Page 25 of Room Serviced
“Not really.”
Max, camera in hand, looked over at her and winked. “Then do whatever comes naturally.”
Sloane was perfectly aware she could be difficult and disagreeable. At work, she tried to at least be professionally difficult. With friends, she tried her to be pleasantly disagreeable, but sometimes they were wrong about things and there was no helping that.
For the past couple of years, in the time she’d gotten to re-know Max over various hometown weddings and holidays, she hadn’t bothered trying around him. She had a little, at first. But the more she let the facade slip, the more his eyes lit up. And now they were here, spending two nights in side-by-side rooms in an allegedly-haunted hotel.
“…so the newspapers dubbed this mysterious man the Coronado Casanova,” Max was saying. “Some guests have reported seeing a figure late at night in the poison garden, tending to the flowers. Could be him.”
Sloane, holding the camera and filming, was literally biting her lip to keep from talking, because Max was making a very nice video and she’d agreed to help.
“No one knows the exact number of people the Coronado Casanova murdered,” he went on. “There are some estimates as high as two dozen?—”
“Zero,” Sloane said when she couldn’t help herself any longer.
Even in the ugly white-green night vision, Max’s face lit up. “Zero? How do you know?”
“Were they eating the bouquets?”
“I don’t know what people did back then,” he said, took the camera, and pointed it at her. “Maybe.”
“Be serious,” Sloane said, trying to ignore the camera.
“They could have done anything!”
“Was he including chocolates or something? Maybe a fruit basket?”
“Not that I know of,” Max said, and Sloane sighed, waving a hand at the garden.
“Then he—if he even existed—didn’t kill anybody,” she went on. “Unless they had a severe allergic reaction, maybe? There’s, like, three things in the entire world poisonous enough to kill you if you touch them, and none of them are these plants. A rash, sure. Death, no.”
There was a slight pause, and then: “I have to know what the three things are.”
“I thought we were telling ghost stories about plants that are mild irritants at worst. When you touch them! Don’t eat them,” she said, and looked directly into the camera.
“I’m telling ghost stories. You’re doing a PSA while I check the EMF meter,” he said.
“We’re in a major city right next to a naval?—”
“Three things you can’t touch. Go!”
Max put the camera on a tripod, then walked over to an electronic box with a dial and lots of lights. It looked exactly like something that you’d expect scientifically-minded ghost hunters to use, which Sloane was pretty sure meant it was fake. She sighed.
“Okay, first is probably anything radioactive,” she told the camera, ticking it off on a finger. “But we all knew that, right? If someone ever offers to show you their uranium collection, just say no.”
“And report them to the CIA,” Max added from several feet away, where he was crouching on the ground.
“I don’t think the CIA is the correct authority.”
“Tell us something else you can’t touch,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her and grinning. Sloane’s heart kicked.
“Jellyfish,” she said. “Most of them will just hurt a lot, but there are a couple species that can stop your heart if they sting you. Also, poison dart frogs. If you’re in the rainforest and you see a tiny orange frog, do not touch it.”
“Noted. Should we start with the EMF meter or the spirit box?” Max asked, standing and brushing his hands off. Sloane looked down at the equipment. It was blinking with interesting lights and dials.
“Well, they’re both bullshit, so you choose,” she said, and Max laughed.
Sloane did not do a good job of being a chill, agreeable guest. She tried. Mostly. Sort of. Well, she meant to try, but every time she slipped and said something like Or maybe it’s lighting up because we’re in a major city with a functioning electric grid, Max would push her, and she’d push back, and before she knew it, they were arguing and she was staring at his mouth. Or his hands. Or the particular way the seams of his T-shirt sleeves looked where they disappeared over his shoulders.
