The door is destroyed in the fall, too damaged to remember what it once was.
r /> A tangle of vines and dirt obscures any evidence of what has occurred.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS sits on a train bound for Manhattan, staring out the window at the frozen tundra of New England, and begins, not for the first time today, to question his life choices.
It is too conveniently timed a coincidence not to pursue, even for a tenuous, jewelry-based connection. He spent a day getting himself organized, procuring a rather expensive ticket to the party and an even more expensive hotel room across the street from the Algonquin which was completely booked. The ticket details included the dress code: formal, literary costumes encouraged, masks required.
Far too much time was wasted worrying over where to find a mask until he thought to text Kat. She had six of them, several involving feathers, but the one packed in his duffel bag with his carefully rolled suit is of the Zorro variety, black silk and surprisingly comfortable. (“I was the man in black from The Princess Bride for Halloween last year,” Kat explained. “That’s literary! Do you want my poufy black shirt, too?”)
Zachary wonders if he should have left yesterday, as there is only one train per day and this one is supposed to get him to New York with a couple of hours to spare, but it is stopping frequently due to the weather.
He takes off his watch and shoves it in his pocket after glancing at it four times in the space of three minutes.
He is not sure why he is so anxious.
He is not entirely certain what he is going to do when he gets to the party.
He doesn’t even really know what the woman in the photograph looks like. There’s no way of knowing whether she will be there this year.
But it’s the only bread crumb he has to follow.
Zachary takes his phone out of his coat and pulls up the copy of the photo he has saved and stares at it again even though he has already committed it to memory down to the disembodied hand in the corner holding a glass of sparkling wine.
The woman in the photo has her head turned to the side and her profile is mostly mask, but her body is facing the camera, the layered necklace with its golden bee and key and sword as clear and bright as stars against her black gown. The gown is slinky, the woman wearing it curvy and either tall or wearing very high heels, everything below her knees is obscured by a potted palm conspiring with her dress to pull her into the shadows. Her hair above the mask is dark and swept up in one of those styles that looks effortless but probably involves a great deal of construction. She could be twenty or forty or anywhere in between. For that matter the photo looks as though it could have been taken that many years ago, everything within the frame looks timeless.
The man at the woman’s side wears a tuxedo, his arm is raised in a way that suggests his hand is resting on her arm but her shoulder conceals the rest of his sleeve. The ribbon of a mask is visible against his slightly greying hair but his face is completely obscured by her own. A sliver of neck and ear reveal that his complexion is much deeper than hers but little else. Zachary turns the phone in his hand trying to get a look at the man’s face, momentarily oblivious to the futility of the action.
The train slows to a halt.
Zachary looks around. The train car is less than half full. Mostly solo passengers, each having claimed their own pair of seats. A group of four at the other end of the car is chatting, sometimes loudly, and Zachary regrets not bringing his headphones. The girl across from him has huge ones, between the headphones and her hoodie she’s almost completely obscured, facing the window and probably asleep.
A static-punctuated announcement comes over the speaker, a variation on the one that has been relayed three times before. Stopped due to ice on the tracks. Waiting for it to be cleared. We apologize for the delay and will be moving again as soon as possible etcetera etcetera.
“Excuse me,” a voice says. Zachary looks up. The middle-aged woman sitting in front of him has turned around over the high back of her seat to face him. “Do you happen to have a pen?” she asks. She wears several looping layers of colorful beaded necklaces and they jingle as she talks.
“I think so,” Zachary says. He rummages around in his satchel and comes up first with a mechanical pencil but then tries again and finds one of the gel rollers that seem to procreate at the bottom of his bag. “Here you go,” he says, handing it to the woman.
“Thank you, I’ll just be a minute,” the woman says and she jingles back out of sight behind her seat.
The train begins to move and travels enough that the snow and trees outside the windows are replaced by different snow and different trees before it slows to a stop again.
Zachary takes The Little Stranger out of his bag and starts to read, trying to forget where he is and who he is and what he’s doing for a little while.
The announcement that they have reached Manhattan comes as a surprise, pulling Zachary from his reading.
The other occupants are already gathering their luggage. The girl with the headphones is gone.
“Thank you for this,” the woman in front of him says as he slings his satchel over his shoulder and picks up his duffel bag. She gives him back his pen. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“You’re welcome,” Zachary says, putting the pen back in his bag. He falls into line with the passengers impatiently making their way off the train.
Exiting onto the street from Penn Station is overwhelming and disorienting, but Zachary has always found Manhattan to be disorienting and overwhelming in general. So much energy and people and stuff in such a small footprint. There is less snow here, clumped in gutters in miniature mountains of grey ice.
He reaches Forty-Fourth Street with two hours left before the party. The Algonquin appears quiet but it is difficult to tell from the outside. He nearly misses the entrance to his own hotel across the street and then wanders through a sunken lobby lounge and past a glass-walled fireplace before locating the front desk. He checks in without incident, flinching as he hands over his credit card even though he has more than enough to cover the total from years upon years of large birthday checks sent in lieu of visits from his father. The desk clerk promises to send a clothes steamer up to his room so he can attempt to undo whatever damage his bag has unleashed on his suit.
The windowless upstairs hallways are submarine-like. His room is more mirrored than any hotel room he has ever stayed in before. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors across from the bed and on both walls in the bathroom make the small space seem larger but they also make him feel as though he’s not alone.
The steamer arrives, dropped off by a bellhop who he forgets to tip but it’s too early to prep his suit so Zachary distracts himself with the gigantic round bathtub, even though the mirror-bathtub Zacharys are disturbing. Bathtub opportunities are few and far between. His dorm has a less-than-private row of showers and the claw-foot tub at his mother’s Hudson River Valley farmhouse always looks appealing but refuses to keep water warm for longer than seven minutes at a time. There is, strangely, a single taper candle in the bathroom complete with a box of matches, which is an interesting touch. Zachary lights it and the one flame becomes many within the mirrors.