VACANCY & ARIEL

“You will see her,” Bazit says. “In due course.”

Au Young says something in Cantonese; Bazit responds in kind, then addresses Cliff in English. “My wife says for such a negligible man, you have a very powerful weapon.”

“Fuck your wife,” Cliff says. “I want to see Marley now.”

Bazit continues patting him down, but does not check under his balls. “You will see her,” he says. “And when you do, let me assure you, she will be unharmed. She is resting. Shalin is with her.”

“You tell that bitch, if she…”

Bazit slaps him across the face. “I apologize, sir, for striking you. But you mustn’t call my daughter a bitch or say anything abusive to my wife.”

Again, he speaks to Au Yong in Cantonese—she looks at Cliff, spits on the grass, and goes into the office.

“This way, please.” Bazit gestures with the .45, indicating that Cliff should precede him toward the rear of the motel, toward Bungalow Eleven. “Don’t worry about your car. It will be taken care of.”

As he moves along the overgrown path that winds back among palmettos, Number Eleven swelling in his vision, Cliff’s throat goes dry and he feels a weakness in his knees, as might a condemned prisoner on first glimpsing the execution chamber. “Come on, man,” he says. “Let me see Marley.”

“I hope you will find your accommodations suitable,” says Bazit. “At the Celeste, we encourage criticism. If you have any to offer, you’ll find a card for that purpose on the night table. Please feel free to write down your thoughts.”

At the entrance to Number Eleven, he unlocks the door and urges Cliff inside. “There’s a light switch on the wall to your left. Is there anything else I can do before I bid you goodnight?”

Cliff opens the door and steps in. Of the hundred questions he needs answered, only one occurs to him. “Was it your father who did the special effects for Sword Of The Black Demon?”

“No, sir. It was not.” Bazit smiles and closes the door.

Cliff switches on the overhead and discovers that the lights of Bungalow Eleven are blue. It doesn’t look as bad as he imagined. No dried blood, no spikes on the walls. No bone fragments or ceilings that open to reveal enormous teeth. He tries the door. Locked from without—it appears to be reinforced. He fends off panic and goes straight to work, dropping his shorts and unpeeling the tape that holds the package. The entrance to the room is a narrow alcove, perfect for his purposes. He tapes a shotgun shell to the back of the door, the ignition button facing out. Then he tapes a thumbtack to the wall slightly less than head-high, the point sticking through the tape, aligning it so that the door will strike it when opened. He has to use the string to sight the job, but he’s confident that he’s managed it. The bathroom door slides back into the wall, so it’s no good to him. He searches for a hidden entrance. Discovering none, he tapes the second shell to the front door, a foot-and-a-half lower than the first, and lines it up with a second thumbtack.

An easy chair occupies one corner of the room. He drags it around, angles it so that it faces the door, and sits down. Booby-trapping the door has taken it out of him. He thinks that the adrenaline rush wearing off is partly to blame for his fatigue, but he’s surprised how calm he feels. He’s afraid—he can almost touch his fear, it’s so palpable—but overlying it, suppressing it, is a veneer of tranquility that’s equally palpable. He supposes that this is what some men feel in combat, a calmness that permits them to function at a high level.

The blue light, which annoyed him at first, has come to be soothing, so much so that he finds himself getting sleepy, and he thinks that the Vacancy sign may have had a similar effect when he stared at it from the used car lot. He wants to stay alert and he looks around the room, hoping to see something that will divert him. The windows are covered by sheets of hard plastic dyed to resemble shades. Except for them, everything in Number Eleven is blue. The toilet, the rugs, the bed table coated in blue paint. The sheets on the bed are blue satin, like the witch queen’s sheets in the movie. That bothers him, but not sufficiently to worry about it. He tries to estimate how long he’s been here. Maybe thirty, forty minutes…The sheets seem to ripple with the reflected light, gleams flowing along them as if they’re gently rippling, and he passes the time by watching them course the length of the bed.