The Waiting Room
~ Chapter Sixty-Six
Books, Lost Loves, and Translations
His
letters! Jack could not believe it. He scrambled off the mattress and
headed towards the door only to find it blocked with rubberneckers.
“Out of me way!” he demanded, gesturing his arms for them
to step aside.
The men grumbled as they cleared another path for the
pirate. Jack marched over to the bar to find young Jack not at his
station. He let himself behind the bar and found a freshly opened
bottle of rum, returned to the front side of the bar and took a seat.
He lay the letters side by side on the top of the bar,
smoothing the wrinkles from his clenched hand. The letters had been
through so much already. He thought of the lost letter, the one from
Ally on the Flying Dutchman. He regretted that he would never be able
to read that one. Perhaps she would write again. For now he had
Jessie’s and Carrie’s letters and the third one that he had yet
to read the signature. He feared if he knew that it too would
disappear.
He picked up Jess’s first. The Spanish words
sprawled across the page. A few he knew but he was not fluent enough
to translate the whole thing. He sighed and replaced it to the bar.
The one from Carrie was in French. Again, the words meant
nothing to him and yet it seemed she had much to tell him.
“Why,
girls?” he asked as he put the bottle to his lips and swigged the
amber liquid, never taking his eyes off the letters. “Why’d ye
write, knowing I can’t read the words?”
He looked around
The Room, watching as the men went about their business. His eyes
fell on DeMarco, then glanced over to Lt. Victor. Both were Spanish
descent. Both spoke the language. He could ask them.
His eyes
stopped at Frenchy and then the Earl who had showed a command of the
French language. Could he ask them?
Sparrow turned back to
the bar taking another long draw on the rum. No, he thought, these
are me letters. Private. The girls had something to say but did not
want just anyone reading the letters. Would it be right to let
someone else read them?
And knowing how much he was disliked
in The Room, would the men give him a true translation?
The
third letter lay with the first two. And what of this one, he
thought, what language lay upon those pages?
One by one he
folded the letters and placed them inside his opened white shirt,
keeping them safe for now next to his heart. He patted them as if
double checking they were still there, then took a final drink from
the bottle, finishing the rum.
Across the room, Noodlemantra
was busy emptying the book cart, ignored by all after he had left the
bedroom. Dean returned to the table, his cigarette hanging limp from
his lips, the smoke tendrils danced towards the ceiling.
“What
do you have for me today?” Dean asked through the smoke, sliding
into the chair.
“I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl.”
Dean
took the book from O.N. It was a fictionalized tale of the actor
Fatty Arbuckle.
“Interesting…a novel. Why this one?”
O.N.
shrugged. “I think his production company is optioning it for their
first movie. Depp referred to Arbuckle as the O.J. Simpson of his
time. You know, accused of a crime, gets off, but the world never
quite forgets it.”
“An actress died because of him, didn’t
she…something about injuries sustained during their, eh, escapade
together?”
“See, that’s what I mean. He was acquitted,
but that is how people remember him. He was a great comic, quite
articulate, rose from nothing to become something. But the world
remembers him as an overweight man who killed a girl in bed.”
Dean looked around The Room. “Er, you don’t think…?”
Noodlemantra waved his hand to stop Dean’s thoughts. “No,
no, Depp’s not planning on becoming Arbuckle. Just producing,
that’s all. I don’t think Fatty will become part of our little
clique.”
“Next?” Dean reached for the next book. A
biography on Robert Falcon Scott, an Antarctica explorer. Again, Dean
held up the book in question.
“One of Barrie’s friends.
Thought he needed insight on who J.M. was acquainted with during his
lifetime.”
The book hunter placed the tomes aside. He
wasn’t sure if there would be anything in them to help him in his
search of the secrets of The Room. He noticed an antique magazine on
the cart.
“And that?” he pointed to the yellowed
periodical. Noodlemantra lifted the magazine, a Ladies Home Journal,
dated 1945. On the cover was a picture of a beautiful woman, beneath
it told the reader that it was of the actress Maude Adams.
“This
is for Barrie himself.”
Noodlemantra turned to the room to
locate the Scottish author.
“Mr. Barrie!” O.N. called out
to him.
The Scotsman turned to find Noodlemantra holding up a
magazine. His eyes sparkled at the sight of the woman on the cover.
Quickly Barrie closed the space between them and reached for the
magazine.
Noodlemantra carefully placed it in his hands.
“Please be careful with it, Mr. Barrie. It was quite
difficult to come by. I will have to return it by next week. Do not
let anything happen to it. It is nearly irreplaceable.”
Barrie
nodded as he walked away taking the magazine with him and sitting
down on the couch. With a delicate touch he opened the magazine to
the designated page and began to read about the woman who had brought
Peter Pan to life for the first time in America on stage.
Noodlemantra turned back to Dean who was watching Barrie with
curiosity.
“Some say that Adams was in love with Barrie but
he never returned it, though he held her up on a pedestal for what
she did for his plays. They were a team. He wrote, she acted. In fact
her last play was by Barrie. She eventually withdrew from society and
lived her last years on a farm in upper New York State. Barrie was
devastated by her death for years after.”
The men gave
Barrie another glance, watching as the man’s face became shadowed
by grief. It was so sad to love something so much and not be able to
admit it even to one’s self.
“Well, if there’s nothing
else, I will be heading out,” Noodlemantra said. Dean nodded as
O.N. turned the cart around.
“See you around,” the book
hunter said.
“Later,” Noodlemantra added and made his way
to the exit door. But as he passed Sparrow he threw two more books up
to the bar, the sound of them landing on the wood bar jolted the
pirate as if a hammer had struck next to him. He turned around on the
stool and watched as Noodlemantra went through the door, fighting the
urge to follow him.
He then gave his attention to the two
yellow and black books. He lifted the top one and read the cover.
The Dummies Guide To Spanish.
Sparrow made an
acknowledging grunt, setting it aside and lifting the second book.
The Dummies Guide To French.
It looked as if Jack was
going to have a long night of reading ahead of him.