Read Night Shifts Black Online
Authors: Alyson Santos
I give Luke’s door a gentle courtesy knock,
but when he doesn’t answer after two attempts, I let myself in. The room is
dark, except for a small lamp on an end table, so I assume he is still in bed.
Not wanting to disturb him, I grab the remote and plop on the couch, turning
the volume low.
There isn’t much on
network TV that interests me so I try the movie channels. I find it strange
that despite the six hundred options at my fingertips, there’s not one thing I
feel like sitting through. Maybe not so strange when I consider that I’m only here
for Luke and he’s absent.
Shortly after noon, it
suddenly occurs to me that he may not even be in his room. I mute the TV and
begin my self-tour of his suite. I’d never explored his accommodations apart
from the main area, and figure now is as good of a time as any to satisfy my
curiosity about how an ex-rock star lives.
I figured the place
had to be large. After all, basic math skills illustrate that, given the huge structural
dimensions of this hotel and the tiny number of doors on this floor, each door
has to be hiding a massive space. I was always good at math, but I’m still not
prepared for what I find as I venture from the enormous open room of the main
living area. I don’t understand why a hotel room needs a corridor, but it has
one. Two, actually, I learn, as I reach the end of the first and realize
another juts to the right. I count one bedroom in my journey, which contains an
unexpected custom stall shower along one wall of the room. The random
bedroom-shower throws me for a loop, and I stand staring at the floor-to-ceiling
glass, intricate stonework, and multiple jets. I spend a long time wondering
why one would want to shower in their bedroom rather than the attached
bathroom, how many people it was intended to accommodate at one time, and what
I’d have to do to convince Luke to let me test it out. I notice the bench and
controls, and suddenly realize it’s a sauna, as well as, a shower. I’m even
more impressed, if not confused, about the floor plan. I see no sign of human
occupation, however, so quickly determine this is a spare room, not Luke’s.
Clearly, a guest of a guest would need a private wall shower.
The next room is an
office. Not the particleboard desk with a lamp and hospital waiting room chair
I’m used to, but an actual office. I see a giant oak wall unit with matching
hutch, a solid hand-carved workstation that would make a lawyer jealous, and an
actual, honest-to-goodness, coordinating filing cabinet. Because every rock
star needs a filing cabinet when they travel. I smirk, imagining Luke sifting
through three-tab folders and hanging files with his ratty tee, ripped jeans,
and glass of whiskey in hand. I’m not surprised that it appears I’m the first
to even open the door to this room.
The next room is just
another bathroom. There’s a powder room off the main space for visitors, but
this must be for those who get lost touring the suite and can’t find their way
back without a break. It’s decorated in the same rustic stone style as the
other bathing amenities I’ve seen, so I don’t waste much time here.
Only one door remains,
so I’m certain it must be the master suite. I hesitate as I approach the open
doorway. It’s dark inside, which leads me to believe it’s probably vacant as
well, but I’m still not totally comfortable about invading his space. The other
rooms were easy. They didn’t seem like his, for some reason, as though they still
belonged to the hotel and he couldn’t care less what happened to them. This
room though…
My curiosity wins out,
and I move toward the darkness.
The stench of alcohol
assaults me when I enter, and I almost cough. Despite everything I’ve witnessed
so far, I’m still surprised by this. Luke seems so together most of the time.
He laughs and jokes and makes his way around the city. I’m very familiar with
the bar in the main space, but the idea that the bulk of his drinking occurs
back here hits me harder than I expect.
“Oh, Luke,” I mutter
to myself, shaking my head.
“What?”
I freeze. “I…I’m
sorry…I was worried.”
By now my eyes have
adjusted to the darkness enough that I can make out the lump on the massive
king-sized bed centered against the wall.
The lump doesn’t
respond, and neither do I, not sure if I should apologize again and leave in
shame or call an ambulance.
“I’m fine,” he lies. I
know he’s lying. I can hear it in his voice.
“It’s after noon.”
“So?”
“So, you’re still in
bed. Have you eaten today? I’ll order something for you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sick?”
“No. Just tired. I
don’t want company today. Sorry.”
“Luke…”
“Callie, I don’t want
to be a jerk, but I need you to leave me alone right now, ok?”
It’s not ok. His voice
is trembling. I know now he wasn’t sleeping.
“Luke, please. Let
me…”
“Just go!” he shouts,
and the lump transforms into a half-man as the comforter reveals a head and
torso.
I know I should, but I
can’t.
I pause, my mind
racing furiously, and yet in no clear direction at all. I get the heavy sense
that I’m standing at a crossroads, although I suspect it’s not just one on my
journey.
I choose a path and
sit on the edge of the bed. I don’t look at him because I know I won’t like the
anger and accusation in his eyes, so I face the wall instead, staring in
silence, daring him to physically remove me from his presence. I am fairly
confident he won’t because I know where he is right now and it’s a place that
rarely has the energy for such things.
“It’s a curtain,” I
say quietly.
He doesn’t respond,
but I know he’s listening. I turn and glance at him briefly so he knows it, and
has to accept the fact that I’m not leaving until I’ve finished my speech.
“Depression, that is,”
I continue. “People who’ve never experienced it think it’s a mask, but it’s
not. It’s a curtain. And when it falls, it shuts you off from your life,
plunging you into complete darkness. There you stand, arms flailing around you,
reaching for anything to find your way back. But after exhausting yourself,
grasping at only more darkness, you give up and drop to the floor in
resignation.
“And so you sit. You
and the blackness. You and the accusations. You and the self-hatred, the lies
that become truth, the failure and pain and hopelessness and black thoughts that
twist through you, impaling you to the floor. There you bleed, alone in your
black hole, convinced the audience on the other side of the curtain has given
up and gone home. The show is over.
“Before you know it,
you realize the curtain has turned into a cement wall, and you couldn’t escape
the darkness even if you wanted to, but by now you don’t care anymore. What’s
the point? There’s nothing waiting for you on the other side, and even if there
was, you’re such a useless waste of space that you wouldn’t dare to contaminate
the world outside with your cancer anyway.”
I stop, my eyes burning,
my voice heavy in my throat.
“You feel like crying
all the time but you rarely do. Depression isn’t sadness; it’s numbness. You
don’t have the energy for sadness. You can’t sleep. You don’t eat. You have no
desire for the things you used to love, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t
love anyway. You feel nothing, just a dull, heavy ache that makes it hard to
breathe sometimes, let alone get up to start the search again. You fantasize
about disappearing, just erasing your pointless existence and sparing the Earth
from your toxic presence. By now you’re so exhausted just from the effort of
living that there’s nothing left to live it.”
I wipe my face now,
the tears dripping down my cheeks. I had almost forgotten about Luke. I’d
stopped talking to him somewhere along the way, lost again in the caverns of my
own backstage nightmare. But when I remember, I don’t give him a choice. Too
many people had let me choose.
I lie down on the bed
beside him and take his hand. I can tell the action has startled him, but he
doesn’t pull away. I squeeze, holding tight, warning him that he’s crazy if he
thinks I’m letting him do this alone. I don’t expect him to respond. In fact, I
hope he doesn’t. I hear the soft sound of his breathing as he stares at the
ceiling, my words disrupting the void around us.
“It’s Depression,
Luke,” I whisper into the darkness. “And it’s lying to you.”
∞∞∞
“Did you ever try to kill yourself?” Luke asks
finally, after a long silence. I had begun to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.
I consider his
question for a moment. It’s a simple question with a very complex answer.
“Consciously?” I ask,
even though I know the answer.
“Yes. Did you
knowingly try to kill yourself?”
“No,” I answer
honestly. “No, not on purpose.”
My answer has an
effect. “By accident then,” he concludes, and I squeeze his hand again. I
hadn’t let go and I don’t plan to.
“No, it wasn’t an accident
either. Somewhere in between.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I made
destructive choices to escape without caring where I was escaping to.”
“You didn’t try to
kill yourself, but you didn’t care if you did.”
“Something like that.”
“Drugs?”
“I picked fights.”
“Picked fights?”
“With my dad, my
boyfriend, strangers, whoever got near me. I wanted them to hurt me. I wanted
them to hate me as much as I hated myself. I wanted them to punish me for
existing.”
“And did they.”
“Sometimes.”
“Your boss at the
grocery store?”
I quiet. “No. That was
something else.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t
have to talk about it.”
“I know. I will one
day, but not now.”
It’s his hand applying
the pressure this time, and I’m relieved for a variety of reasons. I turn
toward him and wrap my arm around his chest, pulling him close to me. “I know
Depression, Luke, and I know you want to be alone, but I’m not going to let
you. I can’t make you let me in, but you’re going to have to get used to the
fact that I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
He still hasn’t moved,
and I can see his eyebrows knit together in the dim light as he continues
staring at the ceiling.
“I’m not who you think
I am, Callie,” he says after another pause. “If I let you in, you’d know I
deserve my prison.”
I get the frantic call early in the morning,
before I’m showered, dressed, or sufficiently roused by my cup of black tea.
Definitely before I’m equipped for drama. It’s Shauna, and if I don’t get over to
the café in the next five minutes, the cops will be involved.
My heart stops long
before she confirms the disruption involves Luke, and I have my jeans and
sneakers on by the time we end the call.
I can hear the yelling
as I approach Jemma’s. Evacuated patrons and random bystanders are huddled on
the sidewalk, attempting to peer through the door, the windows, each other, with
looks of fear and curiosity.
“Excuse me! Please!
Let me through!” I cry, pushing past them.
I hear some curses,
but also warnings as I plow forward. There’s a crazy homeless guy in there. No,
he’s not homeless, just a café regular who’s lost his mind. He’s trying to rob
the place.
I glance back in
surprise at that one, I can’t help myself. Still, I don’t need more
speculation, I need the truth, so I don’t ask and continue my journey.
By the time I get
through the crowd and into the café, there are only a few brave patrons left,
mostly the regulars who have come to expect such erratic behavior from the
weird chair guy who turned out to be someone important. The rest of the
witnesses are staff members. Both Darryn and Shauna are on today. Lucky them.
“Why can’t I have it?
You have a hundred of them!” Luke cries. The Chair is firm in his grip. A table
is overturned, a shocked audience curved around the scene. The manager has her
hands up in surrender, using her managerial crisis training to try to calm the
crazed guest. The problem is, he’s not crazy.
“Luke!” I call,
rushing toward the front of the circle.
His desperate eyes
turn on me, rooting me several feet away.
“What are you doing?”
I ask, forcing myself to take a step forward. He moves back. “They’re going to
call the police. They’ll arrest you,” I reason.
He shakes his head,
eyes dark. “So what? They should.”
I soften and cover
more of the distance between us.
“You don’t want that,”
I say.
“You know I do,” he
replies, the pain starting to replace the anger.
It hits me harder than
I expect, the transformation, the bitter consequence of my attempt to reach him
yesterday. My speech was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction
manual.
“Luke…”
“Leave me alone,
Callie!”
I shake my head. “No!”
“I said, leave!” he
cries, swinging the chair in my direction. I duck away, surprised by the
outburst, but not prepared to give up. His aim was too bad for him to have had
any intention of hurting me. The others don’t realize that, they don’t know him
well enough, and gasp at the new violence. I can see Ailee dialing the phone.
“Luke, please! This
won’t help you escape! You want to hide? How will you hide with the cameras and
reporters? You really want another mugshot for the tabloids?”
That argument has an
affect, and I can tell what I said means even more to him than I’d thought.
He glances around the
room again, suddenly seeming startled, and drops the chair with a curse.
Another string of expletives slips from his mouth as he locks his hands on his
head in distress.
“We’re sorry. So
sorry!” I explain to the manager who’s look is somewhere between fear and fury.
“It won’t happen again. You won’t see him back here.”
“I better not!” she
hisses. “We will call the cops the second he touches the door.”
I nod, completely
understanding her position, and turn back to Luke. He’s broken again. No longer
a threat, just a terrified stranger staring at a chair.
“I need it, Callie,”
he whispers as I approach. His eyes search mine, willing me to understand, to
help him. “Please, just explain it to them.”
“I know, Luke. But it’s
not going to help you. It’s not,” I reply softly, taking his arm.
He shakes his head,
angry tears in his eyes. “Please. Please!” he repeats, one last desperate
appeal to the manager.
She glares at him, but
waves her hand with a curse. “Fine, take the damn chair. Just get out of my
restaurant and never come back!”
I’m still not sure
it’s a good idea for him to permanently possess the haunted object, but at the
moment, it keeps him out of jail so I have no choice but to accept it.
He sighs with relief,
and I see the visible change as a weight seems to lift from his shoulders. He
picks up the chair and heads toward the door. I apologize profusely to every
face I can’t avoid and do my best to clear an awkward path.
∞∞∞
We walk back to his hotel. Him with his chair,
me with my apologies to those we displace on the sidewalk as we march past. I
don’t know what to say to Luke, so I remain silent, focusing instead on making
sure we arrive safely at our destination, still afraid the manager called the
cops after all, and they’ll be showing up any minute to take the crazy rock star
into custody. I’m sure he’s legally drunk, so the media would be merciless with
that report. As it is, I’m almost certain bystander photos and recordings of
his outburst are going to explode into the pop culture conversation anyway,
fueling the thirst for celebrity blood with another tragic train wreck.
The Chair will be
famous now, too.
I don’t think Luke
understands that yet. What he’s done, the firestorm he’s just exposed himself
to hasn’t registered, but it will soon, and I suck in my breath at what he’ll
face. The ghost chair will now be legend, encased in speculation, investigated
with a rabid persistence that will scrape old wounds raw.
I glance back at his
face, and am surprised at the stern concentration. Maybe reality is starting to
settle in his mind as well, or maybe he’s simply trying not to trip with his
heavy burden, but either way I have hope that once we’re safely home we can
reason through this. The present. The future.
The doormen give us a
strange look as we approach, eyeing the chair with their characteristic
skepticism, but it’s in the hands of Luke Craven of Night Shifts Black, so they
respond by opening the door a little wider than usual. I’m sure my reception
would have been less accommodating.
“Mr. Craven! A new
purchase? Please let us help you with that!” Mara Jacobson cries, rushing
toward us as we enter.
“Thanks, Mara. I got
it.”
She glances at me, her
expression more veiled than usual, and I give her a stiff smile.
“Thanks, Mara. We got
it,” I repeat just to watch her squirm.
She does, but has no
choice except to nod in defeat. “Well, of course if you change your mind, let
us know,” she says, and Luke barely acknowledges her as he continues toward the
elevator.
I follow him in,
shifting to allow him enough room for his chair, and he finally lowers his
burden to the floor. He shakes out his arms and stretches as the elevator boy
pushes the buttons. Despite everything, I can’t stop the slight grin of
amusement as I watch the poor teenager try not to react to the strange scene.
Luke seems to notice too, and when his eyes catch mine, my grin breaks. He
returns it, and I suddenly feel safe again.
“Thanks, Aiden,” Luke
says, slipping him a bill larger than anything I’d ever tipped a server at a
restaurant. Aiden will not be talking about the chair, that’s for sure. I give
him a smile as well as I exit onto Luke’s floor and follow him to his door.
I can see him
struggling with the chair and push past him.
“Here, I got it,” I
say, producing my own key and sliding it into the slot.
He gives me a grateful
smile, and I hold the door for him as he shuffles past me.
I’m about to speak
when I realize he’s lost in his head again. This time it’s not sadness, but the
same concentration I saw on the sidewalk journey.
He stands at the top
of the step leading into the giant, open living area, surveying the space with
an intensity I’ve rarely seen before. I don’t dream of interrupting, and watch
him from a distance, curious about the latest glimpse into his confusing mind.
First he moves an end
table against the wall and places the chair in the empty space beside the
couch. He studies it for a moment, but isn’t happy, and moves the end table
back. Next, he tries the space under the bar. He’s even less satisfied with
that.
“The office,” I suggest
gently.
His head shoots up in
alarm, and I suspect he’d forgotten I was here.
“I have an office?” he
asks, and only the serious expression on his face keeps me from laughing. I
figured as much.
“Second door on the
left. After the extra bedroom.”
He hesitates, staring
at the chair.
“It’s yours, Luke. No
one else should have access to it.”
He nods and removes it
from the bar.
I follow him down the
hall, completing our strange parade, and watch as he tests the doors to each
room. How long has he lived here and he never even bothered with them?
“Wow, you’re right,”
he observes, moving inside and turning on the light. “I should do more
paperwork,” he jokes, and I almost laugh that I’d had the same thought.
“There’s a nice filing
cabinet, too, for you to keep it organized.”
He gives a wry smile,
and I return it. Then, he focuses back on the chair. He moves a fake plant in
the corner and puts the chair in its place. He steps back to admire his work
and nods in satisfaction.
“Perfect,” he says.
“Good call.” Then he turns to me with a quizzical look. “You know my suite
well.”
I shrug. “I’m a poor
girl. This place was worth exploring.”
He nods, but doesn’t
chastise me. I don’t know if he forgives me or just doesn’t care. Maybe both.
“Anything else I
should know about?”
I grin. “Actually…” I
take his hand and pull him from the room. We move back to the first door, and I
push him into the guest room.
“Can you please
explain that?”
He laughs, and I love
that life has finally returned to his eyes. “I wish I could, but I have to
admit that this monstrosity threw me for a loop as well.”
I sigh with mock
disappointment. “You’re supposed to be my guide into all things ostentatious and
ridiculous.”
He gives me a sheepish
grin. “Sorry. If I had to guess, this suite was custom built for someone who is
no longer here.”
“Someone who felt the
need to offer their guests multiple showering options,” I observe.
I continue to stare,
still fascinated by the absurd luxury, and can feel his amusement. I blush when
my gaze catches his.
“You’re dying to try
it aren’t you,” he teases, and I swallow.
“What? And you’re
not?”
He laughs again and
moves into the room. “The shower or sauna?”
“Both?”
He grins and opens the
glass door, inspecting the many buttons and knobs. He triggers two of them and
the steam unit buzzes to life. He closes the door and steps back as bursts of
hot air begin filling the sealed glass case.
“Not now!” I cry,
laughing at his crooked grin.
“Why not?”
“I don’t have clothes
or anything!”
“Here.”
He moves to the closet
and removes a luscious robe that’s more enticing than any blanket or comforter
I’ve ever touched. “I’m sure there’s shampoo and whatever else you need in the
real bathroom right through there.”
“You’re not serious,”
I breathe. “You are serious!”
He shrugs, tosses me
the robe, and closes the door before I can respond.
∞∞∞
Luke is lounging on the couch when I emerge
from the guest room, wet and relaxed, wrapped in my cozy robe.
“Thoughts?” he asks
with a knowing grin.
I return it and drop
on another section of the massive sofa. “Surprisingly effective as a shower.
Verdict is still out as a wall of a bedroom.”
He laughs and motions
toward the bar.
“You want something?”
I shake my head. “No
thanks.”
He shrugs and finishes
off his glass before relegating it to the end table beside him.
“You know, I was
thinking, you can keep some stuff in the guest room if you want. For the next time
you feel the need for a shower in the middle of the day.”
I stare at him for a
moment. He’s not looking at me and already seems to be worrying more about
working up the energy to refill his glass than anything to do with me. I have
no idea what to make of the shocking offer he’s already seemed to forget.
“Sure, maybe at least
a change of clothes,” I manage as casually as possible.