Evangeline

the girl who was blue

The service elevator is a steel gray box. The walls gouged and stained with streaks of antique gore that no amount of bleach will resolve. Godfrey stands in the center of the box with olive drab army satchel slung over one shoulder and a square leather medical case at his feet. Legs apart as if he expects turbulence. His head slightly bowed. He wears a dark green suit of Italian wool with a white shirt and no tie. Dark purple pocket square. He holds a moleskine notebook in his left hand open to an inscrutable map of jagged labyrinthine lines. He mutters left left right left right right left left right eight eleven left right left left eight oh eight left left left eight nineteen right left left right left left. He trails off and closes his eyes. Tucks the moleskine in his breast pocket. 

Godfrey has had the eighth memorized for years but still doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust his shimmering memory. Doesn’t trust Pinch not to change something. The back of his neck itches but he doesn’t touch it. No visible cameras in here but he knows Pinch is never not watching somehow somewhere. He holds out his left hand. No perceptible tremor. Now the right. Twitchy as a half dead fish and he shoves it deep in his pocket. Never you mind, he mutters. Take care of it in a safe room on the eighth. He regards the panel of buttons. Like eleven unmarked silver coins. The eighth is where it should be. 

After another round of controlled breathing Godfrey shrugs off the burn the itch the hunger and extends his left hand and punches the button for the eighth. The box surges then stops. He waits a beat then reaches for the telephone. The receiver is black flecked with muddy brown and held together with electrical tape. It’s already ringing. Godfrey holds it away from his face and listens. He doesn’t much care to speak to Arthur at this hour but nothing to be done. Hotel politics are not his lookout. The beef between Pinch and the proprietor is none of his concern. The proprietor’s business is Godfrey’s business this morning and the note tucked under his door wasn’t the least bit flexible. The familiar spidery scrawl on a fragment of scorched parchment, the acidic opposite of Arthur’s pastel sticky notes. Attend to Evangeline at your earliest convenience. Translation. Do it five minutes ago or I’ll have your heart on a plate. 

*find the rest of Evangeline and more at the Nine Story Hotel substack, link below.

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