I saw the front desk staff dispersing, one woman quickly coming out of the door.
Van Raye said to Elizabeth, “Please don’t. I have nothing.” He finally took his glasses off and folded them and put them in his parka’s pocket, withdrawing a pair of tortoiseshell eyeglasses. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said. “I don’t have nothing exactly. I do have one thing. Sandeep knows. I’ve had a bit of success. For what I was searching for.”
Someone had summoned potbellied Mr. Blaney, and Albert from security followed.
“What has happened here?” Mr. Blaney said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Was someone struck?” Albert in his brown nylon jacket and tie wanted to know, his aftershave arriving with him.
“I’m handling everything,” Elizabeth said. “This is a family matter, and I apologize.”
“I’ll go get an incident report,” Albert said.
“I don’t need an incident report,” Elizabeth said. “Please leave us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Blaney said and motioned for Albert to disperse, and Blaney left without a glance back.
Van Raye unzipped the jacket and said, “Seriously, Elizabeth? It takes a lot to admit this to you, but I am broke.”
“Broke you should be familiar with,” she said. “And we are always here to bail you out, aren’t we?”
“It’s not like that. That’s not true.” In a lower voice, he said, “You know what I’ve found.”
“Yes,” she said. “That has nothing to do with us.”
He let out a breath. “It has everything to do with everyone. Look, I need a place to stay. Ruth is here to help me work. She’s the only person who can help. She’s a genius.”
When we turned to see Ruth Christmas sitting on the luggage, she shrugged.
I reached out to Elizabeth, but she turned and stormed toward the elevator.
I hobbled on my cane to catch up to her. She pushed the button and waited for the elevator. I turned to Van Raye and held up a finger for him to stay away.
Elizabeth tried to control her breathing as she watched the numbers above the elevator. “The man will never change. I don’t want him here.”
“Yes, you do. Who was that back there that I just saw?”
“You mean the genius?”
“No, I mean you.”
“Me?” she said.
“Yes. You were someone else, asking about his horn. And then you hit him.”
She closed her eyes and made a visible shudder. “Sandeep, look at me, I’m shaking. Yes, I struck someone.”
I leaned on my cane. “We can let him stay.”
“He’s using us.”
“What does that hurt? He’s going to do this anyway. We can let him work here. Just don’t get too close.”
Elizabeth considered the chandelier in the ceiling, then casually glanced at the woman across the lobby dressed in a green flight suit and with no hair.
“A genius?” Elizabeth said sarcastically.
I quickly typed Ursula a message that I was coming to the room.
Elizabeth said, “‘Genius’ is a term tossed around too much, don’t you think? You’re a genius, Sandeep.”
I stopped typing and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“See, you can label anyone,” she said.
She took in a deep breath.
“Holy shit,” I said, “for a second there, you scared me.” Elizabeth and I watched the other woman put her feet up on the bags.
“His discovery won’t make this elevator any faster, will it?” she said.
“Dubourg and Ursula are here.”
She turned to me. “We’re supposed to be getting back on task here. I’m ready to put this hotel behind us.” She looked back at the two geniuses. “Book only one room for the geniuses. What do I care? Put them away together. We’ll pay for everything, of course.”
CHAPTER 31
I went to my room to collect my cousins. We hugged and then divvied up my ski gear because I told them Van Raye was going to the roof to check out some antenna. Ursula cursed me for leaving her alone in the room and ended up putting on Dubourg’s wool pea coat, and Dubourg put on my hooded ski jacket. We took the service elevator to the attic storage room, and Dubourg and Ursula followed me through aisles of fold-up bed frames from some forgotten era, me following the path of ceiling lights Elizabeth had flipped on only minutes before, purplish and buzzing as they warmed inside wire cages. A set of steel stairs on the far wall went up to a landing and a single metal door. Halfway up, I had to catch my breath and my phone dinged:
Raye is with you.
I turned the phone to them. “Can you see this?” I said.
“No,” Dubourg said, patiently waiting behind me for my legs to rest.
Wind shook the door at the top of the landing and drew our attention, and I kept trudging upward. Ursula reached the door first and pushed its handle and the wind threw it open. Dubourg and I covered our eyes, blinking into the snow. This was the top of the hotel, literally in the sky, swirling with cold that immediately bit at my ears.
Elizabeth stood calmly in the wind shadow of a giant metal utility box, only the triangle of her wool overcoat lifting, her cheap sunglasses on. She pulled her scarf down to say something I couldn’t hear, and pointed. The flagpole’s halyard dinged a rhythm. Ducts leaked clouds of steam that tumbleweeded and thinned and disappeared before it got to an old satellite dish, and there was Van Raye marching toward us with arms raised, a giant smile on his face. “There is more here!” he shouted. “Look at the people!” The ends of his white hair were damp, snow collected on his cap.
Something heavy dropped and Dubourg stepped past me to intercept Charles. Dubourg’s hand went toward Van Raye in slow motion and struck him on the right side of his face. My first reaction to Charles being punched for a second time that day, I’m sorry to say, was to laugh. Maybe it was seeing the physics of Van Raye’s twisting body again and the expression on his face change from the bullshit of his greeting to total candor and the shock of a Munch scream, and then there was the miraculous catch he made on his way to the ground of his eyeglasses in midflight.
He rolled to his elbows and shut his mouth and blinked up at us. There was the slow blossom of a laceration above his eye.
I said to Dubourg, “What was that for?”
Dubourg, hopping around opening and shutting his bare hand to stay the pain, yelled at me, “Why did I do that?”
Van Raye’s gloved hand, the one not holding his glasses, was on the ground beside my foot, and because it was an easy thing to do, I adjusted my weight and lifted my right foot and put it on his hand. The glove was thick, but I pressed through the cushion until I felt his hand inside. I tried to remember if Van Raye had wronged Dubourg lately or if this was just some kind of reaction. Their last meeting was a few years ago, back when Dubourg was in seminary, and the three of us met in Southern California on a day that couldn’t have been more different from this. That meal had been completely amicable, though afterward Dubourg had mentioned that the man talked down to him.
“My God,” Van Raye said now. “More violence? What was that for?”
Dubourg spun like a dizzy kid and tucked his hand between his leg. “Oh fuck, oh fuck. That was pent-up anger. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. I really have hated you all these years. But I’m sorry!” Dubourg’s breathing produced condensation, but the curses were cloudless Oh fucks, and he began mumbling in the blizzard, “Tadyatha diri tishta taskara. . ” his eyes closed, hands on his knees.