Up the grand staircase, deep in the hotel, headed to the end of a ten mile long hallway, passing a round cherrywood side table, dead flowers in a cheap yellowing plasic vase, a dog-eared and worn copy of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky about to fall to the floor, a chevron striped wingback chair next to it, outside room 187. Xenia runs her fingers across the book leaving streaks in a fine layer of dust as they pass. “Raskolnikov,” she says “at least they have good taste.” Vladimir walks in front of her. Their footfalls make less noise than a pin falling on plush carpet. No rush. “The elevator was all the way at the front darling, close to the stairs and that sad little Pinch in his little birdcage, why didn’t we take the elevator?”
They speak to each other in Vietnamese, knowing good and well that it isn’t on Nato or the UN’s list of languages of importance to know, and knowing good and well that they’re in a hotel full of polyglot criminals, vagabonds, and worse, and knowing good and well there still may be people around who can speak Vietnamese.
“This is the Nine Hotel, my love, you never take the elevator,” Vladimir says. “An elevator is somewhere that you can get trapped in a hotel like this.” he sniffs the air, bleach covering human shit and water damage mold like you’ve walked into a flooded mausoleum in New Orleans. The faint taint of ash beneath it all. Vlad had forgotten how the Nine warped everything. Nothing matched for long, nothing stayed in place, no one was only what they looked like or what they said and did. He’d told Xenia this already. “Arthur is a horrible man, but useful. I think he already does not like us.” Passing room 191N.
“I don’t care, he is a child,” Xenia says. Between the doors to rooms 191N and 193N is a painting of a lighthouse in a chipping ornate and curling gold frame that could be genuine or could have come from Wal-Mart. “You act like I cannot feel this place’s spirit.”
“Yes, I know, you are more in tune with these spaces than me, and that is why it is important for you to be very attentive to-” A door opens down the hall behind them, and someone starts to walk out of the room. Vlad and Xenia stop and turn, but whoever is down the hall notices other people in the proximity, out in the open. No one would be able to tell how they figure the hall is being tread down, and whoever was about to come out recedes roomward and slams the door back shut. “Very attentive to everything you see, hear, and feel.” They continue their walk to the door at the very end of the hallway, right past room 199N on the left, an unmarked battered steel door across from it on the right with the ghost outline of a torn-off placard next to it. When they're in front of the bright green dented metal fire exit stairway door that’s been painted again, but has more fresher graffiti over less fresher paint, Vladimir puts his hand on the metal bar push handle that runs across the width of the door. A sign above the push bar on the right, next to a wire inlaid glass window scratched with decades of overlaid graffiti, says ‘PUSH DOOR ALARM WILL SOUND’ Someone has scrawled an upside-down smiley face on the sign under the writing. A sign on the other side of the door says “SMILE, YOU’RE ON CAMERA”
He pushes the door open and both slide one after the other through the smallest crack they can, like vapor, just as silent. As if this place would have fucking fire alarms?
The Situation in the Lobby:
Arthur has burned the index card in a hotel ashtray and is smoking a Gitane. Uncouth to smoke while he’s on the clock but a shock to the system sends you off in strange directions. He checks in a few irregulars, no one special.
Balthazar disappeared while he wasn’t looking, leaving only a pile of stubbed-out backwoods ends like fat little cockroaches crucified on the white linen tablecloth. When he notices Balthazar is gone he considers just how incongruous a name Rufus goddamn Balthazar is. Roll it around your mouth. Rufus. Balthazar. How does someone even come up with that name? Rufus, a name for a dog maybe? Balthazar, one of the Magi that visited a baby Jesus? And why aside from that vague Daniel Plainview There Will Be Blood look to him would someone let people call themself “the prospector”? Arthur’s mind works like this, gears turning, a puzzle box, six Rubicks cubes, playing speed chess against a cheater, sometimes making disparate connections that are very thready. “Daniel Plainview was a prospector… There Will Be Blood… He has that vague Day-Lewis look to him at certain angles in certain light on certain days, but, could that be,” Arthur is maze lost Minotaur hunting muttering under his breath when the north door cracks open, then pushes bump, bump, thump, with Moira ass naked and drenched wet with saucer eyes and, what in the blinding?
“Moira what exactly IS this?” Arthur’s voice crackles static electric across the entire lobby from a PA. Moira is dragging a naked heart-stopping figure, dripping wet, rain-soaked through both of them, pert breasts a wiggle in the wind and a jiggle with every drag and stumble between the both of them, into the lobby. Since Balthazar has gone the lobby is filled with a score of guests speaking business and enjoying cocktails from the bar. No one ever goes near the table Rufus sat at, whichever table it ever is. The Prospector drives people away like he’s got the plague.
But now this beautiful black-haired woman who looks of Levantine descent, obviously drugged, battered, nude, like some sort of expensive Japanese sex doll clutched to a naked stupid very mobile ivory pale Moira, is stumble drunk in a drug stupor muttering under her breath as they cross the lobby. A scene in a picture frame or a movie screen to Arthur from his post.
“Moira” Arthur’s voice cracks across the lobby again as he presses the PA button. “Moira what are you doing?”
People are starting to stare at the ripe wet flesh dripping on the aging carpets and rugs. Paying any attention is too much in Arthur’s opinion.
“This,” Moira huffs and drags the woman across the lobby with her like a rubber fuck muppet “This is Tami!” A beautiful Middle Eastern or sunburnt Greek or very Israeli woman would not be named Tami. Arthur presses the PA button. Usually he reserves the big voice for announcements, but this event seems of enough note, and asks “Where exactly are you taking Miss Tami? And does she need to register as a guest?” Arthur refuses to decide if that was sarcasm or not.
“Guest already, she had a key, so just returning her,” Moira shouts, dragging Tami out of Pinch’s frame of view, to the south wing.
“Returning her to where though?” Arthur asks through the speaker.
“Grim!” Moira yells from the top of the south stairs.
Arthur holds down the button for the PA and sighs into it, reverberating around the room like a swarm of insects, his mouth’s breathy noise doubles back in circles, filling the high cavern ceiling of the lobby, making his sigh triple itself. Pinch takes a moment to compose himself, straightens his back and voice to the proper tone and professional cadence of his position, squares his shoulders, holds down the PA button, and declares: “Ladies and gentlemen the lobby will remain open. As the concierge, I have immediate business that must be addressed away from my post. I am locking the front doors coming inside from the exterior. There will be no new guests while I am out. I will return shortly. If you leave the hotel, please do not hold the door open for anyone trying to gain admittance, this comes at the threat of security being alerted to both your doings and the doings of those parties seen to be entering the hotel. Remember to smile, you ARE on camera.” Twenty or so people in the lobby, half of them mumble. It’s not an uncommon occurrence and they’re regulars. Pinch has to go Pinch someone.
Arthur hangs a sign from a hook at the top of his window that reads “I will return shortly. Apologies for the inconvenience” in bold black cursive surrounded by gold filigree. He rounds away from his frame, and his counter, and walks towards the door leading to the ugly guts behind, inside, and under the eggshell facade of the hotel’s surface. Grabbing his coat and the leather bag sitting under it on the move, he unlocks the door and disappears behind the curtains of the Nine.
The Shook Ones:
From the stairs they had to walk almost ten miles back to room 303N, right down from the elevator. Before they unlocked the door Xenia pulled a dick thick paint marker out of her soggy pocket and put a black dot right before the first 3. .303, and then she scribbled over the N. Vlad nodded as he unlocked the door. Like the rifle cartridge.
Now they chat, the big black pack Vlad was carrying is splayed and unrolled on the floor by the queen bed in the middle of the suite. They run a check on the room after having sat down for a cigarette passed between them and Nescafe Classico from a styrofoam cup.
“So you were banned from this hotel Zayka?” Xenia asks as she runs her hands under the bottoms of the insides of drawers.
“It is a long story darling,” Vladimir is placing a remote electric magnetic lock on the door, drilling holes fast enough that the sound wouldn’t ring odd in a place like the Hotel 9. “I took issues with several guests, security, management,” He checks the lock with its little black remote, chunk lock, shunk unlock, chunk lock, shunk unlock.
“So wait, is this place like that hotel in… The movie with Pointbreak man in it? Is this like the Continental in John Wick?” Xenia is unscrewing a rusted vent cover.
“Don’t be absurd, that would imply some nefarious sort of higher organization at work, fealties, allegiances, safe spaces, rules, also that is a movie,” Vladimir says, stands, and lights a cigarette. “No, the 9 Story Hotel is just the 9 Story Hotel.” They’ve both taken off their coats and liners. Both covered in bodysuits of tattoos. Cyrillic, Thai, Japanese, American, military, unidentifiable, all done in ice black ink. What little subcutaneous body fat both of them have exists as a result of the fact that any fighter or athlete knows if you want to look like a superhero all the time, your life is going to be miserable and you’re always going to be hungry and weak. Xenia and Vladimir fuck and fight too much to not stay fed and strong.
“Then why all this spooky shit Zayka?” Xenia asks.
“I don’t know, baby but do you have to call me Rabbit?” Vladimir asks.
She pulls something wired out of the vent she was inspecting, a fuzzy brown spider, not venomous, tickles up her arm from the clutch of unidentified electronics, a bug, pinhole camera whatever, in her hand. “You’d prefer I call you Ripka? And that doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’d prefer rabbit to fish,” Vlad has walked into the bathroom, checking the faucets, checking the shower, he pulls the mirror off the wall, and behind the mirror is a hole into the space between the rooms, which in the Hotel 9 are more thick a wall than in any Holiday Inn Express, Marriott, Motel 6, Red Roof Inn. Rat tunnels run between every room, under them, behind them, and on all sides of them. “No, this is just.” He sighs, pulls a black light penlight out of his cargo pocket, and pauses. “This is just a strange hotel where shady characters do strange and shady business, nothing more. Owned by a very powerful man in our world.”
“And what world is that Ripka?” Xenia asks from the main room. She just likes to hear him say it.
“The world,” he reaches over to the light switch, the dirty plate, how it’s hard to flip. It wants to be stuck in either position forever. “The world of crime. Whatever.” And he pushes down the switch and turns on the penlight. Black light glow, he checks the bathtub. Vlad huffs. The air comes out of his nose hot and dry. Someone has either been dismembered in the tub recently, or there’s been a fantastic bukakke in there. “And I liked the hotel, I stayed here many times, but it was long ago.” Xenia is asking why she never got taken to the hotel when Vlad sweeps the blacklight up to the wall where the mirror hung a minute before.
He doesn't answer her. “Hello Vladimir,” is written in some faded body fluid, blood or cum, who could tell, written in fingerprints. “Check the mirror,” is likewise same written below the hole in the wall.
He turns to the mirror on the floor and lights it up under the blue black glow “Probably check the front room Vovochka” is written neon slime on the glass. “Xenia,” Vlad says. “Do we have the big blacklights, the wands?”
“Why?” Xenia asks.
Two cigarettes and a string of Russian epithets later they have all the lights in the Deluxe Queen Single off except for two high-power black light wands plugged into outlets on either side of the room. Together they’re powerful enough tubes that the entire space glows, but what’s worse is the room glows with writing on every surface. “This is horror movie bullshit,” Vladimir says, lighting another cigarette.
“Is this normal for the Hotel 9 Floor?” Xenia asks, her own cigarette glowing compared headache orange contrasting against the midnight blue-black glow of the entire room and all the words. “This is just a fancy threatening phonecall,” she says and walks around the room. She stops and giggles, pointing the tip of her cigarette at something written on the ceiling towards a corner “See, there is even a joke,it says ‘free your mind, and your ass will follow’,” she cackles. Her laugh sounds fake but never is. Vlad blinks, more concerned than his wife.
He pulls back the duvet, rips it off the bed, and leaves it crumpled on the floor. Exposed to the blacklight in the dark a message glows day bright across the sheets “Xenia the bed,” he says and she turns to look.
“Xenia Popova, you will die on the 9th floor.” She reads the message out loud. “It’s not subtle. Too on the nose.”
Two sharp cracks against the door and a thud like a person landing on their feet falling from the ceiling outside in the hall should startle both of them, but they turn, draw pistols, and train sights on the source of the noise. An autonomic response for them. Another day at the office. Vlad hand signals, arm bent fist up: hold. Hand turn, thumb back: cover. Two chops in front of him: commit, move, and breach. She follows him step for step, an angle back from him to the side where the door opens. As he does the step over step slow is smooth smooth is fast to his position. She takes a knee and steadies her breathing, ready to put AP rounds through every god and the devil if there’s something in the hall.
Vlad’s hand touches the handle. Xenia thinks, this is bullshit. Just a tap on top of the cheap metal push-down mechanism. She thinks, someone is playing jokes. His left, the non-dominant, slaps down the handle and pushes the door open. In one calm motion, as it creaks and hinges, he takes two steps away from the swinging door, pulling the Glock into a two-handed close retention grip and shouldering back against the wall. There’s a human silhouette in the hallway backlit bright and black shadow dark from their angle, standing directly on the other side of the threshold. The shadow person jerks forward and they light it up. No earplugs and that old familiar airplane takeoff deafening ring, a roar that only they can hear. Smoke wafts up, and burning brass falls, scorching the scarred carpet. The body of whatever was making that lunge lands face down in a limp heap. There is no drama in getting shot so many times, only total collapse to empty object. They’ve both dumped a half mag into the body on the floor that was in egress from the hallway, and the lights in their room flashbulb on nuclear bright, the blacklit writing vaporizing. Same blink and the lights in the hallway outside go blackout dark. They both get that haunted house epileptic feeling and stall frozen in place. The room fades from blinding white light white heat back to full visual, and the thing lying on the floor in a pool of blood is Xenia.
“What the fuck?” She asks and turns to Vlad, but as the words vibrate the air to make the noise of voice reality reconfigures itself around her. She’s all at once the corpse on the ground lying where she just saw herself face down and full of holes they’d shot her through with, but now that IS her, Xenia’s rolling up with her eyes opening, confused and shaking in Vlad’s grip. There’s still blood seeping into the floor under her. She’s not wounded, somehow covered in her own AB- blood, sticky and thick. Vertigo cuts the hemispheres of her brain from one another. Vlad is panicked as she'll ever see him because they just shot her to death, but now she’s the corpse on the ground, alive, not shot, just sticky with blood, and he’s about to cry and pull her into his chest, but she pushes against him, turns away from him, and vomits, a whole body clench comes with it. Smells like bile, looks like gasoline and egg yolk mixed with burnt motor oil, sorta rusty, sprays onto the carpet in an elegant putrid crescent. She wretches twice and stifles more coming up. Clawing out of Vladimir’s arms and scrambling to her feet; she braces herself against the ratty round table across from the bathroom entryway taking breaths held underwater for longer than her lungs can hold. The lights in the room and the hotel hallway are on. She turns her head to look at where she remembers being, panting, and her pistol is on the floor close to where she was kneeling, or thought she was kneeling, or this is fucked. Vlad gets to his feet, slams the door closed, bolts it, clicks his personal mag lock shut, and turns to her. For a man never caught with his mouth hanging open, who lives by his reactions to processing complex information streams coming from multiple sources at all times and from all angles, Vladimir has a look on his face that says he’s confused and he just saw Lazarus rise from the dead in his arms. Saint Xenia, the bullet eater.
“What the fuck?” she asks. “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?”