The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel)

by Max Booth III

  Just from the sound of their voices I could tell they were up to something. When a pillow went hurling out the window and into the snow, this only backed up my theory. Another pillow soon followed. I stood by the window and waited for something else to happen. If this was a movie or TV show, there would have probably been a gunshot, and then a body would have followed the pillows out the window, into the snow. The killer would stick his head out the window to make sure his friend really was dead, and I’d see his face, marking me as the only witness to the crime. Worst of all, he’d see me up there looking at him, and he’d know he would have to take care of me if he wanted any chance of escaping the law. So he’d run up the stairs to our room, kick down the door and shoot both of my parents who’d still be fast asleep. Only I would be nowhere in the room because I’d be long gone. I’d have tossed on my shoes, grabbed my books and jacket and gotten the hell out of there. He’d run back out of the room and back outside, trying to track me down. His mistake would be in thinking I had fled the motel completely, where in reality I had simply jumped down the laundry chute by the vending machine. The police would already be on their way because I was just so goddamn smart. I wouldn’t have gotten my ass killed at all. If that had happened.

  But of course, this wasn’t a movie, and instead of a body falling out the window, I was met with unexpected silence as the two men below trailed off with their ramblings. Naturally it didn’t take long for me to grow bored of waiting and return to my book. After a while, my brain began to fizzle out and I dozed off, only to wake up to an earthquake in the room below. The sun of a new morning temporarily blinded me as I rose and approached the window once more. My vision clearing, I saw that the two pillows were still outside in the snow. However, they were no longer alone, not by any stretch.

  Along with the pillows, there was now a pile of sheets, a blanket, a comforter, a lamp, and a TV. There were coat hangers scattered everywhere, along with broken chunks of wood from a desk that’d been obliterated by God knew what. Same went for the nightstand and TV stand. A mattress was stuck halfway out the window. Standing around this chaos were a group of policemen, each of them rubbing their chins and staring at it all, equally perplexed.

  My first thought was: How did I sleep through this?

  My second thought was, understandably: What in the fuck?

  Now I’m a little older and instead of living in a shitty motel, I work in a slightly less shitty hotel.

  My first week on the night shift, I was with the front desk manager, who’d been training me for the position. He’s since quit for a better opportunity, meaning a taxi hit him while crossing a street and now he gets a disability check once a month.

  But a few years ago, he was still training me. It’s almost three in the morning, and we decide to go outside and walk around the hotel a few times to wake ourselves back up. Along the way, we take out the trash, since it’s overflowing and we’re already out there, so why not. He expresses interest in the fact that I used to live in motels, and asks what was it like being on the other side. I tell him it’s similar, meaning both the guest and the clerk can experience some pretty surreal, unique moments. Naturally, this brings me to share one of my favorite anecdotes. I tell him, one night there were two brothers that stayed in the room below us. We can hear them arguing, and then, I guess one of the brothers leaves, all pissed off, and goes out drinking. The other brother stays behind and decides to smoke up some meth. Does it right there in the motel room, gets high as hell. He then decides the motel room would look much better outside than inside, so proceeds to empty the room of its contents. Throws it all out in the snow, only stopping when the mattress gets stuck. He passes out soon afterward on the floor and wakes up in the morning to his brother coming home, drunk and yelling about what’s happened. Soon the police are called and they haul both brothers away, the drunk one yelling to the meth freak that the devil is inside him and he hopes he rots in hell with the rest of the demons.

  And my trainer, he asks how I know some of those details. How did I know he was on meth, or that they were brothers, or that he fell asleep on the floor like that? And the strangest thing happens—I freeze up. I have no idea how I know any of this. I don’t think I’ve made it up. I remember it all clear as day—those other details, which I shouldn’t know, they don’t seem made-up either. They make sense, too. So what the hell? Maybe someone told me, I suggest. Like the person working the front desk at the time. She would have known what had happened. She’d have to. And why wouldn’t she tell me? She liked me. Of course she told me.

  And the guy training me, he just shrugs and says this all reminds him of these legendary thieves that sometimes hit the area. Their MO, he tells me, is they’ll check into a hotel, paying with stolen credit cards and using fake IDs, and throughout the night they’ll proceed to clean out the hotel room. The TV, the lamps, the paintings, even the fuckin’ beds. They’ll have a pickup truck out waiting at one of the side doors, and they’ll bring it all down on luggage carts.

  I ask him, why the hell would anyone even steal a lamp? What’s the point? And he tells me dude, those things can go for a few hundred dollars. You’d be surprised.

  He tells me he has a friend who works at a different hotel a few towns away. The thieves tried hitting them, only something must’ve spooked them because when the housekeeping went up to their room the following day, they found three of the luggage carts stacked with everything from the room’s interior. Like they were about to take it all down, but something happened and they all bailed on the job. This was a couple months ago, and no one had reported any similar burglary since. So who the hell knew what happened to them. It was strange as hell.

  Then he tells me, about a year and a half ago, they struck the old hotel he used to work at. He tells me how he came in at seven in the morning, started his shift, and got a phone call from housekeeping about three hours later. The maid, she tells him he’s gonna want to come up to this room. He asks why, but the maid just says he won’t believe her, that he’ll need to come up and see for himself. So he gets his manager and they both walk up to the room. Only the room is empty. No TV, no lamps, no bed, no fuckin’ anything. It’s all gone. The room might as well be brand new.

  I ask him how he reacted when they got up to the room and discovered it all missing.

  And he tells me he began to laugh, and his manager began to curse, and neither one of them could stop.

  * * *

  A list of some of the things guests have forgotten in their rooms: cell phone chargers, cell phones, headphones, wallets, money clips, jewelry, hats, pants, shirts, jackets, bandannas, underwear, socks, shoes, unopened and opened bottles of liquor, unused and used condoms, blocks of cheese, unscratched lottery tickets, pills, weed, cocaine, meth, heroin, Twinkies, switchblades, butterfly knives, steak knives, cloves of garlic, silver bullets, crucifixes, bags of salt, bags of fat, bags of hair, and—perhaps the strangest item commonly left behind—handguns.

  Out of everything, I’ve yet to grasp how a guest can forget they’ve brought a gun with them to the hotel. I try to imagine myself staying in a hotel room, a gun in my drawer. I’ve never owned a gun much less held one before, but surely it’s not a typical possession. Someone checks into a hotel room with their gun, that gun is gonna be all they’re thinking about. It’s not something you just forget. Yet it happens, over and over. Maybe it’s a Texas thing. Maybe it’s a human thing.

  So when a platinum member calls a little after two in the morning and informs me he forgot a very personal item in his room, I’m thinking handgun, I’m thinking here’s another rich conservative Texan who’s too busy measuring his own dick to keep track of shiny metal toys with the power to steal life.

  “Uh, yes,” the platinum member says, “so the thing is, I’m already two hours’ away from the hotel, and I simply don’t have the time in my schedule to turn around and come get it. As it is, I’m probably already going to be late for my meeting in Dallas. But, as you know, I have a reser
vation every Tuesday at your location.”

  I’ve never heard of this guest in my life, but I don’t tell him that.

  “So I was thinking maybe I could just pick it back up next Tuesday when I return.”

  “I don’t see why that would be a problem.”

  “Well, okay, so, there is a slight problem.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The item—as I already said—well, it’s personal. Very personal. Not your typical, uh, well, you know.”

  Yup. Dude left his handgun. “No problem, sir. Quite understandable. Happens all the time.”

  “It does?” The surprise in his expression is perfectly visible despite our two hours’ distance apart.

  “Sure, sure it does. What we can do is, I’ll let housekeeping know, and in the morning they’ll collect it and give it to my manager, who’ll keep it locked up in her desk until you arrive next week.”

  “Well for fuck’s sake, kid, don’t let the housekeepers see it. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “I…I see?” I’m lying. I don’t see at all.

  “Do you know what personal means, son? It means…well, it means it’s personal. Very personal. Hell, I don’t even want you to see it, but I don’t see how I have any choice, given my current predicament.”

  “What would you like me to do, sir?”

  The platinum member clears his throat, struggling with his word choice. “I would like you to please, please walk up to my room, collect the…the item, and store it somewhere safe that nobody—not even your manager—will see it. And when I return on Tuesday, I would like you to personally give it to me.”

  Maybe he doesn’t have a permit for the handgun, doesn’t want to risk the chance of being busted. Which means there’s most likely a rather big tip in it for me. “Sure, sir. I can do that. Where did you leave the item?”

  “It’s…under the bed. Please make sure you use gloves or something. I don’t recall washing it off after I last used it.”

  “Why would you…?”

  “You’ll also want a decent-sized trash bag to store it in. I’d recommend double-bagging it, if not triple-bagging.”

  “Uh.”

  “Thank you so much. You don’t know how much your discretion and cooperation means to me.”

  The phone dies. I don’t move for five minutes, maybe ten years. Eventually my brain sends a message to my feet to move. I program a keycard for his room, scavenge gloves and trash bags from the kitchen, and hesitantly head upstairs. Why would you clean a handgun? Maybe to wipe his prints off, which means he’s done something illegal with it, which means I’m about to become an accessory to some kind of fucked-up crime. Hell, I’m already an accessory to whatever crazy shoe shit Hobbs is doing in his room, so what’s another one to the list? At this point, I could start throwing the guests off the roof and it wouldn’t make a damn difference.

  The platinum member’s room is a typical vacant dirty room. Used bath towels on the bathroom tiles. Empty bottles of Shiner overflowing from the small trash bin beneath the desk. Under the bed, he’d said, the item, the very personal item. I already have the gloves on, fearing leaving my fingerprints behind on even the doorknob. I stare at the mattress, unable to move forward, not wanting to see what’s underneath and at the same time absolutely wanting to see, wanting nothing more in this world than to see what the platinum guest forgot. If it’s a gun, maybe I could plug Hobbs with a few bullets and blame it on the platinum guest.

  I step forward once, twice, then the alarm clock on the nightstand begins screaming. I return the scream with my own lungs and flee the room. I’m halfway down the hallway before reality comes snapping back into focus and stops me cold. The alarm clock is still audible even from where I’m standing. Another few minutes of leaving it roaring like that and the front desk phone will start bitching and moaning about being disturbed.

  I unplug the alarm clock and silence its screams. Why did the platinum guest set a wake-up call at this time of night, knowing that he’d be out of the hotel at least two hours beforehand? Some kind of sleep-in insurance? An accident? Another hotel mystery that’ll never be solved. Add it to the cold-case files.

  With the alarm clock DOA, all attention’s glued back onto the bed—and, more importantly, what’s hiding beneath it. A handgun, maybe. Or something much more sinister. Like what? Like a heart, a human heart. And the worst part is, I can hear it thumping, beating, somehow still pumping, still alive, still thirsty.

  “Fuck you, Poe,” I whisper to nobody, and lift the mattress.

  No, not a handgun. And not a heart, either.

  A black leash.

  No, yes, kind of.

  A black leash with a giant rubber cock attached to it.

  A strap-on harness. I’m looking at a strap-on harness. And it’s looking right back at me.

  Well now.

  After I’ve finished laughing, I realize I still have to grab the thing, and that helps kill the humor in the situation. Hand trembling, I reach forward like a petty thief scooping up roadkill as part of his community service agreement. I hold in my breath and push the harness into the trash bag. The dildo nearly whacks me in the face as it flops in with the rest of the contraption.

  I double-knot the bag and carry it downstairs, arm carefully extended out far enough to avoid the bag from swinging and connecting with my leg. The front desk phone’s ringing when I reach the lobby, probably somebody complaining about the alarm clock, or maybe Hobbs needs help stitching together a shoe, or hell, maybe it’s my boss inquiring about the many semen-stained windshields out in the parking lot. Except it’s none of those.

  “Uh, hi, me again,” the platinum guest says. “I…uh…called a few minutes ago?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you, uh…retrieve the personal item we discussed?”

  “I have, yes.”

  “Okay, great. So, uh, I was thinking.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was thinking that maybe it would be best for you to just toss the item in the dumpster, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure, I can do that.”

  “I was also thinking that maybe I won’t be coming back next Tuesday after all, so if you could just cancel the reservation, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “No problem. Would you like me to reschedule it for a future Tuesday, or just leave it in the air?”

  “Uh…I…uh, I don’t see myself ever staying there again, to be honest. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, I understand.”

  “Don’t judge me, son.”

  “I ain’t a judge, sir.”

  “Just…please throw it away.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Come 7:00, as I’m punching my numbers in at the time clock, Javier’s holding up the trash bag, asking who left it on his desk. There’s a piece of paper stapled to it that reads “FOR MANAGEMENT’S EYES ONLY.”

  “It was on your desk when I came in last night,” I tell him.

  Too impatient to unravel my knots, he rips the side open and pulls the harness out, hand wrapped around the dildo. He holds it for a moment, staring, not sure how to react. Meanwhile, Kevin’s standing off to the side, laughing so hard it’s a miracle he doesn’t collapse.

  I’m out of the hotel and jumping into my car as the first scream fills the lobby.

  Part 15

  Kia smells like shit and I’ve never been more turned-on by an odor. I’ve spread out a blanket on the roof and thrown a couple pillows on top. A lantern sits off to the side, turned on to its maximum brightness. We haven’t spoken of our little interview session since she stormed off. When she eventually returned a few days later, we continued on as if it had never taken place. But since that night, she’s somehow acted even more distant than she already had been. Something new has been on her mind, something she obviously wants to spill, but something she’sstill holding back, something she’s still fighting.

  She’s been asking to see the roof for a few nights now, and tonigh
t’s the first time I’ve clocked into my shift with no scheduled reservations. She’s come to the hotel every other night for a while now. We talk for a few, then she binges and purges and gets tired and leaves. Maybe she’s using me for the free food. Maybe she actually likes me. At least she talks to me and listens to what I have to say. Up until her, all I’ve had was George. And there’s nothing wrong with George—except for the things that are also wrong with myself—but Kia is different. George and I are too similar. We get together and just poison our livers and bitch about guests. Our conversations are toxic and always leave me in a foul mood. We feed off the teat of cynicism. Or the dick. Whichever sounds more cynical. But with Kia, my brain feels like it’s finally being put to use. Like the other night, she started talking about my future at the hotel. “Don’t you want to be promoted?” she’d asked, and I laughed.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “I don’t know. The hotel industry is just boring, I guess. Everything is so fucking boring. Nobody should ever become an adult. Our minds expire at age twelve.”

  And she laughed and said, “Cut out that stupid goth high school bullshit, man. Life is only as boring as you make it. If you don’t like the hotel, then fuckin’ quit. Don’t talk about quitting. Actually do it. Figure out what excites you and gun toward it like a goddamn fighter jet.”

  “I’m not sure anything excites me.”

  “Dude, all you do is read books. Have you never heard of a professional reviewer? Or an editor? Shit, man, think about it.”