There Are Doors

Grand Hotel

He woke when the taxi stopped, very possibly because the driver had made certain that the stop would wake him. “That’s twenty-seven ten,” the driver said.

He handed over thirty dollars and got out.

Instead of pulling onto the terrace, the driver had let him off at its edge. Snow still danced across the broad flagstones; it was a dance of ghosts, of whirling white shapes that advanced and retreated in profound silence. A distant clock struck once, the deep tone of its bell rendered thin and spectral by miles of snow-covered fields; a freezing wind touched him through all his clothes.

He could hear the surf, and he turned aside from the warmth and the bright windows of the hotel to go to it, propelled by an attraction he could neither understand nor resist. The sand was strewn with shattered ice piled higher than his head.

He climbed it slowly and patiently, gripping the slabs with stiff fingers, slipping and falling often until at last he stood at the summit and looked across the whispering dark. It seemed to him then that he was himself a creature of the sea, a seal, a dolphin, or a sea lion made human by some heartless magic, magic like that which had given the mermaid legs in the story that had made him cry long ago, cry at the thought of the little mermaid dancing, dancing with her prince in the big castle in Elsinore, dancing the minuet while at each moment the white-hot nails of the land pierced her poor feet.

And it came to him that in those days before television had wholly claimed him, he had received from the mouth of his mother all the instruction he would need to navigate this queer country in which he found himself; but that he had paid no heed, or at least not enough heed, so that he could not recognize as once he might have recognized all its ogres and its elves, the shambling trolls and the dancing peris. North had been a monster, surely; yet what if North had been a salamander, and the master of the flames? What if North were waiting now in the hotel, if North danced with impatience in the hotel this very minuet, waiting hungrily to fire?

Surely his mother had taught him a spell for salamanders?

Nor was she dead, as he had once foolishly imagined. He had always known that, in some deep part of himself that he had banished for fear it would make him strange to employers, to the various girls in Personnel, to the supervisors and submanagers who could no longer be called floorwalkers (not by him at least, not by any hourly employee) the floorwalkers he had so longed to be, though he had no college, though he was not considered—and had never been considered—managerial material.

His mother had never been the waxen thing they had buried. He wondered where she was and why she had not called or written, why she had not advised him in some way, though perhaps she had, perhaps it was her letter that lay in the green-lined drawer of the dream.

The snow clouds parted for an instant, and the moon touched the ocean. He, seeing that fragment of it tossing in the silver light, knew it and knew that in some previous life he had sailed there for decades; and that this previous life was returning to him. He remained poised upon the ice, but the knowledge passed. The moonlight upon the waves became only the moon on the waves, and he grew accustomed to the salt bite of the wind, so that he no longer rejoiced in its sting, but felt only its cold. And after a time he turned away from the ocean and clambered slowly down, often slipping, gripping the ragged ice-slabs with frozen fingers, and crossed the black road with its dancing ghosts, and crossed the broad terrace with its dancing ghosts, and went at last up the steps and into the Grand Hotel.

The hotel had double walls of glass, with a double door in each. Between the first glass wall and the second stood a lone bellboy, like a sentinel guarding a castle without a garrison, a last sentinel left behind by Caesar to watch over the Roman Wall or the Rhine. This bellboy looked at his burned and perforated topcoat and his seared face and said, “Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you can. At least, I hope you can.” He wanted to tell this bellboy his room number, but he could not remember it, so he said, “There was a fire. In a theater and a Chinese shop.”

The bellboy nodded wisely. “What theater was it, sir?” The bellboy had curly hair as blond as excelsior and wore his pillbox cap over one ear.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There was some sort of play, about a revolution.”

“Ah, that’d be the Adrian, sir. Nice place.”

“Not any more,” he said. “It burned to the ground.”

“Prob’ly the Government did it, sir. You know how they are.”

He nodded (though he did not know) and asked, “Isn’t there anyone at the desk?”

“Not this late there isn’t, sir. I’m supposed to take care of it. I’ll take you up in the elevator too, sir.” The bellboy shrugged. “It’s our off season, sir. You know how it is. If we had fireplaces in the rooms …” The bellboy shrugged again, a minute movement of thin shoulders beneath his skin-tight red jacket.

“My friend rented our room. I’d like to know how long it’s paid for.”

“I can look that up for you, sir.”

He nodded, took his hotel key out of his pocket and handed it to the bellboy, who opened the inner glass door for him and showed him into the lobby.

At the desk, the bellboy opened an enormous book and paged through it. “Here you are, sir. That was yesterday, or rather the day before, the way it is now. For a week, sir, so you’ve got six more nights left, counting tonight.”

In the elevator, he asked the bellboy where he could buy a new coat. He was fairly sure that North had bought the shirts, ties, and hats without leaving the hotel; perhaps North really could drive, but he had always been asked to drive, been ordered to drive.

He said, “I beg your pardon?”

“I was saying there’s a place here, sir. In fact, they’re having a big sale, because of it being the off season. In the lower level, sir. There’s a barber shop down there too, and a billiard parlor. Lots of things.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I got lost in what I was thinking.”

“It’s natural you’re shaken up, sir. You must have just barely got out alive.”

He said, “I don’t know,” wondering if he was not in fact dead. He remembered hearing about Purgatory as a child; even then he had not believed it, but perhaps he had been wrong, as he had been wrong about things so many times since, wrong about a whole series of wrong choices that had seemed likely never to end—until at last Lara had chosen him. Did they have fires in Purgatory? No, they had fires in Hell.

He felt that the elevator had started too fast, wrenching and shaking him. And yet he had not noticed at the time, not noticed until its motion had become smooth, showing him all the floors, all the hallways of the hotel, its veins and nerves laid bare by this cage of wrought iron, which displayed to him water lilies and pyramids at one level, golden cattle and sheaves of wheat at the next.

And at every level, empty veins and silent nerves. This was what a scalpel saw as it sliced flesh, this sectioned view that could not live.

He had undergone several operations as a child, none since, and thus he found that his view of surgery was still a child’s—you went to sleep in the daytime and woke sick. This had been the reality, this surgeon’s elevator touring his body to learn how it was made; the wrought iron glared at him with the faces of jungle beasts, from the rolling eyes of a bull with the wings of a vulture and the bearded head of a man.

“Top floor, sir.” The bellboy took out the key. “I’ll see you to your room, sir.”

“Do I look that bad?”

“I’ll feel better if I do, sir.” The bellboy hurried down the hallway ahead of him. “Here we are, sir. Imperial Suite.” With a rattle of the lock, he opened the door. “You and your friend are the only ones on this floor, but if you have trouble or anything just call the desk. I’ll hear the phone.”

He nodded.

The room, which had been cold before, was frigid now. As he got out his wallet, he tried to recall whether he had drunk with the taxi driver; surely he had, or he would not have slept in the taxi. There was nothing smaller than a ten, but he felt that the bellboy deserved a ten after all they had been through together, studying the great book, watching the sea, performing their autopsy on the bellboy’s place of employment.

“Thanks, sir.” The bellboy coughed. “Sir, we have these little braziers …”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like one, if I can have one.”

“They’ve got to be ventilated, but those French doors will take care of that, sir.” The bellboy flashed a lopsided smile. “I’ll bring one up to you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

He was undressing when the bellboy returned. The brazier was a tiny thing, yet far better than nothing. He put it in his bedroom, and when he switched off the light, he found that its copper sides were faintly luminous, aglow with warmth and cheer.

When he woke in the morning, Lara was not there, and every muscle ached. The back of his right hand had been scorched as well as his coat sleeve, and the burn was crusted and painful. The cologne and shaving soap North had bought were still in the bathroom, but neither seemed the right sort of thing to dab on a burn.

Medical was listed on the white plastic card that slid from beneath the telephone. He dialed, and was told that the doctor was not yet in, did not often arrive until later or never during this, the off season, and would (or perhaps would not) call him upon arriving at last. He could not remember his room number, but he said, “I’m in the Imperial Suite, on the top floor,” and the disembodied operator seemed to understand.

It was only when he had hung up that he realized his call had gone through without difficulty, that he had not gotten the twittering voices or Klamm, and that someone—almost the correct someone—had in fact answered.

He resolved to call his apartment again, and at once began to look for something else to do, something that would postpone the moment when he would actually have to dial his own number. He had assumed that the little brazier had gone out, but a few sparks remained, sullenly crimson among the fluffy gray ashes. He added bits of charcoal from a copper can that had accompanied the brazier, then rinsed his fingers in the bathroom, avoiding the burn as much as he could.

His topcoat was ruined. His best trousers would have to be replaced too, but they remained good enough to wear until he got new ones. He dressed gingerly, careful of the burn and thinking more about breakfast than of the call and his apartment, feeling it would be wisest to put both out of his thoughts until it was time to telephone—to telephone and talk to somebody who was not Lara, or no one.

The telephone rang.

He answered. It was the doctor, as he should have guessed. “Understand you’ve a burned hand, sir.”

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think it’s too bad, but there’s a sort of scab on it.” He decided not to mention the burns he had discovered on his face when he had shaved. The doctor would see them, and would treat them or would not.

“Had a bit of an accident myself. Come on down, sir.” The doctor’s voice sounded vaguely familiar. “I’ll give you some salve and a bandage to protect the skin until it heals. I’m in the basement—the lower level’s what they call it.”

The elevator was a long while coming. He rang three times before he recalled that it required a human operator, who would certainly be annoyed. Today the operator was a morose teenager with pimples.

“Lower level,” he said.

The passing floors that had appeared so forsaken the night before seemed equally deserted now. He felt that he himself was only a ghost, riding a ghostly elevator in a phantom hotel, that this building had fallen to the wrecking ball long ago, that it had been replaced by beach-front condos, silent and sourly white structures haunted by the worm, condos wrapped in white winding sheets of salt, themselves slated for demolition if only someone could be found who wanted the land, who would pay hard cold cash on the barrelhead for their destruction.

The lobby flashed by, empty except for a thin, bespectacled youth at the desk. They landed, helicopter-like, in a windowless cavern of boutiques, all of them shut and dark, each of them (to judge by appearances) more than ready to swear that it was never really open, had never been open at all.

“Which way is the doctor’s office?” he asked.

The teenager pointed.

“And could you tell me how late they serve breakfast in the coffee shop?”

“Until they close,” the teenager said, and slammed shut the wrought-iron door.

He reached the end of the row of shops and turned a corner. The cavernous space was even larger here, enlivened by shelving balconies. Dusty flags like stalactites hung from the ceiling; there were only two or three he recognized. Whose was that two-headed eagle? That griffin clawing the air?

“Up here, sir!”

A fat man in shirtsleeves, leaning on a crutch, was bending over a slender balcony rail to wave to him. He waved in return and mounted a short flight of iron steps that creaked and boomed dully beneath his feet, wondering whether there was an elevator someplace and whether the doctor (who it seemed should not have climbed stairs) had been forced to climb these.

The doctor’s door was the only one that showed a light, an old-fashioned pebbled glass door with an oak frame. Plain black lettering on the glass: C.L. APPLEWOOD, M.D.

Inside there was no receptionist, no nurse. The doctor sat at a desk at the back of a long, narrow room, large of feature, heavy of jaw, and smooth of face, with the high Shakespearean forehead that white hair and encroaching baldness give all men, and an extra chin upon which to display a slick professionalism in shaving and the touch of fine white powder that bespoke the actor.

“Good, good!” The syllables were resonant and constricted. “Good to see you made it, sir! Wonderful! We all made it then, save for poor Daniel. Dead, sir! Yes, dead as a stone, and I could not have saved him, sir, nor could any physician since Hippocrates. They got him, sir! Settled poor Dan once and for all. They got me too, as you’ve seen. A bullet, a thirty-eight I suppose, through the fleshy portion of the thigh. Had they but nicked the femoral artery, sir, you should not see me here! I would be a citizen of a better sphere, with poor Daniel at my side. As it was, I was able to hobble away before the fire—as you, sir, were not I see—our bold Carlos having shot the rascal set to guard the stage door.”

The doctor chuckled; the sound was deep and throaty, like the contented noise, half clucking and half crowing, made by a great rooster.

“And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me for not rising, I’ll excuse you from shaking hands. Let’s see it.”