Bellweather Rhapsody (22 page)

His third home was Clinton’s Kill’s Carnegie library, or had been when Rome Cohen was still the town’s librarian. Rome and Hastings had been friends for . . . to tell the truth, Hastings had no idea how long he’d known Jerome Cohen. A long time. Too long. Rome was younger than Hastings, though not by much. They had grown up in Clinton’s Kill knowing of each other, in the same way that all denizens of a small town are peripherally aware of one another’s existence. Hastings had been a lifelong library patron—he had read every title in its mystery and crime section—but it wasn’t until Rome began renting a room at the Bellweather from time to time, much later in his life, that the two men became more than generic acquaintances. The room was for entertainment purposes, Rome told Hastings as he tapped his American Express card on the front desk. Really, the room was so Rome had someplace to bring a woman after a date without having to take her to his own house, which was an uninhabitable nest of clutter. Hastings was oddly charmed by Rome’s little assignations; they reminded him of the old days of the Bellweather, the days of illicit affairs and three-piece suits, summer flings, passionate trysts.

“What d’you know, Hastings,” Rome would say while his date was barely out of earshot. “Who’d a thought a library would attract so much squirrel, huh?”

“You are a gentleman and a scholar” was Hastings’s typical reply.

“You should come by! Oh, I know you’re spoken for.” Rome would grin. “I meant for the books.”

And the bourbon, which Rome served in conical white cups he would order in bulk from some discount warehouse, cups you could never set down because of their pointed bottoms—the reason Hastings went home from the library several sheets to the wind more times than he would care to admit. The Carnegie was a beautiful old building, all cool classical stone outside and warm golden wood inside, with glorious tall windows that made him think of church. It had gone up in the early twentieth century, the fruit of Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s grant money, when the idea that Clinton’s Kill would become something grand seemed beyond dispute. The Bellweather had been built around the same time. Perhaps that’s what had kept Hastings so fond of Rome, so loyal to him, despite all his peculiarities; they were men who’d outlived their ages, brothers fixed to the buildings in their blood.

But while Hastings would go down with his ship, Rome chose to jump. He was old enough for Social Security and had a nest egg, and he didn’t want anything to do with computers. “They’re coming,” he told Hastings one night, neatly folding his conical white cup into a flat triangular spear. “The computers are coming and they’re going to smother everything that’s real.”

The computers are here. Hastings has been to the Carnegie since Rome’s retirement, but only to check out and return books. Today he has come to do research, and instead of the matte-gray window of the microfiche reader, he is staring into a cool shining television. The bright blue screen bulges slightly out of its square box of off-white plastic, humming weirdly, and if Hastings didn’t feel it was of the utmost importance to discover just who is staying in his hotel this weekend, he thinks he would turn around and walk straight out.

“Do you need help, sir?”

The girl—Rome’s replacement has only ever been discussed, between the two of them, as “the girl,” though she is clearly well past girlhood—smiles pleasantly at him. “Are you looking for a legal document or a newspaper article?”

“Newspapers, please,” he says. His hands hover instinctively over the tray of beige keys. He momentarily wonders what happened to his Underwood. It had belonged to his father; he wrote letters to Jess on it, once upon a time. “I’m looking for information about a woman named Viola Fabian.”

The girl takes a seat beside Hastings. “Do you know how to double-click, sir?”

“Hastings,” he says. “Please, call me Hastings.”

She smiles. “Hastings. Place your right hand on this—” She indicates a plastic lump the size and shape of one of the hotel’s fancy éclairs. “Have you ever used a mouse? It makes the arrow move on the screen. It’s how you talk to the computer.” He flinches to see the small white arrow move in tune with his own hand. How odd. How damned odd. “Tap your index finger twice when the arrow is over that icon—” He taps twice. Nothing happens; he’s too deliberate, apparently. He taps again. Still too slow. And again, irritated, but this time the icon twitches and the screen goes from blue to white. He blinks.

“Now type the name you’re looking for in that box, inside quotation marks,” says the girl, who’s taken charge of the mouse for him. A vertical line blinks on and off inside a tan rectangle. “This database is called LexisNexis. Right now you’re searching literally hundreds of newspapers published around the world. How amazing is that?”

Hastings blinks again. A tiny hourglass spins in the middle of the screen.

“It is rather amazing, I suppose,” he says. He would never tell Rome, but the girl is perfectly nice. The screen suddenly fills with lines of text. “Looks like we found a few things,” she says. She does something quickly, too quickly, with the mouse, and he hears an even louder humming noise off to his left. She stands.

“The first printouts are free, Mr. Hastings,” she says as she hands him several pieces of warm paper. “Let me know if I can help with anything else.”

He nods and mutters thank you. He has never needed Rome Cohen and his library bourbon more than he does right now.

Rome hasn’t booked a night at the Bellweather in well over a decade. Maybe longer. In retirement, Rome had blossomed into a misanthropic hermit who only ever let one person into his house. Hastings has mixed feelings about having been granted this dubious honor. Sometimes when Hastings visited Rome he felt he ought to bring reinforcements—the police, Sheila, compassionate-looking women at the Buy-Rite next to the gas station—to drag Rome back into the real world before it was too late. Rome would never leave on his own. He knew his house, every square inch, every scrap of information contained on every sheet of paper, every photograph and artifact and piece of junk. It was the only world he knew anymore, the only world he trusted, and Hastings never brought reinforcements because he didn’t have the heart to take that away from his friend.

Rome’s house was a two-story Victorian not far from the Carnegie, in the center of Clinton’s Kill, about a twenty-minute walk from the Bellweather. Hastings is puffing clouds like a smokestack into the crisp November air by the time he raises his hand to the rusted door knocker. He didn’t like the sky on his walk over, and it looks worse now. The clouds are too heavy. They’ve been predicting snow all week, but every forecast has gotten progressively more dire. His knees and ankles, achier now that he’s been walking, do not disagree.

“Go away,” says Rome, already on the other side of the door.

“It’s me.”

“I know. Go away.”

“I’d like a drink, Rome.”

“Who wouldn’t.”

“Rome, I just want to talk. Something strange is going on at the hotel and I—”

There is a series of clicks and snaps and clacks as Rome unlocks each of the eight deadbolts that run the length of the doorjamb.

“Get in here, putz,” says Rome. “Of course something strange is going on at the hotel.”

“What do you mean?” Hastings asks as he steps inside, cautiously avoiding three neat stacks of thick gray pharmaceutical manuals.

“Isn’t this your annual pubescent orgy?” says Rome, already disappearing into a forest of musty objects. His house has a perpetual odor of wet paper and old coffee grounds. Hastings follows him past a disintegrating lawn chair, its seat stacked high with newspapers touting the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. What must have been Rome’s mother’s pie rack now displays thirty or more empty Big Gulp cups. A bowling ball bag. Books. Books. More and more books. Bloated, ruffled paperbacks and ancient hardcovers with split spines and textbooks with skewed covers, no covers, ripped covers.

Rome’s trail ends in the dining room. At least, Hastings thinks it was the dining room, from what he remembers of the house in earlier, less cluttered years. A large wooden table, big enough to seat twelve or more, is covered with copy paper boxes and stacks of glossy magazines, save for one bald corner—the only open surface in the house, Hastings thinks. Rome points to a white wooden stool.

“Have a seat. I’d offer you that drink, but I’m not sharing what’s left of the bourbon.”

Rome’s eyeglasses, which he broke years ago but never got repaired, are held together on the bridge with a piece of clear tape. He takes them off and polishes them on the edge of his cardigan.

“It’s beyond teenagers running amok,” Hastings says. “It’s a woman.”

“Isn’t it always.”

“Doug Kirk had a heart attack a few weeks ago. So this woman is subbing for him, running the festival this year, and she’s—” Hastings sits on the stool and winces. His knees are swollen now, tender. “She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met, Rome.”

“Describe. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Well.” He loosens his bow tie. “She’s probably in her fifties, early to mid. Striking. Long white hair. Lovely features—she’s this side of gorgeous. But she’s terribly unprofessional. Cruel. I watched her verbally attack a young girl, a student. The girl probably wasn’t innocent, but still, you don’t expect that kind of behavior in an arts administrator. When you’re in a room with her, it feels smaller. You’re drawn to her, you
must
pay attention to her. You want her to pay attention to
you,
and at the same time you’re afraid to attract her notice. I’ve spent a grand total of thirty minutes in her presence, maybe less, and I can’t stop worrying about her. She doesn’t seem entirely human.”

Rome rubs his chin.

“I came down here to look her up at the library, see what I could find. If I have a reason to be worried she’s sleeping under my roof.” Hastings flutters the handful of papers he received from the girl. “It’s research by pushbutton these days. No more spooling, no more heaving great dusty volumes of crumbling newspaper around. Just ‘double-click’ and print.” He shakes his head.

“So
that’s
what you’re doing down here,” says Rome. “Fraternizing with the usurper.”

“She’s not the usurper, Rome. She was quite nice. And that’s not the only reason I came. It’s going to snow tonight; you know my standing offer.”

Rome props his elbow on a pile of magazines. “You honestly think we’ll be safer stuck in a hotel infested with hormonal morons? I should offer to let you stay
here,
Hastings.” He snorts. “Though I’ve half a mind to take you up on it this time.”

Hastings blinks. “Are you serious?”

“You offered.” Rome pushes his mangled glasses up his nose. “All these years, were you kidding? Did I just call your bluff?”

“You’re going to leave your house? You, Rome? When was the last time you walked thirty feet from your door, let alone half a mile through town?”

“We can take the ATV. I keep it gassed up in case the Rapture comes.” Rome snorts again. “That was sarcasm. But I do keep it gassed.”

“Does it have a sidecar?” Hastings does not know what to make of this. He offered and he meant it, every time; it was due diligence to at least ask. Much as it occasionally depressed him, Jerome Cohen was, next to Jess, his oldest friend. His only friend. It was right to save him from being buried alive in his tomb of a house during a snowstorm, but he never, ever expected Rome to agree to it. Rome was the most dependable, unchanging, unmovable stone in his life, and if Rome is motivated to act, something is wrong. Something very queer is happening.

“Why, Rome? I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m legitimately curious.”

“Because you’re my friend and I know you’re disappointed Doug Kirk’s not here.” Rome pushes at the taped bridge of his glasses and grins. “And because of that lady. Your mysterious research subject. I want to meet her.”

“Why?”

“She sounds like a bona fide psychopath.”

At the check-in desk, Sheila, ever the professional, doesn’t blink at the sight of Jerome Cohen. She barely lets on that he’s darkening the lobby, has set a ragged cardboard box of toiletries and clothes on the carpet. The only way to describe him, physically, is to say he is a dumpy little man, unpleasant and frayed, his meanness solidified by the compression of time. Mostly forehead, with white caterpillar eyebrows. He points a thumb backward at the front doors.

“I parked around the side. Hastings told me I could.”

“He can stay with me,” Hastings says, and Sheila cocks her head. “I’ll get a cot from housekeeping.” He waves his hand dismissively to say,
I know. Leave him to me.

“Sure,” she says, brows pulled together in gentle concern. Sheila is such a good kid. She started working at the Bellweather part-time in high school and came on full-time after her graduation last spring. Much as he appreciates her service to the hotel and to him, Hastings knows she deserves a life elsewhere. A life of fresh air beyond the confines of this moldy old hotel. This moldy old hotel that he loves, but that is collapsing around their ears. Who knows how many more years the Bellweather has in her. How many spring floods along the basement tunnels, how many summer thunderstorms and fall winds against the rattly windowpanes. And snowstorms—Hastings feels a flutter near his sternum. Now they’re saying the storm is going to dump several feet of snow from Syracuse to Albany down toward the city, blanketing the Catskills. The roof has passed inspection, but Hastings can’t help but worry about the weight of all that crystallized water. God forbid a warm spell follows the storm, but it could; it’s early, not yet Thanksgiving. The glass dome over the swimming pool is still original.

“You’re a peach, Sheila,” he says, smiling at her. “I’ll get settled and be back in a while. Call me if there are any other Statewide fires.”

She frowns slightly but nods.

“She’s a cutie,” Rome says as he drops his box on Hastings’s bed. “Didn’t her mom used to work here? She looks familiar.”

“Not her mother, her aunt. Don’t put that disgusting box on my bed.” Hastings catches his reflection in the mirror on the back of his door. Going over to Rome’s always leaves him disheveled and dusty. He brushes off his sleeves and straightens his bow tie. Neatens his hair.