. He had no idea where Galway Bay was.

Halfway through “Danny Boy,” he left and drove through the steamy night back to Ocean Boulevard, the Galway Bay melody still playing through his mind. It was eleven o’clock.

After parking the Olds in the lot of a strip shopping center, he limped across Ocean and made his way down the street toward Frank Wesley’s condo. Traffic was still heavy on the seaside avenue, and the rushing sound of passing cars was almost indistinguishable from the sibilant breaking of the surf on the beach behind the towering buildings. There was a depressing sameness to the pale high-rise structures: identical rows of windows and balconies, like stacked ice-cube trays illuminated by floodlights.

Wesley’s building, Highcliff Tower, had no doorman, which made things easier.

Carver pushed in through the tinted-glass doors and crossed pale blue tile and then royal blue carpeting to the elevators. The only other people in the lobby were a man and a woman over by a huge potted fern, interested in each other and nothing else. Humming the song about Galway Bay, Carver rode the elevator alone to the fifteenth floor, Limped silently along a carpeted, powder blue hall to the white door marked 15K. Wesley’s unit.

He wished he’d gotten that duplicate key before Renway had been blown up in the Caddie, but life-and death-were seldom so accommodating. He was no good at picking locks, so he’d simply kick the door open with his powerful good leg and trust that if anyone noticed the noise they’d assume it was something other than a door being forced.

Do it fast, he told himself. Do it to it. Automatically, before rearing back to let fly his kick, he tried the doorknob. Found the door unlocked.

Damned odd.

He should have known better than to enter. But he stood for a moment with the knob completely rotated to the right, then swung the door open and edged inside into cool darkness. Located the smooth plastic light switch on the sandpaper-rough wall and flipped it upward.

A lamp winked on.

Next to a black leather sofa.

The handsome Latin man seated on the sofa with his tan suitcoat draped across his lap looked over at Carver. Didn’t seem surprised that the lamp had come on, even though he’d been sitting there in the dark.

Carver caught movement in the corner of his vision. A black man, about six feet tall and built blocky beneath his well-cut blue suit, stood leaning with his back against the wall. The movement Carver had glimpsed was when the man had uncrossed his arms and lowered them to his sides. They were still swinging in short, lazy arcs, his thick fingers loosely curled. Very relaxed. Very ready. He wore a diamond pinkie ring on his right hand. It caught the light and sent it glimmering in a tightly focused, dancing pattern over the wall.