‘Please, Violet,’ I say, spreading my arms, trying to conceal the letter paper and envelopes. ‘I don’t feel well.’
She collects her coat and her bag. ‘What happened?’ she says. ‘You OK, Molly?’
‘I have a lot to do.’
‘Fine,’ she says. And then she leaves the room and I watch, through my peephole, as she trudges angrily down the corridor.
I breathe out. I order room service breakfast. I shower. I leave.
Reception gives me two Tylenol for my head and then I head out into the city. I have my phones in their protective bag and I have my unregistered tablet.
In a minimalist café in the Meat Packing District I upload my video to YouTube. I use fake Twitter and Instagram accounts to amplify the reach using the same hashtags Shawn Bagby uses. I’m careful to implement all I’ve learned in the past week to leverage the algorithm and get the video seen by his followers. Tags, the description, the title. You have to make the metadata do the hard work for you.
It’s out there.
And now I walk away with a spring in my step. I’m going shopping again.
This time it’s for tonight. I have six items I need to buy, six items on my mental checklist for my date.
Twenty minutes later I find the Victoria’s Secret boutique on Fifth Avenue.
I walk inside.
Chapter 36
By six I’ve thoroughly prepared for my date with Scott, every last detail. I’m hungover and tired. But I feel ready.
I take a long, hot, well-deserved bath. The bubbles overflow the tub and I soak and wash myself with lemon blossom shower gel. I shave and pluck and preen and thoroughly scrub myself, and then I slather my body with lotion.
Room service dinner. Something light because I don’t want to feel bloated later. A chicken Caesar salad with a lime and ginger sorbet.
I go over everything in my head once again. I have never done this before, not even close. We went to discos together, my twin and me, but nothing like this.
The Sofitel superior room is booked and paid for in cash. The room’s reserved under the name Scott Smith. The concierge at the Ritz-Carlton handled the reservation expertly, and I had to spend an extra two hundred dollars as a deposit to avoid any credit card details being handed over. I guess, if anyone ever checked, the breadcrumbs would connect the Sofitel room to Violet Roseberry, not me. It’s important that nobody ever finds out about me and Scott. He might have checked in already. What’s he thinking about? How he’ll seduce me? What he’ll do to me? How he’ll kiss me?
I pull on some of the items I bought today from three separate downtown stores. I have normal clothes, attractive but normal, covered with an ankle-length Scream costume and Scream mask. It’s Halloween. It’s vital that I fit in.
In the lift down to the ground floor I’m the only adult in costume. You might think that would be awkward but it’s not awkward at all. You gain power when you wear a mask.
I take Sixth Avenue and walk south. I buy a single ticket at the Broadway Luxe movie theatre. I pay cash. I also get a box of popcorn and a large Coca-Cola with ice and a straw.
The Shining.
Two hours and twenty-six minutes.
My ticket’s stamped and I say thanks in my best approximation of a New Jersey accent.
Inside there are only a dozen or so people seated. They’re all in the middle of the middle of the auditorium or else they’re down at the front. According to my Google research the larger crowds will come later at the nine o’clock showing of The Exorcist, and the midnight showing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the three a.m. showing of The Blair Witch Project. I sit at the back near the aisle. A few couples walk in and sit near the front. The lights go down. I eat a handful of popcorn and the kernels stick to my fingertips. Adverts play. I feel my heartbeat race. The thought of Scott Sbarra in a king-size bed. The shape of his body. The scent.
Trailers play and then the movie begins. When the sweeping shot of landscape appears – the Torrance family driving towards the Overlook Hotel – I carefully set down my Coke and popcorn, and then I walk quietly to the exit. Nobody sees me leave. I walk for twenty seconds and enter the ladies’ restroom. Third stall, the one with the window, the one I’ve visited twice in the past week, always in a wig and hat. I take out my multi-tool and select the Phillips screwdriver. It’s not easy loosening the screw but eventually I work it free. I open the window.
Someone comes into the ladies’ and I stop dead.
After four minutes I hear a flush, and then running water in the basin, and then the blower, and then the door. I climb out of the window, scanning around for pedestrians. None. I drop five feet into an open dumpster, falling into the cardboard boxes I bought, constructed and placed in said dumpster earlier this afternoon.