Chronicles of New York

Brian opened the door to their room. “We’ve got the best white noise machine in the world,” and he pointed to the roiling ocean just feet from their door.

They’d tried to have dinner that night at Moldavi’s in the main dining room but the hotel had a bar singer, a girl in a pink sequined gown and a keyboardist with a toupee. The crooner was singing old Patsy Cline songs like “Crazy” that reverberated throughout the cavernous dining area. “This place smacks of money laundering,” Brian said. They hopped in the car and drove down to the Lobster Roll where they ate clams and sipped an okay Chardonnay.

Back in their room Jenna wanted to sleep with the door open, but it was too bright so Brian unscrewed the lights on their deck. He couldn’t undo the ones on the stairs, but at least in the dim light they could sleep. In bed they curled up in each other’s arms, their door open to the sound of the sea. Brian was right. Not a sound came from the bungalow of the family with the teenage boys.

But in the middle of the night they woke as someone, or something, passed by the light on the stairs. The darkness awakened them. “Someone’s outside,” Jenna said.

Brian shushed her. “No, it’s just a shadow.”

“But a shadow of what?” For a few moments the room was black and they trembled, hearts pulsing. “Close the door, please,” Jenna begged so she could go back to sleep.

In just a t-shirt, he made his way to the door. “There’s nothing out here,” he said, closing it gently. He was cold as he slipped back under the sheets. He held her as they drifted to sleep only to wake moments later to exploding sounds. Bombs going off. Brian leapt from the bed. “What was that? What was it?” Jenna threw the lights on. Blinking she saw the brown ooze coming from the mini-fridge. Opening it, not sure what she’d find, they stared at the shattered glass. The two cokes they’d purchased at the shop that afternoon had frozen, then burst in the fridge. Like gunfire, Brian would later say.

Neither slept much more that night. In the morning Brian made her coffee from the pot in the room. When Jenna walked on to the deck to drink it, she saw the toenail clippings that someone had left outside their door.

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This entry was posted by Willow on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 4:11 pm. It is filed under Guest Contributors and has these tags: daily life, fiction, insomnia, Long Island, Lower Manhattan, manhattan, new york city, office, restaurant, tourism, vacation, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.