Austin and Emily

by Frank Turner Hollon

  Austin removed his hand from his nose and then swiftly put it back. “I didn’t say excrement. I said extricate. And who is Andre the Giant?”

  The girl said, “Are you kidding me?”

  Austin declared, “This conversation is counterproductive and confusing. Perhaps you should go back to bed.”

  “Perhaps you should build a fort in my ass and live there,” the girl said, cocking her head to the side.

  Emily’s bedroom door opened, and she walked out into the vibrations of the final sentence of the conversation. She was carrying the little blue suitcase and another huge brown suitcase stuffed full.

  “I’m ready,” Emily said. “If you’ll take the bags, I’ll get Ulysses and Glenn.”

  Austin feared the worst. “Who are Ulysses and Glenn?”

  “My cats, of course. I’ve had them since I moved out on my own. Glenn’s a little sassy, but when you get to know him, you’ll see what a good boy he is.”

  Austin looked at Cremora. She smiled a knowing little smile and pointed her right index finger to her pajama-covered rear end. “It smells like ham in here,” she said, and squinted her face. Austin was puzzled by the gesture. The cats were at his feet, rubbing their furry heads against his ankles.

  “See, they like you,” Emily said. She handed her roommate a wad of currency and told her, “This is my share of this month’s rent. Me and Austin are driving west, maybe California, or Mexico. You can have everything in the freezer.”

  “Thanks,” Cremora said. “Here we go again. This time I think we’ve got two popsicles and a frozen cat turd in the freezer. You sure you don’t want the cat turd?”

  Cremora changed her demeanor ever so slightly. “Call me when you get where you’re going.”

  Austin turned to leave, a suitcase in each hand. His mind centered on the dilemma of packing. He could see in his mind’s eye exactly where each of Emily’s suitcases would fit, and then his own suitcase would complete the puzzle. The cats he could not comprehend.

  In the parking lot, Austin asked Emily, “Is her name really Cremora?”

  “Yes.”

  Austin added, “Like the coffee-creamer product?”

  Emily said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The suitcases didn’t fit where Austin envisioned them. He pushed and yanked until the huge brown suitcase gave up. Emily and Austin entered the car, and Glenn began to howl in the backseat, a deep, feline, guttural howl. Emily was oblivious to the sound. If Austin had the ability to whirl around and grasp the cat by the throat, he would have done so. However, Austin McAdoo did not possess such ability, and therefore he started the car for the drive to the motel room.

  “I’m not really gonna miss this place. It was never my home. It was just a place I lived. I’ll miss Cremora. She slept twenty hours a day. I’m not kidding. Twenty hours. She worked at a doughnut place every morning from six to nine. Then she would come home, eat two cream-filled eclairs, and go back to sleep. We’ve known each other forever.”

  Austin said, “I enjoy a good eclair. I think everybody does.”

  Glenn moaned particularly loud.

  “How long will he make such a noise?”

  Emily said, “I love motels. I just love ‘em. The little shampoos. The peephole in the door.”

  Austin turned to look at the young woman in the passenger seat of his red compact car. She was alive and beautiful, still wearing his coat, but no longer naked underneath. Life was very different than two hours earlier. Austin wondered if the differences were equal.

  They arrived at the motel and got the bags and cats inside room 24 without being spotted. In the light of the room Austin could see Glenn was a wiry little gray cat with beady eyes. Ulysses was yellow and puffy, extremely serene, capable of nodding off in any crisis.

  The room was small, a typical motel room, with brown carpet, two beds divided by a nightstand, chest of drawers, TV, and a wooden table with two chairs under a hanging light. Austin’s suitcase was already open on one bed. He put Emily’s on the other. She went straight to the bathroom.

  “I love the little wrapped soaps. You see, they always have one soap for the face, and one for the bath. They’re different kinds of soap. It’s not the same kind.”

  Austin politely forced himself to amble across the room and stand next to Emily at the sink. They both looked up into the mirror at the same time. The scene was like a circus snapshot. It was hard to believe they were of the same species. Austin was tired from the stairs and still breathing hard. The air rushed through his nose wheezing slightly.

  Emily finally said, “I’ve never been in a motel room with a man. I know you’ve probably had lots of girls, but I don’t want to know about them.”

  Austin looked at himself in the mirror. He found no reason to dispel the myth of his manhood. He did, however, for just a brief moment, wonder if he had misunderstood what she said.

  “Do you mind if I use the bathroom first?” Emily asked. “It’s kind of an emergency, a girl thing, if you know what I mean.”

  “Actually,” Austin answered, “I have very little understanding of the female reproductive system, and I wish to keep it that way.”

  Emily hurried to her luggage, retrieved a few items, and closed the bathroom door behind her. Three seconds passed, and Austin heard the lock click. He sat down on the edge of his bed. Glenn, the wiry gray cat, sauntered by pretending to pay no attention to the big man’s legs. With no provocation, no forewarning, Glenn attacked the left leg of Austin McAdoo, claws exposed, tiny sharp teeth piercing the fabric of the pant’s leg like needles and drawing blood to the pale white calf skin.

  “Christ,” Austin yelled, and kicked his leg upward with such force the cat flew through the air coming to rest atop the color TV, feet first.

  “What was that?” Emily asked from behind the bathroom door.

  Austin panicked, regained composure, and said, “Ahh, just the television.” He scrambled for the remote control, switched on the TV, and glared at Glenn who hadn’t moved since his landing.

  Austin whispered, “How’d you like to meet the back of my hand, Glenn?”

  He held up his thickset hand for Glenn to see, but the cat showed no fear and looked disgusted by the display. They stayed that way for quite some time, longer than either intended.

  Emily appeared, wearing powder blue pajamas. Austin swallowed and pretended he was the kind of man she thought he was. A man who had seen such things so often that powder blue pajamas on a beautiful girl in a motel room had become routine, almost boring. She smelled so good and clean. He glued his eyes to the television, where Glenn's tail hung down in front of the screen twisting like a garden snake.

  Emily dove onto the other bed and crawled beneath the sheets.

  “It’s always so cozy and cold in motel rooms.”

  Without warning, Austin felt his bowels begin to twitch. Typically, he would have placed his hand at the waistline and massaged deeply to help himself along. However, this was not a typical situation, and Austin McAdoo found himself immersed in the share-a-bathroom-with-a-woman-in-a-small-motel-room universal dilemma. The distance between the bathroom door and Emily’s bed was so pitifully short. All sounds would be heard. All smells would drift intact like silent brown aircraft carriers. The spell would be broken. The humanness would be unmercifully exposed.

  Austin stood. He removed several items from his suitcase and turned sideways to enter the thin bathroom doorway. There were towels on the floor and some sort of unrecognizable undergarment behind the commode. Austin showered and concentrated with much focus upon halting his bowels. He was well aware it was a temporary fix, but it would allow him time to dissect the dilemma and perhaps discover a solution never contemplated by any man before. It was better than the alternative.

  Austin exited the bathroom sideways, touching both sides of the door frame with brief friction. He wore a yellow T-shirt, two sizes too small, and a pair of jumbo black sleeping shorts. The color combination
made Emily think of a gigantic honeybee, except with the buzzing sound.

  Emily had already turned off the TV. After Austin got into his bed, and secured himself appropriately, Emily reached over with her lotion-smooth hand and switched off the bedside light.

  “I love the sound of the air-conditioner so close,” she said, “and how dark it is in a motel room. The curtains are thick. No light gets through.”

  Austin hadn’t thought of such things before.

  “Just imagine all the places we’re gonna go, and all the adventures we’ll have together. Have you ever been to Mexico?”

  “No, I can’t say I have,” Austin said. There was still a pressure down below, but it had subsided slightly.

  Emily spoke, “I’ve always wanted to go to California, all my life. I’ve always wanted to see those stars on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard. You know, with their names, and the gold trim around the star?”

  Austin listened. He’d never wanted to see the stars Emily described, but when he was a kid, Austin thought a lot about the Grand Canyon. He was told the Grand Canyon was so vast it dwarfed everything and everyone. As a child, until Austin came to terms with his size, being dwarfed by anything seemed attractive.

  “I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon,” he proclaimed.

  “Yes,” Emily excitedly said, “the Grand Canyon. It’s on the way. It’s right on the way. And we’ll stay in motel rooms, and get a map, and every place we stay we’ll get a small souvenir, and if we need to, to save money, I won’t eat. I once went two days without one bite of food. Two days.”

  Austin recalled one of his futile attempts in high school to lose weight. He ate the skin of grapefruits, and only the skin of grapefruits, for forty-eight hours. His mother caught him in the closet with a Baby Ruth, and they wrestled until Austin was able to finally shove the whole bar, wrapper included, into his gaping open mouth.

  “Tomorrow, I will quit my job with Dixie Deluxe. Afterwards, I must stop at my mother’s home in Birmingham to get a few items before we go see the Grand Canyon.”

  “O.K.,” Emily said.

  There was quiet in the dark room. Each lay in their separate beds, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

  Finally, Emily said softly, “I’ve been waiting for you all my life.”

  It was barely audible above the hum of the air-conditioner, but Austin McAdoo heard it. They were in the midst of a sea-change, at the cross of a crossroads, staring blindly in a dark room down the path of faith and what feels right, hitched to the wagon of inertia, as each ascended the hill, made the final push to the crest, and felt the exhilaration of life’s free-fall.

  Emily was glad she said it. Austin’s bowel twitched again, and in the darkness Glenn urinated proudly in Austin McAdoo’s spacious right shoe.

  CHAPTER 3

  At 4:37 a.m. Austin McAdoo awoke with a revelation. “I will go to the lobby bathroom,” he thought. “My mind has found a solution for my body,” he added.

  The big man rose from the squeaky bed as silently as possible. Time was of the essence, so he abandoned the idea of socks and forced his meaty right foot into the wet shoe. There was a cool sensation, followed by a rapid thought process, and Austin chose to blame the rain.

  Pressure mounted. He eased the door open, stepped into the breezeway, and before he could close the door he saw Glenn dart for freedom. For a fleeting moment Austin considered the possibility of allowing Glenn to disappear into the night and thereby eliminating the hideous creature from his future, but Austin knew enough of women to recognize the potential disaster. He hurried down the hall after the swift cat.

  “Glenn,” he whispered, “don’t go. Now is not the time.”

  The cat scurried down the stairs, glancing over his shoulder at the pursuing man. Austin rambled down the stairs, his foot now soaked in urine and his bowels demanding the attention they deserved. The cat made a fatal mistake and veered into a small room with soda machines. Austin entered and closed the door behind.

  “Well, my friend, you have made a critical miscalculation. It appears you are trapped.”

  Glenn found safety behind the ice machine and began to unleash a Satanic howl, long and painful, as if he were about to be eaten alive.

  One wall away, the night clerk, Sandy Shaddix, heard the noise and stopped eating her yogurt. Sandy was forty-three, heavily medicated, and afraid of nearly everything foreign to her. It was her third night on the late shift, and she reached for her purse to remove the emergency can of mace.

  She heard a pounding on the ice machine, and another hair-raising howl, and then a man’s voice yelling, “Glenn, so help me God, I will crush every bone in your body.”

  Sandy reached for the phone to call the police but then remembered her manager’s words, “If you call the police again, it better damn well be an emergency or you’ll be lookin’ for a new job.”

  Austin McAdoo was face down on the cool cement floor, reaching under the ice machine and trying to grab the leg of the cornered cat. He inched further, and still further, until his shoulder and head were completely under the machine and the tips of his fingers could feel the cat’s short fur.

  Sandy crept around the counter, mace in hand, and gently opened the glass door. She quietly walked around the corner to the closed door of the vending machine room and listened. Austin grabbed Glenn’s hind leg, Glenn bit Austin’s index finger, the cat screeched, Austin cried out in pain, and Sandy Shaddix bent down and sprayed mace through the crack under the door.

  “I’ll call the police,” Sandy said loudly.

  Austin pulled the cat out of the corner and lifted himself on all fours. His eyes began to water and his breath caught.

  “I’ll call the police,” she said again.

  “Please,” Austin uttered, “please. I must use the facilities immediately. What poison have you made…” His voice trailed to a cough, and then the sound of spitting.

  With Herculean effort, Austin McAdoo got to his feet, the cat clutched at his chest, and through watery eyes located the doorknob and swung the door open. He could see the outline of a woman, only feet away, her arm stretched toward him, a canister of some sort in her hand.

  “Who are you?” she yelled.

  “I’m Austin McAdoo, ham salesman, room 24, guide me immediately to the facility in your lobby. It’s a medical emergency.”

  Austin stretched out one arm, the other still clutching the petrified feline. Sandy hesitated, studying the gigantic man dressed like a bee. Cautiously, she took his hand in hers and led the man to the lobby. He handed her the cat, closed the bathroom door behind him, and said through the door, “Please take the cat to room 24. Use your secret key. Put him inside, and close the door quietly.”

  Sandy usually did as she was told, and this occasion was no exception. She quietly opened the door of room 24, let the cat inside, and tried to see what she could see in the darkness. There was a strange smell from inside, but she was unable to identify the odor. When she returned to the lobby, the big man was gulping water from the water fountain.

  Sandy said, “Cats are not allowed.”

  Austin raised up, dizzy and disoriented. “My God, you nearly shut down my central nervous system, and now you reprimand me about a cat. If you speak one word of this incident to another human, I shall sue you with the entire legal department of the Dixie Deluxe Canned Ham Company, bankrupt this motel chain, and have you incarcerated in a maximum security prison. Is the cat in the room?”

  Sandy believed what he said. She couldn’t lose another job. She couldn’t go to prison. Her hands were shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Is the cat in the room?” Austin repeated.

  “Yes. Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Austin declared. “I shall go back to sleep and hopefully wake up without permanent damage to my internal organs. We will check out timely.” And he marched out of the lobby.

  Sandy Shaddix was shaken to her core. She waited until the man was gone
and sheepishly sat back down in her chair behind the counter. It was a horrifying experience, but not so horrifying as to waste a good yogurt. Sandy finished it off and waited for daylight.

  Austin was unable to fall asleep again. His head pounded with poison, and the cat bites on his finger and calf were painful reminders. At six-thirty he could no longer sit still and began to move about the room, increasing his noise level in hopes of waking Emily. She slept soundly and dreamt of turtles. Austin turned on the television, flushed the toilet, and finally opened the heavy curtains.

  Emily woke with a smile on her face. She turned to Austin and said, “Good morning.”

  Austin was struck by how beautiful she was. It was their first day together.

  “We’ve got a long journey today. I’ll need to stop by the home office in Pensacola and tender my resignation. If we can make it to Birmingham, we can stay at my mother’s the night. I’d rather not, but there are items I must get for our trip.”

  The car was loaded, and the cats found their places in the rear window. Ulysses was quickly becoming Austin’s favorite, for a multitude of reasons. Austin suggested Emily remain in the car as he went inside the motel lobby to check out.

  Sandy Shaddix stood across the counter from Austin.

  “I shall check out now.”

  They acted as if they had never met, as though the incident hours earlier with the cat, and the mace, and the emergency bathroom visit involved two other people, far away, which was fine with both of them.

  And then Austin McAdoo and Emily Dooley were officially on the road. The drive from Tampa to Pensacola would take seven hours; the drive from Pensacola to Birmingham would be an additional five hours. There’s no better way for two strangers to get to know one another than riding together in a small car without a radio for twelve hours. No better way at all.

  They passed a McDonald’s. Austin began, “I believe the invention of chicken nuggets marked the beginning of the decline of human civilization. Think about it, since that day, the world has steadily declined in every major category.”