Ex-Purgatory: A Novel Read online

  The deejay launched into a diatribe about divorcées and saints. George shut the radio off. How did it keep getting back to religious stations, anyway? More bad wiring?

  He brushed it from his mind. He needed to head home and scour some articles online. Maybe he could find a hint about where Karen Quilt was staying. He’d been assuming it was a hotel, but maybe she had a condo somewhere in Hollywood or Santa Monica or somewhere. Common sense told him there were enough celebrity-stalking websites out there that someone had to have a general sense of where she was.

  His phone beeped. Nick had sent him a text.

  Four Seasons on Doheny—for fuck’s sake, don’t make me regret this

  George smiled and backed his car out.

  The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills stood tall, flanked by a handful of massive palm trees. It bristled with balconies but still had the color and faint lines of Spanish architecture. The entrance was discreetly blocked off from the rest of the world with a series of hedges and smaller trees.

  George drove past the entrance. Through the gap in the high shrubs he saw several valets and very few parking spaces. He went a little farther down and turned onto a side street. It took him another few minutes to find parking, and two more to find a sign that told him how long his car would be safe there.

  He walked back to the hotel. He paused to tuck his shirt in and brush himself off before he stepped through the pillars of greenery and onto the grounds. There were a few life-sized iron statues of people scattered around the entrance. He kept glimpsing them in his peripheral vision as he crossed the driveway. Their stillness was a bit unnerving. They flickered in his eyes and for a moment he saw them covered with years of green tarnish.

  The men at the valet station didn’t give him a second glance. George was sure he wasn’t the first person to dodge valet parking. He returned the doorman’s tight smile and stepped inside. The lobby looked expensive in an elegant way. It was the kind of expense that didn’t feel the need to flaunt it by being oversized.

  He saw the counter off to the side and tried to decide if he needed to speak with the regular clerk or the concierge. His experience in fancy hotels was limited to a pair of parties with Nick, neither of them at this hotel. He chose the main desk on the hope lower-ranking staff members would be more helpful than higher ones. A slim man and woman in matching shirts and blazers stood behind the high counter.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said the man as he approached. “Welcome to the Four Seasons. How can I help you?”

  “Hi,” George said. “I’m trying to get in touch with one of your guests.”

  The man’s hands slid to a keyboard. “Of course. What room number?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have it.”

  “Name?”

  He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Karen. Karen Quilt.”

  The man looked up from his computer screen. He locked eyes with George for a moment, then his gaze slipped to something just over George’s shoulder. There was a large mirror behind the desk, and in it George saw a man by the elevators straighten up. He was a large man, as tall as George but wider in the chest. He wore a black tee with his dark suit.

  “Is Miss Quilt expecting you, sir?” asked the clerk.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. It felt like an honest answer. He looked at the phone by the man’s hand. “Could you tell her … George is here.”

  “George …?”

  “George Bailey.”

  The man’s face twitched. Not in a good way. His eyes flitted back to the large man wearing the T-shirt with his suit.

  George was ready for it. He’d been dealing with it his whole life. “No,” he said, “really. That’s my name.” He slid his driver’s license from his wallet and held it out to the clerk.

  The man looked at the license, then to George, and then back at the license. He tilted it between his fingers under the light, then handed it back. “You have very cruel parents,” he said with a polite smile.

  “They were pretty cool past the whole name thing,” said George.

  “However, Miss Quilt was very clear she did not want to be disturbed this afternoon.”

  “I know,” ad-libbed George, “but this is kind of important, and she’s not answering her cell phone.” He decided to risk winging it. “Neither is her assistant.”

  The clerk sighed. “I will check, sir, but I’m quite sure what the answer will be.”

  George put up his hands. “If she doesn’t want to talk, I’ll move along quietly.”

  “Yes,” said the clerk, “you will.”

  His fingers danced on the keyboard’s number pad and he picked up the phone. He turned halfway from George so the handset muffled his voice. He spoke for a few moments, listened, spoke again, and then listened again. His eyes flitted from George down to his computer screen.

  George turned away and tried to look casual. He gazed around the lobby. His eyes met the large man’s for a moment, and George gave the man a polite nod that wasn’t returned.

  “Sir,” said the clerk. “She’s waiting for you. Sixteenth floor, the Royal suite.” He gestured at the elevators.

  George stood for a moment, just as stunned by the news as the clerk was. He was pretty sure the clerk was hiding it better, though. He managed a “thank you” before he walked away.

  The elevators were all mirrors and brass. Like the lobby, they felt expensive. George looked at his reflection in the doors and brushed a few more wrinkles out of his jacket. He saw his boots and wished he’d switched into sneakers or something more casual. He was pretty sure there was a pair of sneakers in his car. He wondered how long it would delay him to run and get them.

  The elevator doors opened to reveal a smaller lobby, just as elegant. He checked the signs and headed down the left-hand hallway. It was dotted with small tables and flower arrangements.

  A man was waiting for him at the door. He was maybe an inch taller than George, but slim. His dark clothes accented that slimness. The man’s steel-colored hair was bristle-short, and a pair of round spectacles balanced across his nose. George couldn’t decide if the John Lennon glasses made the man look more like a hipster assistant or some sort of undercover Nazi officer.

  “Mr. Bailey?” His voice was dry, but not in a weak way. It was the kind of dryness found inside pyramids. A powerful rasp with tons of weight and history behind it.

  “Yeah.” George nodded and held out his hand.

  The man made no move to take it. He didn’t even seem to notice it. He gestured George through the open door and closed it behind them.

  George followed the man into the hotel suite. It was cream colored and gigantic. He was pretty sure his entire apartment would fit inside the main room. One wall was all windows and French doors leading out to two different balconies. He walked past a sprawling, L-shaped couch and a glass-topped table to stare at a flat screen the size of his bed. George was pretty sure any one of them cost more than his monthly rent.

  “You have ten minutes,” said the man. He pointed at a chair with two fingers. The chair looked expensive, too.

  “Thank you, Father,” someone said.

  George turned and saw the woman on the couch. She was slouched just low enough that he hadn’t seen her there. She set her book aside and straightened up without using her hands. Her body flexed and pulled her up to a sitting position. She also gestured at the chair.

  Living in Los Angeles, George had seen more than a few celebrities. He’d run into Lindsay Lohan once hiking up in Runyon Canyon, and seen Scott Bakula at a pizza place in Larchmont. One time, around Christmas, he’d stood in line at Target with Biff from Back to the Future, and one summer he’d sat across from the redhead from Six Feet Under at a coffee shop for half an hour. It made him aware of how human celebrities were. Without special lighting or an hour of makeup, when you just saw them from any old angle, most of them lost a degree of beauty and appeal. They were still all a lot more attractive than him, but it was clear they were just people like eve
ryone else.

  Karen Quilt looked better in person than she did in photographs and on television. She wore a black tank top and form-hugging sweatpants. If she had any makeup on he couldn’t tell. Her dark hair draped across her bare shoulders. Her arms were muscular.

  Her gaze flitted down to his shoes and back up to his face. She had gorgeous eyes. Sky blue. They had an edge to them that was hard but didn’t look cruel. He kept watching them, hoping to see a spark of recognition.

  If there was one, she hid it well.

  “George Bailey,” she said. “The main character in the 1946 motion picture It’s a Wonderful Life. I would recall meeting someone with such a distinctive name.”

  Something sank inside him. “You don’t remember me?”

  Her dark brows shifted. “Remember you from what?”

  “From … I don’t know, remembering me.”

  She smiled. The smile was even more formal and polite than the desk clerk’s downstairs. “I generally do not associate with janitors.”

  His heart lurched back up in his chest. “You know I was a janitor,” he said.

  Karen pointed at his hand. “There are seven round spots on your right sleeve,” she said, “each discolored to a different degree. They are from drops which splashed up when you were soaking a mop, and do not appear on your left arm because it would be held higher from the bucket. The discoloration was caused by a diluted industrial cleaner, meaning you were most likely not mopping at home. The varying degrees of discoloration mean it happened multiple times with different ratios of water to cleaner. Mopping is a regular action you perform when not at home, thus, a janitor.”

  He smiled. “You’re like Sherlock Holmes,” he said.

  “Except I am not fictional,” she said with a slight bow of her head. The motion made a few strands of hair slide across her forehead and cheek. “What do you do now?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said you were a janitor. What do you do now?”

  He rewound his words in his head. “I … I don’t know why I said that,” he admitted. “Nervous, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you nervous?”

  He juggled a few possible answers. “Because it’s important you know me.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You are lying,” she said, “and you are not good at it.”

  His mind raced and he realized just how unprepared for this conversation he was.

  Karen slid a bottle of water from an ice bucket on the table. She made no move to open it. There were three left in the bucket, and he thought about taking one to give himself a few moments. He wasn’t sure how stepping toward her would go over, though, and it seemed rude to take one if she didn’t offer it.

  His eyes drifted across the table to her face and stopped at the elaborate hotel phone. The call with Barry flitted across his mind. “Can I ask you a question?”

  She ran one finger around the bottle cap and wiped off the excess water. “Very well.”

  “Do you know who George Romero is?”

  “He is an American film director who began his career making commercials and short films in the Pittsburgh area, most notably doing a feature for the children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He is best known as the creator of the Night of the Living Dead horror series.”

  “Yes!” said George. “What are those about?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Please,” he said, “it’s important.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “An unknown force causes the dead to become animate and attack the living. In most of the films in the series, the plot revolves around a small and isolated group of characters dealing with the dead.”

  “But what are they called?”

  “The characters?”

  “The dead.”

  “Romero has said in several interviews that he and his fellow filmmakers did not give the creatures a name, although he was inspired by the legend of the ghoul.”

  George shook his head. “No, not ghouls. They’re called something else.”

  The dark-skinned woman opened her mouth to reply and her expression shifted. Her eyes softened. Then she straightened up. Her shoulders squared off. “Despite my status as a celebrity,” she said, “I am not a student of popular culture. It is not uncommon for me to miss references to motion pictures.”

  “This isn’t a reference,” he said. “It’s just a name. A word.” He met her gaze and her eyes softened again, just for a moment. “And you don’t know what it is, do you?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes hardened. The corners of her mouth twitched. George had the distinct impression he’d just insulted her somehow.

  “Is there a point to this meeting, Mr. Bailey?” she asked.

  “Look,” he said, “I know this is going to sound insane, and I bet you hear crazy stuff like this all the time, but I think you and I … I think we’re supposed to be somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere … else.”

  “That is not very informative,” she said.

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  Her mouth twitched again. Her eyes hardened a bit more.

  “You have dreams about monsters,” said George. “Dead people who walk, like in the Romero movies. And I’m in the dreams, too, aren’t I?”

  “No,” she said, “you are not.”

  His heart dropped again. “I’m not?”

  “I do not dream,” she said. She stared at his eyes. “Not since I was a child. I practice a form of polyphasic sleep.”

  Another moment stretched out between them and became a full minute. She still held the water bottle, but didn’t drink from it. George felt pretty sure at this point she wasn’t going to offer him one.

  He was pretty sure she didn’t blink, either.

  “So,” he said, “none of this means anything to you.”

  She shook her head once. Left. Right. Her eyes never left his.

  “You don’t know me at all.”

  Again, one time side to side.

  “Then why did you invite me up?”

  “She didn’t,” said the thin man from behind George. “I did.”

  George looked at him. So did Karen. “Father?”

  “Your name is George,” said the older man. “Like the saint?”

  The comparison made his head throb. The air rushed out of his lungs. “Yes,” he coughed. “Yes it is.”

  Karen’s father looked at her. “You call his name in your sleep.”

  Any last hints of softness left her face. Her expression would’ve fit well on a grim teacher or soldier. “Nonsense.”

  His chin went up and down once. It was an economical, efficient motion, like Karen’s. “For three weeks now,” he said. “When the clerk said there was a man with this name asking to meet with you, I said to send him up.”

  She glared at him. “You gave access to a complete stranger? What if he was dangerous?”

  The thin man glanced at George. He made a dry sound that might’ve been a chuckle. “What if he was?”

  Something clicked in George’s mind. He remembered who—what—Karen Quilt’s father was. He remembered the links he’d found while browsing the Internet and the articles those links had brought up. Some of the pictures in those articles were worse than the things he dreamed about.

  The man in the John Lennon glasses, he realized, was far closer to Nazi officer than hipster assistant.

  The thin man met his daughter’s gaze. “If there is nothing else,” he said, “I believe Mr. Bailey’s ten minutes are up.”

  Karen stood up. It was a smooth, graceful motion, just what one would expect from a professional model. She held out her hand and he took it in his. Their fingers fit perfectly against one another. She had a very strong grip. “This has been interesting,” she said. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you, St. George.”


  Another needle of pain stabbed George in the back of the eye and he winced. Her father raised an eyebrow. George let go of her hand.

  “Forgive me,” said Karen. “It was a slip of the tongue after my father’s earlier reference. It was not intended as an insult.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s safe to say I deserved it if it was an insult. You’ve been very generous with your time.”

  Her father put a hand on George’s arm and guided him back to the door. The suite flew by in a blur and George was in the hallway again. He met the thin man’s gaze again and then the door closed. There was a double click as the dead bolt locked and the safety bar hinged shut.

  While he waited for the elevator he considered going back and knocking on the door. Then he thought about banging on the door and demanding another few minutes, but by that point he was already stepping into the elevator. He considered going back up and trying to force his way past the thin man, but some part of him understood this was the absolute worst possible plan to act on. And by then he was already walking out the front door.

  The doorman watched him exit with chalky eyes above a mouthful of ruined teeth. George made a point of not looking at the man, but he heard the teeth gnash together like glass splinters. He got a few feet away when the dead man called out, “Have a good afternoon, sir.”

  He walked back to his car and tried to figure out his next move. Something in the back of his mind was telling him to give up on the whole stupid idea, but he forced past it. He’d have to talk to Madelyn. Maybe he could call Barry Burke again, too. He should’ve called him already.

  And then he got mugged.

  The young man in the black hoodie appeared from nowhere in front of him. The way the oversized sweatshirt flapped around him, George guessed the teenager had leaped down from somewhere, although he didn’t think there was anything around to leap down from. He raised his fists and the mugger slapped them away before he even got them all the way up. And then he saw the cleavage and the satin skin and the blue eyes and he realized the slim figure wasn’t a young man.

  “I would like to offer you another ten minutes to explain yourself,” Karen said.