“Does she ever show up anywhere other than your room?” Alice asked.
“Never at the Hilton. I think the Hilton confuses her. They’ve got five hundred rooms over there, you know. Two hundred suites.”
“Well, where is she now?”
“God knows,” Carter shuddered.
“She’s in your mind,” Alice persisted.
“No, no, only to the extent that we’re discussing her. You know how that works.”
Alice didn’t. Her own thoughts were like a masked, hoarsely babbling mob, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“So what does she want from you?”
“She wants me to die! She wants me to share death with her!” She had always wanted to share her problems with him, her weight, her menses, the fading away of her menses, her crushes on men … now this. She was relentless.
“Everybody knows you can’t share that,” Alice said. “Maybe you only think she wants that. She probably wants something else.”
“But what would that be? There isn’t anything else.”
“Some tiny thing, maybe,” Alice said. “Microscopic. Infinitesimal.” There was, of course, something horrible about the infinitesimal.
“No, no, she wants me to join her and go on as though nothing happened. She’s getting more — maybe you’re right in part. At first it was like motes, but—”
“Motes?”
“Yes, motes, they didn’t add up at first. The first few nights she appeared, it was all sort of ambiguous.” Maybe if he’d hired a band to play during the cremation; that’s what the Buddhists did, according to Donald. But the crematorium was in an industrial park! And the undertaker said it would take three hours. No exceptions. It had always taken three hours, it would forever take three hours, which sort of ruled out a normal band. The undertaker, an unhappy man as he had never realized his dream of being a Navy SEAL, having an unreliable stomach, was not sensitive but nonetheless seemed to be functioning intuitively with the three business, for didn’t three symbolize spiritual synthesis? Didn’t it solve the problem posed by that infernal dualism? Three was a remarkable figure for the situation, Carter remembered thinking even at the time. He had never considered going to the industrial park as an observer for those three hours. He had passed the wretched plot on the highway many, many times; Ginger, too, for that matter. One building made velvet, another corrugated cardboard, another paint. One place had been busted for churning out fake military medals. Another, he thought he’d heard once, rendered horses. Oversized American flags flying, chained dogs everywhere, the hulk of bulldozed trees. Still, maybe if he’d had a band — a band might have been just the thing to occupy Ginger’s mind during the difficult transition.
“But we’re not talking motes anymore,” Carter said. “This is far beyond motes. She’s strong now. Strong. Sometimes I think she’s about to yank me up out of here. She’s just waiting for me to lose my balance, and then …” He trailed off. He wanted to get back to the Hilton, have a few drinks in the bar, take a piss in one of their splendid urinals filled with crushed ice. There was a world out there, a world where he could still be active. Donald said he should strive to make his mind buoyant and flexible, capable of addressing any situation. Yes, yes, he had only to convince this girl here, Alice, that she had what it took, had the potential, to murder his dead wife.
“Does she live in your room now that you don’t?” Alice asked.
“Live there?” Alice didn’t grasp the problem at all. “Why, no. That would be all right if she did, if she couldn’t get out. That would be perfectly acceptable. But I’m afraid — let me tell you what I’m afraid of — that because I don’t go into that room anymore, it gives her license to go everyplace else. I think I made a tactical error by abandoning the room, see, she was pretty much contained there. She hasn’t come to the Hilton yet, but why wouldn’t she, once she figures it out? Those key cards are hardly the ultimate in human ingenuity.”
“Maybe it’s her soul you’re seeing,” Alice proffered. This somewhat fit in with her more recent theory that the soul was something you acquired only after you were dead, and by then it was determined to pursue what was most important to it, no matter how misguided the pursuit was. Mr. V. was the treasure meant for Mrs. V. alone, which was having unfortunate consequences for Mr. V. Marriage sort of disturbed Alice; it seemed all aftermath.
“Her soul?” Carter shook his head and felt something pop and grind subversively. No, no, this was Ginger, a simple yet practically incomprehensible parallelism to Ginger. Clearly one couldn’t murder a soul, or if one could it would be very bad, one of those inexcusable things. Still, he realized he was using Alice, or trying to, as cat’s-paw. He should be ashamed of himself. “I’m sure it’s not her soul. It looks just like her — I mean, just like she did.”
“Just like she did when?” Alice asked, for there couldn’t be just one moment that was you, could there? When you looked like yourself, the way you’d be remembered?
But Carter did not address this question. “She used to be rather languid, viperish certainly, but sort of indolent, the way vipers are when they’re not trying to sink their fangs into you. But now she wants to sink in her fangs and she’s coiled with intent. Coiled.”
Alice wanted to help Mr. V. out, he looked on the brink. “Let’s take a look in your room again and see if she’s there.”
“I haven’t been in there in a week,” Carter said.
Alice had an alarmed instant of feeling they had to water Mrs. V. or something, a blurred glimpse of the soul as an animal, ignored if not forgotten, thirsting, its woeful paws curled beneath its famishing.
“Well, let’s take a look,” Alice urged.
He strode purposefully toward his bedroom door. He disliked the door; it was not a fine door and was even hollow. For an expensive house, much had been scamped. He turned the knob and pushed the door back.
Alice peered into the dark. “It’s really quiet in there,” she said.
He heard Ginger’s laughter, which brought to mind the weekend they’d been Christmas shopping in New York, the evening they’d been drunk and run up the down escalator at Sak’s — far more difficult and enjoyable than you’d think. He wrenched the light on so vigorously that the plastic dimmer switch came off in his hand.
Everything looked in terrible disarray.
“You’ve been robbed,” Alice said. “Have you been robbed?”
Carter peered at the room. Initially, it didn’t seem as if anything was missing except his little clock — no, it had been safely relocated, he kept it by the bar now. But he could hear it ticking, or something was ticking, a tocking rondo in his head.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“But it looks as though the police have been here. What’s that yellow ‘Do not cross’ tape?” The tape beribboned the room with festive authority.
“That’s a joke,” Carter said. “I put it up. Just a joke.” There was The Nature of Things. It looked a little the worse for wear. Poor old Lucretius. A love philter had turned him mad. He reeled in the tape, winding it around his hand. “Do you feel a presence in here, Alice? Sort of a permeation?”