Howard Norman - Next Life Might Be Kinder

“Nobody knew anything, I bet,” Elizabeth said.

“Three employees, who will remain anonymous, said, without provocation, things like, ‘Sounds like something bellman Padgett would do.’ ‘Sounds like’ is speculation, and we can’t legally follow up on that. Between you and me and the moon, we came down hard on Padgett. He’s a squirmy bastard, that one, I don’t mind telling you. We didn’t break his thumbs in a dank room with a single light bulb overhead. He didn’t outright confess. But he did it, all right.”

“Yes, he did,” Elizabeth said.

“With each employee, we related only that there’d been a violation,” Derek said. “We used the words ‘illegal entry’ and ‘damage to personal property,’ on advice of the hotel’s attorney. During his interview, I said to bellman Padgett, ‘There are fifty-four long-term residents in this hotel. On the night of the violation, there were also twenty-seven short-term patrons. We haven’t mentioned anyone by name, so why would you even mention Mr. and Mrs. Lattimore, out of the blue?’ See, because he had — he had mentioned you out of the blue. He squirmed, the squirmy bastard. That’s when he owned up to the dustup you mentioned, at the dance lesson. He exhibited a lot of vitriol about that.”

“Can’t he just be sacked?” Elizabeth said.

“Legally, we still don’t have the grounds. But Mr. Isherwood cut his hours in half.”

“What about the lindy lessons?” Elizabeth said. “I want to continue with them, and see no reason I should have to put up with Padgett’s creepiness.”

“Mr. Isherwood will speak with Mr. Moran today. A firm warning to keep things on the up-and-up or we’ll make the ballroom unavailable.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

Derek slipped the affidavits into his satchel, took a sip of coffee, set the cup down, stood, and said, “Night or day, I’m locatable.”

When Derek got to the door, Elizabeth said, “Alfonse Padgett should not have a master key to the rooms.”

“Hotel policy is that all bellmen do,” Derek said.

Elizabeth got up from her chair, accidentally knocked the coffee cup off the table, but continued right over to Derek, who stood at the door he’d half-opened already. She took him by the arm and pulled him with definite insistence over to the chaise longue. She threw back the quilt and pointed at the long gash with the stuffing in view. “That’s Padgett’s calling card, Derek,” she said. “Isn’t there anything that can be done about him having a key?”

“I’ll speak to Mr. Isherwood again,” Derek said, staring at the chaise longue, “but I can’t promise anything. However, I have a follow-up interview with bellman Padgett right after his shift today.” Then he left our apartment.

“Maybe we should move,” I said. “The apartment above Cyrano’s is up for rent, I saw the notice of that. It’d be fine.”

“Absolutely not. This is our first home, Samuel. I’m not going to let some Beelzebub chase us out.”

Thinking back on this, I realize that her use of the word “Beelzebub” must’ve meant that on some level she felt that Alfonse Padgett was more ghastly horrifying than just some creep.

“Plus, my mind’s made up,” Lizzy said. “I’m going to take lesson number three next week.”

“Forgot to tell you, I already went and paid Mr. Moran so I could take lessons, too,” I said. “Coming into it late’s not a problem. I’m only two behind.”

“Thank you, darling. I know you wanted me to feel I didn’t need you in this situation, but in a marriage it’s important to stay close and see to each other’s safekeeping. It’s marriage logic. I’ve got the Boswell Sisters album. I’ll catch you up.”

I always felt the Essex was a dignified hotel. Elizabeth did, too. It had what we felt was a European or old-world quality, as she put it. I had never stayed in hotels in Europe, but as a child Elizabeth had stayed in London, Paris, and Amsterdam hotels when her family went to those cities on holiday. We both liked sitting in the lobby of our hotel, people-watching, reading magazines, having a coffee, looking out at the snow or rain through the big windows. “Just relaxing before we go upstairs and the next thing happens,” as Elizabeth once said. I was in the lobby far more often than my wife. But we both could sketch it in detail, from memory, on a napkin.

A hotel with permanent occupants and a familiar staff constitutes a neighborhood, and any neighborhood may, like a person, have a violent aspect to its character lurking under the surface, and given the right conditions, it can show itself. I thought about this when, two mornings after our late-night conversation with Derek Budnick, I went down to the lobby at about seven A.M. and saw that Alfonse Padgett had a raised yellow-black bruise under his right eye and a bandage holding a thick piece of gauze across the bridge of his nose. On closer inspection, as I walked by the bellman’s station, I saw that his jaw was swollen and black-and-blue as well. This was clearly the result of Padgett’s second “interview” with Derek. Derek himself was sitting on a corner sofa, reading the morning paper. Walking toward the lift, I saw that Derek had bandages on the knuckles of both of his hands. House detective Budnick was ambidextrous.

TODAY, WHILE EATING dinner in my cottage, hoping the dark curtain of rain out to sea didn’t sweep in and make landfall, so I could go down to the beach and see Elizabeth, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a question: did we have a good marriage? It seemed an impossible question — what did “good” even mean, married as we were for so brief a time? We were literature-obsessed, radio-obsessed, espresso-obsessed. We made love at any odd hour and lived on the daily elixir of moods and books and being broke and those dance lessons and hotel life. Much life packed into a given hour, and then hours of doing nothing but talking. I mean, our life in the Essex Hotel was just 209 days.

We had not met each other’s parents. A month after our wedding, my mother had a stroke and lasted only days, and much to my chagrin, her will instructed that she be cremated immediately and her ashes scattered in the sea off Vancouver, so I had no chance to say a proper goodbye. At least my mother and Elizabeth had spoken three or four times on the telephone. My father hadn’t been in the picture, though naturally Elizabeth asked me about him. I told her I’d seen him only once since I was two. She wanted me to tell her about it. So at the kitchen table in our apartment, I said, “I was ten. My mother sat me down and said I was going to a hockey match with my uncle, who’d come in from Vancouver. This uncle was my dad’s brother, Irwin. I had no interest in hockey. None. I could ice-skate pretty well—”

“You’re obviously not a Canadian male,” Elizabeth said.

“I have a Canadian birth certificate and driver’s license,” I said.

“Those don’t matter. You didn’t play hockey. It’s okay. I still love you.”

I continued the story. “So my uncle Irwin got me all bundled up and we went to the arena. He led the way down the aisle and sat me next to two men. Both of these guys were wearing suits and fedoras. One of the men wore a gray suit. The other fellow had a dark suit on. That turned out to be my father. ‘Sammy, you might remember Lawrence, your father.’ My uncle actually said that. Truth was, I didn’t remember him. But I looked up at my dad. He had that nice suit on and the fedora — very handsome guy, really. But my uncle had to differentiate for me. In fact, he never told me the other guy’s name at all. Never introduced us, I distinctly remember that. The one in the gray suit just sort of stared straight ahead, all lost in the hockey match. Pretty soon a vendor comes up the aisle, and my uncle orders hot dogs all around.