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Justin begins dancing with aggressive pelvic movements—in the vernacular, “grinding.” Jules pushes him, gesturing at the three other people in the ballroom, who are ignoring Jules and Justin completely. Justin’s posture becomes conciliatory, apologetic. His hands find Jules’s waist, circle it, drop an inch or two so they skim the tops of her buttocks, and Jules pushes him again. Justin and Jules haven’t made love in more than two months. Jules’s psychiatrist has told Jules to tell Justin about her medications not least because a side effect of SSRIs is a waning sex drive, which a mate may take as personal rejection if he’s unaware his depressed/anxious partner’s neurochemistry is being adjusted. Justin leans to Jules, probably asking—for what seems like the hundredth time—what the hell he’s supposed to do, or what he’s supposed to have done. Jules’s peppy comportment slips for scarcely an instant, before she’s grinning and waving at Brian, who, by the elevator, has been observing this tête-à-tête with curiosity—and maybe a glimmer of sad understanding. Brian waves back, and Jules snuggles to Justin again. Justin joins the farce, calling “Helloooo” to Brian, as if they’re at opposite ends of an abyss.
Franklin thinks his prankster persona endears him to people. Franklin believes he’s had an especially hard life, because he is gay. He majored in theater. He did theater in high school, too, but he also played baseball. He was a star catcher. This makes one want to laugh, but laughter is impossible, given the circumstances. Franklin came out to his parents when he was eighteen, and his parents reacted with nonplussed nonshock, and Franklin—channeling some character in some script—began a soliloquy about how their lack of acceptance shattered his heart, raped his mind, impaled his spirit with daggers the length of his long, hard life. None of this is in Franklin’s personnel file. A more thorough background check became necessary for Franklin, due to his tendency toward pranks. He has established a shaky peace with his parents, who, when interviewed, turned out to be sedately liberal Episcopalians who owned a split--level in Pasadena, thanks to Franklin’s father’s success in advertising and Franklin’s mother’s greater success in selling Mary Kay cosmetics. It makes one thirsty to remember the taste of Franklin’s mother’s raspberry lemonade. It makes one nostalgic for summer, though it’s summer outside.
The Killer is still behind Franklin, watching—perhaps enraptured by the glob of guest soaps that has grown to the size of a softball, or perhaps debating methods. More likely debating methods. An emotional reaction to this situation might be problematic, complex, and multifaceted. Franklin is unlikable. It is truly almost impossible to like Franklin. The only people who like Franklin are fellow narcissists.
Tessa and Brian are passing the eighteenth floor. “Tinted glass?” Brian says, knocking on the slate panes. “I noticed that coming up. What’s it for?”
“The penthouses. Gives the highest--paying guests extra privacy.” Tessa is reading her checklists. There are lists for housekeeping, kitchen staff, waitstaff, and admin. Tessa knows them by heart. She’s reading them because she’s nervous.
Brian leans on the railing, then stands straight. He shoves his hands in his pockets. There’s the sound of flipping paper, a scratching pen. “Say, Tess?”
“Hmm?” She makes check mark after check mark, back--documenting the items she’s completed since leaving her clipboard behind. “What?” she says.
They’re passing the seventeenth floor. “This place have a pool?”
Tessa, surprised, looks up. Brian’s smiling. Tessa laughs shortly, and nods. “Yeah. It’s not in the building.”
“Outdoor?” Brian whistles. “You went cheap with the pool?”
“I’ll show you our cheap pool. You’ve never seen a cheap pool like ours, I promise you.” Her eyes are teasing.
Brian makes a general gesture with his neck. “You like this job? You’re happy with it?”
“It’s good, yeah. The hours are only crazy during weeks like this. I get a lot of downtime.” She sticks out her chin. “And I’m not risking my life every time I come to work.” Brian is blinking, hurt. Tessa says more gently, “I get to do lots of planning, design. That’s what I really like, the designing phase.”
“You designed this place?” His eyebrows rise.
“No.” Tessa is lying. Tessa smells a compliment coming and must block it. “I had input, that’s all. I gave suggestions.” Bullshit. She took architecture courses throughout college but chose to earn a business degree because it was more marketable. She’s heart--stoppingly afraid of being dependent on anyone, ever again, after a childhood spent at the mercy of the foster system.
“You designed this place,” Brian says in wonder.
“I helped. Some. Not much.” Tessa flips a checklist over and—they are passing the sixteenth floor—draws a perfect sketch of the ballroom in seven seconds. “I thought of that.” She points to the bandstand. “Making the room octagonal like that, so we could have storage and a kitchen on either side but keep the ocean view. It’s not a big deal.”
Brian takes a hand out of his pocket and touches the sketch. He caresses the lines like they are something else entirely. “Tess,” he says, and rubs the side of his head. “Jesus.”
“What?”
He leans against the railing again. “I thought I could—never mind.”
“What?” Tessa says, stern.
Brian points at the fifteenth floor, which is coming into view. The door won’t ding open for another twenty seconds or so. The main elevator really is ludicrously slow. The secret elevator is much, much faster.
Tessa’s turning red. “What’s—”
“When you’ve got time,” Brian says, flicking a nail on the railing. “It’s important, but it’s not urgent. I’ve waited eleven years, you know? I can wait another couple hours.”
“Wait for what?” There’s a foreign softness in Tessa’s voice. Hope?
The doors ding open. Brian holds them so Tessa can go ahead.
The Killer has lost patience. He is walking toward Franklin. Franklin’s soap gob is almost the size of a basketball. This is Franklin’s third strike. I instituted a strike system for him after he plastic--wrapped the electricians’ porta potty seats twelve weeks ago. Destin told me to be lenient, but look at this, look at that damn soap ball—what a waste, what a child.
Tessa’s walking with Brian toward Room 1516, and Brian’s impersonating a butler named Jeeves—“Follow Jeeves, madaahme. Your quahtahs are ovah hee--yah.” Tessa is trying not to laugh. Brian is saying, “Don’t laaauf, madaahme. It’s not dignifaah--yeed.” Tessa blushes when she laughs. Tessa blushes when she comes. She only comes during oral sex, so it is a challenge to see her blush. Especially if one is not skilled at making her laugh. It would have been nice to know the key to making her laugh was to tell her not to laugh. Maybe the key to making her come is telling her not to.
It is pointless to speculate. It’s a waste of precious energy.
It is incredibly painful, one assumes, to be yanked off a ladder from behind. Franklin lands like a dropped marionette. He yaps and jerks, sees the huge masked man looming over him, and manages to scramble a few feet before the Killer catches his elbow. And squeezes.
There are innumerable techniques for breaking human bones. Certain types of military training teach men how. Rangers and SEALs, primarily. There is no one on the first through fourteenth floors, save the Killer and Franklin, to hear Franklin shrieking, to hear the loaded pop of his right forearm, his right upper arm, his wrist concurrent with his left forearm (defense fracture), his—
“Can’t wait to see a luxury suite,” Brian says as Tessa takes a card key from her breast pocket. “A luxury suite in this hotel could fit two of my house.”
Tessa says, “Your house is three thousand square f—” And she stops. And she slides the card key in. The lock blinks red.
Brian is very still beside her.
“Damn it,” Tessa says. She shoves the card key in harder.
“Let me.”
“I’ve got it.” Her face is masklike and rigid. She will not hand over that card key for anything. It’s a matter of pride now. Tessa is, in her backward way, nothing if not proud.
“Plee plee plee,” Franklin says, like the sibilance at the end of the word is too much a task for his mouth. His jaw is broken. An educated estimate would claim twenty--two of his bones are broken. Certain tortures are conceived specifically to be bloodless. “Plee plee,” he says, and the Killer looks down at him.
The Killer leaves the housekeeping storage area and enters the employee break room. Franklin attempts, once, to crawl. Two wet pops. The fractures feel like hot, broken glass trying to push through the skin. It’s transcendent, the pain. It makes a man believe in God, but makes the man dislike Him. Franklin’s holler reaches all the way, one guesses, to the seventh floor. There is no one there to hear it. There is no one until the fifteenth floor, where Tessa still has not succeeded in unlocking Room 1516. Brian has offered twice more to try his luck; Tessa has twice more refused. Despondent, she tries knocking. “Vivica?” she says.
The Killer picks up his coveralls bag, goes into Delores’s office, and removes the piece of paper taped over the small television with motion--activated closed circuit surveillance. He watches the screen switch from Tessa and Brian at the door to 1516, to Henri conducting sous--chefs in the kitchen, to the ballroom, where Delores furiously dusts as Jules sits at a dining table and plays Words with Friends on her prohibited cell phone. To Justin, on the stairs, walking past the landing to the seventeenth floor and continuing down. He looks around as if terrified of being caught. He could almost be mistaken for an inept, inexperienced hoodlum seeking the perfect surface to deface with spray paint—“could be” because Justin has the same frosted tips, single earring, and loose clothes he’s been sporting for almost a decade; “almost” because these features have begun their descent into ridiculousness, existing as they do beside Justin’s burgeoning crow’s--feet, a tiny but growing bald spot he’s still able to comb over, and knees that pop when he’s been sitting too long.
The Killer watches the television for a full minute, while Franklin begins to yell for help. It must hurt him, because three of his broken bones are broken ribs. The Killer turns off the TV and replaces the piece of paper taped over the screen. He takes a paperweight off Delores’s desk—a bright red heart, tinted quartz, the size of a grapefruit—and the bag with his bloody coveralls, and walks out of the office, out of the break room, into the hall.
“Tess, for real?” Brian says.
“I can get it, Brian. Okay?” She has tried swiping the card key slowly, swiping the card key quickly, with extra strength, with no strength at all. The lock blinks red, red. “I’ve handled a lot of crap without you to help me, okay? I’ve gotten through so much crap, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve managed without you just fine. All right?” She slaps the door, hard, with her bandaged hand and tries swiping the card key quickly some more. Brian reaches for the card key, but she says, “No, I know how this works. You’re going to ask how I’m doing and wait for me to say I’m fine, and then you’re going to leave, and that’s fine. That’s totally fine. You thought you’d come visit. Great, Bri, fucking fantastic!” She slaps the door with every other syllable, saying, “What the fucking fuck is wrong with this thing!”
Brian grabs her. He pins her arms to her body and holds her. One’s past experience may dictate that pinning Tessa is exceedingly dangerous, as at first, she’ll merely use a hidden talent for contortion and escape. But if one catches her, she’ll employ a knee to the groin and shout, as one writhes on the pillowy carpet, What part of the word “casual” is confusing to you?
She never once buried her head in the front of my jacket and said muffled words.
Franklin bellows “No” as if his jaw weren’t broken. He screams like it’s his only hope, and it is, and it’s inordinately loud, and the sound reaches—probably—to the tenth floor or so, before the Killer’s arm arcs downward with the paperweight in his right hand (he’s holding his knife in his left hand, with his laundry convenience bag of bloody coveralls) and hits Franklin’s skull on the left side. It is not a deathblow. The Killer can hit harder than that. Franklin is unconscious, but it’s unlikely he’s dead. The wound does not bleed much. The Killer puts the paperweight on the table where maids fold sheets, picks up Franklin in a fireman’s carry, and goes to the industrial dryers. There are four of them in a rectangular alcove off the housekeeping storage area. Delores is only supposed to use the first dryer until Manderley officially opens. The Killer places Franklin in the fourth. Franklin’s broken bones sound like a rock drummer’s sticks counting down a fast song. The Killer shuts the dryer door and presses buttons. The dryer chirps. Whirs. And commences the sound of a too--heavy weight turning over and over and over.
The Killer turns around. Here are the washers. He goes to the first one and feeds it his bloody coveralls, then browses the housekeeping storage shelves: miniature shampoos, conditioners, bubble baths, and body washes. He picks a miniature box of Tide out of a stack, returns to the washer, shakes in half the powder, and places the rest on top of the machine, where Delores will not see it, as she is five foot one. The Killer is approximately six foot four. He shuts the washer door and presses buttons. Beneath the sounds of sloshing water and weight being thrown around, there’s the rumble of despairing moans. The Killer picks up Franklin’s basketball--sized soap sculpture, goes to a large trash can beside the washers, drops it in, and sits on the sheets--folding table. On the table’s outermost corner, a copy of US Weekly vows in neon pink that modernity’s substitutes for gods and myths are, in fact, only human. The Killer flicks open the magazine and reads.
CAMERA 59, 12, 6
I didn’t catch that,” Brian says when Tessa speaks, her voice stifled by expensive leather.
She turns her ear to his heart—“Why are you here?”—and burrows once more into his front, ashamed for having asked.
“To explain.”
She shakes her head into his breastbone; his answer was insufficient.
Brian moves so he is no longer pinning her, exactly. He winds his arms around her back like vines. His hands disappear in her black hair, reappearing as protuberances in the thick sheet that reaches almost to Tessa’s waist. Tessa has her arms around his waist. They are a match, physically. He is narrow. She can reach around him easily. He is not a dedicated weight lifter. He runs, like Tessa does, or plays some raucous team sport, like basketball, that involves ass patting and trash talking, and casual acquaintances he calls “friends.” Excessive cardiovascular training in a fitness routine can undermine muscle development by metabolizing muscle protein. It is a matter of proportion. It is a question of how one wishes one’s body to look. It’s not vanity, per se. The protuberance of Brian’s left hand undulates across Tessa’s scalp. He is also stroking the small of her back. Tessa is shivering. Her nose is now at his neck. She is smelling him. His nose is at the part of her hair; he is smelling her, too. His eyes flutter, then shut tight. His voice is husky. “There are things you don’t know. Things I didn’t tell you, and I need to tell you. I swore I wouldn’t, but—”
Tessa peels off him and takes a small step back.
Brian nods, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I have to tell you.” He says this like Judas explaining why a kiss is necessary. “I have to.” He reaches to Tessa’s nonbandaged hand; she’s still clutching the card key. He slides it from her grasp and turns it around, so that the magnetic strip will face the door when she swipes it. The strip must face the door for the lock to read it. There is a diagram on the card key illustrating this.
Tessa’s face distorts in agony, mixed with anger.
“I’m nervous, too,” Brian says, kindly.
“Why?” says Tessa.
Brian backs a step away. Another. He leans on the opposite side of the hall. “Because it’s weird. We were kids, and now we’re not.” He looks down and sees an errant tuft of carpet that Twombley dis-arranged while sprinting to Room 1516. Brian tucks it smooth with the toe of his motorcycle boot. “We’re grown--ups now. It’s confusing.”
“Why is it confusing?”
He smiles at her, but he sounds exasperated. “You want me to say it?”
“Yeah.” Tessa crosses her arms. “Yeah, Bri, I want you to say everything. Eleven years without a word, and you show up tonight? Why now?”
“That’s part of it.”
“I’ll bet.”
Brian takes his hands out of his pockets and crosses his arms, too. They square off. He says, “I get it.” His voice is firm. “I get it, Tess, I do—”
“You get it, huh?”
“Better than anybody else could.” He points at her. This is a mistake. But, as with his previous mistakes, Tessa does not respond in her typical manner. She doesn’t seem to grow, like a provoked cat. She curls in, like burning paper, and listens to him say, “You can be mad at me. I deserve that. I know I deserve that, a hundred percent. But do not for one second treat me like I don’t understand getting left behind. I’m as much a pro at that as you are.” He stows his pointer finger in his folded arms and says, as if regretful about being so stern, “Almost as much a pro. I had eight fosters and you had twelve before the Dominis.”
“You had a brother die.” She whispers it.
“So did you. Mitch was your brother. Mitch would’ve done jumping jacks on PCH at rush hour for you, Tess.”
“You had a twin brother die. And you talked to him while he died. You held his hand.” She chokes. “I watched it on TV.”
Brian tries to shrug. But he fails, like his shoulder’s too heavy. “I’ll tell you,” he says. “But I really do need your undivided attention.”
Tessa looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Bri. You have it.”
“No, you’re worried there’s a carpet stain behind that door. And that the bandstand’s dirty and there’s a maid you can’t find.” He sounds jocular again. “And your chef’s a fuckhead.”
“Hey, know what? These problems might seem insignificant to you—”
“No, they don’t.” He walks close to her, pries her arms uncrossed, and sets them by her sides. “They don’t. I’ll stick with you, help out if I can, and when you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll—” He exhales with huge force at the ceiling, almost as though he’s looking for someone up there. “I’ll tell you. It’ll take a few minutes. Till then, I’ll keep you company.”