Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 6: Elinor

Coming down all those stairs with Dirty Joe's mum took forever. She smelled bad. I could see black hair in her armpit. I wondered what was wrong with her.

When we got her to the bathroom I went back upstairs for Fred. He was making a hell of a racket. I sat on the floor and held him to my chest until he calmed down. I looked at the red blood on the white carpet. At the end of the hallway was another staircase going up to the next floor. I wondered how high up the hotel went.

When Fred had settled down I took him back downstairs.

There were splashing sounds coming from the bathroom, and running water, and Sophie's voice getting louder. "Now really." I didn't know if I should go in there so I sat in the kitchen and fed Fred from his bottle. I liked the sound of him going at that bottle: his little claws would clasp at it and his eyes would close and I swore I could feel him getting fatter in my arms. After a while he pushed it away and dribbled milk down his chin and onto my hand. I licked the milk off my hand. "Hey, not bad," I said.

Fred gurgled at me.

"You gonna give me a hand?" Sophie called out.

I put Fred on the rug in the lounge room and went into the bathroom.

Sophie was kneeling at the tub. There was a wet towel and a bar of soap on the tiles next to her. Dirty Joe's mum was in the tub, chirping like a bird and splashing at the water with her hands. Sophie wasn't having much success getting her clean as far as I could tell. I knelt down next to her and held the woman's shoulders while Sophie washed her back.

"Look, she's happy," I said.

Sophie seemed about to burst into tears.

I looked at Dirty Joe's mum. She was exactly as I remembered her from the photo in Dirty Joe's wallet, except she wasn't wearing any clothes. I'd never seen a woman with no clothes on before.

"She has a lot of hair," I observed.

Sophie shrugged.

I helped Dirty Joe's mum stand up, and turned her around and soaped down the backs of her legs, which were covered with God knows what. Then I used a little bucket to rinse her off. The rinsing made her chirp happily.

"Look at your nails," I said. I held her hands up to show her what I was talking about and she cooed like a pigeon.

Sophie rummaged through the drawers and found some nail clippers and cut the woman's nails. Then we helped her out of the bath and sat her on a chair. I clipped her toenails while Sophie combed her hair.

"I'll brush her teeth," I said to Sophie. "Go upstairs and see if you can find her clothes."

Sophie left without a word.

The woman's nose had started bleeding again. I wiped the blood away with some toilet paper. Then I saw there was blood running down the inside of her leg. I looked for where it was coming from. It was coming from her bum. I didn't know what to make of that – I just cleaned away as much as I could. That seemed to make it stop. Then I wrapped two big soft towels around her.

I'd bought a new toothbrush and toothpaste from the Chinas that day, and now I put some toothpaste on the toothbrush and gave it to her, but she just slapped it against the sink - globs of toothpaste flew up and hit the vanity mirror and oozed down it like slugs. So I took the toothbrush off her and put some more toothpaste on it and brushed her teeth. As soon as I began to brush blood started coming from her mouth. I stopped and checked where the blood was coming from. Her gums. That was okay, I thought, so I kept brushing. Then I helped her rinse out, until the water went pink and then clear. She didn't seem to mind any of this.

Sophie came back with a clean nightie she'd found in a trunk she'd pried open. Her face was white. I didn't ask her what she'd seen up there.

Dirty Joe's mum looked very different once she was clean and combed and clipped and dressed. You wouldn't have known there was anything wrong with her. She pulled up the hem of her nightie to look at herself underneath, and made some surprised cooing sounds. Sophie smoothed her dress out again and held her hands.

I told Sophie about the blood. "We need to take her to a doctor," I said.

"In the morning. She's too tired to walk there now."

Sophie was right. I still couldn't believe how Dirty Joe's mum had run up all those stairs.

"We could call an ambulance," I said.

"How's an ambulance going to find this place?"

Right again. Bloody Sophie.

"Oh, I found her purse," Sophie said. She went away somewhere and came back with it, and gave it to Dirty Joe's mum, who threw it on the floor. I picked it up and opened it. I didn't like to go through her purse, but I guess it was okay since she was there as I did it. There was a hundred dollars in there and a driver's license. The licence said ELINOR AMBROSE and it said she was born in 1932.

"Elinor," I said.

The woman's eyelids fluttered. "Nor," she said.

"Elinor?" Sophie said.

"Nor! Nor!"

I don't know if she recognised the name. Perhaps she just liked the sound of it. "Sssh," I said gently.

"Nor," she said. "Sssh."

There was only one other thing in her purse. It was a key, one of those old-fashioned ones that has a ring for a handle and only a couple of square teeth. The next day, after everything else that happened, I found the key sitting there on the bathroom sink, and realised we must have forgotten to put it back in Elinor's purse. I ended up putting it on the shelf above the stove in the kitchen and forgetting all about it. It was just a key after all.

We helped Elinor into one of the bedrooms and put her to bed. Sophie went off to check on Fred and I sat on the edge of the bed with Elinor for a while. Her mouth was half open. I saw there was some blood at the corner of it, so I leaned over and wiped it away with my T-shirt.

"Nor," she said.

She nodded off fast. I watched her for a while, then I went back to our bedroom. Sophie was curled up with Fred in her arms, looking out the window into the darkness. I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, just thinking. Then I heard a movement behind me, and Sophie wrapped her arms around me and buried her face against my shoulder. We didn't say anything. We just held each other.

That night I dreamed of the hotel, of staircases up and up, into hallways of strange colours, up and up and up; then down, down, down I climbed, into deep dark rooms, as the hotel shifted and groaned above me.

Finally, I came to a place that was all black.