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Chapter Three: The Guided Tour - Part One
Frangipani : (Plumeria rubra) This delicate flower is native to warm, tropical areas. Frangipani flowers are known for their unique, fragrant clusters of colorful, bright, long-lasting flowers. However, they also possess a poisonous, milky sap, which is often used in tribal rituals as a strong warding agent.They are also known as the Lei Flower, Temple Tree, and Dead Man's Fingers.
Calla
Aquarius: Want more pals? Be a better friend.
Calla Speedwell fumbled with her horoscope as she jogged in place outside the newbie’s room, her red plaid trainers shuffling over the hall’s oriental patterned carpets.
Jeez, it was Day Three already and the guy was still going at it pretty hard. As she tossed the newspaper onto the stairwell ledge, she wondered how long it’d take him to adjust. Hadn’t taken long for Calla, at least according to Mrs. K.—the nice, old Japanese woman who tended the gardens. Calla hadn’t shed a single tear when she’d heard the news. And, all right, she’d admit that she wasn’t exactly happy about the circumstances at first. Stuck forever in one place, never allowed to leave or go home or even see any of her friends again. In the hotel, guest couldn’t even age or die. Not the most sterling of silver linings.
Had taken the better part of a day before she could see it, but The Elysium wasn’t a bad place to wind up. A person could do worse than eternal youth in a paradise. Little like a permanent holiday.
Calla could still hear the guy wailing all the way down the hall. She’d bet he’d be at it for a while. She clamped on her headphones and turned up the music on her Discman as she began to pick up pace again. The Elysium might have fabulously decorated rooms, but the walls here were freakin’ paper-thin.
She felt bad for the fresher, but what could you do? He’d get it eventually. And it wasn’t as if there was any big rush. He wasn’t going anywhere.
None of them were. Or so she’d been told.
She remembered when she’d been given the speech.
She’d just arrived in the middle of some posh fantasy vacation resort when Mei and Lenten had sat her down and explained that the Elysium Hotel wasn’t exactly your average B&B. In fact, there wasn’t an ordinary thing about it. If you found yourself staring up at its tall, twisted, iron gates, you could bet you were a singularly unique individual. That is to say, you—unlike the vast majority of people—had the astounding ability to go completely, irrevocably, and spectacularly out of your mind.
See, the hotel didn’t exist. The people in it, not real. And Calla knew, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that she—at least the she that moved into Suite 220 a week and a half ago—did not actually in any real way exist. This was one big mind trip. One that she was willing to let ride for...well, for now.
Calla paused outside the hotel’s huge, frosted glass, double doors, the sun shining so bright that it stung to look at it. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust a bit before bending down to stretch her legs. Looked like they were somewhere south today. Tropics.
Lord, it was hot enough. Humid too; the air so thick not even wind could move it. She breathed deep as the familiar climate hugged her tight, reminding her of Queensland summers at home—summers at her mother’s, she meant.
Shaking her head, she ran down the front steps. The terrain had more hills today with long, dewy grass that tickled her bare ankles. For the past few days, they’d been in plain country; flatlands flanked by farms—the smell of cows was unbelievable. Before that, it’d been rocky hillsides, cold and rainy with fog.
Calla had never known four seasons before she’d gone to Uni in Sydney to study botany, but even that had never been like this. A surprise in every morning. It wasn’t really a traveling hotel, she didn’t think—not really. It wasn’t as if it moved. Rather it was like the world shifted around it. You could go to sleep in Tahiti and wake up in Iceland. Calla never knew whether she’d need a bikini or a parka, a jumper or tank top. But the hotel seemed to know—it was nothing if not full-service.
Today it’d laid out black jogging shorts with sassy white stripes down the sides. A red and white lycra top matched well with a funky, plaid, punked-out bandana and matching trainers. There were worse things than having a new wardrobe every day.
Calla followed the path toward the gardens now filled with tall, lush greenery and bright, fragrant flowers. Already wiping sweat from her forehead, Calla paused to sniff one of the large, amazing blooms. Again, she was reminded of her mum’s in Strandton.
She sighed. They smelled like frangipanis—those tiny, white flowers that bled a yellow center like mini sunbursts behind clouds—they were probably the only thing she missed of home. Er, her mother’s.
Calla passed the kitchen, enjoying the savory smells wafting out from the open windows and mixing with the scents of the sunset-colored bougainvillea growing around the courtyard, now complete with a man-made pond filled with powder blue water lilies and huge, frog green pads. Calla slowed as she saw Lenten and Mei looking out over the pond from the delicate hydrangea-covered gazebo in the middle of the pool. She waved, but neither saw. So, removing her headphones, she jogged down the narrow line of bricks that served as a balance beam bridge crossing the entire pond.
“Hey,” she greeted as she entered the shade of the gazebo.
“Good morning, Calla,” Lenten said with a slight bow of his head. “I trust your day is beginning well.”
“It’s great,” she said, pulling on her slipping ponytail to tighten it. “I guess. Could have done without the morning’s waterworks. Newbie’s taking it hard, yeah?” She lifted her leg to the wooden ledge as she stretched her calves and rolled her eyes when she noticed Lenten sniff stiffly and turn sharply away. Tweedy prude. Reaching for her foot, she peeked at Mei. “So what’s Room 113’s deal?”
Olive served her doll some tea as she said, “Rowan can’t stop crying.” No kidding. Poor bugger. “Yesterday, I even knocked on his door,” she continued without looking up, “twice, but I don’t think he could answer.”
“We don’t discuss other guests’ personal business, Calla,” Lenten said, his virginal, blue eyes still averted, as he handed Calla his handkerchief, before kneeling down to the little, redheaded girl. “And we don’t disturb guests either, right, Olive?”
Olive’s lids fluttered shut. “Sorry, Uncle Lark.” She looked back up at him, her blue eyes huge and apologetic as she held out her tiny, empty cup. “Tea?”
Calla smiled as she mopped her face with Lenten’s hanky. She liked Lenten with his niece. Usually, he was so stuffy, wrapped up so tight in those button-down suits of his and hidden behind those prissy wire-rimmed glasses. But he softened considerably with his little girl around. Smiling wryly, he rolled his eyes skyward before taking the china by the fragile handle and whispering his thanks.
Mei leaned in to Calla as they watched the proper man sit cross-legged across from his niece and her miniature china toy double, sipping imaginary tea. “It’s good that they have each other,” Mei commented. “Most guests come to us all alone. It must be hard to leave everything behind.”
“Not so tough,” she said with a shrug. “Was it for you?”
“Me?” Mei said, taken aback by the question. “I was…” Mei trailed off, her gaze drifting off into the distance.
“Mei?”
“Oh,” Mei said, shaking her head, flustered, “that was so long ago.” She coughed softly. “Lenten, you promised to check on the noise in Suite 315 this morning.”
“Oh, right,” Lenten said as he clumsily stood, adjusting his glasses—his over-sized forefinger still crooked around the cup’s handle and the saucer still clutched in his other hand. Fumbling, he looked back at Olive, whose tea would have stained the unvarnished, sand-colored wood had her kettle actually contained anything more than liquid imagination. Lenten looked down into her disappointed gaze and sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry, Olive, but—”
“ ‘Guests come first,’ ” Olive finished in a monotone voice as she turned her spout back to her doll’s cup. “We know.”
“But,” her uncle continued, wincing slightly as he glanced at Calla a bit pleadingly and set the cup back on its saucer, “I’m sure Calla would appreciate a cup of tea after her run.”
“Really?” Olive asked as her rosy, little head popped back up.
Calla gave a little sighing scoff. Her horoscope did tell her to be a better friend.
Not that she considered the suit-jacketed man a friend, but he was in a bind and she liked Olive. So she pushed off the wall and moved closer. “Yeah,” Calla said as she took the tea set from the bungling, thankful man. “Yeah, I could use a little pick-me-up right about now. But my cup could use a refill, I think.”
She tipped the cup toward the girl as she took a seat. She watched Lenten and Mei as they headed further into the gardens.
Calla shrugged and sipped some imaginary caramel macchiato frappachino with an extra shot of espresso—hey, if there wasn’t any actual liquid in the cup, she could damn well pretend it was anything she wanted. “So,” she said as soon as Lenten and Mei were far enough into the foliage, “what’s Room 113 like?”
Olive shrugged as she brought the cup to her doll’s lips. “Like all the other rooms, I guess.”
“No,” Calla said, not really sure why she was pushing the issue, “I mean, what’s the guy in it like?”
“Nuh-uh,” Olive said as her pretty bob fluttered around her round face, “Uncle Lark said we shouldn’t talk about other guests.”
“Actually,” Calla hedged, “he said that we shouldn’t talk about their business. And too right, we shouldn’t. That’s rude.” Calla paused. She ought to have left it there. “But if you were to just talk to me about him, it’d be like me saying Mei looks nice today or Mrs. K. likes green tea and orchids. No harm in that, right?”
Olive chewed her lip and thought about it. Calla could see the little girl’s struggle. She wanted to obey her uncle, but the temptation to gossip and gab was too firmly in the girl’s nature. “Oh, okay,” Olive said as she set down the cup and sat up a little, her blue eyes sparkling as they widened, “Rowan is real good-looking and nice and he talks pretty too.” But then she tilted her head and settled down on her knees. “But now he’s real sad. I think he’s lonely.”
“Leaving a home behind is tough,” Calla said vaguely, merely echoing words rather than meaning them. “Family. Friends.”
Olive nodded, but didn’t say anything. She just picked up her doll and held her in her lap, her doll’s matching sky blue skirt disappearing into Olive’s Alice dress. “Uncle Lark says that if we can remember the people we care about, they’re never really gone.”
Calla stared at the girl and tried to digest the empty sounding advice, thinking she preferred her horoscopes to the tripe Olive’s uncle had fed the girl.
Calla wondered if she’d quoted adults as much as Olive did when she’d been young.
And, looking at Olive as she fluffed her doll’s dress and smoothed back its hair somberly, Calla wondered if she’d really believed what they’d told her.
“You know what we should do?” she asked the little girl, thinking her horoscopes hadn’t let her down yet.
Olive looked up questioningly.
Calla sat back, leaning casually on an elbow as she sipped her imaginary frappachino. “Seems a shame that Flax cooked all that food for a guest who’s cooped up in his room.” There was still loads of leftovers sitting lonely and uneaten in the kitchen. Something really ought to be done, yeah?
Calla looked up over the gazebo’s latticed ledge and back toward where she’d come.
Want more pals? Be a better friend.
Calla waved her cup with flair, a smile spreading across her face. She turned to Olive. “Fancy a garden party?”
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