Forty-Seven
A room is not much. It’s not a remembered birthday. Not fresh sheets or a greeting at the door. Not a packed lunch or being wakened for school. It’s not a hug or interested eyes. It’s not a name pronounced correctly, the only name that kept you in this world when you were a peanut to be flushed away. A name that made the angels throw a party. A room is none of those things. And a room is surely not forgiveness. Forgiveness for growing, being, speaking, and breathing. Just a room.
Not much at all.
The motel lamp is dim. A low brown glow spreads a layer of dirty light across planes and edges of a room she can’t define. She closes her eyes. A half thought. More of a knowing she tries to get hold of, pin down. So what. It’s not like I’m a virgin. A half thought with filmy words that she squeezes and turns.
The light is clicked off, and only a sliver of green neon slashes through a draped window.
She thinks on the room. Her room. Not on the musty, colorless carpet beneath her feet. Not on her grease-stained dress falling to her ankles. Not on the meaty hand that cups her breast, or the clammy lips at her neck. The room. She thinks on that.
Beautiful, Zoe.
Soft, Zoe.
Yes, Zoe.
Zoe.
But she doesn’t say his name. She doesn’t know his name. The room. A bulldog. Space. Air. A thousand stars all her own. The room is what holds her.
It is over quickly. She is grateful for that. Grateful. Clothing is gathered. Keys plucked from the nightstand. Her purse tucked back beneath her arm. Soon they are in his car headed back to the diner. A slip of time that lives in a dream world. Hardly there.
He pulls in next to her car and jumps out. He runs around to open her door, but she is already out, rummaging for her keys. He reaches into his hip pocket for his wallet.
“What kind of tip do I owe you?”
She wishes they had taken care of it back at the motel, but she couldn’t speak then. Now it is easy. “Ninety,” she says. He pulls out a hundred dollar bill and tucks it in her palm.
“Worth every sweet penny,” he says. He bends to kiss her cheek, and she hardens her bones into place, forcing them to stay put. It is the least she can do for the extra ten.
He gets in his car and leaves, pulling the air with him, gray exhaust left in its place.
She waits there, the oily fumes holding her. She grips the bill tight so it wrinkles, crinkles, shapes to her fist. Crinkling, wrinkling. Her car. She should go to her car. Crinkling. But her legs don’t move. Murray’s neon sign crackles and snaps. The pump groans. It’s all the same. Crinkling.
But it’s not.
What the hell is so different? The yellow sign glows, flattens her into place, and the pump groans. Details swell. But then it’s not the sign or the pump at all. It’s a glance. A fragment. A second look. Beyond her circle of yellow. Beyond the oily fumes.
She sees him.
Carlos.
Standing at the door of Murray’s.
How long has he been there?
A dead weight pulls at her lungs. She forces a step. And another. Until she is an arm’s length from him.
“Carlos—”
He smiles. A quick, jerky smile she hasn’t seen before. “Just stopped by for a late dinner.” His hand brushes through his hair, wipes at his chin, and then is shoved into his pocket to keep it still.
“Right. You told me. I forgot.”
“Yeah. Just dinner. No big deal.”
His words don’t match the stiff movement of his lips.