No, said the woman. I’ll leave in the morning. I promise you. But if I could just stay tonight, I’d be grateful. The cold, and the snow outside—I don’t think I could bear it.
Stay in bed, said Brother Emmanuel. Are you warm enough? Would you like another duvet? A hot water bottle?
I’m fine, said the woman. It’s lovely and warm in this bed. Is it a feather bed?
Yes, said Brother Emmanuel.
It’s like sleeping on air. Like floating. Like being dead.
Brother Emmanuel stepped away from the bed. You must be hungry, he said. I will have Darlene bring you some soup.
Brother Emmanuel left the door to the room open, so that the glow from the hallway continued to dimly light the room. The woman lay in bed, waiting for Darlene to bring her some soup. She thought: This is the part of my life when I lie in a strange bed in the middle of nowhere and wait for a woman to bring me soup. It is a part of my life. It may be one of the few remaining parts.
When the man returned to the hotel the clerk at the front desk handed him a small envelope along with his key. The envelope was the size of business card, and inside it was a small piece of paper, folded in half. He unfolded it and read:
Your wife is recovering from an incident of emotional and physical anguish. Because she must rest she will stay the night. If you wish you may come and see her tomorrow morning.
Emmanuel de Mézarnou
Is everything happening fine for you? asked the clerk.
No, said the man. Everything is happening badly.
I’m so sorry. But it is often the way things happen, don’t you agree?
Yes, said the man. I agree. Is there a phone I could use down here?
There is a public phone in the bar. Lárus protects it.
Thank you, said the man. He crossed the lobby and entered the bar. He found Lárus maintaining his stoic vigil. The businessman sat at the far end of the bar with an alarmingly red cocktail placed before him.
Good evening, the man said.
Why, good evening, said the businessman.
May I use the telephone? the man asked Lárus.
Telephone?
Yes. The concierge told me there was a telephone here I might use.
Of course, said Lárus. He bent down and when he rose he was holding a large black Bakelite telephone, the kind the man remembered being in the front hall of the house he grew up in. It sat upon a perpetually gleaming Hitchcock console table. A Windsor chair stood beside the table, guaranteeing that telephone conversations were brief. Other families had white or green or brown telephones hanging on the wall in the kitchen and on tables and desks throughout the house—there were even sleek pink princess telephones in the bedrooms of some girls—but his mother insisted that a family needed but one telephone, and it must be black, and rotary dialed, and reside in the front hall, which was, for some reason the man never understood, unheated. His mother, like so many wealthy New Englanders, was extremely—frighteningly—frugal. What was the point in heating hallways? Hallways were for passing through, not for living. That was why rooms had doors!
The phone Lárus held trailed a very long cord. Lárus placed it on the bar in front of the man and said, You are my guest.
The man had never used a phone provided like this in a bar and all he could think of was scenes in old movies where people in nightclubs had phones on long cords brought to their table. For a brief moment he felt glamorous and consequential. He was aware that both Lárus and the businessman were watching him, but then he realized that he did not know Brother Emmanuel’s number, and he stood for a moment, dumbly holding the receiver, as if it might come to him. But of course it did not. He looked again at the message, but of course the number had not been added to it in the interval since he had last looked. He replaced the receiver and stood there, exposed as the fool he was.
Do you know the phone number for Brother Emmanuel? he asked Lárus.
I have no brother, said Lárus. He is dead.
No, I mean Brother Emmanuel, the healer. He lives in a house not far from here. And I’m sorry about your brother.
He killed himself, said Lárus. How sad it was! He was far better than I.