There was definitely something off about the room. The furniture looked like antiques, except nothing was scratched or worn. The wallpaper was decidedly retro. It was a floral pattern of pink and red roses that seemed to belong in another time, but there was no faded look to it. Slowly pulling the quilt off her and swinging her legs out of bed, Goldie realized that not only was she pain-free, she was also wearing a one-piece ivory slip with thin shoulder straps that broke about two inches below the knee.
“What is this?” she asked herself.
She slowly stood up, then, seeing an impression underneath the slip below her waist, she raised the garment to her stomach and looked down.
“What the hell isthis,like, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle?” she gawked.
She looked up and saw a push-button light switch on the wall near a door and walked over to push it. As the overhead lights clicked on, she drank in the old-fashioned look of the room. The fixture above her head had three clear bulbs, each one surrounded by frosted glass that looked like a flower. Violets, she decided.
She shook her head, not understanding. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. Who decorated this place? Auntie Em?”
She took a few wandering steps around the room and caught her reflection in the round mirror above the dresser. Her hair was still the same length, about five inches past her shoulders, but it was no longer blonde. It was her natural dark-brown color. It hadn’t been that color since she was sixteen.
Touching her hair with her fingertips, she suddenly heard movement just outside her door and went over to investigate. Turning a glass doorknob, she discovered a short man with a little pot belly in his mid-forties walking by in a red bathrobe and slippers. He was in a hallway with wallpaper that featured large pothos leaves, and he carried a leather toiletry case. He had a fringe of brown hair around his otherwise bald head and a damp white towel draped over his shoulders. Seeing Goldie, he suddenly stopped.
“You’re wearing a robe,” she announced, surprised.
He looked her over. “You’re wearing a slip,” he said, equally surprised.
“Why are you wearing a bathrobe?”she demanded with a pointing finger. She was so intense that the man was a little intimidated.
“People usually wear ‘em after, y’know, a bath. Or, a shower,” he feebly explained.
She looked at the man again, then to her right down the hallway. There were four other doors with numbers on them, two on each side. The number on the outside of her doorway read 9. At the end of the hall was an open door that led to a bathroom.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Sparkledove,” the man replied, puzzled that she didn’t know.
“What’s a Sparkledove?” she pressed. “Sounds like a Britney Spears perfume.”
“It’s a town… and this is the Sparkledove Arms.”
“What? Like a hotel?”
“Exactly like a hotel,” the man replied.
Goldie looked at the short man for another second or two suspiciously, then abruptly closed her door. She had no idea where Sparkledove was or who the man might be. She was thoroughly confused. But after a few more moments, she came to a decision:
“I gotta pee.”
She looked around and saw a suitcase and a pair of black shoes with two-inch heels next to the wall where the head of her bed was. On the wall above the suitcase were two hooks. There were three empty wire hangers hanging on one hook, and a dress and underwear hanging on the other. This was apparently her closet, since the room didn’t have any other door except the one that led out into the hallway.
“I must be dead,” she groaned to herself, scratching her head and picking up the suitcase. Like everything else in the room, the style of the luggage was dated, as if it were seventy to eighty years old. But, like everything else, it didn’t show much wear.
She tossed the bag onto her bed, clicked it open, and looked inside. Right on top of the neatly packed bag was a yellow cloth robe, a toiletry kit, and a medium-sized towel. Underneath were two folded dresses, three blouses, two pairs of slacks, bras and underwear, nylons, and a pair of walking shoes. All long out of fashion.
“Iamdead,” she concluded. “Hell is a place with shared bathrooms and clothing designed by Eleanor Roosevelt.”
Goldie put on the robe, took the towel and a toiletry kit, then ventured into the hallway to use the bathroom at its end. She discovered she was on the second floor of a three-story building. She also discovered the toilet in the bathroom had a pull chain instead of a handle, and the water tank was nestled up against the ceiling with a pipe that connected to the toilet. She had every reason in the world to be addled and panic-stricken, but having lived with Markie Santina for so many years, she was used to concealing her emotions amidst the unusual and stressful. Like the time Bennie the Bone was escorted out of their building by Bruno and taken for a ride from which he would never return. Or three different occasions when she had to submit to a full-body cavity search in police stations. Considering these Soprano-like episodes, she figured she would get answers sooner or later and decided to go with the flow.
Within fifteen minutes, Goldie had used the bathroom, returned to her room, and put on the most stylish of her dresses: a black button-up short-sleeve dress with small white daisies on it. She combed her hair and put on some red lipstick that was in her toiletry bag. Then, taking a deep, fortifying breath, she left her room, turned left in the hallway, and went to its end, where she turned right and found a stairway. She went down the stairs to discover it led into the main lobby of what the man in the red bathrobe had referred to as the Sparkledove Arms. It was an odd place. Like her bedroom, the lobby was decorated with out-of-date furniture that didn’t look old. There was a circular crimson sofa in the middle of the lobby with a high, 360-degree back. Looking right, there was a dark wooden reception counter with ornate carvings of wildlife on its face and a couple of dozen square mailboxes affixed to the wall behind the counter for room keys and messages. Across the lobby, to her left, were a pair of open French doors with sheer curtains that led into a twelve-table restaurant. It was half full, and all the patrons were dressed like extras from a Humphrey Bogart film. There was sconce lighting on the wood-paneled lobby walls, tastefully positioned here and there. They were fashioned like three candles, with the tallest being in the middle, and the bulbs were shaped like candle flames. Over in a corner of the lobby, not far from the reception counter, was something Goldie had only seen in black-and-white movies. It was a wooden phone booth complete with an accordion-type door and glass windows.
“Good morning, Miss Maraschino,” she heard a voice call.
She looked toward the reception counter and saw a woman in her early fifties standing behind it with her blonde hair pinned up in a beehive hairstyle. She wore glasses on her nose connected to a delicate silver chain around her neck. The name tag on her green-and-white polka dot blouse read “Maddie.”
“How was your evening?” she asked, smiling. “Was your room comfortable?”
