“Whoa,” I said. That was more than the month’s rent I paid to live over Timber’s diner. Even though I had all that money in the suitcase I was holding, I did not feel quite right spending it.
“That’s the best we can do. I can’t imagine there’s anywhere else in town with much that’s cheaper.” And then he stopped talking because he had nothing else to say to me unless I was ready to pay $529 a night.
“Well . . .” I said. I was stumped.
“I can assure you the suites are quite nice,” said Rico. “Or you could always drive to the airport. There might be rooms there.”
I did not want to drive anywhere ever again, was how I was feeling. So that is how I ended up staying in the most gorgeous room I had ever seen in my entire life.
THOMAS WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS ROOM, that was the first thing I thought, of course. Two days away from town, three months away from our separation, and still I was running anything new through some sort of Thomas filter. I tried to turn him off in my head every damn day. But I knew him so well; it was hard not to look at things like he would. I pictured him walking through each room—there were four of them, a living room with a kitchen attached, a bedroom, and a walk-in closet as big as the bedroom, and a bathroom with a bathtub for two—lifting up the pillows and sniffing them, pounding his fist on the bed, turning each available switch off and on, the lights, the ones that opened the curtains, the Jacuzzi jets on the pool, which whirred helplessly without water to churn, until finally he settled on the couch in the living room, remote control in hand, flipping the channels looking for porn.
“That’s a brand-new flat screen,” he would have said. “Not as nice as ours but it’ll do.”
And I would have said, “The one in the bedroom’s bigger.”
“You think? Looks about the same to me,” he would say. “Should we go check it out? You hinting at the bedroom because you’re trying to lure me in there, Mrs. Madison?”
“Maybe I am or maybe I am.”
I threw myself on the bed. The mattress bent with me gently at the same time. The comforter was like a mattress all on its own, it was so thick and plush. I took the remote control from the bedside and turned on the television set to a movie channel.
Bruce Willis saving the day, a movie I had seen as a child, one that I was not supposed to watch at the time but did anyway. He talked like he had a cigar in his mouth. There was an explosion—a car turned around and over in the night sky before crashing down below on a shimmery highway—and I shut my eyes, and I saw the explosion behind my eyes, and then I slept.
When I woke it was two hours later, and it was dark outside, but the lights of the city kept my room bright, like a gigantic night-light. The city that never sleeps, I thought. Or was that New York? What was Las Vegas? What happens here, stays here. Where else would it go? Bruce Willis was gone from the television set, but there was Rio DeCarlo, an old movie, one of her first, when she was still up on the big screen instead of making TV movies of the week. God, she was gorgeous. Her lips were real then, real and lush, and these sweet little dark bangs framed her face, so all I could do was stare right into her eyes. She was someone’s high school girlfriend in this one. Her boyfriend went off to military school and that is where the trouble started. If I remembered right, she wept at his grave at the end of the film.
I lay right there, still, hands flat against the bed, back perfectly flat, jaw soft, thighs and calves pressed into the bed. I watched Rio hug the boyfriend from behind as he leaned over a trunk he had just packed. They seemed frozen. It was easier that way, to not move. I did not want to leave that room.
I could not turn myself into stone, though, however much I tried. There was blood rushing through me and a bruised heart and an empty stomach that made noises like a monster. My stomach yowled, angry I had let it go to pot those past few days. I went to the bathroom and dropped my robe. I got into the shower. The water pressure was so strong. It pushed up against me and I flattened myself against the wall of the shower. The water beat down on me like some sort of penance or reward. I dropped to my knees and worshipped it. Holy Jesus, was this a nice shower. I scrubbed expensive shampoo that smelled like mint into my hair. I washed myself with honey soap, my breasts and legs and face. I was clean.
I got ready in no time. I wore my favorite short denim skirt and a tight tank top and flip-flops. It was nice to pretend it was summer again. I looked at myself in the mirror while I dragged a comb through my long clumps of hair. The bones below my neck stuck out like a picked-over chicken wing. Once I was pretty. I would be again someday.