The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel)

by Max Booth III

  I want to relive that night. I want to go back in time before all the horrible things happened. I want to erase the errors.

  The breeze up here is strong and cool and some other night when the weight of the universe isn’t collapsing upon me, I might enjoy it. But tonight it’s only irritating. I continue drowning my lungs in beer. When the bottle is empty I close my eyes and throw it as hard as I can and wait for the sound of glass shattering, but I hear nothing. No gunshot. Probably overshot it into the trees, or more likely, one of the fucking owls caught it and flew off with it.

  I keep my eyes closed and lie down on the roof, shivering and biting my lip. The last time I lied down on the roof was with Kia, back during that brief moment when life felt somewhat meaningful, back before I was evicted from planet delusion. I can’t even bring myself to masturbate on the roof anymore. She might be somewhere out there, still watching. Let her find someone new to watch. Let her hurt someone else.

  Somewhere below me, another shoe customer might be buzzing the front doors, waiting for me to let him or her in so they can go up and get their fix. Hobbs will wander down to the lobby and discover my absence and get pissed. Maybe he’ll bring out his switchblade, maybe he won’t do anything. Maybe I don’t care.

  I fall asleep on the roof, embracing the simplicity of the void.

  Part 21

  At the next afternoon meeting, management serves overdone hamburgers and potato salad that tastes just as bad as it smells. I take a bite of each and throw the rest away, then return to my seat off in the corner where I’m least likely to be approached. I can’t remember the last time I got a haircut or shaved or showered or changed my clothes. My eyelids tremble as I struggle to force them open. Behind the mask of my face a hive of insects participate in an orgy. A strange hum emits from my throat but I can’t figure out why or how to stop it.

  Javier takes one look at me and laughs, says, “Oh, Isaac, you’re such a goof.” I think about inviting him up to the roof and it’s real hard to keep my mouth shut, especially since I keep drooling for some reason. Every time the answers to all of the universe’s questions comes close to fruition, I nod off for a few seconds and disassemble my train of thought.

  Javier’s talking about guest survey cards and how housekeeping needs to shape up and soon a little league group will be staying at the hotel and none of it matters, none of it ever matters. The only important words the man has said at one of these meetings were passing on the news of Owl Girl’s death, and I haven’t forgiven him since. A theory begins to form about the afterlife. Our souls could travel into the nearest owl and possess its body, then we live forever in this feathery carcass. Do owls live forever? Has anyone ever seen a dead one?

  Then Javier asks if anyone remembers seeing Mr. Yates checking out last week and the room’s volume goes quiet as everybody one-by-one shakes their heads and mumbles “no.” Javier’s gaze turns to me and I repeat the same response as everyone else.

  “Well,” Javier says, “Mr. Yates stayed here last week, like he does once a month. However, he seems to be missing. A detective contacted me this morning and asked me to keep her in touch in case I find anything out from you. He was scheduled to check-out last week, but we have no records of him coming to the desk. He was supposed to catch a plane, too, but apparently never arrived. His car is missing from the parking lot, so odds are he left the hotel without an issue. Just, if you remember anything weird about Mr. Yates from last week, anything out of the ordinary, please let me know ASAP.”

  One of the housekeepers raises her hand. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “I have no idea,” Javier says. “But if I had to guess, yeah, probably.”

  I stand up. “Can we go?”

  “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “I’m rotting. I need to recharge. Need to sleep.”

  Javier rolls his eyes. “All right, if your beauty sleep is so important to you, fine.”

  I’m out of the hotel before he can add another smartass comment. Back at the apartment, Yates is still in the closet where I left him. The odor triggers my gag reflexes as soon as I arrive. I light a dozen candles and hang more car fresheners and sit on my mattress and rock back and forth, desperately trying to think of a solution. I can’t keep Yates here forever. The smell is eventually going to attract the attention of my neighbors. But what do I do with him?

  In the corner of my apartment, Chowls whispers, “Meat pies, meat pies, meat pies…”

  I close my eyes tighter and wake up at twenty ’til eleven. No time to shower, not that I was going to, anyway. I search my fridge for food. I haven’t gone shopping in months. Who can afford food? I’ll just eat tonight at the hotel. Pig out on some bagels. Consume an ocean of cereal. I check on Yates before leaving and vomit a little in my mouth. No time to brush my teeth, either.

  The 3-11 shift gives me crap as soon as I walk into the hotel. “You’re late. I’m sick of always waiting on you.”

  “So go kill yourself. It’s the latest craze.”

  “You’re a psycho. I should report you for harassment.” She throws the front desk keys at me before leaving. They bounce off my chest and fall to the floor. I stare at them for a while, contemplating not retrieving them, just leaving them on the carpet, abandoned until the next shift finds them or some hopeless bum hops over the front desk counter and discovers them. But I’m not that far gone yet. I bend down to scoop them up and someone immediately buzzes the front doors. I shove the keys into my pocket and trigger the entrance to open.

  A man with bloodshot eyes stumbles forward. A black baseball cap is tilted to the side of his head and his nostrils look raw, like he’s been suffering some major allergy attacks. “Hey, what’s the rate tonight?”

  “One-nineteen, plus tax.”

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  I debate giving him the room for free. The energy to haggle with a guest is nonexistent tonight. Instead I nod. “Yes, that’s the best.”

  “How come?”

  “Because that is the rate the gods have determined.”

  “What gods?”

  “The owl gods.”

  This answer seems to make sense to him. “Okay, then I’d like to stay tonight on points.”

  “Sure, but you have to make the reservation online first.”

  “Why can’t you just do it?”

  “I don’t have access to members’ profiles. Only a member can make a points-stay online, while logged into their account.”

  “This is bullshit. I’ve stayed at countless Goddamn Hotels that let me pay with my points at the front desk.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Yes.”

  He spits in my face and says, “Fuck you, buddy,” and stomps out of the hotel. I rush for a towel and clean the spit off my cheek. It’s not the first time someone has spit on me at this job and I doubt it’ll be the last. Come to think about it, I’ve probably contacted a couple STDs from phlegm over my years here, so it’s a good thing Kia never had sex with me before abandoning the hotel for good. I am simply not destined for love. At the end of my tunnel the only thing waiting for me is a fresh pile of shit.

  I toast some bagels and attempt to eat an apple as I wait, but the apple is disgusting so I drop it in the trash bin. It’s a Red Delicious, which is anything but delicious. Pink Ladies, now those I can get behind, and not just because they sound perverted. Unfortunately the hotel is too cheap to dish out on decent fruit—nevertheless decent security, otherwise I wouldn’t even be involved in this miserable train-wreck with the Hobbs brothers.

  I eat two bagels and use the leftover cream cheese to draw a crude owl on the kitchen wall. To someone else it will probably look like an abstract glob, but to me it clearly resembles the winged beast that goes “hoot” in the night. I think about Mandy 2 and feel sad at the realization that she only got to pet one of those deranged monsters as it was in the process of chewing her face off
. And it was more likely a desperate grasp of self-defense than a soft gentle stroke of love. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll eventually wake up to an owl planted on my own face and I think, of course I will. It’s the only possible outcome to this stupid life that makes any sort of sense.

  Guests continue to pour in. I give them keys and send them on their way. My eyes burn and vibrate like rails beneath a subway. This will not end. I am caught in a loop of infinity. ’Round and ’round I go, forever.

  “Uh, yes, I would, um, like, um, the presidential suite, please,” a woman tells me in the lobby. She’s sitting on the sofa looking down at her feet, refusing to make eye contact. I send her to Hobbs’s room without hesitation and return to the book I was reading. The less I focus on reality and the more I absorb myself in someone else’s fiction, the more likely I am to survive each night. Whichever night it is. My brain can no longer keep track of such trivial details. Seconds and minutes and hours and days and nights and weeks and months and years and centuries, it’s all illusions invented by man, cheap parlor tricks to make humanity feel better about the vast nothingness slowly devouring the universe.

  A half hour later the woman comes down with Hobbs. She’s wearing new, clean shoes that look more expensive than any piece of clothing I’ve ever purchased. I wonder how much it cost Hobbs to make them. He guides her out of the hotel then sits down on the lobby furniture, belching loudly. He leans back against the sofa and rubs his stomach. “My, my, Eye Sick, my, my. What did you think of that fine piece of ass that just walked out of here?”

  “My mind has become separated from the rest of my body. I am a balloon detached from its string.”

  “That’s a weird thing to say, Eye Sick.” Hobbs licks his lips. “That little lady comes up to me and says she don’t have no cash, but she’d be willing to pay up in other ways. Know what I mean? Now what do you think? Would you have taken her up on that kind of offer?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a faggot, though, so of course you wouldn’t.” He cracks his neck and laughs. “Boy, I tell ya, that gal, now she could suck a mean cock, Jesus Lord Almighty.”

  “Whatever happened to Brenda?” I ask, knowing I’m about to hit a nerve but unable to stop myself.

  Hobbs stops smiling. “Don’t you ever fuckin’ mention that name to me again. You know shit-all about me, so don’t go pretendin’ otherwise.”

  The phone rings. It’s room #209. I pick up and say, “Yeah.”

  “Is my dumbass brother down there still?”

  “He is.”

  “Tell him to get his ass up here right now. We got more orders to package and I have no idea what I’m doing. He’s the one who passed Home Ec.”

  I hang up the phone and ask Hobbs if it’s true. “Did you really pass Home Ec?”

  He opens his mouth, confused but still attempting to spit out a retort, then gives up and sprints toward the stairwell.

  * * *

  A white Toyota Corolla rolls in at a little past one in the morning and parks in front of the automatic doors. It takes a few minutes, but eventually an elderly man steps out of the car and approaches the front desk. His eyes seem to have a difficult time staying open, and when he speaks he sounds like he’s a second away from nodding off.

  He wants to know the rate for a room tonight, but the hotel’s already sold out. He asks if I’m sure, and I nod, yeah, I’m sure. The man stands there for a few moments in deep contemplation, then asks if he can use the bathroom before he gets back on the road.

  I am not a complete monster. Of course he can use the bathroom.

  The man stays in the bathroom for a full hour before I start to seriously worry. The man either decided fuck it, he’s old and he’s gonna sleep wherever the hell he pleases, or he has died. After everything that happened with Yates, I am fucking finished with messing with the dead. I try to pretend the man simply no longer exists, until another hour passes and the man exits the bathroom, yawning. He nods and returns to his car, where he promptly falls asleep.

  The man stays asleep until 5:00 A.M. I confront him as he stands outside, sniffling and nodding off against the hotel. I have to shout at him to get his attention. I tell the man I didn’t mind him sleeping like that for a few hours, since every hotel in the area is sold out and he obviously couldn’t have continued driving in the exhausted state he’d been in, but now it’s time to get going.

  “Could I stay another few hours?” the man asks, groggy.

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I need to at least take a shower first. Where can I do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you guys have some sort of guest shower for weary travelers?”

  “Nah, only in the rooms. And the rooms are sold-out.”

  “Shit. Even truck stops have showers.”

  “This ain’t a truck stop, man.”

  The man sighs. “Okay, well then how about this: I’m gonna need to leave my car here, just for a few hours. I gotta walk down the street and meet up with my sponsor.”

  “Your sponsor?”

  “Yeah. My sponsor’s expecting me. I’m already late.”

  “You can’t leave your car here, no.”

  He sighs again and kicks some gravel. “Okay, fine. I understand. Could I at least use the restroom one last time? Sir, I believe I need to tinkle again.”

  I can’t bring it in me to decline a request with the word “tinkle” involved. As the man uses the restroom, I attend to some spilled trash by the dumpster. When I return inside the lobby, I find the man wandering down the hallway trying to open random guests’ doors.

  “Hey, man, what the fuck?” I ask him. It’s a valid question.

  The man spins around, holding his hands up. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m very tired, you see. Very tired.”

  He flees into the restroom before another word can be uttered. He leaves an assortment of random grocery bags on the floor by the sink and locks himself in the stall.

  In the stall, he begins snorting.

  Loudly.

  Over and over, followed by a content sigh.

  Ten minutes later, he comes out, sniffling, eyes wide, talking fast.

  He asks if I want to hire him to write anything. Apparently he’s a writer. Of course he’s a fucking writer.

  The man tells me that he could write me a resume or a novel or a poetry collection, anything I want, if I have the money.

  “I have no money,” I tell him.

  Defeated, the man grabs his bags and leaves. I follow him outside and watch him get in his car. But instead of leaving, he just sits there. A few minutes pass. He gets out, tells me he lost his cell phone and asks if he can leave his name and address in case somebody finds it.

  “Hurry up.”

  The man opens the backdoor and digs through the seat. He pulls out a notebook, along with a stack of ancient Penthouse magazines. He places the notebook on the trunk, and steadies a pencil against an empty sheet.

  Instead of writing anything, though, he asks me what kind of books I like to read.

  No, I don’t know why I’m still talking to this guy, but here I am, entertaining the insane.

  “Crime.”

  “Crime?” The man turns toward me. “I love crime! Have you ever been in a crime?”

  “Just the other day, I had to dispose of a dead body.”

  The man nods. “Wow, now that’s something.”

  He writes down his name, then attempts to follow it up with his address, and repeatedly nods off.

  After I wake him up, the man tells me he’s written two or three novels, he can’t remember anymore. He says it’s a shame we hadn’t met earlier in life, because we could have partnered up together and ruled the world.

  “I agree,” I say. “It’s a real shame.”

  The man hands me the sheet of paper and leaves, just as mysteriously as he fucking appeared.

  Part 22

  “So you’re saying you don’t reme
mber seeing Mr. Yates leaving the hotel?” Detective Garcia asks. We’re sitting down in the back office, sipping on bad hotel coffee. It’s a little after six in the morning. No management yet, but I figured they wouldn’t mind if I brought a cop behind the front desk for our discussion. Might be bad business to talk about a missing guest in the middle of the lobby. Although the guest isn’t exactly missing. He’s stinking up my apartment. The other day my landlord slapped a notice on my door that stated they were getting complaints from my neighbors. If I didn’t do something soon, they’d let themselves in and personally investigate the foul odors. But Detective Garcia doesn’t know anything about that. At least I hope not.

  “That’s right,” I tell her. “I’m usually very busy in the mornings, handing out guest receipts, taking out the trash, preparing breakfast. It’s very likely he just slipped out when I was preoccupied.”

  My voice sounds calm but my heart’s going a mile a second. I knew someone would eventually question me, but never thought it’d be so soon. The reality sinks in like an anchor. A man is dead and I am partially to blame. Maybe it’s all my fault. Maybe there weren’t any owls. But maybe there were. There probably were.

  “Is Mr. Yates a frequent guest?” Her eyes look baggier than mine. Probably works the same shift as I do and is long overdue for a good nap. We could go to my apartment together and snuggle up on my mattress and sleep until the sun explodes, except she might get curious about what’s in my closet. And if she doesn’t notice, there’s a good chance I’ll end up falling in love with her, then she’ll abandon me just when I’m starting to believe the feeling’s mutual.

  I’m too young to be this fucking bitter.

  “He stays a week every month or so,” I tell the detective. “Something to do with his job, I guess.”

  “Which is?”

  “I forget, to be honest.” Seems odd that she doesn’t know, either, although she probably does and is just testing to see how much I know about him.

  “If he stays here so much, then it’s safe to assume you’ve had the occasional conversation with the man. Correct?”