Cursed be the Wicked (3 page)

Right?

I distract myself from being paranoid by concentrating on the fact that, at least she’s not wearing one of those fake smiles that most people in the customer service industry wear. She seems, I don’t know. Genuine.
Unique
.

Which is why to me, she doesn’t seem to quite fit in with the workplace she’s chosen.

I begin to wonder why she might be here.

I’m also very obviously staring again and she’s most certainly noticing, so I scratch at the back of my neck and force myself to look at something else.

Her fingers are typing still, but her eyes are on me. I can feel them and it’s making me nervous.

“Well, then are you—?”

“Seriously,” I blurt out, exhausted. “Do you always talk this much?”

I don’t mean to sound like such a jerk but nonetheless, I do and Betsy stops short of whatever she was about to ask. She appraises me, then shrugs the rudeness off and goes back to her data entry.

“Just asking.”

After a few moments of awkward silence, she finally tells me the price for the night and pulls a visitors book out for me to sign. I search my wallet for the company credit card that has my pen name attached to it while she places the book onto the counter. It’s difficult
not
to notice the small tattoo peeking out from behind some bracelets she’s wearing.

I try to act like I’m not staring for once.

I fail.

As I hand the card to her, she catches me inspecting the tat and adjusts the rings around her wrist so they cover it up, then purposefully eyes me as though she’s about to ask more questions.

I spy a few pamphlets lining the wall just to my left and figure tourism should be good enough of a reason for being here.

I reach for the brochures about Salem and she takes the bait, nodding in understanding.

“You should go see the Witch House. It’s the only remaining structure left in the town from the witch trials of sixteen hundred and—”

“I’ll try to make time for it.” I try to sound polite but I’m not a hundred percent sure I pull it off. I mean I did just cut her off, but really, I don’t really want to talk about Salem. I don’t want to talk about much of anything, really. I need sleep. And besides, if anything, I feel more compelled to ask her about that tattoo she’s hiding. But something about pushing the semi-exasperating woman who now holds all of my personal information in the palm of her hand too far makes me apprehensive.

Piss off a disgruntled customer service representative and you never know what might mysteriously happen to your bank account one day.

“How about the . . .”

I’m not listening anymore as she rambles on about some other place to go see. I’m trying to get another glimpse at that damn ink on her wrist without being too overt about it. I’ve seen most everything there is to see in Salem, anyway. In fact, I can probably write the majority of my piece with both hands tied behind my back from the comfort and safety of my own apartment down in Florida. But since Bill doesn’t know that and I can’t tell him because that would just add fuel to his fire, here I am.

That thought brings the reason I’m here to the forefront of my mind and a vision of my mother, dead in a casket, flashes before my eyes.

I get a little lightheaded. I’m also sweating. And very cold.

“You okay?” I hear Betsy ask. She sounds genuinely concerned but her voice is muffled so I can’t be sure.

I blink a couple of times and just like that, I’m feeling better. Like it never happened. I look down to avoid her gaze and realize her hand is on top of mine. I’m not sure when she placed it there but surprisingly, it’s nice. Calming.

“You look a little pale. If you’re gonna be sick—”

“I’m fine,” I tell her, dismissing whatever it was that just happened as dehydration or malnutrition.
Maybe both.

Betsy doesn’t believe me. Again.

“Well,” she says, holding a room key out for me to take. “Here ya go, Mr.
Stone.
Second floor, last room on the right.”

Her lips do this half smile thing, and although I have the urge to smile back, all I manage to do is take the key from her hands and go.

“Hey wait!” I hear as I start up the stairway.

So close.

It crosses my mind that maybe she’s decided she
does
know who I am after all. Until I turn to see that tattooed hand extend itself out to me. That’s when I notice, in between her slender fingers, the ones that gave me solace just a few minutes before, is my credit card.

I let out a short laugh at myself and before I can sneak another peek at her wrist, I take the piece of plastic from her like an idiot instead of letting her hold it out for me a little while longer.

I don’t know what it is about it that’s captured my attention. I’m not anti-tattoo
by any means, but I don’t exactly go seeking them out or have tattoo crushes on people who have them either. I don’t really think much about them at all.

“I’m guessing you’re not gonna get too far without this.” She snorts at her own joke and I take in the rest of her that I couldn’t see when she was standing behind the desk out front.

She has a uniform type looking vest on over the top of a Polo shirt and her nametag is properly displayed. But the rest of her, well, let’s just say, casual as the atmosphere might be at B&B’s, ripped up jeans with pink heart patches at the knees and flip flops doesn’t quite fit the bill for a uniform in my mind.

“Shoot,” she scolds herself. When she notices me staring again she adds, “I don’t usually leave the front desk. I just figured you might need that.”

I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed that she felt the need to explain.

“Not a problem,” I tell her while I start up the long flight of stairs again.

“Need help with those?” she asks and I can’t help but assume she’s only being nice because she doesn’t want me to call her manager and complain about her outfit.

“No thanks,” I tell her with finality, only to make the rookie mistake of looking back after a couple of steps. I’m safe though, thankfully. She’s headed to her desk. She’s shaking her head and waving a hand at something and this time, I let myself stand for a few seconds longer to enjoy the view.

The two flights of stairs I climb feel like twenty. When I get to the second floor, I stop and breathe. My chest doesn’t feel tight the way it had when I first arrived and somehow, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking about how it has something to do with the kooky front desk clerk downstairs. In my room, I drop my bags and open the curtains to take a look at the view. I can barely see the city lights over in Salem from here and this is when it hits me how very
not
fun this trip is going to be.

“Just another job, Coop,” I remind myself again.

The room phone rings and I’m grateful for the distraction but I stare at it from the window, long and hard, before finally going to answer it on the fourth ring. I’m not sure who would know to call me here already.

I listen for a second or two before saying anything.

“Hello?”

Static plays from the other end. I can hear someone talking but not well enough to understand them. When I ask who it is there’s no response. Then one last time, I say, “Hello?”

I listen closely to see if I can make out anything they’re saying this time and my heart skips a beat when I could swear I hear, plain as day, “Coooooop.”

The voice is broken and barely audible. After shaking off the creeptastic way whoever it is sounds on the other end, I press them.

“Who is this?”

The line goes dead and I stand there, wondering if I really heard what I think I heard. I mean, I guess it could be Bill but how would he know I’m here? Surely he’d assume I made it to the Hawthorne, over in the city.

Fairly quickly, I blow it off and start thinking of words that rhyme with Coop. Words that they could have actually been saying instead of my name.

“Dupe, Loop, Scoop.” I stop at that one. “Could have been scoop. The line was bad.”

I buy into it and get back to putting my things away. As I pull the laptop out of my bag, I stop short as the phone rings a second time.

I eye the thing, because once, okay, that might be a mistake in dialing, but two in a row?

This time when I answer, I know I sound irritated. It’s because I am.

“Who are you trying to call?” I ask the static. When no one answers, I find that I’m listening intently for them to say something again, only they don’t.

“Hello.”
I say it more sternly this time. After a few seconds, the line goes dead again.

And now I’m past irritated.

I’m full blown, all out annoyed as hell.

I call downstairs to see if maybe Betsy is trying to contact me or some reason or another but I get no answer.

After I hang up, I stand there, waiting for it to ring again but it doesn’t. So I pull my laptop out of its bag and start to open it up so I can check some email.

When I hit the power button, the phone rings for the third time.

This time, I set the laptop down and rush over to the phone, pulling it off of its nineteen-eighty receiver with a vengeance.

“Call this number one more time and I will hunt you down with every contact I have available to me, asshole.”

To my shock and awe, after I’m done going on a tirade, I hear nothing coming from the other end of the line.

As in, no static.

I wait, confused. I’m half nervous, half beginning to get a little suspicious of what’s going on.

“Can I . . . help you?” a hesitant voice finally asks from the other end of the line and I huff out sarcastically.

“Excuse me?” I recognize her voice as soon as I hear it. It’s starting to make sense what’s going on now. She clearly didn’t like the way I ended things on the stairs.

“I said, can I
help
you?” she asks again, a tad more ballsy than I expect her to sound.

“You called
me.
I should be asking
you
that after three prank calls. I mean, what, I didn’t wanna chitchat so you decided to screw with me for the rest of the night?”

“I don’t know what you’re
talking
about,” she tells me. “The front desk rang, I answered it, and you screamed into my ear. So again, I ask, what. Can. I. do. For. You?” Then I hear a muffled “
jerk,”
afterwards.

I’m not gonna lie, her rant throws me into a bit of a tailspin.

“You’re serious? So you’re trying to tell me that even though nobody knows I’m here, and clearly none of your
other
guests should or would be calling me, I’m supposed to believe that you haven’t been calling my room and letting the sound of loud static force me to go deaf?”

Okay, I exaggerate a little, but I’m ticked.

“Listen, Mister
Stone
. . .”

“Don’t
listen
me, sweetheart. If you’re worried about that skimpy little outfit of yours getting you into trouble, don’t worry, I don’t care enough about you to report you,” I tell her. And then with one final, vengeful action, I slam the phone down and smirk at it, hoping it made her eardrums ring in retaliation.

I am
fuming
.

There might be a small part of me that knows I’m not actually fuming about the interaction with the front desk clerk so much as I am toward having to be this close to home again.

Still, it’s a small part, so when my cell phone rings, it hasn’t
completely
registered with me that it’s not the guest room phone ringing or that it isn’t my friendly neighborhood pain in the ass when I answer it.

Let’s just say, it’s not the nicest conversation starter to have with your boss.

“Fuck.
Off.
”

“You’re not still mad, are ya Coop?”

Shit.

“Bill? I’m sorry, I thought you were . . .”

I realize I’m holding my cell phone in my hand as opposed to the receiver of the room phone and cringe.

“Thought I was . . .” he prods.

“Nobody, nothing. What’s up?”

“Just checking in on ya, making sure you got to Salem alright,” he says. He takes a short breather before adding, “You’re okay, right Coop?”

Am I? Honest to God I have no idea what the answer to his question is, but I don’t want Bill worrying about whether or not I’m competent enough to pull this job off at this point. After the hard time I gave him last night, he’s bound to fire me if he thinks I can’t hack it.

“Yeah, I’m cool, everything’s good. Look, I got in a lot later than I thought I would so I checked into a place off I-95. I’ll, um, drive in to Salem tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” he mutters. “And Coop?”

“Yeah boss?”

“Excellent work on the article you submitted this morning. I can’t wait to see what you do with Salem.”

“Sure thing, Bill. And thanks.”

We say our goodbyes and I toss the phone down onto the bed. I’m not far behind. I lay there and think about how this trip needs to go down.

For one thing, I need to get a grip on myself and get over things that happened almost fifteen years ago. At least for the next couple of weeks. I also need to stop participating in what could be construed as angry flirtatious banter with cute front desk clerks. And I definitely need to have a drink.

I sit up and pull out a mini rum bottle from my bag that I stashed there from my flight and twist the cap off. I drink it down straight and when I’m done, I close my eyes, letting the heat travel down my throat.

I figure two or three more and I’ll be numb enough to not really care
why
I’m here anymore.

I lean over to get another one and kick my laptop bag over. When I go to set it up right again, a slip of paper falls out of one the front pockets and I stare it down for a minute.