Vent by the Door

If she pressed her ear to the vent next to the door, she could just make out the sound of whispering. It was high-pitched, like it belonged to the human equivalent of a feather boa. It was the ripple of maple leaves on a summer afternoon; breathy, like a horse’s hooves on pavement. She heard another voice too, like a top hat. It was low and measured, sounding like it drank tea in the mornings instead of coffee. She imagined a porcelain mug. He wouldn’t use teacups, no. He wasn’t like that, she could tell. The cool metal of the vent’s rim cut into the recess behind her ear; she shivered, her joints joining the symphony like they weren’t atrophied from lying on the floor for so long. Music. She could hear the distant strains of piano drifting up from the lobby, lamentations floating up through the grate like ghosts.

“And how do you propose we do that? If you think Doyle won’t suspect a thing, you’re stupid.”

“Listen. I know this place like the back of my hand. It won’t take much to tip him off, but we’ll be fine. I know the valet out back; he’s agreed to keep quiet.”

Feather Boa scoffed. “How much di’you have to pay him?”

There was a silence. The girl pictured a hand moving for a scotch glass. Top Hat was smiling. He licked his thin lips and took a sip. She could all but see Feather Boa’s eyes rolling up, into her head like an egg yolk sun rising above the nonsense of a senseless man.

“It all comes out sometime, George.”

So, his name was George. It didn’t fit him, she thought. Top Hat fit him better. He spoke of the back of his hand; she knew his voice like the back of hers. For weeks, they had been planning something. They had talked like it was the greatest heist of the century. Now their confidence seemed just as faux as the feathers on Feather Boa’s boa.

“I swear to God, George, if you don’t get off your ass and do some real work, we’re gonna lose our chance. You know how I feel about lost chances.”

“Understandable.”

“Well?”

A heavy chair scraped against the hardwood of the lobby. It was damaged enough from the wheels of the bellhop’s carts. The girl winced. “I said I would take care of it.” Top Hat’s voice held a quiet but lethal warning. Don’t test me, it said. I may sip my tea from porcelain mugs, but not everything I touch stays intact.

The unmistakable swish of a feather boa.

The girl had never heard him take that tone before. Something was happening and it would happen soon. She imagined a grandfather clock, the second-hand sending heartbeats on their feet and into motion. She stood when she was sure they were finished talking; looked around the room. The small bed in the corner stared back at her. The coffee pot whistled with disdain. “What’re you looking at?” the open window sighed as a whoosh of air announced its presence. The girl wondered if she should tell Doyle what she’d heard. The hotel manager would probably thank her for her help, give her a promotion. Then again, he could do what he did most of the time. Brush her off. Besides, she reasoned, she had no way of knowing they were actually criminals. They had spoken as if they were, but nothing was ever clear through the lattice of the vent by the door. She didn’t want to be the girl who cried villian. There were plenty of other reasons for Doyle to fire her; he didn’t need another.

The heat of the small stove warmed her cheeks as she took the handle of the tea kettle and poured herself a cup of steaming water. The fretwork framing her only chair bit into the valleys between her vertebrae as she sat. All edges. The room seemed made of angles. It had been less than a month and already her back and arms were crisscrossed with the evidence of her daily routine. She looked like a prisoner’s wall- notches for the days he’d been held adorning every surface, every plane. A stick snapped outside. Unease snaked through her veins like a cobra, its cloak-hood raised, its dagger fangs gleaming under a sun of uncertainty.

The girl rose and went to the window. It was not a bad part of town she was living in, but there had been stories of thieves in the area; burglars that took advantage of open windows, silent nights. She was alone. Nothing emphasizes loneliness like the threat of unwanted company.

“Hello?” No answer. She gripped the edge of the windowsill and peered out, the lead paint from another era chipping on the pads of her fingers. There was silence, the sound of an earache. Convinced her paranoia was to blame, the girl relaxed, the muscles of her face unclenching like a white fist. Another sound rang into the night, leaves rustling not far from where she stood. Her breathing began to pick up again, the blood in her ears pounding until she was sure she would faint from the terror coursing through her. The cobra had struck, had bitten, was looking on in victory as its black eyes saw her writhing on the floor. She was frozen, afraid to move lest she miss some significant sound- indication of danger fast approaching.

“Hey! You two! What’re you doing?” A stranger’s voice pierced the darkness. She bent her neck a little, straining to see past the shadows of an oak tree. There was a streetlamp nearby, though the small pool of light it put forward was barely enough to see by.

“Ah, George, now look what you’ve done.” The girl inhaled sharply. That was Feather Boa- what were they doing outside her window? One of the beauties of the vent had been the isolation she felt from whatever they were scheming. Whatever they planned to do, she could rest soundly knowing she had no part in it- she was no target, though it was alarming. Her only knowledge of the plot had been what little she heard from a vent by the door. Now, however, Danger wasted no time presenting itself at her threshold. She could reach out, feel the threads on its jacket; finger the delicate strands with ease, it was so close. She shivered. The air was still.

“Just try’na get back to our room, is all. No need to shout.” Top Hat.

“This late? And hey, I don’t see any doors around here. You lost? I can show you where the front is.”

Even through the window screen, the girl could hear the low growl that emanated from Top Hat’s throat. She was afraid for the man offering to help the couple. She was afraid for herself.

“No thank you, Sir. I think we may have lost our way a bit a minute ago, but now we’re good. Just got to follow the North Star is all.” Top Hat’s crude attempt at humor fell flat. She could sense suspicion building in the air like water behind a blocked pipe.

“I don’t think so.” The stranger was bold. Surely, he could sense the need to let it go. These people were dangerous. Couldn’t he feel it?

“Sir, I am going to suggest you let us be on our way. my wife, here, is tired and we’d like to get some rest.”

“Of course, I’ll walk with you.”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Tension ran rampant in the air.

“Why, doing something you don’t want me to see?” Her skin prickled with the challenge in the stranger’s voice. She knew Top Hat wouldn’t appreciate it either. She waited for his response. Instead of words she heard a shove, followed by a grunt. Her eyes had adjusted to the dusk enough that she could see the shadows of the two men rolling around on the ground. She watched, rapt, as Top Hat gained advantage in the scuffle, only to be overtaken by The Man Without A Name.

“Security! Help, secu-” the stranger was cut off by a fist to the mouth. Top Hat had woven a sinewy arm around the back of his neck and was squeezing, forcing his opponent into a headlock while he beat his shadow-shrouded face. There was a dark liquid flowing freely from the man’s nose and lips- black in the darkness, but red in her mind. Like paint. His body was a canvas. There was something else, too. The sliver of light provided by the street- lamp illuminated a thin piece of metal jutting out from Top Hat’s back pocket like shards of moonlight from denim clouds. The girl couldn’t help the hand that flew to her mouth to strangle the small gasp that escaped her lips. Top Hat grasped the shard, miming the swinging arm of a pitcher as he drove it forward like a door on its hinges. Two back pools became three and all was silent. A man lay bleeding on the grass. Another bent over his painting like an art critic.

The girl struggled to process what she had just witnessed. A murder? Could that have been what the couple was planning? But no, there had been an altercation- this was not premeditated. She took some comfort in that thought. They must have been on their way to do whatever it was when they were intercepted. But was that not worse? They had crossed the invisible line. Thievery to manslaughter; common crime to the monstrosities of murder. Feather Boa didn’t even try to stop him. Something about this whole business was niggling at the back of her brain. A pilot fish. She peered out, into the darkness. She saw the stranger, his body sprawled out in the shape of a snow angel. It was troubling how such a picture of innocence could come in this form. A dead man. She blinked, narrowing her eyes in attempt to make out the other figures. She almost wished it had been light out. No, she thought. That would have been much worse. A mind didn’t recover from things like that. Even dark as it was, she wasn’t certain hers could ever expel the vision of blood dripping like oil off the man’s corpse.

Her eyes told her there was only the stranger. She could feel her body tensing again, a cold sweat forming on her hairline; her chin-length bob seeming an unbearable weight. Where were they? Her mind raced to a thousand different conclusions, most ending with her body sprawled out, lifeless on the grass, her eyes staring uselessly into the night sky.

She should tell Doyle. The girl was grateful for the little voice of reason that didn’t seem to be paralyzed like the rest of her body. Yes, that’s what she would do. Doyle would see the body for himself; he couldn’t call her silly when his own eyes told her she was right. She shuddered. This is what it took. A body for belief. She hated that thought. She shook her head to clear it.

Her small feet shook as they carried her down the stairs, down as fast as they would go. The elevator was out of order. Of all the days. She tended to take the stairs for the exercise. Normally, she loved the crisp stomp of her heel against the thin carpet. Normally, it was a sort of game; five stomps, five steps; ninety-eight steps in total. Now, her shoes rang out almost irritatingly. Too many, ninety-eight steps were far too many. Who ever thought of putting ninety-eight steps in a hotel? Surely that wasn’t needed. Hot tears had begun to burn at the corners of her eyes; her legs ached with the momentum it took to take two, three stairs at a time.

Finally, she reached the bottom. Yanking open the door to the stairwell, she ran as fast as she could through the various hallways until she reached the small, unkempt office Doyle called home. She shoved his door aside. Jesus, it was like a vault. He looked up from a call, his wrinkled face constricting as needle eyes looked her up and down. A tear fell unbidden from her right eye. He spoke into the phone.

“Manson, I’m going to have to call you back.” He turned to the girl.

“Yes?”

“I-” she was sobbing now. Doyle hated emotion of any kind from his employees, but she had just witnessed a murder. She couldn’t help it.

“I was standing by my window and I saw-”

Doyle released a tightly coiled breath, looking uncomfortable. “Get on with it.”

“I saw a murder.”

“You what? Girl, if you’re playing-”

“No, Doyle, I swear. I was standing by my window about ten minutes ago when I heard a sound. The window was open, and I’d heard stories of people getting robbed around here at night, so I looked out and I saw Top Hat and Feather Boa talking with a stranger-”

“Wait a minute, you saw who?”

“Top Hat and Feather Boa. I’ve been hearing them go on about something in the lobby through the vent by the door and it sounded suspicious so-”

“Suspicious? Why didn’t you tell me?” The man’s face was mottled now, purple with rage. “How long?”

“I don’t know, a couple of weeks? But Doyle, it was them, so I knew they couldn’t be up to anything good. The stranger-I call him that because I didn’t know his name- was offering to help them at first because they seemed lost but then he started to get suspicious, like me.”

“Weeks?” Doyle was the color of a salad onion. The girl swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, not believing what she was hearing. That’s what he cared about?

“Yes, Doyle, weeks. But it was never anything outright criminal. I told you, I was only suspicious. Anyway, the stranger, he started to see that something wasn’t right, so he confronted Top Hat and they ended up rolling around on the ground in a fistfight. I saw a knife in his back pocket and then-”

“Who’s back pocket? You saw this all in the dark?”

“Yeah, my eyes had adjusted pretty well by then so I could-”

“Just tell the story, Girl!”

“The knife- he stabbed him.” Her eyes hurt now, from rubbing them. The back of her hand felt like sandpaper, making them raw.

“Top Hat stabbed the stranger.”

“Is he still there? Are you saying there’s a body on my lawn?”

“Yes, that’s what I came to tell you. There’s the stranger, just lying there. I don’t know where Top Hat and Feather Boa went, but you have to come. He’s just lying there bleeding.” There was saltwater trickling over her lips, she could feel it dry at the corners of her mouth; her cheeks were stiff from crying.

“Let me get my coat.” The girl’s employer got up and found his windbreaker: a blue thing, ripped and torn from various misadventures, its wearer being that kind of miser that hoards his money, leaving most of his belongings to fall into disrepair. He moved slowly, the girl thought. Too slowly for a man faced with murder. He moved with precision, his joints bending each to their own with a meticulousness she’d only ever seen in men twice his age.

“Doyle, hurry.”

“If they’re gone, we won’t catch them. The most we can do is take care of the body.”

“And call the police. We’ve got to have their info on record. They’ve been staying here long enough.”

The man didn’t answer, instead reaching for the door and holding it open for the girl. They left his office, taking the side door onto the lawn directly under her window. The girl gasped when she saw what she had never thought to fear.

There was no body, no blood splatter painting the grass like an adventurous Pollock. She couldn’t believe her eyes; she didn’t. She turned to Doyle, finding his eyebrows raised, his mouth set in a firm line. “I swear it was here,” she whispered. “Only a few minutes ago, it was here.” He said nothing.

“Doyle, I swear. Maybe I miscalculated the distance. Maybe it happened farther out.” She searched the ground. Nothing.

“I’ll be expecting you in my office eight o’clock, tomorrow morning.” He turned on his heel, making a squeaky sound in the grass. He left by the same door they’d come.

The girl sank into the grass. In a few hours it’d be wet with dew. She refused to believe she’d been wrong. The man had been dead. She was sure of it; she had seen his blood. She had seen things people didn’t see coming from the living. He couldn’t have just walked off. She stifled a laugh at that: the image of a corpse vanishing like a live man into the night. Perhaps the couple had moved him. But wouldn’t there still be blood on the grass? It didn’t seem likely it could just disappear.

She tilted her head to the sky, taking in the same view she was sure lifeless eyes had admired just minutes before. She wasn’t crazy.

A wind blew from the east, sweeping what little hair she had over her eyes; she brushed it away, pushing herself up, off the ground in an effort to escape the cold. The door closed behind her retreating form. The trees rustled as another wind carried through the air. A single feather rode it, wafting high as a magenta kite.