“What’s the closest you’ve ever come?”
“Once a woman came back to her room. I was in the bathroom when I heard the door and I had to hide in the shower until she left. She was walking around the room and talking to herself. She kept saying that she had done wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. If she found me, I knew there would be no way out, no way to explain. That was when it was decided I needed someone like you.”
I whistle. My heels are rubbed raw. The insides of my pockets are still wet from the snow. “That’s pretty close.”
“I’ve come closer with other things,” he says.
*
At ten, No Name announces it’s time for a break. He unlocks a vacant room with a king bed. He sits down on the bed and takes out a pack of cigarettes. Soon the room is clotted with gray.
Smoking is not allowed in the Hospital, I want to tell him.
Sitting on the bed might suggest something I don’t want to suggest, so I stay on my feet, by the door. I take off the gardening gloves and examine the grooves of dirt and blood on my knuckles, the black under my fingernails. Do I look like I escaped from someplace awful? Do I look like I ever had a home?
“What did you do before the sickness?” The red carpet is damp, like the one in the lobby, and I can feel a chill coming off the walls.
“Same kind of thing. Only bigger.” He’s smoking one cigarette after another and putting them out on the bedspread. The comforter is dotted with small, dark holes. I smell burnt polyester.
“What about during?”
No Name tells me that he was living here, in this motel in Kansas City, when the sickness came. Was there a better place to be? He had a bed, a shower, a TV, a telephone. If you knew where to look, there were endless supplies of bottled water, bar soap, towels, saltine crackers in plastic pouches. From the window, he could monitor what was happening outside. After the sickness ended, he decided to stay. He had been on the move his whole life—why not try living in one place? And then once the recovery began and travelers started filling the rooms, he and the manager saw an opportunity.
I ask No Name what he knows about Kansas City and he tells me this place is nicknamed the City of Fountains because there are hundreds of fountains. The cowboy boot was invented here. Kansas City is home to one of the world’s largest roller coasters.
“Not just one of the largest in the country,” he says, shaking his cigarette. “But in the world.”
“Not bad,” I say back. No Name seems to be fond of Kansas City.
“My turn to ask a question.” He blows smoke from the side of his mouth. “How long are you sticking around?”
“Only one night. I have someplace to be.”
Kansas City is just the first stop. Tomorrow I will keep pushing south.
“Someplace to be?” A pierced eyebrow pops up. He puts out another cigarette and the bed hisses. “Well aren’t you fancy.”
I hear sirens outside. I go over to the TV and try to turn it on, but the set is dead, defective, like the one I left behind in the Hospital.
“If I wanted a room with a TV, I would have gotten us a room with a TV,” No Name says. “I’m real fucking tired of the news.”
I ask him for a cigarette. He lights a fresh one and holds it out. I reach, but I’m standing too far away and he’s not coming to me; I have to get closer. I take the cigarette and sit down on the floor and feel the wet of the carpet seeping into my jeans.
“So,” I say, taking a drag. “What were things like before around here? How is it different now?”
He waves his cigarette and I follow the gray swirls. “What do you mean how?”
I want to tell him I’ve been in a Hospital for months and I have almost forgotten what it feels like to wear regular clothes and to breathe in city air and to stand in the tall shadows of buildings and to see people who are not patients, who have never been patients. I have almost forgotten there are people out there who smoke. I don’t know what it was like a week after the sickness ended or a month after. I don’t know if the emptiness and the rot is a new situation or if things have always been this way out here.
“I’m not very well traveled,” I say instead.
“What’s your theory?” he wants to know.
“My theory?”
“Of the sickness. Why it happened.”
“I don’t like to speculate,” I tell him in place of the truth, which is: I have no idea. I let the line of ash get longer. I didn’t really want to smoke. I just needed something to do. Outside the Hospital, conversation feels like a bright light in my face and I want to get away from the glare.
“Here’s what I think.” No Name kneels in front of me. His hood slips back and I see a red birthmark, vaguely Florida-shaped, on his temple. His cigarette has burned down to a white stub. “I think someone out there wanted very badly for another person to forget what they knew. I think someone started this whole goddamn thing just to make one person forget.”
“That seems like a lot of trouble for just one person.”
“Doesn’t it?” No Name nods like we’re agreeing. He puts out his cigarette and once again the bed sizzles. I’m starting to feel sick from the smoke. My body is not used to pollutants. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand being on break.
He takes out his list and calls the motel manager. He nixes one room and adds another.
“Back to work,” he says after he hangs up.
What’s your real name? I know better than to ask.
“I want the next room.” My cigarette has gone dead between my fingers. My lap is dusted in ash.
“We’ll see,” says No Name.
*