* * *
—
When Walter walked within earshot of Leon Prevant and Jonathan Alkaitis, some time later, the conversation had shifted from Leon’s work to Alkaitis’s, from shipping to investment strategies. Walter understood none of it. Finance wasn’t his world. He didn’t speak the language. Someone on the day shift had covered the graffiti on the glass with reflective tape, an odd silvery streak of mirror on the darkened window. Two American actors were eating dinner at the bar.
“He left his first wife for her,” Larry said, nodding at them.
“Oh?” said Walter, who could not possibly have cared less. Twenty years of working in high-end hotels had cured him of any interest in celebrity. “I wanted to ask you,” he said, “just between the two of us, does the new guy seem a little off to you?”
Larry glanced theatrically over his shoulder and around the lobby, but Paul was elsewhere, mopping the corridor behind Reception in the heart of the house.
“Maybe a little depressed, is all,” Larry said. “Not the most sparkling personality I’ve ever come across.”
“Did he ask you about arriving guests last night?”
“How’d you know? Yeah, asked me when Jonathan Alkaitis was arriving.”
“And you told him…?”
“Well, you know my eyesight’s not great, and I’d only just come on shift. So I told him I wasn’t completely sure, but I thought the guy drinking whiskey in the lobby was Alkaitis. Didn’t realize my mistake till later. Why?” Larry was a reasonably discreet man, but on the other hand, the staff lived together in the same building in the woods and gossip was a kind of black-market currency.
“No reason.”
“Come on.”
“I’ll tell you later.” Walter still didn’t understand the motive, as he walked back toward Reception, but there was no doubt in his mind that Paul had committed the act. He glanced around the lobby, but no one seemed to require his attention at that moment, so he slipped through the staff door behind the reception desk. Paul was cleaning the dark window at the end of the hall.
“Paul.”
The night houseman stopped what he was doing, and in his expression, Walter knew that he’d been correct in his suspicions. Paul had a hunted look.
“Where’d you get the acid marker?” Walter asked. “Is that something you can just buy at a hardware store, or did you have to make it yourself?”
“What are you talking about?” But Paul was a terrible liar. His voice had gone up half an octave.
“Why did you want Jonathan Alkaitis to see that disgusting message?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“This place means something to me,” Walter said. “Seeing it defaced like that…” It was the like that that bothered him the most, the utter vileness of the message on the glass, but he didn’t know how to explain this to Paul without opening a door into his personal life, and the thought of revealing anything remotely personal to this shiftless little creep was untenable. He couldn’t finish the sentence. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to give you an opportunity,” he said. “Pack up your things and leave on the first boat, and we don’t have to get the police involved.”
“I’m sorry.” Paul’s voice was a whisper. “I just—”
“You just thought you’d deface a hotel window, for the sake of delivering the most vicious, the most deranged—” Walter was sweating. “Why did you even do it?” But Paul had the furtive look of a boy searching for a plausible story, and Walter couldn’t stand to listen to another lie that night. “Look, just go,” he said. “I don’t care why you did it. I don’t want to look at you anymore. Put the cleaning supplies away, go back to your room, pack your bags, and tell Melissa that you want a ride to Grace Harbour as quickly as possible. If you’re still here at nine a.m., I’ll go to Raphael.”
“You don’t understand,” Paul said. “I’ve got all this debt—”
“If you needed the job that badly,” Walter said, “you probably shouldn’t have defaced the window.”
“You can’t even swallow broken glass.”
“What?”
“I mean it’s actually physically impossible.”
“Seriously? That’s your defense?”
Paul flushed and looked away.
“Did you ever think of your sister in all of this?” Walter asked. “She got you the job interview here, didn’t she?”
“Vincent had nothing to do with this.”
“Are you going to leave? I’m in a generous mood and I don’t want to embarrass your sister, so I’m giving you a clean exit here, but if you’d prefer a criminal record, then by all means…”
“No, I’ll go.” Paul looked down at the cleaning supplies in his hands, as if unsure how they’d landed there. “I’m sorry.”
“You should go pack before I change my mind.”
“Thank you,” Paul said.
5
But the horror of it. Why don’t you swallow broken glass. Why don’t you die. Why don’t you cast everyone who loves you into perdition. He was thinking about his friend Rob again, forever sixteen, thinking about Rob’s mother’s face at the funeral. Walter sleepwalked through the rest of his shift and stayed up late to meet with Raphael in the morning. As he passed through the lobby at eight a.m., up past his bedtime and desperate for sleep, he caught sight of Paul down at the end of the pier, loading his duffel bags into the boat.
“Good morning,” Raphael said when Walter looked into his office. He was bright-eyed and freshly shaved. He and Walter lived in the same building, but in opposite time zones.
“I just saw Paul getting on the boat with his worldly belongings,” Walter said.
Raphael sighed. “I don’t know what happened. He came in here this morning with an incoherent story about how much he misses Vancouver, when the kid practically begged me for a change of scenery three months back.”
“He gave no reason?”
“None. We’ll start interviewing again. Anything else?” Raphael asked, and Walter, his defenses weakened by exhaustion, understood for the first time that Raphael didn’t like him very much. The realization landed with a sad little thud.