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Chapter Five: Room Service - Part Two
Lenten
Lenten sat with his head in his hands, feeling the midday sun beat down on the back of his neck. His hand drifted down to touch the warm granite bench.
Sometimes the hotel had a strange sense of humor.
How did that line go? Of all the heather-filled fields in all the gardens in all the world, the Elysium had to shift into this one.
Lenten knew this garden. He’d been in this garden before. It was the same. From the fragrant heather to the winding stone path. Even down to the weathered, carved legs of the bench. It’d been thirty years but none of it had aged so much as a day. It was all the same. He couldn’t believe it.
Yes, a very strange sense of humor.
After having locked himself in his room for a day, Lenten had been all but stir-crazed, the irrational anger and self-effacing uselessness eating away at him.
He couldn’t stay in there. He just couldn’t.
So he’d left. Early the next morning, he’d gotten up—just like he had every morning before—and worked. Worked hard. Worked long. He hadn’t stopped once all day. Or the next day.
It was the Great American Way; when it hurts, bury yourself in work. Get so lost in it that nothing else registers. Win the small battles, control the little things, so the bigger stuff doesn’t beat you down so hard.
He wasn’t living in America anymore. Hadn’t been in a while, but a part of him would always belong to that great country. A part of him would always long to go home.
But that home didn’t exist anymore. It’d died—disappeared—when his brother had hit the Missing Persons List.
So Lenten had made another one. Right here. In this exact garden. On this same bench with its imperfect, but sturdy legs bearing his heavy weight. Thirty years ago.
Life—even so much as it was here in the hotel—was cyclical. And—to use a vulgar phrase—irony could be a bitch.
He stared blindly down the garden’s path. In his mind, he could still remember seeing her rising out of the dark night mist, like a fairytale. Or like an angel.
Mei.
He’d been sure that he’d died. Sure he’d been in heaven. And while a part of him—the part that had held his little niece in his arms, who’d still been crying even in her sleep—had been sad, disappointed, a part of him had been overjoyed to think he would see Ash again.
He’d smiled as she approached, feeling comforted simply by her presence.
Then she’d started to talk. In her soothing, heavenly voice that drifted and mixed with the heady scents of heather and lilacs, she’d destroyed his world.
As he'd sat weakly slumped over under the doubled weight of his grief, she’d held him that night as he held tight to the eight-year-old in his arms.
Six days later, he’d made a promise to himself—to Olive—as he returned to the garden to sit silent on the hard, unforgiving granite of the bench. His home may be gone. His life and his world finished. But he could—he would—make a new home, a new life, and a new world for Olive. Just as he’d promised Ash all those years ago, he would always take care of her. She was what mattered. She was all he had left.
Looking up into the exact same setting, Lenten remembered it with remarkable clarity. Could almost see the scene play out before him.
That day in the garden, dizzy with grief, resolve, and the overwhelming scent of flowers, he’d looked up and seen Mei playing with Olive beneath the warm, shining sun. Sitting, sun-struck, on the bench, he’d witnessed the first smile he’d seen on that little girl’s face since her father went missing.
Lenten remembered looking up from Olive’s joy to the woman who’d caused it and thinking that he’d never seen someone so beautiful. He was sure he never would.
In that moment, Lenten knew, he’d begun to fall. For thirty years, he’d continued the quiet, easy tumble, enjoying the simple serenity she gave him.
It had been happening for so long, at such a steady, constant pace, that he’d begun to believe that it would always be. That it, like the hotel itself, would last forever.
“Lenten?” he heard her call.
But it wouldn’t.
“Lenten?”
Nothing ever did.
“Lenten.” Mei made her way to the bench next to him. “Where have you been all day? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. We need to talk. There are things I need to tell—”
“I have to go,” he told her, quickly standing as she sat down. “I’m sorry. I promised...” He trailed off as she reached over to touch his hand.
“Lenten,” she pleaded, “please. I must speak with you, before...” Her voice caught.
Before.
“I wanted to tell you,” she started, her grip tightening on his hand, “I—”
“I can’t.” He stepped away from her touch and out of her reach. He couldn’t hear this. Not here. Not now.
Of all the gardens in all the world.
Lenten shook his head. He couldn’t let her say the words. They’d been dancing around the words for thirty years because, when one had forever, what did time mean?
But now, when time was all but out, it was too late to seize the future they’d assumed they would have. It was already lost. And there was no point grasping at what might have been. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have to go now. We’ll speak later. When I’ve got more time. Excuse me.”
“Lenten, you know I don’t have—”
“Mei,” he cut her off, wanting—needing—to stave off the inevitable a little longer.
He winced at her gasp. He was being rude. And weak. Again. “I’m sorry, Mei,” he said with a slight bow. “We’ll talk, I promise. Later.” He gave her a small, almost sincere smile. “All right?”
She paused, about to say something, he was sure.
Silently, he begged her to please drop it. Please.
She shut her mouth and stared at him.
Then, folding her hands resignedly in her lap, she bowed her head. “Of course, Lenten.” So polite. Always so sweet. “I understand.”
Lenten turned to leave.
Flee, really.
But he just couldn’t resist one last, long look over his shoulder at her. She was lucid. Whole and impossibly more beautiful than she'd ever been, if only because it—this perfect moment—wouldn’t last. He should take advantage of it. Should take every moment with her that he could. Should drink in the deep comfort of her cloudless eyes. Should bask in the warm contentment she’d always given him.
But even as he looked at her now, he could see the slight shift in her features, could see the changes creep across her face like a threat.
With a swift sniff, Lenten turned, his eyes shut hard. He had to get out of here. Get away from this whole situation and the hotel’s warped sense of irony.
Work.
He’d work.
He’d lock himself in his office and work until his mind was numb with tallied figures and balanced numbers.
Resolve hard, he began to walk down the long, winding path out of the garden. He grimaced, trying not to notice that, with each stiffened step, the garden began to change—the stone path crumbling into colorless, sifting sand beneath his feet—as the hotel shifted yet again.
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