Next Life Might Be Kinder (12 page)

“This all must sound strange to you, I bet,” Elizabeth said. “Try to understand. He's a creep, bellman Padgett is. I agree with my husband. Padgett did this awful thing to the chaise longue. Bellmen have master keys, don't they? They can go into any room in the hotel.”

“I think I'd better get the police involved here,” Derek said.

“Why not get Padgett in a room with you, us, Mr. Isherwood? What do you think of that idea?” Elizabeth said. “Confront him.”

“Obviously there's no love lost between you both and Alfonse Padgett. My concern is, just because he's a creep is not exactly evidence that he tore the fabric on this nice sofa, eh?”

“Chaise longue,” Elizabeth said, a little snappishly, then shook her head and said, “Sorry.”

“No, it's okay. You're upset. You should be upset. I need to get my vocabulary correct, anyway, for my report. I'm careful with my reports. I don't like to spell even one word wrong, so if I'm in doubt, I look it up in the dictionary.” He wrote down and said out loud, “Chaise . . . longue.”

“Nobody but Alfonse Padgett would do this,” Elizabeth said. “He's acted like a creep. He's said creepy things. He's done creepy things.”

“Okay, but this had to be from a knife. This is more than creepy, I'm afraid. You've called the house detective, which is exactly what you should have done, by the way. Exactly what you should have done. But it's now officially hotel business. Someone wielding a knife against a private piece of furniture like this. I have to make a report. There's got to be an investigation.”

“Derek,” I said, “he left the ballroom before we did. He knew we weren't home. He used his passkey.”

“Sam,” Derek said, “maybe you want me to drag Padgett—and by the way, I have my own judgments about him—drag him out of his room and kick the hell out of him in the alley next to the garbage cans. But what if later I find out it wasn't him did this thing? Just consider that. Please consider my position here. We have to follow procedure. Now, Mr. Isherwood will be in at eight o'clock this morning, and I'm going to talk to him first thing, I promise you both that. I'm going to get these photographs developed first thing, too. If you can think of anything else I can do for you in this circumstance, tell me. Ring me right up. I mean it.”

“It's just that this chaise longue means a lot to me,” Elizabeth said. “And Alfonse Padgett—I just thought of this—he delivered it to our apartment. He knew it was here.”

“I'll put that right into my report,” Derek said. “I'm going back to my room and start to type it up.”

Derek, with some formality, shook Elizabeth's hand, then shook my hand. “I'm sorry this happened,” he said. “I'm sorry it happened at all, especially on my watch. Believe me, there's all sorts of things happen in a hotel. House detectives can tell all sorts of things out of school, if they're so indiscreetly inclined, they could. I'm very upset to see you suffer this violation.” Derek left and closed the door behind him.

Elizabeth took an antique quilt out of the bottom drawer of her bureau and laid it over the chaise longue. “Let's go to bed, Sam,” she said. “Maybe neither of us will be able to sleep, but if we can't sleep, at least we'll stay awake together. I hate that goddamn creep bellman.”

“We could tune something in on the shortwave. Try for Amsterdam. Or London.”

“Good.”

With Dr. Nissensen, January 9, 1973:

 

Dr. Nissensen was wearing a black suit and tie, white shirt, black dress shoes. This was far from his familiar, casual attire. I'd never seen him in a suit before. “Wedding or funeral?” I asked.

He looked down, surveying his clothes, and smoothed his tie with his hand. “Now that you've winnowed it down to two possibilities, is it important for you to know?”

“Not important.”

“Which would you prefer it to be?”

“Funeral.”

“Ah, well, I asked for that, didn't I? Yes, Mr. Lattimore, sadly, I have to attend a funeral later today.”

Silence a moment.

“He's in our apartment,” I said. “In the Essex Hotel.”

“Who is in the apartment you and Elizabeth previously occupied?”

“Istvakson.”

“I see. And how did you discover this.”

“I went in to watch the movie being made. I found out that he's been living in room fifty-eight. Can you believe it? Lizzy's and my one and only apartment.”

“Hardly arbitrary. Part of his needing to thoroughly identify with you, a requirement to keep his soul progressing. Are you thinking along those lines?”

“I'm thinking Istvakson makes me more sick by the minute.”

“Perhaps you'd be less sick if you hadn't inquired in the first place.”

“The point is, isn't it, that I
did
inquire. And he's living in our apartment.”

“I admit there's a perversity to it. Far past—what?—artistic license.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

A moment of silence. I felt that Dr. Nissensen was debating whether to say something or not.

“For your information,” he said, “the funeral is for my dry cleaner's wife. I've known them for thirty years. In fact, over the weekend I'd left all my sports coats to be dry-cleaned, and yesterday, when I went to pick them up, the dry cleaner was closed. That left me with just this suit and tie to wear. So, it's ironic, in its own way, that the one thing I have to wear is the proper thing to wear today.”

“Well, thanks for tying up those loose ends.”

“You're welcome.”

Silence another moment.

“I had an upsetting dream. I
hate
talking about dreams. You know I hate it. But this one . . .”

“Was upsetting.”

“I drove to the police station in Halifax. I walked in and right away went to a room that had a big stenciled word on the door. It said
Forensics.
I opened the door and I was taken aback. Because there was Lily Svetgartot, and she was dressed in a white lab coat. The whole room looked like one big chemistry lab. Microscopes. And she was as cool as a cucumber. And I handed her Elizabeth's copy of
The Victorian
Chaise-Longue
—”

“Not Elizabeth's dissertation, but Laski's novel.”

“The novel itself, yes. She puts it under a big microscope and says, ‘Come back in five hours and I'll tell you if I've found Elizabeth's fingerprints'—no, no—‘found fingerprints other than yours on the book.' Then I left the police station, and I couldn't find my pickup truck.”

“Excuse me a moment,” Dr. Nissensen said. He poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table next to his chair. He took a sip, set the glass down, and said, “Fingerprints—”

“—means verification. Because in a past session I told you that Elizabeth asked me to put her copy of the novel on the beach, and that she picked it up to check a reference. So you're suggesting that if I allowed Lily Svetgartot to examine the fingerprints, it might be that I am having doubts it's actually Elizabeth I see on the beach. Fuck that. I don't need verification.”

“I'm afraid that no matter how strong the will, a person can't control where the mind goes in sleep.”

“I don't care about rumor.”

“That's quite funny, Sam. To see insights into the human condition as rumor. Are we done with the dream?”

“For today.”

“That's fine. We'll pursue it later if you want.”

“Maybe in ten years.”

“Saying ‘ten years' doesn't show much confidence in our—”

“Finding some closure?”

“I have purposely not used that word.”

I needed to keep something from Dr. Nissensen. Ever try to have privacy in a therapist's office? I looked over at Theresa Nissensen's charcoal drawings and said to myself,
I love those,
but kept it to myself.

“Sam, I'm going to break professional protocol here. It might be inappropriate for me to even mention it. Certainly it's an imposition. Perhaps it doesn't technically fall under therapist-client confidentiality, because this person didn't actually become a client. It's sort of a gray area. But considering my concern for your strong, even violent feelings toward Mr. Istvakson—”

“Istvakson? What about him?”

“He inquired about an appointment with me.”

I stood up, then sat down.

“Naturally, I declined. All sorts of professional conflicts there. But it does speak to the extremes of his—”

“Yeah, his fucking
research.
”

After the session, in my pickup truck en route to Port Medway, I figured out who had probably provided Istvakson the information that I was a client of Dr. Nissensen's.

T
WO DAYS AFTER
the Victorian chaise longue was damaged, Derek Budnick asked to meet with Elizabeth and me. It was midmorning and we'd been working. Again, we all sat at the kitchen table. Elizabeth made a cup of coffee for Derek. He had a satchel and took out some papers, which he set on the table. “Mr. Isherwood and I interviewed the entire staff one by one, individually,” he said. “We felt this was the best approach. Best not to point the blame when we don't have actual proof. What I've brought here”—he touched the papers—“is affidavits. All signed and dated. Every single employee of the Essex Hotel, including the fact that Mr. Isherwood questioned me, and I questioned him. For the record.”

“Nobody knew anything, I bet,” Elizabeth said.

“Three employees, who will remain anonymous, said, without provocation, things like, ‘Sounds like something bellman Padgett would do.' ‘Sounds like' is speculation, and we can't legally follow up on that. Between you and me and the moon, we came down hard on Padgett. He's a squirmy bastard, that one, I don't mind telling you. We didn't break his thumbs in a dank room with a single light bulb overhead. He didn't outright confess. But he did it, all right.”

“Yes, he did,” Elizabeth said.

“With each employee, we related only that there'd been a violation,” Derek said. “We used the words ‘illegal entry'
and ‘damage to personal property,' on advice of the hotel's attorney. During his interview, I said to bellman Padgett, ‘There are fifty-four long-term residents in this hotel. On the night of the violation, there were also twenty-seven short-term patrons. We haven't mentioned anyone by name, so why would you even mention Mr. and Mrs. Lattimore, out of the blue?' See, because he had—he had mentioned you out of the blue. He squirmed, the squirmy bastard. That's when he owned up to the dustup you mentioned, at the dance lesson. He exhibited a lot of vitriol about that.”

“Can't he just be sacked?” Elizabeth said.

“Legally, we still don't have the grounds. But Mr. Isherwood cut his hours in half.”

“What about the lindy lessons?” Elizabeth said. “I want to continue with them, and see no reason I should have to put up with Padgett's creepiness.”

“Mr. Isherwood will speak with Mr. Moran today. A firm warning to keep things on the up-and-up or we'll make the ballroom unavailable.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

Derek slipped the affidavits into his satchel, took a sip of coffee, set the cup down, stood, and said, “Night or day, I'm locatable.”

When Derek got to the door, Elizabeth said, “Alfonse Padgett should not have a master key to the rooms.”

“Hotel policy is that all bellmen do,” Derek said.

Elizabeth got up from her chair, accidentally knocked the coffee cup off the table, but continued right over to Derek, who stood at the door he'd half-opened already. She took him by the arm and pulled him with definite insistence over to the chaise longue. She threw back the quilt and pointed at the long gash with the stuffing in view. “That's Padgett's calling card, Derek,” she said. “Isn't there anything that can be done about him having a key?”

“I'll speak to Mr. Isherwood again,” Derek said, staring at the chaise longue, “but I can't promise anything. However, I have a follow-up interview with bellman Padgett right after his shift today.” Then he left our apartment.

“Maybe we should move,” I said. “The apartment above Cyrano's is up for rent, I saw the notice of that. It'd be fine.”

“Absolutely not. This is our first home, Samuel. I'm not going to let some Beelzebub chase us out.”

Thinking back on this, I realize that her use of the word “Beelzebub” must've meant that on some level she felt that Alfonse Padgett was more ghastly horrifying than just some creep.

“Plus, my mind's made up,” Lizzy said. “I'm going to take lesson number three next week.”

“Forgot to tell you, I already went and paid Mr. Moran so I could take lessons, too,” I said. “Coming into it late's not a problem. I'm only two behind.”

“Thank you, darling. I know you wanted me to feel I didn't need you in this situation, but in a marriage it's important to stay close and see to each other's safekeeping. It's marriage logic. I've got the Boswell Sisters album. I'll catch you up.”

I always felt the Essex was a dignified hotel. Elizabeth did, too. It had what we felt was a European or old-world quality, as she put it. I had never stayed in hotels in Europe, but as a child Elizabeth had stayed in London, Paris, and Amsterdam hotels when her family went to those cities on holiday. We both liked sitting in the lobby of our hotel, people-watching, reading magazines, having a coffee, looking out at the snow or rain through the big windows. “Just relaxing before we go upstairs and the next thing happens,” as Elizabeth once said. I was in the lobby far more often than my wife. But we both could sketch it in detail, from memory, on a napkin.

A hotel with permanent occupants and a familiar staff constitutes a neighborhood, and any neighborhood may, like a person, have a violent aspect to its character lurking under the surface, and given the right conditions, it can show itself. I thought about this when, two mornings after our late-night conversation with Derek Budnick, I went down to the lobby at about seven
A.M.
and saw that Alfonse Padgett had a raised yellow-black bruise under his right eye and a bandage holding a thick piece of gauze across the bridge of his nose. On closer inspection, as I walked by the bellman's station, I saw that his jaw was swollen and black-and-blue as well. This was clearly the result of Padgett's second “interview” with Derek. Derek himself was sitting on a corner sofa, reading the morning paper. Walking toward the lift, I saw that Derek had bandages on the knuckles of both of his hands. House detective Budnick was ambidextrous.