by J. C. Geiger
Lance grabbed the phone on the nightstand.
No dial tone.
He pressed down little white nubs. Dusty.
“Seriously?” he said.
He sat. In silence, the motel room settled around him like an itchy blanket. He stood. Paced. He ran his finger along the top of a lampshade and came away with a curling spiral of dust. He flicked it onto the carpet, then followed a charcoal-colored stain into the bathroom and jerked the shower curtain aside.
Antennae!
Roaches in the drain. Obscene feelers splayed out on white porcelain. His breath caught in his chest. Nothing moved. Dead roaches. Or hair. Dark strands trailing down to places unknown. Hairy drain. Well that’s it. He heard the words, spoken with his mother’s voice.
Down in reception, Cheri Front Desk continued to stab her keyboard.
“Breakdown Kid,” she said without looking up. “What’s happening?”
“I need a new room.”
“Why?”
“The phone doesn’t work. And there’s hair in my drain.” He planted his palms on the counter. “A bunch of hair.”
“Maybe it’s your hair.”
“What?”
Clacking keys.
“It’s not my hair,” Lance said. “The hair is black.”
“Do you like it?” she asked, facing him with her moon of a face.
“The hair? No, I don’t like it.”
“So why’s it still there?”
“Because it was there when I checked in. The room wasn’t cleaned.”
Cheri stood. “That room was cleaned.”
“Maybe it was cleaned. But it’s not clean.”
“What do you want me to do?” she said. “Housekeeping is gone.”
“I want a new room.”
“That’s the only room left.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“You could leave,” she said. “I’d refund your money. Or, I’ll tell you what. Since there’s no one else here, I’ll hire you for the night. The drain should take you about ten seconds to clean.” Cheri pulled a quarter from her pocket. “Here’s a quarter. That’s a pretty good hourly rate.”
She turned the coin in the light, grinning with her wide mouth.
Lance’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Miriam was calling him.
“I thought your phone was broken,” Cheri said.
“The room’s phone is broken.”
“Ooo,” she said, pointing to the cracks. “Your phone is broken.”
He pressed his phone to his cheek.
“I’ll be back,” Lance said.
“If I had a nickel for every time a guy—”
Lance slammed the door behind him.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey you,” Miriam said. “What’s going on? Are you really missing the party?”
How did she know? His mouth had no saliva. It could not produce words. His feet were thumping up the steps. Muddy boots in the hallway.
“Lance? You there?”
He stepped back into his motel room. The reality of his situation came into focus incrementally, like tiny letters during a routine vision check. He could hear the metal-and-glass slide of the Phoroptor, lenses dropping in front of his eyes.
schlink, schlink, schlink
Clarity, increasing.
“Party,” he said.
“The party. Tonight. Lance?”
schlink, schlink
“Yeah,” Lance said. But the party did not exist in this room. Not to be attended, nor to be missed. The Trainsong Motel could not occupy space on the timeline of his actual life. There could be no choice between Miriam and the Trainsong, because this was a parallel reality. A time-out.
“This can’t be happening,” Miriam said.
Lance agreed. But, somehow, time was still moving in Bend. He could hear the party warming up through the phone. Faint music. Scattered laughter.
“I’ll make it,” he said. “You have no idea how bad I want to be there.”
“You have to come,” Miriam said. “You’ll make it. We just need to—”
A voice in the background: Is that Lance? Miriam was handing him over.
“Lancelot! What in the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
Jonathan, already dialed up to ten.
“Hey, man. I’m stuck. The car is dead.”
“What? This is The Party, Lance. Do you understand? The. Party. You have the penthouse suite. I changed my parents’ sheets for this. Which was gross, Lance. Super gross.”
In the background, Miriam said something he couldn’t make out.
“Jonathan, I have no car.”
“Rent one.”
“I’m in the middle of nowhere.”
“Steal one.”
“Dude.”
“Lance. Over the course of a life, what’s more important? Doing what’s strictly legal, or experiencing the culminating moment of, literally, your entire life? I’m sure your dad taught you how to hot-wire a car.”
His dad had talked about it, but there had never been a hands-on demonstration.
“You’re serious,” Lance said. “You want me to steal a car.”
“Damn right I’m serious,” Jonathan said. “Lance. You’ve had zero fun this year. Old Man Disco Davis has partied harder than you. You’re about to turn into a shitty little bank-telling turtle for the rest of the summer. Listen, Lancelot. You’re better than this. You have to pull out something amazing right now. Defy expectations, okay? I’ll hold my toast until you arrive.”
A distant oooooo, like somebody spilled a drink. Miriam’s voice, orbiting closer.
“Lance. Lance?”
“Hey.”
“Sorry. Jonathan Davis is in rare form. Two White Russians and he’s already into the disco.”
“It’s not even seven,” Lance said.
“Your mom said she could get you home. Can’t you leave the car?”
“Did my mom call you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“It’s weird when she calls you,” Lance said. “I feel like I’m in an arranged marriage.”
“I’m glad someone called me.”
“Miriam.”
“Lance.”
“Did my mom tell you her plan? She wants to junk out the Buick.” The end of his sentence came out a croak. On Miriam’s end, stunned silence. He pictured her, locked in a soundless scream, shock and disbelief. Until she said:
“We’ll be at OSU next year. You won’t really need the car.”
“What?”
A thud of bone-jolting bass—choppy, syncopated guitar from Mr. Davis’s underground disco collection. The party, getting better by the minute.
Miriam! C’moooooon. Let’s get funked!
A male voice, closing in. Some idiot who couldn’t tell funk from disco.
Yeah! Shake that thang!
Who was that jackass? Darren? Had Darren heard Lance wasn’t coming? Darren had been waiting two years to take Lance’s place in the Miriam equation. He was probably eyeing the bedroom Post-it with a Sharpie.
“Miriam, can you go outside? I can’t hear anything.”
“Hang on.”
“Miriam, who is that talking to you?”
She was laughing, then nothing.
“Miriam. Hey, can you go back outside? I can’t hear you.” But there was no music. No Miriam. Lance’s phone vibrated against his cheek. He stopped breathing. His stomach hit a speed bump, hung in the air, and refused to come back down. He pressed the power button. Again. Then again.
Dead.
“No,” he said.
Panic came in quick, hot waves. Because there was no phone charger plugged into an outlet in his room. No phone charger in his suitcase or backpack or trumpet case or the orange duffel bag, which he had not opened, which he would not open. He clawed through everything else. Unzipped and rezipped and heaved out and scattered and paced the room until panic dulled to fact.
His charger was at Joe’s Place.
> “Nachos,” Lance said.
He picked up the landline. Still dead.
Somehow, his life had taken the wrong exit. He’d flipped over the guardrail and was going down. There was no taxi. No train. His car was broken and would remain broken. His virginity, intact. It would spend the night with him. Him and his virginity, curled up alone in bed in a shitty motel room with pissed-off cats and a drain full of hair that was not his.
Nothing in this room to throw. Nothing he could afford to break. A sickening feeling in his chest, and he needed to get it out.
Hands shaking, he unsnapped his case. He took out his trumpet, palms damp on cool brass. Then he yanked open the window and aimed the bell of his horn at the opposite building. With one breath, he reached inside, yanked out the hot feelings twisting in his guts, and blatted a wild, true sound out into the night. A growling wail, slapping the building across the parking lot, bowling over its roof, crashing somewhere off in the trees.
The air trembled with the noise, and Lance let the horn drop to his side.
Breathing.
There was a distant pop of glass and metal, like breaking a window with a home-run baseball. He stiffened. A warbling sound hovered in the distance, close to an F-sharp. Growing louder. The sound attached itself to a lone yellow light. A will-o’-the-wisp, bobbing behind the trees. The sound was a car horn. With the chug of a broken engine, a ruined white SUV bounced into the parking lot, hood metal skinned down to bone. One headlight dangled from its socket.
The car stopped and the horn blared.
The driver’s-side door popped open and a girl climbed out and her yellow sundress was covered with blood and she was screaming.
Somehow, he had white bath towels in his hands.
He was in a dream, outside, moving in slow motion, and the girl in the bloody yellow dress was screaming and jerking at the passenger’s-side door. She’d been driving, and a man was trapped inside.
Get out, Stone! Get out, goddamn you!
A small crowd had gathered, but they were standing in the wrong places to be performing a rescue. Just watching. Stone had short hair and a leather jacket, one leg hung up on the shifter. He jolted to life, trying to move. His head rolled fast and loose, like his neck was made of straw. The girl was frantic. A yellow streak bolting from door to door, jerking at the handles.
Get out! Get out of the car!
“Don’t move!” Lance pulled open the driver’s-side door. The girl was suddenly in his face. Cheeks flecked with blood. Who the fuck are you? Alcohol, a hot wave from her mouth. She knocked Lance aside, groping for Stone.
“Stop!” Lance said.
He grabbed a fistful of her dress, yanked her backward.
“Don’t move him,” Lance said. “He could die.”
Shock in her eyes. People did not tell this girl stop.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Someone call 9-1-1,” Lance shouted. “Call the police!”
“No one’s calling the police!” She kicked off one shoe, screamed at the pavement. She should’ve been beautiful, which made her ugliness worse. Bloodshot eyes, face pinched with disgust. She’d been driving.
Lance knew from his first-aid course to secure the victim’s head. Never move the victim. And Stone’s head was lolling like something in his neck had split. His right arm jerked up, as if trying to swat a fly. Lance ducked into the car and shhhh and it’s okay and relax and packed white towels around Stone’s neck, bracing his skull. His eyes fluttered, white slits. Blood trickled from his mouth. Blood, in the cup holder, like spilled soda. Blood on Lance’s fingers. Warm. And a noise in his right ear. Shaking his eardrum. The girl.
“Out of my car! Get the fuck out!”
“Stand back!” Lance planted one foot on the pavement.
She charged.
It was instinct, putting his hands out. It didn’t feel like a push, and it didn’t feel hard, but then this girl was sucking air like her lungs couldn’t find it, and she was stumbling backward, hands paddling. She rocked back on her heels, tipping like a chopped tree. She fell on pavement. Her head made a soft sound when it hit.
“He just pushed Breanna!” someone shouted.
“Yo! Back the fuck up!” someone else shouted.
Shadowy faces, men’s voices. The crowd constricted. The voices, coming for him, then the front-office door burst open and someone was coming faster. Cheri Front Desk, a wrecking ball snapping loose from its chain—crashing into the crowd, scattering the men and their voices, grabbing hold of this whole ugly thing.
Get back! Stand up! Back to your room! Rocco—I will call the police! Shut up, Meebs! Get up, Breanna! On your feet!
Breanna, the one he’d pushed. She wrestled off her other shoe and flung it into the parking lot, then turned and ran barefoot toward the field, feet slapping pavement. Lance climbed back into the SUV.
“Stone—is that your name?”
“No,” he said. “James. My name is James.”
“What’s your last name? Can you tell me what day it is? James? James?”
Sirens approached, grew shrill. Emergency lights transformed the car into a fun house and James was red and white and barely moving. Lance grabbed James’s hand because it felt like he should, and someone’s palm clapped on his back. Lance turned toward a strong set of eyes, looking into his.
“Thank you, son,” the officer said.
Lance got out of the car. Police swept in, people who belonged here. Lance’s hands clenched to fists and James’s blood pulled at the short hairs on his knuckles. An unsettling flutter in his chest, like the beginning of a shiver. He stood, frozen. He ached for goosebumps, a shudder, a sneeze. Some kind of release.
“Come here, kiddo.”
Cheri had him by the arm and through a door, beneath a naked yellow bulb. A waist-high sink. An oval of pink soap. The water was scalding, steam blanketing the mirror. Lance scrubbed red hands until they were raw and pink shavings had replaced the blood beneath his nails.
Back outside, the stretcher stood at a crooked angle. The straps were tangled as if it had just been pulled out of storage. Police stood in small clusters, pointing in different directions. These men were not neat and trim like the Bend police. They had beards and bellies, like someone had yanked them off their barstools and stuffed them into sky-blue patrolmen shirts. A pair of them walked into the field, flashlights bobbing in the dark.
Had he saved someone’s life? Committed assault?
They would have questions.
But he could not make a report. He could not have his name in an official file, anchored to this place. This was his chance to walk into the shadows with freshly scrubbed hands and no one would ever know. He calculated the best route back to his room, and was moving as quickly as he could when he saw her.
She was watching him.
A girl in the darkness. In possession of perfect stillness. Her stillness made him stop, and because he stopped, it came. The feeling he’d been aching for. Toes in ice water. Feathers up his calves. A hair-prickling, teeth-rattling rush of a shiver so good it made his eyes sting. He took a deep breath and looked at her.
“I saw you,” she said. “You’re the guy with the trumpet.”
He nodded and tried to see her, but her attention was like a spotlight. Hard to look at straight on. She was maybe his age, or a little older. Possibly beautiful. They were on the wide concrete slab of the motel parking lot, but it felt like a small room. Like he should say something important, or ask her to dance. The silence was getting heavy, their instant on the verge of thickening into a moment.
Behind him, voices and emergency lights. He had to move. Now or never. So he didn’t talk. He turned away and stepped to the side, and once he was moving inertia carried him around the corner, away from this still girl, and up the stairs.
Back inside his motel room, police lights flared through the blinds and did strange things to the wall hangings. The cloth sailboat turned orange, the water, crimson. The cats’ eyes were f
lashing marbles. Lance picked up his phone and cradled it. His hands were no longer bloody. His phone was cracked and dead.
He took a shower. The first blast of hot water sent the dark hairs scurrying down the drain, almost before he noticed them. Time passed with a dull, white roar, and when his lungs were heavy with steam he shut off the water. He reached out, pawing bare wooden shelves.
There were no towels.
His feet slipped on linoleum. Back by his suitcase, Lance balled up a white T-shirt and rubbed it over his body until he was dry.
He was damp and dressed in a clean shirt and jeans. Socks and shoes. Shaking hungry.
Out here, The Float is it.
The emergency lights were gone, and he hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. He walked out of his room, down the stairs, and out toward the giant glowing flotation device, feeling wobbly and light, like a moth dancing toward a flame.
The shortest distance from the motel to The Float was through an overgrown field. Too hungry to think, Lance bushwhacked through the scrub and was scratched and nettled and soaked from the thighs down when he finally stepped onto pavement. He circled around to the front of the building, where a laminated sheet of paper was nailed to a windowless wooden door.
THE FLOAT
7AM–CLOSE
DOGS, CATS, AND (SOME) PEOPLE WELCOME
WARM BEER! TERRIBLE FOOD!
The rumble of voices and a standard 2/4 rock beat pulsed inside. Lance opened the door and was greeted by a towering wooden statue of a female pirate, standing where a host should be. She wore a savage expression, one leg cocked up on a rock. She could’ve been solemn—even noble—but someone had done her up with a pink bandana, a wench’s skirt, and a skull-and-crossbones bikini. She still had a sword. Long and broad and sharp. It looked real. Like you could wiggle it right out of her wooden hand.
“Hey! I can’t see you. Dude! Step away from the pirate!”
Lance stepped to the right. Fifty feet ahead and behind the bar was a college-aged guy with a mop of dark hair and noticeable gap between his two front teeth. He held himself like a bear; hunched forward, slump-shouldered.