The Resort (28 page)

“In an hour,” he said. “But—”

“We're going,” she told him. “Sunrise services are fun. And a little religion won't kill you. Besides, we could all use some divine intervention on this trip.”

It couldn't hurt, he agreed silently.

The kids didn't want to go. He understood that perfectly. He recalled all the times as a child he had pretended to be sick so he could stay home and play instead of wasting his Sunday morning at church—a plan that invariably back-fired because if his mother suspected he was faking he got in big trouble, and if she believed him she made him spend the rest of the day home in bed.

But Rachel was right. They should go. If only to see what kind of church services a place like The Reata offered.

They got ready quickly—two bathrooms definitely helped —and finished off the last of the breakfast pastries they'd brought with them to the resort. Lowell once again checked the map in the Welcome pack, and they trudged through the predawn to the amphitheater, falling in behind a rather devout-looking man and his overdressed wife.

The amphitheater was much larger than Lowell had been expecting. It looked like a concert venue. There were numbered seats and aisles, and the stage was large enough to house an orchestra, with rigging in place for stage lights, although none were in evidence this morning. It was built into the rocks at such an angle that the rising sun would shine upon the performers or speakers on the stage from the right, illuminating them but not blinding them.

The guests were in varied attire: shirtless teenagers in sandals and bathing suits, older couples in suits and floral print dresses, assorted men and women wearing casual summer clothing. The number of people staying at The Reata at one time was surprising. Gathered all in a single place, they could have been the residents of a small town; there was about the assembled throng the same sort of diversity and cohesiveness found in a real community.

Quite a few people had brought their own Bibles, and that surprised him. It shouldn't have; polls always showed that Americans were a very religious people. But growing up and living in Southern California, where none of his friends went to church and Sunday was a day just like any other, he'd come to think of the United States as an almost completely secular society. That clearly wasn't the case, and as a person who would not have dragged his family out here this morning if the word “sunrise” had not accompanied “service,” he felt like the odd man out among these people who brought Bibles with them on vacation.

Lowell frowned. He didn't recall seeing a Gideon Bible in their suite, and he was pretty sure he'd gone through all of the drawers and cupboards in the rooms. That was weird. It was the first time he'd heard of a hotel room without a Gideon Bible, and whether it was accidental or intentional, it seemed ominous to him.

They took seats in the center, close enough to see clearly but far enough away that they could sneak out early if necessary.

The sun had risen to the edge of the desert foothills, a crescent wedge of white peeking over a rise, lightening the sky above and casting long shadows that all seemed to point to The Reata.

Emerging from behind a boulder, the minister stepped forward.

Wearing nothing but a black G-string and the head of an elk.

The gasps of the gathered faithful were audible, and people immediately began walking out, the elderly couple in front of them standing indignantly, clutching their Bibles and uttering shocked expressions of outrage, the clean-cut family to their right scurrying to escape the amphitheater as though being chased by demons—which, Lowell reflected, they might legitimately believe was the case.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen,” the minister intoned, and though his voice was muffled by the elk head, it could be heard throughout the amphitheater. “Let us bow our heads and pray. Oh, great god Pan . . .”

“Excuse me, excuse me . . .” A mother stepped in front of them, holding a hand in front of her daughter's eyes to block the girl's view of the pulpit as they hurriedly headed toward the exit.

The minister began thrusting out his black-clad, barely-covered crotch at the audience. “. . . sanction our excesses and forgive us our jests as we forgive our jesters. Lead us please into temptation . . .”

“Let me through,” an irate overweight man demanded as he shoved his way toward the aisle.

Lowell sat where he was. He wanted to see this thing through. They weren't a religious family to begin with, and he didn't think that anything they might see here would permanently harm the kids. Besides, he wanted to see if this would be taken all the way to the end. More than likely, the shock effect scared everyone off after a few minutes, but he wanted to see if the “minister” had enough additional material to perform an entire service.

Something about his attitude seemed wrong. Despite his agnosticism, he should have been outraged and disgusted by this. He should not have been so blasé about it, so
amused.
But he was. And so were Rachel, the twins and Ryan. All of them seemed to be infected with a benign tolerance, and indeed there was a high percentage of people who remained, many of whom seemed just as curious and uninvolved as they did.

“. . . in Pan's name we play! Amen.”

From close to the stage, he heard Blodgett's loud rough laugh. “Amen, brother!”

As if on cue, a single ray of sunlight shone from the right, illuminating three furiously chittering rattlesnakes that were arranged head-to-tail in a constant circle on the stage. With great flourish, the elk-headed minister reached down bare-handed and picked one up. It thrashed and flailed about in his grasp while the other two reptiles closed ranks, creating a much smaller circle.

“Rejoice and be glad in it!” the minister announced. He shoved the wildly squirming snake between the elk jaws and bit off the rattlesnake's head. The thrashing of the reptile's long body became more frantic, more intense, blood spraying out from the open neck like water from a hose. He turned it toward himself, the red soaking his chest and stomach, dripping down onto his legs, making him look like an elk that had been skinned and was walking on its hind legs. He spit out the head and then tucked the dying body into his black jockstrap, holding it there until all movement had ceased and it hung down limply like a giant phallus.

Then he began dancing.

And chanting.

The words made no sense. They seemed vaguely Native American but in a superficial, cinematic way, and Lowell had no idea if the words were real or if the man was only going for a mood or an effect. The chanting caught on, though, and soon Blodgett and his obnoxious buddies in the front row were up and dancing and emitting war whoops. At first Lowell thought they were making fun of the minister, but as seconds dragged into minutes, he began to see that they were joining him, not mocking him. He recognized a few other men who were jumping to their feet and starting to dance like evangelicals receiving the Holy Spirit in a tent revival, Coyotes rather than Roadrunners, but what really started to make him nervous was the fact that their families were joining the fray, wives and kids leaping up and going into the aisles while they shouted rhythmic gibberish.

Recognizable words slipped into the minister's nonstop chanting—“death” and “kill” and, unaccountably, “rhododendron”—while the gathered guests continued to spout nonsense. It occurred to him that the people were being hypnotized, something he'd never really believed was possible until he'd seen it a few years back at the Orange County Fair, and he wondered what the minister planned to do or suggest to his faithful once they were all under his spell. A few more individuals stood up to leave, the still-sensible people moving around the oblivious dancers and heading for the exit aisle, and Lowell decided it was time for them to do the same. He didn't know where this service was going, but he knew now that he did not want to find out. “Come on,” he said, pulling Rachel's hand.

“Let's—” she began, but she saw the look on his face and nodded. The kids, for once, came along quietly.

Out of the amphitheater, safely on a sidewalk heading back toward the rooms, the rising sun to their left, Lowell made a decision. “I think we should leave,” he said. “Today.”

He wanted to take back the words the instant he said them, but behind them he heard the rhythmic drone of the minister and his new followers, and he knew that the impulse was not his own. He walked more quickly. “Let's go back home.” He expected an argument, was half-hoping for one, but he saw only relief on the faces of his family, and that emboldened him. “I'll meet you guys back at the room,” he said. “I'm going to find out about the car.”

“Can I come, too, Dad?”

Ryan was looking at him with such hope that Lowell had to smile. “Sure,” he said. “Come on.”

“Kiss ass,” Curtis muttered under his breath, and while ordinarily Lowell would have chastised him for that, today it seemed a welcome bit of normalcy and he let it slide.

They parted by a Mexican fountain at the crossroads of two walkways, Rachel and the twins heading back to the room, he and Ryan traipsing up the hill toward the lobby. Once there, he walked directly up to the concierge. “Is that battery in my car yet? I want it fixed now.”

“Good morning to you, too, Mr. Thurman. As it happens, I just received a call from Laszlo, our chief mechanic, and he assures me that it will be ready to go by noon.” The old man smiled up at him guilelessly.

“I don't believe you,” Lowell said, and it felt good to say those words, to confront this representative of The Reata.

“I'm no mechanic,” the concierge admitted. “So I can only go by what Laszlo tells me, but he says the battery is here, and as soon as he finishes maintenance on one of our carts and installs a new something or other in a leaf blower, he's going to pop your battery right in, hook it up, and it'll be good to go.”

“Where is this Laszlo?” Lowell asked. “And where's my car? If the battery's here, I can do it myself.”

“Can't let you do that.” The concierge smiled. “Liability issues.”

“I'll sign a waiver.”

“I'm not quite sure why you're so all fired up about this. The Reata has bent over backwards to assist you. You didn't have to be towed to Tucson, we got your car fixed right here for you, and you got your battery at the wholesale price thanks to a mechanic's discount. All you have to be is a little patient. Can you do that for me?”

Lowell wanted to punch him in the face. “We are leaving today,” he said slowly. “I want my car.”

“Check out time is one o'clock,” the concierge said, speaking equally slowly. “You will have your car by noon. That will give you plenty of time.”

They stared at each other, and finally Lowell turned away. What was he hassling this guy for? The concierge just sat here at this desk and made phone calls; he didn't know what was really going on. What Lowell had to do was find the resort's auto shop, the garage, and talk to one of the mechanics face to face.

Ryan was standing near the front desk, slowly spinning the postcard rack. “Look,” he said, pointing to a wooden mail slot on the desk as Lowell walked up. “It says they mail postcards for free for you. Can I get one to send to Gary?”

“Sure,” Lowell said, though he did not want to contribute another dime to this place. He felt his anger start to ebb away. There was a
Star Trek
episode like this, he thought. One of the original ones, where after being exposed to the spores of some plant on a planet everyone became apathetic and lethargic and forgot about the things that really mattered.

The same thing was happening here. Though he didn't know how or why.

And by the time he bought Ryan a postcard and the two of them left the lobby, he didn't really care.

Patrick received his wake-up call, thanked the too-chipper chippy on the other end of the line, then promptly settled back down to sleep. He didn't feel like going to the film festival today, and, goddamn it, he wasn't going to. Fuck Townsend. That prick had gotten him into this mess, had made it damn near a
Wages of Fear
trip just to get to the festival. He could eat shit and die.

He realized that his anger was out of proportion to the situation, and he wasn't quite sure where it was coming from. Frustration from last night, he supposed, and he wondered where Vicki was, what she was doing, whether she'd spent the night in someone else's room. He pushed the thought from his mind. It was none of his business.

He closed his eyes, dozed off again, and when he awoke it was past eight o'clock. He felt good. Playing hooky agreed with him, always had, and he felt the way he had when ditching a class in high school or calling in sick to work: free. He turned on the television for background noise, showered and shaved, then took an orange juice and an apple from the minibar. He wasn't a breakfast person, and figured that would tide him over until lunch.

He had finished eating and brushing his teeth, and was trying to decide whether he should watch a
Dinner for Five
marathon on IFC or spend the morning soaking up some rays by the pool. What he
should
be doing was finishing up his second article on yesterday's festival festivities, but he'd already decided to postpone that until the afternoon. Let Townsend squirm.

There was a knock at his door. He started across the room, wondering who it could be. Someone finally come to check on the party noise that had continued almost all night long? Doubtful, since he hadn't bothered to complain this time. He opened the door. Vicki was standing there, dressed in shorts and a cutoff T-shirt, holding a white piece of paper in her hand. “I've been looking all over for you,” she said. “I know you told us your room number last night, but I forgot it, and those jerks at the front desk won't give out any personal information. So I've been walking up and down in front of different rooms, hoping one of the numbers would ring a bell.” She smiled sheepishly. “This is the fourth door I've knocked on.”