The Dark Hotel (Part 3)

Gesson faced the large mirror that occupied an expansive place above the sink, a mirror that extended to the ceiling and flaunted a maroon-and-rust-painted frame that bulged and warped around the edges and was studded with gold knobs and buttons. The mirror was awkwardly large, far larger than the sink itself, and Gesson found himself planting his shoes firmly on the blood-red bathmat, anxious not to be drawn into a dizzying contemplation of the mirror’s depths.

A sharp, stabbing noise cut into his contemplation of the bathroom and its various provocative fixtures. He shook his large head, with its unshaven chin and wrinkled brow, and turned to face the main room. The noise was coming from the phone on the nightstand, a curiously columnar phone the color of a rotted red apple. It was a piercing, angered-bird-like ring unlike any Gesson had experienced before emanating from a phone.

He picked up the receiver.

"This is Gesson." He stood there with the mouthpiece to his mouth, still wearing his deep-pocketed overcoat the color of damp earth and his sturdy raw sienna shoes. To anyone who happened to observe him, he would appear to be a normal middle-aged man, dressed in attire appropriate for an overcast urban environment, with thick brows and a serious, business-like mouth.

"Gesson. You are at the Dark Hotel." It sounded like a statement, not like a question.

"Who is this?"

"You know it’s Bakermitt!" Bakermitt gave a hacking laugh. Gesson could picture him, in some narrow ill-furnished bureaucratic office, crumpled folders and torn notepaper littering his desk.

"I was confirming, Bakermitt. Confirming." Gesson was in no mood for Bakermitt’s rough sense of beerhall humor, his poorly timed efforts at camaraderie.

"You’re a careful man, Gesson," Bakermitt responded, in an ambiguous tone. Was he engaging in mockery or mere description? "Perhaps you’ll be as careful in finding the Grey Boy."