What You Do Not Know You Want

Nightingale called to check exactly when my plane got back to Yerbas Buenas, and to ask what I'd like for my welcome-back dinner. For an eternity of three or five seconds I contemplated telling her to marry someone who loves her back. "Peppered steak." I came to my senses, realizing there are several reasons why this information might be useful, one of whom might be Czech. "Your mozzarella salad, and you, my angel. " Jesus Gold-digging Christ, I thought to myself climbing into the shower, what a catch I am. Brutal truth was, if Yukio Mishima's dagger failed to materialize, I have nowhere to fall but Nightingale's money. If she knew that, she'd call the wedding off. "I don't do cheap," she says. I can't afford to see her go. I don't do cheap, either. Fears of financial insecurity wrecked my shower. But What I saw on the bathroom mirror as I climbed out, finger-written in letters not yet steamed over, turned my warm skin cold:

d

d y

d y i

d y i n

d y i n g

d y i n g i

d y i n g i n

d y i n g i n h

d y i n g i n h e

d y i n g i n h e r

d y i n g i n h e r e

Who? When? Dripping, I wrapped a towel around me, unlocked the door and looked down the buzzing corridor. Who, me? said the Coke machine. The elevator was climbing from 1F upward, not 4F down. Werewolf? Too subtle. Who else has a key? Wei? A joke? A threat? Who? A skeleton key? A cleaner? Another guest with a muddled-up key' The nocturnal shouter? But why that message? Back in the bathroom, the mirror letters were fading. Had they really been so clear? Isn't it more likely that room 404's previous occupant had drawn them on? Quarter-convinced by this, I dressed and wandered out for some air, for want of any other plan. Wei, far from hiding a triumphant smirk, was watching Will and Grace on a mini TV. Ten A.M. I wanted to speak to someone who knows me. Nightingale? Women attribute emotional calls to a guilty Conscience. Jesus Null-and-void Christ, I miss you, Vulture. I found myself on a bridge over the Lunalilo Freeway, watching the lights in Pearl Harbor. Depression turns Outdoors indoors. Dying in here.

Werewolf was at reception by the time I'd eaten and wandered back to Hotel Aloha. The scarlet carnation in the semen-cloudy vase had rotted to tampon maroon. My last-but-onc 'light, so I had little to lose by getting out your photo and telling Werewolf I had a couple of questions. My hairy hotelier squinted. "So that Jap's why you're hanging around like a wedged turd. Well, ain't got nothing to say about him, 'cept I wish to sweet God he'd ended his misery in someone else's hotel. The paperwork he cost me! The favors I had to call in to hush it up." My request that Werewolf hand over those possessions which he'd "forgotten" to give to the police produced a row of browned fangs. "What're you saying?" Theft from a suicide is still theft is what I'm saying; that I knew about the knife; that I wanted it back. Werewolf chose a lookey here, asshole voice. "If I had anything belonging to that faggoty half Jap"-he flicked your photo and I fought an urge to ram a pencil up his nostril and through his brain-"I'd probably drop it down the nearest sewer." I held his gaze but explained that your relatives would pay a reasonable sum for the knife's safe return. It has no monetary value, but it was a family heirloom. Werewolf went all oh? "A `family heirloom'? Well, bless my bleeding heart, that changes everything. Then I'd definitely drop it down the nearest sewer. Will you tell Faggoty Jap's relatives that from me, during this dark and difficult time?"

The pyramid of mirror letters in 404 had faded away. Logic administered bromides: staying in a hotel where you died just two weeks ago, searching for another suicide's blade, wedding just around the comer… little wonder I was this wired up. I hadn'thaven't-gotten over what you did. Disbelief was my first reaction. You'd just closed a deal worth as much as Princess Diana's damaged diamond Rolex, second hand forever twitching on 8:17. More than the telegraph pole James Dean drove into. Mishima's knife would make us both wealthy for two or three years. You were the newest member of a balloonist's syndicate. Please, not a suicide. But the policewoman talked me through the coroner's verdict: the message on your mirror, going down going down going down, confirmed as yours by the state graphologist, to your prints on the wire cutter used to access the roof, ten other proofs, left little room for doubt. Nervous collapse? Compounded by your Mishima complex? But no. Doubt grows into counterfact in the tiniest crack.