In the Night Room

‘Très bien, monsieur.’ Then, in English: ‘Would you please repeat that in English, sir? Mr Fay-bear’s wife asked me to inquire about his status at the hotel.’

He clicked a button or flipped a switch, Willy could not tell which.

Through the speakers on either side of the monitor came a heavily accented male voice saying, ‘Mrs Fay-bear, can you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ Willy said. ‘Are you the man I spoke to earlier?’

‘Madame, I have never spoken to you before we do it now. You were inquiring about your husband’s residence in our hotel?’

‘Yes,’ Willy said.

‘Mr Fay-bear is still registered as a guest. He arrived three days ago and is expected to remain with us yet two days.’

‘Somebody else just told me he checked out at ten this morning.’

‘But you see, he is very much still here. His room is 437, if you would care to speak to him. No—excuse me, he is not in his room at this time.’

‘He’s there.’

‘No, madame, as I explained—’

‘He’s staying in your hotel, I mean.’

‘As I have said, madame.’

‘Is he…’ Willy could not finish this sentence in the presence of Giles Coverley. ‘Thank you.’

‘À bientôt.’

Coverley raised his hands and shrugged. ‘All right?’

‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘You got through to some other hotel with a similar name, Willy. It’s the only explanation.’

‘I should have asked to leave a message.’

‘Would you like me to call him back? It would be no trouble at all.’ ‘

No, Giles, thanks,’ she said. ‘I guess I’ll wait for him to call me back. Or I’ll try again tomorrow.’

‘You do that,’ Coverley said.

That night, again in the grip of her compulsion, Willy drove back to Union Street. All the way she asked herself why she was doing it and told herself to turn back. But she knew why she was doing it, and she could not turn back. Already she could hear her daughter’s cries.

Her headlights picked out the entrance to the parking lot and the huge dark ascent of the warehouse’s facade, and without intending to do so, she swerved into the lot. Her heart fluttered, bird-like, behind the wall of her chest.

She had known what she was going to do ever since she had realized that she really was backing her little car out onto Guilderland Road. She was going to break into the warehouse.

Holly’s high, clear, penetrating voice pealed out from behind the massive brick wall. Sweating with impatience, Willy drove around to the back of the building. Her headlights stretched out across the asphalt. A voice in her head said, This is a mistake.

‘I still have to do it,’ she said.

A high-pitched wail of despair like that of a princess imprisoned in a tower sailed out from the wall and passed directly through Willy’s body, leaving behind a ghostly electrical tremble. In her haste, Willy struggled with the handle until muscle memory came to her aid. Her body seemed to flow out of the car by itself, and she took her first steps toward the loading dock in the haze of light that spilled through the open door. Her headlights cast a theatrical brightness over the loading bay.

There it was again: Holly’s song of despair, the wail of a child lost and without hope. Willy’s feet stuck to the asphalt; her legs could no longer move.

The long platform emerged from a wide, concrete-floored bay that opened up the back of the building like an arcade. At the rear of the bay, a series of doors and padlocked metal gates led into the building itself.

I can’t deal with the fact that she’s dead right now, Willy thought. First I have to get her out of this damned building.

Holly screamed again.

Willy opened her trunk, rooted around the concealed well, and discovered a crowbar Mitchell had forgotten to remove. She picked it up and went toward the stairs. Again she was halted in midstride, but by nothing more alarming than a meandering thought. With the memory of Mitchell borrowing her car had come the strange recognition that while she had imagined him bailing her out of jail, she had never considered his reaction to being presented with his fiancée’s living daughter. Holly and Mitchell seemed to inhabit separate universes—

For the first time in her life, Willy saw literal stars. She seemed on the verge of falling backward into a limitless darkness. What she was doing was crazy. Mitchell and Holly could not be thought of in the same room because they did live in different universes, those of the living and the dead. Even in his absence, the sheer irrefutability of Mitchell’s physical presence pushed Holly back into the past, the only country where she could still be alive.

Willy felt like a death-row inmate given a last-minute reprieve. A cruel madness had left her, driven away by the appearance within its boundaries of Mitchell Faber.

She went back to the car, dropped the crowbar in the trunk, slammed the lid, and collapsed into the driver’s seat. During the last few minutes, she felt, her life had changed, and she had moved into clarity for the first time since her tragedy. And the agent of that change had not been herself, but Mitchell. His sleek, brooding image had led her out of the shadows. She felt a wave of love and longing for him. That there had been a mix-up at some hotel in a Parisian suburb meant nothing. A serious question remained, however: what had convinced her, against all she knew, that her daughter was crying out for her in the ugly old building? At some point in the future, that would have to be thought about, deeply considered, probably with professional help.

Light exploded from her rearview mirror, and there came the peremptory bip! of a siren announcing its presence. Startled, Willy looked over her shoulder and saw the headlights of a police car immediately behind her. Guilt washed through her body, and even after she realized that she had done nothing criminal, its residue affected her demeanor when the officer came up to her window.

‘Identification?’ He held the flashlight on her face.

She fished around for her wallet and produced her license.

‘This is your name, Willy?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I see you live in Manhattan, Willy. What are you doing parked in a warehouse lot in New Jersey at this time of night?’

She tried to smile. ‘I moved here about two weeks ago, and I haven’t done anything about my license yet. Sorry.’

He ignored her apology. The flashlight shone directly onto her face. ‘How old are you, Willy?’

‘Thirty-eight,’ she said.

‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’ The officer played the light on her driver’s license, checking the date of her birth. ‘Yep, born in 1965. You must have very few worries, Willy. What is your new address, please?’

She gave him the number on Guilderland Road.

The policeman lowered the flashlight, appearing to be occupied by his own thoughts. He was a decade younger than she. ‘That’s the big house with the gate. And all those trees.’

‘You got it.’

He smiled at her. ‘Brighten up my evening and tell me why you’re sitting here in this parking lot.’