Chapter Eighty
Eric Drig was having a splendid time. He thought the hotel wonderful. Just now, he was hiding in a cupboard that could only be accessed through a bent panel in the back wall of an out-of-the-way cellar whilst his brothers and sister sought him. He tried to keep his giggling down, but he couldn’t help himself, and when they found him, he laughed all the louder.
This hotel was full of secret places like that, and now that their mother was off fucking a waiter, and their father incapacitated with despondency, they could practically do as they pleased. Nick cocoa from the larder? Sure. Stay up all night? Okay. Make a fort in the ballroom out of mattresses? Then set it aflame? Why not?
The group ran down the corridor, shouting whatever came into their heads, when they saw Aloysius pushing a cart of dirty dishes. They hid in a broom closet, but their collective evil eye was not lost on him, and later that night, while holding their mother in his arms, after making the tenderest love to her he’d ever made, he would not sleep for fear that the eldest, Danny, would break in and stab him.
Danny, watching the waiter retreat, swore he would not rest till he (Aloysius) died, and his mother, after due punishment, was safely back with her spouse. Their family had been wonky, but reliable, with his brash father kowtowing to his brasher mother as a means of resolving most arguments. As it stood now—what would happen, once the holiday finally gasped its last breath? Would the siblings be broken up, and cast adrift, like the planks of a storm-smashed ship?
The younger ones thought it all a game, save for Betsy, who kept her thoughts to herself.
Why shouldn’t I kill him?, Danny asked himself. What possible consequence, in this unpoliced place, could there be?
He owed it to his father, he concluded. His father was a kind man, but weak. His father should be the one to slay Aloysius, but since that was a deed of which he was incapable, then he, Danny, had to do it. To preserve the family. To redeem his father. And to save his mother.