Steve Hamilton: Ice Run

He stopped when he saw me coming, and opened the door for me. “Afternoon, sir,” he said.

“Hell of a day to be shoveling snow in that suit.”

“We do what we can.”

I stomped the snow off my feet before I entered the lobby. It was the last place you’d want to track snow in, with all the fancy furniture and the Oriental rug and the display cases showing off the hotel’s long history.

I didn’t notice the man sitting there in the lobby. Not at first. I went to the desk and said hello to the woman behind it. She asked me if I had seen enough snow for one lifetime and I said that I had. When I asked for Natalie Reynaud’s room, she picked up the phone and called her. I didn’t take that personally, of course. You don’t send a man up to a woman’s room without calling her, no matter how friendly he looks.

I turned around while I waited. The doorman was still out on the sidewalk, struggling with the snow. The way he was lifting with his back instead of his legs, I knew he’d be sore as hell. It didn’t matter how young he was.

Then I saw the old man sitting in the lobby. He was in one of the big chairs by the fireplace. He had a nice overcoat on, and it looked like he had a suit and tie on underneath that. He was wearing a hat, an old fedora. You don’t see men wearing hats like that anymore. That’s the first thing I thought. Then I noticed the boots he was wearing. They were like rubber fishing boots, going all the way up to his knees. They didn’t go with the rest of his outfit, but with all the snow, what the hell.

He was looking at me. He smiled.

Before I could smile back, the woman gave me the phone.

“Alex, is that you?”

“Natalie. I’m in the lobby.”

“I’m in room 601. Come on up.”

“The top floor. I’m on my way.”

I hung up the phone. I thanked the woman at the desk and headed for the elevator. My throat was dry.

I pressed the elevator button and waited. Then the door opened and I got in. The old man was right behind me.

I pressed six and asked him which floor he needed.

“Six is good,” the man said.

I nodded and looked up at the row of numbers above the door. The door closed. I couldn’t help noticing the man was looking right at me. It’s the one thing you don’t do in an elevator.

I looked back at him. He smiled again. Up close, I saw he was a little older than I had first thought. He had gray eyes with red rims, and a dark little mustache that had gone too thin. His lips were purple.

I returned his smile, then looked away. The elevator door closed. He kept looking at me.

I cleared my throat.

“Do you like my hat?” he said.

“Excuse me?” I said, looking at him again.

“Do you like my hat?”

I didn’t know what to say. The elevator was moving now. “Yes,” I finally said. “I do.”

“It’s rather old,” he said. He kept looking me right in the eye. He kept smiling.

“I figured.”

“Would you like to know how old my hat is?”

The elevator came to a stop.

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t need to know that.”

“Very well.”

The door opened. I got out. Room 601 was just a few steps away, so I didn’t have time to notice that the old man was still standing in the elevator. I was just about to knock, my hand in midair, when I looked back. He had stayed in the elevator, one arm extended to keep the door from closing. He was still smiling. Finally, he gave me a little nod of his head, pulled his arm away, and let the doors close in front of him.

I stood there for a moment, trying to figure it out. Then I thought, to hell with it. An old man slightly off his nut. Never mind.

His eyes, though. They were clear. They were focused.

Never mind, Alex.

I knocked lightly on the door. Natalie opened it and let me in. She was wearing blue jeans and a red sweater. I had never seen her in red before. “You look great,” I said.

“Your hair,” she said.

“Oh God.” I touched it, like I was verifying it was still on my head. “Okay, here’s the thing. The box said it was supposed to look totally natural.”

“You dyed your hair.”

“No, no. It wasn’t dye. Come on. It was, what do you call it, a rinse.”

She came over to me and put her arms around my neck. “You dyed your hair,” she said. “Who’d you do that for, you jackass?”

I wrapped her up. “The box said-”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. Then she kissed me. Everything seemed to run downstream at that point, right onto the bed. I lifted the red sweater over her arms and then she went to work on my shirt buttons.

“I wasn’t going to do this,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because. God, Alex. I think we need to slow down a little bit.”

“Too late.”

“Why does this happen?” she said. “Every time I see you?”

She seemed genuinely angry this time. At me or at herself. I didn’t know. I held her down and kissed her hard, and then everything happened again, just like the first time and every other time after that, like there was nothing either of us could do to stop it, even if we wanted to.

Afterward, as we were both lying there in the tangled-up sheets, I looked out the window and saw the snow falling. “Oh great,” I said. “Just what we need.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“What is it?”

“We should talk about this.”

“So go ahead.”

“I need some air first,” she said, sitting up. “Come on, it’s not too late. I want you to show me around.”

I laughed. “There’s not much to see. Not this time of year.”

But she was already putting her clothes back on. A few minutes later, we were both downstairs in the lobby, wrapped up tight in our coats, ready for our evening stroll. I looked around for my friend from the elevator, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“What is it?” she said.

“Oh, there was just a man down here before. He was acting kinda strange.”

“An old guy, right? All dressed up?”

“Yeah, did he say something to you, too?”

“No, I just saw him in the dining room yesterday. When I was having dinner alone. He walked by and tipped his hat to me.”

“I think he’s got a screw loose.”

“I’m sure he’s harmless,” she said. “He sort of fits in with the place, doesn’t he? All these old artifacts in the display cases.”

The young doorman opened the door for us. He still had the shovel, and it looked like he had almost finished the sidewalk. Until this new snow had started falling. Whatever they were paying him, today it wasn’t enough.

We walked down Portage Avenue, toward the locks. They were closed for the winter, of course, so there were no ships to see. The entire river was frozen now, all the way across to Canada. I told her this street would be busy in the summer, when the shops were open and the tourists were walking around and watching the locks from the observation deck. It was hard to imagine now.

“What did you tell me?” I said. “That you’ve never been over here before? All those years you were living across the river?”

“I drove through a couple of times,” she said, “but I never came into town, no. I heard all the stories, though.”

“What stories?”

“About Soo Michigan. What a wild town it is. At least, when I was growing up.”

I looked down the empty street. The snow was falling and the wind was kicking up clouds all along the high snowbanks. Some wild town. At that moment, it was hard to imagine anyone even living here.

“My grandfather never wanted me to come over here,” she said. “He told me there were gunfights and prostitutes and all sorts of bad stuff going on across the bridge.”