Phoenix Fire (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

“I must see him,” Jenny barked at Nora and hastily went directly to Jason's private office door, opened it and entered. The room was dark and empty, and it occurred to her that this was the state of her soul. Dark, empty, and without purpose. Was Jason's soul at this moment feeling the same dark emptiness?

Jenny let the seeming symbolism pass as she remembered where she was. She suddenly felt her face flushed with embarrassment. She went back to Nora's desk in the reception area. Nora sat looking up at Jenny with a sad smile of understanding.

“Please, sit for a moment,” Nora said.

Jenny reluctantly sat. “I'm so sorry. I thought that he must be in there. He won't return my calls and I'm very worried about him. Do you have any idea where he is? I've tried his home number and he doesn't answer. I've tried to reach him through Mrs. Wimsley but, she, too, has not been able to find him. We don't know where to go or what to do. Can you help us?” Jenny's expression spoke of pain and sorrow.

Nora paused briefly before responding. She, too, of course, was worried about Jason, and this young lady obviously cared a great deal about him. “I don't know where he is, Ms. Mason. Really, I do not. He's only been to the office three or four times since his brother died and he's called in maybe three times. When he came in, he looked terrible. His eyes were red and puffy, and he looked so pale. I'm very worried about him myself. He just said that he needed some time to himself. I wish there was more to tell you that would help but there is no more.”

The telephone rang just as Nora finished her sentence. It was someone else calling for Jason.

As Jenny left Jason's office building, she was stymied. She simply did not know what else to do. She had hoped that by now Jason would have called her. She could not imagine why he had forsaken her. What had she done? She could think of nothing.

She drove back to her own office, picked up some client materials that needed her attention, and left for home.

At her apartment she tried again to reach Jason at his home phone number. No answer. She had allowed the phone to ring some twenty times.

She called Grandma Myrena to see if she had heard from Jason.

“Why, yes, dear,” Myrena told her, “he called yesterday. Has he not yet called you? He said that he would.”

“No, he hasn't, and I'm getting so frustrated. I don't know what else to do. I've even thought of camping out at his home address to try and catch him, but that seems so brazen somehow. If he won't return my calls, why should I think he would want me showing up on his doorstep? Maybe, too, I'm afraid of further rejection.”

They had talked for several minutes, and, after hanging up the phone, Jenny had a scary sort of presentiment about Grandma Myrena. Her voice had sounded so weak and somehow disjointed. Jenny guessed that it must be the medication she was taking for the cancer pain. It was a thought that came unbidden: Grandma Myrena was near the end. Jenny began to cry as an overwhelming sense of doom came upon her. She walked around the apartment, dabbing at her eyes with tissues, adjusting a wall painting, pacing, trying to shake the awful feeling.

Later, with a glass of wine to hopefully settle her senses, she thought again about Jason. He must have discovered the fact of Grandma Myrena's terminal cancer. That knowledge alone would subdue him, but add to that Carlton's tragic and untimely death and it would be difficult to imagine the depth and extent of emotional stress Jason was feeling and trying to handle. Maybe he couldn't handle the stress. Perhaps it would be natural, from a psychological point of view, that Jason would turn away from Jenny, having lost his brother and knowing that he would soon lose his grandmother, a grandmother who was in essence his mother and his role model. Perhaps he feared a potential loss of Jenny as well. And, who could truly say what the loss of his father and mother years ago had meant in terms of psychological scarring and repressed need?

Jenny could question why Jason was turning away from her, but the simple truth was that he had turned away. She could know that the bond they were building prior to Carlton's death was real, genuine, and beautiful. She could not be wrong about that. Jason loved her. She just knew that to be true. She loved Jason. He must surely know that to be true. The ultimate causes for Jason's avoidance of her be what they may, she must be patient and understand fully what he was going through. She must not permit herself to create doubt and self-pity in her mind. It was Jason who now needed her more than she needed to find answers for herself. She must find him and convince him of her love. She must convince him that she would never leave him.

She left her apartment with a new resolve and drove to Jason's house, a lovely Mediterranean type villa cut into the desert rock mountain in Paradise Valley. The large house was elegant in its stone, stucco, and wood exterior. The landscaping made it enchanting with meandering pathways through lush shrubbery, palms, Palo Verde trees, and large boulders.

As she drove up the palm lined lane, the house seemed to convey an aura of sadness. The red clay roof tiles appeared drooping and surrealistic in the late afternoon sun like a Salvador Dali painting. Jenny thought that the dwelling gave off a soulful emanation of its owner. A tear erupted from a quiet place and she felt her own sadness engulfing her.

Jenny parked on the spacious flat stone driveway that encircled a blossoming clump of neatly trimmed hedge growth. She turned off the ignition and stepped from the car. She paused, pivoted, and looked down upon the northeastern valley below. Houses with delft dotted pools in the midst of cacti and palm trees stretched far out to Scottsdale and the hazy McDowell Mountains. A soft crying wind caressed the hilltop and the sad house.

Jenny sighed at the desert beauty sprawled below and walked through an artfully created atrium to the front entry door. An octagonal sign near the hedgerow announced that the house was protected by a security system, with a telephone number in bold brown letting. She rang the doorbell for nearly five minutes and she could hear the accompanying chime sounds inside the house, lonely and softly rhapsodic. She rapped on the hard, thick, oak door for another two minutes. She tried the large gold handle but it was locked.

She walked out of the courtyard and around the house until she reached a fence gate. The gate, too, was locked. She walked back the way she had come, past the atrium, and along the other side of the house. She finally reached the rear left corner of the house, where a huge mountainous boulder nearly touched the sand finished stucco.

There was a narrow space between the house end and the boulder. It was a tight squeeze and she was able to get through onto a large porous patio by shimming up the rounded corner of the house and the boulder until the space widened enough for her to drop free.

Winded by the exertion she stood looking at the space through which she had just come. She shook her head and smiled. “Now, how did I do that?” she asked aloud, her voice hollow and reverberating.

The rear area behind the house was breathtaking in its beauty. The large swimming pool lay up against the mountain boulders, from which water flowed in gentle unhurried sheets. At the northwest end of the massive flagstone patio the backward drop of the shaded stone mountain gave way to slope, sun, and the desert floor below. Jenny paused to conjure a vision of Jason and her sitting here in this beautiful setting, holding hands across their chaise lounges, sipping cocktails, and discussing their wonderful future together.

She walked along the rear of the house where several glass bypass doors allowed for egress and ingress. The first three doors she tried were locked. The last door that belonged to the master bedroom suite glided smoothly open with her tugging. She felt a rush of optimism with the opening door. She half expected an alarm system to start wailing, but it was either not keyed 'on' or was not functioning.

She stepped into the large bedroom suite. A cool breeze from the air conditioner momentarily chilled her warm, perspiring body.

“Jason,” she tentatively called out.

The bed was neatly made and a cleansing smell wafted on the cool air. The maid had obviously been here recently.

“Jason!” she yelled as she stepped out of the bedroom into a hallway. “Jason!” louder still.

Other than her own voice and the whisper of air conditioning there were no sounds in the house.

She went from room to room, slowly realizing that Jason was not at home. “Oh, Jason, where are you?” she muttered in frustration.

Suddenly, the blare of a telephone ringing broke the quietness. Jenny impulsively jerked to attention.

What should she do? Answer the phone? Surely it would not be Jason calling his own number. But, maybe it was someone who might be able to shed some light on his whereabouts. Maybe it was Jason's office. Maybe it was Granma Myrena. Maybes. She would not know until she answered the blasted thing.

Jenny found a telephone on a living room table and picked up the receiver on the fourth ring. “Hello?” she asked.

“Jenny? Is that you, Jenny?” It was the weak and cracking voice of Grandma Myrena.

“Grandma Myrena! Yes, it's me. Have you heard from Jason? I just broke into his house, and he isn't here.”

“No, dear girl, I haven't heard from him. I was hoping to find him there.” There was a pause on the line.

“Grandma Myrena, are you all right? Do you need me there?” Jenny sat on mauve wing back chair next to the telephone table, her brow wrinkled in concern.

“I'm having a bad spell, Jenny. The medicine, I'm afraid, is losing some of its punch. I do wish Jason would call, show up, something.” Her voice was barely audible.

“Have you called the doctor?”

“Yes, Wardley called him. He is increasing the dosage. Someone from Nelson's office will be stopping by soon with the new pills.”

“May I come over, Grandma Myrena? I would like to be there with you.”

“No, dear one, you don't need to bother. Just try to find Jason. Wardley is here with me. I will be all right.”

Reluctantly, Jenny conceded and told Myrena that she would call back periodically to keep her informed. After disconnecting, Jenny sat, her heart sick with worry for the plucky little lady and for Jason. She must find him, but she had no idea of where to look. She had to find him soon. He would never forgive himself if Grandma Myrena … She did not complete the thought. Pain upon pain.

Jenny did not know how long she sat in the chair. When the shadows began to deepen in the room she stood and went into the spacious kitchen, took a glass from a cabinet shelf, and drank some water from the fridge dispenser. As she started to leave the kitchen she noticed what appeared to be credit card receipts tucked under a colorful paper weight, probably gathered and placed there by the cleaning person.

Jenny leafed through the Visa receipts one by one. They were all bar receipts for some hefty amounts. “Oh, Jason, please don't do this to yourself. You need to be strong. You need to be with Grandma Myrena.”

She noticed a pad of message paper and a pen. She scribbled a note and carried it into Jason's bedroom. She placed the note at the fold of the bedspread, just under the pillow. He would have to see it before he got into bed. She said a silent prayer that he would come home soon and read it.

“Very soon, please, dear God!” she said to the empty room, her voice hollow and throaty, alien to her ears.

Jenny let herself out the front door, making sure it was locked behind her.

Driving down the palm lined lane, Jenny looked to the west and saw the sun bursting in deep pink hues all across the horizon. She could only hope and pray that Jason knew the fullness of her love. She could only hope and pray that he would make it home before something awful happened to Grandma Myrena, like, her dying. She softly made a plea, “Oh, God! Please help us.”

She could not shake the sudden, strong, jolting premonition of death.

In Jason's master bedroom suite the edges of Jenny's note lifted slightly off the bedspread in response to the stir of cool air from the conditioner. The note floated softly just briefly, then settled when the air conditioning unit had automatically cut itself off. The piece of paper looked lonely on the large bedspread.

The note read:
Jason --- My heart aches for you. Please! Please! Call me. Come to me. You are my love and my life --- Jenny.

Chapter Twenty-five

The thoughts did not hurt so much in this lofty place, up on the vaporous plateau of Bacchus. The sadness in his soul was temporarily anesthetized by the booze and by the buoyant crowd around him. The noise proclaimed gaiety and denouncement of all woes. Jason could momentarily forget the terrible visage of death that had attached itself to his thoughts and had burned its truth into his brain. He could momentarily seek the easy forgetfulness that came with the numbing flow of amber fluid.

He sat at the bar, remotely conscious of his drooping eyelids and his slurred words.

There was a 'Roy' and a 'Hal' on either side of him but he could not remember which side belonged to which name. Each man talked to him and through him. He was aware of the inane smile on his face and of his nods of false comprehension of their words.

He was still aware enough to think of having coffee to lift the thickening fog around his mind. When he was about to order coffee, another drink would appear in front of him. Dumbly, he drank to catch up with his new found comrades, each gulp taking him closer to an unknown precipice.

He had stumbled off to the men's room on several occasions and he had smirked at his image in the broad mirror above the lavatory. He had splashed water time and again on his face, trying to maintain some degree of sobriety. When returning from his nature calls he found himself behind again, several drinks lined up on the bar. His mind registered his 'friends' cajoling him to catch up, and, in some dull chamber of his mind, he resented their wheedling. In his fog, he began to dislike these phony men. They resembled mindless predators who sought sadistic pleasure in watching others self-destruct. The booze, though, held power over him, and he drank on into the night.

*****

Through the dark tunnel of sleep came a buzzing sound, at first barely audible, then growing in loudness and persistence.

It was a telephone.

Finally, it stopped ringing.

Jason lay still, his body a leaden and damp mass on the lumpy bed. He felt stuck to the sheets and he was afraid to make any sudden moves lest a wave of nausea would hit. He slowly and tentatively opened his eyes, his left cheek moist against the stained and soiled pillow where his deep sleep drool had settled. He squinted as he peered into a cracked and alien wall where a dirty window was partially covered by a faded, grimy shade. The day outside was bright with sun, and he halfway expected the window shade to become inflamed. His eyes moved farther down the wall line and he saw an old soiled chair, its fabric shiny with use and age, its arms and back patched and torn.

Another kind of buzzing started, softer but more annoying because of its close proximity to his ear. It was a fly. He raised his hand to swat it away and the movement caused his body to churn in nauseous waves.

He forced himself to sit up in the bed. His temples were throbbing and his head felt top heavy and cumbersome. He noticed that he was dressed, in wrinkled shirt, slacks, and one sock. In the corner of the dingy room he saw his blazer and the other sock.

His nostrils registered a foul odor in the stuffy room, like a combination of long settled body musk and urine. The smell caused him to retch, and he stumbled shakily to his feet and found the bathroom.

The bathroom was odious in its own peculiar stench, the visible pipes showing rust marks and seepage stains. He gagged and ultimately heaved into the loathsome toilet bowl. He knelt there on the scarred linoleum floor, hovering over the stinking bowl, for several minutes until the nausea eased. There came a nebulous relief, and he rose and went to the filthy wash basin and splashed his pale stubble face with fetid tap water. He went back and sat on the edge of the bed, his face dripping water onto the ugly green and matted carpet.

Where was he?

God! He had no idea where he was.

Yes, he did! He was in a dirty two-bit hotel room. He was in some kind of hell, perhaps the end of his world as he had known it. A pang of anxiety struck him, followed by an uncontrollable shivering.

He could remember nothing beyond this wretched hotel room. A dark shroud had fallen over his memory and the ensuing panic brought a fresh terror to his awareness. His shaking prompted him to lie back on the squeaky bed. He forced himself to take long, slow breaths of the unhealthy air. A sun ray came through the ragged window shade and showed a gray blur of a million tiny specks of dust and dirt.

He needed to relax, to think. Where was he? Okay, he was in a shabby hotel room, but where was the hotel room? How had he gotten to this awful room? He again took slow, deep breaths of the bad air. He tried to reach back, to remember.

“For God's sake, remember!” he admonished himself in a voice he could hardly recognize.

The bar! The cocktail lounge on Camelback Road? “Yes,” he said to himself, “I just need to relax and think.”

What happened at the cocktail lounge? Where did he go after he left the bar? He could not remember leaving the bar. “Think, think!”

There were two men, Roy and Hal. Yes, Roy and Hal. They kept ordering drinks, and he paid for them. Yes, he remembered. He had not liked the men. Why had he been friendly with them? What had happened?

A sharp knocking came at the door. The door was so cheap and hollow that it made the sounds seem like a hammer splintering wood.

Jason was startled by the loud rapping. He did not move, waiting. Waiting? For what? The loud rapping came again. He thought that the door might leave its hinges.

On shaky legs he stood and moved toward the door. It was probably a maid, if a place like this would even have a maid.

“Yes, yes! Just a minute. I'm coming.”

When he opened the door he saw a small man in a white shirt and wrinkled brown pants, his face pinched and mousy, his teeth stained with nicotine. A cigarette was squeezed between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

“Why didn't you answer your phone, pal? You coulda saved me a trip up from the desk.” The little man didn't wait for a reply. “You staying over or what?” The man stared brazenly into Jason's wet face, his breath a mixture of cigarette smoke and alcohol.

Jason hesitated, confused, fighting a new wave of nausea. He opened his mouth and his words came out in stumbling cadence. “Uh, I don't know. What time is it?”

“It's time you make up your mind, pal. Otherwise, you're gonna be charged for another day. Checkout time is 1:00 PM, and we're about ten minutes away. Do the math, pal, it's 12:50 PM.”

Jason stared vaguely at the little man, shaking, trying to formulate words.

The man spoke again with some impatience. “So, what's it gonna be, pal? Don't got all day.” The eyes, for just a moment, seemed to soften. “You all right, buddy? You look like hell.”

Even in his current state of imbalance, Jason was a bit piqued with the little man's patronizing 'pal' and 'buddy.' He finally managed to speak.

“Yeah, I'm fine, I guess. Look I need … yeah, I'll stay over.” Jason just wanted the man gone.

“Okay, you're staying over. Come down to the desk in the thirty minutes and pay up. We're pay as you go here at the Warren and we're very strict about that.” The little man turned to go, then stopped and waited for an acknowledgment from Jason. “You with me, pal?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm with you. I'll be down shortly … Pal.”

A small smile appeared on the face of the mousy clerk as he turned and strode away. He raised his arm to his sides and fluttered his hands, a gesture of unknown significance to Jason.

Jason closed the door, walked to the corner and retrieved his blazer, sock, shoes, and returned to sit on the bed.

He tried again to remember yesterday in its entirety. He had started drinking in the afternoon. What happened later in the evening?

His body had returned to a tentative place, the nausea not prominent but still a threat. There was still an unsettling fear within him, and he was in a quiet and uncomfortable desperation. The room was hot and stuffy, full of bad air, and his face felt parched and flushed.

He went back to the bathroom and splashed more water on his face. He let the cold side faucet run for a long time before lowering his head under it and hungrily gulping as much water as his eager mouth could take in.

Back on the bed he fumbled through his pants pockets and his blazer. He found several wadded credit card receipts, car keys, and a lone Visa Gold charge card. He could neither find a wallet or any cash. Another spasm of anxiety hit him and he thought of 'Roy' and 'Hal.' Had they taken his money and wallet? He shook his head in self-disgust. Then, he noticed on the floor in the corner of the room a brown leather wallet. It must have dropped from the blazer when he retrieved it.

He jumped from the bed too fast, causing him to experience dizziness. He sat again until it passed, rose more slowly and went to get the wallet. He leafed quickly through the plastic card holders and the small inner compartments. His cards were all there, as was his money, still wadded in its clip. The money and clip was inside one of the larger pockets. It struck him as a bit odd to find his money in that spot because he usually carried the clip in a trouser pocket. He could not remember having put the money there, but it really did not matter. He was relieved to have found these important items. It was a small victory in this otherwise sordid predicament.

A slight feeling of hope came to him. He had money. He had his credit cards. Apparently, he had maintained some good sense last night, or … Maybe 'Hal' and 'Roy' had taken care of him.

He again tried to remember all that had happened yesterday. Then he felt the rush of time, or, more specifically, the rush of checkout time. He did not want another visit from the 'mouse man,' his 'pal' and his 'buddy.'

Maybe a shower would help him to remember all the details of yesterday. At the very least he would get the unpleasant musk off of his body, perhaps give him some energy and purpose. He peeled off his clothes and went to stand in the cracked and dented tub while broken streams of water came down on him from the clogged shower head. He felt like holding his breath with tightly closed lips so as not to accidentally swallow some of the squalid water.

When he had toweled off and dressed again he felt better. His face was dark with second day stubble, but a shave would have to wait. A faint perspiration odor came from the shirt he was forced to wear again but, overall, he felt relatively clean.

His mind became active again with thought. While he still could not put all of the previous night together, he began to get patches of remembrance. The hard facts of his brother's death and Grandma Myrena's terminal cancer pounded relentlessly upon his brain, and he felt another rush of anxiety.

Carlton was gone from him in this life. He could only hope and pray that he would have known at his death that Jason loved him. The thoughts that plagued him the most were of Grandma Myrena and Jenny. How would they look upon him if they could see him here in this dingy room, used up and without direction? He felt lost and profoundly ashamed. How could he have sunk to this? What was happening to him?

He walked around the small smelly room, checking for any items he might have overlooked. He found nothing except for some crawling things which might have been cockroaches. Involuntarily a thought came to him of a long ago Ray Milland movie called,
The Lost Weekend
.

With a lingering apprehension he walked out of the room and down a narrow hallway to a red exit sign above a gray metal door. He opened the door, walked down two flights of stairs, and opened another metal door. He cautiously peeked through and saw that he had reached the lobby of the hotel. The large malodorous lobby had a darkly sinister cast to it, depressing in its anachronistic aura. He could see the short registration desk diagonally across from where he stood. He saw only the top of a man's head at a small PBX switchboard and he could hear the little mousy man cursing.

Jason pushed the metal door fully open and stepped into the lobby. He took a right turn and went out a side exit onto a downtown Phoenix street. He had no idea where he was until he saw some familiar reference points, two corner thoroughfare signs that announced the intersection of Van Buren and Central Avenue.

He felt like an idiot. He had no clue where his car was parked, if in fact, it was even in the immediate area.

He thought again of Jenny, Grandma Myrena, and Carlton. Why were the people he loved deserting him? Why was he so unable to cope with the reality of death? Was his problem deeper than the reality of death? Had Carlton's death awakened long sleeping atavistic demons? Was it a karmic anomaly that was pushing him away from Grandma Myrena and Jenny, his only hope of salvation?

He had an urge to walk. It did not matter where his car was. It was most likely still at the Camelback Road cocktail lounge. It would turn up. Maybe he could walk the cobwebs out of his mind. Maybe some sanity would return. Maybe some memory of yesterday would come.

He walked north on Central Avenue until he came upon a public telephone booth. He wanted to call Jenny. He wanted to call Grandma Myrena. He wanted to apologize and to tell them that he loved them so very much.

The neon on the bar in the middle of the block blinked at him like a winking, hypnotic harlot. He felt his resolve to make telephone calls waver. He felt disgusted with himself, but his body had some urgent and immediate need. 'Hair of the dog' held out a promise of relief for his imbalanced and tortured system. He would have a drink or two, strictly for medicinal purposes. Then, he would call the people he loved.