The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel)

by Max Booth III

  He was waiting for me.

  I desperately cling for any chance of escape, but they have me trapped. There’s two of them and one of me. Hell, even one-on-one I’d still be fucked. I’m overweight and afraid of getting punched in the face. Not exactly the best qualities in a fighter. Nor a lover, for the matter. But I don’t think these lunatics see me as a potential sex-partner.

  At least, I hope not.

  The cowboy no longer has his cell phone out. Instead all his attention’s focused on me. Him and John both sneer like I’m an injured pig they’ve corned that they’re fixing to take turns fucking.

  “So my little brother here says you may have claimed his wallet for yourself,” the cowboy says.

  “What? No. No I didn’t.”

  Hobbs nods his head. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, the fuck you didn’t. I heard you on the goddamn phone, ya stupid faggot. I heard you.”

  “No, please, there’s been some kinda misunderstanding.” I hold up my hands to block the baseball bat from smashing into my stomach. Every finger at once jams as it connects.

  I scream but I don’t think it does any good. This laundry room is damn near soundproof. The guests across the hall and in the floor above us are undoubtedly still sleeping peacefully.

  “How you gonna continue bullshitting me, huh?” Hobbs says. “After I done heard you on the phone, talkin’ to whoever the fuck.”

  Is there a way I can talk my way out of this? If there is, it’s not the clearest solution. Nah, I’m screwed. He swings the bat again and I manage to turn in time to block the impact with my shoulder. It doesn’t change the fact that it still hurts like hell.

  “Please stop hitting me.” At this point I’m practically sobbing.

  The cowboy holds up his hand, calls Hobbs off. “Let’s hear what the fat boy’s got to say.”

  Maybe I can lie, make up some story about seeing someone else take the wallet. Except no, that won’t work. He heard me talking to George. I fucking knew it. What did I even say on the phone that night? Did I spill it all, or just imply I knew more than what I’d been letting on? Fuck. Think, think. Why can’t human beings be equipped with a rewind option?

  Hobbs swings the bat into my stomach again and all the contents inside move around a bit.

  “WHERE’S MY FUCKING WALLET?”

  “I don’t have it!”

  “Bullshit.” He hits me again and this time urine or blood or maybe both spurt out of my dick and wet my pants.

  “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t have your wallet.”

  He raises the bat and licks his lips. “Where. Is. The. Wallet?”

  “I’d tell my brother what he wants to know,” the cowboy says. “There ain’t no controlling him when he’s riding crank.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” I sit up and lean my back against the wall, holding my throbbing hands up as a feeble method of protection. “I found your wallet, all right? You’d dropped it in the lobby last week when you checked-in.”

  “Well, where the fuck is it?” Hobbs says.

  “I…uh…I don’t know.”

  “What you mean—you don’t know?” He raises the bat higher, ready to strike.

  “Somebody stole it!”

  Hobbs laughs. “No shit, we’ve already done come to that conclusion.”

  “I mean, somebody stole it from me.”

  Hobbs lowers the bat, eyebrow cocked, finally at a loss for words. The cowboy just laughs. “Who?”

  “Somebody out in the parking lot, last week.” Fuck it, might as well tell them the truth. Ain’t no lies that would fare better. “They had a ski mask on and robbed me at knife-point. Took my wallet and your wallet. Even got my cell phone all wet and dirty.”

  “Fuck your cell phone,” Hobbs says. “I’m’a get your face all wet and dirty.”

  “You’re going to make-out with me…?”

  Hobbs raises the bat and the cowboy stops him, shaking his head and rubbing his temple. For a moment, the only sound in the laundry room is my own frantic heartbeat.

  “Surely you counted how much money was in that wallet,” the cowboy says.

  “I may have looked.”

  “And I’m gonna hazard a guess that you don’t have that kind of cash just laying around.”

  I shake my head.

  “How fast is it gonna take you to come up with five thousand, plus interest—for, you know, all the shit you’ve put us through by not returning the wallet when you first found it?”

  “Uh…”

  “‘Uh’ ain’t no answer.” Hobbs swings the bat again. Something in my knee cracks and I’m too busy crying to pray that it’s not broken.

  “Well?” the cowboy says, seemingly unaffected by his brother’s lunacy.

  “How—how much is interest?”

  “Let’s call it double from what you stole from me.”

  “Double?”

  He nods.

  “Ten thousand dollars?” I gasp, still crying, clutching my knees.

  “This ain’t a fuckin’ math class, bitch,” Hobbs says.

  “How long?” the cowboy asks.

  I barely make fourteen hundred a month. By the time I’ve paid rent and other various bills, I’m stealing hotel bagels to prevent starvation. Ten thousand is going to be impossible, but I can’t tell him that, because he’ll probably just kill me, or tell his asshole brother to do it with his little baseball bat.

  “I don’t know. A few weeks?”

  The cowboy laughs. “How you reckon you’re gonna pull that one off? Hotels pay more than I thought? Shit, maybe I’m in the wrong business.”

  “I’ll figure it out. I promise. Please.”

  “Look, I’ll make this simple.” The cowboy pushes Hobbs’s bat away. “You stole from me. If someone else in my field did this, I would not hesitate to end their life. But you’re basically just a fucking pedestrian who didn’t know any better. I can understand that. I truly can. I would have probably done the same thing if our positions were reversed. Problem is, though, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to talk about it on the phone in front of the person you robbed. So now we’re in this situation, and I can’t just let it go unanswered for. So if you repay me, plus the interest I mentioned, two weeks from now, then we ain’t gonna have no problems. You don’t pay me back? Well, I think you can probably figure out what happens, right?”

  “Switchblade up my asshole?” I ask.

  The cowboy steps back. “Um…”

  Hobbs laughs. “I may have fucked with him earlier.”

  “Actually, that ain’t the worst of ideas.”

  Part 11

  Maybe I lose consciousness. Or maybe Hobbs and his brother just dissolve from existence, like dead movie characters fading out of picture during the narrative epilogue. Either way, one moment they’re standing above me, then they’re not. I blink hard and fast to make sure my vision isn’t fucked up, then crawl through the laundry room, into the employee restroom. I climb up toward the toilet and vomit a good chunk of blood into the bowl. My stomach spasms and I give some thought to dunking my head into the bloody puke water and forcing it to stay until all the pain disappears. The smell convinces me to abandon the idea.

  I wash my face and head back toward the front desk, but stop in the laundry room at the sight of a navy blue t-shirt tacked to the wall next to the washing machines.

  The T-shirt says: i’m really excited to be here.

  Suddenly I can’t stop laughing.

  I kneel down in front of it and worship its majesty. I demand answers. Solutions to the mess I’m in. I consider abandoning the hotel and fleeing back home to Indiana. I could live with my parents and share a room with my thirty-something-year-old brother. We could swap stories of failure and drink ourselves to death until beautiful, glorious alcohol poisoning kicks in. I could give-up. There’s nothing wrong with giving up. There’s nothing to fight for. There’s nothing to win here except death. I could go home. I could finally sleep.

  But I can’t help wondering w
hat would be more painful: a switchblade up the asshole or my mother smiling and telling me she knew I couldn’t make it on my own.

  I am not my brother. I am not my brother. I am not my brother.

  I don’t know what I am but I know what I’m not.

  Hobbs pops up at the front desk at ten ’til seven, whistling and smiling like nothing had gone down last night, like everything was candy and ice cream.

  “Howdy, Eye Sick,” he says, and I just look at him, wincing the same way a beaten dog would at the reappearance of his abuser. “I’m gonna need you to go ahead and extend my stay.”

  “How long?” I whisper, groaning as I lift my hands up to type on the hotel computer.

  “Hmm.” He glances at the ceiling for a moment, contemplating. “Let’s say, oh, two weeks from now.”

  Somehow I’m not surprised.

  “Two weeks it is.”

  He keeps smiling, waiting for me to bring up the subject of payment, which I refuse to do. Fuck him. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Don’t you want to know my method of payment?” he finally asks.

  “No.”

  Hobbs laughs. “You’re all right, Eye Sick. You’re a-okay.”

  There is a bottle of coconut rum under my sink. When I get home, the first thing I do is open it and I don’t stop drinking until everything becomes numb.

  * * *

  Two little kids, maybe five or six years-old, talking by the pool as their parents gather supplies and I wait for them to leave:

  Boy: “Well, that was a really good day for swimming, wasn’t it, Alexis?”

  Girl: “I guess.”

  Boy: “I really liked the hot tub because it was hot. But I also liked the swimming pool because it looks like a bean. What a really good day for swimming.”

  Girl: “Jeffrey, I’m tired, leave me alone. My body requires rest.”

  Then, when I return to the front desk, there’s a group of drunks in the lobby slowly making their way to the elevator. One man is extremely pissed, and to prove it, he starts shouting. “No, goddammit, listen, in Mexican culture…”

  Another man says, “Goddamn, I’m sick of your Mexican culture shit. Shut up!”

  “No, you shut up and listen for once. In Mexican culture—in real, honest-to-God Mexican culture—the woman in the marriage does not get to talk back to the husband.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Listen, in true Mexican culture, the man is allowed to smack his bitch if she gives him lip. It’s true.”

  “You need to go to bed, man.”

  “Fuck you—”

  The drunk walks into the wall, face-first. Embarrassed, he storms toward the elevator.

  The other guy shouts, “In Mexican culture, are you supposed to walk into walls, too?”

  I don’t expect to see the bulimic girl again, not after she told me to go fuck myself, so when 2:00 A.M. hits and she’s knocking on the front doors, I have to blink a few times to convince myself I’m not hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time. Hallucinations are in a night auditor’s job description.

  I let her inside and she rushes to the front desk. Her eyes are raccoon-black and her skin is ghost-pale. “Where have you been?” she says.

  “What?”

  “I’ve come back here the last two nights,” she holds up two ugly, scarred fingers, “to apologize to your stupid ass, and some other bitch was here instead.”

  “I’m off Friday and Saturday nights. That was Mandy, the part-time auditor.”

  “She threatened to call the cops on me.”

  “Why? What did you do?”

  “Man, who cares? Fuck that lady.”

  “She can be irritating.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Wait. I was here last night. You didn’t come here.” Unless she tried to get in while Hobbs went to town on me with his baseball bat.

  “Wait, what’s today?”

  I pause, struggling to remember. “I don’t know. It’s someday, any day. Mayday, mayday. Wait, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m fuckin’ dying, man.”

  “What?”

  “I’m dying. I can’t fucking take this much longer. I need your help, okay?”

  I reach into my pocket for my cell phone. “I’ll call an ambulance…”

  “No!” She lunges at me and I step back, forgetting about the front desk between us. “Don’t call the police. I don’t need their help.”

  “Then…what do you need?”

  For one insane moment I’m convinced she’s going to look up at me and say, “I need your hard cock, Isaac.” But of course she doesn’t. That’s crazy. Porn has rotted my brain.

  Instead, she says, “Food. I need to binge so fucking bad.”

  “Oh.”

  My first instinct is to shame her, tell her to get her disgusting ass out of the hotel before I call the police. Normal people don’t puke up what they eat. But I’m not an asshole—at least, I don’t want to be an asshole. Besides, the whole reason I’d tried to confront her last week was to let her know it’s cool if she comes to the hotel earlier than usual, when it’s just me here. So what the hell is my problem then?

  “Please,” she says.

  I head through the lobby and unlock the kitchen. When I turn around, she’s shaking, teeth chattering, arms crossed over her chest. “Uh. What kind of food would you like?”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any ice cream?”

  “No…sorry.”

  “Okay. Can we cook up some waffles maybe?”

  Preparing the waffle mix is a pain in the ass—especially for someone who prefers to do zero work. My hesitation shows.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” she adds, looking at me in a way that vibrates my heart.

  “No problem.”

  As I pour the waffle mix into a large salad bowl and add water and butter, I ask her to go flip on the waffle irons so they can begin heating. I stir the mix with a wooden spoon, listening to her soft footsteps as she returns to the kitchen.

  “So how long have you worked here?” Her voice sounds distracted. She doesn’t care about me. Only gives a shit about the food. I’m just a necessary evil, like making awkward smalltalk with the delivery guy as you look for your wallet.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember how long you’ve worked here?”

  I shrug, staring at the bowl of waffle mix. “As far as I can recollect, I’ve been here since the moon first hatched. This is where I’m meant to be. Forever. When I die, my ashes will be buried in the garden out front.”

  “That’s a little weird, man.” She coughs. “Dude, what the hell happened to you? You look like someone beat the shit out of you.”

  “Well, there’s your answer.”

  “Why?”

  “A guest was unhappy about his stay.”

  I pour the waffle mix into its proper container and drag it to the waffle irons out in the dining area. I unlock the cabinets below and bring out the plates, silverware, and syrup. The butter is already out. I guess she found it in the fridge as my back was turned. I wonder what else she snatched. She’s giddy and anxious now as she utilizes both waffle irons, shaking like a drug addict waiting on her dealer to arrive.

  “This is going to be so fucking good,” she says. Even though it’ll take a few minutes to cook, she can’t seem to take her eyes off the irons. “Water. I need lots of water.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hurry.”

  I fill up a pitcher with cold sink water and she pries it out of my hands and begins chugging it before I have a chance to retrieve the cups. She shoves the empty container back at me a minute later and requests a refill. This time I bring her two pitchers.

  The waffles are finished and she’s already making two more while simultaneously applying butter to the finished ones on her plate. Impressive. She drowns them in syrup and breathes them in. I stand aside, feeling like a third wheel. This is a date between a woman and some wa
ffles. There’s no room for a night auditor here.

  “So, what’s your name?” I ask.

  “My name?” She looks up, still chewing, remembering I’m still here.

  “Yeah. What do I call you?”

  “The bulimic freak. The fat cow. The gross slut. The Queen of STDs. Take your pick.”

  “Come on…”

  “Look, if you want to talk, at least start heating up more waffles. And refill the water. Please.”

  After she’s had her third helping, she belches and says, “Kia.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Kia.”

  “Like the car?”

  “Yeah. Like the car.”

  “Weird. Your parents just like the sound of it, or…?”

  Focusing on the waffles, she says, “It’s where I was conceived.”

  “Oh.”

  “I guess they exhausted their imagination with my older brothers. Out I come, they couldn’t have given less of a shit.”

  The silence that follows is painful and exhausting. I avoid it lingering by returning to the kitchen to refill her pitchers of water. When I come back out, she’s heating up another round of waffles. I set the pitchers down and ask her if she wants to know my name, and she laughs and says, “I already know your name, Isaac.”

  I freeze, a thousand thoughts racing through my mind. Thinking I’m dreaming. Thinking there’s a conspiracy afoot. Some secret government plot to murder me. The CIA can’t allow this night auditor to continue breathing. I know too much. The fucking owls gave me away. First they took Mandy 2, now they’re coming for me. Forget about the switchblade.

  “How do you know my name?” I step forward, feeling aggressive, fucking violent. God, I’m tired.

  She shakes her head, amused. “Maybe I’m a witch, or maybe I can read the name tag attached to your shirt.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She leans forward, over her waffles. A thick line of syrup drips down her chin and it’s the cutest fucking thing. “But it’s still possible I could be a witch.”

  “At least I haven’t been turned into a newt yet.”

  “What?”

  “Uh, never mind.”

  Maybe on our first date we can watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail together. Wait, maybe this is our first date. We’re talking, having a meal together—well, she’s having a meal. I’m probably the only one who’s thinking of this as a date, though. Who knows what this is to her. Nothing, maybe less than nothing.