Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper Read Free Book Online Page B

window, was at one time the parlor. There’s a fireplace (now enclosed by splintered plywood), and a large mirror over the mantel that sends back a picture of me standing in the lobby. Faded, sickly, a smudge of paleness fixed over the dark background. A yellowed newspaper photograph discovered in an attic trunk.
    I step up to the reception desk and bring my palm down on the service bell. No immediate stir-rings, and for a time I stand and wait, staring into the pattern of complicated vines bulging out from the velvet wallpaper. It’s as old and smoke-stained as everything else but isn’t dreadful, probably even an admired extravagance when first plastered up fifty or sixty years ago. In fact the only thing that seems to belong to the present decade is the bottom-of-the-line computer which sits behind the desk and displays a blue screen unblemished by text. Beside it a quarter-full coffeepot sitting on a hot plate, islands of turquoise mold floating on its surface.
    Ring the bell again. This time there’s the sound of crumpling tinfoil from the back office, and thena man with papery skin and a bald head mapped with burst capillaries steps out into the dull marine light.
    “What can I do you for?” he asks, the inside of his mouth caked with sandwich residue.
    “You can do me for a room. Something large, with generous natural light. And quiet, if you can manage that.”
    “They’re all the same. ’Cept for the honeymoon suite.” He lifts his eyes to mine, but there’s nothing in them.
    “It’s got a TV, phone, separate shower?”
    “Ever been in a hotel room that didn’t?”
    “Well, in Europe…” I begin foolishly, but the blankness of his eyes remains set. “The honeymoon suite sounds like just the thing.”
    I register, pay for the first night (I’m not asked how many more may follow), take the key and directions from Mr. Hospitality, and ascend a set of stairs marked by a brass plaque with GRAND STAIRCASE on it in raised letters, though now not so much grand as unnecessarily wide. Turn right and all the way down to the end, unlock the door, kick it open, flick on the bedside lamp.
    It’s big. One could certainly say that about it. Bigger than the standard. Right on the corner too, so that each exterior wall has its own window overlooking its own street, as well as a semicircle of glass between them and a ledge wide enough to sit on. The smell of vegetable oil and burnt beef, moisture stains blotched over the ceiling, furniture of a sufficient age and ugliness to be sold at “antique” prices in the city but which in this roomshowed only their age and ugliness. All of that and still not bad. Unimaginable what set of misfortunes would ever bring present-day honeymooners to spend a single moment in such a room, but for Bartholomew Christian Crane, long-resigned bachelor and afficionado of the seedy, not bad at all.
    Sometime in the dead of night the phone at the reception desk downstairs starts to ring. It’s one of the old ones with a real tin bell inside, and the sound it makes carries up the stairs, down the long hallway and through the heavy bedroom door without any muting of its volume.
    Four rings, five—doesn’t that zombie who checked me in have anyone work the desk overnight? Six rings, seven—who the hell would be calling an empty hotel at this hour for so long? No doubt some long-suffering wife of a regular at the lobby bar attempting to locate her gin-soaked lesser half.
    With each ring I’m pulled closer to consciousness, although I resist opening my eyes. But by the time ring number fifteen finishes I take the Lord’s name in vain, pull on socks and pants, slip over the hardwood floor to the door and step out into the drafty hallway, ready to go down and rip the phone cord out of the wall. But for a time I only stand there. Arms crossed, cool drafts breathing against my back.
    I must have risen too quickly—everything suddenly prickling and light, a black ring closing around my