Part 31
I drive until I run out of gas then I fill up the tank and drive until it’s empty again. Maybe days pass. But the sun never rises, not once, so I can’t be sure. I drive until my eyes crack like glass. I don’t know where I’m going and it doesn’t matter. I am driving away from the hotel and goddammit that’s enough.
When my eyes start bleeding, I swerve off the highway and pull into a parking lot of a building with a sign that reads: ANOTHER GODDAMN HOTEL. The sign makes my stomach hurt, but maybe my stomach has always hurt.
The lobby is empty. I stand at the front desk, half-asleep, and shout for assistance. Nobody comes. I pound my fist against the counter. “Hello? Hello!”
No response.
Fucking lousy hotel dickhead. Probably somewhere watching Netflix instead of doing his job. Probably jerking-off on the roof, adding cum-stains to my car’s windshield.
I sit down in the lobby chair and fall asleep. When I wake up, some lady’s standing above me, snapping her fingers.
“Hello?” she says, irritated. “Wake up, goddamn you.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve been driving all night and I’m exhausted.”
“What?”
“Don’t you work here?”
I look down at what I’m wearing. I’m still in my hotel uniform, minus the necktie, which is back at the Goddamn Hotel, melted into a burnt dildo. My clothes are covered in blood.
“I don’t work anywhere,” I tell her. “I’ve resigned.”
“Well, I need a room.”
She stands there with her arms crossed, staring at me like I’m the asshole here.
I stare back like she’s the asshole instead.
It’s a regular asshole-staring contest.
She wins.
I throw my hands up and stand. I don’t know the code to get behind the front desk, so I just crawl over the counter. A man in a suit and tie’s hiding on the carpet, out of sight from the lady in the lobby. Tears well in his eyes. He shakes his head slowly and mouths the word, “Please.”
I stare at him then at the lady then back at him then the lady again.
The front desk phone begins ringing and I answer it before I know what I’m doing.
Except of course I know what I’m doing.
Of course I do.
“Thank you for calling Another Goddamn Hotel. This is Isaac. How may I help you?”
The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel) Page 27
