Robert Butler - A Small Hotel

The question actually surprises Michael. His first thought is: you know damn well you are. But he knows not to say that. “Yes,” he does say, and if he had his way, that would be sufficient. But he can see her wanting more, and he says, “Of that you’re guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Laurie laughs. “Cheers in the courtroom,” she says.

And Michael thinks he has said and done the right thing. With Laurie. With Sam. With Laurie and with Sam. And with Kelly? He won’t touch that. He wants to call Max. He wants just to call Max and have him say two words: It’s done. Come on, Max. He probably went straight to court afterwards for some other case. But what the hell is text messaging for? Michael’s cell phone is secreted beneath his swallowtail coat, but not asking about Kelly is part of the letting go of her. He’ll wait it out for now.

“Let’s promenade,” Laurie says, and she’s beside him, she’s turning him, she’s slipping her hand into the crook of his arm.

∼

Kelly has been standing beside the bed for a long while. She has turned her head and she has been staring at the bottle of Scotch. The Scotch primarily, but for a time, of course, the bottle of pills registered on her as well, out of focus, away from the center of the picture of the night table she composed for herself when she first turned her head. But now just the Scotch. The Scotch still sealed and dim in the shadow on the other side of this great swath of sunlight pouring through the French windows onto the bed. The Scotch keeps her mind quiet. No memories at all, really. Just the bottle. Just the look of it there. Just its being there. But eventually it lets this in: a bottle of Scotch still sealed sitting in the center of the long, mahogany dining room table and her sitting at a right angle to it, turning her head to look at it and then turning away, looking straight before her along the table to the window and the water oaks outside and the bayou. An egret passes before her, beats its wings once in the slow, massive way of the egrets, as slow and vast as she herself could feel if she were to drink this Scotch. And Kelly’s chest clamps shut with a sound. A phone ringing. Muffled, though. Her chest releases. But the puzzlement remains. And her hand moves to the sound and she finds her cell phone in a pocket of the terrycloth robe that she is also surprised about, to find she’s wearing a robe. But yes. She showered. She put this on. She came down the steps. She took her cell phone from her purse. She thought to drink awhile. She got the bottle. She put the bottle on the dining room table. She sat beside it. She made a call. And the phone is still ringing and she takes it from her pocket and the screen says “Sam.”

She opens the phone and puts it to her ear.

“Mama,” Sam’s voice says.

“Hey, Sam.” This is her own voice.

“I’m sorry I didn’t hear my phone ring,” Sam says.

“Where are you, baby?”

“Chicago, Mama. I’ve got a gig tomorrow.”

“I’m very proud of you.”

“What’s going on, Mama?”

“Other than the obvious?” Kelly says this even as she refuses to let her mind turn overtly to that obvious thing. She does not let it in. Either as she speaks to her daughter or as she presently stands beside the bed.

“Your message,” Sam says.

“What did I say, baby?”

“You were wet. You were dry. You wondered why you’d never fully appreciated Scotch before.”

“All true.”

“You don’t remember the message?”

“Of course I do,” Kelly says, and she hears herself laugh. But she has remembered the message only after Sam told her. And she wonders: have I already been drinking today? But she knows she hasn’t. She even knows now, standing by the bed, that the bottle of Scotch on the dining table with Sam on the phone and a pale, thin-clouded sunlight out the window is the same bottle of Scotch she has brought to Room 303.

Kelly turns her face from the night table. Why has she waited this long to open that bottle? She’s never had any trouble opening a bottle. It’s never been her first or her obsessive impulse to open a bottle — even since this all began, since the ending of her and Michael — but she can readily do it and she was certainly ready yesterday to open the bottle and she didn’t. And she shudders, deep in the center of her chest, she shudders and then faintly quakes on, because she knows the other bottle near her now, the other bottle on the night stand, is why the seal on the Scotch hasn’t been broken. Yesterday it wasn’t yet about this other bottle. She knows the plan is larger now. No. There is no plan. There are just more possibilities.

She moves away, finds herself before a flower-print wingback chair in the corner beyond the French windows. She sits. The bottle, the bed, the sunlight across the room are distant now. But Samantha is still close. Kelly tries to force herself back in time. She flails for something of Sam that hasn’t to do with the mess. Some good thing. Some good moment. But she cannot will this. She has to wait for whatever is next.

∼

In the quarter-mile brick allée between the highway and the Big House, two dozen couples swan about beneath the canopy of live oaks. Actually a brace of swans and one coot, Michael thinks. But he makes sure his arm is always available for Laurie’s hand. And for her sake, he returns every smile, careful to give no sign that he is uncomfortable in this get-up. He feels Laurie’s animation next to him as he nods with her at a passing couple, her hand squeezing at his bicep. He puts his hand over hers on his arm. He pats her. He’s happy she’s happy. And he keeps his bicep tensed on her account, aware of this little outburst of vanity, trying to show off a muscle. He blinks a slow blink of self-criticism but keeps the muscle flexed.

When the most recent couple is out of earshot, Laurie says, low, “What’s she thinking of, with those leg-of-mutton sleeves?”

“Dinner?” Michael says.

With her free hand Laurie knuckle-frogs him on the arm. “Queen fricking Victoria is the answer,” she says.

“Man. You’re as good at that as Sammy Bunker.”

“Tell me he’s a costume expert.”

“Frogging expert. I had a perpetual shoulder bruise in fifth grade.”

She hits him again. And she really is good at this. After the second stroke, she instantly looks away, studying the other dresses ahead on the allée. The throb of pain from her knuckle and her instant obliviousness to the assault charms Michael.

They are approaching the slate-floored terrace and front veranda of the house, the path passing through clusters of round, white-clothed tables set with candles and china for the dinner tonight. Laurie guides them in a U-turn to head back down the allée. At the far end, across Highway 18, is the berm of the levee, and seeing it now lets Michael pick up a sound from beyond, the grumble of a push boat out on the river moving barges of rice or fertilizer or asphalt up the Mississippi. He’s glad to put his mind out there, out of sight of the house and the playacting, but he feels Laurie squeeze at his arm and straighten and slow down their pace.

He focuses before him and a couple is approaching. Young. Laurie’s age or so. The woman is pretty and her shoulders are bony; the man is carefully coiffed, expensively so, almost certainly, and Michael has a hunch about him. The two couples stop before each other.

“You look wonderful,” Laurie says to the woman.

“So do you,” the woman says.

“I’m Laurie Pruitt. This is Michael Hays.”

They all start shaking hands and the others are saying their names — Jason Murray and Madison Murray — and Jason’s handshake has a certain glad, inquisitive aggressiveness to it, which supports Michael’s initial hunch.