The Abodale Hotel and Suites
By Sam E. Sutin
For most fathers, a routine business conference would not warrant a full-family vacation; indeed, Orman Caldwell knew many of his colleagues savored such occasions as well-deserved reprieves from the overwhelming responsibilities they faced at home, such as mowing the lawn on weekends and concealing extramarital affairs. However, Orman fancied himself a step above the other men of the cul-de-sac; he knew it was never too early to get one’s children hooked on regional networking opportunities. With school out for summer and melted ice cream still sticky on his children’s fingers, Orman loaded his children (and wife) into the family 4-Runner and set out for Balcones, Texas.
So it was that eight hours, seven pee breaks, and one carsick vomiting session later (young Jamey has neither the bladder nor the stomach of his sisters), the Caldwell family pulled into the parking lot of the Abodale Hotel and Suites.
A lofty five stories in height and boasting over one hundred and seventy-five luxury rooms, the Abodale was (and is) among the ten largest buildings in the Balcones-metropolitan area, though few Balcones residents could ever seem to remember having been inside. When asked, former patrons have spoken of the Abodale with distant smiles and hollow words, their expressions lost somewhere between nostalgia and reminiscence. Then, seemingly without fail, their eyes have slid back into place, followed by a glowing recommendation of the continental breakfast and fluorescent pool that the kids just can’t seem to get enough of.
At the counter, Orman was greeted cheerily by Mr. Forcet, the concierge. A slice under six feet and gifted with a mustache nearly as off-putting as his smile, Mr. Forcet possessed the rare ability to gaze, unblinking, into the depths of one’s soul, and to determine in an absolutist fashion the true nature of their being. This makes Mr. Forcet excellent at accommodation, and a cursory inspection of the Caldwell family proved more than sufficient to determine that Room 248 would suit them nicely. (Perhaps, if he had not been so exhausted from the day, Orman would have been taken aback at the existence of a suite with both a king and triple-bunk-twin bed, but as it was, he was more than happy to only book one room. A pencil pusher and enthusiastic capitalist, Mr. Caldwell never blinked in the face of inconveniencing his children in the name of fiscal responsibility.)
In true fatherly fashion, within five minutes of reaching the room, Orman was soundly asleep on the couch, his feet propped upon a precisely placed cushion on the coffee table before him. Orman had learned long ago that sleeping parallel to the couch was not considered ‘manly’ or ‘fatherly’, and that there was nothing more masculine than perpendicular angles. However, this conflicted with Orman's well-bred bureaucratic instinct to be as parallel as possible, and Orman resolved this by placing his shoulders in the corner of the couch, his legs extended outward at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. A little odd looking, perhaps, but a happy medium, which are none too easy to come across in life.
As Orman’s snores harmonized with the grating rasp of the air conditioner, his wife, Eleanor, set about settling her three children into the suite. The primary issue, bunk placement, developed thusly:
Sarah, the oldest of the three children, demanded use of the bottom bunk by seniority.
Dorah, an avid reader, demanded the bottom bunk as well, as the lighting was more suitable for her books.
Jamey, the youngest, demanded the bottom bunk because he knew it would add to the chaos.
As is the nature of these things, the bunk went to Jamey. Eleanor did so for two reasons: first, she had developed a headache that was even now grinding against her skull like a balloon stuffed in a lunchbox, and Eleanor did not want to deal with the tantrum she knew Jamey would eventually throw that evening until her Xanax kicked in. Secondly–and perhaps more altruistically–Eleanor was reasonably sure Jamey had a bladder infection (seven pee breaks in one day was rather concerning), and she knew his incessant bathroom visits would ruin all of their sleep if he was forced to rattle his way down the bunk multiple times during the night.
Unfortunately, Eleanor forgot something that all parents with more than two offspring inevitably must: the middle child. By placing Jamey on the bottom bunk and declaring the matter settled, Dorah was relegated to the top bunk. (For those unfamiliar with the triple-bunk twin bed setup, lying horizontally on the top bunk yields a space of just under seven inches between the sheets and the ceiling. While this is technically enough space to place a book between the near-glistening plaster and the eyes of the reader, it is a less-than-ideal reading experience by almost any metric.)
Grumbling over her predicament, Dorah trudged along behind her mother and siblings as they made their way down to the pool for the remainder of the afternoon. Eleanor had decided not to wake Orman, mercifully ruling that her children could survive an hour without another rambling endorsement of optimal inventory growth trends.
By the time they reached the pool, Eleanor’s Xanax was in full swing, and Mrs. Caldwell spent the majority of the late afternoon dividing her attention between the ceiling and Horace Shoemaker, the reasonably attractive (if not slightly underaged) hotel lifeguard slumbering peacefully in his highchair. Had the subtle thrumming of the Xanax not been pleasantly dulling her thoughts, Eleanor might have noticed that this was the first hotel she had ever seen that employed a lifeguard. As it was, her placid gaze was elsewhere when Jamey strayed a step too far into the deep end of the pool and began to drown.
Through some combination of the fluorescents and the dimming of his life force, Jamey felt his soul briefly depart his body and float toward a nearby ventilation shaft. Thankfully, despite his sleeping exterior, Horace Shoemaker’s metaphysical essence remained razor sharp and on constant alert, and the lifeguard was able to succinctly reel in Jamey’s consciousness before it could be lost to the unrelenting æther.
Sarah–who, as the oldest, often found herself responsible for things she considered far above her pay grade–pulled her brother’s body from the pool, steadfastly ignoring his half-lucid ramblings about being rendered through time.
Eleanor gently chided (the now physically awake) Horace, though her hand rested on his shoulder for perhaps a second longer than was appropriate. Though brief, this subtle affection was enough to convince Jamey that his mother could not be trusted with the fact that the lifeguard was most likely a ghost-wizard hybrid of some kind.
Sensing a reprieve would be appreciated, Room 248 was conveniently where they had left it; inside they found Orman, who was equal parts thankful that he had not been dragged down to the pool and offended that no one had thought to consult him beforehand.
After a terse dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken and intermittent silences, the first day of the family vacation drew to a close. Teeth were brushed, pillows fluffed, bladders emptied (some more than once), and before long, the Caldwell family collectively drifted into a shallow, dreamless sleep.
That is to say, most of the Caldwell family.
Down by the swimming pool, it was around this time that Dorah looked up from her book to discover her family had disappeared–having forgotten her entirely–and leaving her to creep through the eerily silent halls of the Abodale back to their room. After scaling the rickety ladder of the bunk bed, Dorah spent several minutes adjusting her nightlight in a vain attempt to illuminate the pages of her book, cramped as she was between sheets and ceiling. It had been years since Dorah had last felt afraid of the dark, yet something about how the inky blackness seemed to condense at the corners of the room sent shivers down her spine unrelated to the air conditioning. It is understandable, then, how terribly alone Dorah must have felt as Mr. Forcet drifted into view, his shadow seeping across the walls as he oh-so-gently placed a complementary goody basket on her mother’s bedside table. The concierge turned to Dorah and placed an elongated finger to his lips, the ghost of a smile etching the corners of his mouth. Something twitched beneath his mustache, filling Dorah’s mind with spasming, dying insects. And then he was gone, leaving Dorah with the fantasies of both her book and her mind as the night grew ever deeper.
#
The following morning, every member of the Caldwell family except Orman was woken by the screech of his alarm, and Eleanor briefly considered the asphyxiation of her husband before he stirred to life and prodded the clock into submission. Eleanor spent several seconds staring at the gift basket on the nightstand–which she could have sworn had not been there as she fell asleep–before Orman’s cursing drew her back into the present. Her husband had nearly tripped over Dorah, who had been curled up on the carpet at the foot of their bed for some confoundable reason and was now crying about having nightmares. Jamey, who adored his sisters and sought to emulate them in everything they did, began sobbing in solidarity. Eleanor spared a longing glance for her bottle of Xanax before pushing out of bed.
Five minutes later, Orman stepped out of the shower, screamed silently into his towel for fifteen seconds, and then led his bleary-eyed family down to the first floor for one of the best continental breakfasts of his life. The scrambled eggs and bacon were scrumptious enough to be thoroughly enjoyable while maintaining a bland, dry texture that appealed to some deeper part of his soul. The taste of children’s cereal could only be slightly differentiated from the cardboard it was packaged in, which Orman considered a valuable lesson that all things were hollow inside, even the ones with flashy packaging. Eleanor was quick to locate the cash bar just outside the designated breakfast area, each sip of her seventeen-dollar Bloody Mary worming into her brain like a jagged fingernail into a mosquito bite.
Following breakfast, Eleanor scuttled the children back up to the room, only to find Dorah once again asleep at the foot of the bed. After scolding her daughter for having been forgotten a second time, Eleanor sent her down to the breakfast lounge to scrounge for whatever remnants had been overlooked by the other guests (Eleanor had yet to realize that Caldwells were, in fact, the only current occupants of the hotel). Forgetting her earlier libations, Eleanor popped her morning Xanax, screamed silently into a towel for fifteen seconds, and began to dissolve. (For those unfamiliar with the Bloody Mary-Xanax combination, all we shall say here is that it is not recommended within the confines of Abodale Hotel and Suites.) As her physical form slowly evaporated into flowing streams of undulating ultramarine light, Eleanor’s only regret was that she had not ordered a mimosa instead.
#
Unable to locate either of her parents, Sarah was once again left in charge of organizing her siblings. (Orman, displaying an obliviousness developed over years of consistent practice, had already departed for his conference. He would spend the day learning the hidden secrets of meaningful task proclivities and accelerated business expenditures, never faltering in his ability to firmly shake a hand or proffer a humorless joke. Orman received twenty-seven business cards and distributed thirty-one, a steadfast ratio if ever he’d seen one.) Sarah was quick to notice that her sister had yet to return to the room, and decided to go looking for her, Jamey tittering along in her wake.
The Abodale Hotel and Suites is, as luck would have it, internationally renowned for its high rates of coincidence, and it wasn’t long at all before Sarah caught a glimpse of Dorah prowling across a distant hallway, no signs of breakfast in sight. Sarah called out to her sister–demanding by the Right of the First Born that she come here this instant. Dorah, responding in kind with her Right of the Younger Sibling, ignored Sarah and pelted out of sight around the nearest corner. Accepting the challenge without hesitation, Sarah bolted off down the patterned hallway after her, leaving young Jamey to totter off in the direction of the pool.
The halls of the Abodale Hotel and Suites are not laid out in a traditional fashion, opting instead for what one might describe as an M. C. Escher style consortium of passageways, gates, vortices, and funnels. To young Dorah, however, this presented itself as nothing more than a conveniently laid out maze of corridors through which to duck and weave, and after several minutes she felt confident that her sister had been sufficiently lost somewhere behind her.
Taking stock of her surroundings, Dorah realized that she was now on the fifth floor of the hotel, though she couldn’t remember going up any stairs. Shrugging off the impossible as children so often do, Dorah reasoned that the fifth floor was as good a place as any to do some exploring. As she moved down the hallway the pattern of the carpet shifted to a collage of crimsons and cardinals, weaving and threading together like strands of DNA, guiding Dorah around several corners until she found herself in a sizable lounge with a stunning view of the greater Balcones area. Dorah–who had never been on the fifth floor of anything before–pressed her nose against one of the arching windows to get a better view of her surroundings.
As the young girl gazed out at the beige landscape, the deep sapphire eyes of Mr. Forcet inspected her from across the room. After a time, the concierge adjusted his tie oh-so-minutely before gliding across the lounge. He placed a hand that was somehow both deliciously warm and icily cool on Dorah’s shoulder, making her jump. Waving away her apologies like one might shoo a fly from their food, Mr. Forcet congratulated Dorah for her daring escape from her sister with a conspiratorial wink. As she looked up at the large man, a broad smile slithered out from under his mustache.
Though thick streams of sunlight poured in through the magnificent windows of the Abodale’s VIP lounge, Mr. Forcet cast no observable shadow.
#
Strands of essence and energy congealing anew, Eleanor finds herself standing in a parking lot, looking out with vacant eyes at the sharp cobalt tiles outlining the Abodale Hotel and Suites of years gone by. As she steps up to the large glass doors, she pauses to read a small flier taped to the door. The words WE’RE HIRING! are etched across the page in vibrant ink. In a moment of indulgence, Eleanor briefly considers the life she could live here, far from her husband and children. Then she snorts to herself, amused that her fantasies have devolved into abandoning one life of accommodation for another, and pushes inside the hotel.
Now she sits by the pool, gazing at Horace Shoemaker as he sits on his perch. For an aching moment their eyes meet–an unexpected yearning blooming in her chest like a mushroom cloud. Then a flash of pity streaks across the young man’s eyes, and Eleanor averts her gaze to a child splashing in the shallows. The water flows around the child, flecks of moisture catching in the fluorescents, playing tricks on the eyes. A rainbowed reflection dances above her, flashes and twinkles of light bending through the shimmering droplets. Eyes glassy, the reflection looks down upon Eleanor, who finds herself filled with an unwanted sadness for this girl, trapped as she is in this dance of pleasantry and performance. Eleanor feels a hand upon her shoulder, and looks up to see Horace Shoemaker standing over her, gazing out at the water with eyes like a dying sun, stained the most royal shade of blue.
#
As is the nature of these things, Eleanor’s subsequent emotional breakdown caused Horace to be otherwise occupied as Jamey waddled his way to the edge of the pool, falling into the water like a pancake hitting the floor. As the air was sucked from his lungs and the world around him began to fade, Jamey began to wriggle his soul from his body as a caterpillar extricates itself from a cocoon. He could feel the physical constraints of his body contracting around him, threatening to guillotine his spirit with each passing second. With one final heave, Jamey collapsed into the spectral plane, latching himself to a tendril of thought dangling from the ceiling to prevent being swept away by the ventilation shaft.
As Jamie gazed out at this new reality, he was surprised to find his mother huddled in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that lined the pool. Her outline shimmered with ever-changing hues as she sobbed uncontrollably into the shoulder of Horace Shoemaker, who looked down at her with the same tired smile Eleanor gave Jamey when he stubbed his toe or fell off his bicycle. Jamey had never seen his mother cry before but decided that adults were probably supposed to do that sort of thing in private; he turned away, floating out into the expanse of the Abodale.
Eventually, Jamey found himself on the third floor in front of a door conspicuously labeled 723. Something about this room called to Jamey; he knew that whatever lay behind this door was the source of the longing he had felt since he first began to drown in the pool. As he reached out to propel himself through the door it swung open without warning, revealing the arachnoid smile of Mr. Forcet. Though the concierge was firmly planted in the physical realm, the slender man looked Jamey directly in the eyes as he shook his head oh-so-gently from side to side. “I am so sorry my boy. Though you would indeed make an excellent addition to our staff, I am afraid the position has just been filled.” And with that, the concierge reached out with thumb and finger and flicked Jamey’s soul with the force of a battering ram. Jamey was launched backward across the hotel, his metaphysical essence spinning around him with the centrifugal force of a small moon as he hurtled back into his body, which was currently being dragged from the pool for the second time in two days by his sister.
Sarah was sure her brother was dead this time–there were only so many times the idiot could try and drown himself before he succeeded. Nevertheless, Jamey’s eyes snapped open as she laid him against the soggy tile, and he promptly thanked her by both wetting himself and throwing up all over her (young Jamey has neither the bladder nor the stomach of his sisters). Sarah seriously considered pushing Jamey back into the pool before distracting herself by screaming every obscenity she could think of at the lifeguard, who remained soundly asleep throughout the whole affair. Disgusted with her brother, the lifeguard, her parents, and life in general, Sarah seized Jamey and marched him out of the pool area and back up to Room 248.
#
That evening, Orman returned to the Abodale Hotel and Suites, understandably tuckered out from a long day of networking and looking forward to the lukewarm embrace of his wife and unrelenting banter of his children. Corporate sales put him in high spirits like nothing else could, and upon stepping into Room 248, he proudly announced his return to the suite at large. When no one responded, Orman peeked his head into the bedroom to see his wife and children soundly asleep in their beds.
Orman, to his great discredit, did not notice a second goodie basket had been placed beside the first. Nor did he see that his wife was no longer breathing.
What Orman did notice–for the first time–was just how lucky he was that the Abodale had an available room with both a king-sized bed and a double twin bunk for his Sarah and Jamey. Smiling to himself, Orman settled down on the couch, cracked open an overpriced beer from the mini fridge, and placed his feet at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Before long, he was sound asleep, that timeless symphony of snoring and seeping air filling the silence of the Abodale for one last night.
#
It is nearly 3am when the door to Room 248 dissipates into nothingness. Though the room is pitch black, Jamey can taste the wood dissolve like a grain of salt on his tongue. His eyes open, astral energy lancing out of the sockets like high beams, outlining Horace Shoemaker in the doorway, his mother slung over one shoulder. Behind him looms Mr. Forcet, who nods politely at Jamey before following Horace over the threshold and across to his parents’ bed. Though the room is now lit with an ephemeral glow, neither his father nor his sister so much as stir as the lifeguard lays Eleanor carefully atop the hollow outline of the woman lying alone atop the bed. Horace takes a deep breath, his hands hesitating a finger’s breadth above the two bodies. Mr. Forcet places his hand oh-so-gently on Horace’s shoulder, which seems to ease something within the lifeguard. Horace laces his fingers together and begins to push down on Eleanor’s sternum, not unlike how Jamey has seen doctors perform CPR on TV. The outlines of the two women begin to blur, melding together like wet pieces of clay as Eleanor is pressed into the body. As the last of Jamey’s mother disappears into the surrounding flesh, Eleanor coughs gently, her chest rising and falling unhurriedly as she rolls over in her sleep.
Horace exhales, taking a careful step back to examine his work; Mr. Forcet’s mustache wriggles its approval. The two men turn to leave, Mr. Forcet sweeping from the room without giving Jamey so much as a second glance. Horace makes to do the same, then pauses, a thread of essence sifting tentatively toward Jamey. There is a moment between them–frozen like statues as the recycled air of the conditioner rattles behind them. Then Horace smiles, reaches into his pocket, and places a single ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the top of Jamey’s suitcase. Then he is gone, the door to Room 248 flowing back together like liquid amber as the lifeguard fades from view. Jamey stares at the sign for several minutes, then settles back against his pillow, the sounds of his father’s snores lulling him to sleep once more.
#
After another exquisite breakfast the following morning, Orman Caldwell returned the keys to Room 248 and thanked Mr. Forcet for an exceptional stay at the Abodale Hotel and Suites.
The concierge graced him with a trademark smile and reassured Orman that the pleasure was all his.
Orman was so busy loading Sarah and Jamey into the car that he failed to notice that his wife had refused to make eye contact with him since he returned from the conference, or that the pool now had a second, smaller lifeguard standing beside the first. Though it may have been a trick of the lights, had anyone been observing this lifeguard they would have sworn they saw her eyes darken to a pleasantly royal blue.
As the family pulled out of the parking lot of the Abodale Hotel and Suites, Eleanor Caldwell watched Mr. Forcet step out of the double glass doors and remove a piece of paper taped to the door. The concierge gave the Caldwell’s car an oh-so-gentle wave as it sped into the distance, filled with Orman’s praise of the continental breakfast and the fluorescent pool his little Jamey just couldn’t seem to get enough of.
