Justin walks upstairs to their nondeluxe bedroom. Jules lets her hand fall and holds the railing where he held it, feeling the warmth of him and thinking—it’s a legitimate assumption—about tomorrow. Justin will wake before her; he always does. Jules will meet him at whatever stunning experimental breakfast Henri prepares. She and Justin will ooh and ahh, relieved there isn’t time for solitude and reprieved from the pressure to talk about it; they will be afraid because there’s plenty of space—there’s so much space in the world—and the two of them and their struggles and their failings are so small, and the end of their marriage will make not a ripple in the greater ocean of human events.
Jules puts the remote control back on the end table. She squares it to a perfect right angle before sitting on the sofa, pressing the “Power” button. The flat screen blinks on, already set to her desired channel. Jules curls up, pops a pill, and watches E! News.
Brian has been watching Tessa’s free hand. Tessa’s free hand has hit the “Up” button four times, and each time, her free hand returns to a spot above her left nipple, which she touches like it’s simply something to touch. Brian’s shifting where he stands, as if the fit of his pants is becoming uncomfortable. He looks around the foyer. “So, is there a ton of video surveillance in the hotel?”
“Some,” says Tessa. “Not in the rooms, not in the elevator.”
The best security is invisible security.
Brian repeats, “Not in the elevator,” and massages her nonfree hand.
Tessa presses the “Up” button. Twice.
Delores doesn’t hear the Killer letting the kitchen door swing closed behind him, the rap--rap rap--rap it makes when it flaps against its rubberized frame. He doesn’t make a sound coming closer to her—
“I’m scared,” Brian says, “that it’s going to be weird.”
Tessa nods. “Me, too.”
“We’ve never even kissed.” The pointed bottom of the diamond--shaped elevator appears. He squeezes Tessa’s hand.
“I know,” Tessa says. “What do we do if it’s weird?”
“I don’t know.” The elevator dings open. He and Tessa get on. Tessa swipes her card key in a special slot. “What’s that for?” Brian says.
“The elevator won’t stop at the penthouse level unless the guest swipes their key,” she says. She says it breathlessly. “It’s a security measure.” She’s turned toward Brian.
He turns toward her. He still has her hand. He puts it where his pulse beats visibly in his neck. “If this is weird, I say we just—”
“Keep going,” Tessa finishes for him, and laughs.
He laughs. “Yeah, exactly. Don’t be a quitter.”
“Never,” Tessa says, and strokes down his front, to his chest. He shivers. “I’m like the rabbit who wanted to cross the road.”
“Staples. That’s determination, Tess.”
She crooks her finger: C’mere.
He leans.
But Delores cleans a mean window. The Killer makes a reflection, approaching behind her back. So Delores turns with her oversized squeegee right when he’s in range of its length and smacks him with the wet end across his mask. The Killer gurgles a syllable—Gluh!”—and catches his mask and straightens it before it falls off. In doing this, he drops his knife.
Delores catches him again on the reverse. The Killer sputters. Delores is saying, “Franklin, I told you if you kept messing with me, I’d make you real sorry,” but this slap of the squeegee makes the Killer’s mask fly all the way off, to his right. He chases after it as Delores says, “Hey, who’re you?”
CAMERA 12, 56, 62, 63
The drawbacks of video surveillance are two-fold: one, even if a fabulously wealthy properties owner claims to be dedicated to security, the budget for actual cameras will be finite and, therefore, the number of angles available to team members will be limited, which means that if, for example, a remorseless psycho killer is briefly unmasked, it will be a matter of luck if his face is clearly discernible; two, though the preening, spoiled properties owner requests all security feed be backed up for six months on an online storage site before the images are disposed of, he is ignorant of how vulnerable online storage sites are to external penetration, meaning the head of security might decide instead to erase the feed at six thirty a.m. and six thirty p.m. every day, choosing these times because shifts change at six a.m. and six p.m. and at those hours, when the shifts cross, team members discuss scenarios, breaches, so on, which the feed helps to illustrate.
Brian’s lips meet Tessa’s very softly. Both Brian and Tessa remain very still. Only their facial expressions betray change, betray a sense of surprise. Very positive, pleasant surprise. It’s Tessa who moves first, but by nanoseconds. It’s hard to guess, unless one really watches. Unless one can’t look away—not even to such arresting images as Jules in a lacy white negligee, climbing into bed beside Justin, not even to Delores dropping her squeegee and ripping into her apron pocket for the gun—from Tessa’s arms wending around Brian’s neck so he’ll come closer, and their lips becoming not less soft, but less scared. “Not weird.” Tessa groans it, and Brian says, “Hmm--mm” with a downward vocal timbre that means he meant, No, not at all. He takes advantage of Tessa’s speaking mouth being open, and he presses it wider with his kiss. And Tessa makes fists in his motorcycle jacket. And her eyebrows rise, and her hips rise, and Brian’s hands find her hips like his hands are heat--seeking and her hips are hot.
The Killer picks up Delores’s dropped squeegee right as she takes out her revolver. He hits her wrist with the squeegee’s handle. Her shot sails far wide, to the window wall behind the bandstand. Cracks cobweb out from the bullet hole in the glass.
Brian sets Tessa’s ass on the railing. He touches all along the sides of her body like he wants to take it slow. Their mouths are not taking it slow. Tessa’s body isn’t, either. Tessa’s bare feet are pulling Brian tighter to her. He stops kissing her, with an evident struggle on his part, and his parts, and he says, in the second and a half he succeeds, “I love you. I—,” but Tessa says, “I know, shut up,” and renders him silent, or silent of recognizable linguistic phonemes, as Brian has dared now to put a hand under Tessa’s skirt, and his kiss--muffled ululations at this are almost as shameless as hers.
Delores drops her gun, and the Killer runs at her. Delores bends with astonishing speed for a hausfrau. She picks up the squeegee and jabs. The Killer grabs his stomach.
Tessa’s hand moves to Brian’s jeans. Brian’s hand moves to the front of his fly, where Tessa’s unzipping it. He puts both her hands back around his neck. She grins and says, “What’re we waiting for, exactly?”
Brian kisses her. “A bed.”
“Why?”
He nibbles at her neck, moving her shirt’s collar aside for better access. “I don’t know, shut up.”
Delores goes for the gun. The Killer catches her in a tackle as she grabs it. It skids across the ballroom, hops onto the dance floor, and spins to a stop at the base of the bandstand’s stairs. The Killer drags Delores by the hair, toward where he dropped his knife. Delores shrieks, reaches in her apron pocket, pulls out the shard of broken salad plate, and stabs it into the Killer’s hand. The Killer howls through his mask and drops Delores’s hair. Delores is up and running for the gun. The Killer is running after Delores.
The main elevator is passing the eighth floor. Brian is unbuttoning Tessa’s blouse. She is saying, “Slowest damn elevator in the world,” and Brian is smiling, minutely, before he sees a lacy white bra supporting a small breast. He turns serious, palming it. He nods and, all at once, lifts her off the railing so her bare feet are on the floor, pulls her black underwear around her bare ankles, and ducks under her skirt, the actions so quick, Tessa doesn’t have time to react, until she reacts by hollering at the glass ceiling and trying to make fists in the glass walls.
Camera 33
The Killer tackles Delores. She hits her head on the dance floor. She moans, facedown. She’s inches short of the gun. The Killer thrashes up Delores’s body, seizes the revolver, and flips its chamber open. He sprinkles the bullets and tosses the gun; it bounces once before landing in the storage room. The Killer pulls Delores’s scalp backward to beat her skull into the floor. But Delores rears like a bucking mare and throws an elbow into the side of the Killer’s head. The Killer rolls off her. Delores stands and runs for the kitchen, dizzy, her limp more pronounced.
Camera 12
The elevator is on the ninth floor. Tessa balances on one foot, ass on the railing. Her other foot has stepped from her underwear and hangs over Brian’s shoulder. Brian’s neck and head are cloaked in her skirt. Tessa says his name. His name rises in pitch. It’s as if Tessa is birthing him. One might prefer to think of the tableau as something ludicrous—like Tessa birthing Brian—rather than to admit the two of them are birthing something noble and lovely and sacred. Something that will last, so long as the two of them are not hacked to pieces tonight.
Camera 61
Jules and Justin decide to make love.
. . .
Jules and Justin are asleep.
Delores slaps the kitchen door open. She yanks a trash can over behind her. It’s large and gray and rubber and full of disposable accoutrements slick with cherry coulis. She runs for the walk--in refrigerator. The Killer slaps the kitchen door open, but he doesn’t see the trash can and goes flying over it, like Superman, his hands splayed out, and Delores is digging in her apron pocket for the secret elevator controller she has never used. She was told never to use it except in an extreme emergency. This qualifies as an extreme emergency. The Killer lands and skids through red--gobbed paper towels and chunks of waxed paper. Delores finds the controller and presses the button. The juice concentrate moves, too slowly. Delores shuts the door to the walk--in refrigerator and pulls on a shelf crammed with tubs of peppers and fresh fruit. She grits her teeth and makes a sound like a creature giving birth.
Tessa makes a similar sound, in the main elevator. Brian’s head, under her skirt, moves both gently and powerfully at once, like waves.
Camera 35
Red and green peppers fall to the walk--in refrigerator’s floor. The Killer shoves at the door. He’s unable to open it, but he is able to reach inside through a gap. He is slicing at the air with his knife. The juice concentrate has moved mostly aside, but Delores isn’t looking in that direction. Delores is instead snatching a pair of kitchen scissors off a nail; the scissors are there to open plastic pouches of refrigerated material. She raises the scissors and strikes toward the Killer’s exposed arm. The Killer sees this and flounders to pull back. He succeeds. Delores turns. Delores screams.
Camera 12
Tessa is getting close. The elevator is coming up on the twelfth floor. Tessa is trying to hide the fact that she is weeping. She is wiping her temples free of tears. The tears are on her temples because she is staring up at the ceiling as if she sees God in that apex of glass. She has hiked her skirt high enough so she can look down and watch Brian’s efforts. She begins to breathe erratically. She says Brian’s name, twice. Her pussy shoves at his face like she can’t help it. She can’t help it. Brian keeps his pace steady but hikes her skirt higher. He ups the pressure of his tongue. Tessa screams.
Vivica takes up a small rectangle of space inside the secret elevator, her shins flat to the floor, her back atop her calves, her arms in a tangle around her chest and head, bringing to mind Madonna’s “Vogue” music video from the early 1990s. The repeated sight of a disturbing image might numb one’s capacity to forestall insensitive associations. Delores has not seen this sight repeatedly. Delores is screaming. The Killer is bashing at the walk--in refrigerator door, and the shelves are heavy, but so is the Killer. Delores puts her fingers to her mouth, then in her hair. She doesn’t want to get into the elevator. The elevator is painted in blood. Delores makes a sound between her teeth—“Nnnnn, nnnnn”—as she steps in overdelicately, avoiding Vivica, packing to the opposite wall, pressing the button for the lobby with a shuddering fingertip. Delores gawks so dedicatedly at Vivica that she doesn’t notice the Killer finally barreling into the walk--in refrigerator, or the hideous purpose in his lunge for her, or how close he comes to preventing the elevator door’s sedate slide shut. She says, “Nnnnn, nnnnn,” and picks up the intercom phone receiver. She says, “Nnnnooo!” when she finds it’s been disabled.
The Killer bolts across the walk--in refrigerator, the kitchen, and the ballroom, toward the door for the stairwell (beside the main elevator); he pulls and pulls at the door for the stairwell, before remembering this door requires one to push. The Killer flies down the stairs, passing the eighteenth floor. He hears the main elevator ding open there. He pauses, but only for a second. Delores has obviously made him angry. Delores is obviously going for the lobby. The staff’s cars have not been disabled, because it didn’t seem possible that anyone would get to the parking lot. The Killer runs down the stairs, incensed, his coveralls stained and sticky.
The secret elevator, Delores inside it, is passing the seventh floor. She is no longer saying, “Nnnnn.” She is no longer looking at Vivica. She’s undoubtedly smelling Vivica. She is holding the kitchen scissors so tightly, her knuckles are bloodless, and she watches the seam of the elevator doors like an enemy.
Tessa leads Brian out of the main elevator by the hand. Outside the elevator, she pushes him against a wall and kisses him. She sucks his tongue into her mouth, greedily. She takes a card key out of her blouse’s breast pocket and leads him to Room 1802, the deluxe penthouse. She leads him, but this time not by the hand. Brian walks awkwardly. His erection looks enormous, but only in proportion to his overall body size. It’s an average erection. While Tessa puts the card key the right way around, Brian pushes her into the closed door with his pelvis, filling his hands with her hair so he can lick the nubs of bone in her neck; he fits his teeth around one. “Hurry,” he says. She does. The door to Room 1802, the deluxe penthouse, explodes open with the force of their combined weight. The doorknob makes a slight dent in the wall before Brian slams it shut.
Tessa does not notice the dent in the wall: next, the seas will boil.
Tessa’s grasping at Brian’s pants. “Bed,” he says, “where’s a bed?”
Tessa says, “Why?” but yanks him by the shirtfront toward the spiral staircase in the middle of the lavish entryway. Brian pulls her down in the middle of the spiral staircase and rips her bra in half so he can tongue Tessa’s left nipple.
“Bite it,” she growls. He does. She curses, loudly. Brian picks Tessa up and carries her upstairs. It’s easy to carry Tessa. Tessa’s thin. It might seem romantic that he’s carrying her, but it’s not; it’s easy. True romance is predicated on difficulty. Protection is fantastically difficult.
It’s dark. “Where’s the bed?” Brian says.
Tessa tugs him by the belt loops.
The secret elevator—with Delores inside it—opens into Franklin’s office. Delores has the scissors raised. There’s no one in Franklin’s office.
Delores tried her cell phone in the secret elevator, but there was no reception. She takes cautious, soundless steps. The Killer is racing down the stairs. He is passing the ninth floor. Delores is entering the foyer, looking around, seeing no one. She is tiptoeing underneath the chandelier she cleaned less than an hour ago, beginning to walk faster. The Killer is passing the sixth floor. Delores digs in her apron pocket and takes out her car keys. She can see her car in the parking lot. She’s in sight of the main doors, and the parking lot is well lit. Well--lit parking areas are safe parking areas. The Killer is passing the fourth floor, putting on speed. Delores can hear him, which is why she hurries, running for the main doors, twenty feet away. Now fifteen, ten. The Killer passes the second floor.
The Thinker stands up from behind a reception sofa. He does not move quickly. He doesn’t need to. Delores rebounds off the locked main doors. She drops the scissors. She has hit her head. She reels. She bumbles right into the Thinker, who puts his hands around her throat and begins to squeeze.
Tessa bumps into the bed. The mattress pushes the backs of her knees to bend, and she sits easily. She is eye level with Brian’s pants, and he lets her pull them down this time. He steps out of them, then a pair of boxer briefs, and Tessa’s lips swell around his penis as she takes it into her mouth. Brian hisses, allowing her mouth to work awhile before he puts a thumb to her chin and bends, too, kneeling at the bed to undress her. He doesn’t do it slowly, but he doesn’t hurry, either. When she’s naked, Tessa pushes Brian’s jacket off, then his T--shirt, and then they stop. They eye one another like curiosities.
When the Killer comes tearing across the foyer, knife high, Delores is slapping at the Thinker’s mask. But the Thinker keeps his masked face remote enough that the edges of Delores’s short fingernails scrape the tip of the Thinker’s rubber nose and that’s all. The Killer arrives at the pair of them and throws Delores into the bellhop counter. Delores casts out a hand to catch herself and smacks the bellhop’s bell as she rams into the counter hard enough to break all the ribs on her right side. A tinny ping sounds through the foyer.
The Killer and the Thinker look at each other. An observer might find the image surreal. As if a funhouse mirror stood between them, altering the average man’s stature to gigantic, or the gigantic man’s stature to average.
The Thinker walks away, to Franklin’s office, and to the secret elevator. He boards and presses the button for the twentieth floor.
Tessa touches the side of Brian’s face.