Ice Run by Steve Hamilton Read Free Book Online

moment, then looked out the window. We were both quiet for a while. Just as she was about to say something, the waitress appeared with a bottle of champagne.
    “Compliments of the gentleman,” she said, setting up a stand with an ice bucket.
    I looked back over at the old man. He was drinking something now. He raised his glass to us.
    “Who is he?” I said.
    “I don’t know,” the waitress said, pulling the cork. “I’ve never seen him before. But he sort of goes with the place, doesn’t he? This hotel was built in 1927, you know.”
    When she had poured two glasses, Natalie picked hers up and raised it to the man across the room. He tipped his hat again.
    “Veuve Clicquot,” she said, taking a sip. “This is the good stuff.”
    “Yeah,” I said, with a little edge. “We’ll have to go thank him.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Ah, it’s nothing. Like you say, he’s probably harmless.”
    We drank the champagne until the waitress brought our dinners. The wind kicked up and rattled the big windows so hard we could feel it in our bones. But it was warm inside, and a full bottle of champagne was making everything look soft in the light from the chandeliers. Natalie was a little too beautiful to be true, her green eyes sparkling. The whole night seemed a little unreal.
    When I looked over a few minutes later, the old man was gone.
    “Guess our friend called it a night,” I said.
    “I hope he’s not going outside.”
    “He’s a ghost, remember? Ghosts don’t get cold.”
    That’s the line that would stay with me. That’s the line I’d remember the next day, when we would find out what had happened. At that very moment, the two of us sitting there in the dining room, finishing the last of the champagne, the old man was out there. He had left the hotel. He had walked down Portage Avenue. He had taken a right onto Ashmun, and had made his way south, walking on the street lined with snowbanks and dark empty buildings on each side. It was snowing harder. He must have been walking slowly. He crossed the little bridge, over the frozen canal that cut off the downtown from the rest of Sault Ste. Marie. He made it as far as the bookstore on the right side of the road.
    Was he already freezing at that moment, when I made my bad joke about ghosts not getting cold? I’ve been there myself. I know how it feels. You’re disoriented, you start talking to yourself. Things from your past come back to you. You can’t walk straight. Then finally, the ultimate irony. Or maybe the ultimate mercy. You don’t feel cold anymore. You don’t feel anything at all.
    But, of course, we didn’t know. We hadn’t gone back to the elevator yet, feeling happy and full after the big meal, and still a little lightheaded from the champagne. We hadn’t kissed in the elevator and held tight to each other. We hadn’t seen the present he had left for us, on the floor in front of room 601.
    I hadn’t gone back down to the lobby yet, looking for him, or asked the woman at the front desk if she had seen him. I hadn’t looked for the doorman, or gone outside myself with no coat on, to look up and down the street for some sign of the old man.
    We didn’t know he was out there, the snow covering him at that very moment. Or that the snowplow would run over his frozen body early the next morning, nearly cutting him in half.
    Ghosts don’t get cold. I said it, and then we finished our dinner and went upstairs. The thing was sitting there on the hallway carpet, right in front of the door. The door he had seen me go to. Whatever it was, it was covered by the big dinner napkin he’d had tucked into his collar.
    I pulled the napkin off. Underneath was a hat, upside down, filled with ice and snow.
    The man had apparently gone out to the sidewalk, filled his hat to the brim, and then brought it back inside to leave it here by the door. The ice and snow were already starting to melt and leak through the material, a dark stain spreading onto