The Night Parade(4)

It was one of those motor lodges where all the rooms had doors that opened onto the parking lot. He counted only two other vehicles in the front lot and, after driving around the building, two more in the rear. He told Ellie to wait in the car while he went in and got them a room.

The lobby was dressed in outdated wallpaper and threadbare aquamarine carpeting. The lights in the ceiling seemed impossibly bright and were orbited by a cloud of gnats. The guy behind the counter, grizzled and rheumy-eyed, looked no more lifelike than the half-dozen taxidermy animals adorning the wooden shelves behind him. Pressing a handkerchief to his mouth, he looked up as David approached.

“I’d like a room please,” David said to the fellow.

“Last name?” the guy asked through the handkerchief, swiveling on a stool so that he could tap out a few keys on an old PC.

“Arlen.” It was out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. Just like back at the gas station with the credit card. How long did he really expect to last being this careless?

“Ireland?” the old man said.

David went with it. “Yes.”

The man tapped a few more keys on the computer.

David wasn’t sure if it was possible to get a room anymore without a credit card or an ID, but he took his chances. “My cards are all maxed out,” he said. “Do you take cash?”

“It’s still legal tender, ain’t it?” said the old-timer. Then something akin to suspicion glinted in his reptilian eyes, and he made no attempt at subtlety when he leaned forward and peered out the glass door toward the parking lot. He kept the handkerchief firmly in place against his mouth and nose. “It’s just you?” the man said.

“Just me.”

“No lady friend with you?”

“No, sir.”

“’Cause this ain’t no brothel. Won’t put up with no hanky-panky. Just ’cause the world’s goin’ to shit don’t mean I surrender my morals. You catch what I’m saying?”

“Of course. It’s just me. No worries.”

Apparently contented, the old man retracted back behind the counter and completed the transaction. Blessedly, he did not ask to see David’s ID. David forked over sixty bucks for the room and another hundred for a security deposit since he wasn’t using a credit card.

“Kinda steep for a security deposit,” David said.

“What’s it to you, so long as you don’t burn the place down,” said the old man through his handkerchief.

David handed over the money. First night on the road and he’d already made a sizable dent in their meager account.

The man gave him a plastic key card with the number 118 printed on it in permanent marker. Back in the parking lot, David drove around to the rear of the motel and parked right outside the door to their room. Ellie was still wide awake in the backseat, glaring at him.

“Come on,” he told her, leaving the car running as he got out. “I’ll let you in, then I’m going to park the car somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“Because this place looks shady and I don’t want someone breaking in to the car,” he lied.

“It isn’t ours, anyway,” she said as she climbed out of the Oldsmobile’s backseat.

He was quick opening the motel room door and ushering Ellie inside. Glancing around, he took inventory: a single twin-size bed with a paisley coverlet; a wooden dresser on which sat an old tubed television set plugged in to a digital converter; a closet whose door stood open to reveal a horizontal wooden post from which a few metal coat hangers hung; brownish water stains on the ceiling and walls; a telephone and an alarm clock atop a gouge-ridden nightstand. There was a single window beside the front door, the drapes already pulled closed. David went to a lamp on a rickety-looking table, switched it on, then went back to the door, leaving Ellie to stand in the middle of the room, looking around in silence.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her.

She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the TV. In her lap was the cardboard shoe box with the Nike logo on its lid. Over the past several weeks the shoe box—or, rather, the items inside the shoe box—had become something of a security blanket for the girl.

Outside, David got back in the car and parked it behind two enormous Dumpsters at the far corner of the lot. From the trunk, he gathered up his duffel bag, as well as the small pink suitcase he’d packed with clothes for Ellie, along with some board games to keep her occupied. The only item that actually belonged to Ellie was the stuffed elephant, and he had that now only because Ellie had given it to Kathy. It had been Ellie’s favorite toy when she was no more than two, a gray plush pachyderm she’d named, in her pragmatic way, simply Elephant. He debated whether or not he should leave in it the trunk—his fear was that it might spark more questions about Kathy if he brought it into the motel—but in the end he shoved that into the duffel bag, as well.

Back in the room, he set the bags down on the bed, then stretched so that the tendons in his back popped. Ellie hadn’t moved from her perch at the edge of the bed, her eyes still glued to the television set that she hadn’t turned on. She was gripping the shoe box so tightly that her fingertips were white.

“You can watch something, if you want,” he told her.

“The TV looks funny,” she said.