The wisdom to know the difference

Sealing the door closed on California’s least glamorous sauna for the third day in a row, Franks instructions ran through her head as they had done on repeat since he had left her there. She muttered the words under her breath.

Ten straight steps from the pool-house door. This was the easiest bit to remember.

75 degree turn to the left.

25 steps forward. She remembered this bit too, because it was her age.

Turn right and take __ steps and dig. She slammed her palm to her forehead.

Dig for longer than you think and then dig some more, girl.

Penny chewed at her bottom lip and tried desperately to ring her memory out like a damp cloth. She picked at her filthy finger nails and cursed herself for not remembering the missing number. Days she had been digging now, not quite sure if it was the right spot. She knew for sure it was less than 10 but that still left 9 feet of maybe.

The sauna was barely bigger than a red telephone box like she knew from back home in London. She drew up a scoop of water from a leaky bucket on the floor and poured it onto the rickety boiling system, it hissed, instantly filling the room with fragrant woody steam which caught with a metallic edge at the back of her throat. Her whole form ached and she hoped there was enough food left in the kitchen for another night. Penny slumped onto the cedar panelling and tried to slow her breathing. She liked to feel the tiny beads of sweat erupting from her skin. The faint sound of the generator outside the door spluttered as it struggled to keep up with task. The mains electricity had gone the day after Frank left.

The remote desert property was empty now save for Penny. The place had easily housed 20 people on rotation in its day and sometimes at dusk you could feel the imprint of many souls having passed through.

Slick with sweat now, she opened the glass door of the sauna with a creak and stepped out into the pool-room. Her body steamed and her hot bare feet met the cool dusty tiles as she walked silently to the main house, wrapped in a desert dry towel. She walked past loud amateur art which hung incongruously on every wall and a door that had been locked until recently. The day before he left Frank had finally busted open the padlock and revealed a room full of ransacked medical supplies. She wanted to patch up a nasty cut on her forearm before she ate, it took a minute of searching through empty bottles of pills before she found a box of band-aids which would do the job.

A month ago when she had arrived at the property Penny hadn’t yet cottoned on to the secrets of the house. Her hosts had been thin on the details at first though as the weeks had gone by she had excavated enough that the full picture had started to reveal itself.

She stopped to look at the handmade poster on the wall of the pool-room before heading into the living room. The moisture from the murky pool had curled the edges of the yellowing paper. The text was in pink bubble writing with stars and hearts drawn around it.

꧁༒•DRUNK BITCHES WIFI CODE : BILL WILSON•༒꧂

The first time Penny had typed this password into her laptop she’d done so without any idea who Bill was - presuming it was just some guy who had lived here. It was only weeks later when she’d gone to find a book to read and found his, The Big Book on the shelf - along with much other literature about alcoholism. She had asked Frank who had made the poster and he had told her it was a group of Bachelorettes who had rented the house for a weekend a while before she arrived. They hadn’t stayed long, claiming they wouldn’t have booked if they had known the pool was going to be broken. She had checked the review on the Air B&B and they had given it one star and written “Do NOT stay here - its not clean and it has a super creepy vibe. Totally ruined Kelsey’s Bachelorette”.

This had made her smile. She loved the strange house and she didn’t care that the Californian desert dust had made its way onto every surface in the house. Frank didn’t care much for doing “that maid shit” and neither did she so that place remained un-dusted and in disrepair. The second week of her stay she had opened a cupboard and found it full up to the ceiling of shoes. Frank had explained… “This was something he did. When patients arrived he would confiscate their shoes and make ‘em walk on hot coals.. Kinda like an initiation.” Frank was from New Jersey. Penny loved to listen to his accent - she had only heard it in films before. When he had told her stories of his colourful past she hung on his every raspy word.

The long pit of coals was still there in the yard and when she walked on the arid land she imagined what it would be like to arrive here from the city, sick and addicted. Before it had closed down 8 months ago, this large domed adobe building had been a rehabilitation centre. One of 6 in the state run by the same slime-ball crook and shut abruptly under shadowy circumstances. Frank didn’t like to talk about it much. He had worked here as a councillor - after he got clean - a pay it forward system, if you like. He had stayed when it didn't seem like anyone with any authority was coming to seize the property.

Frank had told Penny he had planned to look for the box alone - after hearing retellings of the co-ordinates from past councillors. Assuring himself that he would start after the summer heat had died down but his lungs were not good and he had always found some reason not to. The owner, who Frank had worked for, was locked up now and would be for a long time. “Peculiar guy, kind of a genius though” Frank had said one day. Sucking down a Marlboro with an enthusiasm Penny had never seen. “More people left this place sicker than well and thats the sad truth”.

The sun was setting. This was always an act of theatre in the desert - a psychedelic curtain call that never ceased to bring a shiver to her skin. Boulders in all sizes all of a similar warm shade sat in piles scattered around the vista like a giant hand had crumbled them into place at random. Scenery seasoning. There was dense cactus in parts and desert shrubbery. The trees that populated the land in high definition were staccato silhouettes now on the cerise sky. Penny imagined coyotes and rabbits coming out of their burrows to take the evening as theirs.

Back in the house Penny moved around the space slowly, she had taken to dressing in whatever clothes she found in the patients old rooms instead of washing hers as the water tank was almost empty. She was sure she cut a curious scene in the large industrial kitchen wearing large mens basketball shorts and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her legs covered in bruises with a bust up elbow.

She cracked a can of warm alcohol-free beer and drank it down with an insatiable thirst - it was the only potable liquid left. There was food in the fridge but when she opened the door a wall of warm, stale air hit her. There was very little left which wasn’t already past its best and she decided that she could only reasonably stay one more day. She opened a can of refried beans and cut up a limp pepper, pouring it straight into the can with some hot sauce. She found a fork in the sink and wiped it off on the shirt and padded into the living room. The living space was a large round room directly under the dome of the house and it would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so neglected. It was getting dark outside, Penny lit a candle and settled onto one of the large sofas to read. She was doing what she had done every night since finding them, reading peoples darkest regrets. When Frank had left she had investigated into all the rooms that had been off limits and had found a trove of documents in a large filing cabinet in the old office. Within the loose and scrappy documents there was neatly filed folders and lastly, one solitary small black notebook. Leather-bound and worn it had been so snugly tucked at the back of the cabinet she almost missed it.

Tonight, for the first time she decided to read it. This notebook didn’t follow the same format of the scattered pages she had been working through. Penny cleared her throat and re-wrapped her legs underneath her more tightly than before. The others had been painful lists of happenings that the writers were ashamed of - they had been compelling to read. Like watching a car crash, unable to look away. They were called “moral inventory” she had found by researching into this world she knew nothing of before arriving here. This was different. She could tell almost immediately as she flicked through the pages. This book, in minute and tidy script, contained descriptions of people. Women mostly. Whether they were beautiful or stubborn or old or young. There were dates written next to their names. Any names of men she found simply had one of two things written beside them. On side or Off side.

Her throat tightened and she turned the pages more feverishly now not stopping to care whether she ripped the pages until she found what she was looking for..

Frank. Off-side.

Relief flooded her body and Penny let out a deep breath that she realised she had been holding since she opened the notebook. She was trembling. This book hadn’t belonged to a patient. Theories that until now had seemed far-fetched suddenly stacked into place in her mind and the horror of what had happened here rang around the building like a gong, reverberating off every surface.

She turned to the back page and saw it written, plain as day.

10 R

75 Turn L

25 Strt.

R Turn

7 Strt.

Without stopping to think she ran, clutching the book and robotically followed the notes. After the final 7 steps she dropped to her feet and dug with her bare hands. Letting out a guttural howls as she wildly hurled dirt over her shoulders.

Hours elapsed, the sun was beginning to rise and she had switched the shovel after the initial rage she had felt had deadened and her hands had weakened. Penny was panting and filthy by sunrise, she would never forget for the rest of her life the sound of shovel hitting tin. She dropped to her knees and dragged the box out of the earth. She held it close to her chest, picked up the notebook and walked gingerly back into the house, through the living room, past the bowl which held her keys, straight out the front door and into the truck.

She opened the box. In it were IDs and a passport. Fakes she was sure, on account of the different names. All with the same piggy eyed picture of an overweight man in his 40s. There was a folded up paper with a prayer written on it. There was a stack of cash, which she counted dispassionately.

20,000 Dollars

She turned the ignition and set off at speed. She needed to find Frank.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.