The door opened with a hollow jingle-clank from the old bell above. It let in a bit of a breeze to lighten up the stuffy room and a tall 40-ish man who looked to be aging well despite being overly tanned strolled in. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, “it’s still the same set up from the English owners—here you can look—we’ve got to at least try—,” the man said urgently, motioning his friends inside. He didn’t seem to notice how out of place his bare, perfectly waxed chest was with his brief, very brief and almost see-through white Speedos looked standing on the old Victorian carpets next to the half dead begonias at the Doryman’s Hotel check-in desk.
The tired-looking proprietor looked skeptical when eight wet and sandy men and women tramped through her front door. They didn’t seem like the Doryman’s type, she thought. Her clients were old and had seen better days; these strangers were too young, too tan and too happy for Doryman’s, not to mention too loud, too wet and too sandy.
To make it worse, they didn’t seem to want rooms. They came in and wandered the small lobby, touching things. It was very irritating, but until they actually did something wrong she didn’t know what to say to this odd behavior—she just stood at attention and watched them with her eyes only.
After a quarter hour of watching them like a hawk, she decided they were definitely searching for something—covertly. Thinking of the safe in the back, she grew afraid she was going to be robbed at any moment. She couldn’t figure out where they’d hide the gun since between them no one wore enough clothes to conceal anything.
Finally, the stand-off was broken when the same man who led the charge through the lobby door bent deep and plucked an old wallet photo out of the half dead begonias.
“It’s here,” he told the others quietly.
Like a snake he turned to her and pinned her with his eyes, “We’d like to buy these begonias ma’am.”
Stunned, she said the first thing to come to mind, “But—they’re dead.”
The whole group was converging from all points to the plant stand full of half dead and overgrown begonias that she’d never quiet bothered to throw away since, after all, they’d been living in the lobby for decades.
Between the intense look in the man’s eyes and the threat of seven people coming close, all she wanted to do was escape to the backroom hotpot and a calming cuppa, but it was her lobby and she paid good money for those dead plants when she bought the place. “$500,” she said bravely.
“Done,” he said, turning to the others with the news.
In fewer moments than one might think $500 cash appeared, gathered from each of the eight and was plunked into her waiting hand. She took it and fled.
***
In his hand he held dead leaves, old dark pink flowers and Anna Belle’s picture. At first glance it might look to be a memorial of some kind, but he knew this wasn’t meant as a memorial, it was something much, much more important to him—it was a remembrance of a life. Anna Belle was the girl who lived.