Read Online The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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the management is concerned about payment, please don’t be. I will pay .” Mrs. Erskine had begun to cry softly. Or perhaps she was laughing. Her pale lips twitched.
The concierge, a fourteen-year veteran of the Rainbow Grand, was stricken with pity for this woman, wanting to console her but at a loss for words. What do you say to a bride whose husband has abandoned her on their honeymoon? Mrs. Erskine’s eerie fatalism was beginning to affect him, like a slow-acting poison.
Gamely he said, gently taking her arm, “Mrs. Erskine, ma’am, we’ll find your husband for you, I promise. Don’t fret.”
“ ‘Don’t fret’!” Her laughter was like glass breaking. “This is my honeymoon .”
2
Where the hell was his boss Clyde Colborne? The concierge was anxious, exhausted. Like a hotel employee who’s been carrying an extra chair around, nowhere to put it. You carry the damned thing from room to room, and it’s heavy. Somebody else take this chair!
“We’ll try once more downstairs. Then, your room. Are you feeling strong enough, Mrs. Erskine?”
The red-haired woman inclined her head, lowering her eyes. As if to indicate Yes, yes! What choice do I have.
Another time, the concierge checked at the front desk to see if there was a message for Mrs. Erskine in room 419—“Sorry, sir.
Nothing.” Patiently then, like a man guiding an erratic and unpredictable child, the concierge escorted Mrs. Erskine through the main lobby, which was more crowded and bustling than before, the air heavy with tobacco smoke; and through the busy café (where a pianist was now playing sparkly Broadway show tunes); and into the Rainbow Terrace where well-dressed diners, milling about an extraordinary lavish buffet spread against an entire mirrored wall like a feast of the gods, glanced at Mrs. Erskine’s pale stricken face, with cu-50 W Joyce Carol Oates
riosity. In a lowered voice the concierge asked unnecessarily, “You don’t see him anywhere, Mrs. Erskine, I guess?”
The woman’s head shake was almost imperceptible.
No. Of course I don’t see him. Here? How could I see him, if he has gone?
By this time most of the hotel staff had been alerted to Mrs.
Erskine’s predicament. Bellboys had been directed to search the gentlemen’s lounges, private meeting rooms opening off the mezzanine, fire stairs and storage rooms and remote corners of the building. The hotel physician Dr. McCrady had been summoned in case Mrs.
Erskine became hysterical or ill. Calls had been placed to Niagara Falls police and riverfront authorities including the Coast Guard rescue unit. The concierge was taken aside by a colleague and informed that an “unidentified man” had in fact thrown himself into the Horseshoe Falls early that morning; a gatekeeper at the Goat Island Bridge had tried to stop him. Search crews were out downriver, but the body hadn’t yet been found and the mayor’s office, in alliance with the powerful Niagara Tourism Commission, hoped to “keep a lid on it” for as long as possible.
The concierge shuddered. Oh, he’d known! Something terrible.
I believe I am—damned.
Yes, the description of the suicide made it sound as if it might well be Reverend Erskine.
The concierge saw the red-haired woman standing awkwardly near the registration desk, paying little attention to the the hotel physician’s repeated suggestions that she sit down in one of the plush chairs nearby. In her vague placid way she was watching as a young, attractive honeymoon couple, arms around each other’s waist, ban-tered and giggled with the desk clerk as they signed the register.
She’d discovered that her French twist was coming undone and was trying to fix it, with clumsy fingers. She adjusted the limp bow of her crimson sash. Of all the women and men in the lobby of the Rainbow Grand, which had come to seem a nightmare simulacrum of the vast peopled world beyond the hotel, this woman, Mrs. Ariah Erskine, seemed the one singled out as
The concierge, a fourteen-year veteran of the Rainbow Grand, was stricken with pity for this woman, wanting to console her but at a loss for words. What do you say to a bride whose husband has abandoned her on their honeymoon? Mrs. Erskine’s eerie fatalism was beginning to affect him, like a slow-acting poison.
Gamely he said, gently taking her arm, “Mrs. Erskine, ma’am, we’ll find your husband for you, I promise. Don’t fret.”
“ ‘Don’t fret’!” Her laughter was like glass breaking. “This is my honeymoon .”
2
Where the hell was his boss Clyde Colborne? The concierge was anxious, exhausted. Like a hotel employee who’s been carrying an extra chair around, nowhere to put it. You carry the damned thing from room to room, and it’s heavy. Somebody else take this chair!
“We’ll try once more downstairs. Then, your room. Are you feeling strong enough, Mrs. Erskine?”
The red-haired woman inclined her head, lowering her eyes. As if to indicate Yes, yes! What choice do I have.
Another time, the concierge checked at the front desk to see if there was a message for Mrs. Erskine in room 419—“Sorry, sir.
Nothing.” Patiently then, like a man guiding an erratic and unpredictable child, the concierge escorted Mrs. Erskine through the main lobby, which was more crowded and bustling than before, the air heavy with tobacco smoke; and through the busy café (where a pianist was now playing sparkly Broadway show tunes); and into the Rainbow Terrace where well-dressed diners, milling about an extraordinary lavish buffet spread against an entire mirrored wall like a feast of the gods, glanced at Mrs. Erskine’s pale stricken face, with cu-50 W Joyce Carol Oates
riosity. In a lowered voice the concierge asked unnecessarily, “You don’t see him anywhere, Mrs. Erskine, I guess?”
The woman’s head shake was almost imperceptible.
No. Of course I don’t see him. Here? How could I see him, if he has gone?
By this time most of the hotel staff had been alerted to Mrs.
Erskine’s predicament. Bellboys had been directed to search the gentlemen’s lounges, private meeting rooms opening off the mezzanine, fire stairs and storage rooms and remote corners of the building. The hotel physician Dr. McCrady had been summoned in case Mrs.
Erskine became hysterical or ill. Calls had been placed to Niagara Falls police and riverfront authorities including the Coast Guard rescue unit. The concierge was taken aside by a colleague and informed that an “unidentified man” had in fact thrown himself into the Horseshoe Falls early that morning; a gatekeeper at the Goat Island Bridge had tried to stop him. Search crews were out downriver, but the body hadn’t yet been found and the mayor’s office, in alliance with the powerful Niagara Tourism Commission, hoped to “keep a lid on it” for as long as possible.
The concierge shuddered. Oh, he’d known! Something terrible.
I believe I am—damned.
Yes, the description of the suicide made it sound as if it might well be Reverend Erskine.
The concierge saw the red-haired woman standing awkwardly near the registration desk, paying little attention to the the hotel physician’s repeated suggestions that she sit down in one of the plush chairs nearby. In her vague placid way she was watching as a young, attractive honeymoon couple, arms around each other’s waist, ban-tered and giggled with the desk clerk as they signed the register.
She’d discovered that her French twist was coming undone and was trying to fix it, with clumsy fingers. She adjusted the limp bow of her crimson sash. Of all the women and men in the lobby of the Rainbow Grand, which had come to seem a nightmare simulacrum of the vast peopled world beyond the hotel, this woman, Mrs. Ariah Erskine, seemed the one singled out as
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