There must be at least fifty ways to leave your lover. I
like the one called, "Softly."
Tina likes the one called, "Done."
We both like the one called, "Often."
I'd worked out an order in which I applied those three
favorite ways to leave.
First I left her done.
Then I left her softly.
But I always left her often.
Tina didn't mind my leaving her at all. I don't think she
ever complained about being left, no matter how often, or how soft, just as
long as I left her done. Well done.
If that didn't make sense, don't worry, it'll come to you
when you're ready.
The point is I always went to her when I was ready for
sex, for food, for love, for conversation, for counseling, for sleep, for
knowledge. No matter what I was doing, she always found a way to help. No
matter what I wanted, she never failed to find it. The only thing she couldn't
do for me, was what I was kept a prisoner to do. The only thing she never
offered to do was that. But she never complained about my leaving her either.
Sandy had been removed from the women's floor the same
day Tina had not been found. Sandy learned something that day. I know she did.
She told me so when we met again, but by that time we were both much older if
not wiser. But that's far ahead of my story.
That same day I learned not to argue with myself, or a
voice in my head either. Three days, and only a few hours were in my memory.
Who ever, what ever the voice was, it was not nice, and to ignore it was
painful. Not only that, but ignoring the voice was in the same class as
ignoring myself. I couldn't do it.
In time, I found I could say anything I wanted to, to
that voice. In fact, I could even give an order and it would be carried out by
one of the staff. A mystery to me, but it worked! Some other voice lessons took
some time to sink in, like don't ask stupid questions.
Eventually I even came to understand there was only one
Stupid Question. "Who are you?" was a stupid question. Thank god it
was the only stupid question I was fool enough to ask. In the end, I learned
not to bite the hand that fed me, or the voice that informed me.
*** *** *** *** ***
Morning. I awoke with a jerk and was suddenly ready to do
something other than sleep. What I was going to do, or how, or why, weren't
clear. All I knew was there was something I had to do. Then it came to me. Eat.
I've heard it said that if a patient wants to eat,
they've won their battle and will live. I knew I wanted food. After that, anything;
but first I had to have food.
Alone in my room I dressed and went looking for Tina. She
must have left during the night, because her impression wasn't on the bedding.
I'd searched nearly the whole of the apartment when I passed the stairs leading
to the kitchen, stopped, went to the stairwell door, and descended. As I
approached the kitchen landing I began to smell the food, and my stomach came
awake.
The staff fed me at a small table in an alcove near the
service stair door. A warm, comfortable place to eat a meal, served from the
stoves and ovens directly, I discovered the best seat in the restaurant that
morning. And, a place to hide from the world while I sorted out a problem
without any interference from the staff, or my concubines.
I'd finished my meal and made the two floor climb up,
then back down one floor to the women's floor. When I had first learned why I'd
been brought here to the Tower, I'd vowed never to begin liking any of the
women who lived in the third floor chambers. It was only the first in a long
string of private resolutions I was to make and break. I really liked Lana. I
really liked Lisa.
First I went to the living room. The place was like a
tomb. "Where did everybody go?" It was an absently spoken, rhetorical
question, asked of the empty room. The room said nothing in return. "Oh
well, thought I'd give it a try." thinking aloud and moved through the
room to the dining hall and on to the women's private rooms.
Lana's was first, so I entered and called her name. No
reply. Shrugging I looked to see if she were sleeping, or in the bath. Nothing.
Leaving Lana's rooms, I moved on to Debbie's. Same response, none at all.
By the time I'd gone through each of their rooms, I began
to wonder where they were. All of them gone at the same time. Something has got
to really be wrong. It was.
*** *** *** *** ***
I'd poked about the women's floor until I'd tired of
being there alone. Everything appeared to be in order, but it seemed so strange
that the kitchen help should be busy, acting as if nothing had changed while
there didn't seem to be anybody here except for myself and those I'd seen in
the kitchen at breakfast.
I was mildly surprised when I found myself drawn to the
kitchen, but then when I thought about it, there was no reason for surprise.
I'd been sort of on automatic. Lost in my thoughts as I was, I'd sort of
gravitated to the only noises to be heard on the fourth or third floors. It
seemed as if all the rest of those I knew at all had just vanished into thin
air.
I stood in the entry to the kitchens, listening to the
sounds of life, oblivious to the absence of anyone, going on as usual. The
help, busy with their chores, paid no mind to the lost, lonely, prisoner who
sat by the entry and seemed lost in his own thoughts. As my ears adjusted to
the background noises, I began to hear what the kitchen staff were saying to
each other as their hands did the work automatically, for the most part.
As it turns out, they were aware of the absent residents,
and also aware of what had taken them all out of the Tower at the same time. I
moved a little at a time until I found a place near the kitchen office where it
was relatively easy to eavesdrop on the staff. It took a little time, and my
frustration ran high at times, but I soon knew the gossip of the day.
There had been a message received by Lana during the
breakfast meal. The message itself was private, and none of the staff could
quote it, but there had been some time for deductive reasoning to take place
since the departure of the women living on the third floor, who had been
accompanied by the messenger. By the attire of those departing, it seemed
likely there was to be a sojourn outside the city walls.
Tina had been seen going down the main stairs almost on
the main parties heels, and was reportedly seen by someone as she approached
the guarded gates, on what I thought of as the first floor. I'd been listening
long enough to start hearing the same, slightly revised, stories for the second
time, and one bit of gossip for the third time. I wondered off, pondering over
the bits and pieces of information I'd overheard in the kitchen, my feet doing
the navigating.
The second floor of this Tower Hotel was mostly reserved
for the staff. It was their home while they were here. I poked about enough to
know the place was set up like a dormitory, with the bathing facilities being
communal in nature. Laundry hung in the main hall giving the look and feel of
an alley in a residential project district. The only notable difference being
the absence of children under foot.
I stood at the top of the stairs leading to the first
floor, wondering if I would be pushing things to go below. When I'd been
brought here, I was led to believe I was free to go anywhere on the upper four
floors, which included the one below me.
I descended.
The first, and lowest floor, was given over to storage of
the massive amount of freight sent to feed and supply the Tower Hotel. Mostly
food for the staff, but every now and then I spied some sort of object or item
destined for the residents on the upper two floors. It felt sort of eerie to be
alone on this, the first floor of my domain, so close to the exit without an
escort to keep me company. But the really strange part was when I got to the
gates on the stairwell to the lower levels, the gates were standing open and
only one guard.
The temptation to forget my boundaries nearly won the day
when I heard the sound of approaching footsteps from below and was reminded of
the countless flights of stairs between myself and the base of the tower, with
no place to hide from those who might happen to be there. I shrugged and
started to climb the stairs to my apartment.
*** *** *** *** ***
As I'd climbed the four flights of stairs to the fourth
floor, I'd just been not thinking at all. When I was on the fourth floor I
stopped and tried to think of what seemed to be so obvious but I couldn't quite
see. Drifting down the hall and into the gallery, it suddenly seemed as if
there were no reason left for living. My melancholy grew until It seemed I
would burst if I didn't find something to occupy my time and I began to wonder
the rooms of my domain.
As I left the gallery it occurred to me how out of focus,
sort of distorted, my picture of the world seemed to be. I followed the
perimeter hall around the apartment. as I walked I noted the different views of
the city from the windows and soon began to watch the changing patterns of
streets and buildings on the ground below. I stopped now and then to stare off
into the distance beyond the city walls, across the dense forests and into the
place on the horizon, where the sky and the earth seem to meet.
The city below was laid out like the spokes of a wheel,
which came together at the base of my Tower Prison. I'd noticed that before but
had given it no thought when I did. "Why the tower? Why not the Counsel
Palace, or some other ancient shrine or monument?" I had no answer to
another riddle. I'd come full circle, but the hall came to an end against a
wall. I stood looking at a wall I felt shouldn't have been there. This place
really doesn't make sense.
I thought about the entry at the other end of this broken
square, closed my eyes as I visualized the hallway, all the way back to the
beginning. There's some space missing, I said to myself. Why? Again, I had no
answer.
I paced the length of this section of hall as accurately
as I could, and committed the value to memory. Then repeated the process until
I came to the wall at the other end of the hall. By my rough calculations there
was about twenty feet missing. Twenty feet, for what? No answer. This place is
so crazy. Why? Again, no answer.
I wondered into the library and sat down, trying to make
sense of anything. Nothing made sense. Suddenly I wanted the books I'd left on
one of these tables. The books were gone. All the tables were bare, and as I
walked around the shelves it was plain they were not put back where they'd come
from.
Disappointment, despair, lonely, bored, and hungry. It
was getting near the dinner hour. The day was nearly done.
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Chapter 28 | Chapter 30
Index | Title Page
| Credits | Preamble | TOC