MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
A Novel by
Steve Grossman
Published by Steven Grossman at Smashwords
Copyright (c) 2009 Steven Grossman
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For My Boys
ONE: Naked
ZZZZZZTT ZZZZT ZZZZZZZZZZZZTT
The fly's erratic buzzing drilled a hole in the darkness; its feathery legs on his face woke Jesse Girard up.
Jesse rolled over and pain flooded in. It felt like he'd been beaten with a rock. He groaned and closed his eyes trying to escape back to sleep, but sleep was gone. Lying still, he waited until the pain subsided into a drip of jagged icicles.
Opening his eyes again Jesse looked around. A rectangle of weak light spilled from the open door of a bathroom revealing a small dank motel room. He didn't know he got there.
Jesse sat up and his brain crashed against his skull. Again he groaned and closed his eyes. He sat there gulping for air like an unwatered fish. A deep breath of the room's dank air triggered a coughing fit that ripped at his throat.
When, finally, he could breathe again there was in the musty darkness the pointed stench of burnt cigarettes, whiskey, and sweet, musky perfume.
Jesse remembered the Redhead.
He switched on the bedside lamp; an empty "Jack Daniels" bottle was on the floor next to his socks and sneakers -- his stomach hitched and kicked -- but there was no redhead. He was alone. Looking down at his legs poking out of the nappy blue blanket Jesse felt strangely disconnected from them. His limbs, without sensation, seemed as inert as the green and orange carpet they rested on. Realizing, though, he was naked, made him vaguely uneasy. Jesse put his head in his hands trying to fight the pain and remember how he got here.
It came back in flashes:
Loud, tinny music... a Willie Nelson song vibrating out of a jukebox in the darkness...
...a sea of people... A woman's hot breath in his ear...
The images were disjointed and confused, but the stink of perfume was real and helped to bring much of it back...
"Do you have a light?" Her voice flowed like dry ice. She had a red cloud of hair and a pale mask of a face dotted with blushy cheeks. She held a cigarette to her painted red lips.
She wrapped her hands around his as he lit the cigarette.
...She was talking, but he was too drunk to concentrate.
Jesse bought her a drink. "Jack Daniels". She threw it back in one swallow.
"...What you need is someone to show you around." Her fingers slithered across the bar and scratched at the back of his hand with a long red fingernail. "I could show you around if you'd like. Would you like that?" She leaned in close. The sting of her perfume burned his eyes. Her hand slipped down and scratched his thigh.
Remembering it gave Jesse an erection. Again.
"Why don't we find someplace private? We can get a bottle and I can show you something really special." She offered a wicked smile...
Jesse sat staring at his naked knees holding his head, trying to piece it back together. She brought him here. Did they fuck? He couldn't remember. Maybe he tried, but couldn't get it up, or maybe she changed her mind. He was naked, though, his clothes in a heap on a tattered orange chair by the door.
He was naked because she undressed him.
...And helped herself to his watch.
"Shit!"
Jesse jumped up, causing a new storm of pain. He fell back onto the bed, closed his eyes and waited for it to pass.
When he stood up again he did it slowly. Jesse grabbed his jeans and searched the pockets. His wallet and keys were gone too.
"Shit!"
He threw the pants down, rushed to the door and jerked it open. The parking lot was empty.
"No!"
Jesse ran out onto the rough asphalt of the parking lot.
Behind him there was a noticeable "click" as the door closed.
"Oh, fuck." Jesse ran to the door. It was locked.
He hammered the door with his fists. "Shit. Shit. Shit."
Jesse stood on the sidewalk, naked, staring at the door, his breath puffing out in frosty gasps in the cold air as the sun burned his bloodshot eyes. Inside his head it was storming hailstones the size of grapefruits. But as Jesse stood there it occurred to him that at the far end of the parking lot he could see the motel office. Which meant they could see him. He spun around and threw himself up against the wall.
"What the hell am I gonna do?"
Then he remembered the small window next to the bathroom.
The waist high weeds tickled Jesse's bare ass as he trudged along the row of small grimy windows; the mosquitoes enjoying his generous offering of flesh. The curtain was closed and the glass was filthy, but he found his room from the glow of the bathroom light and the lamp beside the bed.
But the window was locked.
"Damn!"
The cold air had brought a stony numbness to Jesse's aching body, but with the bugs eating him, the grass tickling him, and the painful stew in his head, he couldn't think. He couldn't just stand there, though, and going to the office was out of the question. He only wanted to get his clothes and go, after that he'd worry about the rest of it.
In an overgrown pile of rubble Jesse spotted a broken cement block. He slogged through the mushy grass and retrieved it.
"Fuck it."
He heaved the block through the window. Then using a piece of board and the bushy tip of a weed he cleaned the broken glass out of the window frame as best he could. Jesse pulled himself up onto the sill and carefully climbed through the opening with one hand while protecting his balls with the other.
Stepping over the cement block and picking his way through the puddle of glass on the worn-out carpet Jesse crossed the room to get his clothes. He stood next the bed and quickly dressed, but the adrenaline rush of excitement faded as the storm in his head thickened. Thunder rolled. Lightning flashed. He went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face.
As he stepped on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, Jesse stepped on something. Something soft. He looked down. It was a pink ball of some sort. He bent down to pick it up, but then he remembered something. He knew what it was; it was a falsie, the Redhead's big fake tit.
Jesse staggered backwards out of the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed.
He had this clear picture of the Redhead standing in the bathroom stripped to the waist as she was undressing.
A funnel cloud formed.
He remembered being sprawled across the bed looking up at the Redhead's back; her hairy back. The sick feeling returned. The Redhead was a man, a man with a hairy back. Jesse bolted from the bed to the bathroom sink and threw up.
When there was nothing left, Jesse stayed bent over the sink drooling and dry heaving, the taste of bile in his mouth. He stuck his head in the sink and turned on the cold water until the numbing cold blunted the memories. He turned the faucet off and stood up. Water from his hair dripped tiny pins on his shoulders. Seeing himself in the mirror, his face haggard, pale and thin, with ugly dark circles like bruises around red swollen eyes, scared him. Jesse was only twenty-four, with thick dark hair and clear gray eyes, but the person he was looking at was someone else entirely. The reflection was the face of a beaten old man -- it was his father's face. Jesse turned away. He took a deep breath and wiped his face with a towel filled with the Redhead's perfume.
Jesse found his way back to the bed and sat down.
The Redhead had stood in the bathroom and changed clothes, only she wasn't a redhead, and she wasn't a she. She was a man and she took off the wig and women's clothes and changed into men's clothes. Jesse remembered. He remembered the man standing in the bathroom wearing only women's panties while putting the women's clothes into a bag and taking out men's clothes. Watching it happen, Jesse had laughed. At the time he thought it was a dream.
Jesse remembered watching her (him) change. When she (he) finished dressing he (she) carried the bag out of the bathroom and came over the bed. Jesse remembered the guy bending down and helping him get his pants and shirt off. That was it: he helped Jesse get undressed and helped himself to Jesse's wallet, keys and watch. The guy had tucked him in under the covers, kissed him, and then left.
"Shit," Jesse spit.
He ran to the bathroom sink and gulped down handfuls of water. He wanted to be sick, but there was nothing left. The guy had kissed him. With tongue. Jesse spit again.
As he walked out of the bathroom Jesse stepped on the falsie again. He bent over, picked it up and shoved it in his pocket.
The door to the motel room crashed open. A small fat man pointing a huge pistol rushed in followed by a tall, skinny, younger guy. They came at Jesse.
--------
Pacing around the motel office Dick Zerbee gestured with the pistol as he talked, but kept it pointed in Jesse's direction. Not much over five feet tall, Dick had deep-set, mole-like eyes -- dark, vicious, always moving. His round little body, rumpled, like his clothes, looked slept in. His black chinos were creased and wrinkled; his blue polyester shirt unbuttoned to the top of his fat gut. A gold chain with a medallion hung in the cavity of his chest. In his hand, the gun, a .357, looked ridiculously large, like a red flag - BANG - would pop out when he pulled the trigger, but Jesse knew better. He had shot a .357 once at targets on bales of hay. He knew what one could do.
Jesse stood as still as possible.
The tall, skinny, hawk-nosed guy with Dick Zerbee was the desk clerk. He had over-long arms and legs and moved like a marionette. His name was Mike, but Dick Zerbee always said "fuckin" first as if it was all one name, "Fuckinmike".
"Maybe I'll just shoot you and Fuckinmike here'll be my witness that I killed a thief breakin' in to one of my rooms."
Fuckinmike stood behind Dick, behind the registration desk, an amused smile on his face; playing with the hairs of his thin mustache with his tongue. Mike seemed on the verge of laughing as he watched Dick waving the pistol, but Jesse wasn't having fun. The pink foam tit in his pocket felt huge and seemed to be expanding like a beach ball. Jesse couldn't think. Watching the gun being jerked around, he wondered if he would hear the bang or see a flash before he felt the shot. Each time Dick stepped close Jesse's stomach ached and his throat tightened from the little man's sweaty, rank odor. It was too much. Jesse felt sick and needed to throw up, but he was sure if he puked the little bastard would shoot him.
"I don't give a shit about your fuckin' sob story," Dick Zerbee said. "All I know is you busted out one of my windows and entered a room illegally, that's breaking and entering, and I have every right to call the cops. Shit, I could just shoot you and no one will think twice about it."
"I told you what happened, I don't know what else you want me to say. I'm sorry about the window, but I don't have the money to pay for it. I don't have anything, don't you understand that. Look, if you call the cops, the window's still gonna be broken, but I can fix it. Why don't you let me do some work around here to pay for it?"
"Right, and the first chance you get you'll be outta here like a bat outta hell, probably with everything that isn't nailed down under your arm."
Fuckinmike chuckled.
"Where am I gonna go? She took my car, my money, everything."
"Then I think you'd be happy to call the cops and try and get your car back."
"No, they won't find it. It's gone." Jesse dropped his head in resignation. The last thing he wanted was the police. "I wasn't trying to rob you. Why can't we work it out ourselves? I'll fix the window or work to pay for the damages. I don't know what else I can say."
"Well, Dick, besides the window maybe he can do something about the door on room 12," Mike said. "The doorknob falls off every time someone touches it." He talked fast, the words rushing over each other like he was about to laugh.
"Shut the fuck up," Dick said over his shoulder.
Mike snarled and flipped him off.
Dick frowned and the top of his baldhead wrinkled. He lowered the pistol, looking at it for a moment, and then put his arm down, "Yea, well, fixing one window won't pay for everything. But I got things around here that need taken care of, so I guess maybe we can work something out."
"Sure, whatever you need." Jesse relaxed. His hangover had hardened into a brick, but at the moment things weren't hopeless. All he had to do was get through the day, and then he could get out of there. And the first chance he got to be alone he would get rid of the falsie.
"Well, I guess you better get to work then," Dick said. "I'll let you know when you're done." He turned to Mike, "Fuckinmike, show him what needs to get done, but don't let him out of your sight or I'll shoot your skinny ass."
"In your dreams," Mike snapped back. "Don't worry about it, he'll be an old man before he's finished with all the work that needs to be done around here. Besides, like he said, where the hell's he gonna go?"
"Look, Fuckinmike, just do it. And he doesn't leave before you talk to me. Oh, and who was working the desk last night? That fucker Gordon?"
"Yup, as usual," Mike answered.
"Yea, well this is the last time. You call him and tell him if he ever shows his face around here again they'll never find his body." Dick turned and stormed out of the office.
"C'mon," Mike said to Jesse.
As Jesse followed Mike outside Dick tore away in his big blue Cadillac. Fuckinmike flipped him off and smiled as he licked his scraggy mustache.
TWO: The RIOT INN
A well-thrown stone had done the job years ago: the remaining letters of the big neon sign at the side of the road blinked the words RIOT INN weakly into the street. When it was new the sign flashed red, white and blue neon light like a beacon out to the working people of Boston and Providence: PATRIOT'S INN MOTEL & RESTAURANT
And the people came: on holidays and long weekends, enjoying the nearby beaches and the comfortable pleasantries the small resort offered.
Dick Zerbee's mother owned the place then; years before the national chains offering cut-rate beach side luxury and the quaint Bed & Breakfasts with their nautical decor and ocean views lured the people north to Rockport and Gloucester and east out to Cape Cod. Now, his mother long dead, Dick Zerbee was the owner and the RIOT INN was forgotten and fading.
The broken neon sign marked the entrance to the decaying parking lot of a once modest but cozy restaurant. Abandoned -- windows boarded up -- the restaurant was an empty cement block box at the top of a small hill over-looking the motel below.
At the bottom of the hill, where the crumbling driveway curved around into the motel parking lot, was the motel office, a tiny glass cube with an over-hanging shingle roof, sitting like a lonely sentinel guarding its dismal kingdom.
The green velvet of a nine-hole golf course once surrounded two rows of rooms strung along the wide asphalt parking lot, but the golf course was gone; the lush grass over-grown. The gleaming white clapboard rooms had grown gray and dilapidated. Neatly trimmed shrubs and colorful flowers bordering the driveway had been trampled into dusty, track-worn paths. The swimming pool, empty for years and caving in, was a cattail-filled stink hole.
Three miles from the beach, two miles from the exit off I-195, The Patriot Inn Motel was still open for business, but with no air-conditioning, no cable TV, and in-room pay phones that only allowed three minutes for a quarter, few people stayed the night and even fewer stayed a second. The RIOT INN was a place where out-of-towners ended up because they didn't know any better -- Dick Zerbee never changed the old Yellow Pages ad -- and where local kids came to party and get laid because it was cheap, out of the way and nobody bothered them.
Four months after the night that brought him there, Jesse Girard was still at the motel. He realized the RIOT INN was a good place to be if you didn't want to be found. After his day of working off the broken window Jesse had asked Dick Zerbee for a job.
Dick hired him as handyman and part-time desk clerk (to replace the newly fired Gordon), paying him next to nothing, but allowing him to live at the motel rent-free. Jesse was good at fixing things; the problem was Dick never spent money on anything, so when something broke Jesse had to make do with whatever scraps and pieces and leftovers he could find. If Jesse couldn't fix it, he hung an out-of-order sign on it. Either way, nobody cared.
How he ended up there didn't matter to Jesse any more. Sometimes, though, he did miss his car. His car had allowed him to escape the corn, dairies and cow shit of Meyers Heights, Pennsylvania, and sometimes he thought if he had his car he might move on, put more distance between himself and there, but any place was better than what he left behind, so Jesse stayed.
Meyers Heights was a small town of small people who crept through life on narrow, dusty roads in old trucks. It really wasn't even much of a town. Just a forlorn huddle of wood and brick buildings erected in a slow, erratic fashion over the course of two hundred years. Between two traffic lights, one at the intersection of Main and Center Street and the other at Main and Route 61, occupying all of three blocks, was the business district -- the town office, Sheriff's office, Volunteer Fire Department, Post Office, supermarket, drug store, two gas stations, two barber shops, three hair salons, and three diners with a dozen or so other small shops mixed in. There were also six churches and six taverns. A perfect balance of power. Everyone in Meyers Heights was a farmer, or the son or daughter of a farmer. Lives firmly planted in the soil; they never knew anything but the dirt, never cared about anything except what they knew. If the earth opened up and swallowed the place whole it wouldn't make a decent fart.
In the months since Jesse left the passing of each day pushed him further away from all of it. And that was enough. Now and then, though, the memories crept back in, skulking in the dark corners, waiting for him at idle moments. So Jesse stayed busy, afraid if they got hold of him they would kill him.
--------
Jesse squatted in the dust and darkness of the attic crawl space trying to be quiet. He shifted his weight as he crouched in the corner where the antenna wire threaded up through the ceiling. In the room below him, Audrey, the RIOT INNS only chambermaid, mumbled a black string of curses. Then came the muffled sound of feet shuffling across the carpet and the door opening and closing as she went out.
The wheels on Audrey's cleaning cart squeaked a slow, weary rhythm as she pushed it along the sidewalk to the next room. As her keys jangled in the lock Jesse snorted, suppressing a laugh.
The old maid switched on the light and the pasty glow lightened the darkness of the crawl space. There was no way to see into the room, but Jesse could picture Audrey's every move in his mind.
Seventy years old, hair dyed the color of an eggplant, dressed in a mismatched sweat suit; Audrey shuffled behind the cleaning cart like it was a walker as she moved from room to room. Nobody checked her work, and really nobody cared, but Audrey was sincere in her intention to keep the rooms clean.
Audrey had worked there since the beginning, when Dick's mother was the owner, and old habits die-hard. Now she was the only one left. With few rooms ever rented, cleaning and doing the laundry should have taken only a few hours each day, but Audrey always put in six hours, six days a week. Monday was her day off. Her cleaning routine rarely varied, but over the years had suffered somewhat in diligence. Entering a room, she emptied the garbage cans, made the beds -- changing the sheets when necessary -- picked up whatever was on the floor -- using the vacuum cleaner only in extreme cases of visible filth -- then went into the bathroom, turned the hot water on in the shower, spread a little pine cleaner around, gave the toilet a couple of flushes, and wiped out the sink with a used towel. At this point her dedication wandered. The television was a distraction; she often got involved and sometimes forgot what she was doing, although, the bottle of Amaretto she kept on her cleaning cart covered with a dust rag added to her distraction.
More work got done in the mornings, when the game shows were on and the bottle of Amaretto was still full, but by mid-afternoon when her Soaps came on Audrey slowed down considerably. In each room she took care of the basics before giving in to the TV and bottle, unless, of course, there was something important going on she couldn't afford to miss. For appearances sake, though, and as a matter of principle, when she finished for the day, she had at least spent time in each of the rooms.
Jesse didn't plan on the little game he was playing with Audrey. He was in the crawl space putting out fresh boxes of rat poison when he heard her in the room below. Audrey was talking to the TV, watching one of her stories. All the rooms were wired to a single antenna on the roof, so Jesse crawled over to the place where the wires came through the ceiling into the crawl space and disconnected it from the junction box.
Audrey's TV went to snow.
"Hey, what the hell?" Audrey got up and turned the knobs and played with the antenna and turned the set off and on at least a dozen times, but nothing helped.
She walkered her cleaning cart to the next room. And Jesse waited.
Again Audrey turned on her story and as soon as she got comfortable, zip -- snow.
Audrey moved. Jesse waited. Zip.
Shuffle shuffle, squeak squeak. Click. Zip.
Audrey was missing her stories and cursing the day Dick Zerbee was born for allowing his mother's place to become a "stinking shit hole".
Audrey moved to the next room. Jesse waited. She was about halfway down the row of rooms. The sounds of her movement were faint, getting harder to hear as she moved away. Audrey switched on the television, went to the bed, slipped the Amaretto out of its hiding place and sat down to watch her story. Zip. The picture turned to snow.
"Son-of-a-bitch," Audrey cursed.
Jesse shuddered, stifling a laugh.
There was an explosion of glass as Audrey hurled the bottle Amaretto through the front of the TV. "Piece of shit."
Jesse heard her shuffle to the cleaning cart, bring the vacuum into the room and turn it on. He decided Audrey had had enough. Some traditions shouldn't be messed with.
Jesse was still laughing when he entered the motel office. Fuckinmike was behind the desk; his shift ended at six, then Gilda Greene came on until 2:00 a.m.
Mike smiled, "What's so funny?"
"Old Audrey's having a little trouble with the TV's," Jesse laughed.
"Why, what's wrong with them?"
"It's the damnedest thing, every time she gets it tuned in the picture goes out. Nothing but snow."
Mike started laughing. "What did you do?"
Before telling his story Jesse went into the back room and retrieved a can of beer from the stash he kept in the small refrigerator, popped it open, took a long swallow, and then lit a cigarette.
Leaning over the desk, Jesse told Mike the story. Mike had a laugh like a whistling coffee pot and in the small office it rattled the windows.
"The best part is," Jesse added as he finished, "she'll probably be done in record time."
"Yea, but if she finds out, you're a dead man."
As Mike laughed, Jesse retrieved the last beer and turned on an old plastic radio on top of the refrigerator. The loud scratching of an electric guitar filled the office. Jesse moved a chair into the doorway between the rooms, sat down, and lit another cigarette.
"Has the Dick been around looking for me?" Jesse asked.
"No. Haven't seen him in two days, which is fine with me."
"Hey, me too. I just don't want him popping up all of a sudden."
"Fuck him, what's he gonna do fire you? You should be so lucky. Besides, I think old Dickie-boy's in love." Between sentences Mike's tongue darted out to play with a stray hair of his mustache.
"Why, what's going on?"
"Have you seen the little black skeleton he's been with for the past three days?"
"No."
"Yea, some strung out whore he picked up in the city."
"Three days? That's got to be some kind of record. Maybe he is in love."
"I don't care what it is as long as it keeps him off our backs." Mike's coffee pot whistled.
Jesse thought Mike was gay. He didn't know for sure, but suspected it. If he was, at least his name fit. Mike Sissy. Sissy. How could anyone go through life with a name like that and not be affected? Jesse had never known anyone who was gay. Of course there were gay people in Meyers Heights, none Jesse knew who were openly gay, just those everyone suspected. Mike never said or did anything to verify Jesse's suspicions; it was the way Mike talked and laughed and the way he sat in the chair with his legs crossed -- he reminded Jesse a lot of his Great Aunt Rita. Jesse liked Mike (more than he ever liked Aunt Rita) and in spite of everything he heard about fags growing up they were friends. For them Dick Zerbee was a common enemy and the RIOT INN an unending source of amusement.
The fact was, Mike wasn't gay, although almost everyone who knew him thought so. He wasn't interested in men, in women, or anything else. He didn't have any desires or proclivities. Somehow, in puberty, unlike everyone else, he never developed an interest in or appetite for sex, so he didn't think much about it. As the youngest of eight kids Mike figured his parents ran out of all the necessary ingredients by the time they made him. To Mike sex was a major waste of time and the cause of more problems than it was worth. Everyone he knew, gay or not, seemed preoccupied with sex and, in the end, dissatisfied by it. There was a time when, as a way of trying to understand and satisfy his own curiosity, Mike read everything he could find: straight, gay, deviant, medical and clinical descriptions of sex, but he only found all of it a little repulsive and eventually his curiosity moved on to something else.
Mike was thirty-one and had been at the RIOT INN for seven years. He didn't go to college and wasn't trained to do anything in particular, so after squeaking through high school he bounced around in a string of lousy jobs before ending up at the RIOT INN. He liked it there. It was quiet, easy work perfectly suited to him. He didn't have to deal with many people, and mostly, was left alone with plenty of free time for his drawings. Drawing was the only thing Mike cared about. It came easily to him -- something he'd always been able to do. By the age of four he could draw any character in the Sunday comics. At the motel Mike spent the hours of his shift filling empty white pages with medieval knights, western outlaws, and super heroes. The lines of graphite like molecules, black fibers twisting and moving and coming together, dangerous life spilling out of his pencil. Mike Sissy imagined if he could do anything he wanted he'd live at the beach, someplace warm, and do his drawings on tee-shirts and posters and sell them to the people who stopped and watched him work. It didn't really matter though, his ideas evolved in his mind and lived on the paper -- he gave them breath and freedom and took it again just as easily. He was content.
Dick Zerbee called Mike's drawings his "doodlings". "Fuckinmike, you're like a two year old, always doodling. Maybe you need more work or something. Jesus, find something else to do." Mike hated him. Dick was filthy and ridiculous. He seemed perpetually distracted; his thoughts like his hand in his pocket playing pocket pool with his perverse fantasies.
Dick Zerbee lived in a trailer behind the motel. His mother had the trailer moved there as a temporary residence for her and her son (Dick was Richie then) until their house was built. But the house was never built and the trailer remained at the end of a narrow dirt driveway through a stand of trees now littered with garbage and bits and pieces of almost everything tossed out over the years -- broken appliances, old mattresses, car parts.
Dick himself was a kind of ghoulish garbage man. A collector of freaks and fringe dwellers he picked up in alleys, on street corners, and in the dark seedy bars around Boston. Discarded scraps of people he could buy for a meal or a few dollars to satisfy his wormy passions. Used up whores. Poor black junkies. Runaways. Old drunken men. Homeless women. Dick Zerbee had a taste for carrion.
Shortly after Mike started working at the RIOT INN Dick tried to sample his sexual wares. Mike was sitting behind the registration desk as Dick showed him the bookkeeping system. Mike could feel Dick brushing up against him. He felt Dick's bad breath on his neck. Mike shoved his chair backwards over Dick's toes. Dick yelped and tried to yank his foot free, but Mike stayed firmly planted. Dick swatted Mike's shoulder, "Fucking, Mike..." Mike jumped up and turned and as he whirled around the pen he was holding punctured the crotch of Dick's pants, scratching a heavy blue line on Dick's dick. Dick was never sure if it was an accident or not, but he got the message. And the blue line never completely disappeared.
The loud music from the back room was distracting, but Mike was getting used to it. Except to sleep, Jesse never stayed in his room. When he wasn't working he spent his time in the office with Mike or with Gilda burying himself in beer and the loud music from the radio. And except for his walks to the convenience store up by I-95, he never went anywhere.
"Well, I think I'll call it a day," Jesse said as he finished the second beer. "Don't want to get too much done. I'll have nothing to do tomorrow. Job security you know." He stood up, returned the chair to its place, and came out to the front office. "I'm gonna walk up to the store and get a six-pack. You want anything?"
"No, thanks," Mike said.
Jesse leaned over the counter, picked-up Mike's drawing pad and studied the dark drawing. "You've been working here too long, Buddy." He handed the pad back and started toward the door. "Well, I'm gone."
Jesse pulled the door open. Turning back to talk to Mike, he said, "You should take up drinking. It's a much better hobby." He smiled and went out the door.
Mike watched Jesse walk slowly up the long driveway then turn left and start down the street. He had seen Jesse do the same thing maybe a hundred times and every time he was sure Jesse would never come back.
Mike got up and switched off the radio, then went back to the drawing of the man, nearly finished, slowly twisting on the end of a noose.
An hour later, Jesse was back. He rushed in carrying a six-pack in a brown paper bag under his arm. "Audrey's coming. I saw her from the top of the hill."
He put the beer in the refrigerator and hurried back out to the office. Leaning over the registration desk, him and Mike pretended to be talking.
Audrey shuffled in. She handed Mike her clipboard and passkey.
"Wow, Audrey, finished already?" Mike asked. "You're early."
"How can I be early if I'm done. When ya done ya done."
"Yea, okay."
Audrey turned to leave. Jesse and Mike glanced at each other.
"Oh, yea," Audrey turned back to Jesse, "there's something wrong with the TV in 16."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Don't know. I'm no electrician. Looks to me like someone put their foot through it."
Jesse almost choked. "Okay, I'll look at it."
Mike interrupted, "But no one stayed in 16 last night, Audrey."
"What am I, the motel detective too?" Audrey cursed as she walked out.
THREE: As Ordinary As Dust
By six o'clock, when Mike Sissy and Gilda Greene changed shifts, Jesse had finished his first six-pack and gone off for another one.
"Has the Dick been around?" Gilda asked as she settled into the sagging chair behind the registration desk.
"Nope, haven't seen him all day."
"What's rented?"
"There's a family with a bunch of kids in 14. They have the green station wagon. From out of town. Passing through I guess. Catholic Charities sent them over with a voucher for one night. With all the money the Pope has, you'd think he could afford to put them up at someplace better than this dump." Mike shook his head. "Unit 6 is dirty. A couple of kids used it this afternoon. And the old couple in 9 are leaving a day early, so make sure their card is ready for Jesse in case they check out before I get here."
"Where is Jesse?" Gilda tried not to sound as interested as she really was.
"He's been hanging around all afternoon. He already went through one six-pack and he left to get another one." Mike went to the door. "I think there's something bothering him. He was in a good mood all day, laughing and joking, but after a few beers he just got quiet. Sat in the back room listening to the radio and chain smoking. Has he said anything to you?"
Gilda had sensed a change too. Jesse was her friend; their first awkward days of small talk had become a comfortable exchange of complaints about the RIOT INN or conversations about something they saw on TV or heard on the radio. They didn't talk much about their pasts or personal lives, so Gilda didn't know much more about Jesse now then she did the day he arrived, but they enjoyed being together. And although Jesse was always repeating jokes and trying to make her laugh, Gilda could see the thinly disguised sadness that showed through in moments of silence or idleness.
"No," Gilda answered, "he hasn't said anything, but he's been really quiet the past few days. Yesterday I asked him if there was anything wrong, but he said he was fine."
Mike grabbed the door and pulled it open. "Like I said before, I think he's hiding from something. Or someone. Who knows, maybe today's the day he won't come back." Mike paused, "Oh, the TV's broken in 16. I don't think Jesse's gonna be able to fix it, so you might mention it to the Dick if you see him."
"What happened to it?"
Mike smiled, "Audrey had an accident. Ask Jesse about it. Well, good-night." Mike stepped out into the opulent darkness of summer. Through the distance a faint breeze carried the scent of the ocean.
Gilda settled in. She unpacked her things from her canvas bag: a big bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper, two tuna fish sandwiches and a plastic bowl of potato salad, which she brought into the back room to put in the refrigerator. Jesse's empty beer cans were scattered on top of the refrigerator and on the small table. Gilda collected them, threw them away and wiped down the table and refrigerator with a wet paper towel.
From the vending machine near the door Gilda bought a frosted fudge brownie and a Zagnut Candy Bar then settled back into the chair behind the registration desk to read the romance novel she brought with her. She opened the brownie and picked up her book, but she couldn't concentrate. Her thoughts kept going back to Jesse. Mike was right. Something was bothering him. She wanted to see him. To talk to him. She didn't know how, but she thought maybe she could help. Because Gilda Greene understood sadness. It was as familiar to her as the red lines of raw skin from the elastic of too tight clothes.
Gilda had been on her own for a long time now. An only child, both her parents dead, she was used to being alone, but she hated being lonely. And, as bad as the place was, she looked forward to coming to the RIOT INN every day. It suited her. The RIOT INN was the only place where Gilda Greene was as ordinary as dust.
Gilda started at the motel when she was nineteen. It was the year her father died. She was taking Accounting classes at the Community College and started working part-time as a chambermaid to help pay for it. There was still some life in the place then. In the summer, particularly on weekends, the Patriot Inn was busy. The restaurant was still doing a modest business and the motel rooms were full. It wasn't long before Dick started losing interest and the place started its slide, but back then, for Gilda, it was just a job. She still had dreams of other things.
After that first year, though, when summer ended and the staff was cut back for the winter slowdown Dick offered Gilda a job as a desk clerk and she accepted. College hadn't turned out to be what she hoped, it wasn't much better than high school; the politics and pettiness poisoning everything, so she dropped her classes and started working full time.
Gilda Greene was fat. Fatter than everyone she knew. She was twenty-eight, had always been fat, would always be fat, and a glance at her knuckles, like dimpled marshmallows, constantly reminded her of it. The stares and whispers when she entered a room, the way men reacted when they thought she was getting too friendly, didn't bother her any more. Fatness was her armor and she was too well protected. Mostly, men were intimidated or disgusted by her size and avoided her altogether, but there were some who liked her fatness. They took pleasure in the sheer abundance of her yeasty flesh and, when she allowed herself to, with them she could let go, unencumbered by her size, and enjoy the closeness and physicalness their curiosity offered.
At the RIOT INN though, with Mike, and Audrey, even Dick, and now Jesse, everything was different. Her fatness didn't matter to them. They were her friends. She was just Gilda. She was one of them.
Still, Gilda couldn't figure Jesse out. He was young, younger than her, good-looking and smart, but there he was, like the rest of them, in the middle of nowhere, far away from any real life he could have been living. He was alone, deep inside himself, and lost, or like Mike said, hiding from whatever life he had before. It was a feeling Gilda understood; one she had known all of her life. What puzzled her most, though, was why Jesse didn't leave. Every day she came to work she expected him to be gone and it scared her. There was so much she wanted to know about him, but even more she wanted to give. No matter how much she tried Gilda couldn't keep the growing desperation she was feeling from penetrating her armor.
It was after ten o'clock when Jesse returned. Gilda watched him, in silhouette from the one street lamp along the driveway, stagger down the hill toward the office. She quickly finished the candy bar she was eating and picked up her paperback.
The cool, damp, night air mingled with the smoke of Jesse's burning cigarette as he opened the office door and stepped inside. It was the smell of a brush fire.
"Hey Gilda." Jesse carried his paper bag of beer to the refrigerator. He took a beer for himself, opened it and lit a fresh cigarette, then turned the radio on and settled into a chair in the doorway.
"Has the Dick been around?" Jesse asked.
"No, I haven't seen him."
"Yea, I didn't think so. Mike said he was in love or something."
"Where've you been?" Gilda put down her book and turned so she could see Jesse. In the gray half-light between the fluorescence of the office and the darkness of the back room he was a shadow. Smoke from his cigarette drifted in a long thread toward the ceiling.
"I was at the beach."
"You walked over to the beach?"
"Yea, it's not that far. I go over there a lot. I like it there."
"There can't be too much going on at night."
"No. There never is. I like listening to the water. Watching it." Jesse took a deep draw on his cigarette and for a long moment he was silent. "You probably didn't know it, but on a dark night when there's only a small piece of the moon out and the wind is blowing kind of soft like it is tonight, a field of corn looks like the ocean rolling in and out. Green ripples with pieces of light reflecting off them."
"I've never seen a cornfield." Gilda said.
For a long moment Jesse looked at her, but didn't say anything, then he continued, "When I was like ten or eleven I went on vacation with my best friend's family to Virginia Beach. It was the first time I ever saw the ocean. I was completely blown away by it. After that, when I came home, there were a lot of nights when I would sit in the dark and stare out at the corn fields watching the light reflect off the leaves moving in the breeze and pretended I was watching the ocean. So, now I can see it for real whenever I want and all I can do is think about how much it looks like the corn."
"Maybe, you miss being home more than you realize."
Jesse hissed. "Believe me there's nothing to miss. Mud, cow shit, dust and corn as far as the eye can see. You get up in the morning and go to bed every night every month of every year and it's always exactly the same. Nothing changes. You never go anywhere and never do anything except the same thing you always did for as long as anyone can remember. Believe me there's nothing to miss."
Jesse dropped the lit butt of his cigarette on the floor and crushed it out with the toe of his sneaker. He took a long drink of beer then set the can down on the floor. "I could tell you what everyone I used to know is doing at any time during the day, any day of the year. Right now, early summer, planting done, everyone is talking about how it's going to be a good year. And believing it. Like somehow something’s going to be different this year than it ever was before." Jesse clicked his tongue and hissed. Disgust leaked out. He picked up the beer again and finished it.
Gilda got up from her chair and stepped into the half-light of the doorway looking down at Jesse. "It's the same way here, nothing changes from one day to the next. Except maybe it gets a little worse."
"Every thing's different here," Jesse said. "This place is a dump, but it doesn't matter. Every day isn't life or death. It's a job and we can walk away whenever we want.
"Then what's wrong? If you hate it here so much why don't you go? You don't owe Dick anything any more."
"I don't hate it here. But I do think about it. I think about it a lot. But where am I gonna go? This is the only place I've worked besides the farm. I don't know anything else. I went to college for two years and studied farm management. I'm a farmer. It's what I was born for. To lighten the load, help with the chores."
"Not any more. Jesus, Jesse you're not dead, you're young. Just because you grew up on a farm doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do. You can do a lot of things."
"So what? What difference does that make?" Jesse stood up and went to the refrigerator for another beer. "I used to believe all I had to do was get away from there. If I just left it behind, I could do anything I wanted to." He popped the top on the beer can and took a drink. "Thinking about it nearly drove me crazy, because the truth was I couldn't see myself doing anything else, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't see it. Everyone I knew either worked on a farm or in a mill and as much as I hated the farm the mill was worse." He leaned against the wall next to Gilda. "I didn't even know where I was going when I left. I was thinking about Virginia Beach because it was the only place I'd ever been, but I wanted to see the ocean first, then I figured I could make plans later." Jesse fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He blew the blue smoke out and watched it fill the darkness.
There was so much Gilda wanted to say. Too much. She wanted to say she believed there was a reason Jesse had come to the RIOT INN. There was a plan, a destiny, but that he had to open himself up to it, allow it to happen, and it would make him happy. But the words were too heavy and she couldn't find the strength to push them out of her mouth. The silence lingered between them. She asked, "So, how did you end up here? In Massachusetts?"
"After I got to the beach, I spent a couple hours there, but it was still pretty cold, so I started driving again. I took a wrong turn and was headed north instead of south, but it didn't matter. I finally stopped because I was too tired to go any more. I found this little bar on a side street and the rest is, as they say, history." Jesse held up the can to make a toast.
"Here's to the RIOT INN, where anything's possible." He tipped the can back and took a long swallow."
Gilda watched him not knowing what to say that could help.
Jesse leaned back against the wall and turned to look at Gilda standing there beside him. Her blue eyes were hidden in a mask of darkness, but he knew she was watching him. He could feel her presence in his thoughts. His hand reached out and touched her hair. It was smooth and soft like corn silk. He smiled. "Would you hate me if I did this," Jesse slid his hand down her blouse and caressed the heavy mound of her breast.
Gilda closed her eyes and sighed. She stepped closer, pressing against him. Jesse kissed her. His hands fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. Gilda helped him.
"Let me turn off the light," she whispered.
FOUR: Heat
Summer arrived in a vicious heat. Humidity was like a plastic bag. Nothing moved. The RIOT INN was empty -- the rooms, without air conditioners, were like sweat lodges. Jesse hung tinted plastic shades on the office windows, but they did little to keep the heat out. The sun strained through filling the office in a thick sepia-colored broth. Sitting behind the registration desk as a small oscillating fan blew hot air on her Gilda felt like a toad in a microwave oven. It was hard to work, hard to move, even hard to think. A chair held the outside door open to catch whatever breeze there was, but the air was dead and filled with the stench of stagnant water.
Through the streaming haze rising from the blacktop parking lot, Gilda watched Jesse driving a riding mower, cutting neat horizontal lines across the over-grown grass surrounding the office. Jesse had salvaged the mower using parts from the old golf course mowers and with it he was slowly reclaiming the old grounds. Each week he cut deeper into the swampy field, figuring by the end of the summer he would have the whole thing done.
Friday's Jesse devoted to outside work. It was the same work he had done all his life. Growing up, the work was always there; unfinished, unyielding, and it was too much. Now though, he welcomed it. For a day he could disappear into its familiarity, the smell of the fresh cut grass and the sweat of hard work, and hold on to that small piece of himself he still recognized. To avoid the heat he started early, but the mower broke down -- the front axle pin sheered off -- and by the time he got the broken piece out and replaced it with one from another mower the day had grown into a malignant paste of heat and humidity. It was late, after eight, before he finished for the day.
At the faucet outside the office he washed the dust off the mower with a hose, then pulled off his sweat-soaked dirty tee shirt and sprayed himself with the cool stream. The water was like caterpillars dancing on his skin in ice cube shoes. Jesse put his head under and rinsed his neck, then took a long drink.
As Gilda returned to the registration desk with a fresh glass of iced-tea from the refrigerator she stopped and stood at the window watching Jesse. She liked seeing him bare-chested. She smiled as she remembered. She didn't really believe Jesse loved her, but it was a sweet memory to have. To think about what it might be like if they could be together all the time. A part of her hated him for it, but mostly her anger was for herself. She should have known better than to let it happen, but she had wanted it, desperately, even if it was only once. Now though, if this was what they had become, she was sorry it happened.
Jesse turned the water off and spread his tools out on the pavement to dry. As he stood up he saw Gilda watching him. He smiled, she smiled back, and then he looked away pretending to recheck the tools. He was embarrassed. Pushing his fingers through his wet hair, he watched the water fall off it in tiny drops, spiraling down, landing in small explosions on the wet ground, and tried to shut everything else out -- no thoughts, no memories, no feelings, but he couldn't manage it. For three weeks he avoided her by pretending to be busy because he felt stupid and scared and ashamed, but he missed her.
When Jesse looked up again Gilda was still there, watching him, her hand dangling in the air from when he turned away as she waved. Gilda caught his eyes in hers and held them. Her eyes carried the voice of her thoughts and Jesse could hear her anger and confusion and frustration and longing and it scared him. He pulled himself out of the hold of her eyes. Gilda's hand fell to her side. She turned away and went back to the reservation desk. She moved the fan, changing the flow of its hot stream and blocking her view of Jesse. She picked up her romance novel and began reading.
Jesse wished things could be how they were before, but he couldn't let go of the memory of the tenderness and relief he had felt. He couldn't forget how good it was to feel the grip of his desperation loosen in the pleasure he found with her. And how much it helped. Jesse wanted to leave the tools there, forever rusting into artifacts. He wanted to walk through the waves of heat rising from the hot asphalt toward the beach and keep going like he had planned so long before. He missed his car. When he left Pennsylvania the road seemed endless. It was so easy to believe it was all going to disappear as the miles stretched-away behind him. Away. Away from Meyers Heights. Away from Lancaster County. Away from who he had been, what he had seen. What he had done. Away from the mist clinging to the smoldering black ashes forming crystals of ice and instantly melting away in the heat.
But it all came back. The darkness of his motel room was filled with the memory of his father's breath, hot and sour from bourbon, and the sickly sweet scent of his mother's perfume. Their shrill silence echoed in each idle moment.
Gilda changed things. Before, with her, there were no ghosts. He liked that she didn't seem to care about his life before he came to the RIOT INN, but just liked being around him. It was different now, though. Along with the old memories crawling out of the ashes to recapture Jesse's thoughts, there were new ghosts dressed in rags of regret -- the regret he felt for needing her without wanting her, of taking what Gilda so willingly gave without having anything to give in return -- scaring away what was once so nice between them. Jesse missed making Gilda laugh. He missed hearing her laugh. She laughed like a little girl being tickled. He wanted to tell her about the comedian he saw on the Letterman show and hear her laugh when he repeated the jokes.
Jesse knew how hot his room was going to be. He knew what was waiting for him there. He lit a cigarette then walked around to the front of the office and went inside. Gilda glanced up over the top of her book, and then glanced away. Jesse went to the soda machine in the corner and fished in his pants pocket for change. The little red light in the corner of each selection button was lit. The machine was empty.
"Damn, when the hell is that guy gonna come back to fill this thing?" Jesse banged each button with his hand. "It's been empty for almost a week."
"I know," Gilda said, "I called him twice, and he keeps saying he's coming, but the Dick owes him money."
Jesse sighed. He stood there looking helplessly at the empty soda machine. "Maybe I'll walk up and get some beer."
"I've got some iced-tea in the refrigerator if you want some," Gilda offered.
"Okay, sure." Jesse stepped over to the reservation desk as Gilda got up to get the tea. He picked up the book she had been reading. "I don't know how you can read this stuff."
"I like it."
Jesse rolled his eyes.
Gilda emerged from the back room with two big plastic cups of iced-tea. She handed one to Jesse and sat back down.
"Thanks." Jesse took a long swallow. "It's not a Bud, but it's not bad." He smiled and took another drink. For a moment the silence lingered. "Hey, did you see that comedian on the Letterman show last night?"
FIVE: The Black Dog
Morning peeled open the night sky. Its orange glow spread across the darkness, stripping the night away. With the light came the blossoming heat. Jesse sat on a wooden chair on the sidewalk outside his motel room. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, smoking a cigarette, watching the smoke hang there like a cloud before sinking slowly to the ground. It was too hot to sleep. The hours before dawn were the coolest, so Jesse had taken to spending his mornings watching the sun come up. Dangerous mornings. Alone with his cigarettes and thoughts as the crickets chirped their chorus in the round -- the song of summer, filled with memories of the farm. He wished for the pleasant numbness in a six-pack of beer.
Jesse never really believed he would ever get away from the farm. But then one day a storm of furious colors engulfed world. And it was gone. And he was driving. Escaping. Moving through his dreams toward the sea. It happened so quickly it was hard to make sense of any of it. He could see it just as it had happened, each detail in sharp relief, until the moment of nothing, that instant of absolute nothingness when time stopped, then started again, and everything was different. Jesse wondered if by now his mother knew. Maybe she had returned to pick over the pieces. Maybe she came back with regret, hoping to pay penance for her sins of need. Maybe she came to laugh at the monument of a stupid man. Did she wonder where he was? Was she looking for him? It didn't matter. She wasn't going to find him. They both got what they wanted.