Day Out of Days (4 page)

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah, they just phoned in to confirm it. They’re on their way. I’m sorry about that.”

“That’s okay.”

“There’s a Motel Six just down off Twenty-five. They usually might have a vacancy. If you want, I can call down there, see if they’ve got something.”

“Would you mind doing that? I’d appreciate it very much.”

“No problem. I’ll let you know.” She turns and heads back to her post. Becky seems to have pulled herself together now. Her arms drop, and she starts brushing off the front of her coat as though she’s just discovered lint. She turns back to me with a smile and rubs her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Well, I’m so glad I ran into you, Stuart. You look the same as always.” She steps toward me with her hand extended, which I find slightly ineffectual under the circumstances, but I go along with it. Her hand feels icy and slim and she slides it back out of my grip almost immediately. Then she gives me a little peck on the cheek, like a sister might. It all comes back to me now, the smell of her soft breath. “Bye,” she says abruptly and walks away, disappearing down the hallway again.

If I had a gun right now, I’d shoot both the plasma TV screens and maybe the overstuffed sofa and then maybe I’d start in on the glass coffee table and the Caribbean vacation brochure and all the
Time
and
Newsweek
magazines with Men of the Year on the covers. Instead, I wander back over to the desk, where the girl with the laminated name is being surprisingly helpful. I get close enough to read the tag as she squashes the phone between her chin and her collarbone while scratching down a note.
Lashandra
, the tag says, and it has a little yellow happy face to go with it. “Lashandra,” I say
to her, not knowing exactly which syllable to emphasize. She squints at me and holds a blue-lacquered fingernail to her lips, as though she’s about to land a luxury suite down at the Motel 6. I signal to her that I no longer want the room by drawing my index finger across my throat, then head for the revolving doors. Lashandra calls out to me in dismay, “Sir! Excuse me, sir!” I turn back to her. “Don’t you want the room? I think I might have found you something.”

“No, thanks, but I do appreciate your efforts. You’re very kind.”

“Oh, no problem at all, sir. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Lashandra, could I ask you a quick question?”

“Sure, sir. Anything at all.”

“Don’t you ever go crazy listening to that TV all night long? That—murder?”

“Oh, I don’t even hear it anymore. You know—it’s just always on.” She smiles and I pass through the revolving doors. The pistol shots fade behind the glass.

Outside it’s dark and snowing lightly, flakes floating through orange light. I completely forgot that I left the car running, and my yellow dog is clawing frantically at the windows, seeing me approach. I let her out the back. She slides across a patch of ice as she hits the asphalt. Her tail is wagging wildly in circles as though she’s picked up the scent of quail in the dead of winter. She dashes off toward a little square of brown grass to take a leak. I follow her under the glow of the No Vacancy sign, which I guess I entirely missed when I stopped here. The temperature feels like it’s dropped down into the low twenties by now and the flying snow is making my eyes tear up. The dog must be taking the longest piss on earth. She just squats there with one hind leg weirdly raised, staring straight at me as though I might run off without her. Steam rises behind her. The hollow moan of the highway makes me wonder if I’ve finally broken all connections without even really wanting to.

I pop my dog back in the car and slide into the driver’s seat, which is now red hot since I also left the seat warmer on. I’m about to drop the gearshift down into drive when I look up through the snow and there she is—Becky Marie Thane—standing directly between the headlights, staring straight at me with a look not unlike my dog’s. She’s standing there shivering, without her coat, and the snow catches hold of her red hair and glows in the backlight, like a halo. Am I now having a religious experience?

She comes running up to the window as I roll it down, amazed. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I just thought maybe you’d want to stay in my room since you can’t—I mean, I have a couch and everything. A separate couch. It’s a fold-out, you know—an alcove with a sink. Not a whole room exactly but I just thought it would save you a trip in this weather. I’m not trying to—you know—”

“Oh, thanks, Becky,” I cut her off. “I really appreciate it but I ought to be getting on down the road.”

“All right, that’s fine. That’s fine.” She smiles. “I just thought I’d offer. I wasn’t trying to—”

“No, thanks so much though. It was really great to see you again.”

“Bye,” she says sweetly, and gives me a little fluttering wave, then blows me a kiss as I drive off. I watch her in the rearview mirror as she darts back into the lobby, stomping the snow off her shoes at the entrance. I’m trying to think what movie this reminds me of. One of those corny black-and-white forties Air Force films with tearful good-byes as Jimmy Stewart flies off into the wild blue yonder. Why is everything I’m conjuring up in black-and-white?

The snow is really assaulting the windshield now, as I head for the Louisville junction, the dog turning tight circles in the back, then dropping down into a ball and tucking her nose into her tail; resigning herself to yet another hundred miles of black highway. I
start drifting off into the past as the visibility gets dimmer and whiter. Maybe there’s a correlation between external blindness and internal picturing. I can see the edge of the mattress now and our gray bowls side by side; our knees touching. These are some of the other things that go sailing through my head as I strain forward to keep the car between the lines: Leaving the desert on a clear day. Boarding the Greyhound. Getting off in Times Square. Huge poster of a pop group from England with Three Stooges haircuts. Blood bank with a sign in the window offering five dollars a pint. Black whores with red hair. Chet Baker standing in a doorway on Avenue C. Tompkins Square Park, with its giant dripping American elms. Cabbage and barley soup. Hearing Polish for the first time. Old World women in bandanas and overcoats. Cubans playing chess. Rumors of acid and TCP. Crowds gathered around a black limo, listening to a radio report of Kennedy’s killing. Jungles burning with napalm. Caskets covered in American flags. Mules hauling Martin Luther King’s coffin. Stanley Turrentine carrying his ax in a paper sack.

I’m turning around. I’m in the middle of a blizzard and I’m turning around. I come up on a giant tractor-trailer rig jackknifed in the ditch. No sign of a driver. I’m up over the median now with the hazard lights flashing, hoping nothing is roaring down on top of me from the opposite lanes. I’m driving blind. I’d get off to the shoulder but I can’t tell where it is. Something is happening to my eyesight from the constant oncoming flow and swirl of snow. I feel as if I were suddenly falling through space and the wheels have somehow lost all contact with earth. I really am coming completely apart now, shaking, terrible shivers, gripping the wheel as if any second I could just go plunging off into the abyss and never be found.

Somehow I instinctively poke my way back through the gray to the looping exit, and limp back into the Holiday Inn parking lot. The family from Tupelo are unloading their huge crew-cab diesel
in the whirling storm, sliding their coolers and luggage across the icy blacktop. I just sit there for a while, watching them through the wipers, my hazard lights still flashing, and my dog getting very nervous about what may lie ahead. Maybe I’ll just spend the night in the car, I think. Wait it out. That would mean leaving the engine running so I wouldn’t freeze to death. That would mean that the dog would be whining and turning in circles. I turn on my satellite radio for some possible clue. The angelic voice of Sam Cooke comes on. I can’t take it. I turn it off, not wanting to provoke a total emotional breakdown. Can I just sit here all night like this? Engine running. Dog turning. Lights blinking. Snow falling. Am I going to park this car or just sit here forever? What will happen when the sun finally comes out and the snow stops and the ice melts and the whole landscape is transformed into spring and stuff is blooming and farmers are running their gigantic combines up and down the long rows? What will happen then? Will I still be sitting here like this with the car running? What will happen when they discover that someone is trying to live in his car in the Holiday Inn parking lot? I’ve got to get this car parked!

So I do and then one thing leads to another, and I’m heading back into the lobby, not really looking forward to encountering Lashandra again, not really looking forward to waiting in line behind the Tupelo hot-rod family, but there I am. Thank God the TV channel has changed. Now it’s news with some distinguished-looking dude in a suit, parading back and forth in front of a huge electronic map of the whole United States, magically touching it and brushing it in different areas, causing it to light up red in the South, blue in the North, giving the impression that the whole damn country is some cartoon show, divided up like apple pie, and that no one actually lives here, trying to score a simple room at the Holiday Inn in the middle of a blizzard somewhere on the outskirts of Indianapolis.

The Tupelo family finally trundles off with all their gear
toward the “smoking” room I had once coveted. Lashandra’s face is unsure what expression to make when she sees me pathetically standing there again. It’s a cross between smiling politeness and sheer terror at what she must see in my eyes. “Lashandra, hi,” I say meekly. She says nothing. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor, I—the storm is really bad out there. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“That’s what they were saying,” she says. “Those folks from Tupelo.”

“It’s unbelievable. Whiteout. I could barely see the hood in front of me.”

“They’ve got it on the news,” she says. “All the way down into New Orleans, I guess.”

“Really? Well—I couldn’t—I had to turn back around.”

“I still haven’t got any vacancy though,” she says.

“No, I know. I know that. But what I was wondering is—I have an old friend here. That woman—you know, that woman I was talking to before? That tall skinny woman with the red hair?”

“Right,” she says.

“I was wondering if you could give me her room number, because she offered to let me stay in her room and—”

“Well, we’re not allowed to give out the names of guests, sir.”

“No, I know. I mean—I know her name. Her name is Becky Marie Thane and and we used to live together in New York. Way back, I mean.”

“Well, I still can’t just give out the room number, sir. That’s our policy.”

“I understand that, but do you think I could call her, then, on the house phone? Would that be all right?”

“Sure. I can let you do that. Let me get you connected.” She slides the house phone to her, looks up Becky’s room number, punches it in, then hands me the receiver. I’m holding it to my ear, hoping Lashandra will stop staring at me and turn her back
discreetly, but she stays right there, eyes boring into mine. Becky picks up.

“Hello,” she says, and the simple innocence of her voice starts me weeping and I can’t stop and Lashandra finally turns away.

These recent beheadings are just what we’ve always dreaded. We knew it was coming sooner or later and now it’s here. Ancient gleaming steel coming down like a message from the heavens on our exposed white necks. The kind of separation that terrifies us the most—losing our heads. The absolute shock of sudden separation. The body here, the head over there. And the mind desperately darting between them, trying to pull them back together. How did this happen? From out of nowhere. Seemingly. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody could predict this. Not in 1957, anyway, when Chevy came out with that great fin on the Bel Air, and Little Richard was just hitting his stride.

They were having a conversation about Marlon Brando in
One-Eyed Jacks
. He remembers that much. He can see it in some motel room with a fire, off the coast of Santa Barbara; the Pacific crashing outside their window. He remembers her saying: “Remember how he lied to the beautiful señorita with the red hibiscus in her hair?”

“Oh, that’s what it was—hibiscus?”

“Yes. That fancy red flower she wore just above her left ear.”

“Oh,” he must have said, “but what was the lie about? I don’t remember him lying.”

“Yes, don’t you remember, he tells her there’s something in her eye. Some little fleck of something. He makes that up and she believes him. She starts blinking just from him suggesting it. Then he unties the bandana around his neck and slides over close to her and starts gently poking at her eye with a corner of the bandana.
And, as he’s doing this, he casually slips his arm around her waist and before you know it they’re locked in a classic embrace.”

“But that’s not a lie, that’s just plain old seduction,” he remembers saying, and just as he’d said that he remembers something failing in his eyesight; colors dissolving, shapes disappearing, the foreground suddenly receding into flat smoky sheets.

“Is that when you first noticed you might be going blind?” she says.

“Yes, I think it must have been. But I do remember that flower.”

“The hibiscus?” she whispers.

“Yes, I remember that flower hovering over her ear.”

“Like a spotlight, wasn’t it?” she says.

“Yes, but I don’t remember him lying, to tell you the truth.” They roll over toward the fire and he enters her from behind.

I would come untracked, is what it was. At least, that’s the way I see it. Now. In aftermath, so to speak. Disorient. For days it would come and go like that. Days and days. Wake up in some sheetrock room where the train shook the roof off. So close to the window you could reach out and lose your whole arm. Take your breath away. It did. Tucumcari. Kalispell. Abilene. Patriotic wallpaper. Blues and whites. Liberty Bells. Cracked plaster. Everything. Peeled right through to where you could see the old slats and newspaper insulation dating back to the late twenties. Those funny button-looking hats the gals all wore. Model Ts and pinafores. Headlines about the coming Crash. Was it a rendezvous or something? Some kind of secret meeting-up with someone? I wasn’t sure. Lost track of the reason for being there. Days spent trying to track down license plates. That one with the orange Grand Canyon for instance. Perfect clue. She must’ve been an Arizona gal. Who could tell by now? The way I’d just be wandering around looking for hints. Sometimes the faint sound of a bird was enough to tip me off. I’d head out across the ancient zócalo at dusk, crossing the broad Avenida Dolores del Río, following this song into the darkest night. But mockingbirds can fool you for sure. That’s their
game. Confusion. Diversity. Magnolia melodies sweet enough to take you in completely. Total seduction. And they’re free of guilt to boot. No qualms at all about breaking your heart in two and tossing you out there to the dogs. Those dogs. Those mean little dogs. California. Texas. Baton Rouge. Wide range of melody lines, if you follow my drift. Very little loyalty though. That’s what I’ve found. Very little. Grackles, on the other hand, you can almost always count on. Very trustworthy bird for place and time. Wake up to a grackle and a wonderful certainty fills your aching bones. Calexico. Texarkana. One of those. Long-tailed screeching bravado in the face of another scorching sun. Brings all kinds of news. Breaking news, if you like. But losing track of people altogether—that’s the worst. The feeling. The ache in the chest. Completely emptied out. No people. Some, just gone forever now. You can’t help that. But the other ones. The ones still somewhere. Still somewhere else. What happened there? Where’s the string? If there ever was one. You can’t not believe in that. Still, some I must’ve just drove off. I admit. Must have. Why in the world would they want to stick around a burning bush? A flaming Chevy. Fire blowing out both my Anglo-Saxon ears. Fire blowing out my ass. Catastrophic. A devastating smoking heap. Some of the other ones just fled, I guess. Just ran off. Some came back but it was plain by then they’d never find in me what they were looking for. Plain by the look in their downcast eyes. Terrible disappointment that has no end. That I can see. No end in sight. And me still banging around these dusty streets searching for breakfast. At this hour. Slinking sideways between slat picnic tables, old bent ranchers, Open Road Stetsons; talking steers and heeling dogs, straight-up Christians praying over crispy bacon strips and runny eggs. You find a clean dry space on the plaid oilcloth across from two skinny Mexican kids so lost in love their hands are stuck with superglue. Black Aztec eyes turned inside out; blind to the nasty world, gorging on each other’s mouths while their pancakes turn stone cold.