by Ronald Malfi
I scrolled to a different photo that showed us together, smiling against a sunset on the prow of a friend’s sailboat.
“Listen,” he said. “You got some question about your wife, how come you don’t talk to her about it?”
I slipped my phone back in my jacket pocket and took out the motel receipt. I laid it down on the counter, upside down so that the man could read it.
“My wife died back in December,” I told him. “There was a shooting at a strip mall back where we’re from, in Maryland. It was… well, it was on the news.”
“Ah, Christ,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I found this receipt after she died. Looks like she spent two nights here back in October. Looks like she paid in cash, too.”
He picked up the receipt, examined it. “Cash, yeah,” he said. Then he set the receipt back down on the counter. The expression on his face told me that any further explanation on my end was not necessary. This guy knew why I’d driven over four hundred miles to ask him about this. He was wearing a gold wedding band on one thick-knuckled finger.
“My wife’s name was Allison Decker,” I said, tapping a finger on the receipt to indicate where her name was printed. “Please. Do you remember her coming here or not?”
The man’s mouth tightened to a firm, lipless line. The shake of his head was almost imperceptible. “Most of the people come through here, they got beards and beer guts,” he said. “I’d remember if someone like your wife came here. I’m sorry.”
“Obviously she was here,” I said. “This receipt is yours, isn’t it? It’s from this place.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true.”
“Then she was here. Maybe someone else checked her in?”
“Wouldn’t be no one but me. Sheila, my wife, she does the linens and the room cleanings, but I’m the only one checking people in.”
“Then I don’t understand…”
The man cleared his throat and said, “I mean, look, I can’t say a hundred percent, okay? Those rooms open up onto the parking lot, so no one comes in here unless they’re checking in or checking out, or maybe if they need change for the vending machines. She could have been with someone who checked in while she went straight to the room or maybe waited in the car. In that case, I never would’ve seen her.”
“And it would have her name on the receipt if someone else paid?”
“I would have put it under whatever name I was given.”
“How common is it for someone to pay for a room with cash instead of using a credit card?”
“It happens. Generally, I tack on a ten percent additional charge if you pay cash. You know, to cover any incidentals. Sometimes people ding up the walls or thieve off with the batteries from the TV remote. Stuff like that. If I don’t have a credit card number on file, then I’m out the cost of the damage. Doesn’t look like I tacked it on to that bill you showed me, though. Whoever it was probably struck me as trustworthy.”
“I just don’t understand it,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t offer much more than that,” said the man. “Shame, what you’re going through, and what happened to your wife. What a world we live in now, huh? Just terrible.”
“Thank you,” I said, half in a daze.
“Anything else?” he asked.
I glanced out the plate-glass windows of the motel lobby and out across the parking lot, where, on the other side of the road, the spaces between the trees had grown dark in the oncoming twilight.
“It’s getting late and I’m exhausted,” I said. “I guess I’ll get a room for the night.”
“Cash or charge?” said the man, and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be humorous.
2
Was this the room you stayed in, Allison? For those two nights you spent here in Chester—those two inexplicable nights spent here at The Valentine Motel—did you stay in this very room? Room four of twelve, with the vending machines humming right outside the door? The room with the discolored wallpaper depicting green and brown fish leaping in little arcs? The room with the water stain in the shape of Texas on the ceiling? Would I catch the ephemeral scent of your perfume in this place, Allison? Would I feel your cool lips on my forehead as I drifted off toward sleep?
Had someone stayed in this room with you?
3
The town of Chester was no one’s destination—except evidently yours, Allison. Rather, it was a byway connecting destinations, a spaceport, a layover between larger towns and cities that appear as swollen black dots on maps. It seemed impossible you’d have come here to gambol with some roughneck from one of these dilapidated, weather-beaten campers; a steely-eyed and bearded bandit trolling for walleye or bass; a good old boy swilling pale beer from plastic pitchers at The Troutman, which turned out to be Chester’s only pub.
The Troutman was a rectangular cinderblock building with neon lights filling its smoked black windows. The name of the place hung above the entrance, carved from wood and lit from underneath by a series of floodlights. It was fairly crowded, too, by the look of all the trucks in the lot. I parked close to the road and walked across the lot, which was covered in cedar chips that popped and crunched under my sneakers. The Troutman’s front door was held open by a rusty blue oil drum, and I could hear music coming from within, even over the moan of the wind funneling down from the peaks of the mountains. I’d never seen a blackness so black as out here, a sky so dense and luminous with stars.
A blast of warm air greeted me as I walked through the door. There were a few pool tables near the back, and they seemed to be attracting the most attention. The bar was crowded, too, so I ordered a beer then hunted down a table for myself. There was one in a darkened corner, beneath a collection of taxidermy fish nailed to glossy wooden shields. I sat and drank my beer and watched some men shoot pool.
You would have stuck out like a pink kangaroo in this place, Allison.
Halfway through my beer, a middle-aged woman with an apron slung around her wide hips came over to me. “You need a menu, honey?” she asked, her accent redolent of the mountains.
Even though the last thing I’d eaten had been two Slim Jims with a Dr Pepper, and that had been hours ago while I was still on the road, I wasn’t very hungry. Still, I knew I had to eat. “Maybe just a salad?” I said.
“Oh, sugar, let’s pretend you didn’t say that,” the waitress said.
“Okay. Let’s pretend I didn’t. What do you recommend?”
“What I’m gonna do, darling, is refill your beer and bring you my personal favorite. It ain’t even on the menu.”
“Sounds pretty special,” I said. “Can I ask you a quick question?”
“Sure thing.”
I showed her your picture on my cell phone. Because the motel proprietor hadn’t been sympathetic when I’d said I was out here inquiring about my wife, I now said, “This is my sister. She was here in town back in October. She stayed for two nights at the motel up the hill. You don’t happen to recognize her, do you?”
The waitress placed two meaty hands on the tabletop and leaned so close to my phone that her snub little nose nearly came in contact with the screen. She squinted at the photograph. “Sorry, darling. Don’t recognize her.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Something happen to her? She gone missing?”
“Yeah.”
She covered her mouth with one hand while the other hand fell upon my shoulder. “Oh, Lord. That’s just awful.”
I felt feverish, claustrophobic. It had been wrong of me to drive all the way down here, hunting for some dark thing.
“Are you a spiritual person?” the waitress asked me.
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Well, He’s there, no matter if you believe in Him or not. And your sister, I have faith that He will watch over her and take care of her, wherever she is.”
“Thank you. That’s nice.”
Her face darkened. “And even if so
mething has befallen her, rest assured that she is in His warm embrace. When the Good Lord says, ‘Come with me,’ we don’t have no choice. We have to go. And He holds us there and comforts us.”
I said nothing to this. Only stared at her.
She squeezed my shoulder before retreating back across the bar-room floor.
4
The meal was bologna schnitzel, which was surprisingly delicious. Probably because she felt sorry for me, my waitress brought me a whole pitcher of beer for free. I had no intention of draining it, which was exactly what I did anyway, and I meandered back out into the parking lot sometime around midnight with my head spinning and feeling like my bones were two sizes too big for my body. Because I did not trust myself to keep the Civic from careening into a tree, I summoned other-Aaron, who cranked the ignition, engaged the gears, and drove with dutiful precision all the way back to The Valentine Motel.
The man who had checked me into the motel earlier that evening was standing outside beneath the glowing pink lights of the motel’s marquee, smoking a cigarette. I waved to him as I climbed out of my car and fumbled around in my jacket pocket for the key to my motel room.
“Mr. Decker,” he called.
“G’night.”
“Sir,” he said, coming toward me in the darkness.
I paused, one hand still wedged inside my pocket.
“Is my face red?” he said.
“Well, it’s pink,” I said, nodding up toward the glowing marquee.
“What I mean is, I’m embarrassed to say I misspoke earlier. I had a chat with my wife and it turns out she did check in a woman back in October, name of Allison Decker.”
“Is she sure?”
“She described her pretty good. Said she was wearing sunglasses and one of those French hats.” He twirled a finger above his head. “A red beret.”
5
Next morning, I spoke to the proprietor’s wife before heading back home. She was an amphetamine-thin woman with a narrow face and an overbite. She wore her long tawny hair in a braid that came down to the small of her back. It looked like a strong wind might carry her off into the stratosphere.
“I remember her clearly because she didn’t look like anyone who normally comes out this way,” said the woman. She and I were smoking cigarettes in the motel parking lot while her husband cursed and puttered beneath his truck’s hood just a few yards away. “She had on a red beret and sensible shoes. Said she was having car trouble and needed a place to stay until she could have someone take a look at it.”
“Was anyone else with her?” I asked. “A man?”
“None that I saw,” she said, but then waved at the row of rooms clear across to the far end of the gravel parking lot. “But anyone could have shown up to meet her. I’d be none the wiser, Mr. Decker.”
My gaze traced the length of the building. My heart was jackhammering in my throat. “Which room did she stay in?”
“Room Four,” she said. “Same room as you last night.”
6
It was late by the time I arrived back in Harbor Village. Our street was dark, but there were lights on in all the windows of our townhome. When I entered, I noticed in my haste I’d left the television on, too.
No, not the television, but that fucking Alexa hockey puck, playing your favorite goddamn eighties playlist. George Michael, telling me I gotta have faith.
Sure, I thought. Fuck you, George.
I switched off the speaker then went around through the house turning off all the lights. My head ached, my stomach felt like it had been cast in lead, and yet my entire body felt eerily weightless. Upstairs, all the lights were on. I shut them off, too, then climbed beneath a scorching stream of water in the master bathroom. When I closed my eyes under the spray, an image of you popped up in my head, Allison. I chased it away. I couldn’t keep doing this. I would drive myself crazy doing this.
After the shower, I climbed into bed and just lay there in the dark, staring at the panels of moonlight that cut in through the bedroom windows. When I shut my eyes this time, it was the neon pink of the motel’s marquee that projected against the screens of my eyelids. So I opened them again.
The closet light was on.
I didn’t move for a while—I just kept still, the blankets pulled up to my chin, my heart strumming against my ribcage. A part of me thought that if I looked at that lighted doorway long enough, the light might go out. This insanity might stop.
The light did not go out.
I got out of bed and moved toward the closet door. Everything was silent except for the sound of blood funneling through my ears and a faintly flutelike whistle coming from my left nostril.
I eased open the closet door a bit more and peered inside, startled by a figure standing against the far wall and bracketed by our clothes. The figure was me—my reflection in the beveled mirror.
In the ceiling, the light fixture fizzed, blinked, but remained on.
When I looked back down, I found myself staring at your hope chest. And not just at your hope chest, but at the padlock you had attached to it sometime in the recent past. In the aftermath of your death, I had forgotten about the goddamn lock.
People put locks on things when they want to keep them safe. People put locks on things when they don’t want other people to see what they’re hiding inside.
The latch had been drilled into the lid from the inside, so it wasn’t like I could take it apart with a screwdriver. Without a key to the lock, the only way I was getting in there was if I smashed it apart. It hurt my heart to consider this, but if I’m being honest: I considered this. The wood was strong, the chest well-made, so it would take more than a sturdy hammer to do the trick. An axe? We had one in the shed, didn’t we?
I turned to head out of the closet, already picturing myself chopping your hope chest into kindling, when something caught my eye and made me freeze.
Atop the marble pedestal was a small brass key. I stared at it in disbelief, because surely, surely…
“All hail the mystic pedestal,” I said, and picked up the key.
It fit into the padlock with ease. When I turned it, the lock popped open.
—Do you really want to do this? other-Aaron spoke up from the recesses of my admittedly jittery mind. Once you open this you’ll never be able to unopen it.
I opened it.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
The first thing I saw when I opened your hope chest was a tidy row of wrapped Christmas presents resting on a mat of folded sweaters. A pang of grief resonated through the center of my body, fierce enough to leave me momentarily breathless. I removed the presents and the sweaters from the chest one at a time, setting them in a heap beside me on the floor of the closet, and paused only when I saw the first of the items you’d been concealing beneath them.
A gun.
My knowledge of guns was limited to what I’d read in books or seen on television. It was a revolver, black-bodied with a walnut handgrip. The steel barrel gleamed. I crouched there peering down at the thing, a prickling sensation creeping up the nape of my neck. I wouldn’t have been more surprised had I opened the lid to find a rattlesnake inside. That this thing was in our house—that it was here and I hadn’t known about it—was so impossible that I had to question whether I was awake or dreaming. You had always been against handguns in the home. Even after a series of break-ins in Harbor Village last year, you had refused to entertain the notion of keeping a handgun in the house for protection.
I picked it up, turned it over in my hands. Like a venomous snake, it felt dangerous just holding it. I found the cylinder release and engaged it. The chambers in the cylinder were empty, but that didn’t dissolve my unease. Instead, I knelt there holding the thing, wondering why it was here and why you hadn’t told me about it. Wondering if things might have been different if you’d had it with you that day at the strip mall…
I set the gun atop the mound of sweaters, reached back into the chest, and removed a rectangular ca
rdboard box of .38-caliber ammunition that you’d tucked between two folded afghans. A wave of noxious heat coursed through my entire body. I set the box of ammo on the floor, then wiped my sweaty palms along my thighs.
Above my head, the closet light blinked several times. An indecipherable Morse code. The scent of your Tommy Girl perfume caused me to turn and gaze out into our bedroom, as if in anticipation of your impossible return. I waited. I begged for it. Kneeling there on the closet floor in supplication. Once the muscles in my thighs began to ache, I turned away. My face was warm, my hands were shaking, and there was a javelin of ice advancing its way through the marrow of my bones.
I removed one of the afghans to reveal a clear plastic bag, the kind that bed sheets and quilts come in. But there were no bed sheets or quilts inside this one. From inside the bag, the smudgy countenance of a child’s doll stared out at me.
I unzipped the bag and slid the doll out. It was the kind with the fabric body and the rubber head and limbs. Only this particular doll was missing its arms, as though they’d been torn from its torso. The thing was old, it smelled like death, and its cloth body had turned the grayish-greenish-brown of an aging bruise. One of the doll’s eyes were missing; when I tipped it backward, its remaining eye winked shut. I replaced the doll back in the bag, the stink of it still on my hands.
One final thing was hidden at the bottom of your hope chest, Allison, buried beneath an old bed sheet. I removed the remaining contents from the chest, stripped the bed sheet away with a magician’s flourish, and found myself staring down at a thick accordion folder with a series of industrial rubber bands stretched around it to keep it closed. The discovery of the gun had been a shock, but something about this thick file unsettled me on a more basic level, stirring into alertness that distant, reptilian part of my brain. The part adept at recognizing danger.
I extracted the file from the chest, marveling at the thickness and heft of it, and set it in my lap. It occurred to me that it could contain anything—work papers, tax records, love letters from old boyfriends, college transcripts, original copies of your freelance newspaper articles, or proof of my stupid suspicion of your infidelity. Pretty much anything at all.
