by Chuck Wendig
EIGHT
BEDSHEETS AND BLOODSTAINS
Here’s the thing about cheap, shit-ass motels:
You go to a real hotel, a Holiday Inn or a Marriott-Hilton-Hyatt-whatever, everything is nice and tight and hermetically sealed: crisp sheets, soft carpets, minimal noise, and the plumbing works.
Hotels care about you, or pretend to. They want you to feel trapped in the isolation of their embrace, like you’re in your own little vacation pod away from the world. Safe. Secure. A curated experience.
Motels don’t give a cup of hot wet shit. They are as unpretentious as they come. No plate of cookies at the front desk. No turndown service. No breakfast buffet. The decor is minimal—carpet from ten years ago, wood paneling from twenty, and somewhere along the way, someone said, “I don’t know, put a flea market painting of a fucking lighthouse on the wall.” The beds are usually hard as a rock. The TV gets good porn, and if the reception sucks, you can always listen to the people through the paper-thin walls: the fakey love-yowls of a road hooker giving the goods to a trucker, a family on vacation on the verge of divorce and destruction, two drunk forty-year-old brothers yelling at each other about some girl back in high school they each thought the other one fucked. You might find pubes on the sink. Old bloodstains on the carpet under the bed. Bedbugs hiding at the mattress margins. But the showers are hot. The rooms are cheap. Sometimes, you even get theme motels: teepees or Victoriana or Americana. Miriam was in a motel once in Kansas called the Maui Motel, pretended like it was a slice of the island life in the middle of the cold, dead Midwest: everything was coconuts and pineapples, ukulele music playing over tinny speakers, and walls painted to look like the ocean (with the paint peeling off to show the cinder block underneath). It smelled like dust and the grotesque vanilla air freshener you use to spray a bathroom after you’ve gone and shellacked the porcelain with whatever food poisoning you got from the pupu platter at the “Hawaiian Grill” next door. It was horrible. Miriam hated it.
Which is to say, Miriam loved hating it.
Kitschy, crappy, don’t-give-a-care motels.
They’re authentic. That’s why they matter.
(Like me, Miriam thinks, sometimes. Trashy but true to themselves.)
This one, though: goddamnit, it’s disappointing. Why?
Because it’s a chain motel. A Super 8, maybe once a real-deal motel but now it’s owned by a bigger hotel chain and the beds are clean and the decor is hipster Americana (old cars, aspens, neon signs in black and white, which dicks up the whole reason to take a picture of a neon sign in the first place). As she steps into the room, Gabby must see her scowl and responds accordingly: “Yeah, I know, it’s a Super 8.”
“This is not a motel room where somebody died,” Miriam says.
“And that disappoints you?”
“I mean, a little.”
“Haven’t you seen enough death?”
A shudder passes through her like a drifting shadow. “Probably.”
She plonks down on the edge of the bed. Gabby stands there, jacket still on. Sticking out like a sore thumb, like she doesn’t know what to do with herself, like she’s not sure if she belongs here. Miriam’s face is down, but her eyes are up, watching Gabby.
“You’re really pregnant?”
“That’s what you want to ask me?”
“It’s why you called me.”
“Yeah, it is. And yeah, I am.”
Gabby crosses her arms tight—again, her big puffy jacket vips and vrrps as fabric rubs on fabric. “How do you know?”
“I just—I just know. I had a vision. I can feel it.”
“I thought . . . you couldn’t get . . . that way.”
That way. Like it’s some kind of burden. Gabby sounds like a dude, the way she’s talking about it. Of course, Miriam thinks about it the same way: pregnancy, uck, ick, nyah. It’s a condition. A curse same as her other. “That’s what they told me. Scar tissue in my derelict baby-bag.”
“And yet—”
“And yet here we are. The times, they are a-changing.”
She flops back on the bed.
Gabby sucks air between her teeth. “You’re going to bleed on the bed.”
“This room could use a couple bloodstains. Give it some character.”
“You need to go to a hospital.”
“I need to just . . . lay here for a while. No hospital.”
“You need stitches.”
“I need . . .”
Her words slip away from her and her eyes close. Her head’s not even on a pillow. Her feet still dangle over the edge. Gabby’s talking, and Miriam’s hardly listening—she knows she left Gabby in the lurch. Didn’t talk to her as much as she should’ve—or even could’ve. And here she is, to rescue her when she needs it most. But right now, she’s tired. Every atom of her body feels like it’s heavy as a piece of lead, and she’s sinking like a handful of stray bullets tossed into water. Darkness comes up around her as exhaustion pushes her down, down, down, toward sleep—
NINE
DREAMLESS
She should dream. In the back of her mind, somewhere, she knows that—the only dream is the realization she is not dreaming. This would normally be a time for Miriam’s own mind to haunt her way a ghost haunts the halls of a troubled house—or maybe it would be time for the Trespasser to make an appearance, to taunt her, to urge her. In the dreamless dark, she should hear a baby crying, she should feel the weight of a red snow shovel crashing down on her back, she should be chasing a small boy who is in turn chasing a red balloon across a busy highway. But none of that comes to her. In her exhaustion, she finds no specters. The demons that are uniquely hers remain quiet, exorcised or at least temporarily contained.
But in the stretch of rest, she becomes aware of one thing even in the bleak black of a formless and timeless void:
I’m not alone.
It’s a presence. Not Gabby. A different sound. A different smell. A shape darker than the rest behind the curtain of her closed eyelids. The baby? she thinks, absurd because at this point, the baby is, what? The size of a little deer tick? No. Someone’s here. With her.
Fuck.
Miriam gasps, and jolts awake.
Confirmed true: she is not alone.
A man sits on the other bed, facing her. He’s in a black suit, black tie, like he’s on his way to a funeral somewhere. His hands sit steepled in his lap, by his crotch. Dusky skin. Black hair mussed up, but in a purposeful way—like someone who likes chaos only when it’s controlled.
“You’re awake,” he says, only a few feet away. He’s troublingly close. He could hurt her. Maybe he wants to, maybe that’s his plan. Behind him, sunshine through the blinds frames him like he’s some kind of dark angel riding forth on rays of light.
Her mouth tastes like llama ass. Slowly she eases forward, sitting up so she’s almost knee-to-knee with the stranger.
“I am,” she says, her voice a croak. “You real?”
The man seems taken aback by that question. He gives himself a quick pat-down, as if to check. “I think so. Are you?”
“Real as a roller coaster, pal.”
“Then hello, Miriam, let me introduce myself: I’m David Guerrero.”
“Hey, David Guerrero,” she says, her voice forced to an eerie stillness. “It’s nice to meet you. Are you here to kill me?”
“No. I am not.”
She urges a stiff smile to her face. “Lemme ask you, I had a friend here. Her name was Gabby. Is she around?”
“Nothing to worry about. She’s just outside.”
As if on cue, a shadow passes in front of the window.
Am I dreaming? Is this the dream rising up out of the dark?
“I want to see her. Make sure she’s okay.”
David hesitates for a moment, then nods. He stands up, goes to the door, cracks it open. Miriam hears murmuring back and forth. As he stands there, his jacket eases away from the pistol hanging in a holster at his hip.
Her muscles tense. So,
he’s a fed, not a pallbearer. Or a hitman pretending to be a fed. That’s how Harriet and Frankie played it, once.
He is awfully clean, awfully crisp. Maybe too much so. Grosky was a fed, too, and he looked like a garbage bag.
A splinter of unexpected sorrow digs into her heart. She misses Grosky. He was all right, after all. Associating with her lost him his head—literally. Everyone around me dies. Her very presence is like a taste of slow poison. She’s radioactive: a walking, talking, singing, dancing slice of Chernobyl. She thinks again of the little life inside her. A life guttering like a candle flame, put out by a pair of pinching fingers nine months later.
Guerrero comes back from the door, and Gabby follows him in. She’s buttoned up in her big coat, shivering a little from standing outside. She’s been smoking, and Miriam can smell it, and honestly, that hurts her.
A small but notable betrayal. It is not the only one, she realizes.
Miriam winces against the light. “Hey, Gabs.”
“Hi, Miriam.”
There, in Gabby’s voice—clear as a rung bell—is guilt. Like a slightly mopey teenager who knows she just got caught doing something. Which means Gabby just got caught doing something. Not smoking. So—what?
Ah.
“You’re a fed,” Miriam says to Guerrero. Then to Gabby: “And you invited him here.”
Gabby says nothing. Guerrero sits back down. “Miriam, that is correct. I am in fact an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“So, you’re here to arrest me.” And to Gabby: “You sold me out.”
“I didn’t—” Gabby says, but Guerrero interrupts.
“I’m not here to arrest you. And Gabby didn’t invite me here, not exactly. When you called her, I was listening in. I didn’t give her much choice in the matter. I came because I need to talk to you.”
Every part of her has gone pins-and-needles—an anxious tingling, a heat rising through her. Miriam feels thrust to the edge and standing on the precipice while balancing on a single trembling toe. I won’t be trapped. I won’t be caged. Already she’s planning her escape. Gabby dropped the keys to the car by the little desk near the door. If she can get past this dickhead, she can snap up the keys, grab the car, and get away fast as she can.
But she’s injured. Can she manage it? Idly, she reaches up under her shirt to her armpit to feel the margins of the injury from Harriet’s bullet—
And her fingers find only smooth skin there.
That tingling buzzes louder. Blood rushes in her ears.
It must be the other armpit.
She sends her other hand up under her alternate arm.
No injury there, either.
No wound on either side. No pain there, either—just an itch.
Vertigo assails her. The floor feels liquid underneath her. The air wobbles and the room doesn’t spin so much as it shifts left, then right. Get it together, get it together, this is fine, this is normal, don’t worry about this shit right now. You’re healed. Use it. Use it to get the fuck out of this room.
Guerrero continues: “Miriam, I have a proposition for you—”
Her hand darts out, grabs the lamp by the bed, and flings it at his head. Or, rather, she would, but the damn thing is bolted to the nightstand.
She tries again. It won’t move an inch. Guerrero watches her struggle through narrowed eyes. “You okay?”
This wouldn’t happen if we were in a proper cheap-ass shit motel. In a real motel, she could throw the lamp. And when she did, she’d probably find an old condom or a human finger underneath it, as is motel tradition.
“I’m trying to throw a lamp at your head,” she confesses.
“I think it’s bolted down.”
“Yeah, no duh, Agent Obvious.”
“Are you done? Can we talk now?”
She sighs. “Sure.”
He opens his mouth to speak—
And she punches it—
A burst of static in her head like a radio turned to a nowhere station, bits of voices garbled by the noise.
—his head rocks back and she knows she should be seizing this opportunity to mow over him, clambering her way to the door. But she doesn’t. Even as Gabby gawps and Guerrero reaches up to wipe blood from his mouth on the back of his hand, Miriam doesn’t move. She just stands there, fingers still coiled into a fist, her hand shaking.
“You’re one of them,” she says.
“You mean us,” he answers. He pulls his hand away and his tongue licks blood at the split in his lip. “We play for the same team.”
“You’re a head-tweaker, too.”
“I am.”
“That doesn’t say good things about you.”
“And what’s it say about you?”
Miriam, resigned, sits back down. Again, her hand idly returns to the now-missing injury under her arm. She should be finding a scabbed-over furrow, a stinging ditch in which her fingers could dip, but it’s all healed.
“You’re not here to arrest me?” she asks again.
He sniffs. “I should, after you hit me like that. Christ, you hit like a fastball. No pulling your punches, eh?”
“No.”
Her hand throbs from the hit.
“I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to make an offer.”
“Make your offer. Then go.”
He smiles, teeth smeared red. “Now we’re talking.”
TEN
THE OFFER
“I’m putting together a team, and I want you to work for me,” Guerrero says.
“No.”
He blinks. “You haven’t even heard what it is yet.”
“And I don’t care. I got my own shit to worry about. I’m always sitting around here, worrying about other people’s shit; meanwhile, my own emotional toilet is backing up so bad, it’s going to go off like a porcelain bomb. So, my answer to your offer is no.”
He stiffens. This is rankling him. The frustration bleeds off him like a body odor stink. “It’s a team of people like you and me.”
“Then my answer is Double-No with a side order of Nope-Nuh-Uh and a couple sauce packets of Extra-Zesty Fuck-No Dressing.”
“That’s it? Nothing I can do to convince you?”
“You could threaten me. You could tell me that if I don’t help you, you’ll arrest me. It’s certainly your right, Mr. FBI.”
He pauses like he’s considering it. “I know you didn’t even do half the things people think you may have done.”
“It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. My soul’s got bills to pay; I know that. And if there is an afterlife, I expect I’ll be servicing that debt till the Devil’s asshole is raw from all the rimjobs I will have to give him. But for now, I can’t care about any of this. I can only care about what’s in front of me.” And what’s inside of me.
He leans forward. Guerrero is eager. He’s hungry for this, which scares her a little. It’s also something she understands, because Miriam doesn’t care much for being told no either. Meanwhile, Gabby stands off to the side, near the bathroom door. She’s got her jacket on still.
“I can make the charges go away,” he says.
“Miriam, listen to him,” Gabby says, leaning in. “That’s a real offer.”
“And I don’t want it. I’d rather he just go away, instead.”
The agent chews on this for a while. A good minute passes, his facial expression wrestling with it, like he’s trying to finagle a piece of gristle out from between his teeth—his handsome face twists up as he tries to wiggle and waggle his way through her unexpected denial.
He can’t hack it. It’s pissing him off.
Good. She likes pissing men like him off.
(Actually, just men in general.)
(Okay, people in general.)
But then, like that, he stands. “I won’t threaten you. I could. But I won’t. I’d rather you want to be a part of this thing. I am a man of honey, not vinegar.” He sighs, and flips her a business card. It lands on her
leg, and she brushes it off like it’s a wayward corn chip.
“I’m sorry, I only do vinegar,” she says.
“Call me if you change your mind.”
“Have a nice day, sweet cheeks.” She waggles her fingers in a sarcastically playful wave.
He nods, mouth pursed into a strained half-smile.
And with that, he’s gone out the door. A swirling wind blows in as he exits. The wind is gone again when he is gone, too.
Gabby stares at her feet.
Miriam stares at Gabby.
“I feel you staring, so stop it,” Gabby says.
“I’m imagining my eyes are laser beams.” Pyoo pyoo pyoo.
“Yeah, I can feel that, too, thanks.” Now Gabby meets her gaze, and there’s a flint-scrape of sparks in the dark of her eye. Her face, intersected by scars as if seen through a broken mirror, tightens with anger. “You could be a little more appreciative. I didn’t have to come. I didn’t have to find my way back into the rabid raccoon orgy that is your life.”
Miriam stands. “You also didn’t have to bring that dickhead here.”
“That dickhead was offering you something!” Gabby’s hands are out, like she’s trying to clutch reason and sanity from the very air. “Something huge. He had a way out. For you. For us. Don’t you get it? A tunnel out through the mountain of bullshit you’ve heaped onto yourself, Miriam. You, you . . . you go through life like a tornado through an orphanage. It’s wreckage and blood everywhere you turn, and that guy was giving you a way to get out of it. To get above it.”
“Pfah, whatever. I had no idea what the cost would be. And don’t think I didn’t hear what you said—for us. You’re looking out for you as much as you are for me, here. Don’t pretend you’re some angel.”
“I never have! Of course I want to be okay. Who doesn’t? I’m helping you out, but I’m tired of getting thrown under the tires of this bus you’re driving. And as for the cost . . .” Gabby laughs, and it’s a manic, mirthless squawk. “He was gonna tell you the cost of the deal if you just gave him thirty fucking seconds, Jesus Fucking Christ, Miriam.”
“No. No! No. He would not have told me. He would have told me part of it. But it’s like a used car salesman—that would be the upfront cost only. Nobody ever tells you the hidden fees because that’s why they’re fucking hidden. Because nobody wants to tell you the real costs you pay in this life. And I’ve paid them in spades, price after price, again and again. Fuck that. Fuck you. Fuck all of this.” She sits back down on the bed, chest heaving. The sudden urge to have a good cigarette between her lips and a cheap, cold whiskey in her hand is like soft ground sucking her down into the inescapable mud. Quieter now, she says, “You could’ve at least ruined the surprise and told me he was coming.”
