I couldn’t think of a single letter. I wiped my palms on my jeans.
At the station, the officers said, “You sure you don’t know where he is?”
“I was in bed when he left.”
“Miss? Will you spell it?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t spell my name.”
“I’m sorry,” I told them. “I made him eggs but he didn’t eat them.”
“I found a reservation for Marin Delaney. SFO to LGA. But it’s for the twenty-third.”
“I’m early,” I said.
“I can see that you’re upset,” they said.
“Let me see if I can get you on a flight today,” she said. “There will be a fee.”
I took out the ATM card.
The heat—it swallowed me up when I arrived in New York. All my life, hot days came with cooler breezes, but even with the sun setting, the air was thick and relentless.
I boarded a bus from the airport. I didn’t know which direction I was going in, but it didn’t really matter. I watched out the window until I saw a motel sign lighting up the dark. HOME AWAY FROM HOME, it said. I rang the bell to get off at the next stop. The moment I stepped into the lobby, I knew it was no place to be. I should have left, but I crossed the room anyway.
“You over eighteen?” the man behind the counter asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
He looked at me. “I’m gonna need ID.”
I handed him my driver’s license.
“How long you staying?”
“I’ll check out on the twenty-third.”
He ran my card, nodded, handed me a key.
I climbed the stairs and walked down a corridor to find room 217. I startled at the room before mine—a man stood in its window, staring.
I turned the key and stepped in.
Worse than stale. Worse than unclean.
I tried to open the windows to get the smell out, but they only opened three inches, and the air outside was still thick and hot. The curtains were stiff, coated in something. The carpet was splotchy and worn, the comforter torn. I put my photograph in its folder down on the chair along with my wallet and my phone.
Next door to me, a woman started howling and didn’t stop. Below me, someone blasted telenovelas. I heard something break. It’s possible that some of the rooms were occupied by regular people, down on their luck, but my wing was full of the broken, and I was at home among them.
By then it was late and I hadn’t eaten anything. I was amazed that I could be hungry, but my stomach was churning and growling, so I crossed the street to the diner. I sat myself, like the sign told me to. I ordered a grilled cheese and french fries and a chocolate shake. I feared nothing would fill me up.
It was pitch-black when I headed back across the street. I asked the motel clerk for a toothbrush. She told me there was a drugstore across the street, but then handed me a travel kit that someone had left behind, still enclosed in plastic, with a tiny toothbrush and a tiny tube of paste. I walked past my neighbor, still staring out the window. As I splashed water on my face, I thought I heard Gramps singing, but when I turned the faucet off there was nothing.
I went back outside. I knocked on the door next to mine.
The man opened it.
He had sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes. He was the kind of person I’d cross the street to steer clear of.
“I need to ask you something,” I said. “If you see an old man outside my room, will you knock on the wall to let me know?”
“Sure,” he said.
And then I fell asleep, knowing he was watching.
Three nights later I heard a tap above my head. Would he be bloodstained, would he be ghostly? Outside it was quiet. There was no one. My neighbor’s vacant eyes peered through the screen. I knew that he hadn’t moved for a long time. It wasn’t he who had knocked. Maybe a rodent, burrowing through walls. Maybe my mind, playing tricks. Maybe someone upstairs. Maybe him, haunting me.
He sang each time I turned on the faucet, so I stopped using the water.
There were only six days left before I could move into the dorms. At the drugstore, I bought a gallon of water for drinking and toothbrushing. I bought a bottle of hand sanitizer. I bought a pack of white T-shirts and a pack of white underwear. I bought baby powder for the oil in my hair.
I ordered split pea soup.
Scrambled eggs.
Coffee.
I used the ATM card.
I tipped eighteen percent.
I said thank you.
They said, “See you tonight.”
“See you in the morning.”
“The cherry pie is special today.”
I said thank you.
I said see you.
I looked both ways.
I crossed the street.
I turned on the television. Judge Judy. Laugh tracks. Always. Dove. Swiffer.
I pulled back the blankets, ignored the stains. I burrowed under like a rodent in a wall. I kept trying to find the right position. I made myself very still. I made my eyes shut.
“You’re okay,” I told myself.
“Shhh,” I said.
chapter twenty-three