The Bard awoke to find a piece of paper stuck to his window. His sides were still sore and so he gingerly made his way over. The window was suicide proof, so he couldn’t get his hand out through the gap to bring the paper in. He contemplated breaking the glass, but didn’t want to attract more attention to himself. He waggled his fingers around the edges. That damn dealer. He knew this would happen. This was just a test.
“I’ll show him,” the Bard mumbled to himself. He looked around the room so something small. He went to the closet, but the coat hangers were all attached to the bar. He slammed the door in frustration, shaking the hangers and making them clink. A dull throb in the top of his head had flown in direct from Painville.
There was nothing in the bathroom he could use. Why supply a toilet brush or plunger when maids came into the room, ostensibly every day? The Bard smelled the mildew on the tiles. “More like maids every week, “he snorted. He couldn’t just go outside and pluck it of the window, since his room was on the third floor. He could imagine the conversation he would have with the dealer. “I, uh, can’t get the message.” “Why, my dear Bard, let me get that for you,” he would say in that grandpa voice and then it would turn like a sword, “And then, dear Bard, let me give you a papercut and pour lemons on it! Would that be easier? Mmmm, lemon.”
On the coffee table was a complimentary Bowling Green Sentinel Tribune. The Bard recalled he and his brother, playfighting as kids. They’d wanted to be knights and so they’d made crude plate armor from cardboard and fought with wrapping paper tubes. They even tried to joust on their bikes, but the tubes could really hurt if you were hit deadon and it didn’t crumple. So instead, they used-
“Rolled up newspaper,” the Bard said aloud. Cackling and impressed with his resourcefulness, he opened the Sentinel-Tribune on the floor and carefully rolled it up. He walked down the hallway barefoot to the vending machine. He got a pack of Wrigley Spearmint and crammed two sticks into his mouth. He chewed furiously. As soon as the gum lost flavor, he spat it onto one edge of the paper to keep it rolled. Then he chewed two more pieces and stuck the wad on the end.
He stuck his paper-gum apparatus out the window, and then rotated it. How to press the tip to the paper? He drew the newspaper back into the room. Taking a hotel pen, he punched a hole in the top. Then the Bard unlaced one of his size 14 Doc Martens. He drew the lace through the hole.
Back at the window, the paper still stuck, unfazed by the breeze outside. The Bard put the tube through the bottom of the window, holding the laces in his hand. He made sure to keep the free end inside the room. Holding first one end of the lace, then the other in his mouth, the Bard positioned the laces on either side of the window. Then he held the left end of the lace with his foot up against the window frame, sweating heavily. He manipulated the free end of the tube so that the gum was on axis with the paper, and then drew the right end of the lace towards him, smushing the tube to the window. He almost fell backwards onto the floor. The Bard shouted, “Ha ha!” and carefully pulled the tube down. The paper lost whatever force was holding it to the window and came free onto the tube. He let go of the lace and put his foot down and hauled in his prize.
It was an old map of Georgia. In the upper left region, Atlanta blinked blue.
“I need to sleep,” Brad yawned. “I guess you require as much sleep as food.”
“You are a most astute young man.”
“Is that OK? Can we stop in somewhere?”
“That is fine. We will send the message in the morning.”
He took the next exit off I75, heading into Adairsville. The sign rushed by before either of them deciphered the logos. Brad wondered if axe murderers preferred secluded motels or ones with easy highway access. It covered up his deeper concern like a blanket over a body, the form still obvious.
“How’s this Ramada?” he asked. “It looks nice. Let’s stay here.”
The 4Runner did not stand out in a parking lot filled with a myriad of cars from the rustbuckets to the pickups, to the hulking pastel RV’s. Unlike the hotels Brad was accustomed to staying in, this was a collection of one-story buildings. He pulled the SUV up to the one that looked different and they got out. Brad stretched his arms and touched his toes. He cranked his torso side to side, luxuriating in the cracks that came from his spine. Callie simply stood outside in the same silk-pajamas-on-a-hanger manner that she’d been sitting in during the ride.
Brad held the door for her and she strolled in. The thought of sleeping arrangements burrowed out of its covers and she gave him an inscrutable look as she passed.
“What? I’m not the mindreader,” he said in his inside (inside the cranium) voice.
The two walked to the desk where a well manicured desk clerk was cutting his fingernails inside a plastic Gap bag.
“Welcome to the Ramada, my name is Kurt, what can I do for you?” he effused.
“We would like a room for the night,” said Callie, the word “nonsense” not even in her vocabulary.
“Certainly. One bed or two?”
Brad tried to think of math problems, of video games, of anything innocent.
“Two,” he eked out from between the Pythagorean Theorem (and the more general Law of Cosines) and remembering how to throw a fireball in Street Fighter (and the other quarter circular motions of the joysti- oh crap).
The clerk smiled and collected the necessary information from Callie while Brad mentally slapped himself over and over. Handing over two credit card keys and some info pamphlets, Kurt went back to clipping his nails, the two travelers already passing out of his mind, having become just two more numbers in his computer system, room 1334.
Brad pulled the car around to the second building on the right. “Sorry for any, um, stray images that you caught back there.”
“It is fine. I think I would have been insulted had they not,” she said.
“Really?”
“Actually, I probably would have been shocked, not insulted.”
“But shocked in a good way, right?”
“You would be the first human I’d ever met who did not fantasize about me.”
“But it’s not going to happen, so I should just do math all night?”
“Do not concern yourself. I do not think any less of you.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Then why are you not relieved?”
“I can not wait to get to sleep tonight…” he said. “Enjoy my dreams.”
They got out of the car and opened the room, the tang in the air and matted carpet stronger indications than the logos on all the consumables declaring that they were indeed in a roadside motel. The beds were tight pods, scratchy sheets, and an itchy top wool blanket but they were magnets to Brad’s exhausted iron bones. He jumped up and landed with a most satisfying whump, his mother’s voice in his head, “Don’t jump on the beds!” Callie sat gently on the side of her bed, working the alarm clock.
Brad rolled over, too many things to do before he could give in to his eyelids.
“Hello, Gong residence.”
“Mom, hi,” Brad said.
“Hi dear, where are you now?”
“Safe in Atlanta. I’m staying at a,” he checked his notebook, “ Holiday Inn, just south of the airport.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, mom.”
“Did you lock the car?”
“Yes Mom. I even took all the bags out of the back,” he wrote down REMOVED BAGS, “and it’s fine.”
“Is it expensive?”
“No, it’s just $48. I’ve got to go to bed now, Mom, I’m going to be up really early tomorrow to hit the road.”
“OK, dear. Do you want to speak to your dad?”
Brad’s dad would read him like a billboard. “That’s OK, mom. Tell him I said ‘Hi.’”
“Good night dear. I’m praying for you. And do pray for Leroy.”
Oh, right, he thought. Leroy.
Louie sat at the edge of his bed, trying to remember if he’d packed everything he’d need for the trip. The funny thing was, he’d gotten a lot of this stuff together for the sham Donovan funeral. Once again, the thought that he and Brad had tweaked the nose of some higher power occurred to him. He had his suit. Black suit, black tie. White shirt. He’d be a Reservoir Dog to say goodbye to Grandma Stern.
But really, he felt at peace. His cry earlier in the day had been his own private farewell. Everything else was window dressing. Appearances. Louie’s family would send off their matriarch in the proper way, remembering only the good traits and sweeping the bad under the rug. There would be no mention of the current family scandals involving a poor investment tip spread by one of Louie’s uncles to the rest of the clan. And there would definitely be no squabbling over the tiny inheritance. They were all supposed to pretend that money wasn’t even capable of crossing their minds.
Louie wondered if Brad’s trip was going as planned. He wondered if in Brad’s book, Brad was making the funeral a dramatic one with loud words and accusations, or if he just wanted his entire fake cast to get along and grieve beautifully together. Louie was pretty sure it’d be the latter and that his own family would mirror the Donovans and it annoyed him that the real funeral and the fake would be the same; the same clichéd emotions and the same measured mourning.
He wished he were there with his best friend. He wished he could have some editorial input into his story.
The Bard checked out of the hotel in his own way. He packed up the dealer’s artifacts carefully in his dirty leather satchel and slung it over his body. Unable to overcome his belly, the strap strained and one of the D rings popped off. The Bard swore. Taking the bag up under an arm the size of a boa constrictor that’s just eaten the three little pigs, he started off down the hallway, lyre in the other hand.
The kid at the desk was not only happy to let the Bard check out early, but he also included a fifty along with the receipt. After the Bard played him a reel, that was. Before, the kid had wanted all sorts of information and a major credit card. Now he was content to stare at the wall, looking for hidden messages from the stars.
Life was so much easier with the dealer’s little rhymes. All the Bard wanted was to have the power to write his own songs, since the old man had only given him ones that furthered his mission. He thought that as long as he had the lyre, he could just sing whatever he wanted, but it just didn’t work. But if he had the Inspiros, that would all change. And he didn’t only want to cast spells. He wanted to write songs that would make him famous. Fame would lock him into the canon of music, never forgotten. Never to be that chubby little kid on the playground, passed over and pissed on.
A rock star, sure. But even those fade. He’d be known for more. He’d be a musician. He’d be respected. Loved.
He just needed the Inspiros. And for that, he needed the muse.
The Bard piled into his Tercel (he was a pile all on his own). He seatbelted the lyre and placed the box back on the dash. He put the dealer’s map under the box, a precarious position, but he had the feeling after its hotel window experience that it would be OK.
As soon as he pulled out of the circle drive, a light green dot appeared on his map. This would be too easy. The three hundred miles to the blue dot stretched out in front of him but he appreciated the journey. It would give him some time to think about a subject for a song.
Esmerelda Jackson took off her shoes and sat down in her room. She unpinned her nametag and placed it on the desk and then off came her earrings, her bracelet, her hairpins. The motions were all autopilot. Everything was routine. Like her day should have been.
“Weird shit sorta day,” she told herself. She considered writing it down, to make sure that she wouldn’t forget the twenty, blank on one side. The girl, scurrying into the car. That big man, his face inches from hers as he offered her a hundred for that strange bill. That reminded her. She pulled the hundred from her bra, where it had been scratching against her body all day. Esmerelda had worried that it would fall out during her shift, so she kept adjusting her bra, drawing lascivious looks from the truckers, until the regulars growled at them. By the end of the day, she’d grown so accustomed to the money, pressed against her flesh. Now with it gone, it felt like she’d lost it.
Ben Franklin peered at her from the biggest tip she’d gotten. And yet, she wondered if she should’ve taken it. What’d that big fool want with a counterfeit twenty? Why’d that nice girl had to resort to faking money to eat? These questions ran tiny around the big one, which was what was the big man going to do to that little girl?
Maybe she should’ve stood up to him. Held her ground. Esmerelda wasn’t one of those girls who played old school princess; Esmerelda was Wonder Woman. She defended the weak. Wonder Woman would’ve sensed that big man was up to no good. And would’ve told him where he could put his big bill.
Esmerelda had a mini movie in her head. She saw herself ripping that money to shreds. Throwing it in the trash. But what good would it do now? Make her feel righteous, then it would be gone. The man already had what he wanted. If only there were a way she could destroy the cash, and still put it into the bank, take some of the pressure off her balance. But Ms. Jackson knew that wasn’t really an option.
Her day’d been anything but routine. Well, the morning at least. It was sad to see how quickly she’d made the rest of it into the same old same old. Just pouring coffee and taking orders. Working the rest of her shift and then driving home, stopping at Blockbuster for a movie, even though there was always something on cable that she’d watch instead.
The hundred was still on her table. An image popped into her head. It was Esmerelda, not as Wonder Woman, but in a white karate uniform (“a gi,” a voice in her head said, recalling one of those bad cable movies). The big man leaning in, with his big money and Esmerelda kicking his big butt around. She was going to take his money, start taking lessons at the karate school down in the strip mall on the way to work. This would cover the first bit and pay for that gi, and she could put aside some scratch. It was worth it. ‘Cause she was not going back to normal again.
Masterson and Rand crossed another major junction leading back to Indiana without taking it and without too much concern. Even the most forgiving interpretation of the fresh pursuit laws would not cover an overnight stay. The last tip they’d gotten was from a Kentucky trooper who’d seen a black Tercel and made visual confirmation of a large Caucasian male, bearded, heading down I65 south of Munfordville, and then turning off the interstate in the outskirts of Bowling Green. So Masterson didn’t even bother asking Rand if they should go on. He just started saying, “Call local” instead of “Call state.” That wouldn’t last forever. Even now, the interest of the Bowling Green dispatch was piqued. What the hell were two Indiana guys doing, one hundred miles south of the border?
There was no conversation within the car. Rand realized that he had no idea who the man next to him was, beyond the base facts. A wife. One son. Small house. Neither of the men was particularly chatty. Until this past little drive, they had no reason to be. Trooping can be a lonely job, especially when you were just cruising on your own. No sense getting used to having someone to talk to, even when they were right along with you. Then you’d be unprepared to go back to solo patrol.
The topics they discussed were lightweight. Stories of the constant repairs on Masterson’s house stretched out into a long running saga that was always good for a few miles. Rand sometimes mentioned his favorite restaurants. They discussed TV shows about cops and how the TV always cocked up some detail or another.
So were they friends? Rand guessed he’d call Masterson an assigned friend. Sort of like how his friends in high school were the ones he was stuck with in group projects. By senior year, when the teachers stopped making groups and letting them pick their own, they just stayed with each other. They knew their roles. Rand wasn’t a group leader ever. He liked responsibility (of course, not his chosen profession) but he didn’t like giving it to others.
And where were all those friends now? Most of them had gone to Bloomington to Indiana University. Rand went to Purdue and didn’t hear from them again, separated by more than the hundred miles between towns.
Masterson and Rand sped on through Kentucky, not talking, as usual. Cars slowed down as the drivers noticed the light bar on the top of the squad car, and sped up again as the troopers streaked down I65. If one were to observe it from above, it would look like one lightning bug sucking energy from all the others as it passed.
Brad eyed himself in the mirror before he ripped out his contacts. He was only 19 hours older than when he’d put them in. He popped first the right, then the left into the figure eight case, and then filled it with solution. He marveled at how easy eye care was compared to when he first got his lenses. Packing for family trips took a much larger bag then. There was the cleaner, the peroxide, the saline. He’d rub, rinse, and then place them into the holder for a night of soaking. The first day he’d worn them, he spent a full half hour dinking the right one against his eyelid before finally getting it to stay in. Getting them out that night, he felt like he was plucking his eye out. And as the neutralizing disk wore away over the months or he got lazy rinsing off the eye soap, getting the lenses in would be a mixed blessing: clear eyesight through red veined blinkiness. But heaven forbid that Brad should leave the house in glasses (although he had to wear them for two weeks whenever one ripped and he awaited replacements).
But now things were much better. First came multi purpose solution (even though the optometrist warned against its use… until the company started giving him a kickback). Then came solution that you didn’t even have to rub. Soon there’d just be some spritzer that would work in eye. Or some sort of light beam thing. Brad smiled wistfully at the thought.
Next on the nightly toilet came face washing, then teeth brushing. Why did these motels put the bathroom in the room, with not even a door to separate sleeping from cleaning areas? He felt Callie’s gaze on his back, documenting him for the countless stories that swirled in her head. He’d hate to be remembered as someone unclean. “I could give you an image of some dirty little boy and you could write down what you see,” she’d say to some other schmoe she picked from the street. He looked back, which was mostly pointless since the world was a blurry haze of Ramada brown carpet and off white walls. But he could see that her purple hat was over her face. No, she wouldn’t pick up some other schmoe. She’d said it herself; she didn’t come to earth unless she had to. And it would be over soon. The thought of traveling without her bummed him out. He slipped on his science-geek glasses and made his way over to the bed. The sheets would not come untucked easily. He got one section out and tried to work his legs down, fighting against the friction and the thought of the many people who’d slept in the same spot. Did they drool on the pillow? If he were lucky, that’d be the least objectionable activity to have taken place.
Not calmed, but exhausted into some state of inattention, Brad slept.
Five feet over, Callie lay, face up and covered with her beret. She still had all of her items on her list of things to do, but it did not seem so insurmountable as that afternoon. Sitting up, she pulled Brad’s thermos out of her backpack as silently as she could. She opened the top, which illuminated her face and cast a large fuzzy shadow of her head against the hotel crap art hung here. She tried to guesstimate the level of ambrosia left, but the fact that it shone made such judgments a tricky affair. It was adequate. She just needed enough to last her through tomorrow, and then another day for the Bard to arrive in Georgia, then one more to get to her sisters. She smelled the liquid, still chocolate laden from the thermos’ previous use. She tilted the thermos and dipped one finger in. Just a drop. Callie’s body grew warm, like the feeling of taking a good belt of Nyquil. She replaced the thermos and lay back down.