The American men I had frequented always said it was the best they’d ever had, the most beautiful, but they still left. If I was aware of the rules ahead of time, this time, things would be different, no? I knew the variables now as I had never known them before. It would be okay, I thought.
~ ~ ~
THE SHADES WERE DRAWN IN THE GLASS CUBE of the office and I wondered who authorized the change — to be invisible to the traffic flowing down each side of the boulevard.
I walked in and there was a man standing at the desk. Prim and slim and Pakistani, I think. Middle-aged. It stopped me for a moment but I regained my composure. He smiled at me like he was supposed to.
I walked to the bank of brochures next to the entrance and fingered them, flicking the tops, pulling out ones for Havasu and Laughlin.
“May I help you?” he asked.
I breathed deep. Where is the desk clerk, Jason, I wanted to ask, Who are you, I wanted to ask.
Was room 214 occupied? Where was Greg?
“How much is a room for the night?” I asked, instead.
The man checked his motel register. He had a thin black mustache and his hair was parted at the side, letting the small tufts near his ear fluff up and out.
“It’s 129 for the night,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
He seemed taken aback. “That’s the weekend rate, best on the boulevard.” He had a lilt to his voice. I could tell he was trying to make a hard sell.
“What about room 214?”
He looked at the key fobs behind him.
“Available.” He looked me up and down. “Best room.”
“Can I see it?”
“Trust me.”
“I want to take a quick look,” I said.
He contemplated it and then got sidetracked with a phone call. He was giving someone else the same speech.
I went back to looking at the brochures and considered what to say next. I didn’t want to be rushed.
“I was here a few nights ago and I forgot something in one of the rooms. Where’s that other guy?”
“Other guy?”
“The one who works here, usually.”
“I’ve been working here for days. I don’t remember seeing you.”
“Maybe it was last week,” I said.
“What did you forget, ma’am?”
“It’s private,” I said. I was getting impatient. “The other guy said on the phone I could come back and he’d let me in the room.”
“Ma’am, I’m the only one here.”
“I’m not a ma’am.” I was clutching onto shiny, slick brochures, printed cheaply and folded precisely. I was bending the edging to them. Stuffing them in my purse.
“What?” He eyed me strangely.
“I’m a miss, not a ma’am. Jason. He told me to come back.”
“I don’t know anyone named Jason.”
“Don’t you clean the pool?” I said.
“No one’s been swimming since the fires.”
I knew that wasn’t true.
“I left it in room 214.”
I made the saddest face I could and he pulled at the fob, annoyed.
I put more brochures in my purse and walked out, behind him.
We walked past the pool, up the stairs and I waited, tapping my fingers on the stucco as he tried to jangle the door open.
He finally opened it. I walked past him and saw the room was empty. Same flower comforter with the plastic sheen. A faint acrid smell, maybe smoke. Nothing else. I pulled the drawer open. The pen, everything was gone. He had the list.
I told the man it was gone and rushed out. He called out and asked if I still wanted the room. I said I didn’t have any money and he swore at me in another language. I didn’t mind because I didn’t know what he said.
I walked up the boulevard, past the Ralph’s. The only place to go was home. Back to wait for Lev.
~ ~ ~
LEV DIDN’T COME BACK UNTIL I WAS ALREADY sleeping, glass of whiskey and lemon juice and soda next to my bed, near my nose, close enough for me to smell it and turn my stomach while I tried to sleep. Bits of lemon floated up to the surface, hazy brown like swamp water with lemon seeds clustered at the bottom. The knocks were booming and insistent, like I remembered them to be.
I got up and walked to the door, slowly, making him wait, waiting to hear more insistent knocking, to know how badly he wanted to get inside.
They didn’t come.
I hesitated opening the door, worrying he had left to try a door somewhere else. When I finally did I saw him sitting in his car, about to turn it on. He saw me and stopped. He got out, pulled the keys out while standing. He walked over to me, pulled his pants up over his stomach and looked left and right, making sure no one was watching, watching him try again and take me up on coming inside.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“Sleeping.”
“It’s early,” he said.
I didn’t know what time it was but I didn’t think it was early at all.
“Where were you?”
“Nowhere, really.”
He said some things in Russian, looked at me, like he didn’t want me to be his wife, or his keeper, someone who asked him questions. So I stopped and let him through the door. He walked to the bedroom, pulling off his tie, to my sheets and my mattress hiding my stain and I didn’t think he’d ever be in the position to find out about what he was sleeping on. I followed after him, locking the door, and lay down next to him. In between the smell of the glass and the smell of his breath, both heavy with booze and both making my stomach turn. He didn’t lean over to kiss me and I hoped that he would turn over, mouth away from me, before he fell asleep. He didn’t. He pulled me close to him. Face pressed into his chest, I could barely catch my breath while closing my eyes. I regulated my breathing so that I could lie still, lie quietly, and not suffocate. When Lev had asked me to sleep here I thought it would be different. I thought we would do things besides sleep. His grip was hurting my back and I wanted to move but I knew I couldn’t. I closed my eyes and begged myself to fall asleep.
~ ~ ~
IT HAD BEEN DAYS AND I WAS TIRED OF HIM already. All I did was open doors for him. Let him out. He hadn’t opened my legs in days.
When he came at first I thought, I win.
But he left graying socks with a hole in the toe everywhere, or faded black ones, and I could see the stitches his wife had probably sewn herself. Green thread against the faded black. I wasn’t going to do that for him; I hope he didn’t expect me to. Maybe that was the part I was missing. I did not know how to sew or knit or darn socks. My mother hadn’t taught me anything. When she tried I broke the needles on the electric sewing machine, sending them shooting all over the room. The little yellowing light of her refurbished machine glared down bright on my fingers as I tried to push the fabric through. The hood covering the little light bulb had cracked and broke before we had gotten it and the bare bulb shone in my eyes, making it impossible to thread the tip of the needle. I licked and sucked at the edge of the thread, tried to make it a point but it never worked. She pulled it away from me, put in a new needle and threaded it all in one motion.
“Zosia, you have to learn these things,” she said as she pushed the fabric under the needle and pressed her foot down on the pedal that was connected to a cord that connected to the machine and sat under the dining table. She pushed down on the pedal and the sound of whirring and a sound like chomping came out of the sewing machine puncturing over and over.