Truth in Advertising Page 0,45
Night?”
“I’m not sure how to respond to that, but no, I don’t think I am.”
“Oh, okay, then.” The grin remains intact.
“Just a room, if you have one.”
She chuckles. “Wide open tonight. Take your pick.”
“Something quiet, please.”
“You’re on Cape Cod in the winter. Quiet is guaranteed. Let’s see here. I’ll put you in one of our nicest rooms, how about that?”
There’s a hotel in Venice, Italy, called the Danieli that sits on the Grand Canal. There’s a hotel in Bangkok called the Mandarin Oriental that serves high tea each afternoon. There’s a hotel in Buenos Aires called the Alvear that has a butler on each floor. There’s a hotel in Cape Cod where the room smells of mold and stale cigarette smoke and the TV is locked to the console, which is a pity because I was thinking of stealing it. The bedspread is a polyester paisley that looks like it’s seen better days.
I dial Ian.
He says, “I hate you. What’s the temperature?”
I say, “Eighty-one degrees. Sun’s just set and I’m on my second ice-cold Dos Equis.”
Ian says, “You sound weird. You’re lying. Where are you?”
“Cape Cod.”
“What? Why? What happened?”
“My father’s dying.”
“Jesus. Fin. I’m sorry.” He pauses for a moment. “Wait. I thought your father was dead. You told me he died years ago.”
“I might have said that. He’s not, though. Not yet.”
My room looks out on the parking lot. A car pulls in and I watch as five men dressed as Santa get out of a car. They’re laughing and talking loudly. They seem drunk. I lean my face against the window and exhale from my nose, watch the condensation form on the window, see that my left nostril is the one with the most air. I read once that it switches throughout the day, that it’s never even.
I say, “My brother called. Someone from the hospital called him. No one was going to come down. I just thought . . .” I don’t know what I’d thought.
I say, “You wouldn’t think it was so hard to take a vacation, ya know?”
“How is he?”
“Not good. Heart attack. A thousand years old. Smoker. Drinker. Ate red meat like M&Ms. They say it’s a matter of time.”
“You want me to fly up? I’ll come up in the morning. I’ll bring Scott. We’ll drive to P-Town, have dinner. We’ll make a thing of it. I’m serious.”
I lean back from the window and I can just make out, as if I’m almost not there, my own reflection. I can see that I have a slight smile on my face. Ian’s got ten people coming to his apartment tomorrow and he would cancel it and get on a plane to be here with me. He is more like family to me than my family.
I say, “You’re a selfish prick, ya know that?”
“Seriously.”
“I’m fine. To be honest it’s really not that different from the Yucatán Peninsula. Gorgeous, dark-skinned people, a very relaxed attitude.”
“Call me, okay?”
“I just saw five drunk Santas.”
“Is that a band?”
I’m about to hang up when I say, “I don’t know what I’m even doing here. I mean, I haven’t seen him since I was twelve.”
“You’re doing what you’re supposed to do. He’s your father.”
“In theory.”
Later, I turn on my computer, check e-mail, and for a moment consider working on Snugglies. But suddenly I am a camera on a crane outside this hotel looking through this window at me on my laptop on Christmas Eve. Alone. Time to go to a commercial break.
• • •
Sadly, I never spot the drunk Santas again. I sit at the bar and drink a beer and enjoy a knockwurst (as you do on Christmas Eve) and the musical stylings of Surf ’n’ Sand, a seventy-ish-year-old couple, he on piano, she holding a microphone and making noise into it with her mouth. Some might call it singing.
Surf (Sand?) plays “Moonlight in Vermont.”
I look over to see two women looking back at me. They look over and smile. Nothing good will come of this. And so I decide to say nothing. Which is when I open my mouth. “Hi.”
“Hi,” they say, all smiles.
“Mind if we join you?” one of them asks.
“Please do.”
“You look lonesome over here all by your onesies,” one of them says. I have made a horrible mistake.
“Fin,” I say, extending my hand.
“Hi, Fin. That’s Marta and I’m Janie.”
We shake hands, sit, and smile at one another for what seems like forty-five minutes.
“Are you staying at the hotel, Fin?” It’s Marta.
“I am, Marta. Do I detect a slight