Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“Did you call him before we decided to come here? No,” Jamie said. “Let’s just get up there. I will do the talking. I will sort this out. You just stand and — well, do something.”

“I do lots of things. I sew. I cook. I even do my own taxes. Deductible for children, deductible for friends, deductible for charitable donations…do you like dogs? You can’t get a deductible on them, but if you run it through an organization they will let it go.”

The Pillar was quiet. Jamie pushed the elevator button while Elvira explained dog discipline and the best way to shave their bellies if they got infected with worms from eating their own shit or some other dog’s shit. Ted never called her after he went to Arizona. This was where they had their honeymoon, she said. This was where love was supposed to live. The wallpaper was dark brown and small photographs of farms hung on the walls — all the old properties that the town had built over. The barns were gray and bent under the wind. Jamie pressed the button again with his thumb.

“He knows the elevators, he’ll take the bigger one, and then he’s gone,” Elvira said. “Ted knows the elevators.”

Jamie yanked Elvira into the tiny elevator before it struggled up the guts of the Pillar. Small feet scurried around the outside of the tube. Jamie hit another button. They were headed to the twentieth floor and the penthouse suite. He flexed his good leg and tried to stand on his toes. The right foot dangled limply above the floor. Jamie pulled the rifle out of his pant leg and let his hands get used to the weight. Elvira had stopped talking once they stepped into the elevator. Jamie tried not to think about the size of the Vines’ hands. He hadn’t even recognized the body the two bearded men had left behind in his bone can.

The elevator doors opened on the twentieth floor. The walls were a much darker shade of mauve. There was one door at the end of a very short hallway. All the light fixtures were made of fake pewter and stuck out from the walls at odd angles. The ice machine’s hum cut through the artificial silence.

A skinny man in a robe waved at Elvira as she and Jamie stepped out of the elevator. Long, winding scars traveled up from his belly button and into webs across his chest. The man’s skull looked shaved down to the skin. He grinned at them with a full mouth of discolored teeth and shook his ice bucket in the couple’s direction. The elevator doors closed behind them with a ping. Elvira pulled the spoiled quilt up over her head and stuck her gaze to the floor.

“This isn’t Ted. Look at the hair.”

“I wasn’t — ahem — really expecting anybody,” the man said. “I think you might have the wrong floor. This is the honeymoon suite, the penthouse. You must have the wrong floor.”

Astor Crane gazed down the rifle barrel now tucked under his pale chin.

“But I suppose I could ask you all in for a drink. Would that help?”

The lone strand of hair on his head was red and stringy.

Elvira Moon ran down the hall into the honeymoon suite. The hotel staff still sometimes called it a penthouse despite the heart-shaped bed. This was where Ted Moon once walked away from her. Jamie could only watch her run. His leg was still screaming every time he moved.

“You gotta relax, buddy.”

Astor Crane laid a hand on the rifle barrel bobbing in front of his face.

“You seem a little too high-strung. How about — now, just swing that away from me. Just like that. There we go.”

“She said — fuck. She said they’d be here,” Jamie said. “Elvira! Hey, get back here!”

“Who would be here? No one on this floor ’cept me,” Crane said. “Hasn’t been anyone else up here for months, really. I’ve got the place as long as I want. She probably isn’t going to come out of there if you yell at her, you know.”

Jamie swung the rifle barrel down at the floor. He could barely hold it straight.

“You have no fucking idea the night I’ve fucking had,” he said. “Just back off, all right.”

“Well, after you graciously jammed that gun up in my face, how can I refuse?” Crane said. “Manners. You ever notice no one has them anymore?”

“Oh fuck off. It was a mistake, all right?”

The almost bald man turned to walk down the hall.

“Wait up!”

Jamie limped after him. The rifle returned to its original role as a cane.

“What happened to your leg?”

“I said I had a night,” Jamie said. “I just need her to help me find them. That’s the whole problem — she can’t tell one apart from the other.”

“You look a bit shaky,” Crane said. “You wanna sit down for a second?”

Elvira Moon lay naked on the heart bed.

“You gotta — what did you do with the quilt?” Jamie said. “She doesn’t even realize she’s got everything hanging out there, you know? I shoulda just waited there for them.”

Astor Crane carried his bowl of ice over to the bar. He plopped three cubes into three heart-shaped glasses and pulled out a bottle of Canadian Club. The suite’s floor was littered with VCR cases and small ashtrays overflowing with bottle caps and cigarette butts. Prescription bottles were lined up neatly on a windowsill with a schedule taped to the glass above them. On the massive television screen in front of the bed, The Wizard of Oz played on mute.

“You bust in on me and start waving shit like that around, there is bound to be a misunderstanding,” Astor explained. “So I think before you run off with the princess and the pea here, you need to at least introduce yourself. Let’s try this out, like human beings enjoying the early hours of a Sunday morning. Or is it Monday? Must be Monday now.”

Jamie set the rifle down on a pink loveseat.

“All right, but I can’t really stay.”

Astor offered Jamie a drink. He took the strange glass but didn’t sip from it.

“No, let’s start brand new. My name is Astor. I live here. And you are my guest. So is your friend. Now, what did you say your name was?”

“Jamie. Does that work?”

“Jamie, yes, that works. You can take a sip of that, you know.”

Jamie wanted to spit it out, but swallowed instead. “Look, we can just get our shit and get out of your hair and then…”

“Very funny…”

“What?” Jamie asked.

Astor pointed to his fuzzy scalp.

“Come on, man,” Jamie said. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“Nobody ever does. Can you let me know when it’s five thirty? I need to take another round of meds. Disgusting stuff, really. Horse pills.”

Jamie sat down on the loveseat and placed the rifle on the floor. He took a bigger sip and tried to avoid looking at Elvira. “Look, uh Astor, we aren’t looking for you. Or anybody really. I’m looking for twins. Well, not real twins, like pseudo twins,” Jamie explained. “And I found you instead. And Elvira, well, she had it in her mind that they would be here.”

Astor remained standing. He gazed at the television while Jamie spoke. Dorothy skipped through red flowers with her three friends. The lion was a little out of step with the other two.

“Twins? You don’t look like you’re in any condition to be chasing some twins around. Look at your foot,” Astor said. “And you haven’t shaved either, I can see that. You really think two girls are going to go for that…and the gun?”

Jamie swallowed his drink and crunched an ice cube in his mouth. “Not girls, they’re old guys. Like forty-something. And they were supposed to be at the fucking Dynasty, but they weren’t, and then I found her there, and she was out of her gourd.”

Elvira stood and began remaking the bed. Her long hands smoothed the sheets and tucked them under the upper ridges of the heart-shaped bed. Astor ignored her.