Free A Small Hotel by Robert Olen Butler

cheapness of your cigars?”
    “I smoke only the finest cigars,” Michael says.
    “And the
largest
,” she says, and she once again massages a word to open its ambiguity.
    He says, “If only Sigmund Freud had been born by now, Miss Pruitt, I would have a shocking response to that comment.”
    “Why, whatever do you mean, Mr. Hays?”
    And a cell phone rings. Michael’s, hidden beneath his swallowtail coat. The faces in the room turn toward the sound, upper lips squaring and nostrils flaring in disdain.
    Michael ignores the censure and quickdraws his phone to see who’s calling, even as Laurie hisses, “Michael.”
    It’s Bloom, Weisberg, Hatfield & Moore. Finally, word. Michael says to Laurie, “You know what today is.”
    She softens instantly, “Of course,” she says, touching his arm.
    Michael turns and flips open the phone before the second ring and he moves out the parlor door. “Claire,” he says to his lawyer’s secretary, “I’ll call Max right back. I’ve got to step outside the nineteenth century first.”
    And Michael moves through the front door and across the veranda and the terrace and into the allée. He keeps walking, even after he’s alone and can call Max and can hear that it’s all over. He’s delaying this, and he realizes he is, and since he’s alone he feels free to visibly, sharply shake his head, make an overt gesture of disgust at himself, at his own weakness. And having done this, he flips open his phone and calls Max’s office.
    “Claire, it’s Michael. I’m ready for Max.”
    And moments later Max is on the line. “Michael,” he says. “She didn’t show.”
    “What?”
    “Kelly didn’t show up to finalize.”
    “I don’t understand,”
    “Even her lawyer was taken by surprise,” Max says. “He’s been trying to locate her. Nothing. No answer.”
    “This was when?”
    “The appointed hour. Eleven. Judge Fox waited till noon. As long as he could.”
    “Jesus.”
    “I hoped to have some news by now. I’m sorry to put this on you.”
    Michael says nothing for a long moment. It’s as if he’s standing there thinking, but he isn’t. He thinks about thinking something about this turn of events, but there’s not much actually going on in his head.
    “Michael?” Max says.
    “Yes.”
    “You okay?”
    “I just want it over.”
    “Of course,” Max says. “What was her mood the last time you talked?”
    “It’s been a couple of weeks. I don’t know.”
    “We’ll keep trying,” Max says.
    “Thanks. Yes. I have to go.” And Michael hangs up.
    He tries again to think this out, but his mind is still benumbed and he is mostly aware now of the drift of voices from the house and the drape of shadows from the canopied oaks above him and the sooty sweet smell of sugarcane stubble burning somewhere. He finds himself facing the house but he turns away, walks down the allée now toward the levee, and as he does, he dials the house in Pensacola.
    The phone there rings and rings, and then Kelly’s voice says, “I’m sorry. No one is home. Please leave a message …” and Michael hangs up. He dials Kelly’s cell phone.
    ∼
     
    Distantly an old rotary phone rings. From her bedroom Kelly hears it, waking in the middle of the night. She keeps her eyes hard shut, though she is awake, though she knows the phone is ringing. She hears her mother rustle past the bedroom door, heading for the phone. Her father is sad again somewhere. Kelly forces her eyes wide open. The sunlight on the bedspread is too bright. She closes her eyes and opens them. The phone rings. Her mind clarifies. The brick wall. The wrought iron grapes. The night table. It’s her cell phone, which rings again. She chose this sound. But it’s distant now, muffled, and she looks to her purse lying at the foot of the bed. Her cheeks are tight with dried tears. The phone rings. She has no intention of answering it, even without thinking who it probably is. She’s out of town. She’s gone away.