CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Happy New Year
Dante spent Christmas alone in his room. His presents were few, given not with love, but memories of love, set too deep to exhume.
Things were certainly different with Sunny. On the day before school let out—Tuesday—he’d given her the nail polish. Their surroundings had been secret. No one ever went behind the giant Christmas tree in the foyer. Knowing this, Dante had led her there by the hand. They’d hunkered down behind a number of large, empty boxes decorated to look like presents, and here, Dante gave her his own present. Sunny’s response could not have been better. Gushing with thanks, she’d thrown her arms round his neck, punctuating each word of gratitude with a kiss. The color was perfect, she’d squealed, totally what she would have chosen had she been in the shop with him.
“I’m glad you like it,” Dante told her, leaning on a Styrofoam snowman.
And Sunny, with her head on his chest: “Oh, I love it dear. In fact why don’t we just stay here all through fifth period?”
“I have a better idea,” Dante had then said. “Why don’t we just go home early? Sneak away to Stoutenburg Park, swing on the swings?”
“In twenty-five degree weather?”
“Sure. I’ll keep you warm.”
And so they’d gone, giggling, down one empty hall and up another, peeking around lockers like a couple of Santa’s helpers hoping not to get caught with the milk and cookies. They’d slipped out the front door, ducked behind the bicycle racks. None of it frightened Dante. Somehow he’d known they wouldn’t be caught.
He’d been right. Fifteen minutes after leaving the school, on the cold, empty playground of Stoutenburg Park, Sunny had given Dante his present. It was a book. The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.
“Don’t open it here,” she’d said, snuggling him on one of the picnic tables. “Wait ‘til you’re alone.”
“Thank you for this,” Dante said before putting the book inside his coat.
“My family doesn’t celebrate the holiday. But how could I not let you know what you mean?”
“So the book has a message?”
“Not according to Silverstein. Read the inside cover though. You may find something.”
Later that night he did exactly that, pulling the book’s handsome cover back slowly in a ploy to savor the moment. There was a note inside, written in loops and swirls of red ink.
Dante, Sunny had written.
Chances are you’ve already read this book a hundred times. Its author insists there is no message, but as I told you on the picnic table, the message is mine not his. It goes as follows: Sometimes—most of the time—being good just doesn’t matter. The universe is going to take from you. You are the giving tree; it is the old man. Stop. I’ll help you. I’ll show you how.
Love,
Sunny
He had indeed read the book more than once, but since he always found it so enjoyable he read it again right there at his desk. Then he read Sunny’s note again. And again, and again.
…but as I told you on the picnic table, the message is mine not his.
Over the school year she had executed a number of disturbing maneuvers upon his psyche, to the point where they should have, by this time, been nearly commonplace. All the same, his heart went cold at these words. How on Earth had she possessed the foresight to write them? There was simply no way Sunny could have known his intention to steal her away to the park. Right up until the moment it happened, Dante hadn’t even known himself.
On impulse he decided to open the book again, flipping the pages carefully to see if she’d written anything else. There was nothing until the very back, where on the opposite side of the cover he found:
I know everything…
About the boy I fell in love with. You, Dante.
You.
Had this strange statement, written in the same red ink, and in Sunny’s hand, been there all along? Dante couldn’t be sure. He put the book on the desk, stood up, and went to the window. The scene beyond—light snow, a large church, an empty street—was certainly familiar enough. Comforting even. But the darkness he sensed did not come from outside. Rather, it was right here in the room with him.
“Sunny?” he called aloud, still staring at the church. “Tell me something. How long were you able to hold your breath that day in front of my locker?”
He waited a few seconds, then crossed to the desk. The book lay there, just as he’d left it. But had it perhaps changed just a little bit? He opened the cover gingerly, as if at any moment it might snap and take his fingers off. Sunny’s note was still on the inside, word for word as she’d written it. Dante flipped to the back. There was the other, shorter note. It too read exactly the same as before.
“You’re an idiot,” Dante said to himself, closing the book.
He didn’t get it all the way closed. Somehow one of the pages curled over too far. Yanking the cover back so as not to damage it, Dante’s hand slipped. The book slid to the edge of the desk and fell off. It thudded on the floor with its cover wide open. Dante bent, picked it up…
And saw that it had fallen to page thirty.
∞
New Year’s Day arrived. 1993. Like always, it was a quiet one in Norwalk. It brought no drinking or dancing. Nobody honked their car horns, or sang Auld Lang Syne in drunken, warbled notes. In Ohio fireworks were illegal for civilians to launch; thus, the skies at midnight of January the 1st remained dark and cold. Indeed, for one in Norwalk to look from skies to streets retained the potential for brief confusion, as they both, at a glance, pretended to be each other. But for the courthouse clock that chimed the hour, nothing among the old downtown buildings made a sound.
This year Dante didn’t care. He wasn’t in town for the holiday. He’d gone with his mother and father to stay at a hotel in Cleveland, where a yacht-owners convention had been booked. The idea excited him at first, not due to the company they would surely keep (tall, suave, self-important—and of course, male), but the premises in which they’d be kept. The Hotel Consorcia on Euclid Avenue was lavish—or so his father promised the week leading up to the event. It boasted three hundred rooms throughout fifteen floors. A swimming pool, a gymnasium; a Jacuzzi, a sauna. There was also a video arcade (again, promised by his father before Dante saw any actual proof), a candy store, and an ice cream parlor.
Of all these fanciful amenities, only the latter two turned out to be bogus. They arrived on the afternoon of December 31st. A valet parked their car. Luggage boys carried their bags through a revolving gold door. Beyond lay a whisper quiet, dim lobby painted wine and gold. Huge pieces of cedar wood furniture snoozed beneath the glow of pleasant lamps. At a long counter, also of cedar wood, his father spoke to a girl who procured a room for them on the ninth floor.
They went up in an elevator silent as the lobby. The car’s door was mirrored. Seeing himself reflected made Dante, as always, immediately self-conscious. He set about straightening his hair and collar while his parents stood statuesque. It didn’t seem to help much. His jeans looked baggy, his shirt wrinkled. Irritated, he took a deep breath and decided to hold it until the doors opened, which they did in plenty of time, dumping them all into yet more dimness, this time a hallway, lushly carpeted and set with fake plants that cast long, vaguely unsettling shadows.
A cart with their bags on it sat outside room 909. Dante’s father opened the door with a mag-card, then asked Dante to roll the cart into a room that smelled of fresh laundry. One of the bags—a red duffle—belonged to him. He put it on the bed closest to the window, hoping his parents wouldn’t ask him to switch. Then he went to the glass and looked out. Craning his head, he could see Euclid Avenue’s wet sidewalks stretching to the Huntington and PNC buildings. Nearer by was the State Theatre on Playhouse Square. Everything was rain and concrete gray. Not unpleasant. A day for coffee by candlelight, or a good book in an easy chair. This was the departure of 1992. Its final few steps would be from a city by the lake.
“Dante?” his father called.
Dante closed the curtain. “Yes?”
“Your mother and I are going to wash up for the convention. Once we’re gone you’ll be on your own…probably for the rest of the night.”
“Okay.”
“They’re having a little party after all the boring slide-shows,” Mr. Torn went on to explain. “I guess to ring in 1993.”
He spoke this last as if the holiday were normally too trivial to muck about with. For the most part that was true. Dante thought his parents might stay out late tonight, but they wouldn’t dance or get drunk. That kind of behavior simply didn’t fit their reasoned, sensible style. Some of their friends, on the other hand…
“Is Joe going to be there?” Dante asked.
Immediately he regretted bringing that particular friend into the conversation. Too many bad memories—bad and not so distant memories—involved Joseph Jones. And since Dante never liked the big blowhard anyway, why had he even bothered think of him?
“No,” his father said, with a drop in temperature Dante could easily feel. “Joe doesn’t leave his house much these days. But don’t worry,” he added after a moment, “I’ll leave some money for you on the bed-stand.”
Ouch, Dante thought.
His father stared at him with eyes like the headlights of a police car. “Will there be anything else?” he said.
“No,” Dante told him. “Thanks.”
“Good boy. Happy New Year, Dante.”
“Thanks,” Dante said again. “Happy New Year, Dad.”
∞
In less than an hour he was all by himself in the room. By then it was near six o’clock and almost full dark. Euclid Avenue had come alight, though very few Clevelanders wished to brave the damp weather. Looking out the window Dante could see a good many traffic lights serving a futile purpose. He counted their cycles—red, green, yellow, red—half a dozen times before seeing a single car.
Not that the cold was solely to blame. Because of the holiday very few shops along the strip were even open. Of those that were, Dante guessed, none would welcome patrons with open arms. Yes, there were people who still had to show up for jobs over the holidays, but they didn’t expect to work.
Yawning, Dante left the window. What lay beyond mattered little. He was prisoner of the hotel. Indeed, it appeared as if he might open 1993 right here in room 909, watching movies on cable television. Hoping this wouldn’t be the case but feeling powerless to avoid it, he lay back in bed with the Consorcia’s remote control and began to surf channels. What sprang up was not encouraging. First came a black and white sitcom from the fifties; next, a basketball report from two nights previous—Cavaliers 114, Hawks 96—then a Schwarzenegger movie on HBO; then snow; then a beer commercial; then another black and white, this one a movie featuring Cary Grant and Joan Fonaine.
“Hello, Monkey-face!” Cary Grant sang.
Dante clicked the TV off. He put the controller on the table, right next to what his father had left him for dinner tonight: fifty dollars. Not bad, he thought. I can do a lot with fifty bucks.
Then he remembered he was in the Consorcia. With luck he might be able to afford a burger, fries, and a Coke at the bar. If they even let kids into the bar. If not, he would have to call room service.
There was a menu next to the phone. Dante skimmed it. The meals were pricey all right, all printed in flouncy curly-cues he could barely read. In fact only the kiddy meal would leave him with change enough to tip the delivery boy.
He was not going to order the kiddy meal. Tossing the menu aside, Dante reached for his shoes. He put them on, grabbed a key and the money, and left room 909. If the Hotel Consorcia couldn’t feed him on fifty dollars, he would find a deli down the street.
As it turned out, there was a buffet lounge off the lobby that sold reasonably priced meals. Dante ate Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes in a quiet corner which, through an arched wooden doorway, gave him a view of the bar, where bald-headed old men drank whiskey in the dark, their glasses clinking. None of them spoke, or even smiled. They’d grown tired of the future, Dante guessed. For them New Year’s Eve had long ago lost its ability to enchant. They’d brushed the fairy dust of hope away, knowing it no longer sparkled with the power to give wings to its receiver. Instead, it brought sneezes and coughs. Dante watched one of the men put down his drink and light a cigar. Smoke clouded his face. The smoke of anguish yet to come.
∞
After dinner he found the video arcade, a by no means easy task in this particular hotel. It began with a decision not to ride the elevator back upstairs, but stroll past their shiny doors to the end of the hallway. Here an unusually dark T intersection offered two options: turn left to the convention hall (where the yachtsmen were no doubt discussing old Christopher Cross hits and whether or not Dacron was stronger than Spectra), or turn right into an even darker corridor possessed of undisclosed destinations.
Dante chose right, leaving the glow of the convention to caress his shoulders. That glow quickly faded while the hallway seemed to get more narrow with every step. He passed a janitor’s closet, then an empty room with a black sink counter and a coffee pot. Steam billowed from the pot. Beside it was a white mug, its rim chipped.
Dante was almost past the room when he noticed a poster on the back wall. Hesitating, he afforded it a closer look. It was an oddity. Never before had he seen anything like it, and for the life of him, he couldn’t see its purpose in a luxury hotel.
It showed a flight of black stairs, beneath which floated a pair of tilted, angry green eyes. Beware All Lairs Beneath Old Stairs, a message beneath the picture read.
What it was supposed to mean, besides the obvious (and ludicrous), Dante held no power to fathom. More than likely an employee had hung it there for a joke. Unsettled regardless, Dante walked to the end of the hall. Here a flight of concrete steps, uncarpeted, curved down to what he at first guessed was a parking garage. Expecting to be deposited onto a tier of chrome grills and bumpers, he rounded the curve, only to be surprised by a dim, carpeted room of blinking, blipping screens. Another poster, this one far more friendly, hovered on the wall to the right. It showed a powered-up Pac-Man gobbling colored ghosts, while on the bottom a caption proclaimed: We’ve Got To Stop Eating Like This.
Delighted by his find, Dante entered the room. Huge, black video consoles—all of them lit—formed a corridor of electronic bliss. Better still, there was no one else in the room, so he had his pick of the games.
He started with Ms. Pac-Man and worked his way towards the back, dropping quarters into other games like Galaga and Space Invaders and Street Fighter. Screen lives went reasonably quick, as he wasn’t an especially skilled player. This fact scarcely bothered him. The fact that the room was dark didn’t bother him either, nor that he was alone, until an hour later when he noticed a small, round table with a white card taped to it. On the card was a series of black words. Dante glanced at it once before finishing his round of Tempest. Only then did he afford it another look. In an instant all merriment came to a halt. The card’s message was not a happy one. Far from it.
Closure Of This Retro-Arcade Shall Be Permanent And Absolute, it read, All Games To Be Left On For The Beguilement Of That Which Our Young Patrons Have Feared, And Spoken Of In Awkward Forums. Entrance To This Room Is FORBIDDEN Without Express Permission Of Hotel Management. Thank You.
Suddenly unable to move his legs, Dante looked back along the row of consoles. He now stood at the room’s opposite end, far from the curved steps. He took a deep breath. No doubt the sign, like the poster in the coffee room, was meant to be a joke. Otherwise, why wouldn’t it be hanging at the doorway, rather than all the way back here? Still, Dante felt unnerved, and no longer wished to feed coins to the blinking machines. Letting the breath out, he took a step forward. That was when a pinball machine on his right, Gorgar, kicked a free ball to its piston, and began make sounds like a heartbeat, as if it had somehow come alive.
Beat Me! a voice through its hidden speakers challenged.
It was the voice of a demon, which was appropriate, considering the picture on the machine’s backboard that depicted one of the beasts. It grinned at Dante with long teeth and green eyes.
Boom-Boom! thumped the heartbeat effect. Boom-Boom! Boom-Boom!
Dante looked at the card again.
--For The Beguilement Of That Which Our Young Patrons Have Feared—
Spine tingling, he left the room at a hurried pace, not daring to look over his shoulder as he moved. He reached the top of the stairs and passed the coffee room without a glance.
∞
Back at the elevators, he asked a bellhop for directions to the swimming pool, hoping that time in a festive, public area would help calm his nerves. The bellhop obliged with a smile, along with a neat, crisp hand covered with white glove. Dante put a quarter in the hand, then made his way through the dark lobby, keeping his mind focused on the route he’d been told to use. Through the lobby, to the left, and down a long, wide hallway that led to an enormous glass dome.
The young man’s instructions proved accurate. In less than two minutes Dante was at the edge of a large, rectangular swimming pool. It ran the length of an open foyer that echoed the sound of footsteps, along with that of lapping water. Above spanned the dome, black and starless, as the time was now past eight o’clock. A cloak of darkness also hovered along the far wall, where a row of plain, numbered doors slept, awaiting tenants.
Few were here at the moment. Indeed, Dante could see only one—a slender lady with long red hair, swimming laps in the pool. She wore a green, two-piece bathing suit with ties that streamed elegantly, like tiny kite strings, from her body. Each kick of her legs threw up light, dainty droplets of water.
“Phew!” she breathed, her arms moving. “Phew! Whew!”
Not wishing to disturb her exercise, Dante found a seat at one of the tables. From here he watched, by a series of furtive glances, as the red-haired woman swam from one end of the pool to the other, and back again. She looked quite graceful. Her slender body made scarcely a ripple upon the surface, and the music of her labored lungs was high and pretty. A couple of times she caught Dante watching, but didn’t seem to mind. She even smiled at him once. That was when he noticed her eyes, like her bikini, were green.
Smiling at him again, she drew a deep breath—AHHHH!—and dove down.
Dante counted to ten before she broke the surface, filling her small chest with what sounded like much needed air.
“OH!” she cried, as water sprayed her twinkling eyes. “Goodness!”
“Are you all right?” Dante forced himself to ask.
“Yes!” the woman answered, breasts heaving. “But I should have rested a little first! Whew! Got a bit too confident with my mermaid skills!”
Dante cleared his throat and nodded. He could think of no suitable response to her statement, though one seemed required, as the woman kept staring at him, her smile thin yet knowing. Knowing of what Dante couldn’t be sure, as they had only just met.
Or had he perhaps seen her before? When she next spoke, it was to say that she was a relative Sunny’s, and that she knew the family of her boyfriend—of whom she spoke often, with elated fondness—was staying at the hotel for a yacht convention.
“Sunny has shown me your picture many times,” the woman said, swimming to the edge of the pool to grab hold. “You can only be Dante.” At that moment her smile widened, and her eyes narrowed, so that Dante almost felt he was seeing a shark in the water. “Is my intuition correct? It normally is. My memory too.”
“I’m Dante,” he told her, trying to smile back.
“My name is Hadria,” the woman said. “I’m Sunny’s cousin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
With that, Hadria got out of the pool, dripping water all over the tiles. Dante put her height to be just over five feet, and guessed her weight to be not much more than a hundred pounds. She fetched a towel from a nearby table, dried herself, then took a seat next to Dante.
Over the next few minutes they exchanged a smattering of simple pleasantries, with Hadria doing most of the talking while Dante punctuated her musings with tiny, awkward crumbs of information about himself.
“Sunny talks about you all the time,” Hadria said again, with a friendly tap on Dante’s arm. “Being in love makes her very excited. Very happy. Of course it does. Everyone loves to be in love.”
Dante noticed that every time she spoke the word love, her green eyes fluttered, and her brow wrinkled, as if she were suffering some minor discomfort. He began to wonder if perhaps this woman had once been in love, and been hurt by it. If so he didn’t care to imagine what kind of man would have inflicted the pain, for Hadria’s beauty was such that it seemed fresh with each anxious glance he sent in her direction. Her red hair, now dry, lay like a curtain of fire over shoulders delicate and narrow. Light freckles sprinkled her cheeks, which were otherwise clear, arcing back to dully pointed ears, each pierced with a small, milky-white stone.
“Moonstone,” Hadria said, when she caught Dante looking. The shark smile had come back to her lips. “The stone of desire. It radiates female energy and stimulates a man’s appetite for love. I’ll loan them to Sunny for you. If you like.”
Mention of his girlfriend caused Dante to blurt out what had been on his mind for several minutes now. “You look like her. Like an adult version of her.”
Hadria tilted her head. The motion must have captured a ray of light reflecting off the pool water, for her green eyes then began to twinkle like stars seen on a clear, cold night.
“Does that mean I interest you?” she asked in a slithering voice.
Here Dante, feeling ridiculous, began to splutter explanations and apologies in equal measure. Yes, he found her to be an interesting woman, but not like that, or not like how she seemed to ascertain; not that she wasn’t interesting in that way, not at all, but he loved Sunny, he belonged to Sunny, he would never—
Hadria cut him off with a laugh. “It’s all right, Dante. I know precisely what you’re trying to say.”
“Thank you,” Dante gushed. “That makes one of us, at least.”
At this the small woman laughed some more, glancing in opposite directions, perhaps as a way to reassure herself that no one was looking. Once she saw that they were still alone, she looked at Dante and asked:
“Would you like to time how long I can hold my breath underwater? I’ve been trying to reach one minute but haven’t quite been able to.”
“Sure,” Dante said. “No problem.”
“I have a watch in my bag. Let me get it.”
Hadria rose and walked, pixie-like, to the next table, where she rummaged briefly through a large bag and came up with a pink wrist-watch. After pressing a few of its beeping buttons, she handed the watch to Dante. Its green display showed a row of zeroes. Next to them was a button marked START.
Hadria walked to the edge of the pool. After a brief glance into its depths, she dove in. Dante admired how her reedy frame barely disturbed the water. Seconds later she surfaced by the ladder, refreshing her lungs.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I’d like to try this without a top.”
Dante’s eyes widened as Hadria reached behind herself, untied the top of her bathing suit, and lay it on the tiles.
“I’ll get a much deeper breath this way,” she then explained, “and also be more relaxed while holding it in.”
She didn’t wait for Dante to offer an opinion on the matter. Instead, her chest began to rise with a numbe