Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 9.1

I went to Bill's first that morning. I took him a framed painting of a woman with no clothes on. It made my face go hot just looking at it. It was Sophie that talked me into taking it to Bill. She let me wrap it up in brown paper at least – she agreed that a kid walking through the city with the painting would attract attention. Luckily it wasn't very big – only about the size of a cookbook. There was a signature in the bottom right corner of the painting. Soya. Pretty retarded name. I wondered if Bill would give me anything for it at all.

Bill's was looking a lot less shabby these days. He'd lost weight and had a hair cut, and he was even wearing a suit. I didn't see his wife and kids at the shop. There was a young man I'd never seen before though, fixing a chair out the back.

"That's Chris," Bill said. "Started with us last week." But he didn't introduce me to Chris, and Chris didn't look up from what he was doing. When Bill sat down at his desk it blocked my view of the back room, and all I could hear was an occasional tapping sound from Chris and the chair.

Bill's desk had a little TV on it. It was warbling away in the background, showing a cricket game being played between some white people and some brown people.

"Nice TV," I said, trying to be polite.

"Following the Test?"

"Kind of," I said. I didn't know what he was talking about.

"They're killing us," Bill said, and laughed.

If someone was killing me I wouldn't be laughing.

The cricket stopped and it went to an ad for something called Safe 'n Sure. On the ad two old people were riding bikes and smiling and laughing, then it cut to this scene of blue water being thrown on something, then it was back to the old people again. The ad finished. I still didn't know what Safe n' Sure was.

"Well this is rather mysterious, isn't it?" Bill said.

At first I thought he meant the ad, but then I saw he was looking at the wrapped parcel under my arm. So I tore the paper off it and showed him the painting.

Bill held the painting for a long time. I could see his hands shaking – perhaps he was embarrassed about the naked lady too. "Has anyone else seen this?" he whispered.

I was about to tell him Sophie had seen it, but I'd never told him about Sophie before, and I knew I probably shouldn't: it would only lead to more questions. "No," I said. I tried not to look at the painting or Bill. I was glad his wife wasn't there.

He seemed about to ask something else, but he just wrapped the painting up in the paper again. "One fifty?" he said.

A dollar fifty. Fair enough. It was just a shitty old painting after all.

He reached over to the till and it popped open. He took out three fifty dollar notes and put them on the desk in front of me.

I stared at the notes.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said, swivelling around in his chair as if to ask Chris something, though he didn't. While Bill's back was turned I swept the notes up and stuffed them into the front pocket of my jeans.

The TV had gone to a news break. A woman with a serious voice was talking, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. Next to her head was a kind of window. On the window it said: MISSING CHILDREN. It cut to a blurry picture of my face as Bill swivelled back around.

He froze when he saw the TV.

A man was speaking now.

"Authorities are baffled as to the whereabouts of the three children, who ran away from the Trapper Home for Boys and Girls in late January of this year. The nine-year-old boy and ten-year-old girl" (here it cut to a photo of Sophie) "are believed to have a ten-month-old boy with them." A grey-haired policeman appeared on the screen. "Anybody who has seen these three, or knows of their whereabouts, is encouraged to come forward..."

Bill switched the TV off.

"Can't stand the news," he said. He put his glasses on and opened one of the dumpy catalogues scattered about his desk. Finally, he peered at me over the rims of his glasses. "Thanks for dropping by."

I floated towards the door. As I touched the handle he spoke.

"See you next time Benny."

I glanced back at him and nodded. Then, somehow, I was back out on the street again.

A few doors down from Bill's was a toy shop. I went in there to hide out for a while – I figured nobody would be suspicious of a kid in a toy shop. I pretended to look at the toys and waited for my heart to stop pounding.

When I got out onto the street again I saw a stuffed dog in the window of the toy shop, and I felt something hot in my throat. I went back in and bought it. It cost five dollars ninety-nine. When I was a couple of blocks away I took the dog out and looked at it. For some reason I got upset. I don't know why buying a toy dog would make me upset, but it soon passed, and I was okay again.

It's amazing how when you're nine years old you can be scared half to death one minute, but then twenty minutes later you're okay again. This happened to me. I was walking through the city and listening out for the singing dogs when I passed a tram stop. I decided on the spot to take a tram to the Chinas rather than go straight back to Ambrose. I'd never gone on a tram before, but I figured it couldn't be that difficult. I stood at the tram stop and watched what the people did, how they got on and bought a ticket and all that. Then I got on a tram. I had no idea if it went all the way to the Chinas, but it looked like it was going in the right direction. I was looking forward to seeing the Chinas. I liked them. They sometimes had tea with me in their shop. I liked having tea with them, even though I didn't really like the tea. It had green leaves in the bottom, and tasted more like boiled water than anything else, and it made me want to piss. Anyway, this was what the Chinas drank. But I didn't have tea with them that day, because I never reached the Chinas at all.