“I fell asleep at a buddy’s,” Gage rehearsed as the elevator clattered open at the Harlequin Hotel.
He stepped in and consoled himself that checkout was at noon, giving him a half hour to retrieve his luggage and charge his phone. Then he could call his folks and straighten things out.
“I fell asleep at a buddy’s,” he repeated.
It’s not a lie, he told himself, though Ariel wasn’t so much “a buddy” as “a hostile acquaintance” after all that.
Well, at least I tried.
Gage girded his loins to put the episode behind him, catch the next flight to Springfield-Branson National Airport and be home in time for supper.
The absence of his wallet remained a puzzle. As Clark showed the decency to return his borrowed hoody, Gage ruled him out as a suspect.
Sometimes these things just happen, he mused as he disembarked from the elevator on eight, wearing the very same hoody. He hung a right.
The first sign of trouble was the housekeeper wearing a gas mask and elbow-length industrial rubber gloves, dropping a filthy pile of laundry into a contractor clean-up bag in the hall.
The second sign of trouble was the gaggle of security officers and hotel staff who consulted outside Room 817 with grave demeanors all around.
The third was the Orleans Parish Police Detective whose eyes lit up on seeing Gage, advancing with his hand extended. “You must be GAGE!” he cried in a hail-fellow-well-met manner. “Bonjour! Kinichiwa! Back so soon?”
As he reached hand-shaking distance, the detective flipped his hand into a fist.
“Psyche! Fist-bump.” Perplexed, Gage bumped fists with the detective, who beamed, “God knows where your hands have been! Well, actually, I got an idea.” He shook his head. “You look like shit, honeybunch.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Gage faltered.
“Detective Bills. Orleans Parish. Just admiring your masterpiece in there.” He gestured toward what Gage slowly realized was a crime scene. “Your folks were so blown away, they left your sorry ass with me.”
“What happened?”
“What happened?” Bills imitated viciously. “Seeing as you left the hotel at 6:17AM or thereabouts - no, actually, 6:17 on the dot - you haven’t seen your tour de force in the morning light. C’mon in!”
This is not my life, Gage thought as he followed Bills into the hotel room.
The only object left intact was his trophy from the National Robotics Challenge, which glistened, unmolested, on the end table.
#
Fuck, he wanted a shot of Ketamine.
Ketamine was perfect for smoothing out such upheaval, Ariel mused.
But from respect for Medulla, he hurried like a good boy toward the cottage on Chartres Street, glancing through the grubby sheaf of papers that the kid handed him.
Of even more interest than Ariel’s name on Gage’s family tree was the name above his own…
…and not on the maternal side, which listed Betty Hooks, child of Magdalene, daughter of Hope and so on. His eyes turned to the other side of his parentage:
Barney Collins, father.
Whoever the hell he was.
Ariel was unsurprised that Gerald, Betty’s husband at Ariel’s birth, wasn’t his biological father. Ariel solved that riddle in early childhood, for he showed no signs of African heritage despite his mother’s lifelong campaign to persuade him otherwise. Despite sharing no DNA with his son, Gerald proved the superior parent, to understate the matter.
Ariel paused on the porch. He shook himself out, shoved the papers in his back pocket, and glanced at his watch.
11:38. Fuck. Almost a hundred minutes late. As Ariel rapped on the door, he noticed that the knob was replaced by a handle at shoulder level.
“Comin’,” called a voice from within, followed by approaching footsteps. The door opened a crack, the occupant obscured within.
“Hey,” Ariel started, “I’m sorry I’m so late. Believe it or not, this isn’t how I roll. I’ll add some time, gratis…”
“You’re all good, no worries,” the stranger replied in a gentle Ghanese accent. “I’m just glad you came.”
Opening the door with his foot, Gordon stepped into the light of the doorway.
He had survived a terrible fire. The skin on his face was a patchwork of skin grafts, a medley of pinks and dark browns that covered his hairless head. The skin around his lips was bright pink, the margins lopsided. He wore a white T-shirt from which his arms emerged, amputated at the elbow. His suspenders held up a pair of loose linen pants above two intact, unscarred bare feet.
He was shaking.
Ariel gave a psychic tip of the hat to Medulla, recognizing her faith in choosing him. He gazed without judgment into his client’s forlorn eyes, which darted down in defense.
“It’s cool if you wanna go,” Gordon murmured to the floor.
“Hey,” Ariel said.
Gordon didn’t look up.
“Do you want me to go?” Ariel asked softly. His eyes smiled to meet his client’s “Sorry. I get a little insecure sometimes.”
“You do not,” Gordon said shyly, as if Ariel were making fun of him.
“But I do,” Ariel assured him. “I mean, a client rejected me last night, like, at the door. Took one look and drop-kicked my ass on the street.”
“Well, I know that feelin’.” Gordon’s eyes brimmed up. “Sure enough.”
“Maybe we can work on our confidence together.” Ariel dared to place a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “A friend gave me advice once that I try to keep in mind. He said, ‘It’s okay to fake confidence, ‘cause often in the process, confidence arrives.’” He squeezed Gordon’s shoulder gently. “I’ll fake it if you will.”
Gordon searched Ariel’s face. Finding nothing but kindness and good humor in it, he nodded, then welcomed him in.
#
“All right, take seven,” Kayleigh ordered. “This time try not to look so defeated.”
Kayleigh and Larry stood side-by-side with her phone in selfie mode, framing them before the picture windows of the Presidential Lodge. Kayleigh bumped Larry six inches to the right so that Branson’s Inspiration Tower rose from Shepherd of the Hills between their heads.
“Action,” called Kayleigh as she pressed the red button. She cleared her throat.
“Hello, hot-shot. Welcome to Tough Love. This is your intervention. After your Dad and I saw the aftermath you left in your wake, you are hereby kicked out of the house. We thusly enforce a strict ‘no contact’ policy with you until you enroll in a 90-day Christian reorientation rehab thing of our choosing to get the help you so desperately need. Barb suggested a few places that Brandon went to.”
Kayleigh moved the phone close to her face. “That is, before he OD’d last year.”
She turned to her husband. “Anything I forgot?”
“Nope,” Larry sighed in a defeated manner. Kayleigh poked him off-camera with her free hand.
“If you’re gonna play with the big boys, muchacho,” she continued to camera in a hard-boiled manner, “then, then the big boys... Then the big... then you’re in for a whole lot... heap...” She paused to dislodge a cliche from the logjam in her mind.
“You get the horns,” she concluded in triumph, pressing the red square. “CUT!” She exhaled brightly. “I think that’s a keeper.”
“Kayleigh, we didn’t get his side of what happened.”
“What side could he possibly have?” she asked. “He needs to learn that consequences have results. And let’s not kid ourselves. We saw this coming.”
“Didn’t see drugs coming at all.”
“People get over drugs. I mean the other thing, the one that ain’t so easy.” She patted his head. “Tough love is hard. Get over it. You can collect him once he learns his lesson. Who else is he gonna call when he goes to jail?”
“Can we just talk to him before you send that?”
Whooosh! went Kayleigh’s phone as she hit “send.”
#
The message came through as Gage’s phone returned to life in the hotel’s security office. Eavesdropping on the message, Detective Bills jeered. “Ain’t that sweet?”
“All set,” said the hotel’s Head of Security, gesturing toward a collection of monitors on the wall. Gage numbly turned his attention to a grainy video of the prior night’s tos-and-fros on Floor 8:
11:28 PM: A white male (approx. 70 inches), in black shoes, dark jeans and a red “JESUS U” sweatshirt exited the elevator with his hood pulled down and a satchel over his shoulder. He finished a phone conversation and proceeded to Room 817, unlocking the door with the very key handed to Gage Keller three days before at check-in.
12:42 AM: A room service attendant delivered a cart to Room 817 and returned to the elevator at 12:45 AM.
6:17 AM: A white male (approx. 70 inches) in black shoes, dark jeans and a red “JESUS U” sweatshirt exited Room 817. He carried a satchel, his hood pulled down, and took the back stairs down to the side exit on Canal Street.
11:32 AM: A white male (approx. 70 inches) in black shoes, dark jeans and a red “JESUS U” sweatshirt returned to the hallway…
“…which brings us to where WE rubbed noses, Eskimo!” Bills cried viciously. “So you expect me to believe that some stranger… Wait, what’s the name of your imaginary friend again?”
“Clark,” Gage moaned.
“Yes, you mean that ‘Clark’ was such a mastermind, he didn’t just steal your sweatshirt and your wallet, but brought the sweatshirt back after trashing your room?”
“I know it’s hard to, like, believe,” Gage said.
“Sounds a lil’ methy to me,” Bills observed. “If I was to get a warrant to drug test ya, say, how ya think Mammy and Pappy gon’ feel ‘bout the results?”
Gage’s face went white, remembering the Garfield pill that he swallowed back when life felt so carefree. It wasn’t meth, because that was T. Ariel told him it was E. Not to be confused with K nor G.
All these letters.
“Tell ya what,” Bills continued after a long silence. “Since you don’t have anywhere to lay down your sweet head, I’m gonna book you a resort that offers the finest baloney sandwiches, a thin lil’ whisper of a mattress and no pillows to speak of. Did y’ever take a crap for an audience of criminals? With nuthin’ to wipe your shitter but the orange jumpsuit you got on?”
This is not my life, Gage thought.
“Stand up, turn to the wall and put your hands behind your back.”
Blank-faced, Gage followed orders.
“You are charged with Felony Destruction of Property and Possession of Schedule 2 Narcotics,” Bills said as he slapped handcuffs onto Gage’s wrists. “Turn that frown around, Boo! You won the showcase!” He hustled Gage down the hallway to the freight elevator. “An all-expenses getaway to O.P.P.!”
As for what that meant, Gage was too numb to ask.
###
☮️ & ❤️,
