Puppet (11 page)

“I fell asleep?”

“Snores and all,” Ben confirms.

“I snored?”

“I guess some things never change.”

Amanda feels her cheeks grow warm despite the cold blast of air that hits her face as the uniformed doorman pulls open the car door. “Women don’t snore,” she tells Ben testily, grabbing the doorman’s hand and pulling herself up and out of the car.
“I
don’t snore.” She can’t decide if she’s angry at him for his casual—and somewhat proprietary—reference to their shared past, or at herself for falling asleep, as if, by doing so, she has
exposed her vulnerability and thereby allowed him the upper hand. The upper hand at what? she wonders, reaching into the backseat for her overnight bag, feeling the leather fingers of Ben’s gloves brush against her bare knuckles. “I can do that,” she tells him, as he lifts the bag from the backseat and carries it toward the lobby. “You don’t have to come in.” But he is already inside the revolving door, and by the time she pushes her way through, he is only steps away from the reception desk.

Amanda stops abruptly, feeling the whoosh of the glass door as it continues revolving behind her. So, this is where it happened, she thinks, sniffing at the perfumed air for the merest whiff of blood. This is where my mother shot and killed a man.

She stares at the large, rectangular, floral-print rug that cuts across the middle of the large, well-lit lobby, searching for maroon-colored stains anywhere along its dark wool surface, but she finds none, which means it’s undoubtedly a replacement. Can’t very well let a large pool of blood be the first sight that greets unwary travelers. Not exactly the stuff of good first impressions.

A glorious arrangement of real flowers sits in the middle of a mahogany table in the center of the rug. Coppery brown marble covers the walls and floor. Mirrored-glass columns stretch toward the high ceiling. A bank of ornate elevators line the far wall, the reception desk to their right. A lobby bar is on the left, as are several comfortable seating areas, each with a sofa and two chairs in complementary shades of beige. This is where my mother sat all day, waiting to murder one of the guests, Amanda realizes, trying to guess exactly which chair her mother might have chosen.

“Amanda,” Ben calls from the reception desk. “They need some identification.”

Amanda pushes herself toward him, although it seems she’s lost all sensation in her legs. She feels her knees about to give way, and she stumbles. Instantly Ben is at her side, his hand on her elbow, guiding her forward.

“Are you all right?”

“They cleaned things up pretty quick,” she mutters, brushing aside his concern with an impatient toss of her head, and proffering her passport to the clerk.

“Good evening, Ms. Travis.” The young man’s smile reveals at least a dozen more teeth than necessary. “Nice to have you with us. I see you’ll be staying here for seven nights.”

“No,” Amanda corrects sharply.

The desk clerk visibly blanches, his teeth disappearing behind the thin line of his lips.

“Two nights will be more than enough.” Amanda glares at her former husband, as if to say, What on earth would make you think I might consider staying a full week?

Ben says nothing. The desk clerk pushes a form across the desk, indicates the place for her signature.

“Don’t you need an imprint of my credit card?” Amanda asks when the clerk fails to request it.

“The gentleman has already taken care of that.”

Amanda smiles tightly and hands the clerk her own credit card, whispering under her breath to Ben, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just trying to expedite things.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I know that.” He refrains from stating the obvious—“You always have”—but she hears it anyway.

What was John Mallins doing at the reception desk when her mother shot him? she wonders. Was this the same clerk he’d been talking to at the time?

“You’re on the sixteenth floor,” the young man tells her, looking altogether too cheery to have recently witnessed a cold-blooded killing. He hands her a small envelope containing her key card, then lowers his voice, as if he is about to impart some news of great importance. “Room 1612. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call. Do you need help with your bags?”

“We’re fine,” Ben informs him, slipping the overnight bag back over his shoulder and heading for the bank of elevators.

Amanda is about to stop him, tell him she can handle things from here on out, that it isn’t necessary for him to accompany her to her room, that just because her mother shot and killed a man in the lobby of this very hotel, she doesn’t need tucking in and looking after, that she isn’t the damsel in distress he thought he’d rescued when he married her, that he should know better by now.

Unless of course, he’s in the mood for a conciliatory quickie, she decides. A brief reminder of the impulsiveness of their youth, an acknowledgment of the chemistry still stalking them, something to get out of their systems once and for all, a let’s-just-satisfy-our-curiosity-and-get-this-over-with kind of onetime thing they could enjoy and then forget ever happened. She might be up for that, she is thinking, as he lowers her bag to the marble floor.

“I’ll let you find your way from here,” he tells her.

Amanda tries not to look either surprised or disappointed. It’s better this way, she decides, wondering if he’s
going to suggest having dinner after she settles in. She’s hungry. She hasn’t eaten anything all day.

“I’ll pick you up around one o’clock tomorrow,” he says instead.

“Fine.” Room service it is, she thinks, retrieving her bag from the floor as a set of elevator doors opens to her left. She steps inside and presses the button for the sixteenth floor.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Ben unzips his jacket and pulls out a large manila envelope, thrusting it toward her just as a middle-aged couple enter the elevator, snow sparkling on the shoulders of the woman’s black mink coat.

“What’s this?” Amanda asks.

“Something you might want to look at later.”

The envelope weighs heavily in Amanda’s hands, as the woman in the black mink coat presses the button for the twenty-eighth floor, and the elevator doors draw to a close.

Amanda throws her overnight bag across the queen-size bed and walks to the window, stares down at the street. It’s very dark, and only a few people are out walking, their faces buried against the raised collars of their winter coats, their backs hunched against the wind, snow falling like confetti on their heads. “What the hell am I doing here?” she asks the silent room. Just last night I was staring out the window at the ocean. “Last night you were puking your guts out,” she amends, exchanging the envelope in her hand for the room-service menu lying on the desk. She grabs the remote-control unit from the top of a nearby cabinet and flips on the television. “Get some
noise in here,” she says, glancing back at the envelope on the desk, and deciding not to open it until after she’s had something to eat. She already has a pretty good idea what’s inside it. She should eat something first. Shore up her strength.

It takes less than a minute to unpack the few items in her bag, five more minutes to decide what she wants for dinner. “I’ll have the carrot soup and the roast chicken,” she tells room service, as a television announcer excitedly reminds her to stay tuned for
Hockey Night in Canada.

“That’ll be one hour,” room service says.

“An hour?”

“We’re very busy.”

Amanda hangs up the phone and plops down on the edge of the bed, her eyes moving restlessly between the salmon-colored walls and the beige carpet at her feet. She leans back, kicks off her black, ankle-high boots, and dangles her now bare feet in the air, as if she were sitting at the end of a dock. “What am I going to do for an hour?” she asks the floral print on the wall above the bed.

She could watch television. Except she doesn’t understand a thing about hockey, and two complete cycles with the remote-control unit reveal there is absolutely nothing on TV she wants to see. Even the porn available—among the offerings, something called
The Fuller Bush Girl
—fails to tempt her.

She could take a walk, explore the neighborhood, with its trendy boutiques and hip nightclubs. Except that it’s cold and it’s wet, the shops are all closed, and even the thought of alcohol makes her stomach lurch.

Damn that ex-husband of hers anyway. Where was he rushing off to in such a hurry? Hot date with the
comely assistant crown attorney? “Well, it
is
Saturday night,” she reminds herself out loud, falling back against the pillows and wondering why she is thinking about Ben at all. She’s barely thought of him in years.

Although that’s not exactly true, she admits silently, covering her eyes with her right forearm, trying to block out the image of him standing in the airport, her first sight of him in over eight years. And there he was, looking as good as he had on the day she’d told him she was leaving.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he’d said simply, then, even more simply, “Do you?”

Amanda sits up abruptly. “I will not do this.” She reaches for the phone. “No way am I going through that again.” She calls the operator. “Can you get me the hotel at the Metro Convention Center, please?” A minute later, she is talking to a woman who greets her in both English and French. “Jerrod Sugar’s room, please. Thank you.”

“Mr. Sugar isn’t answering,” the woman informs her after half a dozen rings. “Would you like to leave a message on his voice mail?”

“No, thank you. I’ll call back.” Missed your chance, big guy, Amanda thinks as she hangs up the phone. “Okay, I give up.
Hockey Night in Canada
it is!” She flips to the proper channel, spends ten minutes trying to follow the action. “What the hell is an ‘offside’?” she demands of the announcer, pushing herself off the bed and deciding to take a bath. She turns on the tap, strips out of her clothes, and stands naked in the middle of the bathroom, waiting for the tub to fill.

The phone rings.

“Ben,” she says, turning off the tap, and reaching for the phone beside the toilet. She lets it ring a second time
before picking it up. No point in appearing too eager. “Hello?”
No, I think I’m too tired for dinner. Thanks anyway. I’m just going to climb into a hot bath and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.

“Ms. Travis,” an unfamiliar voice says, “this is room service. We forgot to ask what kind of potatoes you’d like with your chicken.”

A sharp stab of disappointment pushes its way between Amanda’s breasts. “What are my choices?”

“We have french fries, mashed, baked, or au gratin.”

She shrugs. “Baked.”

“Butter, sour cream, chives, bacon?”

What the hell? “All of the above.”

“Thank you. We’ll get that to you as soon as possible.”

Amanda returns the receiver to its carriage, turns the hot-water tap back on, and watches until the tub is full almost to the very top. Steam is rising from its surface as she steps gingerly inside, the water quickly turning her skin an alarming shade of pink as she settles in and closes her eyes. “What’s the matter with you?” she asks, water sneaking between her barely parted lips. Are you upset because your mother murdered a man in cold blood, or because your ex-husband didn’t ask you out to dinner?

She flips onto her side, causing water to splash over the edge of the tub and onto the floor. Don’t be ridiculous, she castigates herself. I have no interest in Ben Myers. He is part of a past I couldn’t wait to escape, a past I
did
escape, a past he has somehow managed to drag me back into.
That
is what I’m so upset about, why I’m feeling at such loose ends. It has nothing to do with him. Nothing at all.

Except did he have to show up at the airport, looking so goddamn knight-in-shining-armorish? Did he have to look so damn good?

Amanda feels the sudden threat of tears and sits up abruptly, once again sending spasms through the water and causing it to slosh over the side of the tub. Ripping the paper cover off the small bar of soap, she begins furiously scrubbing at her arms and legs, rolling the sweet-smelling soap across her breasts and stomach, trying to ignore the tears now falling down her cheeks, to pretend that they are merely errant drops of bathwater. She swipes at them with the back of her hand, feels the acidlike sting of soap in her eyes. Good, she thinks. Something real to cry about.

She pushes a washcloth against her eyes, presses it against her closed lids until she sees small squares of gray, like a crossword puzzle. And then the puzzle explodes into a series of images: Ben following her out of the club she’d been tossed from because the bartender wasn’t buying her fake ID, then kissing her full on the mouth before he even told her his name; Ben’s hair falling into his eyes as he thrust himself repeatedly inside her, his entire body glistening with sweat; Ben’s naked body as he lay sleeping beside her, his sly smile when he awoke and reached for her again.

They were so good together.

Before he started mistaking sex for love.

“No!” Amanda cries now, shaking her head, water spraying from her hair like water from a dog’s back. “I am not doing this.”

Except she has always done
exactly
this, she thinks, wrapping herself in a thick white towel and emerging
from the tub. She has always used sex—as a weapon, as a panacea, as a way of keeping her distance, of maintaining control. She laughs. Intimacy as a substitute for intimacy. Hadn’t Sean accused her of that very thing?

Amanda wraps herself in the long, white terry-cloth robe the hotel provides, towel-drying her hair as she returns to the bedroom. Outside her window, snow continues to fall. Inside, burly young men continue skating across the television screen. An announcer yells, “Icing!”—whatever that means. Only a minute away from her still-steaming bath, and already Amanda feels cold. She checks the clock beside her bed. Almost half an hour before dinner is scheduled to arrive. Reluctantly, she grabs the manila envelope from the desk and carries it to the bed, where she pulls down the floral bedspread and sticks her feet beneath crisp white sheets. “Might as well get this over with.”