Bud and Pearl Bentley acquired the hotel eventually, the bank all but giving it to them, in its desperation to be rid of it after a decade with no takers. Hinckly had never been overburdened with progressive thinkers, but when the hope for a railroad disappeared, the few that did exist vanished along with it. Bud had busied himself right away with dismantling the massive letters of the sign, stripping off their brass overlay and selling it for salvage. If you knew what to look for, you could still make out the hotel’s former name, imprinted like a shadow on the faded wood of the towering facade. Tacked across three of the letters hung Pearl’s hand-lettered sign: P
EARLS
C
AFE
—
GOOD EATS — CHEEP
R
OOMS
. Bud had hammered it into place, Pearl directing him from the street below. But as neither of them were real sticklers for details, the sign had never hung any too straight, and after the first winter the weather had more or less destroyed it. Over the years, the rooms upstairs had gradually been stripped of their embellishments and filled with rotting men and rancorous mice, each learning to tolerate the presence of the other. Pearl ruled over all of them with a snarly temper and the ever-present threat of eviction. One time, in an uncharacteristic burst of Christmas bravado, Bud had clambered up the ladder and strung blue lights across most of the roof, and every year since, Pearl would plug them in the first of December and leave them on twenty-four hours a day until the month was over. A few of them still worked.
The cumbersome entrance door had twisted in its frame, and Victoria wrestled with it for some time before she managed to wrench it open. Thick leaded-glass panes decorated the top half of it, and when the door jarred open suddenly they gave an ominous shudder. One of them had been smashed out and was covered with cardboard like a patched eye.
The lobby of the hotel had been dressed for success, and even now still retained a glimmer of its faded flamboyance. A curved staircase swept down from the upper floor and delivered itself into the lobby with all the flourish of an elegant lady joining in a ballroom dance. A legion of oak soldiers ran up its length, a smooth brass railing balanced with perfection on their finely turned heads. Here and there a comrade had fallen victim to various vandals, and dark gaps stood in their stead.
Victoria started as a coarse murmuring rose from the gloom then ceased. She strained to see who else was with her in the cavernous room, but the crystal chandelier with its thick garnish of lacy gray cobwebs offered out only a meager light. It came to her again, louder this time, and followed by the appearance of a face in a hole in the railing near the top of the stairs. The face, brown and sunken as a bruised apple, peered down on her, its lifeless eyes taking her in.
“Hey. Hey, ‘toria. Up here. You got a smoke? Hey. Hey, ya ‘member me?” And then, hoping she did, “Hey, you got a smoke I could bum, ‘toria?”
Victoria stiffened as if splintered nails were scraping down her spine. She refused the impulse to look up at him, acknowledge him. She moved quickly across the lobby toward the café entrance, his voice growing louder behind her.
“What’sa mad’der, baby? You ‘don ‘member me? Hey, I betcha do. Ya, I sure do betcha do.” And he laughed a bit, as if it was too difficult to talk, and a laugh would suffice just as well.
She ignored his words as if they hadn’t a hope of penetrating her ears and entering her mind. Ignored him as if he did not exist. And why not? Billy Bassman was a pig. Handed his welfare check over to Pearl each month in exchange for her squalid room and cheap whiskey, pretty much taking over where his older brother left off. His brother had lived for seven years in the hotel and died there as well, three days short of his twenty-fourth birthday.
A black stain on the burgundy carpet still marked the spot where he’d lain bleeding to death, passersby just assuming he was out cold again. No one was ever quite sure why he’d been stabbed, and no one was fool enough to venture who’d done it, but the town had its theories. Seemed most likely it’d been the result of a misunderstanding.
She’d have never guessed back in high school that Billy Bassman would follow in the infamous, staggering footsteps of his brother. He was a couple of years older than her, but they’d been in the same class at school, he having failed grade three twice. Good-looking, with an almost comical over confidence, she’d thought he was the type who’d really go places. And he had gone places. Spent a few years traveling with a circus and a couple in jail then returned back to Hinckly, his desire for adventure apparently satiated while his desire for whiskey was not. Her stomach twisted to think he’d ever touched her.
The restaurant’s solid wood tables still reflected some of their original charm, but the cloth booths were either stained or split, and Bud Bentley had dutifully solved both problems with a liberal application of silver duct tape. Rose sat alone in the corner by the window. She stood apart in Hinckly, a rose planted among thistles, some things in common but not at all the same. Hers was an exotically attractive face, and over the years she’d developed a penchant for wrapping herself in layers of brightly colored, flowing garments. Victoria had watched Rose’s face with the curiosity of a child, trying to discern which features she possessed that so elevated her in the ranks of beauty. But it wasn’t as simple as any one feature—like say, beautiful eyes or a brilliant smile against swarthy skin, although she boasted these and more. It was perhaps the intensity of the life lived through them. A smile from Rose lit the day and erased storm clouds from the skies, whereas her fury could erupt unforgiving as lava, raging black eyes smiting her foe from the earth. But it was a rare thing to see Rose mad. Chronically cheerful, she made the best of what came her way, although by all accounts much of that had been hard.
“There you are. I was starting to worry.”
“I’m sorry, Rose. My stupid car again. Quit completely this time. Just after Patterson’s place. Have you been waiting long?”
“I was a little early.”
Of course you were,
Victoria thought but kept the comment to herself. Rose was always early. Irritatingly so. Still, Victoria had never felt particularly close to anyone before she’d met Rose, with the exception perhaps of a childish bond with Auntie May. Dance had been her devoted partner until she’d married, and if it had been friendship she desired then, she certainly didn’t find much of it with Bobby.
“Have you ordered?”
“No. Pearl came by once with coffee and I haven’t seen her since. Do you want me to get you one?”
“Sure. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
Nobody was allowed behind Pearl’s counter, including Bud, unless there was something that needed patching up. Rose was the first one audacious enough to even try it, and for some incomprehensible reason Pearl would grudgingly allow her. But any other nitwit guileless enough to attempt it got hollered back into his seat with a velocity that threatened the windows.
Although Rose definitely had her detractors, the general feeling held around town was that anyone who could move beyond the wall of suspicion grating out from Pearl Bentley must be a bit of an enigma. Rose’s ability to do so had magnified her in some of their eyes almost to sainthood.
Pearl came in from the kitchen just as Rose set the coffee on the table and sat down. She scurried over, her ratty head bobbing tightly, her manner prickly.
“I could have gut ya that. Ya could’a just hollered, ya know.”
“Yes, I know, Pearl. But you seemed awfully busy today and I thought I’d save you the bother.”
“Ain’t no bother. Jus’ holler next time, eh?” Pearl stood fidgeting like a moose tormented with black flies, scratching first one arm then the other, twitching her shoulders and flinging her head to the side as she talked. Clearly she would have liked to unleash a tirade that would fly to hell and back, but she bit her lip, literally, narrow yellow rodent teeth all askew.
“You gun’na wan’na eat, too?” She eyed them thinly.
“Give us a few minutes, okay?” Rose said.
Pearl shrugged, grumbled and left.
They spent a few seconds in silence as they attempted to decipher the deletions and additions scribbled across the menu, prices adjusted with a strip of masking tape and a red pen. But Victoria couldn’t focus on the words, her mind dissolving into fragmentary images of Elliot’s face, his free-flowing voice and voluptuous hands. Yearning filled her, contractions of discontentment gripping her like hunger pangs, and yet the menu in front of her held nothing that even remotely interested her. She wanted to sit, quiet and alone, and walk back through every moment they had shared. She wanted to remember each word that had slid from his tongue and roll it gently through her mind, savoring it like the tenderest of morsels.
“Know what you’re having yet?” Rose’s voice broke in.
“No. I’m not really that hungry. Maybe I’ll just have some soup.”
“Soup! Vic, you have to have more than that. You don’t start taking care of yourself you’ll end up sick. Look at you . . . a good strong wind comes up and it’ll blow you right out of here.”
“I wish.” Victoria smiled quietly. She had to admit she enjoyed the fuss Rose made over her, clucking at her with concerned admonishments about her sporadic eating habits and diminishing weight. “Maybe if I was lucky it’d blow me all the way to Europe.”
“Europe?” Rose offered her a questioning glance. It was not like Victoria to dream beyond her expectations.
“Yeah. This morning when my car broke down I got—”
“I thought Bobby was going to fix that car for you,” Rose said, concern clouding her face.
“He is.”
“Hmm.”
“He is, Rose. He’s just really busy right now and—”
“Well, I’m sure he is busy, Vic,” Rose said softly. “But I’m also pretty sure I saw him over at JJ’s this morning, tinkering on that old car they’re always playing with.”
“He was?” She hated it when the conversation turned on her like this. She’d stood embarrassed in front of the town many times over the years when Bobby had gotten busy helping his friends, leaving her waiting to be picked up after grocery shopping or various appointments. But, for reasons she couldn’t explain even to herself, whenever Bobby’s irresponsibility came up, she was the first and only one to rise to his defense.
“Oh ya. Well, that makes sense ‘cause I saw the tractor was broke down and he probably had to come in and get some parts to fix it.”
“Okay, Vic. Whatever. I just wish he’d take a few minutes to spend some time on your car for once and make sure you’re safe—”
“Rose, that’s a bit much. I was just fine. It was broad daylight, for crying out loud.” Irritation burst out through her words like starlings from a thicket.
“Hah!” Rose slapped long manicured hands together. “Broad daylight. So what? I guess I don’t have to remind you that perverts have no problem performing in the full light of day. Yuck, forget it. I don’t even want to think about it. I’ll wreck my lunch. Just be careful, Vic. I worry about you. You have no idea . . . no idea.” And with that she closed her eyes and gave her head and hands a dainty little shake as if she was trying to fling off bad memories. And in all likelihood she probably was.
The whole town had been amazed when Rose had started dating Steve six months after she arrived, but no one more so than Steve himself. A spindly, bookish bachelor, he was an amazingly nice and proper guy. Which of course proved an ongoing detriment to his love life. But Rose had obviously found in him assets no one else had bothered to uncover and, much to the dismay of the town’s male population, she married him. When it became apparent that a baby was growing long before the sanctified date, the boys had spent many melancholy nights at the bar discussing their poor luck, slack jawed and feeling cheated.
They were delighted then, six years later when the truth finally came out, and they embraced it open-armed, their wounded prides redeemed. Details slipped out slowly at first. Rose later admitted that, so devastated and shocked herself by the extent of Steve’s betrayal, she was hesitant to expose him lest no one else would believe such vile things about such a seemingly sweet and innocent man. She needn’t have worried. The town had always thought Steve a bit odd, and now they had the facts to prove it. Finding a receptive audience, Rose broke the dam and spilled a torrent of horrible, descriptive stories of Steve’s demented abuse, complete with graphic details that would stick in the mind, causing a person to look at everyone through fearful, suspicious eyes. After all, if such a pit of deviant decay could secretly possess such a kind and, to all observances, peaceful man like Steve, how could anyone really know what prowled unseen in the banished thoughts of those around them? Sadistic fantasies might well be waiting to be unleashed on some unsuspecting, trustful soul.
The town had gone ballistic. Ignited by hatred and inspired by fear, it would not rest until he was punished. Some even talked of putting an anonymous bullet through his head. Some had refused to believe it without proof of course—his pastor, his kindergarten teacher, a few others—but after the phone calls began, even they had had to concede. The calls came during the day when dads and husbands were sure to be at work and, although the line was bad and his voice muffled in a vain attempt to disguise it, he had given so many obvious clues as to his identity that people thought he must have been drunk or insane or probably both.
One day he was just gone. Left Rose with three kids, house, car and bills. Fortunately he’d also left a bit of money, and she managed okay with the town’s help and the added bit she brought in from her job as a seamstress. And the town did help her, felt protective over her and perhaps a little guilty for what had happened; after all Steve had grown up out of their loins. Where he had gone no one knew, no one cared. They were just glad to be rid of him and prayed he wouldn’t come back. Some prayed he was dead.