Things grew a bit fuzzy after that.
When Ray arrived at the hotel he was covered in wet peat and had misplaced a sliver of a front tooth. He marched into the deserted lobby. The newly hewn edge of his incisor scraped against his tongue. A dull ache pulsed in his temples and he felt very sleepy. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He stood at the reception desk for some amount of time — there was no telling how long — until Mrs. Campbell emerged from the depths of the building.
“We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Welter. You’ve received quite a bit of correspondence. My goodness — you’re a mess. What happened to your face?”
“I feel a little woozy. May I sit down?”
“By all means,” she said. She came around the reception desk and latched her fingers into his arm, leading Ray to a chair next to the dormant fireplace. The remains of a charred log sat on the iron grate like a turd that wouldn’t flush. “You’re bleeding, Mr. Welter,” she said, as if it was news. “Stay put and we’ll fetch Mr. Fuller.”
Ray attempted to reconstruct the events of his ride, but the headache made linear thought difficult. He had fallen off the bike somewhere between Ardlussa and Craighouse. Images came back to him as if from a slideshow in random order …
Wet pavement four feet below him and somehow moving parallel to his body.
Up close eyes of a sheep staring at him as he regained consciousness.
A cheese and onion sandwich freed from its wax paper and seasoned with gravel and motor oil.
He had hit his head — that was it. Even with the helmet, he had taken a good knock to the cranium. In his daze he had carried the twisted frame of Molly’s bike the rest of the way. He stood to find the washroom and inspect the extent of the damage, but Mrs. Campbell and Mr. Fuller came rushing in.
“We did tell you to stay put, Mr. Welter. Let us have a look at you.”
“I fell off my bike,” he told them.
“Now why would you go and do that?” Fuller wanted to know.
“I didn’t mean to. It was—”
“An accident, aye. One word of advice: try walking next time. This is going to sting a little bit,” he said. He held a dirty kitchen rag to the top of a plastic bottle and drenched it in what smelled like bleach. He held Ray’s head and patted the rag against his scalp. The electric current carried down to his gut, where it would stay for the remainder of the day.
“If you do that again I am going to punch you,” Ray told him. He meant it.
“Do sit still, Mr. Welter,” Mrs. Campbell said. “It must have been quite a spill. While we have your attention, and you must forgive us for inquiring, you haven’t by any chance seen Molly, have you?”
“Molly? No, why? Is she missing?” he managed to ask. “I do hope she’s okay. Have you called the authorities?”
“I wouldn’t say missing,” Mr. Fuller said.
“No, not missing, just … unaccounted for at the moment,” Mrs. Campbell said. “She has a habit of disappearing for weeks at a time. Not to worry. At any rate, you should sit here for a few moments. He’s a bit concussed,” she told Fuller.
“He’s just had his bell wrung a wee bit, haven’t you, Mr. Welter? Now drink this.”
The odor of the tea stung his eyes before he sipped it. It tasted like rotten fish parts. He would’ve preferred a hot cup of the disinfectant sizzling on his scalp. Mr. Fuller wrapped a large bandage all the way around his head. “This’ll stop the bleeding. One word of advice: you might do well to sit still for a moment. If you don’t mind, I need to get back to my kitchen. The haggis won’t cook itself, will it?”
“Perhaps this isn’t the best time, Mr. Welter, but we do have some correspondence for you. From America, from the looks of it. Also, a number of emails addressed to you have arrived via our hotel website. We’ve taken the liberty of printing them. Normally we don’t accept email for guests, but these appeared to have some urgency about them. Now let us see where we put them.”
She wandered off.
Mrs. Campbell had read his personal correspondence and then left it lying around the hotel for all to see. These fucking people.
“Here you go, Mr. Welter,” she said when she returned, and handed over a stack of papers. She lingered for a moment like she wanted to read over his shoulder, so he held them to his chest until she stomped away.
The printed emails were from Bud. The papers looked like they had been thumbed through. Had there been a fire burning he would’ve thrown them in it again. The stack also included a large envelope from the Chicago law firm retained by his wife — and Helen was still his wife in some way and would remain so until he tore asunder the envelope.
The words on the top page wiggled in a dialect of Newspeak legalese and amounted to the official and fully expected news that he was no longer married. Pending his signature, the divorce would be final and its financial conditions unfavorable.
Next he found a small pile of greeting-card envelopes. Six of them, each with his mother’s secretarial-school handwriting. He opened the first one. The card had a plastic sheath and the cover featured a beach yellowed by a setting sun reflecting in a blue sea. Inside, she had written, “Dearest Raymond.” The manufacturers of the card had seen fit to include the familiar sentiment:
Thinking of you
and wishing you all
the blessings of our
Lord and Savior.
His mother had written at the bottom, “—Mother.” The other cards were identical, each mailed a week apart from the post office in his hometown.
The last two items in the pile were both postcards. On one, Bud implored Ray to get in touch. The face of the second was completely black apart from the white letters: “Machu Picchu at Night.” On the back, a colorful stamp confirmed that it had originated in Peru. The handwritten note read only:
Remain optimistic.
— f.
Ray stared at the postcard in the hope of making some sense of it. Flora had moved to South America as she had planned.
Remain optimistic. He didn’t know what that meant or what it was meant to mean.
“Remain optimistic,” Farkas read over his shoulder. Ray hadn’t heard him come in, which was astounding considering that the man panted like a dog even while sitting still. He took a seat at the fireplace. “What have you done with your head?” he asked.
“I fell off my bike.”
“I suppose that accounts for the twisted hunk of metal I saw out on the porch. Maybe you should have worn a helmet.”
“I did wear a helmet,” Ray said.
“You’re lucky to be among the living or at least among the non — brain damaged.”
“I’m pretty sure the jury’s still out on that one. In fact, I don’t feel very lucky at all.”
“You wouldn’t, now would you? That’s some bandage there.”
“I have Nurse Fuller to thank.”
“Aye, he’s a talented man, a talented man. If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll go procure us a couple drams.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea in my—”
“Well if it isn’t the Wolfman and Mummy, together at last,” Pitcairn said. Ray slipped the postcards and the emails into the big envelope from Chicago. “Let me guess: you fell off your fancy bicycle and banged up that big brain of yours.”
“Just a little spill,” he said. “Nothing serious.”
“Pour me one too while you’re at it, Farkas — especially if Chappie’s buying.”