CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Fifteen

MELISSA

How could I describe what I felt as I cracked the door shut to Dahlia’s pathetic, squalid little room and marched away down the dank corridor toward the stairs? How could any single word encapsulate the range of emotions I was feeling?

There was no word? How could there be? If my emotions were represented by a great wheel of fortune then it was spinning and flashing in every segment now, whirling too fast for its mounting perhaps, shuddering with a clumsy vibration set to derail it and send it skittering off. I was well over-excited but there was also a great darkness behind that wheel in my mind that threatened to engulf me if it did lose its mounting and shatter in a maelstrom of sparks and whistles.

I reached the marble staircase and set off down, gripping the handrail far tighter than I needed to.

All these months here in Greece and the weeks before, travelling between my house in Barton and Summertop up in Pinecrest, I had been carefully constructing an impossibly complex four-dimensional jigsaw in time and space, delicately balancing my manipulations of this strange, crazy, mixed-up woman. I had added piece after piece to the puzzle, laboriously... precisely... even gracefully in the hopes that I could lead her to lead herself to reach the conclusion that the change had to be permanent... or at least indefinite. And despite all of those efforts I had failed. My manipulations had not worked and she, in her supposedly well-meaning blundering had refused, destroying all my hard work; threatening to tear down every piece of that meticulously constructed series of half-truths and wiles. And now, in the space of what, five minutes? I had ripped my own construction to shreds. I’d thrown away all conception of quiet, friendly confidence and replaced them with a potent but clumsy and entirely brutal alternative.

I had abandoned all my manipulations and coaxing and resorted to uncontrolled vents of emotion, direct confrontation and threats.

I paused on the next landing and realised as I removed my hand from the rail that it was shaking. They both were. And the more I stared down at them, the more  I realised that that quaking was running up my arms. It was in the centre of my chest making my heart rate erratic. I was sweating underneath my hair line and in the pits of my cheeks, between my shoulder blades and down into my lower back.

I felt awful. I felt sick to my stomach.

I had fucked up. I had really fucked up.

Now that I was out of there I realised that. Of course I had.

“Oh God,” I said. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

Who was I kidding with that crap I had spewed? Not even myself now that I was out of there. The very idea of it was outrageous.

That I could run away to Thailand and have my face altered without Dahlia being complicit? That I could go back to her life in England and hope to infiltrate and absorb it without her support and potentially; obviously inevitably; against her active attempts to stop me? It was a hopeless castle in the air. It was a ridiculous, childish fantasy that only existed in that room because I had been hip-deep in my temper tantrum.

This wasn’t one of those shitty Disney Channel movies or some crap from a late night sci-fi show like the Twilight Zone. This was reality – or at least it was now I was outside that room and able to see the sunlight around me.

I was as crazy as Dahlia was sometimes. I really was. I had been all summer; allowing myself to believe this was going anywhere at all. But to believe it could go anywhere without Dahlia’s total complicity was the worst kind of stupid. It was moronic, laughable and every bit as crazed as she was. I was ashamed of myself that I’d allowed myself to think it.

I gave a single nasty chuckle that went straight to my heart in derision and misery. “Know this,” I’d said. “This is happening. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop it now. The only power you have is in how you capitulate.”

What a crock of shit. It was embarrassing. She was up there now, laughing at me hysterically. I should have been laughing at myself. But tears welled into my eyes in a single flow that trickled and then stopped immediately instead.

I went down two more flights to the ground floor and left the building. I went out to the pool area where the few dispirited guests about were sunning themselves. No one was in the water. There was a fine layer of dust on much of its surface that discouraged any kind of dip. Near the far side was a dishevelled-looking bar that an attempt had been made on to make it look both hip and tropical. Both had failed. I walked over and ordered a vodka martini, wolfed it and ordered a second.

I sat on a tall stool, looking at the pool, just nursing it on my lap for a minute and a half or so, then I knocked it back in one and ordered a third, ignoring the raise of eyebrows that passed between the only other two people sitting there. They could go and fuck themselves as far as I was concerned.

What was Dahlia doing now really? What was she thinking? Because surely that intense little series of moments had passed for her too now. Surely she had snapped out of it as much as I had and realised just how pompous and stupid I must have sounded up there.

So she’d had a good, hard laugh at my expense. She’d imagined out the reality of me trying to actually steal her life: the easily traceable plastic surgery, the mismatched finger prints and DNA, the huge gaps in my knowledge about her life that any kind of determined scrutiny would root out if a breath of doubt was called into question. Had she realised how easy it would actually be for her to get back to England if she needed to, no matter how restricted her finances. It wasn’t that expensive and there was always money to be got... one way or another if you were desperate enough. And back in England, while I was pretending to be her, how eager pretty much any trashy reporter would be to run an exposé, whether it turned out to be true or not.

Cleaner tries to steal life of ex-super model? Someone would grab that up and run with it and with only a tiny amount of digging I would be exposed and ridiculed. I’d doubtless be up on criminal charges.

I shook my head and drank half of my last drink.  

What an idiot.

I’d ruined everything. That puzzle of manipulation I’d been building had been my only chance. Success required Dahlia to go along with it completely and indefinitely. It required her to be so broken that she gave in completely and accepted she was never going to get back. It required something that, frankly, was never going to happen now... because she didn’t want it, and because I’d then gone and ruined any chance of calling it back. Basically I had acted like a childish dick and it was over.

Or... was it?

Was there the slightest chance? Was there any chance left that I could pick up the pieces of my jigsaw and fit them back together?

No. Thinking back at her face; imagining her now, laughing at my tirade and threats. No. There was no way back from this. I had never really had a chance in the first place. And if I ever had, I’d ruined it now with my tantrum.

I looked up at the hotel, through the facade as though I had X-ray vision to see to the back of the building near the top where her room was.

Could I... Should I go back up there?

Was there the slightest chance of healing the breach between us? Was this my last and only chance to have one more go?

I half slipped off my stool as though to start walking but stopped before my buttocks left the hard, split plastic.

No. No. It was over. I had to just accept that. I had to go back to my own hotel and pack my stuff and maybe enjoy one last night of luxury before she came over to kick me out, fire me and start the process of hurling me back into my shitty old life of despair and self-loathing with Robert in Barton.

Except...

Except one of the crackling emotions on my wheel of fortune was a wild, fanatical optimism and another was desperation. And need. And horror of what was coming next. And maybe the tiniest particle of genuine, innocent hope.

I stood up.

I lifted the glass to my lips; held it away, looked at it. Set it down. Walked away. Went back. Drank it down.

Then I set off back toward the hotel entrance.

My hands were shaking again. I gripped them up tightly into fists but that barely helped because the shaking had gone back inside of me again. I could feel it all through my body.

I had no idea what I was going to say to her when I got back up there. I had no idea what I was going to do. In my arrogance, I had counted myself a master strategist while I’d been planning this. That was laughable now obviously. I’d achieved nothing, despite all my best efforts. All I could hope for was some honest-to-God improvised last-minute brilliance now; some instinctual face-to-face persuasion that would turn things around from being made of pig swill to being made of gold.

That sparking, fizz-popping optimism on my emotional wheel was dripping purple with pessimism now. The hope was a gleaming ember with almost no internal incandescence left at all.

I crossed the crowded foyer and made for the stairs.

“Uh, excuse me.”

I went on walking.

“Excuse me please. Miss Western?”

I stopped and turned. There was a member of the cleaning staff on the ground floor holding a dustpan and brush in one hand and a spray bottle of cleaning fluid in the other. She had a coarse British accent and a faintly ugly face that smacked of low-born provincial roots. She was one of the cleaners here and the minute I saw her I knew who she was from Dahlia’s description.

Her face brightened when I looked directly at her and I realised it was because she recognised me, as Dahlia.

“It is you,” she said. “Oh my God.” She grinned, fawning, coming to the foot of the stairs. “I’m sorry to stop you. Oh God, this is amazing. I can’t believe it’s really you. I’d heard you were staying in Greece but I never thought I’d really see you to speak to. I’ve never seen a celebrity up close before.” She blushed brightly.

And suddenly I felt completely different. Suddenly that wildly spinning emotional wheel wasn’t shaking fit to lose its fitting. It was running smoothly. It was damping down on the darker colours.

It was telling me that all wasn’t lost; that this woman – this thick-witted bulldog-faced woman who had been unwittingly tormenting the real Dahlia Western all summer really believed that I was her. For real – even without the surgery. Even this close – five feet apart – though surely there must have been more to the story that I didn’t know for her to pick me out like this. She must have seen me already, perhaps over at the Satine Palace. I had a feeling from her red cheeks and neck that she was hiding something, though I didn’t really care anymore what.

Suddenly everything seemed possible again. Everything. And that confidence was reconstructing the delicate pieces of that manipulative puzzle in my head again, telling me that there wasn’t just a small chance but maybe even a big one that Dahlia could be brought back round.

“I was wondering if I could maybe get an autograph,” said the cleaner. “If it isn’t too much trouble. I wonder if that would be possible.”

She was so sycophantic. It was kind of pathetic. And hilarious compared to the reports I’d been getting on the way she’d treated the real Dahlia.

But I had no time for this now.

“No,” I said,” Sorry. I’m busy. I have someone I have to see.” I started up the stairs.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry for bothering you,” she stammered, falling behind, but I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about her. I was going to do this. I could do this.

I climbed flight after flight, my strong, athletic legs carrying me up to the dingy top of the hotel staff quarters quickly and efficiently, and as I went my confidence only increased.

I could do this.

I could do it.

It wasn’t too late.

I got to that top corridor and paused. I held my breath. I started walking again. Now my confidence faltered. Now the emotional wheel became rickety. That sense of confidence I’d felt downstairs became drained and weak. The boost that talking to Dahlia’s nemesis had given me wore off completely, leaving me more and more tense; more and more edgy.

The closer I came to her door, the more it came back to me in unblurred clarity how outlandish my tirade had been; how preposterous my threats; how little power I ultimately held.

I stopped half way there, breathing heavily, hating myself.

I had to really make myself walk on again, and as soon as I did I realised that something wasn’t right. The corridor wasn’t as I’d left it.

Her door was open.

That made me stop again.

This was it. This was the moment of final confrontation and that instinctive range of iridescent persuasion that I had hoped to summon, ready to coax Dahlia’s resistance away and stroke her doubts smooth was not there. I had no words. My mouth was parched.

I should turn round and go back but maybe she was in there in the shadows and had already seen me. If turned back now she would only laugh the louder at my retreating back.

Surely this was my last chance. My last ever chance to win her round.

I forced myself on until I reached the half-cracked door.

I put my hand on it, pushing it in and almost said the name, “Dahlia,” but glanced behind my down the corridor, thinking how odd that would sound if it was overheard. Instead I said nothing.

The room was as dim inside as it had been. I thought I heard something shuffle but when the door fell fully back I realised I wasn’t sure after all.

I stepped into the doorframe.

Dahlia was nowhere to be seen. The room was as filthy and cluttered as ever. The light was off in the bathroom.

It was empty. She wasn’t there.

And now the emotional fortune wheel did start to shimmy off its frame inside my mind, every aspect of it losing cohesion as its sparks flashed brightly enough to blind. Its mount shattered in a firework burst of inner sensation that was acute enough to give me real physical pain in the real world. The blackness beyond it swept in, blotting out the world around me and extinguishing any final sense of confidence of optimism I might have had.

Dahlia had gone. I had no idea where. She had gone and I had missed my chance to make this right.

She had given me a calm and measured decision; a declaration of intent to chance back to being her true self and in return I had acted like a spoiled child, making ridiculous, incontestably moronic threats that only underlined the absurdity of this entire situation.

And now she had all the time in the world away from me to reflect on what a traitorous ass I was; on just how badly I had let her down and tried to set her up; on how much I clearly hated her and always had, and on just what she was going to do next to ruin my life in return.

It was over. All of it.

And she wasn’t to blame. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She just wasn’t as crazy as I’d thought she was. If anything I maddest. Of course I was.

I had actually believed I would succeed.