Day Eighty-Six
It was late in Newark when Lally made it to her hotel, a nondescript eyesore by the airport that looked like any of two dozen other airport hotels she regularly cycled through on her routes. She was so tired that she slid her ID across the check-in desk without so much as saying a word.
“One night?” the handsome young night clerk asked in a tone that Lally could almost mistake for a proposition. It was nearly eleven thanks to a mechanical delay and then weather, and she had already set an alarm for four thirty a.m.
“If that.” Lally scanned the beige lobby until her eyes fell on an obnoxious floral display of plastic birds-of-paradise and a spark of recognition set in.
“Oh, hey. Is Candice on duty tonight?” One of the perks of repeated stays in the same hotels was becoming friends with members of the staff.
Candice was one of her favorites, a single mother with a brash mouth and flaming red hair to match who kept a stash of good hooch that she was always willing to share hidden among the cleaning products in housekeeping.
“Candice?” The kid drained of all color like a Victorian child who had seen a ghost. He returned Lally’s ID across the counter.
“Red hair. Kind of bawdy.” Lally wondered if she had suddenly misremembered her name. Could it have been something else? Cadence?
The young clerk was at a loss. “Candice is gone.”
Gone? Died? Of course, that didn’t seem right; Candice was a decade younger than Lally. And gone had another meaning of late. “What do you mean, gone?” Was it possible the people in her life were being erased one by one?
“Just a moment.” The young man stepped back and disappeared into a door marked Office, the door slowly closing and clicking behind him.
Lally was exhausted, but no—she was positive her friend’s name had been Candice.
Or maybe her name was Candice and this was the wrong hotel.
She looked at the lobby again, its garish light too bright for this late hour.
No, this was the right hotel. They had made fun of the wall sconces, which looked swollen like balloons.
The night clerk appeared with a manager, middle-aged, beard trimmed too neatly, dyed too dark.
One year, Robbie had been a pirate for Halloween; their father had lit a wine cork and snuffed it out, drawing a beard on Robbie’s face with the ash.
The manager’s face looked like that, fake, like he was wearing a costume or had endured a premature facelift.
“You were asking about Candice?” He was holding back rage, poorly.
“I—I was just asking if she was on duty tonight,” Lally stammered, worried she had poked a bear.
“And why do you want to know?”
Lally was confused by his tone. “Well, this may sound weird, but we had become…” Lally tried to think of an apt, but innocuous, word. “Friendly.”
The night clerk pointed at the computer, where presumably Lally’s name was still visible on the screen. The manager nodded like he was making a mental note before returning his attention to their guest. “Candice has been terminated.”
The way he said terminated made it sound like she had been snuffed out by a hired assassin. Lally laughed, but mostly from exhaustion. “Terminated.”
“For running an OnlyFans from this hotel.”
Puzzled, Lally had to stop and think what an OnlyFans was. It was some sort of social media platform or porn site or both?
The manager clicked the pen in his hand five times as an outlet for his rage. He must have read her confusion, because he immediately clarified the offense. “She was having sex with guests in vacant rooms, filming it, and putting it on the internet.”
Lally blanched. That didn’t sound like Facebook—OnlyFans must be porn. And then it hit her, the reason for the manager’s scorn. She had just admitted that she and Candice were friendly, in hindsight not the best choice of words. “I see.”
“So if you’re looking to be friendly with a member of my staff, I might suggest another hotel. Because that is no longer happening here.” The night clerk turned red; perhaps he had been in on it.
Lally couldn’t believe her ears. She pushed up her sleeves, ready to throw down.
Was this really what he thought of her? She was well into her forties.
Her joints cracked when she bent down too far.
There were spider veins on her legs from spending so much of her life on her feet, and small bags were growing under her eyes from her schedule.
There was no way anyone would subscribe to some kind of platform to see her have sex, lesbian or otherwise.
But of course, as much as she wanted to, she didn’t say any of that, so she instead growled, “I think just the room will suffice.” She snatched her key card from the young night clerk and dragged her suitcase to the elevator, afraid to even ask for the Wi-Fi passcode.
It wasn’t until she was safely in the elevator alone that she realized the manager’s assumption could also be seen as a compliment.
In the right lighting and with a generous partner, maybe she could still be an object of desire. She chose to view it that way.
Her room was on the ninth floor, small, and had a window that rewarded her with a view of an air shaft that ran down the center of the building like a brick esophagus.
She desperately wanted a shower, but when she went to turn it on she discovered four inches of standing water in the tub, cloudy, cold, off-putting.
She couldn’t help but think she was placed in this room on purpose, punishment for guilt by association.
The TV remote was in a plastic sleeve, something that made her feel safe during the pandemic but was now a turnoff, like this hotel was the last place that needed desperately to be disinfected.
And maybe, thanks to Candice’s extracurriculars, it did.
At least the robe in the closet looked clean.
In lieu of a shower she removed her uniform, the zipper on her skirt sticking as some sort of coup de grace on this stale day, and draped herself in the robe; there were slippers, two left feet.
The minibar had the hotel chardonnay she found least objectionable, but the fridge kept it shy of cold.
She thought about filling an ice bucket, but she was already out of her clothes and didn’t want to risk running into the manager while not fully dressed.
So she drank from the bottle; it was syrupy, but after a few sips she felt the warmth even bad alcohol brings.
She looked down at herself and took stock of her life.
For the first time in her career, she thought maybe it was time to hang up her wings.
Lally flopped on the bed, her arms spread like a cross, and stared at the water-stained ceiling.
She used to love the idea that she was the one missing, unreachable.
Her schedule was private and constantly changing; on any given day she could be nowhere or everywhere at once.
In the time before smartphones, she was a phantom in the night.
On her days off she would use her travel perks, hopping flights to Hawaii or Mexico.
But now, in the wake of Norman’s disappearance, she realized how annoying it was, how inconvenient for others who wanted to reach her.
The Wi-Fi was easy to connect to without a password, and she was grateful to avoid a call to the front desk.
There was an email from Harlan and she smiled in spite of herself.
Once again it was Harlan to the rescue, standing up for her in her retelling of Norman’s insult, now raising her spirits when the world seemed determined to bring her down.
The email had a video file attached. In the body was a simple phrase: Well, he’s a piece of work.
She opened it, hesitant, afraid of what she might find.
The video was a wobbly mess, difficult to watch without Dramamine.
It took her a minute to orient herself; the phone must have been in Harlan’s breast pocket with only the lens exposed.
A woman with curly silver hair was leading him into a cavernous classroom, with only a few students seated down front.
A man slowly came into view, tall, almost disconcertingly so.
Oh my god, this is Jesse’s class.
The curly-haired woman spoke first. “This is Mr….”
“Hancock,” Harlan lied.
“Mr. Hancock, with the midsemester accreditation board. He’s here to observe.”
“Is this a joke?” Jesse asked. “You look familiar to me.”
“No joke,” she heard Harlan say, detecting a slight panic in his voice.
“Well, take a seat, MSAB. We’re discussing humor writing for a visual medium. Do you like films?”
The camera bobbed as Harlan presumably nodded. “Baseball movies especially.”
“What’s the best baseball movie?” Jesse asked.
“I don’t know,” Harlan began. “The Natural? Field of Dreams.”
“It’s actually Addams Family Values. Have you seen it?” The class laughed. She squinted to see the students, but it was impossible from the camera angle to make out any faces. But Jesse seemed to have their rapt attention.
The camera turned left and then right, as if Harlan was looking for how to react. “I don’t think that’s a baseball movie. So I don’t see how it could be the best.”
Lally grew hot watching this scene unfold. She felt protective of Harlan and didn’t like Jesse taking shots at him. It didn’t matter that Harlan was there to spy. Her whole body tensed.
“Addams Family Values is the best movie of all time, so it stands to reason that it is also the best baseball movie. Deductive reasoning.”
There was a pause on the recording, and then the curly-haired woman laughed hysterically.
She leaned into Harlan, so close that Lally could no longer see her face on the recording.
She demonstrated an uncomfortable familiarity.
“It’s a class on humor writing. He’s just having fun with you.
Not everyone gets his sense of humor, but I think it’s great. ”