by J. C. Geiger
“Good. Yeah, me too,” William said. “Well. I got a garage. Don’t advertise or nothing, but I’d be happy to take a look.”
“Tonight?”
“I can sure try.” William forked over a business card, glossy as an oil painting. And beautiful. It depicted a suspension bridge over a blue ribbon of water. Clusters of trees, clear sky. The back of the card read: Goodview Towing, William Scholz.
Lance checked the name against William’s overalls, then stuck the card in his pocket.
“Wait,” Lance said. “Where were you planning to tow the car?”
“Lady told me to take it to The Boneyard.”
“Boneyard?”
“Junkyard,” William said.
Tires crackled on blacktop, and a green taxi bounced into the parking lot. The creak of brakes. A door popped open and a large man unfolded, stretching skyward, stacking legs, trunk, shoulders, and beard. He wore a rust-colored duster. Rain droplets stained his coat a darker brown.
“You Lance?” the taxi driver said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Meter’s running.”
Lance’s phone vibrated. A text from Miriam.
Hey you. What time are you heading over?
“I have to make a quick call,” Lance said. He stepped under the eaves. Cracked phone and a wet screen. His finger was shaking and would not land on the call button. He tried twice. Three times. And finally:
“Hi there!” his mother said. “Back on the road?”
“What are you doing with the car, Mom?”
“Are you in the taxi, Lance?”
“What’s happening to the Buick?”
Silence.
“A junkyard, Mom? You’re taking the Buick to a junkyard?”
“Did you think I was having it towed to Bend?” she asked. “The tow would cost more than the car.”
A little twist of disdain on the word car, like the Buick didn’t deserve to be called one. William and the driver were facing each other. Rain pattered on their shoulders—taparatataratatap—like distant drums.
“Maybe you can go back up to Washington,” his mother said. “Get it later.”
“How’s that going to happen?”
Water dribbled down through a hole in the roof, tapping his shoulder.
“If I leave the car, I’ll never see it again,” Lance said.
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“It’s true.”
His voice was going reedy.
“They’ll pay you something for the parts.” She sighed. “You can keep the money.”
So that was it. Her angle. His car for a cab ride. His car for a night with Miriam.
“What else are you going to do, Lance?” his mother said. “You’re not going to spend the night in Washington.”
Her words twisted in his stomach. That clammy feeling, like when she’d told him he wouldn’t drive to Seattle. His friends had chimed in: You’re too busy. You won’t go by yourself. You’re afraid of the city.
Yet, he’d gone. He hadn’t been afraid.
Streets teeming with people: so many voices, accents, cultures. His eyes too wide and too small at the same time, straining to peel back the skin of the place and get down to where the notes were humming. He could sense music, quivering along the edges of skyscrapers, cutting long, clean lines against the sky. Solos hiding on street corners. Symphonies in the sewer.
“I’m staying with the car,” he said. Was that him talking?
“You’re staying.”
Worse, hearing her repeat it. With one swift sentence he’d painted himself into a corner, his mother had applied the second coat, and Miriam and the party were on the other side of the room.
“Really, Lance?” His mother laughed. “You’re staying. Miriam is going to love that.”
He could already hear their conversation. His mother’s ripe chuckle. Miriam, giggling. And then he told me he was staying. No, really? He did. He really did. Oh, Lance.
But they’d only laugh if he came home.
“Lance?”
“I’m not leaving Dad’s car.”
Lance launched the D-word. A rocket, dragging a vapor trail through the sky. It pinged off a satellite and rushed over mountains, roads, and streams to land with the precision of a sniper’s bullet in his mother’s ear.
His mom was quiet. Dead, maybe.
“So that’s what this is about,” she said. “Has your father been in touch with you?”
“Seriously, Mom? No.”
“You want to keep the car? Go ahead and stay. I hope you enjoy your night in the wild.”
“I’m at a gas station, Mom. Not the Serengeti.”
His mother hung up. A low ringing, between Lance’s ears. Once, freshman year, his friend Darren had kicked him square in the balls. There had been a swimmy, head-buzzing moment just before his body processed the injury and brought him down in a heap of gut-clenching agony. That’s how he felt now—floating through frozen time, about to feel the pain. He walked quickly to William.
“William,” he said. “Can you tow me to your garage?”
“Yeah? Sure thing, bud. I’ll hitch her up.”
“It would be great if you could fix it tonight.”
“I’ll do my best,” William said.
The taxi giant stepped into their conversation. “So, you ready?”
William walked to the truck, leaving them alone.
“Hi,” Lance said. “So I guess I don’t need a ride anymore.”
“What?”
“I don’t need a ride. I’m going with William.”
“You got a ride,” the man said. “You just ain’t paid for it yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I had to drive out here. I’ve been waiting ten minutes. That costs something.” The man had severe gray eyes. Out of place in his wide, bushy face.
“How much?”
“Fifty,” the man said.
“Fifty dollars for ten minutes? That’s insane,” Lance said. He looked around, and there was no one to appeal to. William was hitching up the Buick. “You expect me to eat the gas on this ride?” the man said. He pursed big red lips.
“I’m not paying you fifty dollars.”
“And I ain’t leaving until I get paid.” The man hitched up his jeans.
Lance looked down. He was still wearing the clothes from his audition. Khakis. Polished shoes. Still, he’d rip the man’s eyes out. Clutch his keys into a spiny fist and pummel his face. He would take out his wallet. Hands trembling, he would take out his wallet and hand this man fifty dollars.
The driver took Lance’s money with a thick, grease-stained hand, rubbing each bill between his fingers. Careful as a bank teller. Then the taxi driver got in his car and rolled away with Lance’s fifty dollars. Lance checked his wallet. Yes, the bills were gone. He felt sick, like the money had been carved out of his belly.
He picked up his trumpet case and walked to William’s truck. Inside, the murmur of talk radio. He grabbed the door handle, and something exploded against the window. A pompon of orange and white fur, claws skittering on glass. Lance shrieked. A barking cocker spaniel, and William yanked it back by the collar.
“Daisy, goddamn it!” William shouted. “C’mon, kid. Get in.”
William clutched Daisy to his thigh, and Lance climbed into the cab of the truck. The cocker spaniel snarled. The truck rattled to life, and Joe’s Place shrank in the rearview mirror. They turned onto Highway 2, dragging the Buick behind them. Towering conifers swallowed them. Day had already tipped into evening, and darkness hardened in the gaps between trees.
“So. Where you headed?” William asked.
“I’m trying to make it back to Bend.”
“I mean, where you headed now, bud?”
He was headed to the party, of course. William would fix his car tonight and he would make it. He’d be with Miriam in a matter of hours. What else could possibly happen?
“Trainsong?” William said. �
�Don’t know why I’m asking. It’s the only place.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you were going to fix the car tonight,” Lance said, warble in his voice.
“I can try,” William said, flipping on the windshield wipers. Drizzle, coming and going. “We better head to the Trainsong. Nice little motel.”
Motel. The word had never entered Lance’s travel vocabulary. There had been chain hotels with his mother and campsites with his father. Motels were squat, neon-lit habitats one went rushing past on the way to better places. Would there be amenities? A pool and hot tub? Miriam was probably in the hot tub now. In a swimsuit. That blue one, for sure. The one that gapped in a mind-altering way when she leaned forward, and he could just lean over and—
“Easy there,” William said.
Lance’s right leg was jackrabbiting up and down. William and Daisy, eyeing him.
“Sorry,” Lance said.
“Ha! Felt that shaking. Thought my truck was about to break down.”
“Restless legs syndrome,” Lance said. He held his leg still. Felt the crawling. Calves, pulling and tightening.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a condition. Makes me bounce my legs sometimes.”
“Heard of that,” William said. “Not just while you’re sleeping?”
“It can happen anytime.”
“Kinda young to have a syndrome, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Lance smiled. Tightness in his cheeks. He hadn’t smiled in a few hours.
“You in school?”
“Yeah. High school,” Lance said, looking out the window. So much darkness. Hundreds of miles of rivers and roads between him and Bend. “I graduate next Friday.”
“Play trumpet? Your mom said you were up here for an audition.”
“That’s right,” Lance said, tightening his grip on the case.
“How’d it go?”
“Pretty good. The Seattle School of Music has some amazing musicians.”
The three panelists had been friendly when he’d walked in, laughing about campus parking, offering water. But you could smell the experience on these guys: a thousand smoky club nights and street-corner gigs. Seasoned in hundreds of orchestra pits. They had chops. And when they watched him blow, their eyes hit him like the unnerving peal of a triple C sequence he hadn’t yet learned to play.
“I did my best,” Lance said.
“So you could be making music up in Seattle.”
“Probably not,” Lance said. “I’ve got a scholarship to Oregon State.”
“Corvallis, right? Beavers.”
“They’ve got a satellite campus in Bend. I got a full ride.”
“For music?” William asked, eyes glimmering.
“Business,” Lance said.
William turned back to the road. He looked uncomfortable, like something was itching him under his overalls.
“And I’ve got a job this summer. At Bank of the Cascades. I can live at home and save up money.”
The truck swallowed white stripes on asphalt, sucking them under its carriage. William gnawed the inside of his cheek.
“And my girlfriend is going to OSU too, which is perfect.”
“Well,” William said. “You got me convinced. Now, what kind of sputtering do you reckon it was, just before the car died? Was it a clicking, or more of a dinging? Did it kick in all of a sudden, or come on slow?”
As William talked, the road got darker, more remote. Like they weren’t traveling across the wilderness so much as tunneling into it. Moments later, a white blaze of light struck the sky. A giant, luminous flotation device—like the kind you’d throw a person who was drowning. It was the size of a car, mounted on a building. White with red lettering: the float.
“The Float?” Lance said.
“Ha!” William’s smooth, baritone laugh. “Spent plenty of time there. Might not be driving this truck if it weren’t for all them nights at The Float.”
“What is it?”
“The Float is it. For twenty miles in any direction. Roadhouse. Only place to get a meal. Or a drink. You’ll get to know it real quick.”
“Roadhouse,” Lance said slowly, tasting the word’s rural mystique.
Just before The Float, William turned in and parked between a pair of motel buildings. Long two-story structures, divided by a parking lot.
“Here’s the Trainsong. This is where you’ll be staying.”
“Until you fix the car, right?”
William cranked up the hand brake. “I’d go ahead and get yourself a room.”
The rain had returned, a thickening drizzle. Lance collected his things from the Buick. Orange duffel bag, suitcase, backpack. He stacked them neatly around his trumpet case. His pile of things looked small and wet.
“Gimmie a call in a few hours,” William said. He slapped Lance’s back, his hand like a soft sack of bones.
William hopped in his truck and fired the engine. Then the Buick was being dragged away, taillights smearing red trails through the rain. In Lance’s stomach, the hole the cabdriver had carved ripped wider.
Loss. Something was gone.
“William!” Lance shouted. He ran. “William! Stop! Wait!”
The truck rolled forward. Lance’s foot shot out over loose gravel and he stumbled, scooped up a rock and flung it at William’s truck. A deep clang, like a church bell. He’d nailed the side, just under William’s window. Taillights flared. William climbed out into the rain. Backlit in red. Frizzy hair, cocked head. With a chain saw, he would’ve been a one-man horror movie.
“Boy. What in the hell?”
“Sorry,” Lance said. “I left something in the glove box. It’s really important.”
“So you throw a rock? That’s what you do?” They stared at each other through the drizzle.
“Well, go on,” William said, shaking his head.
Lance tore into the glove box: insurance, registration, and starlight mints. It was still there. Thank god. The worn envelope with his name. lance. He kissed the envelope and put it in his back pocket. William climbed back into his truck. The Buick lurched out of the parking lot and shrank down the length of highway, taillights turning to mist.
Gone.
Lance gathered up his things and walked toward the front office. The sign in the window said welcome trainsong, and looked like it had been drawn by someone in elementary school. Inside, the lobby was small. A shoe-box diorama of a real hotel. Straight ahead, a wooden counter with a brass bell and a nameplate:
cheri front desk
He assumed Cheri Front Desk was the woman in the tiny squeeze of a workspace between the counter and the back wall. She was staring at a dinosaur of a computer monitor, tan and boxy. Cheri and the monitor were of the same era. Her skin was orange and looked overpixelated, as if her face had missed an essential software upgrade everyone else in the world had gotten around 1990. Long fingernails pecked at the keyboard.
“Excuse me,” Lance said. “Excuse me.”
Cheri’s fingers, swift and violent, crushed down on the home row.
Lance rang the bell.
Cheri stopped, then craned her neck at a crazy angle, like her head had a swivel option most humans did not. Her eyes blazed blue and she looked in every way like a mythological creature who would ask him riddles and eat him.
“Was that you, got towed off by William?” Cheri asked.
“Just now?” Lance asked. “Yeah.”
“Where’s he taking your car?”
“Back to his garage.”
“Lordy.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “You looking for a room tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“One night or extended stay?”
“One night. Definitely. He might even have the car fixed tonight.”
“William?” She laughed. “Hoo-ee. You sure you don’t want extended stay?”
“What do you mean?” Lance asked.
“Oh, nothing. Here’s y
our paperwork. Go on and sign.”
The forms covered things like make and model and maximum occupancy and insurance and evacuation routes, pet policies, maximum seasonal charges. When Lance turned the sheet over, Cheri snapped the paper out of his hand and poked her finger at the X.
“You don’t have to read the whole thing. Just sign.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Wowee. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that. Look at you, blushing.”
Cheri slapped down a metal key attached to a cartoon train with its smokestack snapped off. Brittle plastic.
“Room two twenty,” Cheri said. “Welcome home.” Lance loaded his things onto his shoulders and walked around the side of the building. The steps leading up to the second floor were painted blue. The same blue as the building and the banister and the doors and the hinges, suggesting the entire Trainsong Motel had been painted all at once by an air tanker dropping a single load of high-gloss periwinkle.
On the balcony, Lance had to step around a pair of muddy black boots. The mud was hard, like the boots had fused to the floor last winter. In the room just before his, someone was watching a game show turned up to action-movie-volume levels. Laughter and applause rattled the windows.
LET’S SEE WHAT’S BEHIND DOOR NUMBER TWO!
Lance opened his door to the warm odor of a nursing home. He took a final gulp of fresh air, then plunged in, groping for a light switch. It was smaller than hotels he’d stayed in with his mom, but not cramped. A queen bed, covered with a floral spread that might’ve been quilted in Cheri Front Desk’s basement. A window, facing the parking lot. To his left, a small desk wedged in the corner. Two wall hangings. One: a puffy, homemade tapestry of a keeling sailboat on wooden dowels. Garage sale material, the fifty-cent pile.
Wall hanging number two was something special.
Right above the bed, an enormous framed photograph of twin tabby cats. The picture could’ve been cute, but the tabbies looked like they wanted to maul the photographer. Giant, angry cats. Staring straight at him.
“Nice, Cheri,” Lance said. “Charming.”
He set his horn by the desk, then took the envelope out of his pocket and searched for a place to stash it. In the nightstand drawer, a Bible and a slender phone book. He opened the yellow pages to auto repair.
One advertisement on the page. ROBERT’S AUTO REPAIR: A REAL MECHANIC. That was all it said. Lance traced his finger down the listings. Between GOODBAR GARAGE and GREAT AMERICAN AUTO PARTS was exactly nothing. GOODVIEW TOWING wasn’t even listed. He took out William’s card with all its depth and shading and perfectly inked letters. Somehow not in the yellow pages.