7. Henry Finds Out Where to Begin.
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Room 460
“The Old Man,” as Henry liked to be called—even though he wasn’t really, not quite yet—had lugged the black fiberboard case up to his hotel room and set it on the desk. He unbuckled the latches and lifted out his typewriter.
He licked his fingers, pulled out the first sheet of paper, and fed it through the rollers. He closed an eye to perfectly align the edge, and then he began to type.
Then he began to type.
“Then he began to type,” Henry said.
He plucked his fingers off the keys and took a sip of the scotch he’d poured twenty minutes ago, stroked his goatee, and looked at that empty page again. After a bit, Henry decided that it was the location of the desk that was blocking his inspiration.
He lifted the phone and set it on the ground, then dragged the desk so that it faced out the fourth-floor window. He pushed aside the curtains to reveal the courtyard, lit now in the evening light, and he began to type.
He began to type.
“He began to type,” he said again and then sipped his scotch.
Henry had booked the room for two weeks, loudly proclaiming to the front desk clerk upon check-in that he was there to write his memoirs. “A lot of interesting stuff to get through,” he’d told the disinterested clerk with the pockmarked face and long, broad nose, who had simply mumbled something under his breath and handed over a key.
Henry stood from the desk, picked up his scotch, and paced the room as the glass’s condensation wet his fingertips. He kept muttering to himself, “He began to type, he began to type, he began to type,” until he sat back down, finished the remaining gulp of scotch, and began to type.
He began to type.
“Damn it,” he said.
The problem with trying to do this at home was all the interruptions.
Sure, his daughter Janice had married and moved away over a year ago. And sure, he’d retired with enough money in the bank to keep him and Molly, now empty-nesters, financially secure. And maybe Charlie the dog didn’t need as many walks these days, after he’d put in the fencing around the backyard.
But still, so many interruptions back at home.
These memoirs were something Henry’d had on his mind for years now. Decades, even. Finally, he could tell it like it is, or like it was. Whatever the proper tense in this case, he wasn’t quite sure.
He would blow the lid off so many scandals that he’d witnessed during his time in advertising. So many stories about how he got extra press just because he’d gotten the right person drunk at the right time. How he’d finagled a rider for a top star to ensure she got a giant bowl of Cool Ranch Doritos in her trailer. That afternoon he spent with Dolph Lundgren—very nice guy! And similarly intriguing stories that would surely render any reader rapt.
Surely.
“Fuck,” he said.
All 55 years of Henry’s slim build stood up and paced around. He looked at the phone sitting on the carpet. He hadn’t eaten in some time, at least a few hours. Maybe that was the problem. He called the front desk to order a cheeseburger and fries, returned to the desk, and began to type.
He began to type.
“I just ordered a cheeseburger and fries,” he typed with a loud clatter. “I haven’t eaten one in months, and I am looking forward to it. Because,” he hesitated. “I am a dumb piece of shit.”
Henry groaned and stuck his thumbs on either side of his nose to relieve the growing pressure. He gave them one last squeeze and, his eyes now blurry, looked straight ahead through the window.
“I am sitting at a desk in Room 460 of the Palmer Hotel,” he typed. “I am looking out of a window that faces into the courtyard.”
He leaned forward.
“In the center is a glass structure with a small triangle in the middle of its roof. This is the hotel’s dining room. It’s about six in the evening and I can see the shadowy blurs of people inside. One is in a red coat. It may be that older woman I saw earlier in the lobby, but it’s difficult to know for sure.”
His eyes drifted across the courtyard to the hotel’s other wing.
“I’m in the North wing, which faces the South wing,” he typed. “In the South are a handful of windows lit from inside. A floor above me, I see a man eating a sandwich as he watches TV. Half the sandwich is resting on his bare stomach, and his feet are resting on the edge of the television set. It looks like he’s watching Night Court.”
He looked higher along the wall of windows.
“In what appears to be the penthouse,” Henry typed, “I see a group of men in suits standing on the balcony. They’re looking down on the courtyard with glasses of wine in their hands and cigars in their mouths. One spits off the balcony, and it hits the dining hall roof. He gives another man a high-five.”
Henry lowered his gaze to stare straight ahead.
“I see a flutter in the white curtains directly across from me,” he typed. “A small hand pulls them open, and now I see it is connected to a young woman. She’s in what looks to be a costume. Long skirt, grey blouse with frills. In her other hand she’s holding a red rose. Its vibrancy contrasts with her paleness. She scans the courtyard, and now she’s looking right at me.”
Henry froze.
He shifted in his seat to hide behind the curtains, clumsily. When he poked his head out again, the pale woman was stifling a laugh. She offered the faintest of waves. Henry waved back.
A dark silhouette appeared behind her. It was a man. He wore a dark cloak that fluttered at his sides as he walked the room that, from Henry’s angle, looked significantly larger than his own. Slowly the man approached. Hesitantly. As if sneaking up behind her to surprise her.
The man reached into his cloak and pulled out a shiny object. As he stepped closer, Henry could see that it was a knife.
He shot up, and the blood drained from his face. “Um,” Henry said out loud to no one. “Lady?”
The woman tilted her head in a questioning glance. She turned slightly as if hearing something behind her. Her smile washed away. Then the woman disappeared, and the white curtains pressed against the window.
“Help,” Henry said.
The curtains bunched and thrashed with chaotic movement.
“Help!” Henry screamed, alone in the room.
He ran to the phone and dialed the front desk. Busy. He ran to the window and opened it, yelling “Help!” The only response was laughter and a mocking “Help me pwease!” from the the penthouse.
He slipped on his shoes and ran to the bank of elevators, pressed the call button one, two, three, four times, gave it up for the stairwell. He took the steps three at a time down four flights, exiting on the ground floor and catching his breath as he made it to the front desk in the lobby.
Behind it, the same clerk as before, tall with a receding hairline and a sharp nose rising from a pockmarked face, was speaking into the phone. The clerk whispered something and hung up.
“Can I help you?” the clerk said.
“A woman,” Henry stuttered. “A woman’s being attacked in the next...”
“Oh dear,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Where?”
“Fourth floor,” Henry said.
“Follow me,” he said.
They walked to the South elevator bank and stepped into the first car. The doors slowly shut behind them before the lift’s jittery ascension.
“We have to hurry,” Henry said, out of breath. “We should’ve called the police.”
“Before we go any further—” the clerk began, and the elevator doors opened.
Henry ran out.
There was an eeriness to the new environment. It was cold. The wallpaper torn, hanging in shreds. Stale cigarette smoke lingered in the air. Behind him, Henry heard a lighter spark and turned to see the clerk lighting up.
“As I was saying,” the clerk said, exhaling smoke, casually walking down the hallway. “This floor hasn’t been rented in years.”
“But I saw...” Henry started, and the clerk waved an arm, inviting Henry to look for himself.
Some of the doors were cracked open, and Henry saw only dark, empty spaces. At the hallway’s end was a small curved alcove where an old yellow couch sat. Its cushions were torn, speckled with dark stains.
They reached the room directly across the courtyard from his own. The clerk turned the knob to open the unlocked door. Inside were the basics: bed, TV, desk, mini-fridge. But no sign of a woman, a man, a struggle, or any inhabitant at all.
“This used to be the old hotel’s top floor, before they added upwards,” the clerk said, jerking his thumb towards the ceiling, “and across.” He nodded to the courtyard.
Henry walked to the window and held the white curtains gently in his hands. They were intact, free of any blood. The only sign of any occupancy was a faint spiral someone had carved into the wall seemingly decades ago.
He let the curtains fall and looked across the courtyard. There was his room.
All at once, the courtyard was bathed in a red glow. Henry looked up. It was coming from the North wing’s rooftop sign. He looked again across to his room and saw his typewriter glistening in the scarlet. The small metal tag on the back glared as if on fire. He couldn’t read it from this far away, but he knew what it said.
“To the Old Man.”
The typewriter had been a gift from his daughter, Janice.
She’d been premature. That was the first thing his mind always went to when he thought about her. The first few weeks were touch-and-go, with Molly in the hospital bed as Janice squirmed in the incubator. Whenever Janice’s tiny mouth opened to cry, Henry had to keep himself from smashing through the glass just to hug her, to tell her it’d be alright.
“You ready to go?” the pockmark-faced clerk said, stubbing his cigarette out on the desk.
“I think I am,” Henry said.
Henry returned to his room and sat again at his typewriter. He inserted a fresh page and began to type.
He knew now where his memoir must begin.
Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.
If you like Tales from the Palmer Hotel, tell a friend. If you really like it, the suggested donation for the series is a one-time payment of $6.66. Venmo (@Rick-Paulas) or Paypal (rickpaulas@gmail.com).