American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  She starts off into the streets. It is nearly evening, and the first thing she plans to do is ask someone where a motel is. She’ll tackle the issue of her mother’s house in the morning. So long as she presents her identification to the right people tomorrow, the house should be hers.

  But she finds no one to ask. As she roves through the street grid (each block is nearly perfect—if she took out a protractor and measured the corners, she is sure they would be at an even ninety degrees) she does not spot a single soul. Every street and every shop and every home is deserted. There aren’t even any cars parked in the lots.

  This is why Wink wasn’t on any maps, she thinks. No one fucking lives here anymore. It is just her luck to inherit a house in a ghost town.

  But it can’t be abandoned, not really, she decides. It is too well maintained for that: the neon lights of the diner, though unlit, look functional; the cafés all have (somewhat) fresh coats of paint; and as the sun sets the streetlamps all flicker on, bathing the streets in a white, phosphorescent glow, and none of the bulbs are out.

  But though it is deserted, the town is quaintly beautiful. Many of the shops and buildings have a faint Googie influence to them, which contrasts hugely with the New Mexican stylings: standing beside a smooth, earthy adobe home might be a metal porthole window and an angular, upswept roof, or an amalgam of glass and steel and neon. Both the diner and the café have parabola-shaped signs done in soft, Easter-egg blue. It feels inappropriate to be cruising these streets in the Charger. What she needs is an Eldorado with tail fins and rocket-ship taillights. Or, she thinks as she passes a round-walled adobe house with pine corbels, maybe a horse-drawn wagon. It is a strangely schizophrenic place, but not unwelcoming.

  She tries to imagine her mother living here. Maybe she went to that diner, bought flowers from this shop on the corner, walked her dog down that sidewalk. Jesus, Mona thinks—could she have had a dog? For some reason, this fairly irrelevant possibility confounds her.

  Then Mona turns one corner, and she sees the street ahead is lined with parked cars. They are not, as she expected, vintage cars, but Chevy trucks and the like. She speeds up a little, wondering if this could be something, and as she does a wrought-iron railing emerges from the bushes along the sidewalk, and at the next corner is a white wooden church with a tall steeple.

  When she pulls up alongside the fence she finally sees what is on the other side, and she slams on the brakes in surprise. The tires squeal a little as she comes to a halt.

  Just on the other side of the wrought-iron fence is a huge crowd of people, hundreds of them.

  When her tires squeal they all jump, turn, and look at her.

  Mona looks back, and sees they are all wearing black, or at least dark gray, and some of the women’s faces are veiled.

  The yard with the wrought-iron fence, she realizes, is a graveyard. And at the center of the crowd is a lacquered casket hanging over an open grave.

  Wink is not deserted: everyone is attending a funeral. Which Mona has just interrupted, in her rumbling muscle car with squealing tires.

  “Ah, shit,” says Mona.

  For a moment she has no idea what to do. Then, haltingly, she waves. Most of the people do nothing. Then a small boy, about seven, smiles and waves back.

  An older man in a black suit says something to the woman beside him, and walks to the iron fence. Mona rolls down the passenger window, and he asks, “Can I help you?”

  Mona clears her throat. “I-is there a motel around here?”

  The man stares blankly at her. But not, she feels, in shock or reproach: it is as if his face can make no other expression. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he raises one arm and points down the road ahead. “On the left,” he says, slowly but clearly.

  “Thanks,” says Mona. “I’m real sorry for interrupting everything.”

  The man does not respond. He stays stock-still for a couple of seconds. Then he lowers his arm. The rest of the crowd keeps watching her.

  “Sorry,” she says again. “Real sorry.” She rolls up the window and drives away, but when she looks in the rearview mirror they are all still watching her.

  There are probably worse first impressions, but right now Mona cannot think of any. She’s come from one awkward, unhappy funeral to another. She wonders what they will think when they hear she’s inherited a house in town.

  Her face is still bright red when she finds the motel, a low, long, dark building at the edge of town. The motel sign reads PONDEROSA ACRES in orange neon, and below that, in smaller red letters, is the word VACANCY. It looks a little like a cabin, with walls made of—or made to look like they’re made of—huge pine logs. There are no lights on in any of the rooms except the office.

  She gets out and scans the parking lot. There are no other cars here, not even any on the street.

  She walks into the office with her bag over her shoulder. The office is surprisingly spacious, with green marble floors and wood-paneled walls. It smells of beeswax and dust and popcorn. There is only one light in the room, a yellow ceiling lamp that casts a spotlight on a small desk in the corner, littered with papers. In the corner she can just make out an old yellow sofa. Keys glint on the wall behind the desk, and somewhere a handheld radio tinnily plays “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Besides that corner, the office is oppressively dark. She can barely make out a dead palm in a pot before the desk. Its curling brown leaves are still scattered on the floor. On the wall is an old calendar turned to the wrong month; it is brown with age and unmarked, the tool of someone who has had nothing to do for a long, long time.

  The office appears to be empty. “Damn it,” she says, and wonders where she will go now.

  “Can I help you?” asks a deep, soft voice.

  Mona turns around, looking for the speaker. The room is so dark that it takes her eyes a moment to adjust. Then she sees there is a card table in the corner of the room beside the door, and seated at it is an old man with a board of Chinese checkers in front of him. He is bald and gray-bearded, and his pock-marked skin is so dark that initially his gray beard appears to simply float in the darkness. In one of his hands is a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. He wears a gray zip-up sweater, red-and-black-striped pants, and alligator shoes, and he watches her over a pair of half-moon spectacles with calm, reserved eyes.

  “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t see you there.”

  The old man sips his coffee but says nothing, as if to mean—Obviously.

  “I’d like to rent a room, please, sir. Just for tonight.”

  The old man looks away, thinking. After nearly a full thirty seconds of meditation, with nothing but Hank Williams to break the silence, he says: “Here?”

  “What?”

  “You want to get a room here?”

  “What? Yes. Yeah, I want to get a room here.”

  The old man grunts, stands up, and goes to the keys on the wall. There are about twenty hanging there on the corkboard. He surveys them very carefully, as if searching a bookshelf for the appropriate tome, and with a quiet aha! he selects one from the bottom corner of the board. What marks this key as different from any of the others, Mona cannot tell. Then he lifts it to his lips and blows. A significant cloud of dust flies up from the key to dance around the ceiling lamp.

  “Been a while since you guys had customers?” asks Mona.

  “It has been a very long while,” says the old man. He smiles and holds the key out to her.

  Mona reaches for it. “How much?”

  “How much?” He pulls the key back, confused. “For what?”

  “For… the room?”

  “Oh,” says the old man, a little irritated, as if this were a needless formality he’d forgotten. He lowers the key, grunts again, puts his cup of coffee down, and begins to sort through the papers on his desk. As he does, he notices the dead plant on the floor. He stops and leans forward, examining it. Then he looks up at Mona and sternly says, “My plant has died.”

  “I’
m… real sorry to hear that.”

  “It was a very old plant.”

  He seems to be waiting for her to say something. She ventures, “Oh?”

  “Yes. I had it for nearly a year. It was my favorite plant, because of this.”

  “Well. That’s understandable.”

  The old man just looks at her.

  She adds, “You get attached to things if they’re around long enough.”

  He keeps staring at her. Mona is beginning to feel quite disturbed. She wonders if he is senile, but there is more to it than that: it feels very unsafe in this big, dark office, where only one corner is lit and tangible, and the rest is hidden from her. For some reason she gets the sense that they are not alone. When the old man returns to his papers, Mona checks the corners—still nothing. Maybe it’s just a weird feeling she got from seeing that funeral.

  “I am not sure what to do with it now,” he says grudgingly. “I liked the plant very much. But I suppose these things happen.” He sniffs, and produces a tiny note card from the mountain of old papers on his desk. This he consults carefully, as if it is the ace in his poker hand, and pronounces, “Twenty dollars.”

  “For a night?”

  “It seems so,” says the old man solemnly, and he places the card back on the desk.

  “So… you don’t know how much your own rooms are?”

  “There are several rooms, with several prices. I forget them. And we have not had any visitors in some time.”

  Mona, glancing at the piles of paper and dust, can completely believe that. “Mind if I ask how you stay open, then?”

  He thinks about it. “I suppose you could say,” he concludes, “that there is no shortage of goodwill around here.”

  For some reason, Mona feels he is telling the truth. But this does not exactly comfort her. “Just curious—is this the only motel in town?”

  Again, he ponders her question. “If there is another motel, I am unaware of it.”

  “I guess that’s an honest answer.” She reaches into her bag, takes out a twenty, and hands it to him. He takes the bill and clutches it tight in his hand, as a child would, and looks hard at her again. “Have you ever been here before?” he asks.

  “Here? In Wink?”

  “Yes. In Wink.”

  “No. This is my first time.”

  “Hm. Allow me to show you to your room, then.” He picks up the key, the twenty-dollar bill still clutched in his hand, and walks out the office door.

  As she follows, Mona glances behind the desk. She sees no gun, no weapon, nothing suspicious. But she does not feel entirely satisfied. It is as if there’s a tiny wound in her mouth she can’t quit playing with. Something is wrong with this.

  On the way out, she looks at the Chinese checkers board. There is something different about it now. She cannot say why—after all, it is dark, and she didn’t get a good look at the board—but she is sure the checkers have been rearranged, as if someone has just made a complicated play. But perhaps the old man just jostled the table when he stood up.

  He leads her down the row of motel-room doors. Night has fallen very quickly. The sky was bright blue, then streaked with pink, but now it is a soft and dusky purple cut short by the dark mesa surging into the heavens. The air has chilled considerably with the onset of evening, and Mona wishes she’d brought some winter wear.

  “What is your name?” the old man asks.

  “Mona.”

  “I am Parson, Mona. It is very nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “It’s good that you are staying the night here.” He gestures into the dark trees that crawl up the slopes. “The area around Wink can be a little treacherous, especially at night. I would not advise going out at night, especially outside of downtown. People get lost very easily.”

  “I can imagine,” says Mona, remembering the steep hills and sudden precipices. “Can I ask you something?”

  He stops to consider it, as if this is a very serious proposition. “I suppose so,” he says finally.

  “I tried to find this place on a lot of maps before I came, but—”

  “Really?” he says. “Why?”

  “Well… I don’t really want to get into it too much now, since nothing’s settled yet… but I inherited a house here, supposedly.”

  Parson stares off into the distance. “Did you,” he says softly. “Which house would that be, if I might ask?”

  “It’s on Larchmont, or so they tell me.”

  “I see. You know, I believe I know the residence in question. It is abandoned. But it is in fairly good shape. And you say you inherited it?”

  “That’s what all these papers say.”

  “How curious…” says Parson. “I cannot remember the last time someone new moved here. You will be quite the oddity, if so.”

  “That’s kind of what I wanted to ask about. You might not have anyone moving here because no one knows this town’s here. It’s not on any map. Is there some reason for that? Something to do with the lab on the mountain?”

  “Lab?” asks Parson, puzzled.

  “Yeah. Coburn National Lab. And, uh, Observatory.”

  “Oh,” he says, and smiles. “Goodness. If you’re looking for a job there, I’m afraid you’re about thirty years late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Coburn was shut down years ago. End of the seventies, if I recall. I’m not sure why, exactly. I think they just never produced what they said they would. Lost funding. Wink was originally built around it, you know.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “Did you?” he says. “Well. When it was shut down, it just left us all here. Where were we going to go? I suppose they took us off most maps to keep the place undisturbed. No spies sniffing around the lab, or some such. But now that we are forgotten, they never remembered to put us back on. To be honest, I like the peace and quiet. Even if it is bad for business.”

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “You have done so already—I see nothing barring you from doing so again.”

  “Did you ever know a Laura Alvarez here?”

  “Here in Wink?”

  “Yeah. She would have left about thirty years ago or so. She worked at the lab up on the mountain. I’m trying to find out more about her. She’s—she was my mom.”

  “Hm,” he says. “I am afraid I cannot help you. I am not the most social of people. I remember very few names.”

  “Even in a town this small, you don’t know?”

  “Small?” he says. “Is it so small?” He looks up, examines the room numbers, and selects one. “Ah. Here we are. Our bridal suite.” He smiles at her, but does not open the room.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “We do not really have a bridal suite,” he says. “It was a joke.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  He unlocks and opens the door and shows her in. The carpet is brown shag, and the lamps on the walls are made out of deer horns. The bedspread is done in a colored diamond pattern that Mona identifies as Native American, and it looks comfortable enough.

  “The TV,” says Parson firmly, “does not work.”

  “Okay.”

  “I will help you move in,” he says, and begins to walk back to her car.

  “That’s okay,” she says. “I have all my things in my bag.”

  He stops and peers at her bag. “Oh,” he says, both irritated and disappointed. “All right, then.”

  “Is there a good place to eat around here?” she asks.

  “There is the diner, but it is likely closed for the funeral.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I saw. Who died, the mayor or something?”

  “Someone important,” he says. But he adds, “Ostensibly.”

  “And you didn’t go to the funeral?”

  He gives her a cryptic look, face suddenly closed. “I do not go to funerals. It would not befit my station. Luckily for you, I do offer a complimentary breakfast. I may provide it now, if you wish, rathe
r than in the morning.”

  “I’d be much obliged.”

  “Excellent,” he says. “I will return shortly.” Then he turns and shuffles back across the parking lot.

  Mona has had a lot of weird encounters in her life, but she feels like this one has just made top seed. But before she can think on it more, there is a flicker of light in the sky. Startled, she looks and sees that blue clouds have gathered around the mountains behind the mesa. They are small but violent: each one flickers with lightning every thirty seconds or so, which makes the mountains look like they’re crowned with a tangle of blue neon lights. It is a powerfully unearthly sight to see this island of chaos in an otherwise peaceful night sky.

  It is then that she sees the moon is up, but there is something strange about it. It takes her a few moments to put her finger on it.

  “It’s pink,” she says out loud. “Why is the moon so pink?”

  Parson’s voice comes from behind her. “It always is, here.”

  She looks and sees the old man has sneaked up on her. He’s carrying an aluminum tray with an egg sandwich and sausage that look like they came out of a vending machine. To her amusement, the meal is paired with a Corona and a Pop-Tart.

  “Bon appétit,” says Parson.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Every night it is the same, Bolan thinks. Every night the truckers spill into the Roadhouse, reeking of cheap tobacco and old sweat, sleep-deprived and claustrophobic and half-blind from the sight of endless highways. Every night they order the same drinks and demand the same songs and shriek the same half-intelligible catcalls. There is always some lout who gets too hopped up on whichever substance is available that night and has to get hauled out and spanked in the parking lot. (And just three months ago Zimmerman and Dee laid one man out and left him breathing under a timber truck, yet in the morning they found him frigid and pale and still, one eye dark with blood and his fingers at many angles; the boys admitted they’d been overzealous, and the man still sleeps somewhere out in the woods under the stones and pine needles, and sometimes Bolan wonders who else is out there with him.) Then, finally, the truckers approach the downstairs girls in stages, and they’ll spend the rest of their evening in the back rooms, coaxing favors out of the girls, or the girls coaxing money out of them. Sometime around three or four they will come stumbling out of their wretched fog and wander out to the parking lot to sleep in the cabs of their trucks. And then, just before dawn, once she’s made all the totals and rechecked the registers, Mallory will stalk upstairs to Bolan’s office, and tell him what the night’s take is.