7
Theresa had not worked in the shop for two days. Although she was first to often admit that she wished Alex was different, she did have good memories of her, and she held on to them by sleeping on Alex's bed in her bedroom. Surrounded by the ugly pink carpet on the walls and the floor scattered with clothes and magazines, the grieving mother woke tiredly and listlessly. She found herself covered by a blanket from the linen closet. Jerry must have come in to check on her last night. In her mind, all she could think of was Alex. Where was her daughter? Who did Alex think she was? What was she doing? A great empty feeling of uncertainty welled up in her as she slowly ambled around and forced herself to sit upward, her head swaying dizzily as she did so. She saw her reflection across from her in Alex's vanity. Her mouth opened just for a yawn, but her mind stayed stuck on Alex. Where was she? Where was she?
"Theresa…" Jerry came strolling in carrying a cop of coffee extended toward her. "Good morning…" His voice was quiet and sympathetic.
"Have you heard anything?"
"Nothing, but look…" Jerry let go of the coffee mug as Theresa's fingers wrapped around it and lifted it to her feet. "It won't be long now. She may be able to hide from normal people, but she can't hide from a magic search. Someone is going to find her."
"Why Alex?" Theresa swayed a bit on the edge of the bed and shook her head slowly. "This spirit was briefly Justin and even Harper. Why did it choose to be Alex?"
"Well, Alex has always had untapped potential…" Jerry had thought about this rationally and logically trying to figure this out for himself. "Maybe it felt more stronger as her…" He paused. "Maybe… it needed her for some reason."
"She's going to come home, right, Jerry?" Theresa looked into her husband's brown eyes.
"She's going to come home." Jerry said it with more resolution. "As soon as I hear anything, I'm going to…" He heard Justin bumping the door to Alex's room and scowled a bit confused as the boy pulled out a tape measure and flailed it to extend the ling strip of numbers to measure the room. He measured from the back wall to the door and pulled out a pad and pencil to scribble something down. Rolling his tape back up, he jerked it again to unreel it and measured it from the left wall to the right wall.
"Justin," Jerry had inkling what he was doing but wanted to hear him say it. "What are you doing?"
"Would you mind if I knocked out that wall to create a bio-dome?" He pointed with his pencil to the wall separating his room from Alex's.
"Justin, you are not taking over your sister's room!" Theresa stood to confront him. "She's going to come home!"
"I know she is." Justin was now looking to see how her bed came apart. "But when she returns she can move in with Harper in the basement." He nodded with a half-serious smile and measured how big the bedpost of Alex's bed reached. "How much do you think I can get for Alex's bed?"
"Out!" Jerry pointed the way to the hallway.
"Okay, okay…" Justin nodded his head annoyingly. "But remember what Benjamin Franklin said," He posed a bit. "It is best to prepare for the worst than to deceive ourselves by hoping for the best!" He over-emphasized his departure by lifting his head and marching out still defiant with his head up high. Jerry stood behind him shaking his head in disapproval. Theresa's hand reached up tiredly and emotionally to wipe the brow of her head. She moved distractedly for the wall then turned around looking for support from her husband.
"The nerve of him…." Jerry spoke annoyingly.
"He's just masking his pain…" Theresa mentioned. "Jerry, isn't there some spell that you could…"
Max now walked in carrying a box. He placed it on the bureau and raked his arm across the top knocking Alex's stuff to the floor in the corner. He pulled out the top drawer and turned it upside down to dump his sister's underwear and unmentionables on to the carpet. Reinserting it into its space, he began carefully unloading all his old comic books.
"Max, you're not moving in here either!" Jerry told him.
"I'm not moving in here." Max grinned abashedly. "I'm using it for storage… and maybe a den." He pulled out another drawer, dumped out Alex's t-shirts into the corner and began unloading more comic books. "Man, I'm going to have a hell of a time getting my canoe in here."
"Max…" Theresa's jaw dropped and she marched back over to remove Max's comic books and start picking up her daughter's clothes. "You're not storing anything in here!"
"Where'd you get a canoe?' Jerry asked confused.
"How much do you think I can get for Alex's bed?" Max stepped aside then looked it over up and down. It was a large four-poster bed with a huge oak headboard and footboard. It looked as if it came out of a castle.
"Out! Out! Out!" Theresa lightly pushed him against his will out of the room past Harper carrying several dresses on hangers over her shoulder and a huge overnight bag in her other hand.
"Thanks for getting rid of him, Mrs. Russo…" She headed straight toward the closet, pushed Alex's clothes to the end and hung her own creations. "I mean… some people just can't take a hint." She turned around, caught her breath and placed her bag in the big chair in the corner. "I've got seven more things to come up…"
"Harper…" Jerry now had his chance to sound annoyed. "You're not moving in here either!"
"Mrs. Russo said I could."
Theresa turned her big brown doe-like eyes to her husband responding so forlornly. She did say that!
"Theresa?!"
"Just until Alex gets home…" The unhappy mother tried to get him to understand why she said that. "Besides, it gets creepy down in the basement." Behind them, Harper jumped backward on to the bed and sank deep into it.
"Boy, am I going to sleep tonight!" Harper announced expectantly, but deep down, she had to wonder where Alex was. Where was she sleeping? Who was she meeting, and was she aware at all what had happened to her? Two hundred miles away in the city of the Boston Red Sox, a yellow taxicab turned from Beacon Street toward the high imposing Tipton Hotel on St. Charles with another familiar face sitting alone in the back seat. Alex looked out through the tinted car windows covered in the rain drops of the light rain and watched as a small battalion of hotel employees rushed to meet her. They treated her like royalty. Norman the doorman opened her door for her and reached for her hand as Alex stepped on to the curb with one leg extending from under her skirt. Bellboys collected her luggage on to a carousel and pulled it behind her under the emerald green canopy out front highlighted in gold. The gold-plated doors were emblazoned with large gold letters on each door and as she entered, Alex turned round on her heel taking in the opulence of this five-star hotel. A huge crystal chandelier hung over the sunken lobby, a short set of steps guide her past the concierge to her right, green painted elevators on the landing opening and accepting businessmen and diplomats. The gold yellow carpet felt as if she was sinking into it. Priceless museum pieces decorated and accentuated the grandeur of the lobby. Across the back of the lobby was a huge staircase of grand mahogany lifting to the second and third floors hidden above. The hotel manager looked up from the admittance after being told who she was. Dressed in a short white skirt with a green blouse and matching jacket, Alex moved lightly as if she were gliding to meet her destiny. Manager Stacy Orpington came to greet her.
"Miss Frost, welcome to the Tipton." The fifty-something former museum curator spoke with a British accent. She was the successor in the job to the previous manager, Marion Moseby, a high-strung African-American gentleman known for stressing out from the job. A beautiful woman herself with delicate features and closely trimmed dark hair, her fine English customs accentuated her role in the job. "If there is ever anything you need, please don't hesitate to ask. I or my assistant will be glad to help you."
"Maddie Fitzpatrick…" The former candy girl reached to shake Alex's hand. She was another attractive young girl with long blonde hair and soft brown eyes garbed in the uniform of the managerial staff. "I'm sorry, but you look so familiar. Have we met somewhere?"
"I don't know…" Alex thought back and tried to think. "But then I think we all seem to look like someone to someone else."
"Maddie…" Miss Orpington was checking the hotel registry. "I have Miss Frost in Suite 715. Would you like to show her the way?"
"Yes, Miss Orpington…" Maddie gestured for Alex to follow. The luggage was still on the landing over the lobby but now was being pushed toward the elevators. Corrie Willows watched from Maddie's old job at the candy counter, and maintenance man Arwin Hawkhauser watched from the way to the hotel's ground floor restaurant. In the days since Moseby had departed, the luggage was now required to take a separate elevator from the guests.
"So, have you every stayed in a hotel before?" Maddie indulged in small talk as the elevator closed.
"No…" Alex lightly lifted her head to count the numbers to the floors. "I've never been out of Collinsport to tell the truth. I just recently got my GED."
"You're from Collinsport!" Maddie lit up at the fifth floor. "Oh my god, I bet you knew Mr. Collins, the writer!"
"How did you know him?" They passed the sixth floor. Alex looked distantly surprised.
"I must have babysat his daughters like a million times…" The doors had opened to the Seventh Floor. "The little monsters…." Maddie continued. "They were not to be underestimated." They stepped out before a table under a portrait of ships at sea under a starry night and fake flowers in an imitation Ming vase. She turned left toward the suite. "So, how did you know him?"
"My mother went to school with him." Alex claimed.
"Maybe that's where we met?" Maddie walked lightly along to the end of the hall. "He invited me and my friend London at this big yearly ball at Collinwood." They heard the service elevator open behind them with Alex's luggage.
"Maybe, but I'm afraid I'm not really good with faces." Alex spoke softly. She was too deep in thought at the moment, but she could not bear to be rude or cause attention to herself. Maddie scanned the computer card in the digital lock and opened the two grand double doors open wide to a grand parlor with a balcony overlooking the street below. A smaller version of the chandelier in the lobby illuminated the room, which was filled with decorative reproductions of Victorian furniture. The lamps had pleated shades and the writing desk was off center from the middle of the room in the corner. Maddie closed the glass French doors to the room now that it was aired out. Alex strolled past the large ornate sofa to look into the bedroom, and stopped under the fireplace emblazoned with the image of an English lord on horseback surrounded by hunting dogs.
"Okay…" Maddie carried out the usual intro. "The honor bar is here…" She opened the compartment on the bar as the luggage rolled into the room. "Your remote to the TV is here." She clicked it on and off as a cabinet opened and closed as if opened by ghosts. "The telephone is here if you need anything. Our night manager is named Esteban; he will do or get you anything to make your stay pleasant, and, oh…." Maddie found some in-line skates hidden under the end table. "I'm sorry, but these must have been left behind by friends of mine. They went off to school awhile back, but we're still finding their stuff across the hotel." Maddie turned around. "If you find anything else, just send it to Carey Martin, she's our entertainment director and their mother."
"I'll remember that." Alex seemed quiet and distracted. She was nothing like the last heiress who had once lived here in the hotel's twenty-fifth floor. London was out-spoken, exuberant and sometimes as dumb as a bag of wet hammers, but Monica "Nikki" Frost was quiet, social and a bit distant as if she were grieving over something lost. Even when she grinned to Maddie, she seemed tortured. Maybe it was because she was now alone. Her parents and family were gone, and she was now living on the inheritance of a fictional father she never really knew based on fake paperwork and credentials mystically conjured out of a book from the New York Public Library.
"Thank you very much, Maddie."
"Have a good day." Smiling as she granted the card for the door to Alex, Maddie loved her new role for the hotel. Closing the doors behind her, she departed Alex to enjoy the peace a quiet. Removing her jacket and tossing it over her mismatched suitcases from the Waverly Street Thrift Store, the brunette sorceress turned straight for the bar and took out the sherry to pour herself a drink. Popping the tall crystal bottle, she poured it to the same amount she had seen her mother do it in 1863 then closed the bottle again. Taking the crystal glass in her left hand, she lightly tipped it to her lips, the sharp tart and sweet taste of the liquor causing a brief reaction to this body.
"Wow…" She gasped. "That actually tastes worse than dad's stuff." She tried it again. Not so bad on the second taste, she downed it on the third tip of the glass, setting the glass side and turning to wander around the room. Her fingers danced over the entertainment center, past the bookshelf next to the bedroom doors and over the second writing desk in the corner with the hotel stationary. She started for the balcony but hesitated at the fireplace, looking up at the fake English lord staring down at her. It was an imitation of a French master done in the British style, the sort used to decorate hospitals and downtown restaurants, but when Alex lifted her arms to it and turned her fingers in circles before it, the paint turned to liquid once more and swirled into patterns of gray, brown and purple and then receded to create faces and shapes. The dashing dark-haired man who appeared was tall and handsome and garbed in Old American clothing. His brunette wife was a beautiful woman with long dark hair to her waist. To his side was a young soldier in the uniform of the Union Army; his other son was an eleven year-old boy with a toy sword. The daughter was eighteen and at the cusp of womanhood in a form-fitting red dress. Her three barefoot younger sisters were all in matching white dresses on the front portico of a Federal-style mansion long gone from the eyes of man.
"Father, I miss you so much." Alex's voice quivered. "I wish you all could be here with me… but…" She lowered her emotional eyes and braced her hand on the mantle. "When you passed over… why did you leave me behind? Did you think I could find my way?" Her red lips parted and sobbed silently. "Why did you not come back for me? Was it to be my destiny for not gaining your approval? Why did you not love me? Was it something I did?" She gradually fell to the floor and sat huddled before the fireplace. She held her head low and dropped to lay on the floor behind the sofa crying and sobbing.