The Sun Down Motel(19)

Fell, New York

November 2017





CARLY


They hired me. There probably weren’t very many other applicants; maybe there weren’t any at all. But I found myself at eleven o’clock at night four days later, sitting in the Sun Down’s office with a miserable man named Chris, learning the job of night clerk. Chris was about fifty, and he said he was the son of the motel’s original owners. He wore a blue plaid flannel shirt and high-waisted jeans, and he was as unhappy as any guy I’d ever met, even in high school. Misery came off him like a smell.

“Keys are in here,” he said, opening the desk drawer. “We never changed to an electronic card system, because that costs a lot of money. We have problems with electronics in this place, anyway. We tried a booking computer for a while, but it never worked, and eventually it just stopped turning on. So we still use the book.” He gestured to the big leather book on the desk where guests wrote their names.

“Okay,” I said. My job as a barista had been way higher tech than this. “Landline, too, huh?” I gestured at the old phone.

Chris glanced at it. “You can use your cell out here if you get reception. We don’t have Wi-Fi unless you steal one of the local signals when the weather is right. Again, the electronics problem, and Wi-Fi costs money. Nancy comes at noon every day to make up any rooms that have been used—you’ll never see her. Dirty laundry goes in the bin in the back. Laundry is picked up and dropped off every week, again during the day. You won’t see them, either.”

I was still stuck on the Internet thing. “There’s no Internet? None at all?”

That got me a look of disdain. “I guess that’s a problem for someone your age, right? I bet you’d like to get paid to stay up all night and Twitter.”

I gave him my best poker face. “Yes,” I said. “It’s a dream of mine to make minimum wage to sit in a motel office and Twitter. Like, totally. When I get extra ambitious, I Facebook.”

“This country is going to the shitter in a handbasket,” Chris said.

“It’s ‘hell in a handbasket,’ actually. The saying.”

“Whatever. Wear this.” He handed me a dark blue vest with the logo on the breast. “Honestly, I won’t know if you actually wear it, but you’re supposed to. We were going to update them, but—”

“That costs money,” I filled in for him.

I gave him a smile, but he just looked sad. “My parents paid a song for this place,” he said. “Dad bought the land off of some old farmer and had the motel built for cheap. The land was supposed to be the real investment, with the motel just a way to make money to pay the taxes. I guess they were going to sell when the value went up.” He sighed. “It never did, because they never built that damn amusement park. Now my parents are dead and the place is mine. I tried to sell it around 2000, but no takers. So here we are. The few thousand bucks a year it makes is cheaper than paying an agent to sell it.”

I took the polyester vest, feeling its thick plasticky texture between my fingers. “Then how do you make a living?” I asked.

“I sell car insurance. Always have. Stateline Auto in town. If you need insurance, call me.” He looked around, his eyes tired. “Frankly, I hate this place. I come out here as little as possible. Every memory I have of this place is bad.”

I wanted to ask what that meant, but the expression on his face had shut down. So I said, “If you want to save money, why have a night clerk at all?”

“We tried going without one in the nineties, and frankly the hookers took over. They stayed here all night, did damage I had to fix, and took off without paying. Profits actually went down, if you can believe it. Turns out having someone here makes people behave, at least a little.” He pointed to a pinboard on the wall next to the desk with a note on it. “Call the cops if you need to. Most people are just jerks who back down when you tell them to knock it off. We’ve never had anyone get violent with a night clerk.”

“Except for the one who went missing,” I said.

Chris blinked at me. “What?”

“The night clerk who went missing in 1982.”

“How the hell did you hear about that?”

“It was in the papers,” I said, which wasn’t a lie.

“Oh, God,” he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. He seemed horrified. “Don’t bring that up, okay? I thought everyone had forgotten about that. That was in my parents’ time. You weren’t even born.”

“Did you know her?” I asked him.

“I was a kid, so no.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“Who knows? It’s ancient history. Please don’t bring it up. We don’t need even fewer customers than we already have.”

That was the end of my interview with Chris about my aunt’s disappearance. Score zero for Nancy Drew.

When Chris left, I dropped the blue polyester vest on a chair and went to work. I started with the desk, opening all the drawers and rifling through them. Except for the room keys, each of which was on a ring on a leather tab with a number stamped on it, there was nothing interesting.

Next, I moved to the desktop. It was chipped wood with a Formica top. There was a blotter, pencils and pens, the old telephone with big square buttons across the bottom to open different lines. None of the buttons were lit at the moment. On the corner was the guest book, a large leather binder with pages inside. I hovered my hand over the guest book, then stopped.