Hello. Sam Stefanik here. Welcome to the fifth installment of 'Crown Vic to a Parallel World.' I've noticed that a lot of my chapter titles are questions. I wonder if that means something. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me on this one. I hope you're having fun with it.
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5
What are you gonna do with all that?
Shawn said nothing as he led the way back to the elevator, back to my room where I gathered my dirty clothes and cigarettes, and to the parking garage where I dumped the clothes in the Vic and got the rest of my smokes.
We approached a grouping of plumb-purple, egg-shaped vehicles. They were the smallest cars I'd ever seen. What had looked like plastic from the roof, actually was plastic. The car was as long as it was wide, almost perfectly egg-shaped, with four go-cart tires and two doors that opened on tracks, like van sliders. As they couldn't slide straight back, they slid around the body toward the rear of the egg.
Shawn selected one from the group and climbed in. I opened the narrow door to peer at what looked like a seat for a first grader. It took two false starts before I figured out my legs had to go in first, because if my body led the way, there wasn't enough room to pull my feet in behind without breaking my calves or adding a second knee. Once in, I got a better look around.
The seats, controls, interior panels; everything was made from the same plumb-purple plastic as the body. It was as if the entire vehicle was injection molded in one piece. The car was the purest form of a transportation appliance I'd ever seen. The seating was bolt-upright and so narrow, my left upper-arm was pressed to Shawn's right shoulder. My cigarettes were in my lap, my knees forced toward my chest by the lack of legroom, and my hair brushed the roof. I would have been worried about being killed in a five mile an hour crash, except all the cars I'd seen were the same. With my bulk added to the vehicle weight, we may have had a slight advantage over the others.
It was a few minutes after six as we left, and the sun had just started to set. Shawn negotiated through the yard around The HALL, waved his way through a check-point with a uniformed guard, and accelerated the silent vehicle through the main gate onto the road. He put the windows down from a switch on his side, allowing warm evening air to blow through the cab. I had so many questions, but was so overwhelmed, I hadn't the words to ask any of them. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open as we drove.
The building we'd left had been an imposing cube of polished black with no internal light showing. It stood on its own block, was surrounded by a paved yard, and a ten-foot-tall wall built of a blue-grey stone with flecks of white. I might have said the rock looked like schist, if I had any idea what schist looked like. The stone was quarried randomly, bonded with thick joints of white mortar, and capped on top with a rounded, six-inch layer of the same. Set into the wall next to the main gate was a large copper-colored plaque proclaiming the building to be the headquarters of `The HALL Organization.'
As The HALL retreated behind us, I looked ahead at my new surroundings. Everything we passed was fascinating. I marveled at the expansiveness of the parks, more impressive from the ground than they were from eight floors up. The grass was as groomed as a golf course, the shrubs pruned to neat, natural shapes, and the trees massive with age but as healthy as saplings. Even the birds that wheeled amongst the upper branches seemed like perfect examples of their kind and positively glowed against the darkening sky.
The parks gave way to residential blocks. A closer look at these presented the housing as all detached multi-story buildings built of the same blue stone and white mortar as the wall around The Hall. They had deep-set windows, plain, un-milled, wide-white trim, white front doors, and none was taller than four floors. For some, the stone was quarried square and stacked in uniform rows like oversized bricks, but most were built in the irregular manner of traditional stonework.
The homes gave me the impression of great age, but I don't know why I thought that. It certainly wasn't the way they were kept. Each was immaculately clean and beautifully maintained. I think it was how much they all appeared to be part of the landscape. Nothing seemed fresh or recently altered. Even the trees shading the manicured lawns were as large and healthy as those in the parks. There were no signs of construction or maintenance.
No fences separated yards. The only lines splitting the lawns were wide, white sidewalks. I assumed these were some form of concrete, but they had a matte sheen, almost like unpolished marble. Lights glowed through large, screenless windows, opened-wide into the warm night air. Gentle breezes blew sheer curtains and gave glimpses of brightly lit rooms full of brightly colored people.
The people were the most fascinating feature of the drive. It was difficult to tell from sitting in the car, but they seemed somewhat shorter on average than people on Earth and definitely slimmer. The clothesÉI'd never seen so much neon brightness outside of a box of highlighters. Everyone was dressed in spectacular pinks, yellows, greens, blues, oranges; mixed without regard to color match or clash. The sidewalks were busy with individuals, couples, and families strolling, seemingly for pleasure. The greetings we witnessed were familiar handshakes or gentle embraces.
Shawn stopped in front of a four-story, blue-stone building, and parallel-parked near a streetlight. The light was a glowing column of white, like someone took a light-panel ceiling, rolled it up, and stabbed it into the curb. We were between other purple eggs. The one in front was the same size as ours while the one behind was stretched to accommodate four seats and four doors. Shawn sat looking through the windshield, his hands gripped the wheel at two and ten.
"What's up?" I asked. He didn't speak or move. "Shawn." I called and leaned harder on his shoulder.
"What?" He asked with a start. He slid his hands around the wheel and spoke in a low tone without looking my way. "Oh, sorry, wasn't thinking. This is my building. We can't stay here because I live in a studio apartment. There wouldn't be room. The hotel is two units over. I need to get a few things. Do you want to come in?"
"What floor?"
"The fourth."
"Elevator?"
"No."
"I'll wait here."
He got out of the car and walked to the door like a man being led to the gallows. I slid my door open and clambered out of the egg. I leaned on the vehicle facing the building with my arms crossed over my chest. The car rocked sideways as it took my weight. To my surprise, the wheels on my side stayed on the ground. A few people walked by me, then a few more. I wasn't paying attention to them. I was watching lights go on in the fourth-floor windows of Shawn's building. I started to get that creepy feeling you get when someone is watching you. I lowered my gaze to the sidewalk traffic and noticed the attention of the passers-by was all on me. The more subtle looked along their eyes without turning their heads, the rest blatantly stared.
I checked my shirt for stains, made sure my fly wasn't open, and checked my reflection in the side mirror of the car. Nothing was out of place. `What are they staring at?' I wondered. I was still wondering when a young couple, a man and a woman, came out of Shawn's building. They walked down the sidewalk toward me with their arms linked. They stopped at the end of the walk to look at me. I was starting to feel like a zoo animal who'd lost his cage.
The couple was mid-twenties, fit, blond, tan, attractive. The man was about five-foot-six, the woman, two inches shorter. They were dressed outlandishly, but not compared to the other people I'd seen. The woman spoke first. "You're tall." She said in a high, bubbly voice that I suspected would get annoying.
"You're observant." I replied.
Her expression didn't change, and I guessed my sarcasm was lost on her. A smirk on the man's face told me he got the joke. "Waiting for someone?" He asked.
"Waiting for Shawn." I didn't know if the guy was the block captain or a busybody. Either way, the staring and the questions were unnerving me. It was also getting near cocktail hour. As I didn't have a bottle, I fed the addiction I could. I dug a cigarette from my pocket, tapped it on the face of my watch, stuck it in my mouth, and lit it with my Zippo. I filled my lungs with smoke and exhaled a plume to the side. The blonds stared at me like I'd grown a second head.
I was about to demand an explanation when Shawn hurried down the walk, the handle of a small, black overnight bag clutched in his left hand. He inserted himself between me and the blonds, facing them. "Hi...hello...uh...nice to see you both...been a while...well, we need to get going." He stammered and pawed the air behind him with his right hand.
I couldn't figure out if he was waving or trying to signal me. I'm not good with hints. I drew on my cigarette and talked the smoke from my lungs. "Are we in a big hurry? I just lit this." I asked, referring to my barely smoked cigarette.
He rotated like he was on a spindle. "Church," he pleaded, "I need you to get in the car now."
I dropped the cigarette on the pavement, ground it to dust under my heel, and struggled into the egg. Shawn threw his bag in my lap, slammed my door as much as it's possible to slam a sliding door, got in and drove away. I looked back to see the blonds staring after us.
"What was their problem?" I shifted in the seat in a vain attempt to get comfortable and felt the car rock on its suspension as I moved.
He white-knuckled the wheel and took several deep breaths before he answered. "No one smokes here, not now, not ever. For them, seeing you smoke...it would be like watching someone eat broken glass."
I thought that over. It made sense, but it wasn't the whole story. "But people were staring before I lit up."
Shawn took his hands from the wheel one at a time to flex the white from his fingers. He put them back and the knuckles went white again. "You're...uh...you're big...for here."
"What do you mean?"
"It'll be easier to show you. We're almost there."
He turned into a loop driveway and stopped under a glossy white canopy roof in front of a hotel entrance. A uniformed attendant in a canary-yellow three-piece suit approached the car. His pants were pleated and cuffed and his jacket looked like an old-fashioned cutaway from a 1930s film. He wore a shocking purple shirt with a white tie. He opened our doors and relieved me of Shawn's overnight bag. He tried to take the plastic shopping bag that held my cigarettes, but I fended him off.
The hotel exterior was a stretched version of Shawn's building, four floors tall, set in a manicured lawn, built of blue stone with white framed windows, and so long the ends of it seemed to disappear into the horizon. Clear glass automatic doors bearing stylized golden letters that read `The Capital Hotel,' slid open on silent tracks as we followed the attendant into the lobby.
The room was deep and narrow. On the left a wide white check-in counter stretched from the entry door all the way to the black glass doors of the twin elevators at the far end. On the right was a small seating area where a scattering of people sat to read or talk in sky-blue overstuffed love seats clustered around a series of low white tables that were arranged to remind me of booths in a diner. Navy-blue terrazzo with flecks of emerald-green and gold covered the floors and met white walls which rose to the one-story ceiling that was a glowing light panel.
The attendant led us to an unoccupied clerk at the counter, set Shawn's bag on the floor, and moved back toward the entry doors. Shawn moved up to address the clerk while I hung back and rocked on my heels. My hand absently reached in my pocket for a cigarette and reminded me of the addictions that ruled my life. I stepped up to the counter where I hoped to see if there was a bar in the hotel and ask if they had a room with a balcony I could smoke from.
I was just in time to hear the clerk, a slim, short, young woman also dressed in a yellow suit, say, "Yes, the honeymoon suite. We hope you and your..." She paused to glance my way and the rest of the statement went unuttered. Instead of insincere well-wishes, she stared up at me and said, "What are you gonna do with all that?"
Shawn cleared his throat, then he cleared it again, then he knocked on the counter. The knock drew her attention back to him. "There's been a mistake, miss. The name is Summas. The reservation was made by The HALL Organization. Please check again."
She flushed pink. The sound of rapid typing came from her side of the counter. "HERE!" She blurted. "I mean, here it is...Summas, luxury suite, two bedrooms, two baths, a sitting room, and a balcony on the top floor." She opened a drawer and metal rattled. She handed over two flat gold keys with black numbers engraved on the ends. "I'm very sorry, Mister Summas...for the mistake. I apologize to you and your..." She trailed off and looked up at me again.
"Associate." I said to finish her sentence.
"Associate." She repeated.
"Miss," Shawn called her attention back to him so he could finish the formalities. They exchanged some more information and the woman pointed us toward the elevators that were an obvious feature from any part of the lobby. Shawn picked up his bag, we went to a waiting elevator, and got on. The doors slid shut without a sound.
"What the fuck was her problem?" I asked when we were safely inside.
Shawn stepped in front of me and waved his overnight bag to our reflections in the polished surface of the elevator doors. I was a head taller and several inches wider than him at every point from my broad shoulders to my flabby middle to my ample hips. Even the spread of my thick legs and feet was significantly wider than his. "In this world, I'm considered a big man." He explained. "No one here is as tall or as big as you. That's why she reacted that way. That's why the people on the street were staring."
The doors slid open for us to step into the corridor. It was finished like the lobby except the walls were punctuated by glossy-black flat-slab doors with gold numbers and gold doorknobs. He unlocked the one whose number matched our keys, 428, and pushed the door wide.
We went into a cheerfully bright, pastel-pink sitting room with a wide pastel-green sofa flanked by glossy white end tables and facing a blank interior wall. The floor was white carpet and the ceiling was a light panel. At the far end of the room was a desk of the same material as the end tables. This sat against the exterior wall, under one of the two sets of double-wide windows. Between these was a door that led to the balcony.
I dropped my cigarettes on an end table as Shawn shut the door and tried to clarify his earlier statement. "So, I'm a monster." I said.
He rubbed his right cheek with the palm of his right hand and studied the floor. "You're unusual." "Uh huh, `no Church, you're not a monster, you're a freak.'" I mocked.
"That's not fair." He flared, the volume of his voice rising beyond the loudest volume I'd heard from him thus far. "You say it like you being bigger than us is my fault."
`Give me shit, will you?' I thought and fired back at him. "You knew how big I was when you picked me."
"You're infuriating." He whispered. I was puzzled when the volume of his voice ran counter to the words he spoke. Typically, people shouted when they labeled me `infuriating.' I guessed Shawn wasn't a yeller. Even though he wasn't yelling, he wasn't any less angry. "You chose to get involved. I didn't ask."
I had the impulse to load my guns for a second volley, but realized arguing was getting us nowhere. I stuck up my hands, the palms turned toward him to show surrender. "Look, I'm stressed-out, I'm confused, and I'm way too sober for this time of night. All I want to do is find my bed, get something to eat, and get drunk. Is that OK?"
He calmed down and said it was.