24
Missing Time
Chloe
On the outskirts of the Old Town in the center of Warsaw—the Old Town built in 1955 because the war that altered the world had leveled the old Old Town entire—there is a hostel nicer than the others, inasmuch as they could conclude when they read about it in Blake’s indispensable guide to Poland. It stands on a quiet street two kilometers away from the Old Town. Not in a great central location, but cheap and clean. That was very important. They had booked two nights, reserving a room with four beds, a sink, and a bathroom down the hall, all for about twenty dollars a person, which was preferable to a hotel, which would cost twice that. Of course a hotel would have had a shower in the room. They decided a private shower wasn’t worth an extra hundred dollars a night. It was to this hostel that Johnny and Chloe came near midnight.
The desk manager, awakened and hostile, stood in his tatty robe behind the low counter, looking for her name in his book, in which row after row of names had been written out by a careless hand. That he found her name at all was a miracle. She was a day or two early, since they decided to cancel the travel to Gdansk. She could barely sweet-talk her way into the reservation. Beg, more like. The room was on the third floor. There was no elevator. He ordered them to keep it down as everyone else was already asleep. What did he think they were going to be doing, and noisily, too?
Chloe didn’t know what he meant by “everyone” because everyone she saw was wide awake and on the stairs and in the hallways, their doors flung open, smoke and smells emanating, the whole place like a foyer to a sewer.
“How can we stay here?” Johnny, the veteran of Daugavpils crack houses, asked about a three-star hostel in the capital of Poland.
“It’s midnight. What do you see as our options?”
The room had four grungy beds, one in each corner, narrow like steamer trunks, the old mattresses bare and stained. The sheets, pillows, pillowcases and blankets were folded in careful squares at the foot of each bed. The room was painted deep green with bright yellow trim. It had brown curtains and a warped wood floor. It was dark; three of the light bulbs were out, and one lamp cord was broken. The water didn’t run into the sink. It didn’t run at all. If it weren’t so late, Chloe would have gone downstairs to complain. But she’d given up complaining for the night.
Johnny waited for her in the dirty pink corridor outside the bathroom. After escorting her back to the room, he told her to lock the door and not let anyone in. He took the key. She asked if he wanted her to wait for him in the corridor as he had waited for her. He half-smiled. “What are you going to do, protect me, Chloe?” he said. Then he left.
Yes, she wanted to say. You should always protect the things you can’t do without.
She made up her bed, next to one window, and then his bed, on the opposite wall. She sat on the bed with her hands folded. She sat and sat, and when she grew so tired that she couldn’t sit anymore, she put down her head, for just a minute. The bed was hard, the pillow hard. She wondered if he was all right, but was too frightened to go outside to check. The trains and the drunk men, the noisy children and the violent beggars, the green weed and the stark absence of her closest friends, it all intruded into the space where there should have been nothing but candlelight and ripe peaches. She waited and waited. She fell asleep.
She woke up in the middle of the night. She bolted up in bed, because she heard a man screaming in the corridor, walking up and down banging on all the doors. She yelped like a mouse, and then adjusted to the night and saw Johnny in his bed, under the sheet, sleeping. She didn’t know how he could be sleeping because the man outside was raging as if everyone was about to die. Johnny, she whispered. Johnny, are you awake? He had propped two chairs against the door, one under the handle, one to the side. She crawled out of bed, because the man was now banging on their door, shrieking in Polish. She got so scared she started to cry. Johnny, Johnny. Kneeling by his low bed, she shook him gently. He didn’t stir. In a few minutes the man’s outraged voice was answered with another loud voice, then two more, and then the man stopped banging on their door, and was dragged away, shrieking. The noise died down. It was four in the morning. Everyone else had gone back to sleep, but Chloe could not. She sat by Johnny’s side, not knowing what to do, and then crept into his tiny bed and squeezed in on her side in front of him. He formed a big C and she a little c. She lay awake, her back pressed against his sleeping inanimate front. He never woke up. And she never went to sleep.
Johnny, she whispered. Johnny.
He opened his eyes, sat up instantly, and smiled at her. They were both in his narrow bed. “Good morning,” he said. “Why didn’t you wake me when you climbed in?”
“I tried,” Chloe said. “How did you not hear? There was a horrible hysteric outside our door in the middle of the night.”
“Chloe, if I woke up every time an addict yelled in the corridor, I’d be Al Herpin, the man who never slept, wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. Would you? I didn’t get any sleep.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s seven. Time to go.” Still wearing yesterday’s clothes, he jumped up. “I have to go get Emil and the tour van. I’m meeting my group at nine.”
Slowly she sat up, swooned, and bobbed back down again. “I feel run over,” she said. “Like I’ve been in an accident and my head came off and someone put it back wrong.”
He laughed. He was refreshed, clear-eyed, full of energy. He leaned over her.
“I’m a very sound sleeper,” he said.
“Um, I noticed. Why was that man shrieking?”
“Someone probably pinched his stash. He was looking to knife that someone.”
“So why was he banging on our door?”
“I don’t know. I was sleeping.” He was still by her side. He touched her face with the back of his fingers. “Can you get up? We have to get going. I hope you’re a morning person. Otherwise you and I can never be.”
What a funny, tear-inducing thing to say. “Johnny, don’t joke. I barely got five minutes of sleep. I can’t go anywhere.”
“You got some sleep,” he said. “Because when I came back, you were out.”
“You were gone forever.”
“Five minutes. And you were out.”
“Well, those were the only five minutes I got.”
“Chloe, you have to come with me,” he said. “You can’t stay here by yourself.”
“I’m just going to sleep.”
“I’ve slept in alleys that were safer than this place. You’ll be robbed. Or worse.”
She shook her head. “Nothing could be worse than going without sleep. I’ll go with you tomorrow. I can’t today. Look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“So stay with me,” she said, extra quiet.
He caressed her face. “I would. But I can’t. I have five people waiting for me to tell them about death. And I’ve got a guy who needs to get paid for a van rental. We have to find you another place to stay.”
“I can’t. We prepaid.”
“Yeah, that desk guy didn’t seem like the type to offer refunds. Oh well. Forget about the money. Money is paper. Your safety is paramount. Let’s jet. I’ll take you to another place, but we have to hurry.”
“What about Blake and Hannah and Mason?”
“This room is paid for. And I don’t know the address of the place I’m taking you. I just know where it is. In the afternoon, when you’ve had some rest, you can come back here and leave a new address with the manager.”
“Where am I going?”
“Castle Inn.”
“Is it a hotel or a hostel?”
“A hotel,” he said, smiling. “Funny how one letter makes all the difference. Right in the Old Town, near the River Vistula and the Royal Castle. You want to see a castle, don’t you, princess? Quick, and I’ll take you there.”
Blake
After a trip that was torture, after a terrible, terrifying, cramped, hungry,
eighteen-hour hell ride with three changes and numerous delays, we arrived in Warsaw at almost midnight only to discover that Chloe wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
The hostel looked a lot less attractive than it did in the photos, as if a little bait and switch was going on, and when we knocked, no one opened the firmly locked door for nearly ten minutes. When a half-asleep gentleman in a robe finally turned the lock, we were ready to give up.
“You have reservation?” he barked. “Why does everyone come at such hours?”
“This is when the train from Vilnius gets in,” I said.
“I don’t care,” he said. “What name reservation?”
I gave him Chloe’s.
“Ah, yes. Khloya Deveeny.”
“Chloe. Divine.”
“Room on third floor. You are paid until tomorrow, but you have to leave by ten.”
“Do you have a key?”
“I gave key to her,” he said.
“Her who?”
“Khloya.”
“Is she upstairs?”
“I don’t know where she is,” he replied. “I have one key to room, I gave it her. The rest I don’t know.”
“She’s probably in the room, bro,” Mason said. “It’s late.”
“She not upstairs,” said the manager. “She left this morning. Not come back all day.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know where she was?”
“I made mistake.”
“She left this morning?”
“Yes. With suitcase.”
“With suitcase?”
“Why you repeat what I say? Yes. Left. This morning. With suitcase. And with man with guitar.”
Mason and I exchanged a look, his quizzical, mine murderous.
“Where did they go?” Hannah asked.
“Miss, I not know nothing. I give key, they go to sleep, or whatever. This morning, they come down with suitcase, and they not come back.”
“Are you sure?” It was his whatever I found especially ill-mannered.
“This my place. You think I not know who come and go?”
Hannah made exhausted, unhappy noises. “Can you just let us into the room, please?”
The manager made exhausted, unhappy noises. “Your names are on reservation, otherwise I no let you upstairs, you understand?”
Really, asshole? I wanted to say. This is your great and proud commitment to the safety and security of your guests? Was Johnny Rainbow’s name on the reservation? Yet you let him upstairs. Explain that, why don’t you? Elaborate on that pinochle, if you will.
“Thank you so much for your consideration,” is what I said.
He gave me a key off his master ring, but would not walk us upstairs. We all went, me pulling my suitcase and Hannah’s, and Mason helping her up three flights of shabby, stinking stairs.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. A dank, square room with a bed in each corner, two of them made, two of them with their mattresses still exposed. There was no sign of Chloe, no sign of Johnny, the window was closed, and it was suffocatingly stuffy. I traipsed downstairs to give the manager back his key.
“You really don’t know where they went?” I asked.
“You think I lie to you before? If I know, I tell you. I don’t know. Give me key. I have to go to bed.”
Slowly I made my way upstairs. Inside the room, there was a round table with two chairs. The other two chairs had been dragged and left on either side of the doorway. I stared at them, trying to figure out why they would be there.
“Blake,” Hannah said, “are you going to stand there and analyze the room or are you going to help me push our beds together? I can’t seem to move them. They’re stuck or something.”
I went to help her. The beds were stuck. I felt around on the floor by one of the legs.
“The beds are bolted to the floor, Hannah,” I said.
She was putting the pillowcases on and didn’t turn around. “I don’t think we can both sleep in this bed, Blakie,” she said. “It’s too narrow.”
It did look like half of a twin bed.
“It’s fine,” I said, suppressing a small sigh. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll sort myself out.” I hoped that was true.
Hannah went out to use the bathroom. Mason and I followed her down the hall like dogs. The hallway smelled worse than the one in Daugavpils, and I didn’t think that was possible.
“I know you’re worried, dude,” Mason said, “but it’s okay.” He smiled. “You saw the two made-up beds. They’re as far apart as they can be.”
“Well, they are bolted into the floor,” I said. My back was to the wall. I didn’t look at my brother. “And you’re the one who needs to be worried about that part, not me. What I’m worried about is more obvious.”
“Like?”
“Where the fuck are they?”
That Mason had no answer to.
“Exactly.”
“Don’t get so worked up. There’s a good explanation. You’ll see.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, do I? Wasn’t he supposed to go on tour today? She probably went with his group. Maybe they had to stay overnight somewhere.”
“Like where?”
“Another city. He didn’t want to leave her alone here. It’s not safe. I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. He did the right thing. You’ll see. Everything will be clear when we meet up with them.”
“If.”
“If what?”
I waved Mason away. Nothing felt right. The place was a dump. I can’t believe we fell for the pretty pictures. Oh, look, close to town. Oh, look, close to the parks and the churches and the museums. Everything at our fingertips and the place is clean, and painted, and for a small increase we can get a room for the four of us, instead of sharing a dorm room with twenty others. A room with a sink!
The corridor floors were buckling, and it smelled bad, of piss and drink, and also like maybe something had died in the walls and was still busily decomposing. I knew that smell. We have all kinds of rodents, squirrels, raccoons, foxes die in the woods near our house. The smell is how we find them.
We were all too tired, frankly, after days on trains to be too bothered. Hannah changed into her sleeping shorts, and I put on a clean T-shirt and sweatpants. Mason took the bed where Chloe had possibly slept, and Hannah the one she had just made up. I lay on the bed that already had sheets on. I didn’t know what was worse. To lie down in the made bed he had been in, or to lie down in the made bed he might not have been in.
I stared at the ceiling and out the half-open window overlooking the courtyard where they threw out the trash and the dead animals, overlooking other windows with cats and drying towels in them. I listened for the noise of the city, which had quietened down at two in the morning. I still couldn’t sleep.
What was troubling me?
What wasn’t troubling me. Missing Chloe. Not writing notes for my story. Hating Johnny. Worrying about Hannah. On the train she’d been so withdrawn. Blowing through Lithuania without seeing a half-hour of Vilnius. Our train had been monstrously delayed. We were supposed to get into Vilnius at eight in the morning, but didn’t get in until 11:05 with the train to Warsaw leaving at 11:20. I mean, my God, we were in Lithuania, and we didn’t even get to walk through the Gates of Dawn! Why even come to the Baltics?
On the train, in the cabins next to us, every single person was deafeningly drunk. They bellowed in blurred voices and called it singing. They laughed like hyenas but then, with their next breath, fought like carrion crows over God knows what, shrieking and screeching. They yelled for the conductor, ran up and down the aisles, got into a shoving match that was going to get out of hand in about five seconds, and then did. A fist flew out, someone’s hair got pulled, there was caterwauling, and blood. The women rushed out into the corridor, to calm down the men, we thought, but no. They joined in the mêlée. A whole suitcase got thrown out the window! A suitcase went flying, in the middle of the day. It wasn’t e
ven lunchtime yet, and they were this drunk. The conductor said, “They got drunk last night. They stayed drunk.”
It went on for hours. No one stopped them, no one even complained. In Kaunas, I asked the helpful, English-speaking conductor why no one did anything about it, and he confessed sheepishly that it was because everyone was afraid of them. Great.
But then it was great. We had to change trains in Kaunas, and the rabble-rousers forgot to get back on! We saw them from our windows running down the platform and waving madly. I think the engineer actually sped up when he saw them trying to flag his train down. That was pretty awesome.
The ride from Kaunas to Sestokai was quieter but also less entertaining and therefore interminable. Hannah slept, Mason too. They’re like bears, the both of them. They can sleep anywhere. Actually, Hannah can’t. Her sleeping surprised me. I tried to work a little bit, write in my back journal, think about my story, but I couldn’t. I was too busy staring out the window and thinking about dumb things.
Lithuania is beautiful. For hours I gazed at the pine forests and the rivers and regretted we hadn’t stopped in Vilnius. Our Lady at the Gate of Dawn is the only city-gate of the original nine still standing, through all the wars and destruction. The icon of the Mother of God is supposed to have healing powers. People come to it from all over the world to pray. I would have liked to pray for a few things. For my dad’s back. To win the truck so Mase and I could start our business. To write this novella about mysteries and stolen treasures and suitcases full of magic things with healing powers. Instead, nothing.
I guess I forgot to pray that we’d find Chloe again because she’s not here. Maybe Mason is right, and she left because this place was horrible. But how could she have forgotten to tell us or the robed hostelkeeper where she was going? That wasn’t like her. Or was it? Was she really that reckless? What if we don’t find her again? I can’t even say this to Mason or Hannah; they’d ridicule me, if they weren’t snoring. They slept nearly the whole time on the trains, and they’re asleep now. Not a care in the world for those two.