The Hidden Back Room Read online

  As Reed had suspected, the music couldn’t compete with the waiter’s conversation. ‘I’m back. No, no—I have time. How is your mother doing?’ A pause. ‘Well, she needn’t trouble herself. I can call the repairman. Could you hold another moment, darling?’

  The waiter returned. ‘It will be just another minute on your sandwich. Is there anything else I can get you?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ The waiter nearly tripped when Reed called after him, ‘Hey—I couldn’t help notice . . . is there seating in the back, as well? If it’s more convenient for you, I’d be happy to move.’

  The waiter slouched in gratitude. He smiled. ‘If you’d like to, we can certainly accommodate you. Right this way?’

  Reed rose, put on his clammy coat, and bent to retrieve his coffee.

  The waiter halted him, ‘Oh, no, sir—you can leave it here. I’ll bring you a fresh cup.’ He led the way to the back of the dining room, stopping at the centre door. ‘This passage is most peculiar. I’m afraid mistakes were made in the design. We have to go through an intersection. We must go through this door, then close it, then partially open the door to the left as we go in, so that we have room to open the next door straight through, and we must thereafter open the next door straight through before closing the previous. You understand?’

  Reed thought he couldn’t possibly understand the puzzle through description, but believed the gimmick would reveal itself as they proceeded. ‘I’ll follow you,’ he said.

  The waiter gave him a look of uncertainty, and then pushed open the first door. The tiny square intersection was terribly cramped with the two of them in it, and Reed wondered how anyone could be induced to go to the back room—and why no one had simply removed all the doors. Nevertheless, the sequence seemed recognisable to him from what the waiter had described, and despite the unnecessary complexity and Reed’s hesitant fumbling, they were soon through.

  Reed did not expect the back room to be so large. After a short passage (between kitchen and restrooms, Reed thought), the room widened (wider than the bar area, he observed) to what might have once been a dance floor. An even greater surprise lay at the back of the expanse. The ceiling opened into a grand glass cupola which swelled high above a single, round table. A vast chandelier hung from the centre of the dome (he thought it an odd combination of elements). Reed thought he saw the twinkling of crystal, though it was hard to discern the details of the chandelier, as the sky was slate and the cupola wavered with an ever-rupturing veil of rain, and the room was moodily shadowed besides. There were four recessed lights above two long tables piled over with cutlery and dishes and platters and glasses, one on either side of the entryway. Otherwise there appeared to be only two directional pan lights turned on, mounted at the base of the cupola and pointed vaguely towards the chandelier, lending unfocused lustre to the centre of the yawning space, fuzzy stars shivering behind a dim auroral shroud. A candle in an orange hexagonal lamp glowed on the table, barely illuminating its two inhabitants, a man and a woman seated very closely to his left, despite the largeness of the table, which might comfortably accommodate eight.

  The man smiled broadly as Reed approached and beckoned with his right hand as he called, ‘Come in! Come in! Please—sit with us; we’d be glad of the company.’ The woman presented a fixed, prim grin.

  There appeared to be no other option—only one unoccupied chair was to be seen in the large, empty room. Reed noticed that the waiter hadn’t ushered him to the table, and had, in fact, disappeared. He pulled out the lone chair and sat opposite the couple. Closer now, he thought it extremely odd how near to each other they sat. He guessed they might have been holding hands beneath the table (and hoped that that was all). He could only barely make out their features in the candlelight. The man was balding straight from the front into a round helmet of brown which gathered at his collar. A bushy mustache wiggled over a profoundly wide mouth. He wore a loosened tie over a patterned shirt and a light jacket. The woman wore an unstylish dress with puffy, long sleeves. As his eyes adjusted, Reed saw that no, they were not holding hands; her hands appeared to be folded in her lap. Her hair was curled and piled up in some indiscernible fashion. She wore glasses that must have been unusually thick; the lenses distorted her eyes to the point that they appeared affixed to the frames. Even in the monochromatic glow, the rouge on her cheeks blazed. Reed guessed they were middle aged, but could be no more precise than that.

  The man twirled his right hand to present himself. ‘We are the Ansoms. My wife, Mitzy.’

  She teetered forward in a slight bow. She said with a wet, warbling mezzo-soprano, ‘And my husband, Dieter,’ at which he tilted his head.

  ‘Nice to meet you. Reed Murmin.’

  ‘Oh!’ Mitzy bounced in her chair. ‘What a fine name—Murmin.’ Some tightness in the lips—indeed, her mouth moved little—caused her pronunciation to lean more towards ‘Vernon’ or ‘Vermin’.

  Reed shrugged at the complement. ‘I’ve never thought much about it.’

  ‘Names are funny things, I find. I’m reminded of a story . . .’

  ‘Now, Mitzy, let’s allow the gentleman to get settled.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I’d love to hear it,’ Reed acquiesced, although he wasn’t at all sure that was what he wanted. He had been eagerly anticipating drinking his coffee and despaired its absence. ‘Though I wonder if the waiter is coming back, first.’

  Looking at the table, it was hard not to wonder if the waiter would ever return. A range of dirty dishes were on the table, mostly on Dieter’s side; only an empty cup and saucer and a crummy bread plate sat in front of Mitzy. Curiously, the dishes appeared to have long ago served their purpose; most were picked clean and none gleamed with grease; no odour lingered; a few random bones were naked and dry. There was no sign of anything that might have been recently delivered from the covered platter the waiter had carried, and, judging by the varied collection awaiting removal, Reed doubted that the beer mugs the waiter had returned with had been cleared from the table.

  ‘Perhaps I should go and find him?’ Reed volunteered as he pushed his chair back to stand.

  Dieter’s arm shot forward and rattled a stack of mismatched plates. ‘Oh, no, no! Don’t trouble yourself!’ he cried.

  Reed noticed liquid slosh from the disturbed stack, either milk or water (in the low light, it was difficult to tell which). He saw now that quite a few of the dishes were wet.

  Mitzy was more composed. ‘We wouldn’t want to put too much on his plate.’

  Dieter guffawed and pointed at his wife. ‘We certainly wouldn’t want to put him out!’ he barked. She hooted appreciatively.

  There were splotches on the tablecloth. Reed surreptitiously reached a pinky to the closest and felt it to be wet. He looked up and watched a drop fall from the indistinct shape above them.

  ‘There’s a leak,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t be surprised,’ Dieter said. ‘There’s just so much rain right now.’

  ‘Some of it is bound to get through,’ Mitzy agreed.

  ‘Should we move the table?’ Reed asked.

  ‘No!’ ‘No!’ ‘No!’ ‘No!’ the low and high voices ping-ponged.

  Reed sighed, and something like a grumble passed with it.

  The wooden door banged open. Reed shifted to look back towards the front of the restaurant. The waiter carried four large plates on an extended arm, as one might with food ready to serve, but the plates appeared to be empty, a state verified when the waiter stacked them one atop the next amongst the various piles of things on the table to the left of the passage.

  ‘Oh, waiter!’ Mitzy called in her song-song voice.

  The waiter’s shoulders tensed at the sound. ‘Yes! One moment!’ he called back testily. Then he dashed down the corridor and manoeuvred the noisy sequence back to the front room.

  ‘He’ll return soon, you’ll see.’ Dieter’s reassurance was unconvincing. ‘He has a lot to prepare before the restaurant can open.’ He reached a
cross his body with his right hand and plucked a crumb from Mitzy’s plate.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was early,’ Reed said. He wondered why special privilege—such as it was—had been accorded his tablemates. ‘Should we be here at all?’

  Dieter waved noncommittally as he mashed the crumb between his lips. ‘Think nothing of it,’ he mumbled.

  Reed was now not only thirsty and cold, but hungry as well (to his surprise), and for once he would have been glad to have a club sandwich set before him. He wondered how long he might have to wait. He glanced upwards again to watch another drop plummet. Perhaps because his eyes were becoming adjusted to the gloom, the chandelier appeared somehow closer, if still indistinct, as though wrapped in sheer cloth.

  Mitzy said, ‘Perhaps I should tell my story now: It has to do with a girl named April and a boy named October. April fell in love with October right away, because how could she not? A boy named October is a very rare thing. I suppose if she and he had been set up by friends who treasured the idea of the two “months” meeting, then she might have resisted. But she found him all on her own, and so held no such prejudice.’

  Mitzy leaned slightly forward and back in a slow rhythm as she spoke but didn’t move otherwise; her hands remained in her lap. Her speech remained constrained, such that her consonants were often indistinct. Dieter watched her raptly, smiling, even offering the occasional encouragement of an ‘Uh-huh’ or ‘Yes’ at the end of a sentence, though he had doubtless heard the story many times before.

  ‘October was as sullen as his namesake, but he, too, felt the stirrings of love. If he did not fall as hard as April, it was only because she was so bright and he so dark, as he thought she must be, and as he thought the world expected of him. Now he was a cobbler’s apprentice and she was a shoe . . .’

  ‘Gesundheit!’ Dieter shouted.

  ‘Oh!’ Mitzy popped, and then laughed. ‘I told it wrong! Now, he was a cobbler’s apprentice and she had a shoe that needing mending. She had to have her favourite pair for a formal event, a gala fundraiser of some sort. Naturally, she left it to the last minute, because that is the way of things, and she stopped at the cobbler’s just as October was about to close for the evening, the cobbler having already left, you see. As I said, April was taken with the lad right away, encouraged not only by the peculiarity of his name, but spurred as well by necessity, for she was obliged to be charming and, yes, flirtatious, as she was asking a rather pressing favour, which, even if he was not so quickly stricken, he provided. October’s work was every bit as good as the cobbler’s, and April was so glad at the result that she impetuously kissed the youth on the cheek.’

  Reed’s interest in the story was waning quickly, and, as it seemed to be more involved a tale than he would have liked to be committed to, his discomfort was exacerbated. Mitzy’s voice reverberated muddily in the expanse. Reed lamented that the music from the front was not playing in the back. He wanted once more to hear that wondrous voice and wanted to ask in what exotic tongue it sang. He frowned, sure the song was long over.

  His pinky began to itch where he had touched the wet tablecloth. A drop splashed on the loose stack of plates. Reed looked up and was sure that there was no simple illusion of his eyes adjusting to the gloom; the chandelier was clearly lower—though, sure as he was, he couldn’t yet believe it, for even if it were somehow true, how could such a thing occur silently?

  Mitzy continued, ‘Thereafter, April frequented the workshop, though always after the cobbler had left October to finish closing. October mended many shoes for her. He suspected she might have mistreated some of them for the sole—oop! sole!—purpose of visiting him, and though he frowned upon the frivolous destruction, it was this aspect of the ruse that exposed her agenda, and his feelings simmered. So, to recap: April declared her more robust feelings by repeatedly engaging October in a subservient role, and his feelings grew in response to his understanding of her deceitful machinations, all the while sending her off in elegant footwear to dance and laugh with a better class of suitor.’

  ‘Err . . .’ Dieter seemed uncertain of the narrative.

  ‘In this we see the struggle towards hopelessness, the striving to establish commiseration with the release of breaking from the artificial plight as its ultimate goal, promoting the unexceptional result from pedestrian to poetic.’

  Reed noted the closing alliteration was pronounced flawlessly.

  Dieter squirmed as he commented, ‘Darling, I don’t think you’re telling the story right. That’s not at all how I remember it.’

  ‘Oh!’ She tittered as though roused. ‘How silly of me! I’ve gotten off track.’

  The doors clattered in sequence. Reed pushed his chair back and stood, but the waiter failed to emerge from the passage.

  ‘I really think I should see what’s keeping him.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s the moral of my story, don’t you see?’ Mitzy insisted.

  Reed saw little sense in the story thus far and didn’t expect it would culminate any more satisfactorily, but he sighed and sat anyway, hoping the waiter was just out of sight in the shadows. As much as he hated waiting, he felt curiously averse to going back through the doors. He had forgotten the sequence, and doubted he could reverse it confidently had he remembered. It was the sort of endeavour easily put off when embarrassment is anticipated.

  Reed rubbed his itchy finger against his trouser leg and then looked at it. He appeared to have smeared a fine white powder over the pad, the substance having provoked a rash; tiny red dots stippled his finger.

  ‘Good things come to those who wait,’ he murmured.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Mitzy said. ‘ “Patience is a virtue”.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The moral of the story,’ she said. ‘By cultivating their suffering, April and October are pushing towards something, not simply waiting. But, to maintain their grace, they must not arrive. “They all lived happily ever after” is a leap from the precipice into the void. Whenever was a great truth revealed by the closing of a cover? Eternity is horrid.’

  Dieter was exasperated. ‘Well, now you’ve spoiled it, Mitzy,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in telling it now.’

  ‘It was over when you named the boy “October”,’ she chided him tersely. ‘Who could believe such a thing?’

  Reed averted his eyes from the confrontation and happened to glance up. There could be no doubt: the chandelier was markedly closer. He might touch it if he stood. And now he saw what had made it seem so indistinct before, what had muted its glimmer and blurred its form: The chandelier was covered in spider webs. At first he thought they must be cobwebs, but the fabric was not frayed and banded into drab skeins; it retained the taut, even spread of ongoing industry. Reed’s skin crawled even as he admired the beauty of the weave. Though they shimmered in their spotlights, the crystals were rounded to soft ovals by the gauze, while the rain made sloughing tinsel, catching sparkles as it ran. Reed watched again as it dripped, dripped, stains on the tablecloth, milk on the saucers.

  ‘I am absolutely sure that the chandelier is falling,’ he stated. He was surprised by the panic in his voice.

  ‘What’s this?’ Dieter said, as he looked upwards.

  Mitzy did not look. She continued to stare at Reed. In that moment of Dieter’s surprise, all life went out of her. It was then that Reed realised that Mitzy was a mannequin, and Dieter a ventriloquist. He was offended by the fraud. He felt duped. Only in the back of his mind was he impressed by the gall of the hoax and the quality of its execution.

  Dieter sighed. ‘It is a damned shame to watch things fall into disrepair, after staking so much of yourself into it.’

  Surprise supplanted Reed’s pique and embarrassment. ‘Wait—you’re the owner of the restaurant?’ (Of course, he thought, that explained their—his—presence.)

  Dieter nodded sullenly. Mitzy remained blank, as though Dieter had forgotten his obligation to her.

  ‘It’s been a rough go. You hope to open strong
and establish yourself quickly, because attrition is inevitable.’ He sighed. ‘What was feast is now famine,’ he said. ‘I’ve even had to sell the crystal off of the chandelier.’

  Reed was confused. He looked again at the chandelier. He stared hard at the glittering shapes distributed around its half-hidden frame. Then he saw the truth of Dieter’s assessment: it was not crystal that twinkled; light reflected off the rain as it drizzled through a multitude of small nests—tainted water that dripped more frequently as the chandelier descended, pooling on the plates. Reed leaned over the table and studied the collected runoff. A tremor of revulsion rippled through him as he saw hundreds of tiny paisleys wiggling in the liquid, like the translucent tails that swim against a blue sky.

  ‘Excuse me, Martin!’ Dieter called past Reed’s shoulder.

  The collapsing accordion rattle of a stack of china dropped on a table made Reed jump. He spun in his chair. The waiter kept his back to them.

  ‘Martin, we think the chandelier is . . . well, it’s falling, apparently.’

  The waiter hissed, ‘It’s on the list!’ He turned on his heel to go.

  ‘Um!’ Reed called after him. The waiter stopped rigid at the sound. ‘My . . . my coffee?’ Reed had no idea why he should want to remain in the restaurant a second longer; at the very least, he had no desire to take a meal at that befouled table. His coffee seemed the least important thing imaginable, even to him, but with the opportunity of the waiter’s attention at last available, he felt rushed to make some sort of request.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the waiter dripped. ‘The gentleman must have his coffee. What would happen if the gentleman went deprived of coffee for another second? Calamity, there can be no doubt.’ The waiter slipped into the dark.

  Mitzy’s warbling sing-song returned. ‘You must understand,’ she said, ‘We can’t afford any more help. And he can’t leave. It’s put him under a tremendous strain.’