Remember Me, Irene

“We’re making our way to a stairwell,” she said, her tone gentle, coaxing. “There should be more light there.”

I couldn’t answer.

She looked back at me again, then put the light on the doors around us. Some were marked, most weren’t. She paused, as if debating something. I started shaking. I tried to force insistent images from my mind. This is different, I told myself. You’re safe, you’re safe. I heard my own breathing-quick, short breaths.

“Slow down,” she said. “You want to carry the light?”

“No.” I made myself take slower breaths.

She reached back and took my hand, then started walking again. My own hand felt cold in hers. I wanted to protest, to say she was making me feel like a child, but I was grateful for her warm, firm grip.

“Hope thatstronzo we found back there didn’t bother you too much.”

I shook my head. Useless in the dark.Get me out of here! I wanted to scream.

“Look at it like a hunter would,” she said. “Think of it as fresh spoor. Maybe your friend left it.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said, my voice tight. “Somebody else, maybe. Not Lucas.”

“Oh, so your friend the bum is such a saint he doesn’t ever take a shit, eh?”

I pulled my hand away.

“Oh,”she said, in the darkness, “so he’s a saint, just like St. Anthony?” She kept moving forward; I was forced to follow at a faster pace. “The saint who never took a dump,” she went on. “What a fantastic miracle to have to one’s credit!”

I felt my fists clench. “Stop it.”

“Maybe the pope will make him patron saint of the asshole. St. Bum of the bum.”

“Goddamn it, Rachel,” I shouted, “shut the fuck up!”

The words echoed in the hallway. She stopped, and flashed the light on the door just ahead of us.EXIT was painted on it. She turned back to look at me, bouncing the light off a nearby wall, illuminating both of our faces. She was smiling. “Much better.”

I realized what she had done, why she had done it. I dropped my gaze. “Forgive me if I don’t say ‘thank you’ right away.”

She laughed and opened the door.

There was light in the stairwell, and more air, a combination which helped me to calm down. I raced past her, up the stairs to the first broken window. I put my face up to the opening, took deep, gulping breaths of cold, fresh air. The knots went out of my stomach, I stopped shaking. Then, on that wave of relief, for the next few moments, I felt as if I might start crying.

At one time, an emotional reaction like that would have made me ashamed of myself. Now, I was growing used to it, and perhaps because I knew it would pass, it passed more quickly. I looked over at Rachel, who was waiting behind me on the landing, pretending to be studying her cellular phone. Her long hair cloaked her face, hiding her expression.

“Are my nose and cheeks as red as yours?” I asked.

She looked up. “Yes, and yourorecchi -your ears, too.”

I reached up and rubbed a hand through my hair. “I can’t wait for this to grow out again.”

“It will, it will. That stubbornness of yours will push it right out of your head. Your hair will be longer than mine by summer.”

I laughed.

She smiled. “A good sound, that laugh of yours,” she said, putting the phone away. She began to lead the way upstairs again. “I figure we should start at the top. That okay with you?”

“We’re thinking the same thing. Corky said Lucas liked to go to the upper floors in a building.”

“Right.”

There was little conversation after that. The task of climbing fourteen flights of stairs kept us both warm and quiet. Rachel was in terrific shape; Frank, Mr. Really Great You-Know-What, once told me that Rachel had shamedhim into a more rigorous work-out. I was still making a comeback from having been laid up for a while; for the last few floors, I had to put real effort into it.

At the top floor, we stepped out into a dark area near a set of elevators. We rounded a corner into a dimly lit hallway. The light was coming from two large glass doors, long plates of frosted green glass. Deco-style woodwork of mahogany and chrome framed the doors. Twin angels, as solemn as their counterparts on the exterior of the building, faced us. Draped in heavy robes, each held a sword. “The angels on this building are the saddest heavenly creatures I’ve ever seen in my life,” Rachel said, pushing one of the doors open. “Maybe I won’t feel too bad if I go the other way.”

The doors opened on to one large room. Light streamed in from three directions, from long windows that must have once offered a fantastic view of the city and the water. Now, taller buildings blocked much of that view. Behind us, a long bar carved with smiling cherubs stood before a big mirror that had lost a lot of its silvering.

“The happier angels are here at the bar,” I said, my voice echoing in the empty room.

“I guess those serious types at the door are the bouncers,” she said.

“Guardian angels. Must be-if my guess about the age of the building is right, that glass and the rest of this place survived the big quake of 1933.”

Rachel shivered and made an Italian gesture to ward off evil. “Don’t say the word ‘earthquake,’” she said. A hardwood floor, scarred and buckling, remained in place, although I doubted that anything other than dust motes had danced in this room in the last few decades. I squatted down closer to the floor to look at it from another angle.

“Doesn’t look like anyone has been staying up here,” Rachel was saying.

“No, but look at the floor. Someone sat up here and admired the view.”

There were places here and there that might have been old footprints, but a set that was clearly newer led across the floor to a place along the south-facing windows, and back again to the doors. Whatever tables and chairs had been in the room had long ago been removed, but an overturned crate was propped up near the windows where the footprints ended.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

“These windows face south, toward the ocean.”

“Do you think he was trying to look at the water?”

“Couldn’t see much of it from here.”

Near the crate, the view from the windows took in a narrow glimpse of the sea. The buildings directly across the street didn’t block the view, but several blocks away, especially along Broadway, a long cluster of skyscrapers stood between the Angelus and the Pacific Ocean. One in particular caught my attention-a black glass monolith, one of the tallest buildings downtown. Three letters crowned the giant: BLP. The Bank of Las Piernas. Ben Watterson’s bank.

“Let’s try the next floor down,” I said.

THERE WAS NO LIGHTin the hallway on the fourteenth floor of the Angelus Hotel, but there was still plenty of cold air. It didn’t stink like the first-floor hallway, making me wonder if that was one reason Lucas took the trouble to climb all of those stairs in the buildings he slept in.

Rachel grew cautious again, listening carefully before opening the first door we came to. As it creaked open, she waited a moment in the hallway before stepping into the room. I crept in after her.

Only when a hotel room is absolutely empty do you realize how small it is. No carpet, no drapes, no bed. A radiator against the wall beneath the window. Only the window trim and wainscoting kept the room from being utterly plain. I could see our breath as we looked around.

No sound.

Rachel glanced in the small bathroom and closet.

“Nobody has been in here for ages. Let’s keep looking.”

As we left the room, I started to pull the door shut.

“No, leave it open,” she said. “More light in the hallway.” She paused, then added, “Would you like me to open one of those windows?”

I shook my head. “I’m okay now. Thanks-for offering, and for what you did earlier.”