I pick my way across the messy sidewalks out onto Boston Way, where a few taxis idle. I knock on one window and ask if twenty bucks will get me to Victory Island. It will.
The lobby of the Tiki Motel is surprisingly spacious, but the brown-speckled carpeting and flowered yellow wallpaper aren’t exactly elegant. Sidonie was right; the décor is a laugh. Over the front desk is a fake thatched roof, fake tropical birds pinned in the plastic straws. Artwork hangs on the walls, pictures of the sea in every size and color frame. I’m no expert—no assistant to the curator of prints and drawings—but none of it is museum quality. Except for one familiar print by the luggage cart. Small fishermen in a small boat on inky waters. A wistful dream of plentiful food. It seems unlikely that the place hasn’t been remodeled in seventeen years, but my mother did say she knew straightaway that this was the place for them.
All of a sudden, it’s depressing that this ridiculous tourist trap, which once meant so much to my parents and, I’m hoping, still means so much to Dad, never crossed her mind, not even after she heard his message. She really did leave us in the past.
The front desk clerk has his back to me, rooting around under the desk, and hasn’t seen me yet. Betting he won’t give out a guest’s room number to just any uncombed teenager, I duck down a short hallway to my left, past the elevator and to the vending machine humming away at the end. Kicking off my boots and peeling off my coat, gloves, and hat, I stuff them and my bag into the corner beside the machine. With the last few coins in the bottom of my pocket I buy a Coke. I turn and survey my reflection in the tarnished gold doors, cloudy with handprints. I’m a static-haired, red-eyed mess, but it could work for me.
Shuffling out into the lobby in my socks, I call out, “Hi, um, excuse me?”
The clerk turns slowly. He looks exhausted. Probably worked the nightshift and won’t be relieved till nine or so. Hopefully he won’t give three craps about protocol this late in his shift.
“So, I locked myself out of my room?” I shrug and smile at him, channeling my inner Jessa. “I woke up and, like, came down to get a soda, but I forgot I lost my key card yesterday? And my dad’s not answering the door? I think he’s in the shower, maybe?”
“What room?” the clerk mutters, crossing to his computer.
“Umm . . . oh my god, I should totally know this. One forty? Or one fourteen? It’s under Joshua Scott. He’s my dad.”
His fingers skate across the keyboard. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s it.”
“Are you sure?”
More clicks of the keys, and a sigh. “No, it doesn’t look like it.” Now he’s peering over the monitor at me, perhaps trying to remember if he’s seen me check in.
Black panic coils up around me. What if, what if, what if . . .
“Or”—I suck in my breath—“could it be under my . . . other dad’s name? Miles Faye? He could’ve, like, booked the room for us.”
I wait for the clerk to wave me off, but he doesn’t. “I’ve got a Miles Faye in room two fifty-six.”
Oh thank god. I slap my forehead with my free hand. “I am such a flake. That’s totally it.”
“I’m guessing you’ll want a spare key?”
“That would be amazing,” I gush, collecting the key card from him after he feeds it through a little machine on the desk. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I grin as brightly as possible and walk away, casually sipping my Coke.
Jessa would be proud, I think.
Back at the elevators I drain the soda—I could use the caffeine—and collect my things. I ride up to the narrow corridor of the second floor, where the wallpaper is the red-orange of a bright, bloody sunset. Just around the corner is room 256. A dull orange door like every door, except not. The key card is in my sweat-slick hand, but I’m afraid to use it.
I think it’s like this: as long as you don’t turn the last page in a book, you get to believe whatever you want to believe. You can have faith the good guys will win, the clearly identifiable bad guys will lose, and everyone will go home and eat Spicy Italians on flatbread on their cheerfully dumpy living room sofa. I’m not living in a sunshiny state of delusion. I know this is real life, not some story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. Whatever’s in room 256 will be in the room, whether I open the door or not.
But I am so fucking scared to turn the page.
When the key card slot blips green, I ease the handle down, peering into the dark behind the door. A wall of stale heat and the pretentious sweet-spicy smell of Djarum Blacks break over me.
Carefully, I make my way across the cluttered floor, to the single bed where a long lump under the sheets is illuminated in the slice of hallway light, and steady my voice.