The Chosen

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN}

Vera wandered through the main dining room, checking the place setting and flower arrangements. Lately it seemed she had nothing to do before opening but that: wander. The early afternoon light looked drab in the gaps between the heavy gray draperies. In the far wing, one of the housekeeping staff seemed to grimace whilst laying out more place settings and teepeed linen napkins.

A solitude, drab as the winter light, fell down on her: The Carriage House felt dead. What was wrong now? She couldn’t stop calling up the memory of her encounter with the blond prostitute, and how so much of what she’d said corroborated Paul’s explanation. And the business with Chief Mulligan disappearing—she knew it had nothing to do with her, or The Inn, but it still seemed so strange. Earlier, in her office, she’d gotten a call from Morton-Gibson Ltd., someone inquiring as to the whereabouts of one Mr. Terrence Taylor. Vera told him all she knew, that Mr. Taylor had checked in but had forgotten to check out. This, too, seemed strange. But that wasn’t all that bothered her—

“You look bothered,” the soft but solid voice drifted out. Feldspar stood by the hostess station, eying her. He wore fine black slacks and a loose gray-silk shirt, diamond cuff links winking. Bothered? Vera thought. Me? What could she tell him? Nothing, really, so she lied, “I’m fine, Mr. Feldspar.”

He unlocked the glass cognac case and poured himself a shot of Louis XIII. Vera winced when he threw it back neat. That stuff’s a hundred years old and cost five hundred fifty dollars a bottle, Vera wished she could scold. You don’t throw it back like it’s Old Grand Dad. Of course, it was his; he could do what he wanted with it. He could wash his hands with it if he so desired. “You’re fine, you say?” he seemed to challenge. “Frankly, I’ve never seen you appear so…disconsolate.”

Well, I think someone was in my room last night. Is that something worth being disconsolate about?

No, it wouldn’t work. What could she possibly tell him? Last night, her dream had returned, her fantasy of The Hands. The Hands had caressed her into ecstacy, after which their phantom possessor had made love to her in the graven dark. Well, no, not love—she’d been fucked, roughly and primitively, her face shoved down into the pillows so intently she thought she’d smother, her buttocks slapped till it stung, her hair yanked like a bell cord on an ice cream truck. Yet in spite of the dream’s flagrant violence, she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

And when she’d awakened…

She swore she’d heard a click.

As if her bedroom door had just clicked shut.

Suddenly it hadn’t felt like a dream at all. Her sex ached, and her buttocks seemed—yes—it seemed to sting. And hadn’t Donna reported having bizarre dreams too, undeniably sexual dreams?

Laved in sweat, she’d lurched from bed, donned her robe, and stepped quickly into the hall. No, this hadn’t seemed like a dream at all. It had seemed real in some hazy unsorted way. She even harbored the consideration that maybe, just maybe, someone had been coming into her room all these nights. Molesting her. Raping her.

In the dim hallway she’d seen the figure, its back to her as it walked away. “Who are you?” she called dizzily out. She’d always believed the dream-lover was Kyle, but this figure didn’t look like him at all. “Who are you!” she called out again.

When the figure turned at her call she saw at once that it wasn’t Kyle.

And she knew that it must be a dream.

No, the figure wasn’t Kyle. It wasn’t even human.

The memory snapped like a thin bone, bringing her back to Feldspar, the dining room, reality. “I just haven’t been sleeping well,” she said. “Bad dreams.”

“I’m sorry,” Feldspar offered. “I suppose we all have them from time to time. They say that dreams, particularly nightmares, represent abstract depictions of our darkest desires.”

If that’s true, I need to be locked up, Vera thought. She remembered the dream-figure’s face, once it had turned: pallid, malformed, hideous. Rheumy, urine-colored eyes peered back at her with irregular irises. A cluster of pale slimy tentacles emerged from a mouth like a knife-slit in meat…

When you have a nightmare, Vera, you don’t fool around. But what in her subconscious could be so demented that her mind would produce such awful images in her dreams? Am I that screwed up? she wondered.

Feldspar obliquely smiled, something he rarely did. “I’m very enthused, Ms. Abbot. Things are just going so well.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Vera said, though she still had yet to see any evidence of The Inn’s success. Evidently, room service was still blowing the restaurant away. “Oh,

I meant to mention something to you. Remember Chief Mulligan? He seems to have disappeared.”

Feldspar’s eyes narrowed quizzically. He ran an unconscious finger across his bright amethyst ring. “I don’t understand.”

“One of his deputies called me, said he never returned to the station after he dropped by here.”

“How queer,” Feldspar remarked. “I suppose they believe he was abducted by one of The Inn’s evil ghosts.” Then Feldspar chuckled.

Even Vera shared the laugh, but then she kept thinking: Mulligan. And his fairly direct implications. Feldspar had admitted to a checkered past, though she hadn’t asked him to elaborate. And what she asked next went against all good judgment.

“May I ask you something? Personal?”

“Of course,” Feldspar invited. “Personal questions are always the most enlivening.”

“Well…” Vera hesitated. “The other day, when I was telling you about Chief Mulligan’s visit—”

“And his suggestion that we might be involved in some sort of corruption,” Feldspar added for her.

“Yes, and all that. You said that you had been in trouble with the authorities once in the past.”

Feldspar nodded. He poured himself another shot.

“I realize it’s none of my business,” Vera tacked on, “but I can’t help but be curious…”

“Ah, you want to know exactly what happened. Well, as you know, I’ve always been in this business in one way or another. My employer always had great faith in me—”

“Magwyth Enterprises, you mean.”

“Correct. I’ve managed resorts similar to The Inn, all over the world, the very best inns, facilities that make our inn here pale in comparison. Well, it was at one such inn that I gave my associates a bit too much leeway in the way things were to be run. I’m afraid some improprieties occurred, and my associates, unbeknownst to me, took it onto themselves to engage in some rather unusual management practices.”

Vera’s brow twitched.

“Yes, Ms. Abbot. Crimes were committed. Nothing serious, mind you, but crimes no less. Several of our best-heeled clients took exception to this, and since my associates were under my supervision, I was quite justifiably held responsible. But I assure you that none of these misgivings were anything remotely similar to the good Chief Mulligan’s accusations. They weren’t so much crimes as they were unauthorized liberties.”

Vera pondered this. Certainly many liberties were taken in the hotel and restaurant business: pilfering, misuse of funds by mid- and upper- management, fraudulent business deductions and record-keeping. These must be examples of what he meant.

“At any rate, my employer was not pleased. I was demoted back to the field, so to speak, to manage a new facility and reprove my worth. It’s a bit like penance.”

Some penance. It sounded more like a slap on the wrist to Vera. Sending Feldspar to the cost-no-object Inn as a demotion was like putting a fat person on a 5,000-calorie-a-day diet. If this is how Magwyth Enterprises punishes its managers for screwing up, I’d hate to think what their idea of a promotion is.

But Feldspar, next, even answered the joke, by repeating something he’d already mentioned many times. “If The Inn continues to succeed—and I suspect it will—then I’ll be back in the good graces of my employer, back to running our very best inns.”

Feldspar made The Inn seem like a highway motor lodge. Vera found it hard to imagine that the company’s other inns could be significantly superior to this one. He must be talking about places in Europe or the Middle East, which catered exclusively to royalty and billionaires.

And Feldspar went on, “In which case I’ll need a preeminent restaurant manager to take with me, Ms. Abbot.”

Another implication he’d been making since she started up here. Part of her felt like a dog being tempted by a distant bone, yet another part of her felt quite flattered. “Well, Mr. Feldspar, I don’t like to count my chickens before they hatch. We haven’t even been open long enough for a full quarterly report. It’s probably not a great idea for either of us to be worrying about promotions until we see exactly how well we’re doing here after the initial numbers are in.”

Feldspar lit a Turkish cigarette with a jeweled lighter. “Ah, so businesslike, a natural predilection toward pessimism. My hunches, however, almost always come true. I hope that you will keep any potential possibility in mind.”

He’s such an odd man, she thought. Was that why she admired him? Was that why she liked him? “Don’t worry. I will.”

Again, he smiled, the fetid smoke blurring his face. “Indeed, Ms. Abbot, I believe with the utmost certainty that you and I will both enjoy a considerable success in the very near future.”

««—»»

What could Lee say? He didn’t even know her name. Excuse me, but have you seen…well, you know, the pudgy housemaid who never talks? That’s right, the one who gives me head every night, and who can’t have sex because some S&M pervert sewed her vagina shut? The one who’s got burn marks and scars all over her body?

Lee was worried.

She hadn’t come to his room in the last three nights. Nor had he seen her working about The Inn. The other housemaids—the ones who seemed equally distant and nontalkative—sure.

But not…her.

Lee didn’t know what he was getting into; he didn’t even know how he felt. He knew one thing though:

Something’s fucked up around here.

They seemed to be running a fair amount of dinners that night—not exactly in the weeds, but they were busy. There was no time to take a quick break and skip over to room service to ask Kyle if he’d seen her. And he couldn’t really ask anyone else because they’d want to know why.

“Hey, Lee, what’s the matter? Your Jack-’o-matic break down?” Dan B. called out from behind the range. “How come you’re acting weird these days?”

“Weird? Me?” Lee tried to joke back. I think I’m in love with a fat woman who never talks. “Your mom dumped me for Cujo. I’m depressed.”

“Aw, that’s a shame. But look at the bright side, you’ve still got your sister, that is if you don’t mind the sloppy seconds after me. One thing I can’t figure out is that parking-garage-sized cooze on her. What’ve you been doing, sticking your whole head in?”

“Why don’t you stick your head into that pot of creek water you call Le Chabichou Sturgeon Soup? And take a deep breath.”

“I took a deep breath last night when I was going down on your grandma. About died, but fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”

Lee slid another tray of glasses into the Hobart. No point in trying to out-do Dan B. with the gross jokes. He sipped a Maibock he’d hidden behind the big dishwasher, and let his thoughts flee.

They didn’t flee far.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the housemaid.

He couldn’t stop thinking that something bad had happened.

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