Free The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) by Lindsey Goddard Page B

limbo between his old home in Pakistan
and his newly built American mansion. He had paid good money, more
money than I could dream of spending on a house, and he was furious
at the situation.
     
    The spoiled son of an oil company CEO, he
didn’t care for the public aspect of a hotel, sickened by the
inconvenience of being forced to lay his head where so many others
had laid theirs. He let his frustration show, always tense, biding
his time with every painstaking tick of the clock. His dark eyes
twitched when he spoke, his bronzed complexion flush with
impatience.
     
    He had an assistant by the name of Tahir, a
short Pakistani man, very soft-spoken and polite though his English
was broken. Tahir was not staying at our five-star hotel, but
rather a ramshackle motel several blocks east, as his employer saw
fit. He had dark circles under the dark circles on his eyes, and I
was certain it was from dealing with the stressful antics of Mr.
Ahmed.
     
    The wife, Mrs. Ahmed, remained a mystery to
me throughout her two week stay. I never learned her first name;
never dared to ask. She did not converse with men outside her
immediate family, only occasionally whispering in her husband’s
ear. She most likely didn’t know a word of English. With no reason
to establish a first name basis between the two of us, I accepted
her as a blank slate... an unknown guest. But after so many years
of getting to know my guests on a personal level in order to better
accommodate their needs, I admit, it felt odd to have this one slip
through my fingers.
     
    You know how skimpy clothing is often
described as leaving “nothing to the imagination”? Well, Mrs.
Ahmed’s wardrobe left everything to the imagination. I was familiar
with such cultural garments from text books, television, and
newspapers, but I’d never seen one up close. A niqab, that’s what
they’re called.
     
    A black veil concealed the entirety of her
face. It covered her eyebrows and even the bridge of her nose. The
eye slits were narrow, and I remember thinking it would drive me
nuts to have all that cloth in my peripheral vision. A head dress
draped her shoulders and hung down her back, and not a single
strand of hair could be seen.
     
    I hid my discomfort as best I could, mindful
not to hurt the feelings of the woman beneath the shroud. Different
strokes for different folks, I always say. I noticed that even her
fingers were hidden beneath gloves. Her hands left no prints where
she leaned upon the counter, and I thought, “She might as well be a
ghost”. It was a perfectly innocent thought which seems so ominous
in retrospect.
     
    I made sure to smile at the woman every
evening as she came to get a bucket of ice. I wished to make her to
feel as comfortable as possible. The move from overseas was a huge
one. I imagine adjusting to the change in culture was exhausting. I
have no way of knowing if she smiled back, but a couple times she
nodded in my direction before hurrying over to the ice machine.
     
    I assume Mr. Ahmed had some personal use for
the ice, as he would yell for her to hurry up if she took a few
seconds too long. Perhaps he needed to soak his feet in a cold bath
after a full day of pacing back and forth and placing angry phone
calls to the real estate agent. One thing is for sure: his wife was
never fast enough. In a gruff foreign tongue, he barked at her from
down the hall, and although I could not understand his words, they
didn’t strike me as particularly encouraging.
     
    Two nights before Sameer Ahmed checked out of
the hotel and headed for his newly built mansion, the woman in the
niqab encountered a problem on her nightly run to the lobby. ‘OUT
OF ORDER’ was scrawled on a sheet of paper and taped to the ice
machine, written with red permanent marker in all capital letters.
The daytime clerk had scheduled a repair for the following day and
scribbled a Post-it note to me, which now clung to the front desk,
drawing my attention with a nauseating