You're Always Haunted (2/2)

• The Lifecycle of Suns Ch 3: Only Lovers Left
• The Lifecycle of Suns Ch 4: The Speech of the Dead

"She's fake," said the guy on the corner, smoking a clove cigarette with fervor. I had not greeted or much acknowledged him to this point, only took out my cigarette and lighter. "I don't think there was ever an 'Esther Fields.' It's viral marketing for a horror movie or some stunt. Just watch. You can barely see her face and the mouth is all pixelated, so you don't know what she is saying. Pure bullshit for the gullible to eat up."

I wanted to knock that damn pretentious cigarette out of his mouth, along with half his teeth. He looked so proud of his skepticism, giving a thin grimace as he waited for me to contradict him. That was his point, to feel rebellious playing the Devil's advocate. I've never seen why he would need one.

I had held her in my arms and enjoyed her warm body. She died in my clothing, drowned in the tank at the top of the DeMille Hotel. She died. Now people like him thought they owned a piece of her, even to the point of doubting on the corner below where she died.

My fist was tight at my side, but I thought what Esther would have wanted. I did not know. To be alive, certainly. Whether I got into a fight would not have factored into it, but I decided it wasn't worth the violence. Having my nose broken wouldn't prove Esther was real. It would only be an act of self-flagellation because I had not been there to stop her death, no matter how it found her.

I met his expectant eyes with a glare, stepped on my barely smoked cigarette to snuff it, and returned to my room.

I didn't know how to mourn her and didn't deserve to. I folded my clothes until I came to hers, to the shirt and jeans she left behind. It was all I had of hers, these clothes, ones I laundered as a surprise for the next time she visited my room. That and the book.

I had a little money left, but I had failed my LA adventure. My brief affair was a blessing for us both. It could have kept her alive another day, and it gave me something to focus on other than making it as an actor in this city of perfectly fake people.

The hotel tried to move me out of there weeks before, after Esther's body was discovered. Maybe I should have. Some guests, they relocated to other hotels, paid for their stays, darkened the doorsteps of better establishments. You had to sign a waiver saying you would hold the hotel blameless for having you drink Esther. I didn't sign anything, and I didn't leave. They didn't press the issue with me. They knew me about as well as they care to. I wasn't going to be a problem.

The health department said the water was safe to drink the whole time, no matter how it looked or tasted. Chlorination works wonders. Still, they flushed it to assuage the disgust of the guests and the public. It was a token effort. The only way of getting Esther's body out in anything resembling one piece was to have the fire department cut open the side of the tank. The flushing cleaned her remnants from the pipes, but the tank was a lost cause. The top two floors, still soaked from the flooding, remained closed. I suspected the owners of the DeMille wouldn't bother changing the carpet. Esther could never entirely leave the DeMille, in body as well as story.

They pulled the clothes out of the tank. I was sure that was enough to bring them to me, which was idiotic. It wasn't as though I'd committed a crime before. No one had my DNA on file. Even the internet didn't make too much of her wearing men's clothing, aside from calling her a slut, but they would do that of any woman no matter the circumstances. If I were found dead with Esther's panties on, that would be all anyone would talk about.

I could not feel at ease in the DeMille. Had someone who worked at the hotel murdered Esther? Only the staff had the passcodes and keys to the roof. I couldn't imagine that management trusted many with these. They could have edited the security video. If one were trying to hide a conspiracy or murder, one could do better than releasing the footage. Better to leave her as another who vanished from the DeMille, one of many over the years. Few people would think twice about that. But, no, the world had this cryptic video now to chew over.

I had packed most of my possessions when I heard the knock on the door. I peeked out the peephole. The two men were strangers to me, though there was something about them that niggled the back of my mind. They had dressed in blue Oxford shirts of differing hues tucked into jeans. Neither looked comfortable. They seemed like t-shirt and sweatpants guys.

They weren't police, I knew. I opened the door but kept the security bolt in place.

"Would you mind us checking out the room?" asked the fatter man in a flat accent. His eyes suggested none of the courtesy of the words.

"I'm leaving today. Give me a few minutes, and the room is all yours. If you want to ask, I'm sure management will clean it for you." I was unsure of this, but I wanted to give these men a task other than speaking to me.

"You met a young woman." This was not a question, even more reason I felt no need to reply to it.

"As I said, I'm checking out." I might have engaged with them if they tried to exude any authority. These were merely men. Since the video's release, a flood of curiosity seekers had come through the lobby, few of whom were brave enough to go further.

None of the seekers had bothered me before. The crackheads, even the whores, would indulge in a conversation, sometimes for a price. It didn't mean they were residents here when Esther was, just that they knew how to fleece suckers.

No one would think I had much part in a seedy underbelly.

"I didn't know Esther. Try the next floor up. There is a father and son who I am sure know more." I tried to close the door, but the thinner one had his foot there. He did not look down.

"The girl. You did know her. Better than anyone else here. You spent some nights together."

The way he said this made my skin crawl, as though he were admitting having watched it all through a hole he had drilled in the wall.

"Fine. Esther was a friend. I didn't know her too well."

"That's how it is these days. You share your bed, but you don't ever tell your real name," said the fatter one.

"I don't have anything to say about her. If you don't mind?"

I closed the door this time.

I listened for them to leave, but they did not.

"We're not here to hassle you," said the fatter one, his voice revealing that they were still inches from the door. "We just want our box back."

Of course. These men had handed Esther a box the day before she died. I had forgotten all about them. I had not considered them as a factor in her death.

I could have resisted the bait of this. This was yet another answer I wasn't owed but still wanted. "What was in that box?"

"Open the door," said the thin man. His voice, his way of speaking, was stilted and curious like he was giving his best Christopher Walken impression and fell short of William Shatner. "We're just here to talk."

I opened the door a crack. "I don't know anything about a box or anything in it. Esther didn't tell me anything about it."

"We don't want what was in the box," said the fat man. "That's not our concern. We want that box back. Once we get it, you don't have to hear from us ever again."

I didn't believe this for a second. It must have some evidence, a residue, that would tie them back to Esther's death. If they were her killers, it was insanity to let them come in. It was not so different from the aborted fight on the street. I wanted to be punished. This was a way to do it. "It has sentimental value then?"

Any courtesy dropped from that man's face. "Don't jerk us around. Do you have the box or what?"

I shook my head. "Did you check her luggage?"

"Her parents claimed it. There was nothing in there of value."

"So why do you think I know anything about your box?"

"You were the first person seen with her after she received it," the thin man answered. "We saw you, too. We know she brought it into your room. After that, no more box. Whatever happened with the box happened there. Ipso facto, you know where the box is."

"I don't. You can look at my stuff if you want. You can rent this room after me and scour it. I don't know anything about her box."

The fat man sat on the bed -- a bed I no longer considered my bed -- as though testing the mattress's comfort. "She was a sick girl; did you know that?" He tapped his temple. "Depressed. Bipolar. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and that's not what the girl was. She was caught in something she couldn't handle. She didn't know. We want to make everything right."

"And the box is going to do that?"

"It's going to be a good start."

"What was in the box?" I asked again,

"It's not important," said the other man. "I know you think we are blowing you off. It's only the box we want."

"I wish I could help you," I said, beginning to mean it now. It had been weeks since anyone expressed sincere sympathy for Esther. "I don't know anything."

"This place has a way of getting to people," the thin man said as though we were having a civil conversation. "Do you know about that pigeon woman? Osgood, I think her name was? It was decades ago, so maybe you don't know this. She lived here a while. Brutally raped. Murdered. Never solved. That's the way of it. You die here, and the police don't look into it too hard."

Was this a clue? "You think something like that happened to Esther?"

"We don't know what happened to her," said the fat man. He looked over at the pile of Esther's clothes, but he did not remark upon them. He picked up the copy of Diary she had gifted, flipping as if by instinct to the words she had underlined. You're always haunted... "Not raped, thank God. The cops think they solved it, so you could take the blessing in that, but I don't think you will."

"We're not like those asses out there," said the thin man, "digging up dirt on the dead so they can jerk off over it. We're on your side."

"I don't have a side."

"Sure you do. It's the same as Esther's side," said the thin man, making himself comfortable on a hard chair by the desk, one carved with pentagrams and dicks, "and we're on it. We all want what is best for her."

"How is it that you knew her?" I asked.

"We gave her the box," said the fat man from the bed as though this were all that needed to be said.

"Okay, but why? How did you know her before?"

"Who said we knew her before that?"

It was getting too circular. "If you didn't know her, why did you give her a box? Was it drugs or something?"

"We gave her the box because she asked for it," the fat man answered. "Maybe it should have been pills. She wasn't taking her medication. That's my guess. I had a cousin -- well, a friend's cousin -- that stopped taking his meds. They found him weeks later, naked and face down in a river. A real tragedy, that."

I didn't know that I believed this happened. It was too on the nose, but his demeanor never cracked.

"Awful stuff," agreed the thin man. He turned to me, "What do you think happened to her? I guess I don't have to pretend you haven't watched that video. I mean, I felt like a scumbag watching it, then watching it again." He jabbed his thumb toward the door. "I felt like one of them. But we aren't, you and I. So, your learned hypothesis?"

"Someone..." I didn't know what would come out of my mouth next. I never formed an actual theory, just stewed in the possibilities. "I think someone was after her. I don't know if they found her."

"For the box."

"I thought you said it was because she went off her meds."

"Things aren't just one thing or another, you know," said the fat man, learning toward me confidentially. "She went off her meds. She saw someone. She was wrong to think she could play this game with them."

"What game? With who?"

"I don't know the game, but it wasn't with us," said the thin man. "Whatever game that was the ended up with her in the water tank."

"I think she put herself in that tank," said the fat man, as though I were no longer of interest to him. "She was swimming, and she could have gotten out, but the water level dropped. Nobody knew where she was. I hate to think of it."

If she was treading water, why did she remove her watch and panties? They can't have had much to do with the difference between sinking and swimming. I couldn't stop myself from imagining it in full clarity, the despair and would feel.

The police said they found no one's DNA but hers on the tank, no prints, so it had to be Esther who put herself in that tank. It had to be voluntary. She had to, at some point, have wanted to be in there.

"You know, she didn't have much water at all in her lungs." The thin man looked at me expectantly, like the guy with the djarum. He brushed his sparse mustache with his thumb. He dangled this in front of me as though it were supposed to be bait, but I guess I was too stupid to get it. He sucked in his cheeks. "You drown; the water goes into your lungs. You breathe it. Your body can't get any air. Her lungs, though? Not too much water at all if you read the coroner's report. Did you read it?"

"So, she didn't drown in the tank?"

"It says 'drowned' on the death certificate, but what else do you expect they would put?" asked the fat man. "The cops aren't going to want this to be any stranger than it has to be, and the world at large likes a mystery. Better for all concerned that it be able to have a neat ending."

"But that's a lie." I wasn't sure it was. The longer they were in this room, the less I thought I understood any of this. Before they knocked on the door, I had been avoiding her death. I had all the pieces, but thinking I could put them together had sickened me.

"The truth is a slippery animal. It's true enough for everyone else. It should be true enough for you."

"But it isn't the truth."

"True enough," he repeated. "An accident. A mishap. Is it a relief to have someone tell you that your girlfriend didn't kill herself?"

"She wasn't my girlfriend," I said. "But, yeah. I don't want her to have been in any pain."

"She isn't here to contradict us if we say she wasn't," said the fat man. "She was a real girl. She wasn't a police report or urban legend. She isn't a mystery for anyone to solve."

She wasn't a mystery, but what surrounded her death still was. "She couldn't have gotten into that tank without help from someone in the hotel. It's impossible. There are keys and codes. Someone did this to her."

The two men looked at one another in a silent conference. Slowly, they seemed to decide on a course of action. "Do you trust us?"

"Not remotely," I answered without hesitation.

The thin man laughed. "I understand what she saw in you, bud. C'mon, we can clear up a few things if you are willing to give us about twenty minutes and a willingness to follow us."

"I'm not leaving the hotel."

"You don't need to," said the thin man. "What you need to see is right here."

I had indulged them so far, against my judgment. I wanted to confess this all for once.

I stood, and they took this for my confirmation, leading me down the hallway and to an exterior window.

"You expect me to fly?" I asked.

The fat man had already lifted the window. "The fire escape."

I followed him out, the thin man behind me, as he climbed the ladder. I did not need the thin man's prodding to follow him up. There was a satisfaction in this act, finding something no one else had considered.

It was no trouble to climb to the top of the hotel, surpassing the need for keys and codes.

When I stood on the roof, I waited a moment for an alarm to sound. Nothing did.

"So, what do you have to say about that?" prompted the fat man, gesturing.

Broken bottles and crushed cans, uncountable cigarette butts, and condom wrappers littered the roof. Tags and some more elaborate graffiti covered the walls. Too much to have been the indulgence of the hotel staff. I was not the first or the hundredth to have discovered this.

"What else do you imagine is a lie?" he asked.

I looked over at the tank. "She could have gotten on the roof, but how could she get in one of those tanks? The doors are metal. How could she lift one and close it behind her? How could she even get up there?"

In answer, the thin man ran up a staircase and stood on a ledge above the tanks. "Come up here."

The fat man took me by the arm, not forcing as much as directing me. "She was a girl," he said as we walked, "She fell into misfortune. It happens to thousands of people a day, and she is only special because you had these moments with her. Can you accept that?"

I hesitated to walk down to the tank. The gash let in sunlight. The structure looked chomped into, as though a dragon had drained away the water to rescue a princess. It wouldn't have needed anything so fantastic to save Esther.

"We aren't going to push you in if that is what you are thinking," said the thin man. "Even if we did, it's the same tank, still cut open. The fall isn't going to kill you."

"How do I know you aren't going to shove me in?"

He sighed, heavy and long. "You know, for such an untrusting kid, you sure cuddled up to Esther fast."

But Esther was not like them. Yes, she was a sweet, attractive woman, but she had her secrets. I had no reason to be so generous with these men. She had her secrets, but there was Esther behind them. These men were only secrets, liberal in handing me conflicting theories.

I sat on the edge, though far enough from them that they would have to telegraph if they intended to do anything to me. I waited for them to say something more, but they kicked their feet and studied the view.

Sitting on the edge of the tank, I couldn't help but want to believe them. Everything was so neat by their description; it was as though it had been crafted to be explicable. They had entrusted Esther with this box and had trusted them enough to receive it. I did not deserve the mystery of this, as I did not, in retrospect, deserve Esther.

"I do not know where your box is," I said, wanting there to be nothing like a secret.

"We know. We knew in minutes."

"Then why all this?"

The fat man shrugged. "There isn't a person I can think of who couldn't have benefited from a little longer to be redeemed, even to themselves." He was quiet, his hand on the thin man's. "We can't get that for Esther, so we have to put that aside and accept the circumstances of her passing as best we can. I don't know how well you knew Esther. I mean, it can't have been too well, if you don't mind my saying. But do you ever think, 'What would Esther want here?' That's what she would want for you. She would want you to accept what she did or what you think was done to her and move on." He dropped his other hand to the tank. The sound of it was dull and louder than it deserved to be. "We all need to. We need to be the ones who leave her memory alone while it is still about her. We can't be like those assholes prowling downstairs like a game. We are the only ones who get to know the real Esther. That's going to have to be enough."

We didn't say much more. They did not divulge how they knew Esther, and I did them the favor of not prying more. After an hour, they left me there to grieve not only for Esther's death but the hundreds of smaller ways her new fans would have her die again.

As I walked to the stairs, I saw the tan of wood under a discarded bra surrounded by broken beer bottles. I kicked it aside. It was a box, four inches by four inches. Unremarkable. I don't know that it was the box. Maybe it is where someone kept their pot. I nudged it with my shoe, feeling its emptiness. I could have picked it up, examined it, guessed what had been in it. What would Esther have wanted?

I left it there.

I checked out of the DeMille. On the drive home, I stopped by a grocery store on the edge of LA to drop her clothes and book in an orange donation bin.