Reincarnation
Oh, I almost forgot I finished this! Lol. It will almost certainly be revised, but as my first serious short story ever, it's alright.
Title: Reincarnation
Word Count: 5623
Summary: Jake would never find out that he'd wasted his whole life.
Reincarnation
It was a severe screech that woke Jake up. Some woman had pulled the blinds open, letting the chipped rings scrape against the metal bar in a cacophonous chorus. The light flooding in around him disoriented him, illuminating the room in sharp contrasts: the reflective glare of the white walls, the long shadows of the baby-grand piano, the crinkled clothes and various paraphernalia strewn about the room, giving off the sense of a comfortable living space, though of course it was utterly foreign.
“Good morning,” the woman said to him cheerfully, turning around and facing him. Her eyes were small and crowded around a long, pinched nose. With the light penetrating through the blinds and into her bushy hair in crepuscular rays, she resembled a blurry, overblown witch.
“Oh god,” Jake thought to himself, “Please tell me I didn’t sleep with her.”
Realizing that the woman was staring at him patiently for a reply, he mumbled back, “Morning.”
“How are you feeling today, Jake?”
“Er, just fine, thank you,” Jake replied, startled by the woman’s strange choice of words. Though the woman was young, she spoke with a long-suffering, distinctly matronly authority that alternately soothed and disturbed Jake.
“That’s good, that’s good,” she said, smiling agreeably and scooping up into a laundry basket the scattered clothing on the ground. Jake watched her for some time while she hummed to herself, determining an opportunity to ask her the crucial question on his mind.
“And uh, how are you, Ms…?” He trailed off, unable to finish.
“Quite excellent, thank you very much,” the woman chirped while completely ignoring the other half of his question. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Jake said. “Um, by the way -“
“Have good dreams?” the woman asked, cutting Jake off.
“I can’t remember, but I bet I did.”
“Hm, well don’t worry your head about it.”
“Wait, just one question. Did anything, er, happen?”
“No,” the woman replied quickly, automatically.
“Then why am I -“
“Breakfast is straight to the right down the hall,” the woman said, interrupting him midway again. She left the room before he could get in anything else.
Realizing that he was indeed quite ravenous, Jake pulled the covers off, equally startled and relieved to find that he was still fully dressed, although they were not the same clothes he had remembered wearing. Disregarding that curious fact, he rummaged around for his shoes, and failing to find them, donned a pair of white bath-house slippers instead.
The hall was surprisingly full of people. In fact, it was not so much full of people as it was full of old people, with all their hunch-backed hobgoblin heads bobbing as they tottered down the hallway, soaked in their putrid body odor of dead fish. Jake winced and strode past them as quickly and politely as he could. It wasn’t that much faster, but at least he would be able to get to the hallway soon and rid himself of that smell. A few people nodded to him and smiled, and one person even astonishingly knew his name, but he ignored them, mind focused simply on escaping the horrible stench.
The breakfast room proved to be a haven. A safe distance from that terrifying legion of gnomish figures, he found himself hungry, and entranced by the stacks of pancakes and rashers of sausage and ham sizzling on the metal pans, he pulled a waitress over, asking her how one paid for food here and what the etiquette was. She shook her cross-eyed head gently, and in a surprisingly melodic voice he would not have expected to breathe out from that pointed nose, told him that it didn’t cost anything.
“This is a complimentary breakfast, sir,” she said, “It comes with your hotel stay here. Just take one of those trays over there and a plate, and you can pile everything onto the plate.”
Jake nodded, chiding himself lightly over the insensibility of paying for a buffet breakfast at a hotel. Of course all buffet breakfasts were complimentary. The only thing that bothered him was the missing memory of registering a room in the hotel, but the thought left his mind as he begun to pile on food, grinning in anticipation.
By the time Jake had decided on a table the army of old people had arrived, ready to do battle with dropped utensils and banal conversations about cats.
He picked up his knife and his fork, gripping them viciously and slicing across his pancakes with wide, disorganized slashes. He imagined launching the fork straight into someone’s eye, and the tribal custom that befitted such a vulgar action, of cutting out the victim’s heart and eating it, blood dribbling gloriously down the chin in a vampiric ecstasy. Before he knew it the pancakes were gone.
He next started work on the sausages, slicing them in a slightly erratic rhythm, the scratches against the plate soothing his discomfort. Soon the sausage had evaporated too, and all that was left was a lukewarm cup of coffee, the unwelcome habit of every American. Jake thought coffee was vulgar, but lately he had been feeling more drowsy and exhausted as the days dragged on, and in a twist of irony, had found himself slowly and steadily becoming dependent on the ugly black sludge.
As Jake sipped on his coffee, he noticed that his hands were becoming soft. They had the strange, spongy look of a bloated vat.
“I’ve gotten fat,” Jake thought to himself. It must have been those weeks of non-stop business flights and meetings. And partying, the thought bringing up a sly smile to his mouth. Well, no matter. He would just have to acquire a gym membership, and the problem would be fixed easily.
Suddenly a woman slid into the seat across from Jake, intruding upon his reverie. He glanced up, annoyed at the unwanted company. The woman looked elderly, but not so old as the drooling patrons wallowing next to him and the infestation of old people around him.
“What kind of a stupid diner is this?” he thought, “How did I end up with so many invalids?”
A slight cough returned his attention to the woman next to him. She smiled sweetly and said nothing for several minutes as Jake politely focused his attention on her, waiting for her to speak. When no sound arose, Jake cleared his throat and was on the verge of asking her pleasantly what the hell she thought she was doing, but before he accomplished that mission the woman reached over and stuffed a yellow crumpled Post-It note into his shirt pocket.
“Hey, what are you doing?!” Jake squealed, to his mortification, clutching himself at this sudden violation of his privacy.
The woman cocked her head to the side.
“Just telling you you should keep the note. Don’t read it,” she advised, and without an explanation, rose and left, before Jake could register a course of action. When he had finally recovered his wits, he stared after her, imagining the highly suspicious woman stalking out of the room like she was on a secret mission. He was utterly confused by this bizarre turn of events. Out of the corner of his eye he saw an elderly couple sneaking glances at him surreptitiously and sniggering judiciously, little sprays of spittle flying out of their grotesque mouths and hanging suspended in the morning light like a cloud of flies.
“What are you laughing at?” Jake snarled at the duo, unfurling his arms in chagrin and bemusement. The couple ceased their hyena act, but continued to direct condescending smiles at him that in their bare contempt disturbed Jake so much more.
At length though, the two crones seemed to lose interest, and returned to their wrinkled discourses on the vicissitudes of life. Jake sat still for a while, angry and frustrated. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why the two had started laughing in the first place. The fact bothered him all through breakfast, all through his exotic coffee, until another, more pressing problem took precedence over his peripheral thoughts.
He had picked up a newspaper from the wire-rim stand as he departed from his breakfast, leaving a generous tip for what was surely high-class fare. The publication was a name he had truly never heard of, USA Today, and the headlines had some nonsense about wars and destruction, and an irreverent picture of a devastated building. The date, like a piercing dagger, was what had caught his eyes though.
Jake felt a chill run through him, haunting in its familiarity. His feet took themselves unbidden to the front desk of a rotten hotel, where he tossed the newspaper down like a gauntlet at the attendant and howled at him, “What date is it?!”
If the attendant was scared or surprised in the least, he did not show it, for he didn’t even raise his eyes to look at Jake, opting to adjust his gold-embossed nametag instead while uttering a monotone, “September 4, 1986, sir.”
“Then what is this?!” Jake screamed, nearly overcome with frustration, brandishing a trembling finger at the offending text.
The attendant didn’t even look.
“That’s our joke paper. It’s placed next to the real newspapers in case some people might pick them up for laughs.”
Jake’s eyes bulged out.
“A joke paper?” he gasped, “A JOKE paper?”
“You mean to say you almost allowed me to have a heart attack because you wanted to print a JOKE paper?”
The attendant wrinkled a nose paper.
“Most people know what day it is, you know,” he said, visibly annoyed.
“Now, now, now,” a voice chimed down the hallway, cheerful and hasty. A woman swooped down on the two, short and ugly like a gnomish grandmother. She yanked Jake to her, allowing him to notice a horrific mole on her neck as she reprimanded him.
“You know better than I do that this is not the time to start fights,” she said with an insufferable sigh, “You have a meeting in half an hour, for chrissakes!”
Jake stiffened, standing up straight and allowing his posture to embody the rigid awkwardness required of everyone in business. He knew there was something he had forgotten, although he had not remembered ever hiring this fussy maid as his secretary. In fact, he did not even remember having a secretary, which left the question of how this peculiar woman knew the miniscule details of his life so well. Had he slept with her, perhaps?
The woman’s voice, a miracle among her other misguided gifts, brought Jake back from his momentary fantasy world. She led him away, down the maroon carpet path and through a waiting room filled in every nook and corner with wizened grandmothers knitting scarves and arthritic grandfathers falling down. Feeling like he had just occupied a room full of unpleasant cats, Jake breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally outside, standing next to a telephone pole. The woman came up to Jake, placed her shriveled hands on Jake’s shoulders, shook him hard once, and said, “You wait here until Mrs. Gilligie arrives, okay? Stay next to the pole and don’t forget about it.”
Jake stared at the woman, stupefied. She was talking to him as if he were a three-year old child, or a dog, even. He wondered. What was he doing here anyway? Why was he waiting out here? It was true that in the past Jake had had to sacrifice hours and hours of time, sitting on the steps and waiting for a meeting that would get him hired and start him on the ludicrous path to making money. But those were old, old days. Jake had not had to wait on a meeting for almost two years.
Presently, as he stood around waiting for a figure, a piece of rock, anything to cure the monotony, he forgot his original purpose, mind drifting instead to any other plans he had made for the day. He couldn’t remember anything abnormal about his schedule, although he was sure that it was a busy day - it had been for the past few weeks, after all. Jake sighed, and began to pace around aimlessly, secure only in the knowledge that someone important must be arriving to warrant this inane waiting.
A woman walking up through the glass doors confirmed this assumption, as she strode towards him purposefully, eyes boring straight into him. Jake straightened, reaching into the shirt pocket where he usually stored notes on meetings.
“Valerie, 1 PM, lunch,” it read, scrawled in feminine loops that were distinctly different from his handwriting. Jake frowned. Who had written it? It must have been the woman. A note of suspicion crept up on him. Were they meeting for actual business or for some other sort of rendez-vous? He felt he definitely would have remembered if it were some sort of forbidden tryst, but now that he thought about it he couldn’t be so sure. The woman was far older than he would have liked, but her appearance and her face were not so bad at all.
“Hello,” the woman said as she walked up to him. “Jake?”
Her posture was equal parts casual affection and distant alienation, and her dress could have floated into both an elitist awards ceremony and a picturesque picnic. Jake could not decide how to react to this woman he clearly couldn’t remember.
“Valerie,” he said with a cheeky grin of assurance, extending a hand as if it were only there for simple formalities required despite their friendship.
“I’m sorry, I’m actually Nora,” the woman corrected politely, taking his proffered hand and giving it a small shake.
“Shit in a rabbit hole,” Jake thought, and shook Nora’s hand more firmly.
“I’m sorry, Nora,” he said apologetically, “I just get peoples’ names confused sometimes, with my hectic schedule and my chaotic organization. I need to hire myself an assistant, really. I do apologize.”
Nora stared at him for a moment, as if unable to speak. Just as Jake was about to panic and retrace his steps to discover what he had done wrong though, she broke out into a wide conniving smile, saying light-heartedly, “I’m actually Valerie, Jake. Did you forget me so easily?”
“What? I, uh, no,” Jake stammered, flustered. “No, no, no. I knew you were Valerie, but I mean, you’ve gotten almost a complete makeover. I almost didn’t recognize you at first. You look really good, by the way.”
Jake quite hoped that it was the case Valerie had reinvented her appearance. If it wasn’t true, he knew he would be occupied with enough grave digging to carry him into the next century.
Valerie teetered for a moment with a look of indecision on her face, before smiling gracefully.
“Thank you,” she said, “Shall we go have lunch then?”
“Indeed,” Jake replied, relieved at having just lived through the awkward situation. “So, where to?”
“I was thinking of an Italian restaurant that’s just around the corner. I’ve already booked us a reservation there.”
“Ah,” Jake murmured, “I’ve heard good reviews about it,” although of course he had never even heard of the restaurant.
Valerie smirked a little bit, as if she could see straight through his lie, but said nothing as she turned and walked off. Jake followed, quickly catching up, and they made small aimless conversation as they walked down the street.
“How are you doing today, Jake?” Valerie started.
“Oh, great. I’ve just had a big breakthrough with my company, we acquired a major contract with a customer. I’ve been celebrating all week. How are you?”
“Oh good, good. And your fiancé?”
Jake smiled fondly, thinking of his beautiful Nora, with her long brown hair and dark, almost like charcoal eyes. He felt a pang of regret run through him at consorting with this other woman, who most certainly was not a business associate. The thought of adultery killed him, so he put it out of his mind. They were only going to have lunch.
“She’s doing well. We’ve set the marriage date for sometime in July.”
“Yeah?”
Jake stole a sidelong glance at Valerie. He was startled to find how much she resembled Nora; Valerie could have substituted for Nora, two planned children and twenty years later, although of course her persona would always be different.
The conversation continued on for an eternity, more like an interrogation than a pleasant talk between friends. Valerie only gave brisk responses to which she would not elaborate, and Jake did not ask her to, shamed by the fact that he was probably supposed to know about the details of her life. So Valerie asked questions, pressing on into Jake’s complete life, and yet never satisfied with anything he said.
The restaurant was most decidedly not around the corner, rather being around several different corners which never crossed the street. Jake felt his skin prickle as he became highly uncomfortable and suspicious, but finally they arrived, Jake rushing in with a sigh of relief and Valerie muttering to herself, highly frustrated.
She stopped the barrage of questions as soon as they sat down, leaving Jake to look over the menu in blissful peace. In fact, she did not speak at all, although a pensive look remained on her face that creased her forehead and marred her features.
The newest songs were playing in the restaurant, Depeche Mode and Nirvana. Jake pored over his menu, a simple white laminated in plastic, running through each entrée in the hopes of prolonging the blessed silence Valerie had fallen into.
Finally the waiter arrived though, a cheeky grin plastered on his face to match the obscene amount of buttons encroaching on his uniform.
“Hey, you two!” the waiter said excitedly, “Same old, same old?”
Jake blinked.
“What?”
“Minestrone soup for you, ma’am, and veal pasta for you, sir?”
Jake stared at the prophetic waiter, becoming increasingly fearful.
“How did you know that?”
“The waiter was just guessing, Jake,” Valerie interrupted smoothly, “Is that what you want though?”
Jake cast a distrustful eye at Valerie, but nodded mutely.
“Yes, a clam chowder and a bacon cheeseburger with fries, please,” Valerie said to the waiter.
“Okay, well then thank you! Your order will be right up,” he beamed, before running off to serve another table’s needs.
“I… what was that?” Jake asked Valerie.
“Nothing, Jake,” was Valerie’s tired response.
“How can it be nothing? He knew exactly what we were going to get, even though I’ve never ever been here before. Isn’t that really weird?”
“Not particularly, Jake. What do you want for dessert?”
“No,” Jake replied, a little bit murderously now. “I don’t believe you at all. Tell me what is going on.”
Valerie seemed to consider Jake seriously for a moment, before casting a defeated sigh.
“Alright, Jake, I’ll tell you. But only after we’ve decided what we’re going to get for dessert, okay?”
Jake blinked at this bizarre request, then weighed his options. He decided he could wait until after everything else had been settled to get his answers, and grudgingly picked up a dessert menu and flicked through it, eyes narrowed.
“The dark chocolate cheesecake sounds good,” Valerie commented.
“Yeah, I guess,” Jake said, “although the peach melba puffs look delicious as well.”
“Well, what do you want to get?”
“Hmmm,” Jake said, deciding.
“Maybe we could get two things.”
“No, I’m going to have to start dieting and working out again if I do that. I already haven’t been keeping up for the past week.”
“Alright then.”
Jake paused for a moment more, contemplating.
“Coconut and chocolate gelato?” he finally suggested.
“Sounds good,” Valerie said, “We’ll order that then.”
She settled her arms on the table, and stared at Jake piercingly.
“So, what did you want to talk about?”
Jake stared at Valerie in surprise. Had he scheduled this lunch?
“I… don’t know,” he said slowly.
“Well, that’s alright,” Valerie said easily, “We can just talk.”
They chattered amiably together, discussing topics of no importance. Jake felt himself relax as the conversation dragged on. He didn’t talk like this often, so casually to other people without some ulterior motive.
The food arrived and left, and Jake offered to pay when their conversation wound down. Valerie did not object, and together they left the restaurant.
There was an almost comfortable silence between the two as they walked down the street. Jake stole glances at Valeria, appreciating little effects like the chime of her jewelry, the perpetual hint of a smile on the corner of her mouth, a small mole near the bottom of her chin. It was in the same location as Nora’s mole, Jake realized. Valerie reminded Jake of Nora, in not just her physical resemblance but also the way she behaved. They both talked with nervously excessive hand motions, made appalling messes as they ate, and walked heavily, feet pointed outward in awkward positions. Valerie was more refined than Nora - hand gestures more deliberate, table mannerisms more polite, gait lengthened gracefully by what must have been a lifetime of wearing high heels. The resemblance induced a pang of longing in Jake, not for Valerie, but for Nora. He had never explicitly noticed Nora’s habits, but now he did, while he was away from her, and he had never wanted her more. It was ironic to Jake that it was another woman, one that he had possibly slept with, who helped him recall why it was he had asked Nora to marry him in the first place.
All too soon the walk was over, the restaurant having been surprisingly close to the hotel where Jake guessed he was staying. It was silly of him, to forget where the location of his hotel was, but thankfully Valerie was an expert at directions, and led him to his residence easily.
Once Jake reached the door he held it open for Valerie, asking her if she would like to come in for a round of drinks. She shrugged indecisively, but gave a resigned smile when Jake needled her and walked in, murmuring a thanks politely.
The lounge was populated by elderly people, a gaggle of them playing cards against each other, and a handful knitting colorful sweaters, sinking into the yawning maw of the couch cushions. There were even some old people lined up in wheelchairs against the window, dozing off underneath the sun. Jake frowned. This was certainly the oddest hotel he had ever stayed at.
He turned to Valerie, casting an apologetic look at her for this intrusion of invalids that extended all the way to where the bar must be. He decided he would invite her into his hotel room for drinks instead. Jake had a bottle of vodka and rum that he always transported with him when he traveled, like a perverse safety blanket. Nora always worried about that aspect of him, though she could never send him to rehab, because he wasn’t an alcoholic; he only brought alcohol around with him.
Realizing he could not remember what room he was staying at, he said to Valerie, “Wait here for a little bit,” then trotted over to the hotel attendant, who barely looked at Jake as he responded to his question: “303.” Newly armed with the information, Jake walked back. He stopped short as music crackled through the stereo, all the old people whooping and cheering, and some of them beginning to rise and dance. All these old people around irked him for reasons unknown, beyond the fact that it was simply weird.
Valerie didn’t seem disturbed though, and in fact even rose from the couch to join in with the other dancers. Jake watched her, transfixed by the comfortable grace she exuded as she stretched, her fingertips reaching towards the ceiling and her belly button exposed. She was more beautiful than Nora, despite her age. Perhaps it was because of her age, the sharpness of the chin softened in the extra pounds, the smiles showing through perpetually in the laugh lines, the need to conform to society forgotten in time. God, he wondered what lucky man had won the battle to be her husband. He hoped that person treated her well.
“Come dance with me,” she said, walking up to Jake.
Jake recoiled.
“I’m not a very good dancer,” he said, unwilling not only because of the gaggle of old people but also because of his legitimately lacking skills in the art of coordination.
“You’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Valerie said confidently.
“No, really, you’ve never seen me dance,” Jake stammered, “I’m horrible, I can’t do it, I end up tripping over my shoelaces -“
“Just try,” Valerie said, taking his hands and leading him into a waltz despite his repeated protests. Some classical music piece was playing that Jake had never heard of, and though this heightened his terror, he discovered to his surprise that this kind of dancing, this complex waltz, was not so impossible for him, and that in fact he was doing quite well. Experimentally he raised his arms and led Valerie into a whirl, relying only on the movies he had seen of stuffy Victorian ages in high school history, and was elated to find Valerie completing a perfect turn and landing in his arms exactly like in the movies.
She stood there, leaning back with her face upturned to his. Jake was struck by a sudden urge to kiss her, which may or may not have also been spurred on by their cinematic simulation. He did not really want to, and all he could think of was Nora, but nevertheless he leaned down, incontrollable like a bad habit.
Valerie wrenched herself away, like she should have. Her mouth was drawn in a thin hard line that became a tight smile.
“I’m sorry, I have to go to the bathroom for a minute,” she said to Jake, using the millennia-old excuse of primal human needs.
She didn’t give Jake a chance to reply, turning on her heel and leaving before his mind came around. Sighing, Jake stalked over to a chair and sunk into it, feeling it swallow him up like a clam.
An old woman calmly knitting in a chair next to Jake asked, “Something got you down?”
Jake groaned, covering his eyes with his left hand.
“Just… just life. And some bad decisions.”
“That happens to everyone, dear,” the woman said conversationally, “Sooner or later you just have to start living.”
“How cryptic,” Jake remarked dryly.
“I’m getting senile, I can say stupid things like that.”
This was exasperating. Jake rose, pardoning himself, and sprinted away.
He was just about to turn the corner when he heard two people talking about him. He paused to listen. There were, of course, other people named Jake, but a gut feeling, perhaps egotism, told him that he was the subject of their debate.
“I tried at first, you know, with Jake,” the first voice said bitterly.
“I always thought he would remember, some day. The doctors said they weren’t sure about his condition. There haven’t been any documented cases of recovery, but the phenomenon occurs so rarely. It would have been better if they just got rid of whatever hope there was at the beginning.”
“They were just doing their job, dear,” the second voice said soothingly.
“Yes, but I can’t help but blame them. My entire life was destroyed, and then I wasted another lifetime waiting to piece back together the first one. I couldn’t see him at first without crying, you know.”
“It gets so tiring, coming back here. You feel trepidation before coming, and resentment once you’re here for being forced through this ordeal again, and then afterwards you can’t feel anything but guilt, for even thinking like that about such an invalid. And for who? Someone who can never even begin to understand your emotions, to change his behavior.”
Silence.
“Valerie, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but maybe you should stop your visits. You do have a different life now, one that doesn’t really involve Jake. He’s not your obligation.”
“I don’t know.”
“Want a cigarette?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I think maybe I’ll leave. And not come back.”
Jake slid down the wall, paralyzed, just as footsteps from the pair approached. Valerie. They had been talking about him, and that had been Valerie.
The footsteps stopped. Jake looked up, into Valerie’s surprised face.
“Did you hear everything?” she asked, cigarette dangling from her wrinkled hands.
Jake groaned in anguish.
“How long has it been?”
Valerie smiled sadly.
“You know, I don’t even know anymore. At least twenty years.”
“I am so, so sorry,” Jake said lamely. He knew his apology would count for nothing, when he wouldn’t remember it upon their next encounter, if there was one. Still, it was an action, and an action could not be taken away, once done.
She shrugged.
“Do you remember our waltz, a few minutes ago?” she asked randomly.
“I wish.”
“You’ve gotten very good at it,” she said. “It’s something, at least.”
“You could be like a little Buddha,” she continued, “Benevolent in your malice, acting and improving without ever remembering.”
“I’m sorry?” Jake asked, highly confused. “Are you okay, Valerie?”
Valerie laughed.
“I’m telling you to find inner peace. Even though you won’t remember.”
“Okay,” Jake said slowly. “Okay.”
“I’ll be leaving now, then,” Valerie said, with a wave of her hand.
“Goodbye,” Jake said, waving in return as she turned and walked away.
He felt a desolate sadness come over him. Her image hadn’t disappeared yet, but it would in a sudden burst. As soon as he stopped thinking about it. He wondered if he should try to hold on. He decided against it in the end. She would be forgotten inevitably. Jake shook his head wryly. Fighting for inner peace was ridiculous when he had only one lasting state of mind anyway. He stood up and walked down the corridor.
There was a mirror perched above a mahogany table further down. Jake gave it a glancing look as he walked by, but halted, bracing himself over the table to get a closer look. His reflection stared back at him, entranced, shocked, a little horrified. He raised a hand slowly to trace his wrinkles, making a slow hesitant path up his cheeks and into his tufts of white hair. Here was the truth at last, though what truth it was he didn’t know. It was like an absurd hallucination. Perhaps it was one, for he couldn’t remember how he had gotten to be there, and where it was exactly. The last thing he could remember was getting in the passenger seat. Had he smoked something later and forgotten about it?
“Your room is this way, sir,” a voice chimed pleasantly behind him. He whipped around, startled by the interruption. A rather homely woman stood there, pinched nose carving a distinctive curve as she gestured for Jake to follow her. Utterly lost, he complied quietly as she unlocked a door to reveal an immaculate room to him, complete with a baby grand piano and a glorious view.
“This is where you’ll be staying, sir.”
Jake nodded appreciatively. He must have made some spectacular reservations.
“Thank you, ma’am. This room is perfect.”
“I’ll leave you be then,” the woman said, turning around to leave. “By the way,” she added, stopping at the door, a hint of odd derision in her voice: “Did you enjoy your reflection in the mirror?”
Jake frowned uncertainly.
“What mirror?”
But the woman was already gone.
Title: Reincarnation
Word Count: 5623
Summary: Jake would never find out that he'd wasted his whole life.
Reincarnation
It was a severe screech that woke Jake up. Some woman had pulled the blinds open, letting the chipped rings scrape against the metal bar in a cacophonous chorus. The light flooding in around him disoriented him, illuminating the room in sharp contrasts: the reflective glare of the white walls, the long shadows of the baby-grand piano, the crinkled clothes and various paraphernalia strewn about the room, giving off the sense of a comfortable living space, though of course it was utterly foreign.
“Good morning,” the woman said to him cheerfully, turning around and facing him. Her eyes were small and crowded around a long, pinched nose. With the light penetrating through the blinds and into her bushy hair in crepuscular rays, she resembled a blurry, overblown witch.
“Oh god,” Jake thought to himself, “Please tell me I didn’t sleep with her.”
Realizing that the woman was staring at him patiently for a reply, he mumbled back, “Morning.”
“How are you feeling today, Jake?”
“Er, just fine, thank you,” Jake replied, startled by the woman’s strange choice of words. Though the woman was young, she spoke with a long-suffering, distinctly matronly authority that alternately soothed and disturbed Jake.
“That’s good, that’s good,” she said, smiling agreeably and scooping up into a laundry basket the scattered clothing on the ground. Jake watched her for some time while she hummed to herself, determining an opportunity to ask her the crucial question on his mind.
“And uh, how are you, Ms…?” He trailed off, unable to finish.
“Quite excellent, thank you very much,” the woman chirped while completely ignoring the other half of his question. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Jake said. “Um, by the way -“
“Have good dreams?” the woman asked, cutting Jake off.
“I can’t remember, but I bet I did.”
“Hm, well don’t worry your head about it.”
“Wait, just one question. Did anything, er, happen?”
“No,” the woman replied quickly, automatically.
“Then why am I -“
“Breakfast is straight to the right down the hall,” the woman said, interrupting him midway again. She left the room before he could get in anything else.
Realizing that he was indeed quite ravenous, Jake pulled the covers off, equally startled and relieved to find that he was still fully dressed, although they were not the same clothes he had remembered wearing. Disregarding that curious fact, he rummaged around for his shoes, and failing to find them, donned a pair of white bath-house slippers instead.
The hall was surprisingly full of people. In fact, it was not so much full of people as it was full of old people, with all their hunch-backed hobgoblin heads bobbing as they tottered down the hallway, soaked in their putrid body odor of dead fish. Jake winced and strode past them as quickly and politely as he could. It wasn’t that much faster, but at least he would be able to get to the hallway soon and rid himself of that smell. A few people nodded to him and smiled, and one person even astonishingly knew his name, but he ignored them, mind focused simply on escaping the horrible stench.
The breakfast room proved to be a haven. A safe distance from that terrifying legion of gnomish figures, he found himself hungry, and entranced by the stacks of pancakes and rashers of sausage and ham sizzling on the metal pans, he pulled a waitress over, asking her how one paid for food here and what the etiquette was. She shook her cross-eyed head gently, and in a surprisingly melodic voice he would not have expected to breathe out from that pointed nose, told him that it didn’t cost anything.
“This is a complimentary breakfast, sir,” she said, “It comes with your hotel stay here. Just take one of those trays over there and a plate, and you can pile everything onto the plate.”
Jake nodded, chiding himself lightly over the insensibility of paying for a buffet breakfast at a hotel. Of course all buffet breakfasts were complimentary. The only thing that bothered him was the missing memory of registering a room in the hotel, but the thought left his mind as he begun to pile on food, grinning in anticipation.
By the time Jake had decided on a table the army of old people had arrived, ready to do battle with dropped utensils and banal conversations about cats.
He picked up his knife and his fork, gripping them viciously and slicing across his pancakes with wide, disorganized slashes. He imagined launching the fork straight into someone’s eye, and the tribal custom that befitted such a vulgar action, of cutting out the victim’s heart and eating it, blood dribbling gloriously down the chin in a vampiric ecstasy. Before he knew it the pancakes were gone.
He next started work on the sausages, slicing them in a slightly erratic rhythm, the scratches against the plate soothing his discomfort. Soon the sausage had evaporated too, and all that was left was a lukewarm cup of coffee, the unwelcome habit of every American. Jake thought coffee was vulgar, but lately he had been feeling more drowsy and exhausted as the days dragged on, and in a twist of irony, had found himself slowly and steadily becoming dependent on the ugly black sludge.
As Jake sipped on his coffee, he noticed that his hands were becoming soft. They had the strange, spongy look of a bloated vat.
“I’ve gotten fat,” Jake thought to himself. It must have been those weeks of non-stop business flights and meetings. And partying, the thought bringing up a sly smile to his mouth. Well, no matter. He would just have to acquire a gym membership, and the problem would be fixed easily.
Suddenly a woman slid into the seat across from Jake, intruding upon his reverie. He glanced up, annoyed at the unwanted company. The woman looked elderly, but not so old as the drooling patrons wallowing next to him and the infestation of old people around him.
“What kind of a stupid diner is this?” he thought, “How did I end up with so many invalids?”
A slight cough returned his attention to the woman next to him. She smiled sweetly and said nothing for several minutes as Jake politely focused his attention on her, waiting for her to speak. When no sound arose, Jake cleared his throat and was on the verge of asking her pleasantly what the hell she thought she was doing, but before he accomplished that mission the woman reached over and stuffed a yellow crumpled Post-It note into his shirt pocket.
“Hey, what are you doing?!” Jake squealed, to his mortification, clutching himself at this sudden violation of his privacy.
The woman cocked her head to the side.
“Just telling you you should keep the note. Don’t read it,” she advised, and without an explanation, rose and left, before Jake could register a course of action. When he had finally recovered his wits, he stared after her, imagining the highly suspicious woman stalking out of the room like she was on a secret mission. He was utterly confused by this bizarre turn of events. Out of the corner of his eye he saw an elderly couple sneaking glances at him surreptitiously and sniggering judiciously, little sprays of spittle flying out of their grotesque mouths and hanging suspended in the morning light like a cloud of flies.
“What are you laughing at?” Jake snarled at the duo, unfurling his arms in chagrin and bemusement. The couple ceased their hyena act, but continued to direct condescending smiles at him that in their bare contempt disturbed Jake so much more.
At length though, the two crones seemed to lose interest, and returned to their wrinkled discourses on the vicissitudes of life. Jake sat still for a while, angry and frustrated. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why the two had started laughing in the first place. The fact bothered him all through breakfast, all through his exotic coffee, until another, more pressing problem took precedence over his peripheral thoughts.
He had picked up a newspaper from the wire-rim stand as he departed from his breakfast, leaving a generous tip for what was surely high-class fare. The publication was a name he had truly never heard of, USA Today, and the headlines had some nonsense about wars and destruction, and an irreverent picture of a devastated building. The date, like a piercing dagger, was what had caught his eyes though.
Jake felt a chill run through him, haunting in its familiarity. His feet took themselves unbidden to the front desk of a rotten hotel, where he tossed the newspaper down like a gauntlet at the attendant and howled at him, “What date is it?!”
If the attendant was scared or surprised in the least, he did not show it, for he didn’t even raise his eyes to look at Jake, opting to adjust his gold-embossed nametag instead while uttering a monotone, “September 4, 1986, sir.”
“Then what is this?!” Jake screamed, nearly overcome with frustration, brandishing a trembling finger at the offending text.
The attendant didn’t even look.
“That’s our joke paper. It’s placed next to the real newspapers in case some people might pick them up for laughs.”
Jake’s eyes bulged out.
“A joke paper?” he gasped, “A JOKE paper?”
“You mean to say you almost allowed me to have a heart attack because you wanted to print a JOKE paper?”
The attendant wrinkled a nose paper.
“Most people know what day it is, you know,” he said, visibly annoyed.
“Now, now, now,” a voice chimed down the hallway, cheerful and hasty. A woman swooped down on the two, short and ugly like a gnomish grandmother. She yanked Jake to her, allowing him to notice a horrific mole on her neck as she reprimanded him.
“You know better than I do that this is not the time to start fights,” she said with an insufferable sigh, “You have a meeting in half an hour, for chrissakes!”
Jake stiffened, standing up straight and allowing his posture to embody the rigid awkwardness required of everyone in business. He knew there was something he had forgotten, although he had not remembered ever hiring this fussy maid as his secretary. In fact, he did not even remember having a secretary, which left the question of how this peculiar woman knew the miniscule details of his life so well. Had he slept with her, perhaps?
The woman’s voice, a miracle among her other misguided gifts, brought Jake back from his momentary fantasy world. She led him away, down the maroon carpet path and through a waiting room filled in every nook and corner with wizened grandmothers knitting scarves and arthritic grandfathers falling down. Feeling like he had just occupied a room full of unpleasant cats, Jake breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally outside, standing next to a telephone pole. The woman came up to Jake, placed her shriveled hands on Jake’s shoulders, shook him hard once, and said, “You wait here until Mrs. Gilligie arrives, okay? Stay next to the pole and don’t forget about it.”
Jake stared at the woman, stupefied. She was talking to him as if he were a three-year old child, or a dog, even. He wondered. What was he doing here anyway? Why was he waiting out here? It was true that in the past Jake had had to sacrifice hours and hours of time, sitting on the steps and waiting for a meeting that would get him hired and start him on the ludicrous path to making money. But those were old, old days. Jake had not had to wait on a meeting for almost two years.
Presently, as he stood around waiting for a figure, a piece of rock, anything to cure the monotony, he forgot his original purpose, mind drifting instead to any other plans he had made for the day. He couldn’t remember anything abnormal about his schedule, although he was sure that it was a busy day - it had been for the past few weeks, after all. Jake sighed, and began to pace around aimlessly, secure only in the knowledge that someone important must be arriving to warrant this inane waiting.
A woman walking up through the glass doors confirmed this assumption, as she strode towards him purposefully, eyes boring straight into him. Jake straightened, reaching into the shirt pocket where he usually stored notes on meetings.
“Valerie, 1 PM, lunch,” it read, scrawled in feminine loops that were distinctly different from his handwriting. Jake frowned. Who had written it? It must have been the woman. A note of suspicion crept up on him. Were they meeting for actual business or for some other sort of rendez-vous? He felt he definitely would have remembered if it were some sort of forbidden tryst, but now that he thought about it he couldn’t be so sure. The woman was far older than he would have liked, but her appearance and her face were not so bad at all.
“Hello,” the woman said as she walked up to him. “Jake?”
Her posture was equal parts casual affection and distant alienation, and her dress could have floated into both an elitist awards ceremony and a picturesque picnic. Jake could not decide how to react to this woman he clearly couldn’t remember.
“Valerie,” he said with a cheeky grin of assurance, extending a hand as if it were only there for simple formalities required despite their friendship.
“I’m sorry, I’m actually Nora,” the woman corrected politely, taking his proffered hand and giving it a small shake.
“Shit in a rabbit hole,” Jake thought, and shook Nora’s hand more firmly.
“I’m sorry, Nora,” he said apologetically, “I just get peoples’ names confused sometimes, with my hectic schedule and my chaotic organization. I need to hire myself an assistant, really. I do apologize.”
Nora stared at him for a moment, as if unable to speak. Just as Jake was about to panic and retrace his steps to discover what he had done wrong though, she broke out into a wide conniving smile, saying light-heartedly, “I’m actually Valerie, Jake. Did you forget me so easily?”
“What? I, uh, no,” Jake stammered, flustered. “No, no, no. I knew you were Valerie, but I mean, you’ve gotten almost a complete makeover. I almost didn’t recognize you at first. You look really good, by the way.”
Jake quite hoped that it was the case Valerie had reinvented her appearance. If it wasn’t true, he knew he would be occupied with enough grave digging to carry him into the next century.
Valerie teetered for a moment with a look of indecision on her face, before smiling gracefully.
“Thank you,” she said, “Shall we go have lunch then?”
“Indeed,” Jake replied, relieved at having just lived through the awkward situation. “So, where to?”
“I was thinking of an Italian restaurant that’s just around the corner. I’ve already booked us a reservation there.”
“Ah,” Jake murmured, “I’ve heard good reviews about it,” although of course he had never even heard of the restaurant.
Valerie smirked a little bit, as if she could see straight through his lie, but said nothing as she turned and walked off. Jake followed, quickly catching up, and they made small aimless conversation as they walked down the street.
“How are you doing today, Jake?” Valerie started.
“Oh, great. I’ve just had a big breakthrough with my company, we acquired a major contract with a customer. I’ve been celebrating all week. How are you?”
“Oh good, good. And your fiancé?”
Jake smiled fondly, thinking of his beautiful Nora, with her long brown hair and dark, almost like charcoal eyes. He felt a pang of regret run through him at consorting with this other woman, who most certainly was not a business associate. The thought of adultery killed him, so he put it out of his mind. They were only going to have lunch.
“She’s doing well. We’ve set the marriage date for sometime in July.”
“Yeah?”
Jake stole a sidelong glance at Valerie. He was startled to find how much she resembled Nora; Valerie could have substituted for Nora, two planned children and twenty years later, although of course her persona would always be different.
The conversation continued on for an eternity, more like an interrogation than a pleasant talk between friends. Valerie only gave brisk responses to which she would not elaborate, and Jake did not ask her to, shamed by the fact that he was probably supposed to know about the details of her life. So Valerie asked questions, pressing on into Jake’s complete life, and yet never satisfied with anything he said.
The restaurant was most decidedly not around the corner, rather being around several different corners which never crossed the street. Jake felt his skin prickle as he became highly uncomfortable and suspicious, but finally they arrived, Jake rushing in with a sigh of relief and Valerie muttering to herself, highly frustrated.
She stopped the barrage of questions as soon as they sat down, leaving Jake to look over the menu in blissful peace. In fact, she did not speak at all, although a pensive look remained on her face that creased her forehead and marred her features.
The newest songs were playing in the restaurant, Depeche Mode and Nirvana. Jake pored over his menu, a simple white laminated in plastic, running through each entrée in the hopes of prolonging the blessed silence Valerie had fallen into.
Finally the waiter arrived though, a cheeky grin plastered on his face to match the obscene amount of buttons encroaching on his uniform.
“Hey, you two!” the waiter said excitedly, “Same old, same old?”
Jake blinked.
“What?”
“Minestrone soup for you, ma’am, and veal pasta for you, sir?”
Jake stared at the prophetic waiter, becoming increasingly fearful.
“How did you know that?”
“The waiter was just guessing, Jake,” Valerie interrupted smoothly, “Is that what you want though?”
Jake cast a distrustful eye at Valerie, but nodded mutely.
“Yes, a clam chowder and a bacon cheeseburger with fries, please,” Valerie said to the waiter.
“Okay, well then thank you! Your order will be right up,” he beamed, before running off to serve another table’s needs.
“I… what was that?” Jake asked Valerie.
“Nothing, Jake,” was Valerie’s tired response.
“How can it be nothing? He knew exactly what we were going to get, even though I’ve never ever been here before. Isn’t that really weird?”
“Not particularly, Jake. What do you want for dessert?”
“No,” Jake replied, a little bit murderously now. “I don’t believe you at all. Tell me what is going on.”
Valerie seemed to consider Jake seriously for a moment, before casting a defeated sigh.
“Alright, Jake, I’ll tell you. But only after we’ve decided what we’re going to get for dessert, okay?”
Jake blinked at this bizarre request, then weighed his options. He decided he could wait until after everything else had been settled to get his answers, and grudgingly picked up a dessert menu and flicked through it, eyes narrowed.
“The dark chocolate cheesecake sounds good,” Valerie commented.
“Yeah, I guess,” Jake said, “although the peach melba puffs look delicious as well.”
“Well, what do you want to get?”
“Hmmm,” Jake said, deciding.
“Maybe we could get two things.”
“No, I’m going to have to start dieting and working out again if I do that. I already haven’t been keeping up for the past week.”
“Alright then.”
Jake paused for a moment more, contemplating.
“Coconut and chocolate gelato?” he finally suggested.
“Sounds good,” Valerie said, “We’ll order that then.”
She settled her arms on the table, and stared at Jake piercingly.
“So, what did you want to talk about?”
Jake stared at Valerie in surprise. Had he scheduled this lunch?
“I… don’t know,” he said slowly.
“Well, that’s alright,” Valerie said easily, “We can just talk.”
They chattered amiably together, discussing topics of no importance. Jake felt himself relax as the conversation dragged on. He didn’t talk like this often, so casually to other people without some ulterior motive.
The food arrived and left, and Jake offered to pay when their conversation wound down. Valerie did not object, and together they left the restaurant.
There was an almost comfortable silence between the two as they walked down the street. Jake stole glances at Valeria, appreciating little effects like the chime of her jewelry, the perpetual hint of a smile on the corner of her mouth, a small mole near the bottom of her chin. It was in the same location as Nora’s mole, Jake realized. Valerie reminded Jake of Nora, in not just her physical resemblance but also the way she behaved. They both talked with nervously excessive hand motions, made appalling messes as they ate, and walked heavily, feet pointed outward in awkward positions. Valerie was more refined than Nora - hand gestures more deliberate, table mannerisms more polite, gait lengthened gracefully by what must have been a lifetime of wearing high heels. The resemblance induced a pang of longing in Jake, not for Valerie, but for Nora. He had never explicitly noticed Nora’s habits, but now he did, while he was away from her, and he had never wanted her more. It was ironic to Jake that it was another woman, one that he had possibly slept with, who helped him recall why it was he had asked Nora to marry him in the first place.
All too soon the walk was over, the restaurant having been surprisingly close to the hotel where Jake guessed he was staying. It was silly of him, to forget where the location of his hotel was, but thankfully Valerie was an expert at directions, and led him to his residence easily.
Once Jake reached the door he held it open for Valerie, asking her if she would like to come in for a round of drinks. She shrugged indecisively, but gave a resigned smile when Jake needled her and walked in, murmuring a thanks politely.
The lounge was populated by elderly people, a gaggle of them playing cards against each other, and a handful knitting colorful sweaters, sinking into the yawning maw of the couch cushions. There were even some old people lined up in wheelchairs against the window, dozing off underneath the sun. Jake frowned. This was certainly the oddest hotel he had ever stayed at.
He turned to Valerie, casting an apologetic look at her for this intrusion of invalids that extended all the way to where the bar must be. He decided he would invite her into his hotel room for drinks instead. Jake had a bottle of vodka and rum that he always transported with him when he traveled, like a perverse safety blanket. Nora always worried about that aspect of him, though she could never send him to rehab, because he wasn’t an alcoholic; he only brought alcohol around with him.
Realizing he could not remember what room he was staying at, he said to Valerie, “Wait here for a little bit,” then trotted over to the hotel attendant, who barely looked at Jake as he responded to his question: “303.” Newly armed with the information, Jake walked back. He stopped short as music crackled through the stereo, all the old people whooping and cheering, and some of them beginning to rise and dance. All these old people around irked him for reasons unknown, beyond the fact that it was simply weird.
Valerie didn’t seem disturbed though, and in fact even rose from the couch to join in with the other dancers. Jake watched her, transfixed by the comfortable grace she exuded as she stretched, her fingertips reaching towards the ceiling and her belly button exposed. She was more beautiful than Nora, despite her age. Perhaps it was because of her age, the sharpness of the chin softened in the extra pounds, the smiles showing through perpetually in the laugh lines, the need to conform to society forgotten in time. God, he wondered what lucky man had won the battle to be her husband. He hoped that person treated her well.
“Come dance with me,” she said, walking up to Jake.
Jake recoiled.
“I’m not a very good dancer,” he said, unwilling not only because of the gaggle of old people but also because of his legitimately lacking skills in the art of coordination.
“You’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Valerie said confidently.
“No, really, you’ve never seen me dance,” Jake stammered, “I’m horrible, I can’t do it, I end up tripping over my shoelaces -“
“Just try,” Valerie said, taking his hands and leading him into a waltz despite his repeated protests. Some classical music piece was playing that Jake had never heard of, and though this heightened his terror, he discovered to his surprise that this kind of dancing, this complex waltz, was not so impossible for him, and that in fact he was doing quite well. Experimentally he raised his arms and led Valerie into a whirl, relying only on the movies he had seen of stuffy Victorian ages in high school history, and was elated to find Valerie completing a perfect turn and landing in his arms exactly like in the movies.
She stood there, leaning back with her face upturned to his. Jake was struck by a sudden urge to kiss her, which may or may not have also been spurred on by their cinematic simulation. He did not really want to, and all he could think of was Nora, but nevertheless he leaned down, incontrollable like a bad habit.
Valerie wrenched herself away, like she should have. Her mouth was drawn in a thin hard line that became a tight smile.
“I’m sorry, I have to go to the bathroom for a minute,” she said to Jake, using the millennia-old excuse of primal human needs.
She didn’t give Jake a chance to reply, turning on her heel and leaving before his mind came around. Sighing, Jake stalked over to a chair and sunk into it, feeling it swallow him up like a clam.
An old woman calmly knitting in a chair next to Jake asked, “Something got you down?”
Jake groaned, covering his eyes with his left hand.
“Just… just life. And some bad decisions.”
“That happens to everyone, dear,” the woman said conversationally, “Sooner or later you just have to start living.”
“How cryptic,” Jake remarked dryly.
“I’m getting senile, I can say stupid things like that.”
This was exasperating. Jake rose, pardoning himself, and sprinted away.
He was just about to turn the corner when he heard two people talking about him. He paused to listen. There were, of course, other people named Jake, but a gut feeling, perhaps egotism, told him that he was the subject of their debate.
“I tried at first, you know, with Jake,” the first voice said bitterly.
“I always thought he would remember, some day. The doctors said they weren’t sure about his condition. There haven’t been any documented cases of recovery, but the phenomenon occurs so rarely. It would have been better if they just got rid of whatever hope there was at the beginning.”
“They were just doing their job, dear,” the second voice said soothingly.
“Yes, but I can’t help but blame them. My entire life was destroyed, and then I wasted another lifetime waiting to piece back together the first one. I couldn’t see him at first without crying, you know.”
“It gets so tiring, coming back here. You feel trepidation before coming, and resentment once you’re here for being forced through this ordeal again, and then afterwards you can’t feel anything but guilt, for even thinking like that about such an invalid. And for who? Someone who can never even begin to understand your emotions, to change his behavior.”
Silence.
“Valerie, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but maybe you should stop your visits. You do have a different life now, one that doesn’t really involve Jake. He’s not your obligation.”
“I don’t know.”
“Want a cigarette?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I think maybe I’ll leave. And not come back.”
Jake slid down the wall, paralyzed, just as footsteps from the pair approached. Valerie. They had been talking about him, and that had been Valerie.
The footsteps stopped. Jake looked up, into Valerie’s surprised face.
“Did you hear everything?” she asked, cigarette dangling from her wrinkled hands.
Jake groaned in anguish.
“How long has it been?”
Valerie smiled sadly.
“You know, I don’t even know anymore. At least twenty years.”
“I am so, so sorry,” Jake said lamely. He knew his apology would count for nothing, when he wouldn’t remember it upon their next encounter, if there was one. Still, it was an action, and an action could not be taken away, once done.
She shrugged.
“Do you remember our waltz, a few minutes ago?” she asked randomly.
“I wish.”
“You’ve gotten very good at it,” she said. “It’s something, at least.”
“You could be like a little Buddha,” she continued, “Benevolent in your malice, acting and improving without ever remembering.”
“I’m sorry?” Jake asked, highly confused. “Are you okay, Valerie?”
Valerie laughed.
“I’m telling you to find inner peace. Even though you won’t remember.”
“Okay,” Jake said slowly. “Okay.”
“I’ll be leaving now, then,” Valerie said, with a wave of her hand.
“Goodbye,” Jake said, waving in return as she turned and walked away.
He felt a desolate sadness come over him. Her image hadn’t disappeared yet, but it would in a sudden burst. As soon as he stopped thinking about it. He wondered if he should try to hold on. He decided against it in the end. She would be forgotten inevitably. Jake shook his head wryly. Fighting for inner peace was ridiculous when he had only one lasting state of mind anyway. He stood up and walked down the corridor.
There was a mirror perched above a mahogany table further down. Jake gave it a glancing look as he walked by, but halted, bracing himself over the table to get a closer look. His reflection stared back at him, entranced, shocked, a little horrified. He raised a hand slowly to trace his wrinkles, making a slow hesitant path up his cheeks and into his tufts of white hair. Here was the truth at last, though what truth it was he didn’t know. It was like an absurd hallucination. Perhaps it was one, for he couldn’t remember how he had gotten to be there, and where it was exactly. The last thing he could remember was getting in the passenger seat. Had he smoked something later and forgotten about it?
“Your room is this way, sir,” a voice chimed pleasantly behind him. He whipped around, startled by the interruption. A rather homely woman stood there, pinched nose carving a distinctive curve as she gestured for Jake to follow her. Utterly lost, he complied quietly as she unlocked a door to reveal an immaculate room to him, complete with a baby grand piano and a glorious view.
“This is where you’ll be staying, sir.”
Jake nodded appreciatively. He must have made some spectacular reservations.
“Thank you, ma’am. This room is perfect.”
“I’ll leave you be then,” the woman said, turning around to leave. “By the way,” she added, stopping at the door, a hint of odd derision in her voice: “Did you enjoy your reflection in the mirror?”
Jake frowned uncertainly.
“What mirror?”
But the woman was already gone.