The Radio Magician and Other Stories Read online

  If Dorian stood at the window, he could peer down the mountain at the long, railed walkways that connected one section of the inn to the next. Curved glass covered some of the walkways so the guests could pass in comfort from the casinos to the restaurants, or from the workout facilities to the spas, or from the tennis courts to the pools, but others were open and guests could walk in the unencumbered mountain air, their hands sliding along guard rails with nothing but the thought of distance between them and the rocks in the sightless haze below.

  Dorian cleared his throat. “I can’t find my wife, Stephanie Wallace.” His fingers rested on the polished wood.

  Without raising his head from the clipboard he’d been studying, the concierge looked at him. “It’s a big inn, sir. When did you see her last?” The man’s eyebrows had a distinctively rakish look to them, turning up at the ends like a handlebar moustache, and his hair was silvery-gray.

  “We were supposed to meet for lunch, but she didn’t show up.” Dorian glanced into the lobby, hoping that she might appear. Behind him, the room towered fifty feet to skylights. Opposite the window, the mountain’s rocky side made another wall. Exotic plants that would never grow outside of the inn’s protection filled every nook, spilling vegetation over the deep-toned stone.

  The concierge put the clipboard on the booth. “Perhaps her plans changed, sir. There’s much to do here at Mount Either.”

  Dorian gritted his teeth. “Yesterday’s lunch! I’ve been looking for her since last night. Stephanie’s not late. She’s gone.”

  “It won’t help for you to be short with me, sir. What is your room number?”

  “4128.”

  The concierge tapped at a personal digital assistant that nestled in his palm. “This is your wife, sir?” A picture of a smiling blonde woman, glasses slid part way down her nose, peered back at Dorian from the screen.

  “Yes.” She’d worn her glasses on the airplane. Once they checked in, she switched to contacts.

  “I show that she’s still a guest.”

  Resisting an urge to throttle the man, Dorian said, “I know that. What I want is some help in finding her. Can’t you ask the other employees to keep an eye out?”

  “Of course, sir. But, as I said before, this is a big inn. Maybe she wants some privacy. Perhaps she’s admiring one of our many gardens. She wouldn’t be the first guest to spend a few uncounted hours sitting on a meditation vista. In fact, getting lost at the inn is a selling point. We advertise it. ‘Lose yourself in the experience.’”

  “It’s not supposed to be literal!” snapped Dorian.

  The concierge picked up the clipboard again. “I will alert the staff. You don’t suppose she went through a transitionway unaccompanied, do you?”

  Dorian felt himself blanching. “No, of course not.” But he remembered how she’d lingered yesterday morning in the Polynesian hallway.

  “Guests are to be escorted through the shift zones.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that.”

  The concierge sniffed. “We’re very specific in our agreement when you signed in. The management will respond strongly to guests who ignore the rules.”

  Dorian turned away from the concierge. A new tramload of tourists had arrived, pulling their suitcases behind them. Most were couples. Newlyweds, by the look, or retired folk. A pack of bellboys scurried to meet them, while a mellow-voiced recording intoned, “Welcome to the Inn at Mount Either. You are standing in the new lobby, two-hundred and fifty feet above the historical first lobby built on the site of where Mount Either’s special properties were discovered. If you are interested in a guided visit to the old lobby, dial 19 on your room phone.”

  “If she did go…” said Dorian. A hand seemed to be grasping his throat. It was all he could do to croak out, “… unescorted?”

  The concierge said, “It’s a big inn, sir. We will do all we can to help, but we don’t really count a guest as missing until forty-eight hours have passed.”

  Dorian didn’t know what to say. He drummed his fingers on the counter. Some of the new arrivals were at the window, looking down. The glass leaned away from the mountain, and the lobby itself protruded like a shelf, so they had an unimpeded view of the two-thousand foot drop and the rest of the inn on this side of the peak, clinging to the sheer face.

  “I can’t wait that long. I’m going to look for her myself.”

  “That is your privilege, sir,” said the concierge. “I’m sure she’s just around the corner. Nothing stays lost here forever.”

  The elevator to the Polynesian transition they had visited yesterday was out of order. Dorian looked both ways down the long, curving hall, but there wasn’t another elevator. The inn’s maps were almost impossible to read since the inn itself was aggressively three-dimensional, riddled with elevators, stairs, ramps, sloping halls, ladders, bridges and multilevel rooms. They’d followed a guide to the Polynesian transition, but none were in sight now. Dorian went left, around the curved hall.

  Finally, he reached a stairwell that spiraled down for fifty steps. He didn’t recognize the hall it emptied into, but a distinctive arrow in blue and yellow pointed toward a transition. Yesterday, as they approached the zone, the wallpaper had changed from the art deco they’d grown used to, to a palm and beach motif. Following the guide, he’d held Stephanie’s hand until they stepped through the transition’s door and into a Polynesian mountainscape.

  “You’re lucky, today, folks,” said the guide. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it looking this good.”

  The sun pouring through the open veranda spread heat like a warm flush on their skin. Stephanie’s hand drifted from his own, and she walked to the platform’s edge as if in a dream.

  “Oh, Dorian,” she’d said. Instead of the snow-capped mountains of the Inn at Mount Either, a series of rounded hills rose in front of them, covered with forest so thick that it was hard to imagine ground beneath it. A flock of long-necked birds wheeled below, skimming the treetops and crying out to one another. She’d stared into the distance, entranced, her blonde hair just brushing her shoulders, and for a moment he saw the young woman he’d married twenty years earlier, the jaunty athleticism in her posture, the grace in her wrists and hands.

  A waiter in a flowered shirt offered them drinks off a platter.

  “Can you smell it?” Stephanie said, delighted. “It’s the ocean.”

  And Dorian could smell salt and sand under the rich vegetable forest. Stephanie loved the ocean and all that was associated with it, the seals and birds and spiny creatures crawling in tidal pools, and the way the waves slid underneath her bare toes. Her passions were intense. She’d spend hours studying art or collecting children’s literature or working with other people’s kids. Once she’d gotten hypothermia in a mountain stream while sorting through rocks on her hands and knees. “I thought there might be quartz crystals,” she’d said through the shivers. She laughed often.

  Stephanie hadn’t wanted to leave the overlook. The hotel guide finally had to insist. “My shift ended twenty minutes ago, ma’am. Perhaps you can come back another day if it’s still here.” Then he took them back through the hallway and into the inn they had left. “This was one of the original shift zones,” he’d said as they walked back to the main lobby. “They found it third.”

  “How marvelous it must have been,” Stephanie said. “I can imagine them climbing the mountain. Squeezing through a crevice, and there they were.” She looked behind them.

  Dorian rushed down the corridor. He remembered fewer doors in the hallway yesterday, and the carpet had been a different color. Closing his eyes for a second, he tried to picture the inn’s structure. The elevator had only gone down a couple of floors, which was about the same distance the spiral stairs had taken him, but nothing looked the same. Maybe he was in a parallel passage. He passed another blue and yellow arrow. The decor changed from dark-polished woods and brass fixtures to natural pine siding. A long mural of a desert canyon rimmed with cactus co
vered one wall. Then the hall ended at a door, a rough-hewn, heavy-planked structure marked by a solid iron handle to open it instead of a doorknob.

  It was a transition way, but not the one from yesterday. Still, it was close. Maybe Stephanie had come down this path. The elevator might have been out of order for her too. Dorian took a deep breath and opened the door.

  On the other side, a wooden bridge reached an open platform. Drooping ropes hung from thick posts that lined the bridge’s side, serving as protection from the drop into the depths below. Dorian leaned on the rope at the platform’s edge. The general shape of the mountains was the same, but no snow covered the peaks. The sun glared, radiating off slick-rock, dark with streaks of desert varnish. He shaded his eyes to look up the mountain. Wood structures covered most of the slope, all light-colored pine. For a moment nothing looked familiar, then he spotted the main lobby buttressed by tree-thick pylons jutting from the mountain.

  A man wearing a cowboy hat and a leather fringed shirt joined him at the edge. “First time to Mount Either?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Dorian, confused. “How could you tell?”

  “Your duds. Not quite in the motif, pard.” He smiled, a gold tooth flashing in the sun, then glanced at his watch, a large-faced instrument ringed with turquoise. “You going to the barbeque? I’m going to find my wife and head that way. Gosh, I love the grub you get here.” His leather boots clacked against the wood flooring as he headed to the stairs.

  Dorian was alone on the platform again. “I’m looking for my wife too,” he said. Overhead a lone bird circled. He thought, is that a buzzard?

  A tram like a large ore cart glided past the platform, heading down. Cowboy-hatted tourists sat at one end, while a pile of saddles and bridles filled the other. At the bottom of the ravine where the tram’s cable ended at a tiny building, a dozen horses no larger than grains of rice milled about in a corral.

  The set of stairs that gold-tooth had ascended looked like they led to the main lobby. Dorian took the steps two at a time. If Stephanie had come this way, she hadn’t returned. Would she have realized right away that she was lost? Would she have gone to the lobby for directions? She could be there even now, maybe sipping a cool drink at one of the many, nearby cafes.

  But at the top of the stairs were three passages, and none of them looked like they headed up. Dorian paused. If he chose the wrong way, he could become lost himself. A bellboy in flannel shirt tucked into jeans, carrying a tray of dirty dishes on one hand above his shoulder, came out of one hallway.

  “How do I get to the lobby?” said Dorian.

  The bellboy transferred the heavy tray with practiced ease. His suntanned face crinkled into a weathered smile. “Right hallway until you come to the elevator. The button is marked.”

  Dorian nodded, then started forward.

  “My right,” said the bellboy as he descended the stairs.

  In the lobby, Dorian took a moment to orient himself. It wasn’t that this sage-scented lobby was completely different; it was the similarities that threw him off. The same tall window gazing out on the deserty-looking mountains, the same exposed rock making one wall, a familiar reception desk dominating the room’s center, but all the materials were different: hand-hewed timbers replaced the slick chrome support beams, big-looped throw rugs covered the plank floor where before he’d walked on expensive carpet, but what was most disorienting was the concierge, whose distinctive upward-flaring eyebrows and silver-gray hair waited for him at the reception desk as Dorian crossed the room.

  “Thank goodness,” said Dorian. “I wanted to find the Polynesian transition, but I ended up here instead.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” said the concierge. His expression was completely bland. No recognition at all.

  “It’s me, Dorian Wallace. I told you ten minutes ago that I was looking for my wife, Stephanie.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. You have me at a disadvantage.”

  “We talked. You said nothing stays lost forever.”

  The concierge shook his head. “Maybe I was thinking about something else when we chatted. What room did you say you were in?”

  The situation was ludicrous. In the window behind the concierge, the sun blasted the peaks. No snow. No smoothly curved walkways stretching from wing to wing. Just heavy rope and solid wood and thick iron cable strapping the structures to the mountain. It was like an 1860 version of Dodge City turned vertical. “I’m from the real Inn at Mount Either. I’m in one of its rooms.”

  The concierge’s forehead wrinkled. “This is the real Inn at Mount Either, sir.”

  Dorian stepped back. The man looked similar, but the business suit Dorian remembered had been replaced with a leather jacket, and where the silk tie had hung before, a silver clasp held a black bolo. Something about his face was different too. More wrinkles maybe? More silver in the hair? Suddenly Dorian was sure that they would have no record of his registration, and he realized he’d gone through a transition without a guide. What had the first concierge told him about management “responding strongly” to guests who ignored the rules?

  Keeping the panic out of his voice, Dorian said, “My fault. I mistook you for someone else.” He forced a smile. “There’s so many employees here.”

  Nodding, the concierge turned his attention to a stack of papers on the desk. “This is a big inn, sir. Perfectly understandable.”

  On the way out of the lobby, Dorian paused. Had he come up a short flight of stairs to enter, or had the hallway been on the same level? At the foot of the stairs a mineral gift shop offered its wares on wooden trays inside its door. He vaguely remembered passing something like that, but he’d been in a hurry. Had he?

  On an impulse, he entered the shop. Rocks and crystals of all kinds filled the shelves. “I’m looking for my wife,” he said to the man behind the counter. “She might have been in here yesterday.” Dorian showed him a photo from his wallet.

  The man hooked his thumbs in the top of his overalls and leaned to look at the picture. “Yep, Stephanie, I know her. She liked the amethyst. I figure she spent an hour hunting for a good specimen.”

  Dorian caught the edge of the counter to keep from falling. His legs had no strength. He looked at the crate overflowing with purple crystals.

  “Didn’t buy anything, though. I offered her iron pyrite, fool’s gold. She said if she couldn’t have the real thing, she couldn’t be happy.” The man smiled. “Besides, she said her husband sometimes buys her gifts, and she didn’t want to spoil his fun.”

  “Which way did she go?”

  “Didn’t really notice. Down the hallway, I reckon.”

  Dorian dashed to the door, then looked the way the man had indicated, as if there might be a chance to see her still. But the hall was empty. He glanced up the stairs into the lobby. The concierge was talking to a couple of men wearing six-shooters and badges. Security? The concierge pointed toward Dorian.

  “Thanks,” he called to the mineral shop man.

  “Nice lady. I hope you find her.”

  The elevator at the end of the hall was not the same one he’d ridden up, but he didn’t want to talk to security, so he rode it down to the transition level he’d come from. When he stepped out, the doors closed, and the elevator returned to the lobby.

  Were they really after him?

  After a couple confusing turns down hallways that didn’t look the least bit familiar, Dorian stepped onto an open-air bridge that ended at a platform overlooking the canyon. He breathed easier. A quick dash down the transitionway, and he’d be home, but the long cables that carried the tram he’d seen earlier to the ravine’s bottom were next to a platform a hundred yards farther away. An updraft ruffled his hair and dried the sweat on his face instantly. Wrong platform. The problem was how to get from the platform he was on to the one that he’d come from without retracing his steps?

  He crossed the bridge back to the mountain where three choices waited: the hallway he’d exited from, a short ramp to another ha
llway, and a set of stairs that at least headed toward the other platform. At the top of the stairs, a blue and yellow arrow pointed in the right direction.

  But the hallway’s transition theme was heavy stone work, like castle fortifications, and on the door’s other side, towering spires and crenelated restraining walls lined the paths. He’d missed the transition back to where he’d started. A dozen flights of stairs, two ramps and an elevator ride took him to another transition, clearly not the right one, but he needed to get back to the Inn at Mount Either he’d come from. Passing through transitions without a guide, he thought ruefully. I’m probably racking up room charges of astronomical proportions.

  The next transition felt vaguely Arabic. He ran into a fellow in a rush going through the door in the opposite direction.

  “Sorry, my fault,” said Dorian at the same time the other man said the same thing. He only had a moment to notice the fellow was wearing the same kind of pants and shirt he wore before they dashed their separate ways.

  The next had a rainforest look, but he recognized none of the birds that flew past the walkways. A blue and yellow arrow pointed down a hallway lined with jungle plants and short vines that dangled from the ceiling. He hurried past the closed doors until the hallway curved and the decor on the wall changed from matted vegetation to slick aluminum and recessed light fixtures. He pulled the door at the end of the transition zone open with relief.

  The door closed behind him.

  The lights were out.