Recursion(20)

Tonya appears with a whiskey, which she sets on a napkin in front of Barry with HOTEL MEMORY embossed in gold on the paper.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do when you get back?” the younger man asks.

Barry sips the scotch—sherry, caramel, dried fruits, and alcohol.

“I have some ideas.” Amor raises his cigar hand. “No more of this.” He points at the whiskey. “Less of that. I used to be an architect, and there was this building I always regretted not pursuing. Could’ve been my magnum opus. You?”

“I’m not sure. I feel so guilty.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t this selfish?”

“These are our memories. No one else has a claim on them.” Amor polishes off the last of his whiskey. “I better hit the hay. Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Sliding off their respective stools, the men shake hands and wish each other luck. Barry watches them wander away from the bar to a bank of elevators.

When he turns back toward the bar, the bartender is facing him.

“What is this place, Tonya?” he asks, but his mouth feels odd and his words emerge with a sluggish clumsiness.

“Sir, you’re not looking so well.”

He feels something loosen behind his eyes.

An untethering.

He looks at his drink. He looks at Tonya.

“Vince will help you to a room,” she says.

Barry steps down off the stool, swaying slightly on his feet, and turns to meet the dead-eyed stare of the man from the diner. Around his neck is an ornate tattoo of a woman’s hands strangling the life out of him.

Barry reaches for his gun, but it’s like moving through syrup, and Vince’s hands are already inside his coat, deftly unsnapping the shoulder holster that secures his service weapon, and slipping the gun down the back of his jeans. He digs Barry’s phone out of his pocket, tosses it to Tonya.

“I’m NYPD,” Barry slurs.

“So was I.”

“What is this place?”

“You’re about to find out.”

The wooziness is intensifying.

Vince grabs Barry by the arm and leads him away from the bar toward the bank of elevators beyond the reception desk. He calls the elevator and drags Barry inside.

Then Barry is stumbling through a hotel corridor as the world melts around him.

He weaves down the soft red carpeting, passing sconces made of old lamps that cast an antique light on the wainscoting between the doors.

1414 is projected onto the door by a light in the opposite wall that moves the number in the pattern of a slow figure eight around the peephole.

Vince lets them inside and steers Barry toward the expansive four-poster, shoving him onto the bed, where Barry curls up in the fetal position.

Fading fast and thinking, You fucked up now, didn’t you?

The door to the room slams shut.

He’s alone, unable to move.

The lights of the snowbound city bleed through the sheer curtain at the wall of windows, and the last thing he sees before losing consciousness are the ornamented chevrons of the Chrysler Building, glowing like jewels in the storm.



* * *





His mouth is dry.

Left arm sore.

The surroundings crystallizing into focus.

Barry is reclined in a leather chair—black, elegant, ultramodern—to which he’s also been strapped. His ankles, his wrists, one across his waist, another over his chest. There’s an IV port in his left forearm—hence the pain—and a metal cart beside his chair, out of which runs the plastic tube that’s plugged into his bloodstream.

The wall facing him is lined with a computer terminal and an assortment of medical equipment, including (and to his considerable alarm) a crash cart. Tucked away in an alcove on the far side of the room, he sees a smooth, white object with tubes and wires running into it, which looks like a giant egg.

A man Barry has never seen before is seated on a stool beside him. He has a long, wild beard, stark blue eyes that radiate intelligence, and an uncomfortable intensity.

Barry opens his mouth, but he’s still too drowsy to form words.

“Still feeling groggy?”

Barry nods.

The man touches a button on the cart beside the chair. Barry watches as a clear liquid pushes through the IV line into his arm. The room brightens. He feels instantly alert, as if he just mainlined a shot of espresso, and with the awareness comes fear.

“Better?” the man asks.

Barry tries to move his head, but it has been immobilized. He can’t even turn a millimeter in either direction.

“I’m a cop,” Barry says.

“I know. I know quite a lot about you, Detective Sutton, including the fact that you are a very lucky man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of your past, I’ve decided not to kill you.”

Is that a good thing? Or is this man just toying with him?

“Who are you?” Barry asks.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m about to give you the greatest gift of your life. The greatest gift a person could ever hope to receive. If you don’t mind,” he says, the courtesy paradoxically alarming, “I have a few questions before we get started.”

Barry is growing more alert by the minute, the confusion fading as his last piece of memory returns—stumbling down the hotel corridor and into Room 1414.