Midnight Forever at the Dustoff Motel

Sensitive themes: Sex, language

The pen is chained to the counter. The chain stretches taut; John is halfway through signing his last name on the registration card when it snaps. The receptionist shrugs when he starts to apologize. LISA, her name tag reads, the stick-on letters crooked and peeling as if readying themselves to be rearranged for her inevitable replacement.

“Your room’s on the second floor. Checkout’s at eleven.” LISA snaps her gum and hands John a key, real metal, rust-scented. “Unless you want a late checkout. Or want to extend your stay.”

John nods and thanks her.

The worn carpet sucks at the wheels of his suitcase as he drags it down the corridor. The carpet’s pattern is terrible - his wife would hate it. Brown and red triangles like muddy, bloody arrows. There are vending and ice machines on this floor; they will make noise all night, he knows.

At least room 218 is clean. He pulls back the heavy synthetic drapes and stares into the setting sun.

He takes an extra-long, extra-hot shower, waiting for the water to turn cold, but it never does. The bathroom mirror fogs up, defiant of the fan’s useless rattle. He doesn’t wipe away the condensation, though he needs a shave. Lily can’t stand his stubble, but she isn’t here right now, is she?

He should call her.

He doesn’t.

The sun is still setting when he steps, naked and dripping, out of the bathroom and into the dry, over-air-conditioned chill. He turns on the TV and wonders how much of his luggage he should unpack.

A commercial for a pizza place blares, intrusive. And effective. John’s stomach rumbles; his hours-ago lunch at the conference center had been light and unsatisfying: slimy, lukewarm turkey and wilted lettuce on plasticky white bread, fruit in a cup that had tasted like waterlogged floral foam. He looks around for a room service menu, for a motel directory of any kind, but finds only the obligatory Bible in the nightstand drawer and a pad of branded stationery imprinted with the ghost of the last guests’ handwriting. He flips through the Bible to see if some pious soul has left any money for a faithful stranger.

Two dollar-bills are tucked into the New Testament book of 1 John.

He puts on his same clothes from earlier and heads down the hallway with his ice bucket and Gideon’s blessing, vending-machine-bound.

The ice machine grumbles. “You have one job,” John tells it. It dispenses his ice, begrudgingly.

He pushes B4 on the vending machine for Cheetos. The Doritos in D9 drop. He sighs, but figures they’re basically the same thing.

According to the bag, the Doritos expired yesterday.

He cringes and throws the bag in the trash can next to the humming machines.

***

“The vending machine on 2 doesn’t work,” he tells LISA, still holding his bucket of ice.

“Darn,” she says. She doesn’t look at him. She snaps her gum. John wonders if it’s the same piece from earlier.

“Does this place have any room service? Or are there any good restaurants that deliver?”

“There’s a bar on the other side of the hotel. They serve some food.”

“Thanks.”

The bar smells like lemon Pledge and old beer. Everything is vaguely sticky. His stool wobbles. Halfway through his Coors, he realizes he still has his ice bucket. The ice hasn’t melted yet.

The bartender nods hello to a woman entering the bar. She sits a few stools down from John, and the bartender starts making her a complicated cocktail without her having to order it. She’s been at the motel long enough to be considered a regular, John thinks. How awful.

Or is it? He could sip this Coors forever, he thinks. He’s travel-weary, but in the productive, sore-muscles way you get after a good workout. His room is clean. His wife isn’t here. He should call her; she hates it when he doesn’t check in. Instead, he eyes Complicated Cocktail Lady.

She’s overdressed for the Dustoff in her smart, tailored suit. John wonders if she’s in town for the conference - she’s attractive enough to kill it in sales. Her voice, as she makes small-talk with the bartender, is charming and warm above the repetitive, muffled music that comes from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Hi there,” she says to John.

“Hello,” he says. He is self-conscious about his ice bucket.

“That sounded like it took effort. Long day?”

John chuckles. He swirls his beer like it’s wine. “Long life.”

The song in the background starts over. John wants to start over with it.

“I was starting to think I’d be drinking alone forever,” she says.

“I got here as soon as I could.”

Lily would have rolled her eyes at the line. He isn’t even sure why he said it. But Complicated Cocktail Lady laughs and leans toward him a little.

“You’re right on time.” She holds her right hand out for him to shake. “I’m Mira Jean.”

She glances at his other hand and sees the wedding ring. She smiles and tightens her grip, her fingers on his wrist.

This is why Lily hated business trips.

“I’m J-… Luke.”

“Are you sure about that?”

John bristles. “Um -”

“Your name badge is still attached to your shirt, John. How was the conference?”

He blushes and drinks to hide it. It doesn’t work.

“Don’t worry, John. I won’t tell Lily.”

John chokes on his drink. “I’m sorry?”

“I won’t tell anybody. Besides, I get it. Who wants to be themselves at a place like this?” She sips her cocktail. “Can I have another one of these, love?” She smiles at the bartender.

John’s pulse settles. “Another, please,” he says, and slides his empty glass away.

***

He doesn’t remember changing into swim shorts. He doesn’t even remember packing them. But he’s wearing them: plain black, faintly chlorine-scented. They feel like they’re his. They fit like they’re his.

Too many Coors.

Mira Jean walks in front of him, leading the way to the pool room. She’s in a robe, one she must have brought herself - the Dustoff certainly doesn’t provide them.

She opens the double doors labeled “P OL AND JA UZ I” with a flourish, a magician stepping onto stage, a movie star at her big premier. John almost expects to see paparazzi, camera flashes.

Chemical steam and humidity hit him. Bubbles echo. The wet concrete is rough on his bare feet.

“NO LIFE,” a sign screams. It takes John a moment to realize “GUARD” has peeled off.

The Jacuzzi water is a baptism. His tension releases in the warmth. Mira Jean sighs contentedly as she sinks into the green-tinged water beside him.

“I love motels,” she says, “for the same reason I love airplanes. There’s nowhere to be but where you are. No obligations. No promises, no demands.” She sings Lily's favorite song and it's somehow both mocking and innocent, knowing and naive.

“Love is a battlefield.” John sings his response.

And it is: a battle of tongues, Mira Jean’s versus his own, wet from the spa, loosened by liquor, so much warmer than the cold kiss Lily gave him when he left. A war between want and duty, lust and commitment. He squeezes Mira Jean through her swimsuit and water streams out of the synthetic material. Steam rises from their skin like spirits set free from a body. Lily floats to the forefront of his mind, furious at the betrayal. Always most alive when enraged, that was Lily. Incandescent in her anger. Flushed and bloodshot, clenched and zealous. John kisses Mira Jean harder.

The rest is a guilt-blurry dream; he is spent and empty at the end. He breathes hard, sweaty from exertion in the hot water. Mira Jean slumps next to him, swimsuit straps in disarray. She bobs in the mechanical current, eyes closed. John wonders why the jets haven’t turned off yet.

Mira Jean doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at him. Her hair swirls on the surface of the water.

John wants to get back to his room.

“Goodnight,” he whispers. Mira Jean doesn’t respond. Her head lolls. The water laps at her parted lips.

***

“Sorry to bother you,” he says to LISA. “My key isn’t working. It won’t even go in the lock.”

“Are you sure you have the right room?” LISA speaks to him as if she’s coddling a toddler.

“Yes. 218.”

LISA flips through the stack of registration cards. “You’re in room 120.”

“I’m certain I’m in 218.”

“Then why isn’t your key working?”

John doesn’t answer. He’s still holding his ice bucket, and the ice still hasn’t melted.

At least the sun has finally set. It’s dark outside; the first floor windows show only blackness and the reflections of the corridor lights.

When his key nestles neatly into the lock of room 120, John is certain LISA has played a prank on him. Did she switch his key when he was drunk? When he was... distracted in the Jacuzzi? What a creep.

His suitcase is on the floor, the same place he left it in 218. The TV is on, the volume lowered. He changes into clean, dry boxers and a t-shirt and sits on the edge of the bed.

He should call Lily. He knows she’s stewing under the covers, silent and rigid in the dark, in shocked disbelief that he hasn’t reached out. He doesn’t want to face her. He imagines her mad at him, seething, tossing and turning in their bed, rehearsing all the fire she’ll spit at him once he gets home.

If he gets home.

It’s not a bad place, the Dustoff.

He lies back. The bed is comfortable enough, the sheets smooth, the pillows soft. He reaches idly for the remote and raises the volume on the TV.

An infomercial plays. A salesman with a paper shredder smile is raving about mattress technology, breathable nanofibers; he promises a paradox: sleep so revitalizing! Sleep like the dead!

John drifts off, the voice of the salesman manifesting for him a sleep so deep that he dreams of nothing.

He wakes in a panic, knowing he’s overshot checkout time, horrified by the realization that he must leave without readying himself, that he has to go home. He fumbles for the phone on the nightstand, dials 0 for the front desk.

“Dustoff Motel, LISA speaking.”

“LISA! It’s John in 218- er, 120. You’re still on shift?” He rubs sleep from his eyes. His mouth is dry. “I overslept, I’m very sorry. Could I request a late checkout?”

“Sir, it’s ten PM.”

He glances at the clock on the nightstand on the other side of the bed. 10:14.

“Oh. Right. Thank you.” He hangs up, embarrassed.

“Why toss and turn when you could disappear into comfort? Slide in, sink deep, and forget what you were running from. And if you add on our state-of-the-art, proprietary mattress topper, you will- "

John mutes the TV. The silence is broken by his growling stomach, and he realizes he never actually ate anything at the bar earlier.

He finds the Bible, flips through it.

Two dollars, pressed between the pages of the book of Luke.

He doesn’t take his ice bucket to the vending machine; the ice he got earlier hasn’t melted. He wonders if he should dump it out, if there’s some harmful substance in the second-floor ice machine that’s acting as formaldehyde for the cubes.

B4, he presses, deliberate, no typos. “Cheetos,” he says, as if there is a little waiter inside the vending machine.

B10, he receives. Snickers.

“Don’t laugh at me.”

It’s expired anyway. He throws it away.

Back to his room. He changes.

Back to the bar.

***

“I was starting to think I’d be drinking alone forever.”

“I got here as soon as I could.”

Mira Jean gives him a shy, knowing smile. She’s wearing her tailored pantsuit again, though perhaps it’s a little rumpled now. Did she take a nap too? He tries, surreptitiously, to sniff her hair for chlorine. She laughs and orders another drink.

The pool room is hotter, wetter this time. Mira Jean groans with pleasure as the water envelops her. She floats over to him, kisses him without preamble.

Lily’s face swims into focus in the black of his mind’s eye. Her eyes bore into it, she refuses to blink, she won’t move, she won’t speak to him. He kisses Mira Jean harder, bites at her bottom lip, runs his hands roughly over her sides, presses himself against her. His mind-Lily snarls, her rage awakened; he tears into Mira Jean with desperate intensity, making Lily scream and curse him and hit him and cry; with every thrust she intensifies, with every gasp she contorts in vital animation. Tears run down his cheeks and fall to join the water below, and when he is done he is ashamed and delighted, his wife ablaze in his eyes, Mira Jean limp in his arms.

“Mira Jean?” he asks. He lets go of her. She flops, inelegant, onto the bubbling surface of the water, facedown. She doesn’t move; she floats, hair swirling, playing a prank on him, why is everyone at this motel such a trickster? Don’t they think he’s been through enough, that he feels bad enough already?

He stumbles out of the water. He runs for the doors, runs to his room down a corridor that’s flexing, too long and too cold. The air conditioner rattles, the carpet is damp - bloody, muddy arrows point to nowhere. He smells like musty chlorine. He needs to call Lily, but his hands are wet. Shaking. Full. The bucket. Always the bucket. The ice still hasn’t melted.

***

“My key isn’t working again. LISA, what’s going on?”

“Are you sure you’re you have the right room? You’re in 307.”

“…the sleep of the dead! Folks, this is the greatest leap in mattress technology since -”

“Sir, it’s only eleven PM.”

Two dollars, 2 John.

B4.

“CHEETOS! FUCK!”

This is still better than going home, he thinks as he throws away the expired pretzels.

“I was starting to think I’d be drinking alone forever.”

Chlorine and saliva, Lily and Mira Jean, rage and submission.

“Mira Jean?” She slumps in the water, and he tries to wait for her to splash back up with a grin and a laugh, but she has the lungs of a deep-sea diver, she lost an earring and is looking for it in the drain, she’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine.

***

“LISA!”

401.

“Breathable nanofiber-”

“John, it’s only midnight-”

Two dollars, 3 John.

C7. “Ha!”

Cheetos. Finally.

Expired.

Call about Lily. Tell someone.

“I was starting to think I’d be drinking alone forever.”

Water everywhere, in his eyes, his nose. Mira Jean’s embrace is a vise he will be locked in forever and it’s worth it, it’s worth all the expired food, the formaldehyde ice, it’s even worth dealing with goddamned LISA and her goddamned tricks, worth the mattress salesman, the parade of Bibles. It’s worth anything and everything to see Lily vibrant, ventriloquized, puppeteered by pain.

Mira Jean slumps, splashes into the water.

He’ll wait this time. Wait and see.

She doesn’t move.

John waits.

She bobs for awhile, then starts to sink. Her hair swirls.

“Mira Jean?” She can’t hear him, she’s fully underwater.

He waits.

The ice begins to melt.

***

It is hours, hours. Days.

The jets shut off.

The ice becomes cold water. The water warms in the heat of the pool room.

Mira Jean, mottled, is suspended like a specimen in the green-tinged water.

John shivers. His fingertips are raisins. His stomach growls.

It’s checkout time.

LISA will be here soon, LISA the tyrant, the trickster. She will find them here, she will assume the worst. His fault.

He takes a breath.

He drags Mira Jean out of the water. He rolls her onto her stomach on the concrete. He pushes on her back to press the water out of her lungs. Her skin becomes clammy as the residual spa heat dissipates. He turns her over. He tries to kiss breath into her, and Lily watches these kisses without rage, and that makes them the worst kisses of his life.

Mira Jean does not breathe. Her heart does not beat.

She is dead. He has no choice but to admit it.

And, with a realization as sick as the spit-string between his mouth and the corpse, he knows he was kinder to this figment, this mirage of a woman than he was to his own dead wife.

He cries and cradles Mira Jean as she disappears.

***

He makes the call.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I left her there. I’ll be there soon.”

He checks out. On time.

“Good morning, sir! How was your stay?” ISLA, the name tag reads. She slides his folio across the counter. The total amount due is higher than he expected. He hands ISLA his card.

“Just sign here please - perfect. Have a safe trip home, sir.”

John signs his name. The sun continues to crawl upwards into the morning sky. The pen is chained to the counter.