The Chosen

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO}

Lee off-loaded the last dish-rack from the Hobart’s big chain conveyor, then began to automatically stack the hot dry plates. The shift had passed like sludge in a gutter, and that was about how Lee had felt lately—sluggish in dark questions and dread.

“Get rollin’, Lee,” Dan B. happily remarked. He was whistling as he polished up the range and the line table. “Looks like we’re going to be out of here by midnight, still plenty of time to go into town, huh?”

Lee merely nodded, carrying more plates to their metal shelving.

“And guess what, dishman? Vera’s letting us take her car. Ain’t that slick?”

“Yeah, man. Slick.”

Dan B. frowned across the kitchen, his big white chef’s hat jiggling. “What’s the matter with you? You still want to go, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Lee said.

Dan B. easily sensed his friend’s sullenness. “Come on, man. What’s wrong? You’ve barely said a word all night.”

“I’m fine,” Lee responded. Yeah, right, fine. But even if he’d wanted to talk about it, what could he possibly say?

“This place looks good enough. Let’s roll.” Dan B. slapped Lee on the back. “Aren’t we going to change?” Lee asked, indicating their sneakers and smudged kitchen tunics. “We’re going to The Waterin’ Hole, not the Kennedy Center. Quit stalling, let’s get out of here and have a couple beers,” Dan B. said.

They donned their coats and went out the side exit. Lee cast a glance over his shoulder; Kyle wouldn’t like this at all—most nights, for weeks now, Lee had finished the roomservice dishes after he’d finished up at The Carriage House. He didn’t much care now, though; he was too confused and depressed. Kiss my fat ass, Kyle. Clean up your own mess. Brisk strides took them across the darkened parking lot; the bitter cold slapped them in the face. Lee glanced up, at The Inn. He was thinking about the woman, as he did now almost constantly. Grim images weaved in and out of his mind.

“You forget your brain?” Dan B. asked. He was already in the Lamborghini, starting it up. “Get in unless you want to freeze.”

Lee climbed in and idly closed the door. Snap out of it, he urged himself. Dan B. would be thinking he was weirding out. “Hey, Dan B., you ever seen the serial number on a rubber?”

Dan B.’s brow knit as he pulled out of the lot. “What are you talking about? Rubbers don’t have serial numbers.”

“Sure they do, I guess you’ve just never rolled one down far enough to see it.”

“Funny. Put a potato in your pants and keep dreaming.”

“On the way back, how about letting me drive?”

Dan B. laughed. “You? This? Shit, you probably don’t even know how to drive.”

“I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve driven a car, but I drive your sister crazy every night.”

“Yeah, crazy with laughter. Besides, you couldn’t squeeze between the seat and wheel.”

“Yeah, you may be right. So I guess I better just settle for squeezing between the ceiling and your mom.”

“You’re on a roll tonight. I was beginning to think you’d lost your terrible sense of humor.”

But it was all a fake; joking around didn’t help. Lee could only wonder the darkest things. The housemaid continued to come to him, every night, in her silent gratitude, in her passion—perhaps even in her love. Yet Lee wondered repeatedly: What did they do to her? Who did all those awful things? It could be a cold world sometimes, and an ugly one. What made it all worse was that Lee was beginning to really like her…

The sleek car glided gracefully along the old, weaving roads. The cold sky beyond the ridge looked like black murk. The winter, and its bitter cold, its stillness and lifelessness, made Lee feel more isolated than ever.

Only a few other cars were parked in the drab little lot before the bar. A neon open sign blinked in the window, advertising Bud. “Class joint,” Dan B. whispered when they entered. Lee expected as much. He was a bit of a beer snob, and he groaned when he spotted the sign on the bar wall: don’t ask for imports, ’cos we ain’t got ’em! Great. I’ll have to drink Carling. Several old-timers sat up at the bar, drinking Kessler’s straight and complaining about “the goddamn recession.” Some other patrons occupied several cheaply upholstered booths in back, too dark to be seen. Two women in their fifties sat closer up, smoking Salems and yakking away. One laughed drunkenly, showing bad teeth.

“Is that your mom?” Lee asked.

“No,” Dan B. said, “but your dad’s here.” He pointed to the end of the bar, where one of the old-timers passed out and went face down into a bowl of peanuts.

Dan B. ordered two Buds, draft. “All right, no more fooling around,” he asserted. “Out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“You can’t bullshit Dan B.,” Dan B. said. “You haven’t been yourself all week. What’s bugging you?”

I can’t tell him, Lee reminded himself. No way. He’d sound absurd, he’d sound like an idiot. First off, Dan B. would go apeshit if he knew Lee was sexually involved with an employee, especially one of Kyle’s employees. And what could he say that wouldn’t sound absolutely demented? Well, you see, Dan B., I’ve sort of become, uh, involved with that pudgy housemaid, you know, the one who never talks to anyone. She comes into my room and gives me head every night, see? And there’s this slight problem, like, uh, she’s got all these scars and burn-marks all over her body. Oh, and one other thing. She’s got stitches in her vagina…

“I guess I just haven’t been feeling too hot.” But there was one thing he could mention, wasn’t there? “You been hearing weird things at night? Like real late?”

Dan B. plowed half his beer in the first gulp, contemplating the question. “Come to think of it, yeah. Like people talking out in the hall and walking around. And a lot of ruckus too, but it sounds like it’s coming from downstairs, not upstairs.”

“Me too.” Lee winced when he sipped his Bud. But he’d heard more than that, or at least he thought he had. Things thumping around; thunking, laughter. A couple of times he was sure he’d heard someone shriek. Just dreams, he tried to convince himself. Who would be shrieking at a high-class private resort like The Inn?

“In fact,” Dan B. continued, “one night last week I woke up to hang a piss, and I thought I heard someone shriek.”

Lee looked at him.

“And a few nights ago I thought I heard someone walking around the hall. So I looked out, and saw someone going down the stairs, walking away from our rooms.”

“Maybe it was Feldspar,” Lee suggested. “Vera told me his room’s on the end.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s funny. I’ve only seen him once or twice since we got here. And that Kyle motherfucker. Where’s his room?”

“I don’t know. On the upper floors, I guess.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. The upper floors are all the higher priced suites. Why give one of those to an employee when there’re still several unused rooms on our floor?’’

Lee shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe it was your mom, looking for a fresh doorknob.”

“No, no. Now I remember. It was your sister. She got lost on her way to the smokehouse.”

Lee tried to think of a suitable derogatory comeback, but in the next instant, Dan B. gently poked him with his elbow and said under his breath: “Check this out. These old sticks over here are eyeballing us like we got no heads.”

Lee discreetly took another wincing sip of his Bud, taking a quick glance right. It was true. The old, rustic-looking men at the other side of the bar were staring at them.

“They probably got the hots for you, buddy,” Dan B. suggested and got up off his wobbly stool. “A cute gal like you, shit. Excuse me while I go contribute to the Waynesville reservoir.”

Dan B. walked off for the men’s room, while Lee smirked. What he needed after a long shift was a good beer, like a Maibock or a Blue Herren Ale, not this limp, fizzy domestic swill. And one thing he definitely didn’t need was being stared at by a bunch of drunk old codgers.

Then he nearly jumped off his stool at the surprise slap to his back. “If it’s not my favorite fat boy,” greeted Kyle, who’d been sitting in the opposite corner. “How goes it, slim? I didn’t know they had an all-you-can-eat pasta bar here.”

Kiss my fat ass, Lee wished he had the gall to reply. Kyle slapped him on the back again, downed a shot of Jack, and smacked his lips. “How come you’re sittin’ here bending this bar stool when you’re supposed to cleaning up room service?”

“Kiss my fat ass, Kyle,” Lee finally summoned the courage to suggest. “I’m not doing that anymore; it’s not my job. And you can go ahead and fire me if you don’t like it. I don’t give a shit.”

“Relax, Oprah, relax. I got my own crew squared away so I won’t be needing you back there breaking the floor tile anymore.” Kyle raised his hand. “Hey, keep, get my buddy here a beer on my tab. A light beer.” Then he laughed and went on, “And of course I realize you’re pretty busy these days after hours.”

“What are you talking about, man?’’

Kyle leaned closer. “I know you’ve been fucking that housekeeping dolt, tubby. She any good?”

How does he know… This was a dilemma. Lee set down his beer. He struggled for a reply.

“Don’t worry, man,” Kyle assured. “I can keep a secret, you know, like as a favor. And maybe you can do me a favor sometime.”

How could Lee deny it; Kyle obviously knew all about it, and if he knew all about it, maybe he knew…Lee decided to have out with it, then. What did he have to lose?

“All right, sure. I’m kind of involved with her. So what? You gonna fire me for that? I’m still the best dish-man you ever seen. And since we’re on the subject, I want you to tell me something.”

“Sure, Winny. Anything.”

Lee lowered his voice, sickened by the images that the question conjured. “What the hell happened to her?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You said you’ve been working with her for years. Somebody’s done all kinds of disgusting shit to her.”

Kyle ordered another Jack from the medicine-ball-bellied keep. “Oh, you mean the scars and all that.”

“Yeah.”

“I told you, man, we get these groaty dolts from all over the place—Mexico, the Phillipines, East Europe. They work like dogs, and for peanuts. Lot of them used to be whores and strippers and stuff like that. You ever seen the gross shit a Mexican or Phillipino hooker’ll do for a buck? Just about anything. They’re all like that. They’ve seen it all, believe me. S&M, bondage, the works.”

Lee stared off. Could this be true? A prostitute, he thought. He didn’t care—it wasn’t her fault. People from third world countries were products of environment, they had to do whatever they could to survive. But the possibility only saddened him further, that some people clearly weren’t as fortunate as others.…

“What’choo lookin’ at, gramps?” Kyle exclaimed across the bar. The roughened old men looked away.

“Whole fuckin’ town’s like this, Ollie. It gets on my nerves.”

“They’ve been staring at us since we walked in,” Lee told him.

“Of course they have. We’re the outsiders here in this pisshole of a burg. We’re the people from The Inn.”

“What?”

“You’ve heard the stories,” Kyle said. “The place is supposed to be haunted. Used to be an insane asylum, and they killed the patients and sold ’em to labs and medical schools, shit like that. Up your ass, pops!” he nearly shouted again, giving one of the old men the finger.

“Pay up and get out, buddy,” the big, mutton-chopped barkeep ordered. “We don’t want your kind here.”

“My pleasure.” Kyle slapped down a twenty and put on his coat. “I’d put my foot up your big redneck ass except I’d ruin a perfectly good shoe, and the same goes for all of you backwoods fuckers.”

“Get out, or I throw you out.”

Kyle gave him the finger. “See ya tomorrow, Slim,” he said to Lee. “You know, at the Haunted Inn? At the insane asylum just up the road?”

Kyle stormed out, the door banging behind him. The old men were muttering amongst themselves, glaring. The women laughed.

“Hey, I barely know the guy,” Lee explained to the keep, who lumbered away with a grimace. “Your twin brother Kyle was just here,” Lee told Dan B. upon the chef’s return.

“That snide cocker?” Dan B. made a face. “Glad I missed him.”

“He says the reason we’re getting the once-over is because all these people think The Inn is some kind of haunted mansion.”

Dan B. ordered another beer. “Not that crap again. Donna was reading about it in that kooky book of hers. These townspeople got a hard-on for The Inn—it brings back bad memories. You know, all the torture and shit that supposedly went on there, and all this shit about ghosts. These old-timers here? They’re old enough to remember. The book says it was the townspeople themselves that set fire to the place.” Dan B. chuckled. “Can’t say that I blame them. I wouldn’t want a haunted insane asylum in my back yard either. Brings down the property values.” Then he laughed.

Lee laughed too, but only half-heartedly. The old men at the end of the bar continued to stare at them. Ghosts, he thought, looking back into his beer. He didn’t believe in them; the whole thing was silly.

But then he remembered the noises he’d been hearing at night, and he—well—

He couldn’t help but wonder.

««—»»

Vera couldn’t help but wonder. She lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. Too much on my mind. But how much of it was even legitimate? Chief Mulligan’s strange implications, and Feldspar’s even stranger behavior at dinner. Then there was that well-dressed thuggish-looking man who Kyle was checking into a suite close to midnight…

Go to sleep, for God’s sake, she whined at herself. The bedroom’s darkness felt thick with heat. What the hell time does Kyle close room service? she wondered next, noting by her alarm clock that it was now past 3 a.m. She could hear the doors of the RS elevators opening and closing…

thunk-thunk…thunk-thunk…thunk-thunk—

It went on all night now, every night.

Then she heard—

What the… She got out of bed, exasperated. Moonlight tinted the carpet eerily across the room. She padded for the door.

Footsteps, she thought.

Yes, she felt sure this time. She’d heard footsteps out in the hall.

She clicked the bedroom door open, peeked out…

All that lit the hall this late were the little marker lights by the door to each room. She couldn’t see well but well enough:

That maid, she realized.

That chunky woman with bunned hair, the one who never talked. Of course, now that she reminded herself, none of the housekeeping staff ever seemed to utter a word.

Obviously the maid had been coming from the far rooms down the floor. Lee’s room, and Dan B. and Donna’s. Her generic white shoes carried her silently down the hall. What’s she doing up here this late? Vera wondered. Vera’s own little group of rental suites were located at the other end of the wing, and no one had been checked into any of them. Just Kyle’s rooms on the upper floors. So what could this maid be doing here?

Then…

Vera squinted out. As the maid walked on, another figure appeared, just stepping onto the landing. Vera wasn’t sure but—

Donna? Is that… Donna?

The figure passed the maid without a word or so much as a glance. After another few steps, Vera knew her eyes didn’t deceive her.

It is Donna, she recognized.

Another mystery. Donna had gone to bed hours ago. What was she doing coming up from downstairs at this hour? There was no reason for Donna to be downstairs now. And—

What the hell! Vera thought next.

Now she simply couldn’t believe her eyes.

Donna was dressed in nothing but that racy lingerie she’d bought in town the other day…

The darkness swarmed. Even in the feeble light, Donna’s state of attire could not be dismissed as a trick of the eye. The stout breasts shone more than plain in the sheer nippleless lace bra. Even more than plain was the thick plot of pubic hair revealed by the diminutive crotchless panties…

“Donna!’’ Vera whispered. “Donna!’’

Her friend approached, or at least seemed to—

“Donna, what in God’s name are you doing walking around The Inn dressed in—”

—and then she walked right past Vera without reply or even recognition. Donna’s face, in the grainy dark, looked blank.

Then she went into her bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her.

This is ridiculous! Vera seethed. Sure, she was whispering, but it was a pretty fierce whisper, and there was no way Donna wouldn’t have seen her standing in her own doorway.

Vera stepped out into the hall, approached Donna’s door, and raised her fist to knock…

But at once she felt too embarrassed. What would she say? And surely she’d wake up Dan B. Maybe she has some sleep disorder, she then reluctantly considered. And as her thoughts ticked, standing there before Donna’s door, she…smelled something.

Oh no, she thought.

The smell, just the faintest trace, could not be mistaken, and that made her think at once of the bottle of rail liquor she’d found hidden beside the fireplace…

Downstairs.

Donna, her friend, but the reformed alcoholic nonetheless.

And this was what she smelled in the air at Donna’s door: Scotch.

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