Speaker 1: Hollo. I'm walking stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. I arrived on a Thursday, just
Speaker 1: ahead of what the hotel calendar grandly called the Great
Speaker 1: Lakeside Reading Retreat. I'd chosen the place, an old hotel
Speaker 1: draped in history and likened by a broad Vermont lake,
Speaker 1: as much out of weariness as curiosity. Retirement, despite what
Speaker 1: people tell you, is an acquired taste, one i'd not
Speaker 1: quite gotten used to. My wife and I had uprooted
Speaker 1: for her daughter's job in Minneapolis. But I'd somehow found
Speaker 1: myself with too many afternoons, not enough of my own chores,
Speaker 1: and a vague ache for mystery. A week at this
Speaker 1: retreat sounded just right, words, walks, and hopefully a new
Speaker 1: notebook full of impressions to make sense of my unscheduled life.
Speaker 1: I'd been assigned Room seventeen. A stroke of luck, said
Speaker 1: missus fallen at the desk, since it were one of
Speaker 1: the brightest with views you'll remember. She spoke in the
Speaker 1: polished but punctured way of someone managing the same property
Speaker 1: for decades, Friendly, curious, brisk, sarcastic at the edges. When
Speaker 1: she handed me my brass key. I felt foolishly like
Speaker 1: I ought to tip her for the privilege of mystery.
Speaker 1: The climb to the second floor was a lesson in patience.
Speaker 1: The stairs creaked, the carpet whispered with the footprints of years,
Speaker 1: and shadows seemed to cling to the base boards in
Speaker 1: odd places. The door to seventeen still bore a faint
Speaker 1: stencil faded from gold. Inside the room had a pleasing geometry,
Speaker 1: two upholstered chairs, a walnut desk, a reading lamp with
Speaker 1: a slightly cracked parchment shade, and a wide window set
Speaker 1: deep in a creamy wall. I set my suit case
Speaker 1: on the sturdy bed spread and circled the room, tracing
Speaker 1: the edge of a dustless bureau, as if by old reflex.
Speaker 1: The window drew me almost before I'd finished unzipping the bag.
Speaker 1: I peered out. The view at first matched every hope
Speaker 1: I had carried with me. Bare trees, their branches and
Speaker 1: etching against the sky, slouched over the winter d old
Speaker 1: garden beyond ice clung to the edge of the wide lake,
Speaker 1: and gentle snow tumbled silently, thinning as it crossed the view.
Speaker 1: The whole landscape had that hushed particular to a March snow,
Speaker 1: neither deep nor determined, but enough to sketch the ground
Speaker 1: in white and turn the air opalescent. My mind skipped
Speaker 1: a step snow. The forecast all week had boasted the opposite,
Speaker 1: a rare Vermont heat wave, sixty degrees in sun, enough
Speaker 1: to bring out the first daffodils. I fished my foam
Speaker 1: from my inner coat pocket, thumbed it on, sure enough
Speaker 1: the cheerful blue icon, a cartoon sun reading sixty four
Speaker 1: degrees f mostly sunny, with a low of only forty two,
Speaker 1: no mention of snow, no advisories, no sudden storms. I
Speaker 1: looked back out. The flakes still drifted even as I stared.
Speaker 1: A pair of gray juncos hopped under bare hydranger, scattering
Speaker 1: powder with their wings. I stood up straight, trying to
Speaker 1: think rationally old glass, perhaps some film on the pane.
Speaker 1: I reached up, tapped gently, solid, cold and clear. I
Speaker 1: stepped away, paced the room, then, in a moment's whimsy,
Speaker 1: strode out into the hallway. The air was distinctly warm,
Speaker 1: carrying a hint of lilac from some air freshener, or
Speaker 1: perhaps just the memory of spring. After a moment's consideration,
Speaker 1: I returned to my room and braced myself for a
Speaker 1: colder reality. But inside that hush had faded. The room
Speaker 1: was no colder. Only the window seen the same snow undisturbed,
Speaker 1: gently falling as dusk pressed through the trees, a trick
Speaker 1: of the light. I told myself it must be too
Speaker 1: many hours in airports, too little sleep, Or perhaps I'd
Speaker 1: grown so addicted to the ordinary pleasant strangeness of hotels, strangers, smells,
Speaker 1: weird pillows, all that anticipation, that my mind had decided
Speaker 1: to invent a little atmospheric drama of its own. I laughed, gently,
Speaker 1: dropped my scarf on to the arm chair, and wondered
Speaker 1: for a moment how often whether forecasters got it wrong
Speaker 1: up here? I told myself, I'd look again, really look later,
Speaker 1: when I was less traveladdled. For now. I poured myself
Speaker 1: a glass of tap water, watched a last flake swirl
Speaker 1: against the glass, and sat down to write, March Room seventeen,
Speaker 1: snow impossible. By breakfast the next morning, my mind had
Speaker 1: reset itself to the gentle eccentricities of the hotel. I woke,
Speaker 1: as always before sunrise. The habits of thirty years in
Speaker 1: a class room, refusing to retire with the rest of me.
Speaker 1: The room was darker than I expected. The window sill
Speaker 1: rhymed with what looked like frost, but I ignored it
Speaker 1: for the moment in favor of my morning notebook ritual,
Speaker 1: three pages by hand before coffee. Old teacher's tricks die hard.
Speaker 1: I still write in block caps, as if I might
Speaker 1: some day be called to explain my thinking to others.
Speaker 1: This morning, my pages circled around how lazy and restless
Speaker 1: I had felt since moving, how strange it was to
Speaker 1: be somewhere. My face was a secret again from my door.
Speaker 1: The hallway tilted slightly down its boards, so uneven I
Speaker 1: had to step sideways in places at risk of stepping
Speaker 1: into a groove or sticky patch of wax. The old
Speaker 1: hotel had that once grand, now cozy feeling that only
Speaker 1: places with careful owners truly possess. The walls carried photographs
Speaker 1: in tarnished brass frames, wedding groups from the twenties. A
Speaker 1: dog perched atop snow banks, three women wading at the
Speaker 1: lake shore. Someone missus Fallen presumably had arranged them not
Speaker 1: in neat rows, but in what seemed a map of
Speaker 1: shifting personal memory. I followed the morning smells. Slow brewing
Speaker 1: coffee cinnamon muffins would smoke from somewhere beyond, though it
Speaker 1: was too warm for the fire places to be in use.
Speaker 1: The lounge where breakfast was offered opened onto a semicircle
Speaker 1: of mismatched arm chairs and low tables, scattered with newspapers, notepads,
Speaker 1: and the odd pair of abandoned glasses. The crowd was earnest,
Speaker 1: half chatty, and half dream like. Missus Fallen presided from
Speaker 1: a seat by the doorway, a paperback resting on her
Speaker 1: lap so confidently it threatened to be a prop. She
Speaker 1: looked over the assembled guests like a chest master at
Speaker 1: the board. She greeted me with a nod as if
Speaker 1: I'd been attending these breakfasts for years, and with a whisper,
Speaker 1: handed me a menu that I soon realized was almost unnecessary.
Speaker 1: The options ran classic oatmeal with dried cherries, soft scrambled eggs, toast,
Speaker 1: a compot of overripe apples. The staff moved quietly, almost reverently,
Speaker 1: as though to disturb the routine would violate the spell.
Speaker 1: At a table near the window sat mister Canning bald
Speaker 1: except for a price of heroic combed over hair, flipping
Speaker 1: through the New York Times crossword and muttering words under
Speaker 1: his breath. He wore two pens clipped to his shirt
Speaker 1: pocket and had, I later learned, been summering and some
Speaker 1: times wintering in the hotel for over a decade since
Speaker 1: his wife's death. He offered me a half salute as
Speaker 1: I passed on a faded rose couch. A woman with
Speaker 1: cropped hair and heavy glasses scribbled in a bound note
Speaker 1: book so intently she missed her tea cooling beside her.
Speaker 1: This was Elina, already legendary among the group for her poetry,
Speaker 1: her staccato laugh, and an indifference to both routine and interruptions.
Speaker 1: I would learn later that she treated oddities much like
Speaker 1: the rest of us treat off handed weather, a curiosity perhaps,
Speaker 1: but rarely a real disruption. Pete, the night manager, was
Speaker 1: stacking juice glasses behind the counter, grinning that easy, eager
Speaker 1: grin that only people knew to their jobs seem able
Speaker 1: to give. When I complimented the marmalade, he approached with
Speaker 1: a semi conspiratorial tone and asked, first time here. When
Speaker 1: I nodded, he replied, you'll find it grows on you.
Speaker 1: All sorts of hidden corners, ask if you need local
Speaker 1: hikes or where to get real pie tell. Structure itself
Speaker 1: encouraged these pockets of conversation. The lounge, the small library
Speaker 1: with bay windows and ancient encyclopedias. The segmented hallways branching
Speaker 1: in unexpected directions, staircases that seemed to arrive at slightly
Speaker 1: different heights depending on how tired you were. Some doors
Speaker 1: were permanently closed. One bore a lock whose key Misses
Speaker 1: Fallen alone managed The building held both temporary and long
Speaker 1: haul guests, with missus Fallen assigning rooms by arcane principle,
Speaker 1: or so it seemed. Everyone swore there was a system.
Speaker 1: Each room had its peculiarities, slanting light, squealing pipes, the
Speaker 1: odor of tobacco or mint or neither. The staff retained
Speaker 1: that perfect balance between knowing and not knowing, present but discreet,
Speaker 1: aware but never intrusive. Discussion at breakfast. Beyond the crossword
Speaker 1: which mister Canning solved loudly, looped and curled around the
Speaker 1: familiar interests of a retreat. Which authors were most likely
Speaker 1: to provoke, disagree agreement, which view made for the best
Speaker 1: reading which year the scones had reached transcendence. Several returned
Speaker 1: guests joked about how charming the building was, or how
Speaker 1: the quirks kept you honest, but nothing more precise was offered.
Speaker 1: When I made a passing remark about my room being
Speaker 1: drafty or the view being painterly, Elena looked up and
Speaker 1: blinked owlishly, as if to say, is that the nature
Speaker 1: of old buildings? Mister Canning grunted non committally. After breakfast,
Speaker 1: there were suggested activities readings in the library, slow walks
Speaker 1: along a lakeside path where melting snow alternated with candy
Speaker 1: bright crocuses, and this was my favorite time to sit
Speaker 1: pen in hand. Unhurried. As the day began to open,
Speaker 1: I spent the first part of the afternoon skimming a
Speaker 1: slim book of Vermont history in a patch of sun
Speaker 1: on the window sill for an hour. The small crowd
Speaker 1: of literati drifted through the library, leafing through stacked volumes
Speaker 1: and exchanging polite theories about Chekhov and thorough In this
Speaker 1: first day, nothing about the hotel felt especially odd. Apart
Speaker 1: from its practiced eccentricity. The delightfully cluttered reading nooks, the
Speaker 1: Betty lamp still glowing in the stairwell, the overstuffed mail
Speaker 1: cubby behind the front desk. I felt, if anything wrapped
Speaker 1: in ritual repetition. Everyone seemed to know their orbit. But
Speaker 1: that sense of repetition also allowed for looseness, things you
Speaker 1: could notice if you kept your eyes open just a
Speaker 1: bit wider than usual. That evening, just as the group
Speaker 1: discussion on regional storytelling was winding down, I returned to
Speaker 1: Room seventeen, intending to jot a few notes on what
Speaker 1: I had overheard, something about the way Elena paused as
Speaker 1: Stanza had grabbed at my memory. My key stuck, as
Speaker 1: if reluctant to allow me privacy. But once inside, I
Speaker 1: found the room had retained its gentle chill. The window
Speaker 1: again drew my attention, not because I was seeking strangeness,
Speaker 1: but because the dusk seemed to deepen there faster than
Speaker 1: in the hallway. I moved forward quietly, my notebook still
Speaker 1: in hand. The garden below was shrouded in snow more
Speaker 1: than before, deeper. Curling in among the shrubs and dusting
Speaker 1: the iron tables with bright powder, someone a shape indistinct
Speaker 1: walked in the near distance, head bowed against what looked
Speaker 1: like a windy squall. I watched the snow swirl higher,
Speaker 1: the light changing to a blue, almost violet at the edges.
Speaker 1: I frowned. Suddenly insistent, I snapped my notebook closed and
Speaker 1: strode out into the hallway, the heavy door rattling faintly
Speaker 1: behind me. The corridor was brisk, even a little warm,
Speaker 1: now unmistakably tinged with spring air. Determined, I made my
Speaker 1: way downstairs, weaving past guests reading in the alcoves, and
Speaker 1: stepped through the antique double doors into the parking circle.
Speaker 1: The outside was muddy, the sweet, sharp smell of new
Speaker 1: earth everywhere. The grass, tough and bruised by boots, ran
Speaker 1: all the way to the lake, where a few slabs
Speaker 1: of ice hunched together on the shore. There was no
Speaker 1: snow at all, and certainly no chill dense enough to
Speaker 1: warrant a scarf. I paused, half laughing, half annoyed at myself.
Speaker 1: I looked back up at the hotel's wings, trying to
Speaker 1: compute angles. If I stood here, Room seventeen would be
Speaker 1: two floors up, third window from the left. What I
Speaker 1: saw instead was my own reflection caught in the dusky glass,
Speaker 1: no sign of snow, only the yellow of lamp light
Speaker 1: and the shadow of some one moving within. No trace
Speaker 1: of winter, no one walking in the garden. Dismissing it
Speaker 1: as some trick, perhaps a reflection burned in my brain,
Speaker 1: a childhood memory intruding on real sight, I turned to
Speaker 1: retrace my steps inside. Pete greeted me from his spot
Speaker 1: at the front desk, where he was untangling a foam cord.
Speaker 1: He caught my expression and grinned weathers confounding out there
Speaker 1: to night. Huh. I hesitated, then mentioned lightly that I
Speaker 1: had seen snow from my window, A lot of snow,
Speaker 1: not just a patch micro climates, Pete said, eyes twinkling.
Speaker 1: Vermont's famous for it. Sometimes I think this hotel exists
Speaker 1: in its own little bubble. Could be the insulation. These
Speaker 1: old walls play games with the senses. He winked. But
Speaker 1: it was the wink of some one reciting a line
Speaker 1: learned from those before him. I decided, as I trailed
Speaker 1: back up stairs to pay more attention. The next day,
Speaker 1: I made a mental chart hallway temperature, window scene, physical
Speaker 1: reality outside. The teacher in me was hungry for data
Speaker 1: even of the unscientific, subjective kind. I wrote a note
Speaker 1: in my journal and propped it on the lamp, a
Speaker 1: promise to myself to test things properly come morning. The
Speaker 1: second morning, I rose, made my bed, another habit of
Speaker 1: the profession, and went straight to the window, notebook in hand.
Speaker 1: This time, the scene outside held none of the gentle
Speaker 1: winter of the day before. Instead, a thick, rolling fog
Speaker 1: covered the lake, slick the guard in mirrored silver. The
Speaker 1: glass itself felt cold, almost damp, as if the mist
Speaker 1: pressed directly against it. I pressed my ear to the pane,
Speaker 1: expecting silence, but fancied I could hear the slap of tiny,
Speaker 1: invisible waves on ice. I dressed quickly and made my
Speaker 1: rounds tea in the lounge, a quick chat with a
Speaker 1: returning guest about the merits of reading aloud, and a
Speaker 1: dash outside with a borrowed scarf. The air outdoors was clean,
Speaker 1: almost balmy, sunlight glancing through birch trees on the far
Speaker 1: side of the hotel lot, no fog at all. The
Speaker 1: sky was empty, clear, a few crows shouting from the
Speaker 1: tree tops. I pulled out my phone again, another promise
Speaker 1: of a warm, sun bright day. The contradictions were holding
Speaker 1: and growing more insistent. I began to keep notes time, temperature,
Speaker 1: what each window in the hall showed. That afternoon, during
Speaker 1: the group reading session in the library, I excused myself
Speaker 1: and returned to Room seventeen. Thunder unmistakable rumbled through the windows, whirled,
Speaker 1: and the gray water of the garden pond trembled with
Speaker 1: spattering rain. In reality, beyond the glass of the main lounge,
Speaker 1: sunlight curled through budding maples. I began to test, tapping
Speaker 1: the glass, peering sideways, holding my hand flat for any
Speaker 1: sign of projection or layering. I checked the frame for seams.
Speaker 1: The window opened no more reluctantly than expected. When I
Speaker 1: cracked it, a cold draft swept in, sharper than what
Speaker 1: I had felt anywhere else in the building, carrying the
Speaker 1: electric tang of a coming storm. I leaned out altogether,
Speaker 1: too far for comfort, and saw only the hotel's white
Speaker 1: painted wall, its metal drain pipe cold against my palm.
Speaker 1: The real garden staggered below in its muddy, marched thor.
Speaker 1: When I tried to bring some one up peat who
Speaker 1: was switching over laundry between floors, he peered around agreeably,
Speaker 1: shrugged and said some rooms keep a chill old pipes, maybe,
Speaker 1: but his voice had the ring of practiced uncertainty. I
Speaker 1: started to record the distinctions more obsessively, listing each detail
Speaker 1: inside Room seventeen, thickening fog at seven zero zero, a
Speaker 1: m a woman in a navy coat walking the garden
Speaker 1: path at nine fifteen, but on checking no one was out.
Speaker 1: Then missus fallen herself at the front desk, Mister Canning
Speaker 1: zooming through a crossword. In the lounge. I plotted what
Speaker 1: little I could see from the window with what was
Speaker 1: real outside, by walking the halls and reading the guest
Speaker 1: logs left near the entrance. In the evenings, the snow
Speaker 1: would return, an unhurried, soft, piling snow. But from Elena's room,
Speaker 1: Room three, on the other wing, there was nothing but
Speaker 1: the honest warmth of a spring night and the last
Speaker 1: light on young grass. I asked Elena about it, describing
Speaker 1: as casually as I could the weather patterns from my room.
Speaker 1: She shrugged, gazed, sliding away, as though my question was
Speaker 1: an intrusion on a decade of indifference. That's just old glass.
Speaker 1: Han filters everything at a poet's eye, and you'll see
Speaker 1: all kinds of storms that aren't there. Her answer was
Speaker 1: edged with humor, but not quite dismissive. She seemed content
Speaker 1: to let the room tell its own story. Curious, I
Speaker 1: tested physical explanations, the possibility of some clever light trick,
Speaker 1: may be a layered window or old filter. None of
Speaker 1: it held up to scrutiny. When I ran my finger
Speaker 1: along the ledge, I found only dust, and the cold
Speaker 1: was deafinite, but ordinary in its own right. I half
Speaker 1: expected to discover a screen projecting an old film, but
Speaker 1: there was only the solidity of wood and pain. I
Speaker 1: kept noticing people outside, sometimes bundled, sometimes not, forming odd
Speaker 1: little contradictions. One night, unable to sleep, I caught sight
Speaker 1: of a woman in an old fashioned hat walking quickly
Speaker 1: through the snowy path, lamp in hand. The hour was
Speaker 1: close to midnight. The next morning, when I mentioned it
Speaker 1: to Pete as I passed the front desk, he insisted,
Speaker 1: without looking up from the keys, that no guest had
Speaker 1: left the building after eleven, and in any case, there'd
Speaker 1: be no snow since February. At breakfast, I tried again,
Speaker 1: posing the oddities differently. I asked Elena if she'd ever
Speaker 1: noticed her view changing in odd ways. She peered at
Speaker 1: me with curiosity than a shrug. Every day looks different
Speaker 1: if you stare long enough. Mister Cannon grumbled whether obeys
Speaker 1: its own rules up here and returned to his puzzle. Pete,
Speaker 1: perhaps more receptive, offered a grin and said, you should
Speaker 1: hear about the draft ghosts. Nobody's fixed that, since the
Speaker 1: eighties place is famous for weird chills, makes a good
Speaker 1: story anyway. Missus Fallen changed the subject with effortless speed,
Speaker 1: steering the conversation to a debate on whether the best
Speaker 1: local writers came from the south or the northeast of
Speaker 1: the state. Not all the offhand comments felt so pointed.
Speaker 1: One morning, lingering by the tea cart near the lounge,
Speaker 1: I overheard two guests chatting. One a middle aged man
Speaker 1: with an accent I couldn't place. Joked, my room's always
Speaker 1: stuff in July, even in January. Guess the HVACX haunted.
Speaker 1: His companions snorted. I nearly joined the conversation, but thought
Speaker 1: better of it. Instead, I kept my eye on the
Speaker 1: line up at the breakfast buffet, looking for pattens who
Speaker 1: sat near the windows, who didn't, who commented on the
Speaker 1: view and who ignored it altogether. No one seemed to
Speaker 1: share my exact trouble, but the puzzle's outline was forming.
Speaker 1: I started, out of both boredom and obsession to wander
Speaker 1: different halls, eyes darting to each window that faced the
Speaker 1: gardens or the lake. Some rooms I could see had
Speaker 1: people moving in them, shapes passing at strange hours, curtains
Speaker 1: twitching open before dawn, guests staring absently at weather that
Speaker 1: may or may not have existed during a slow Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 1: Mister Canning, ever, the crossword devotee, ever reluctant to indulge
Speaker 1: in small talk, became my accidental ally. We sat across
Speaker 1: from each other in the lounge, sharing space, but not
Speaker 1: conversation until I noticed he was struggling with a clue
Speaker 1: atmospheric phenomenon four letters starts with D. Out of habit,
Speaker 1: I muttered dew. He grinned, a burst of delight surfacing
Speaker 1: and said, you're a teacher by training. I take it.
Speaker 1: We fell into conversation, swapping tips and stories of the
Speaker 1: city versus the country. As our talk wound through crossword
Speaker 1: puzzles and bad puns, I found myself mentioning almost by accident,
Speaker 1: the strangeness in Room seventeen, the snow that never matched
Speaker 1: the outside, the odd thunder storms at noon. I expected dismissal,
Speaker 1: a wise crack about retirement and boredom. He surprised me.
Speaker 1: He leaned, in voice dropping Room five. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: rain from my window in what five years now, even
Speaker 1: when there's thunder over the lake, just blue sky every time.
Speaker 1: Figured the tree line shielded my view. But he trailed off,
Speaker 1: then laughed uncomfortably, as if it were somehow embarrassing to admit.
Speaker 1: I seized on it. You've never seen rain at all,
Speaker 1: not a single drop, he replied, almost with pride. Once
Speaker 1: during that big nor'easter last November, there was a rainbow outside,
Speaker 1: and I opened the curtains and nothing, just cloudless sky.
Speaker 1: I chalked it up to bad luck. My mind raced
Speaker 1: with the implications. Have you ever checked with some one
Speaker 1: else another room? He shook his head. Didn't seem worth it.
Speaker 1: Figured the old place had quirks, and who wants to
Speaker 1: swap rooms for an experiment? He added arch Buoyed by
Speaker 1: the new lead, I cornered a few more guests over
Speaker 1: the next day. Most responded with variations on skepticism. There's
Speaker 1: nothing odd about Room nine, insisted a science fiction writer
Speaker 1: from Maine. But a visiting historian, a bluff cheerful woman
Speaker 1: in patterned scarves, mentioned her Room number eleven always seems dim,
Speaker 1: even when the sun's blinding outside, like looking through a
Speaker 1: lamp shade. She'd assumed it was the buildings or orientation,
Speaker 1: but when I checked the maps by the front desk,
Speaker 1: her window should have caught the full afternoon sun. Fueled
Speaker 1: by this, I proposed a test after the reading session,
Speaker 1: a whirlwind tour through a selection of rooms, comparing each
Speaker 1: window's view with external reality. Pete found the idea hilarious.
Speaker 1: This is the closest we get to a field trip.
Speaker 1: Should I hand out clipboards? But he agreed to help coordinate,
Speaker 1: with a handful of guests in tow Elina, mister Canning,
Speaker 1: the historian, and a poet named Sandeep, who delighted in
Speaker 1: anything absurd. We parceled out keys and dashed from room
Speaker 1: to room, calling out weather conditions as we went. Room
Speaker 1: five's window sky so blew. It seemed painted despite dusk outside.
Speaker 1: Room eleven dull almost sepia light. Room three matched the
Speaker 1: exterior exactly a normal sun warmed world. My room seventeen,
Speaker 1: distant fog branches rhymed with ice. Another guest room nine,
Speaker 1: nothing but what was honest in the air, sharp clear spring.
Speaker 1: As we huddled in the hallway for a moment, comparing
Speaker 1: notes and no small amount of laughter, I felt the
Speaker 1: first frieeson of something larger than myself. You ever wonder,
Speaker 1: Pete said, if the place picks your weather for you,
Speaker 1: maybe it gives you whatever you want or whatever you deserve.
Speaker 1: Elena counted, straight faced. We returned to the lounge, giddy
Speaker 1: and unsettled in equal measure. Missus Fallen appeared, arms folded,
Speaker 1: as if she'd anticipated commotion and tolerated it with grace.
Speaker 1: When I asked, as directly as I dared, if she
Speaker 1: knew which rooms had unusual windows, she offered only a
Speaker 1: maddening smile. Every building has its charms, mister Riley, Some
Speaker 1: you learned to live with the phenomenon, I realized was
Speaker 1: neither isolated nor random. Some guests, accidentally or by tradition,
Speaker 1: had lived for years with these inconsistent realities and made
Speaker 1: peace with them, or simple learned not to discuss them.
Speaker 1: Even Pete, ever hospitable. Admitted staff always tell each other,
Speaker 1: don't get attached to one view. If it's beautiful, appreciated,
Speaker 1: if it's odd, you'll adjust. That's how it goes. But nobody,
Speaker 1: not even missus Fallen, laid claim to an explanation. I
Speaker 1: felt the ground shift beneath me. My curiosity, once circumscribed
Speaker 1: to the quirks of my room, now stretched wider, spanning
Speaker 1: hallways and histories. The rules of the place seemed both
Speaker 1: established and unspoken, a tone, a set of possibilities you
Speaker 1: might brush past a hundred times before questioning why. It
Speaker 1: was in the late afternoon, after a lunch of sweet
Speaker 1: bread and cheese in the garden that I stumbled onto
Speaker 1: a new path of inquiry. I'd been loitering in the
Speaker 1: back lounge, idly fingering through the rack of ancient postcards
Speaker 1: donated by decades of former guests, pretty scenes of the
Speaker 1: hotel in every kind of weather, rose like dawns, blizzards,
Speaker 1: golden afternoons, shimmering on the lake. What struck me and
Speaker 1: set the hares rising on my arms was that several
Speaker 1: of the postcard scenes echoed exactly what I'd seen in
Speaker 1: my window. Fog rolling over an ice bund pond, A sudden,
Speaker 1: uncanny thunder storm, throwing tree shadows long over the grass,
Speaker 1: that first silent snow dusting the garden path. Even the
Speaker 1: shapes the angles seemed repeated. A sudden thought, perhaps the
Speaker 1: weather was less about the present than about something else.
Speaker 1: Time memory re enactment. I started to note down the
Speaker 1: dates on the post cards and cross reference my observations.
Speaker 1: A pattern leapt out fog at dawn, as in the
Speaker 1: card dated March nineteen thirty one, matched my morning's window view,
Speaker 1: a snow scene from nineteen fifty four, same as what
Speaker 1: I had seen my first night. My pulse quickened to confirm.
Speaker 1: I hunted down the old guest ledgers left in a
Speaker 1: glass fronted case near the front desk, lists of notable events,
Speaker 1: whether comments scribbled in various As I flipped through, ignoring
Speaker 1: Missus Fallan's raised eyebrow, I found more echoes. An evening
Speaker 1: squall March twelve, nineteen fifty four, guests marveled at the
Speaker 1: sudden hush August thunderstorm. Room eleven presents an odd grayness
Speaker 1: at midday. I gathered my findings and hesitantly went to
Speaker 1: Missus Fallan hoping for either confirmation or a gracious shutdown.
Speaker 1: To my surprise, after a long, silent appraisal of my notes,
Speaker 1: she motioned me to follow her to her small, over
Speaker 1: full office. She unlocked a drawer with an old fashioned
Speaker 1: key and drew out a narrow index file, faded to
Speaker 1: the color of milky coffee. Inside were neatly cataloged programs
Speaker 1: from bygone annual galas, ball invitations, hand written lists, and
Speaker 1: most importantly, archival photographs, many clearly marked with room numbers
Speaker 1: and dates. We spent an hour, joined by Pete as
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic note taker, cross referencing Room seventy Deane's view
Speaker 1: from different eras under every kind of sky, side by
Speaker 1: side with my note book. It was clear the moments
Speaker 1: I had witnessed through the glass often matched these documented,
Speaker 1: sometimes even photographed vignettes from long ago. A foggy dawn,
Speaker 1: a snow cloaked midnight, a solar eclipse noted in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four replayed in strange occurrence. Missus fallen. Never one
Speaker 1: to offer more than required, finally, said Wilford Merton built
Speaker 1: the place loved weather. There are stories about him. All
Speaker 1: these rooms, he said, should remember Pete Excitedly flicking through
Speaker 1: the documents, found an old blueprint. The rooms, labeled only
Speaker 1: with initials and some notations, indecipherable at first glance, but
Speaker 1: clearly meant to be more than mere room numbers. The
Speaker 1: more we discovered, the stranger it became. Some of the
Speaker 1: longer term residents, mister Canning among them, admitted almost sheepishly,
Speaker 1: that their rooms seemed to recall certain kinds of weather,
Speaker 1: a pattern persisting for years. The historian from Room eleven
Speaker 1: laughed and said, perhaps the past is leaking in. Others
Speaker 1: more grounded speculated architectural tricks, specific glass that darkens, or
Speaker 1: atmospheric quirks caused by window shape and antique air passageways,
Speaker 1: but the evidence was impossible to ignore. The off rooms,
Speaker 1: as I began to think of them, were synchronized not
Speaker 1: with the current day, but with a kind of memory,
Speaker 1: those moments documented by guests, hotel bulletins, and postcard writers
Speaker 1: decades earlier. Sometimes even weather that never should have happened.
Speaker 1: Here a red dust storm in a nineteen forties photo
Speaker 1: never known in Vermont, present in the window of Room
Speaker 1: twenty one. According to Sandeep standing in the archive room
Speaker 1: that evening, my sense of reality re arranged itself. What
Speaker 1: began as a strange inconsistency one window snow against spring
Speaker 1: sunshine was now a question far larger and richer than
Speaker 1: my original complaint. The hotel, whether by design or by
Speaker 1: some deeper, patient trick of architecture or time, itself, seemed
Speaker 1: to contain and replay the weather not only of the present,
Speaker 1: but of remembered days, sometimes from many decades past. Each room,
Speaker 1: it seemed, looked out on a fragment of time whose
Speaker 1: boundaries I could not entirely fathom. Missus Fallen, watching Peter me,
Speaker 1: with her old, dry smile, offered, we tell guests who ask,
Speaker 1: it's best to enjoy what weather you're given. That's the
Speaker 1: charm of old places. Yet I could see in the
Speaker 1: way she fingered the old keys a trace of wonder
Speaker 1: that even she couldn't quite smother. The late sun scattered
Speaker 1: gold and honey through the office windows. As Missus Fallen
Speaker 1: closed the archive drawer, her ring of keys settling in
Speaker 1: her lap with a decided chime. Pete, still hunched over
Speaker 1: the tangle of blueprints and post cards, snapped a picture
Speaker 1: of a particularly odd room notation. These little weather notes.
Speaker 1: They're everywhere, he murmured, voice bright and uncertain. There's a
Speaker 1: whole system here. I found myself echoing the cadence of
Speaker 1: his uncertainty, lest the impatience of a school room, more
Speaker 1: the low pulse of shared mystery. That night, nobody spoke
Speaker 1: directly of weather. At dinner, the talk spun out as usual,
Speaker 1: of plot of lost books, of the local bakery's rumored resurrection.
Speaker 1: But as the meal unfolded, the atmosphere in the lounge shifted.
Speaker 1: There was a new electricity. I caught Elena passing a
Speaker 1: glance my way, eyes serious above her tea cup, before
Speaker 1: she bent her head again to a battered edition of Yeats.
Speaker 1: Mister Canning sidled over after the cheesecake, demanding my opinion
Speaker 1: on six letter synonyms for remembrance. But beneath his gentle
Speaker 1: affect was a question he had yet to ask aloud.
Speaker 1: We were a half conspiratorial little society, joined less by
Speaker 1: a taste for reading and more by a question no
Speaker 1: one seemed able or perhaps willing to form into a
Speaker 1: full sentence. It was Pete who brought the subject back,
Speaker 1: Siddling up to my cozy arm chair in the library
Speaker 1: after dark had fallen, the air outside seethed with peepers
Speaker 1: and the metallic breath of spring mud, I told missus fallen,
Speaker 1: he said, we ought to look closer at the blueprints.
Speaker 1: There are weird symbols. See. He produced his phone thumb
Speaker 1: tapping through fuzzy shots from the archives. One blueprint was
Speaker 1: stamped with a looping barometric symbol, beside several room numbers,
Speaker 1: seventeen among them. Another bore notations almost lyrical dawn Calm
Speaker 1: thirty seventeen, scrawled in a precise looping hand. I know
Speaker 1: this is nuts, Pete said, But who writes stuff like
Speaker 1: perfect frost March three never repeated reflect for missus h
Speaker 1: it almost looks like he was what programming the place.
Speaker 1: My skepticism wobbled in the face of so much careful oddity.
Speaker 1: A builder with a poetic streak, I suggested, or just
Speaker 1: an eccentric's game. He grinned wide and sheepish. Sure, but
Speaker 1: you can feel it right. I've lived in old buildings,
Speaker 1: nothing like this, Sandeep said. His room showed desert light
Speaker 1: this afternoon, a burnt orange twilight right about four, when
Speaker 1: the outside was nothing but drizzle. That's not Vermont. What
Speaker 1: would it take, for I don't know a house to
Speaker 1: remember another landscape. His question caught me. Was it possible
Speaker 1: for a place to accumulate whether the way it accumulates
Speaker 1: stories retelling conditions, not just as an echo of memory,
Speaker 1: but as a tangible daily experience. I tried to recall
Speaker 1: any law from my own homes or the old city school.
Speaker 1: Nothing close A place imbued with sentiment, yes, but not
Speaker 1: with seasons. What does missus Fallan think, I asked After
Speaker 1: a beat. He let his breath out with a chuckle.
Speaker 1: She's so good at not answering, isn't she. I think
Speaker 1: she really does know something, or she's playing the long
Speaker 1: joke on us. It was late, and I excused myself
Speaker 1: with a half hearted grin, the weight of the day
Speaker 1: making my thoughts heavy and slow. Climbing back to seventeen,
Speaker 1: I paused on each landing, heart beating, not with fear,
Speaker 1: but with a thick, searching anticipation, as if upon turning
Speaker 1: the next corner, some kernel of the answer might unspool
Speaker 1: in the air and make itself heard. Not for the
Speaker 1: first time, I remembered some advice from my teaching days.
Speaker 1: If a puzzle grows more complex, the more carefully you
Speaker 1: attend to it, you might be asking the wrong question.
Speaker 1: The next morning, rain pattered steadily, at least outside Within
Speaker 1: Room seventeen, the window staged yet another scene, golden haze
Speaker 1: leaves turning. Late September. In my note book, I drew
Speaker 1: a line down the middle of each page, dividing window
Speaker 1: from world, a teacher's instinct for comparison. Eventually, the column
Speaker 1: headed window swelled with more verbs, shines, hushes, beckons. The
Speaker 1: world line sounded plainer, drips, thaws, thuds. At breakfast, I
Speaker 1: set my coffee on the table near Aleena, my mind
Speaker 1: brimming with the weight of evidence and contradiction. She was
Speaker 1: scribbling as ever, head bent low. I decided on directness.
Speaker 1: Do you believe it? I asked quietly. She glanced up.
Speaker 1: I brow arched which part ghost, weather or poetic architecture?
Speaker 1: Doesn't it unsettle you? Her smile came slow, wry, a
Speaker 1: little tired. It did. Years ago. My room used to
Speaker 1: show the first frost every morning, regardless of the month.
Speaker 1: I wrote five poems about it. Eventually I realized I
Speaker 1: missed frost, so maybe the room gave me what I
Speaker 1: really wanted. She sipped her tea. Considering, I stopped looking
Speaker 1: for reasons after that, in the crook of her words,
Speaker 1: I found a path. Perhaps the real anomaly wasn't the
Speaker 1: misaligned weather, but the piece others made with it. After
Speaker 1: the mid morning reading, Pete cornered me by the old papon.
Speaker 1: Just for nostalgia, he said, grin intact. Let's try something,
Speaker 1: he said, a bunch of us. We can log every
Speaker 1: one's window set times, room numbers all at once. If
Speaker 1: there's a pattern we're missing, maybe it'll show up soon,
Speaker 1: Pete mister canning Elena reluctantly. The historian and I had
Speaker 1: assembled in the lounge with a pile of room keys
Speaker 1: scavenged from Missus Fallan's lock box. Sandeep recruited herself her word,
Speaker 1: not mine, eager to inject the process with what she
Speaker 1: called poetic method amid scientific boredom, we split into pairs,
Speaker 1: each assigned to a handful of rooms, each equipped with watch,
Speaker 1: notebook and the bare minimum of preconceptions. Missus Fallan informed
Speaker 1: just as we finished our division of labor, only shook
Speaker 1: her head and muttered, mind you don't get lost, and
Speaker 1: bring the keys back. The task in retrospect was as
Speaker 1: much performance. As experiment, we found through the hallways, testing seventeen, five, eleven, three, nine,
Speaker 1: twenty one, and a few mysterious rooms reserved for storied
Speaker 1: guests of seasons past. We compared views times, whether outside light, drizzle, peepers, loud,
Speaker 1: a gray sky and window scenes that made nonsense of chronology,
Speaker 1: or place mountain peaks under low winter sun, a pond
Speaker 1: brimming with red dusk, even a moment where Room nine,
Speaker 1: generally normal, flickered briefly just before noon, with a shadow
Speaker 1: too elongated for the day. The data, when compiled, only
Speaker 1: disoriented further. Peete drew up a chart sketches and times
Speaker 1: flying nowhere close to matching, he muttered, and not all
Speaker 1: Old Vermont either. Sand Deep swears her room had a
Speaker 1: view of red cliffs like Utaw. Tell me that's not weird.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful, but undeniably weird. The more we looked,
Speaker 1: the less it seemed the hotel was anchored to a
Speaker 1: single time or climate. Some rooms favored particular days, always
Speaker 1: the same, Autumn, always dusk, always the hush of snow.
Speaker 1: Others leapt restlessly December in the morning and all August.
Speaker 1: After lunch, guests started to take it personally laying claim
Speaker 1: to their favorite scenes. The historian delighted in perpetually shadowed afternoons,
Speaker 1: Elena shrugged off hers, saying, give me frost or give
Speaker 1: me spring, so long as the coffee's hot. But the
Speaker 1: more I thought about it, the less satisfied I was
Speaker 1: with the usual narratives. Tricks of architecture explained at best,
Speaker 1: small anomalies. Shifted light, an odd chill, but not peering
Speaker 1: out in late spring to knock kneed man with a
Speaker 1: walking stick trudging through blizzard in period clothes. Not the
Speaker 1: flicker of lamps, Not the match between Room five's eternal
Speaker 1: blue and a photo dated nineteen seventy three. Not the
Speaker 1: replication of a long lost surface eclipsed from another age.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, as the group's energy faded, Elena drifted to
Speaker 1: my side while we waited for the teapot to draw.
Speaker 1: You realize, she said, this place has been full of
Speaker 1: travelers since the start. Maybe the room remember more vividly
Speaker 1: than any of us. And what do they remember? She paused, thinking,
Speaker 1: then smiled, It depends whose looking. That phrase, It depends
Speaker 1: whose looking. Landed somewhere between comfort and challenge on impulse,
Speaker 1: I cornered. Missus fallen that evening as she was cataloging
Speaker 1: books in the small office off the front desk. She
Speaker 1: sat sleeves rolled, eyes, tired but still keen as she
Speaker 1: ran her finger over a line of novels. Wilford Merton,
Speaker 1: the architect. I said, what do you really know of him?
Speaker 1: She took a breath, then, after a moment's negotiation with herself,
Speaker 1: gestured me to sit. Merton was, oh, what's the words? Theatrical?
Speaker 1: He claimed buildings should outlast ordinary use, that a house
Speaker 1: ought to give you, not just shelter, but something like
Speaker 1: a second life. There are stories every one in the
Speaker 1: village has won. He used to walk the property at dawn,
Speaker 1: jotting notes about you. Said the hotel would be a
Speaker 1: place to revisit perfect days, and not only one's own. Me.
Speaker 1: She shrugged. In my grandmother's day, rooms were said to
Speaker 1: be tuned. I never put too much faith in it,
Speaker 1: but there's always a sliver of truth in old stories.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's deliberate, some mechanism? She turned the
Speaker 1: question over, slow and careful. I think if it is,
Speaker 1: it's nothing. A wrench or screwdriver could fix a pause.
Speaker 1: You'll want to see the old records room. Then we
Speaker 1: keep it locked for privacy, but I think you've earned
Speaker 1: a look. The next morning, aided by Pete's keys and
Speaker 1: Missus Fallan's permission, we unlocked the door to the dark,
Speaker 1: low ceiling chamber abutting the basement stairs. Stale paper cedar,
Speaker 1: and a faint tang of old ink pressed at us
Speaker 1: as we flicked on a single bulb overhead. Sunlight didn't
Speaker 1: reach here, but the shelves were rich portfolios of architectural drawings,
Speaker 1: boxes labeled with years in neat cursive, a stack of
Speaker 1: brittle hard cover journals. Pete whistled softly, lifting a sheaf
Speaker 1: of diagrams I wateringly technical, and yet beside each window
Speaker 1: notation there were not merely numbers and measurements, but poetry. Rain.
Speaker 1: At dusk nineteen forty one, sun break after the hurricane
Speaker 1: Eclipse six forty two, a m room seventeen guests lingered,
Speaker 1: reluctant to leave. Another folder revealed photographs, each annotated Wilford
Speaker 1: Merton's hand, again precise. If each window frames a world,
Speaker 1: let each offer rest to the soul that needs it.
Speaker 1: Missus Fallen, reading over my shoulder, gave a low laugh.
Speaker 1: He was obsessed, you know. They say he built the
Speaker 1: place for his wife, who could never travel, wanted every
Speaker 1: room to carry her somewhere new, if only for a morning.
Speaker 1: Of course, people romanticize, but she tilted her head at
Speaker 1: the blueprints. It's something more than nostalgia, isn't it. The
Speaker 1: architect's journal, more intimate than any guest ledger, confirmed as much.
Speaker 1: There were sketches, pains divide with irregular lines, prisms nestled
Speaker 1: in corners, strange notes about reflection, ratios and recollection resonance,
Speaker 1: and slipped into the final pages A letter to those
Speaker 1: who stay here after me. Let it not trouble you
Speaker 1: if the view disregards your calendar. Let each vantage be
Speaker 1: a channel, a favor to heartbreak and delight alike. May
Speaker 1: you dwell inside the day your soul most needs, if
Speaker 1: not the one you expected. I read and reread this,
Speaker 1: startled at the gentle ambition wrapped in such eccentric language.
Speaker 1: I could almost smell the heavy memory of heartbreak for
Speaker 1: a wife who could not cross mountains or seas, or
Speaker 1: perhaps for the faded golden days of one's own youth,
Speaker 1: endlessly sought after, and here seemingly replayed, Pete broke the silence.
Speaker 1: Does this mean the rooms are what attuned to us,
Speaker 1: to our mood, or memories, or just the luck of
Speaker 1: the draw Missus fallen, eyed him with rare softness. Why
Speaker 1: should that, how matter more than the gift? But Pete,
Speaker 1: voiced tentative, would not let it rest. Is it really
Speaker 1: a gift? Though? If you never know what's real outside
Speaker 1: and what's real at all? Sandy piped up, appearing in
Speaker 1: the doorway, cheeks flushed. If it's beautiful and it leaves
Speaker 1: you better off, maybe we forget to ask it. As
Speaker 1: we leaped through every diagram, every plan, one stubborn fact
Speaker 1: held There was no obvious mechanism, not a hint of
Speaker 1: hidden wires, special glass machinery, no architect's secret lever. The
Speaker 1: windows themselves were old, battered in places, but honest every
Speaker 1: one in the end reached the same conclusion at the
Speaker 1: same time. Whatever Merton had desired, whatever this channel to
Speaker 1: remembrance amounted to, the process, was, at least in physical terms,
Speaker 1: quietly invisible. For an hour, our little group sat surrounded
Speaker 1: by archives, the dust of history, and affection, together combing
Speaker 1: the past as if its details could explain the present,
Speaker 1: Sandy read allowed the architect's favorite lines, may every window
Speaker 1: open on to what remains? And Elina scribbled one brief
Speaker 1: poem on the fly leaf of the oldest guest book.
Speaker 1: With Missus Falland's reluctant assent, my notes became less analytical,
Speaker 1: less the record of contradiction, and more a set of questions.
Speaker 1: Was I were we meant to solve this or only
Speaker 1: to notice it had happened. When we finished and Pete
Speaker 1: had locked the record's room again, Missus Fallan gathered us
Speaker 1: briefly behind the lounge counter, as informal as any teacher
Speaker 1: in the last minutes before afternoon. Bell I always thought
Speaker 1: of this as Merton's joke or his benediction. She said,
Speaker 1: if people leave happier, who's to say if the magic
Speaker 1: is real or only because they see what they wish.
Speaker 1: That evening and the one that followed, the mood shifted
Speaker 1: in the hotel. The weather inside windows and outside alike
Speaker 1: became less a source of problem than intimacy. I overheard
Speaker 1: guests comparing their favorite window scenes, recalling days from youth
Speaker 1: in the patterns outside their glass. My room gave me
Speaker 1: the winter I missed, mister Canning admitted, I slept better
Speaker 1: with the hush of snow. The historian from number eleven
Speaker 1: described how she'd grown to crave the oddly eternal twilight,
Speaker 1: a sense of time stretched just long enough to finish
Speaker 1: a thought. Pete and I, over late Coco in the
Speaker 1: kitchen discussed the oldest residence. They say the rooms change
Speaker 1: as people change, he mused, I can never tell if
Speaker 1: they are joking. He showed me a faded page from
Speaker 1: the archives in which a guest from the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: had written, I come to Room thirteen each spring. It
Speaker 1: always rains, just as I wish. Nobody minds. They let
Speaker 1: me have it. Elina meanwhile handed me a scrap of
Speaker 1: new verse weather remembers what we forget, loves us for
Speaker 1: our fever and ache, and leaves on the sill frost
Speaker 1: enough for longing. She winked, but her tone was gentle,
Speaker 1: no longer dismissive. Instead quietly. It dawned on me, quietly,
Speaker 1: and then with the certainty of a lesson. Long studded,
Speaker 1: but only now understood that the rooms odd weather had
Speaker 1: become for many not a glitch in the building, but
Speaker 1: a resource comfort nostalgia. The slow reweaving of time around
Speaker 1: individual need a place where the landscape out your window,
Speaker 1: unbound from the strictness of dates, could heal a little
Speaker 1: sense of heartbreak or recollect vanished ease. It was not
Speaker 1: the cause that mattered most, but the meaning wound through
Speaker 1: every conversation, every year, returned every postcard written home when
Speaker 1: one was young. On my last afternoon, I sat one
Speaker 1: final time by the deep window in Room seventeen. The
Speaker 1: world outside the building was loud with April's renewal, Robin's shouting,
Speaker 1: peepers swelling to crescendo, the distant grind of trucks prepping
Speaker 1: the road for eager tourists. But within that wide, beloved window,
Speaker 1: the scene held to a luminous, impossible autumn, a sky
Speaker 1: the color of fresh wheat, oak leaves burning, a still
Speaker 1: lake edge bordered in bronze and gold. Just beyond the glass,
Speaker 1: a pair of children in woolen coats ambled after a
Speaker 1: spatter of geese. Ghosts, memory or wish I did not know.
Speaker 1: I opened the casement for a moment. The draft was
Speaker 1: cool and true, and sharp with the sweet tang of woodsmoke.
Speaker 1: I felt content. The puzzle no longer urgent, but nurtured
Speaker 1: by wonder. My note book, half filled now with diagrams,
Speaker 1: whether notes, lines of poetry, and guest names, rested open
Speaker 1: on the desk, beside a cold cup of tea. In it,
Speaker 1: under the column meaning, I wrote, if every window frames
Speaker 1: its own world, what days might I be seeing through
Speaker 1: all the other untouched windows of my life? There was
Speaker 1: a strange generosity in it, a gift not of answer,
Speaker 1: but of endless, bearable surprise. I left the page open,
Speaker 1: my initials at the bottom, and moved quietly down the
Speaker 1: hall as the golden dusk stretched on, knowing that sometimes
Speaker 1: wonder is both memory and forecast, and sometimes it only
Speaker 1: asks to be witnessed, and that is the end. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, and I will see you in the
Speaker 1: next one.