Chapter Twenty
More and more, guests chose to remain in their rooms. Out there, after all, was at least one murderer, as well as some baffling pervert—possibly the same person—who delighted in stuffing things in people’s toilets. Many a guest planned to demand a refund from the hotel’s proprietor, through their solicitors, if and when they escaped from this nightmare a.k.a. holiday.
Philip La Paiva, though, came and went. His father could hear him, through their suite’s communicating door, leave his bedroom, at all hours of the day and night, and return, chuckling to himself over—who knew what?
His father, actually, knew, having been granted—the reader will (or won’t) recall— total knowledge of the universe, for better or for worse. Thus he knew, ironically, perhaps, too much to judge, and more than enough to forgive. One night, his son having just come in, La Paiva the elder rose from his unwanted and inescapable communion and entered his son’s room.
“Couldn’t you knock, Father?” Phil was at the mirror, undoing his tie. “Just once?”
“There is nothing you could think or do to which I would not remain, through no will of my own, privy,” La Paiva smiled sadly.
“Oh, yes, right—the omniscience.” He rolled his eyes. “Or did you already know I was going to say that?”
La Paiva shrugged.
“I suppose,” Phil sighed, dumping himself in a chair and turning his side to his father, “there’s no point, then, to us having this conversation, as you’ll no doubt know everything I’d say to you, and what you’d say to me, and how it’d all turn out. So—do you think you could hold it yourself, in your room, while I try to get some sleep?”
His father moved into the room and sat down on an ottoman quite close to him, surprising him. “I suppose no one likes a know-it-all.”
“Well, I don’t, anyway.” He jumped up. “Like a drink?” Without waiting for an answer, he walked to the tray of bottles on a dresser and started pouring himself one. “You’d make a brilliant bartender, I’ll give you that. You could have everybody’s drinks ready for them before they’d even stepped into the bar.”
“Would you like to know what I see?” his father asked him softly.
Phil, his back still to him, stopped all movement. His head turned only a little. “. . .I don’t think I would.”
“I don’t blame you for that. In fact, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But I’d like to tell you just one thing. . .a rather big thing, I admit. . .if you’ll let me.”
Phil, standing, downed his drink, started to pour another—then stopped—lowered the bottle, came back to the chair, sat, and looked his father straight in the eye. “Tell me.”
“I can see. . .” He swallowed. “I can see a huge hole, of ultimate pointlessness, in the universe. . .”
Without wishing to, his son appeared appalled.
But his father went on: “. . .If you don’t know where to look. If you look right through space—through the invisible. But coupled with this, in tension with it, is the ultimate salvation.”
“Christ?”
“No. . .” He reached out and, awkwardly, placed his arm around his son’s neck. His face was in darkness, with only his tears ensnaring the shuddering glow of the little lamp. “I want. . .I would like. . .to give up everything. . .everything I have. . .just to try to make you understand. . .that I love you.”
His son was crying too. Gently, regretfully, he took hold of his father’s arm and removed it from him. “It’s too late, Father,” he whispered. “Go to sleep, now.”