The Ninth Nightmare

TWO Room 309

It was less than a half mile to the Griffin House Hotel but John and his passenger had now been sitting at the same intersection for nearly ten minutes, next to a scabby plane tree on which somebody had thumb-tacked a flyer for a missing black-and-white cat.

‘Maybe you want to walk,’ John suggested, looking at the woman in his rear-view mirror. ‘I can bring your bags along as soon as this traffic gets moving.’

‘In these shoes?’ the woman retorted.

John hadn’t noticed the woman’s shoes when he had picked her up at the airport, but judging by the rest of what she was wearing, he had a pretty good idea what they must be like. Although it was a gloomy October afternoon, with winter just around the corner, her eyes were hidden behind enormous beetle-like sunglasses with sparkly diamanté frames. She wore a short leopard-print jacket with a high furry collar, on top of a tight purple satin dress with a cleavage that probably would have sent back multiple echoes if you had shouted down it. She smelled very strongly of Boss Intense. Since he had started driving taxis, John had become something of a connoisseur of women’s perfumes, especially industrial-strength women’s perfumes like this one.

‘OK, it was only a thought,’ John told her. He looked up at his rear-view mirror again. ‘First time in Cleveland?’ he asked her.

‘Oh, no way,’ she told him. ‘I was born and raised in Brunswick. A fully-fledged graduate of B-wick High. My sister still lives in Shaker Heights.’

‘Hey, that’s a nice district, Shaker Heights.’

‘I guess, if you like boredom and trees. Personally I hate being bored and who needs frigging trees?’

John raised his eyebrows and thought: Who needs frigging trees? That’s classy. Not the usual caliber of guest he would have expected to take to the Griffin House Hotel.

He adjusted his seat belt around his belly. It was way past two thirty and he still hadn’t had lunch yet. He had been planning to go to Quizno’s on Euclid Avenue when he had dropped this fare off, to pick up a bourbon grille steak sub. He could almost taste it now: prime rib, mozzarella, Cheddar, mushrooms, sauté onions, all covered with grille steak sauce and served up on rosemary Parmesan bread. His mouth watered so much that he had to swallow.

‘Staying here long?’ he asked, in a quacky, saliva-filled voice.

‘Not if I can help it. I’m only going to my grandma’s funeral.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. My condolences.’

‘Thanks, but I don’t need condoling. I never liked her and neither would you, if you’d ever known her. What a witch. She had a face like somebody looking at themselves in the back of a spoon.’

The traffic began to inch forward. The woman said, ‘At last. Thank you, Lord Jesus.’

As they neared the Griffin House Hotel, John could see three black-and-white police cars lined up outside, their lights flashing, and two uniformed officers directing the traffic. The hotel itself was an imposing brown-brick building with Gothic windows and elaborate spires and a gray slate roof. It was surrounded by tall ivy-wrapped oaks, their leaves already turned rusty and yellow. A crowd of people were milling around the wide stone porch — police officers and TV cameramen and hotel staff, as well as rubbernecking bystanders.

‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little excitement,’ said John. He signaled to turn into the curving driveway in front of the hotel and a police officer flagged him down and made a winding gesture for him to lower his window.

‘Just dropping off a hotel guest, officer. What’s all the flap-doodle for?’

‘Nothing serious, sir. If you want to pull over to the left side there.’

John parked his yellow Crown Victoria close to the left-hand verge, and heaved himself out of the driver’s seat. He opened the door for his passenger to step out, and this time he made a point of looking at her shoes. They were purple suede, the same color as her dress, with gold studs all around them, and very high heels. Her dress was so short that he couldn’t help noticing that she was wearing purple nylon panties, too. He gallantly turned his head away and looked up at the sky.

It seemed as if all of the hotel’s front-of-house staff were busy talking to the police, so John popped the taxicab’s trunk and lifted out the woman’s pigskin suitcase. It wasn’t Louis Vuitton, but it wasn’t cheap. She may have started life in Brunswick (or ‘Brunstucky’ as some disparaging Clevelanders called it, an elision of ‘Brunswick’ and ‘Kentucky’) but she appeared to have money — either made it or married it.

For the first time she took off her sunglasses and she was unexpectedly pretty, even if she did have the slightly battered look of a woman who has struggled to make her way in life and had her fair share of fights. She had bright blonde hair, expensively cut in a feathery bell-shape, wide-apart eyes and a short straight nose, and lips that looked as if they were just about to pout. She had a faint scar on the left side of her chin, as if somebody had punched her, a long time ago, somebody wearing a signet ring.

As John began to walk across the driveway, carrying the woman’s case, a skinny young black bellhop in a green uniform came loping up to them. ‘It’s OK, junior,’ John told him. ‘I got it.’

‘Please, sir, let me help you,’ the bellhop begged him, trying to take hold of the handle.

John yanked the case away from him. ‘Oho, so that’s your game! You’re trying to stiff me out of my tip, is that it?’

‘Of course not, sir. It’s my job.’

‘I know, junior. I know it’s your job. But exactly what part of “I got it” do you find so incomprehensible?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘That’s OK, junior. You’re excused.’

John carried the suitcase into the reception area, changing hands every three or four steps because the goddamned thing was so heavy. How come women who wore practically nothing always had suitcases that weighed so much? He followed the woman up to the front desk and pinged the bell for her, because there was nobody there.

‘Pretty plushy joint, on the whole,’ he said, looking around. The reception area had high vaulted ceilings with decorative plasterwork, thick red floral-patterned carpeting, and leather wing chairs gathered around a crackling log fire. On the wall above the fireplace hung a large oil portrait of a severe-looking man in a formal black suit with black silk facings. His face was so pallid that it was almost white, and his eyes were as dead as stones. The only touches of color were his hair, which was gingery-red, and the ring on his right hand, which had a dark red stone set in it.

Close to this portrait hung another smaller portrait, in an oval frame, of a pretty young woman with wild blonde curls. She had her head tilted to one side, as if she were flirting with the artist who was painting her picture.

John pinged the bell again and this time a receptionist came in from the porch, where she had been talking to a police officer.

‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, sir. Are you checking in today?’

‘Not me — her,’ said John, jerking his thumb toward the woman.

‘Ms Rhodajane Berry,’ said the woman, resting one elbow on the marble-topped counter. ‘I booked a queen-sized room for tonight and tomorrow night.’

‘Hey,’ John put in, ‘you’re not related to that Halle Berry, are you, by any chance?’

The woman turned and stared at him. ‘Do I look like I’m related to Halle Berry? I mean, I’m not being racist here.’

‘Well, you never can tell. It’s a funny thing, genetics. And Halle Berry, she’s from Cleveland, too, did you know that?’

Rhodajane Berry was still filling in her name and address and credit card details when a bulky man in a flappy gray suit came puffing and panting into the reception area. He was just about the same height as John, about five feet eight, and he probably weighed about the same, too, somewhere in excess of three hundred pounds. He was purple faced, with protuberant blue eyes, and a small curved nose that looked as if it had been stuck on as an afterthought. His eyebrows seemed to be raised in permanent surprise, like two arched-up caterpillars.

He was sporting a wide silk necktie with scarlet and yellow diagonal stripes, and his shirt must have been at least a twenty-two-inch collar, but it still curled upward because it was too tight around his neck.

‘Pardon me, people,’ he asked, in a hoarse, strangulated voice. ‘Did you talk to any of my officers yet?’ He reached into his pocket and tugged out a notebook, licking his thumb and turning over the pages. ‘What room are you in?’

‘I’m not in any room,’ said John. ‘I’m a cabbie and this lady is my fare.’

The detective peered at Rhodajane Berry with his pencil raised in his hand as if he half recognized her. ‘OK… what cab company?’

‘Alphabet Cabs. My vehicle’s parked right outside. You can call them and check if you want to. You want their number? John Dauphin’s the name. John Benjamin Franklin Dauphin. The third. From Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Still trying to get back there, one way or the other.’

The detective gave a quick shake of his jowls to indicate that it wouldn’t be necessary to check John’s credentials. But then he turned to Rhodajane Berry and said, ‘How about you, ma’am, what room will you be staying in?’

‘She’s three-oh-nine,’ said the receptionist.

‘Three-oh-nine. OK.’ He wrote down 309 and sniffed. Then he said, ‘Have a good stay, won’t you? But if you do hear anything or see anything, here’s my card. Give me a call anytime.’

Rhodajane Berry looked taken aback. ‘What do you mean, if I hear anything or see anything? What kind of things do you mean?’

The detective hesitated. ‘You know, anything out of the ordinary.’

‘Anything out of the ordinary like what, for instance?’

John had to give it to her, Rhodajane Berry had a voice like a braided-wire whip. It could cut through anything.

The detective shrugged. ‘Anything out of the ordinary like the room maybe changing in appearance.’

‘Excah-use me? The room changing in appearance? I don’t get it. How does a room change in appearance? You mean like I’m going to be lying in bed and somebody’s going to come in and start to strip off the wallpaper?’

‘Well, to be honest, ma’am. I don’t know any more than you do. But if it does change, in any way at all, call me, please. Likewise if you hear shouting or crying or if you find anybody in your room who isn’t supposed to be there.’

Rhodajane Berry said, ‘Wait up a second. I seriously do not like the sound of this. Shouting or crying? People in my room who aren’t supposed to be there? I’m supposed to be staying here tonight. I’m paying one hundred sixty dollars per night. What the hell kind of crap is this?’

‘There’s no need for that language, ma’am. I’m just asking you to be vigilant tonight which isn’t a whole lot to ask, is it?’

‘What happened here?’ John demanded, ‘What’s this all about?’

The detective said, ‘You don’t have anything to worry about, sir. You won’t be staying here. I suggest you get right back in your taxicab now and leave.’

‘I won’t be staying here but this lady will and right now she’s still my fare and that makes her my personal responsibility. So what went down here?’

The detective took a deep breath. Then he said, ‘There’s nothing for you to get yourself worried about. One of the guests suffered an episode, that’s all.’

‘An episode? An episode of what? Days Of Our Lives?’

‘No, sir. She had what you might call a hallucination. She thought her room had altered in some way and she thought she saw a strange person in her bed. When the housekeeping staff found her she was in a state of some distress, but there was nothing in her room to indicate that what she had experienced was real.

‘All the same, we’ve been taking the precaution of asking all of the hotel’s guests to call me personally at any time of the night if they think they see or hear anything unusual.’

John dragged out his handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘Sounds to me like for no good reason at all you’re causing this good lady here a whole lot of unnecessary anxiety for nothing.’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion, Mr Dolphin,’ the detective snapped back at him. ‘I’m simply erring on the side of caution. Now, please, if you don’t mind, I have to go talk to some sane people.’

‘Hey, wait up! Some sane people? You’re trying to suggest that I’m some kind of nut job?’

‘No, sir. Not at all. I didn’t say that.’

‘Excuse me. You clearly said you have to go talk to some sane people, which would suggest to me that you think I’m not one of them. What’s your name, detective?’

The detective reached into his breast pocket and took out another card. ‘There. If you have any complaints to make, just contact the UCPD. Now I have to get on.’

John held up the card and squinted at it. Detective Walter B. Wisocky, University Circle Police Department, 12100 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland Heights.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thanks. You can bet that I’ll be calling your Chief of Detectives directly after lunch. Sane people indeed. The nerve!’

Before he left, however, Detective Wisocky turned back and laid a firm hand on John’s shoulder pad.

‘Don’t think I’m trying to influence you or nothing,’ he breathed, very close to John’s ear, and his breath smelled of scallions. ‘But before I leave here I’ll be sure to make a note of your medallion number, and believe me, if you make a complaint against me to the Chief of D’s, you’d better drive your cab real meticulous in future. And I mean real meticulous. Everywhere, and for ever, amen.’

John looked him in the eye, trying to be challenging, but all the same he was thinking about the number of times he had driven to pick up a fare holding a cheesesteak in one hand and a can of Dr Pepper in the other, steering with nothing but his fingertips and his right thigh. He thought of all the illegal U-turns which cut minutes off call-out times, and all of the convenient shortcuts which took him the wrong way down one-way streets. He thought of all the times he had driven to the airport on I-71 at more than eighty-five miles an hour, because he was running late for a pickup.

He said nothing, but Detective Wisocky kept his hand pressed down on his shoulder pad and kept staring at him without blinking for a full five seconds to show that he meant business.

‘Ma’am,’ said the receptionist. ‘Here’s your key card. I’ll have somebody bring your luggage up to your room.’

Detective Wisocky turned and walked off. John watched him for a moment, and then said, ‘No, it’s OK, ma’am. I’ll carry your case up for you.’

He followed Rhodajane Berry to the elevators, which had highly-polished brass doors. He could see himself standing beside her in his crumpled linen suit, his belly bulging over the waistband. He always thought that he could have been handsome if he hadn’t loved food so much. When he was a teenager he had looked a lot like Tab Hunter. Well, more snub-nosed, like Tab Hunter pressing his face against a Burger King window. Now he thought he looked like every fat guy who ever was. Fat.

He wasn’t sure why he felt so protective of Rhodajane Berry. She must be reasonably wealthy, but she was trashy, too, and he had always been attracted to trashy women. His first serious girlfriend Charlene had been trashy, with the dirtiest laugh and the biggest breasts and the shortest conceivable skirts, but when he had returned from his stint in the Army she had taken one look at him and he had known before a word was spoken that their relationship was over. He might have been the only three-time winner of the Fort Polk prize for culinary excellence, but he had more than trebled in weight. After a long silence, Charlene had said, ‘Jesus. It’s the Pillsbury Dough Boy.’

‘Meeting the rest of your family today?’ he asked Rhodajane, as they went up in the elevator.

‘Not if I can help it.’

‘Oh. Not too close, then?’

‘You could say that. They’re a collection of mean-minded sons-of-bitches, all of them. I only came here to make sure I got what’s coming to me in grandma’s will.’

‘Oh. So what are you going to be doing tonight?’

‘Not going out with you if that’s what this is leading up to.’

‘Hey, of course not,’ John protested. ‘I’m just making small talk, that’s all. You know, like persiflage.’

The elevator chimed and the doors slid open. Before she stepped out, Rhodajane prodded John with her long purple fingernail and said, ‘If there’s one thing I’m a real good judge of, Mr John Dolphin, it’s men. And I’ve been watching you watching me in your rear-view mirror ever since we left the airport. And I saw you looking up my dress when I got out of your cab.’

John said, ‘All right. I think you’re very attractive. Is that a crime? And besides, it’s “Dauphin”, like the eldest son of the King of France, not “Dolphin” like in Flipper.’

‘Pity. “Dolphin” kind of suits you.’

They reached Room 309. John put down Rhodajane’s suitcase and opened the door for her. Then he switched on the lights and hefted her suitcase on to the linen chest in the corner. ‘Nice room,’ he said, looking around. It was decorated in turquoise and gold with brocade drapes and a bedspread to match. He went to the window and peered out. ‘You got a great view of the university, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t knock it. I hear they have a first-rate department of anthropology.’

‘That’s a relief. Switch on the TV for me, would you?’

John switched on the television while Rhodajane sat on the bed and took off her shoes. ‘God, my feet. I mean, I really love these shoes, but…’

John handed her the remote control. ‘You’ll have to work this out for yourself. I’m not too good when it comes to technology.’

Rhodajane flapped one hand. ‘Anything will do, so long as they’re speaking English. I really have to go to the little girls’ room.’

When she stood up without her shoes on, she was at least three inches shorter than she had been before. She padded off to the bathroom and closed the door while John flicked through the TV channels. As far as he could he see it was the usual daytime diet: As The World Turns and The Electric Company for kids, followed by General Hospital, American Justice and The Tyra Show.

Tyra was talking to a plump young woman who wanted to swallow a tapeworm so that she could lose weight. John wondered if he ought to do the same, but apart from the very idea of it making his mouth feel all greasy and his throat close up, he doubted if any tapeworm could keep up with him. He could finish a whole muffuletta sandwich in less than a minute, complete with extra provolone.

‘Hey, you want to come see this!’ he called out. An entrepreneur who sold tapeworms on the Internet had joined Tyra and her guest, and was lifting one of them out of a jar, all four feet of it, pale and slippery, with four suckers around its head.

John turned around. Rhodajane was still in the bathroom with the door closed, but he could see himself in the mirror over the dressing table. He could see the reflection of the TV screen, too, but inexplicably the reflected TV screen wasn’t showing Tyra Banks and her two guests. Instead, it was showing an indistinct image of a darkened room, as if it was being filmed by a closed-circuit camera. A woman in a stained white nightgown was lying on a bed, and a man was repeatedly walking backward and forward in front of the camera, although John couldn’t see who he was, because his head was cut off by the top of the screen.

Baffled, John looked back at the real TV. The tapeworm entrepreneur was lowering the worm back into the jar, along with several other coiled-up companions, and Tyra was screaming and laughing in disgust. John looked back at the TV in the mirror. The man was bending over the woman on the bed and although John couldn’t hear what she was saying, it looked from the expression on her face as if she were crying and begging.

‘Ma’am!’ John called out. He heard the toilet flush, and the faucets in the bathroom basin splashing. The man who was bending over the woman on the bed moved slightly to his right, so that he obscured the woman’s face. He appeared to be jerking his left elbow backward and forward, in a strange repetitive way. John could only see the woman’s bare legs, but they were covered in huge maroon bruises and they were twitching and convulsing as the man continued to jerk his elbow.

‘Ma’am!’ John repeated. He wanted Rhodajane to see this — partly because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing with his own eyes, and partly because he was worried that this might be an example of what Detective Wisocky had called ‘anything out of the ordinary.’

‘OK, OK! Keep your toupee on!’ The bathroom door opened, and Rhodajane stepped out, still brushing her hair. ‘Sorry if I kept you waiting but I was busting.’ She walked across the room and opened her pocketbook. ‘How much do I owe you?’

John said, ‘The TV, ma’am. Take a look at the TV.’

‘Hold up. Let me get my glasses. I can’t see a goddamned thing without my glasses.’

As she was rummaging in her pocketbook for her purse and her spectacles, John saw a dark red stain spreading quickly across the sheet on which the woman was lying. The man stood up straight, and for a split second John could see the woman’s face again. She seemed to be staring directly at him, her eyes bulging in pain, her mouth dragged downward in a silent howl. Then the TV screen flickered and jumped, and the image of the darkened room vanished, and was instantly replaced by a commercial for HeadOn headache cure, (or nOdaeH as it appeared in the mirror.)

Rhodajane came up behind him wearing her glasses and laid a surprisingly familiar hand on his shoulder. ‘So what did you want me to see? Not this goddamned HeadOn commercial? It must be the worst commercial ever! “HeadOn — apply directly to the forehead! HeadOn — apply directly to the forehead!” Jesus, I can hear it in my sleep!’

‘No, no, not that,’ John told her. ‘There was something on The Tyra Show, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.’

‘The Tyra Show? That crap? You have very strange tastes, Mr Eldest-Son-Of-The-King-Of-France. How much do I owe you?’

‘Forty-four bucks, but let’s call it forty. The traffic wasn’t your fault.’

Rhodajane gave him a fifty-dollar bill and said, ‘Keep the change my good man. But don’t spend it all on bacon fries.’

John headed for the door and opened it. Before he left, though, he turned around and said, ‘Here — let me give you my cellphone number.’

‘What for? I’m still not going out with you.’

‘I know that. I’m not asking you to. But just in case.’

‘Just in case of what, for instance?’

‘Just in case something weird happens. Weird things do happen. I’ve had some pretty weird things happen to me, in my time.’

‘You and that detective, you’re both as screwy as each other if you ask me. Tweedle-de-dum and Tweedle-de-dee.’

John took a catsup-spotted business card out of his breast pocket and offered it to her. ‘More than likely, ma’am, everything’s going to be fine. But if you get spooked or anything, and you feel too reticent to phone the cops, give me a call and I can be round here in five minutes flat. I only live in Glenville.’

Rhodajane hesitated for a moment, but then she took his card and tucked it into her cleavage. ‘OK, big boy, whatever you say. But I don’t believe for one single second that my room is going to change into the chamber of horrors or that I’m going to hear screaming in the middle of the night. And nobody else is getting in here once I’ve locked this door behind you, and you can be one hundred and eleven percent sure of that.’

‘Sure,’ said John. He could have tried to explain to her what he had seen on the reflected TV screen, but she would probably think that he was deliberately trying to frighten her so that she would ask him to come around and protect her. Either that, or she would think that he was mentally challenged, or that he had been smoking something more exotic than Marlboro Lights.

‘Goodbye, then, Mr Dauphin,’ she told him. ‘And thank you. You’re a gentleman.’

‘Well, I was the last time I looked. But don’t forget, will you? Anything outré occurs, anything at all, anything eldritch, you pick up your phone and it’ll be John Dauphin to the rescue. I mean that.’

Rhodajane looked at him and gave him a very slight shake of her head. ‘Do you know something, Mr Dauphin? Half the time I don’t understand a word you’re saying. But I like you. I really dooski. I give you permission to have a dream about me tonight if you want to.’

‘Well, I’d be careful about saying that if I were you, ma’am. Some dreams are good, but other dreams are not so good. And some dreams you can never really wake up from, even if you want to. Some dreams stay with you for the rest of your life, and you wish you’d never had them.’

Rhodajane looked at him narrowly. ‘What are you, some kind of dream expert?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes, I guess you could say that I am.’

They were both silent. It was only for two or three seconds, but in those two or three seconds something passed between them, one of those indefinable feelings that they were more than just cab driver and fare, more than just passing acquaintances who would never see each other again, except by coincidence. Ostensibly they had nothing at all in common, but John pointed at Rhodajane with a pistol-like gesture as if to say ‘see you later, OK?’ and Rhodajane closed her eyes as if to acknowledge that he would.

John turned and waddled off toward the elevators and Rhodajane stood in the doorway of her hotel room watching him go. Behind her, Tyra was talking to a twenty-two-year-old woman who wanted to auction her virginity on the Internet.

The woman was saying, ‘I always dreamed of having a lover… but somehow it never happened. Every man I ever met turned out to be a nightmare.’