“But you’ll be here, won’t you?” I said. “We can talk to you then, can’t we?”
“Of course you can!” Mrs. Krantz’s dried apple--doll face lit up, and I could see that she’d once been very pretty.
“Is there a special treat we can bring when we come back tomorrow?”
“Can you bring me some chocolate--covered cherries?”
“We can,” I said, “and we will.”
Chapter 20
“WE DROVE BY a motel for twenty--nine dollars a night,” I said. “That’s probably as good as it’s going to get.”
What I didn’t say was that it was called Motel 9, which I took as a good omen because it was so close to Disregard the 9. I didn’t want her to think I was superstitious.
When I snapped out of my mini--daydream, Petty was staring at me. “We’re going to a motel?”
“We need a place to sleep,” I said. “What were you thinking we should do?”
“I didn’t think about it,” Petty said. “I guess I thought we’d come to town, we’d find my grandma, she’d tell us who my real dad is and we’d go there. I didn’t think about . . . nights.”
The way she’d said it, “going to a motel” sounded extra special sleazy. Suddenly my stomach felt like it was tumbling in a clothes dryer.
“If we stayed at a nice place,” I said, feeling my face glow red, “it would be over a hundred a night, easy.”
“That’s not exactly what I was—-”
“It’ll only be for a night or two.”
She went quiet and stared out the window, to my relief.
We pulled up to the motel, which was made of tan brick. MOTEL 9, said the sign. Best Rates in Town. WiFi. Cable. Phones. Fridge. What looked like old blue terry--cloth towels hung behind some of the windows while others were sealed up with slabs of particle board. The rooms surrounded the parking lot in a U, and all the doors were red. We got out of the Buick. There were cigarette butts all over the ground, so many of them it almost looked decorative.
“Maybe we should gather all these up for Ashley,” I said.
“That’s a joke, right?” she said.
I couldn’t help but smile as I nodded. “That’s a joke.”
We stood gazing at the motel.
“Do you feel weird?” Petty said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But our cash stash is going to go a lot quicker than you think, so I think we need to stay in the same room.”
“No,” Petty said. “I mean I’m having a hard time getting enough air, and my heart rate’s way up.” She held two fingers against her jugular.
Oops. I tried to recover quickly. “That’s the altitude.”
I led the way into the front office. A wall of what was probably bulletproof glass stood between us and a dried--up old man shaped like a parenthesis. He wore pants belted just under his armpits and his voice squawked out of the mouth--high metal speaker embedded in the glass.
“Room?” His teeth were the color of maple syrup.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We’re not sure how long we’ll be here, so maybe we should—-”
“Twenty--nine dollars a night, one forty--nine a week.”
“Right. You have a room available for, I don’t know, like three nights?” I glanced at Petty to see if this seemed reasonable. She had no reaction.
“Pay up front,” the old man said. “Cash only. No check. No card. Cash only.”
I could imagine he’d been saying this speech dozens of times a day for the last sixty years in exactly the same way. A metal drawer popped out and knocked Petty in the hip. Inside of it was a pen and card to fill out. I removed them and started writing. Petty reached into her pocket, pulled out five twenty--dollar bills and put them in the drawer, which retracted.
“No pets.” The old man counted the cash as he talked and never looked up at us. “No smoking in the rooms. Outside only. Hundred dollar fine we catch you smoking in your room.”
It was funny he was saying all this, because the inside of the office smelled a lot like Ashley’s apartment. But I figured Petty was glad I’d have to smoke in the parking lot.
“Here’s your key,” he said, and the drawer popped out again. This time Petty got out of the way. She pulled out the change and the key.
“Thirty dollars if you lose the key,” the manager said into the metal speaker that made his voice sound like a robot’s.
“Gotcha,” I said.
The old man put his mouth up against the metal circle and shouted, “And no drugs!”
Petty jumped at the sound.
Outside, I parked the car in front of the door to Room 5, our new home for the next -couple of days. As I tried to unlock the door to the room, a woman peeked out the window next door. She had crispy yellow hair and sleepy eyes that rolled in my direction, but she looked through me. I snorted. No drugs my ass. I unlocked the door, opened it and went in first. Thousands and thousands of cigarettes had been smoked in that room. The brown carpet resembled felt and was worn to the floorboards in some places.