A Slap Dash Mystery Part Two

The rapping at my door interrupted valuable research time. I looked out of the bathroom and towards the hall door, then kicked the bathroom door shut. I'm from a big family. I know when I have to protect my privacy and when I don't, but in a hotel room, on my own, it can get hard to tell. That knocking could be anything from a housekeeper checking for occupancy to a guest rapping at the wrong door. But, as I wasn't quite in a position to answer it and shoo them away, I took the more prudent approach and shut the door. If anyone came in, I could yell at them from the security of a hollow-core barrier.

No one invaded my privacy, though, so I knew it wasn't staff. Whoever it was probably figured no one was home and left. Fine with me. I finished my research, or at least paused it for a while until I could pick it up again, and after I'd washed my hands I returned to the little desk the hotel provided. The chair was comfortable enough, though I wouldn't want to sit in it for too long. I'd been Googling transformations and magical spells all morning, as well as tarot cards and their power, and had come to a few conclusions, one of which was that tarot cards didn't work that way. They apparently only predicted the future; they didn't influence it, nor did they hold any kind of magical transformative power. That revelation had, however, brought me in new directions with my investigation, so it wasn't a failure at all.

Whoever was knocking at my door earlier was back suddenly, and they really wanted to grab my attention. I wanted to ignore the atonal, stuccado beat, but I couldn't; it wouldn't let me. So, I had to get up and tell whoever it was to just go away. I hated to confront them like that, but I was too busy for any nonsense.

It was Pretty-boy. I don't know how he found my room, but there he was, staring right at me and looking rather sheepish.

"Can I come in?" he asked, and his tone was so pathetic that I couldn't say no. I moved aside and made a sweeping gesture into the room, closing the door after he wandered inside.

He didn't say anything at first. All he did was wander around for a bit, glancing at my stuff scattered everywhere. He spotted my manuscript and went to it, lifting it from the nightstand and opening it to a random page. Then, he actually began reading it! The audacity! I'm not sure what prompted me, but I watched him do it for a while. Then, he scoffed.

"That's funny," he remarked, more to himself than to me.

That was a compliment. I said, "Thanks. You like the joke, then?"

He looked up at me with a little smile on his face.

"It's pretty funny," he told me.

"Which one is it?" I eagerly asked. "Is it the RDRR one? Or the euclidean theory?"

"You-clidian?" he pronounced slowly, looking lost. Then, he snapped my book shut and cleared his throat, saying, "Maybe now isn't the time..."

I had a pretty bad feeling about that. I snapped, "Well, which part are you on, then?"

"Um," the man hedged before weakly admitting, "The kissing part?"

"The kissing -?" Then, I was pretty mad. I told him, "That part's not funny!"

"No," he agreed without meaning it. "I know."

"Then, why did you say that?" I demanded.

"No reason," he said, shrugging.

"No, tell me!" I needed to know. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," he weakly assured me. Then, he said, "It's just that -!"

"No," I told him. "Nevermind! I don't want to know! You didn't come here just to criticize my writing, anyway, did you?"

"No," he replied warily. "I didn't even know you wrote."

"So, why are you here?" I demanded.

"Well, it's about that murder," he began to explain.

But I couldn't let him go on, not with the elephant he'd just brought into the room. I told him, "Wait! Stop! What's wrong with my writing, anyway?"

"What?" he asked, and he gave me the deer-in-headlights look. He stammered a bit, then weakly muttered, "Nothing. It's fine."

But it didn't sound like it was fine. It sounded like it was far from fine. And I didn't like it! I demanded, "What's wrong with it?"

He hedged a bit more, but seeing that he was cornered, he started groping for the right words to say. After an interminable wait, Pretty-boy finally said, "Well, they're supposed to be kissing, right?"

"Yeah," I told him, a bit more huffy than I wanted, but he was really irritating me. "Why?"

"Have you ever kissed anyone?" he had the audacity to ask.

"I don't think that's any of your business!" I sharply told him. Then, I had to know, "Why?"

"Well," he hedged again before saying, "They're supposed to be kissing, right?"

"I already told you that!" I had to remind the idiot.

"Well," he said, his thoughts all over the place, "They're supposed to be kissing...but you make it sound like they're eating each other's face off."

"What?" I demanded. I'd never heard a more ridiculous thing! Obviously the man couldn't read! "I do not!"

Pretty-boy opened the packet again, and began to read aloud. Apparently, his finger had bookmarked the precise spot he'd read to himself earlier.

"'Their mouths worked together in chewing motions, devouring each other's souls...'," he read in that halting way that avid readers found annoying. "'A chill ran up his spine. Was this it? Was this the one? Was she the one he had been waiting for all his life?'"

I interrupted him then. The way he was reading it made it sound bad. He was deliberately doing that, and I couldn't let him continue! "Okay, that's enough!"

He stopped, then sheepishly lowered the manuscript. I noticed, though, that he still left his finger in it as a bookmark.

"All I'm saying is," he said in that half apologetic way people have of telling you your writibg stinks, "Every time I've ever kissed someone, I'm not wondering if they're 'the one' or not. Generally, I'm just enjoyng the -!"

"Okay!" I snapped before he made me sick. He already put an image in my head that'll never come out, even with bleach! "I get it! It needs a rewrite!"

"It needs a lot of -!" he started to say, and I quickly had to remind him why he was there.

"You came about the case?" I asked, trying to get him back on track.

"Oh, yeah!" he suddenly brightened. "The case!"

"What about it?" I asked. I was glad to get him back on topic again. And, I was pretty surprised anyone came to me about it. As far as I knew, I was the only one that even knew there was a case, at all.

"Well, I was talking back there with that woman, and -" he said, then stopped and wrinkled his brow. He seemed deep in thought for a second. I didn't want him to get lost, so I asked him, "What is it?"

"You really think kissing is like that?" he asked, scrunching up his nose.

"What?" I snapped. What did that have to do with the case? Then, it came to me all at once, and I had to defend myself from the brute.

"It's called poetic style," I told him. "You wouldn't understand it."

"I don't know about that," he mumbled mostly to himself. "It just sounds like you've never kissed anyone before..."

"I've kissed a lot of people before!" I protested. He was really getting insulting, now.

'Okay," he remarked in a patronizing way that really got my hackles up. "You've kissed a lot of people!"

He wasn't going to throw me off by agreeing with me! I let him have it!

"I have! And I've done more, too, so -!" I had to stop myself before I came off as moronic as I felt. I didn't have to explain myself to him! It's not my fault I chose my writing career over romantic entanglements! Besides, the word is my lover! I don't need anyone or anything else! And, besides, it had nothing to do with the mystery.

"You said," I said, winging things back on track, "You talked to someone about the case?"

"Oh! Yeah!" he exclaimed, "I did! That woman! She said she needed help!"

"Help?" I asked. He got confusing again, probably because he was confused easily. I shouldn't have cared about it, though. Whoever she was went to him for help, not to me. It was none of my business. But that's not my brain's opinion on anything, really, and it wouldn't be long until I started wondering what that was all about, so I decided to get it over with right away. It would be much easier to forget about it if I knew for certain it had nothing to do with me. "What kind of help?"

"Well," he hemmed and hawed again, and it was really irritating! But before I started yelling, he miraculously found his tongue and said, quite frankly, though a bit meekly, "She wants me to investigate her murder."