Adelaide Confused (7 page)

I was angry then, but I buried it down and
spoke calmly. “Should I use my gift like you use yours? Should I
influence and manipulate until I’ve built myself an empire? Is that
my potential?”

“
I have an unfair
advantage,” he admitted. “But the glamour is harmless. It’s not a
crime to have a charming disposition.”

“
I don’t think your
secretary would agree, or my friend Francesca, if either was in
their right mind.”

He raised both his
eyebrows. It was the perfect expression for the confusion he was
feeling at my accusation. “What does my personal aide have to do
with this? And who is Francesca?”

I slammed the kitchen door
shut and stalked toward him. With a shove, I sent him stumbling
down the hall. “She says she loves you, and you don’t even remember
her.” I continued to push him through the front room, he only
resisted a little.

Astonished, he muttered,
“The first woman who can see past the charm and she hates
me.”

“
I have a feeling your ego
will survive. I imagine it’s rather resilient.” I opened the door
and tried to push him through.

He became immovable,
resisting my effort with ease. He’d been humoring me before,
allowing me to herd him along, but he wasn’t leaving until he had
his say. The realization tasted sour.

He sobered, looking down at me with chilling
blue eyes. “Your life is your own, waste it if you will. I can’t
force you onto my payroll, but you will do a job for me, freelance,
and that’s nonnegotiable.”

“And if I refuse?”

“
Your family is still
waiting, hoping to hear from you. All it takes is a phone call.”
The bastard was blackmailing me. “We’ll be in touch,” he said,
stepping out the door.

I slammed it shut while
considering my options. Contacting my family would be like opening
a can of worms, I’d put it off with good reason. But being
blackmailed rankled, and being a pawn in Reed Wallace’s pocket was
unthinkable. Unable to commit myself to a course of action, I
wandered back to the kitchen for more cake batter.

Stephen shambled into the
office carrying a stack of new phonebooks, Ben close at his heels.
Being old, Ben didn’t do the whole eight hours of sleep thing. He
was scheduled to work from five in the morning until one in the
afternoon, but typically he started his shift before the appointed
time. That meant Missy got to leave early while I got stuck with
Ben hovering around the office hours after he was supposed to go
home.

“
Over there,” Ben
instructed Stephen, pointing a knobby finger. “No, no, bend at the
knees or you’ll have a bad back when you get to be my age. Not that
I’d know—I’m fit as a fox.”

“Is that even a saying?” I asked. “I thought
it was healthy as a horse.”

“Bah,” he said, waving my words away.

“
Change the phonebooks out
while you’re cleaning,” I said to Stephen. “Room seven is probably
gross, the customers seemed shifty. I think they snuck a dog in or
something.”

“
They’re not customers,
they’re guests!” Ben hollered, sounding aggravated. I knew better,
he wasn’t aggravated, just his usual gloom, a misery that followed
him like a second shadow. He still mourned Mary.

“
This is a cheap motel,
Ben, calling them guests is pretentious,” I argued.

“
No, using the word
pretentious is pretentious.”

“Fine,” I conceded. “I’ll call them guests if
you’ll only do a landlord’s duty and have my window fixed.”

“What window?”

“
The window at my house,
it’s broken.”

“How the hell did you break a window?”

“
It’s possible it broke
itself. Old windows are bound to become fragile, I hear it
happens.”

“
It broke itself,” he
repeated in disbelief. “That’s the best lie you could come up
with?”

“
I said it’s possible it
broke itself. That’s not a lie,” I explained.

“Trying to take advantage of a poor old man,
you ought to be ashamed.” He could pretend all he wanted, but I
knew he enjoyed these ornery conversations.

“What poor old man?” I asked. “I thought you
were fit as a fox.”

“
Piss off, Adelaide,” he
muttered as he shuffled out the door.

“I guess that’s a no to the window then?” I
called after him.

I felt her before I saw
her, a shifting miasma of emotions. I wanted to hide, that was my
first thought. But as she bustled through the door I was held in
place by my own gruesome fascination.

She wore a knee-length pea
jacket in deep purple which matched her floral print purse. Her
makeup was too heavy, her hair too tall, and her jewelry too gaudy.
It was easy to picture her shopping at a Hallmark store.

She approached the front
desk, bringing feelings of outrage, rejection, and sadness closer
with each step. “Hello,” she said as she settled her purse atop the
counter. “I need a room please,” her voice cracked. The tears were
coming.

Wanting to get rid of her,
especially before the crying started, I rushed through the check-in
process. I’d just gotten the needed signatures when she began to
sniffle, her eyes turning watery.

“
Here’s your key,” I said,
thrusting it at her, “room twelve.” That was as far from me as I
could put her.

She took it slowly, but didn’t turn to
leave.

“
Have a pleasant evening,”
I hinted.

Her lips flattened, the
edges turning down—that was all the warning I got. Abruptly she was
sobbing, tears streaming down both cheeks. Her feelings began to
bubble up and boil over, suffocating any sense of propriety she
might have felt. There was only hurt. It stemmed from alienation
and loneliness, leaving behind a bitter disappointment. I felt it,
and yet I felt nothing.

You might think being an
empath made me kind and compassionate, seeing as I was capable of
more than simple sympathy. But no, being an empath had made me
somewhat dead inside. I saw someone crying, I ran the other way. I
felt their sorrow, I tried to leave. It was a matter of survival
really, self-preservation.

I watched stoically as she
pulled a cloth kerchief from her sleeve, blowing her nose as she
began to babble. “I mean, I paid to be here and she’s just going
to...” She shook her head. “...to pull this, acting as if it was
all an accident!” Her outrage and indignation swelled. She looked
at me. “Did you know she had the audacity to pretend the hotel had
made a mistake? A bold-faced lie if I ever heard one!”

I stared at her.

Apparently that was all the
prompting she needed. “She’s the queen you know, so I can’t do
anything about it.”

Now I was curious, and
since she wasn’t likely to shut up anytime soon, I figured it
wouldn’t hurt to ask. “queen?”

“
Yes,” she said, rubbing
her nose. “She started the chapter.”

“Chapter?”

She dabbed at her eyes.
“Didn’t I say? Oh, well, sorry, I don’t know what’s come over me. I
suppose it’s just one of those days, did you ever have one of
those? You know, where everything goes wrong?”

I shook my head, but she
didn’t seem to notice.

“
I bought this coat because
I’ll be graduating from pink to red soon.” She stroked the arm of
her jacket. “I thought it would be alright to wear. I’m only a few
weeks from fifty. But Kathy, that’s the queen, she said it wasn’t
appropriate, that I should be wearing lavender.” I felt a renewal
of her hurt and humiliation. “But I couldn’t help wearing it, I was
so looking forward to the trip. Then we get here and I don’t have a
room!” A spike of anger; I wondered if it might be mine. “Kathy
said she’d made the correct reservations, and everyone believes
her, but I know she hates me. I just don’t understand why,” she
admitted softly.

“What hotel was this?”

“
The Crowne,” she sniffled.
“I tried to get a room, but they’re full. Reed Wallace is on the
island. He’s holding a work retreat so all of his employees have a
reservation.” A fresh round of tears began to leak, and I felt her
miserable jealousy. “I bet they’ll even meet Reed, and I won’t!”
she wailed.

“
How do you know about
Reed?” Up until a few days ago I’d never heard of him, and even
then I hadn’t taken him for a big celebrity.

“He’s been on the cover of Corporate World,
you know, the magazine.” She didn’t look for a reaction, just kept
talking. “He’s just so, so...”

“Charming,” I supplied dryly.

“
Yes, charming, and such a
handsome man. I’d really like to meet him, but I’ll be busy with
the ladies, no time for chasing men. Red hatters are a busy bunch
you know,” she said with pride. Her emotions were evening out, her
demeanor turning mild.

“
Well,” I said awkwardly,
“um, things can only get better... probably. I mean, that harpy,
Kathy, she’ll most likely get receding gum lines, or have an
extreme case of early pattern hair loss. Karma always has the last
laugh.”

She began to gather her
bags. “Well, I try not to be too negative. Maybe we’ll work out our
differences.”

“Yeah, or that,” I agreed.

A few hours later Stephen
returned carrying a couple of phonebooks. “These are the leftovers.
I did every room but twelve. It was occupied before I got a
chance.”

“
Are you going
home?”

“
I think I’ll stay and
watch TV for a while.”

“
Be home by seven. I don’t
want your mom to call looking for you.”

“
Okay,” he said, turning to
go. Halfway to the door he bent down. “What’s this?” I looked to
find him picking up a red and white scarf with tiny chirping birds
speckled all over.

“Appalling, it could only belong to...” I
glanced at the signature scrawled across the receipt. “...Pattie
Hankey, equally appalling.” I held out my hand.

Passing it over, Stephen
lectured, “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”

“
She’s not a book. Now go
away.”

After Stephen left I
quickly became bored. I played MASH a few times, discovering that I
was either going to marry Leonardo DiCaprio or Steve Buscemi,
depending on which game you counted. I wondered if MASH was a gift,
and if someone was out there legitimately predicting futures with
it.

The boredom persisted, so I
pretended to be blind, closing my eyes to try and learn the room
like they did in the movies. I counted steps, substituting a
flyswatter for a cane. It didn’t really work. I know because I
slammed my thigh into the sideboard.

In an act of desperation I
collected Pattie’s scarf and a phonebook for her room, so bored I
was willing to deliver both items. I left the office, checking the
lot to make sure there were no customers—I’m sorry, guests—coming.
I wanted to stretch out the task, so I walked slowly.

Ahead was the small
breezeway that separated the two units. Stephen used it daily, a
shortcut to the cleaning cart which we kept in a storage shack out
back. Nearing it I noticed a mist floating in from behind the
building, filling the walkway floor.

I stopped abruptly,
becoming nervous because I’d seen this before. The mist moved
lazily, swirling slowly, but rising higher.

I cursed and stumbled back,
wondering how I could be seeing a ghost without the ring. And then
I felt it, the thin wire band wrapped snug against my finger. I had
no recollection of putting it on, and yet there I was wearing
it.

The night was deceptively
peaceful. The cicadas sang and the trees swayed, their leaves lit
silver by the half moon. But I hardly noticed because I was too
busy staring at the rising mist, unable to move away. It began to
form a coiling milky pillar, compressing itself into the shape of a
man.

We stood staring at one
another until he stepped closer. Startled, not to mention scared
shitless, I jerked back, tumbling off the sidewalk into the parking
lot.

He wafted toward me
silently, and as he passed in front of the mounted lights they
obscured his image like a hologram blinking out. He loomed over me,
and I could do nothing, not even breathe.

He seemed to solidify,
turning that sickly gray, a cadaver’s complexion. He leaned over
me, his face pressed so close I sunk back to avoid him, his glassy
eyes filling my vision. “Go away,” I whispered.

I felt a burst of emotion,
mostly it was a mix of amazement and surprise, but I felt the
subtly of relief and a growing eagerness, no,
anxiousness.

He straightened so fast I hadn’t even seen
him move. But I did see him raise his arm as he prepared to hit
me.

I screamed, flinching when
the phonebook flew from my arms. I opened my eyes to find the ghost
had moved away, now kneeling hunched over the book and flipping
pages.

“
That’s what you’re all
excited about, a phonebook?”

He turned, scowling at me,
his face fading as he became transparent. I realized he could hear
me, I just couldn’t hear him. Not his voice, not even the whisper
of his clothing or the scuffing of his boots.