The Sun Down Motel

He scowled at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m calling the cops,” I said. I was impressed with how I sounded, considering I was terrified out of my mind. Too late, I remembered that the pepper spray Heather had given me was in my purse, back in the office. I moved my feet back again and turned to leave.

“Wait,” the man said after me. “I’m staying here. It’s legit. I have a key and everything.” There was a clinking sound, and I turned to see him hold up a familiar leather tab with a key dangling from it.

I paused. “What’s your name?”

“Nick Harkness.”

“You’re not in the guest book.”

“I never signed the guest book. It’s legit.” He put the key away and reached into his back pocket. “You want to check me out? Here.” He pulled out his wallet and tossed it to the ground between us, where it made a heavy sound against the concrete floor. “My ID, everything,” he said. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

I paused. Was it a mistake to bend down and pick up the wallet? Everyone knows a serial killer can get you in an unguarded moment. I toed the wallet toward me and grabbed it as fast as I could. His ID was in there, as advertised. He had sixty dollars, too.

“Okay,” I said, mostly to myself. I closed my eyes and massaged the bridge of my nose beneath my glasses. “Right, okay, fine. This is under control.”

Nick Harkness watched me, but he didn’t make a move. “You okay?” he asked.

“Sure, I’m great,” I said. “I’m just great. I’m the night clerk.”

Nick blinked his ice blue eyes in disbelief. I remembered that I was wearing my coat and I hadn’t put on the blue polyester vest. “You’re the night clerk,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, I am. Sorry about the noise. I didn’t realize you were sleeping.”

“You didn’t think you’d wake people up by banging doors in the middle of the night.”

His tone dripped with sarcasm, and I wanted to fling his stupid wallet at his head. Something was opening and slamming the doors, you idiot, and I’ve had a shitty night. But I couldn’t quite get mad as I looked at him again, standing there in the November cold in his T-shirt. Something about his face. It was a good-looking face. It was also edged with exhaustion, as if he slept as little as I did. “You could try not to be a jerk,” I told him. “I was just doing my job.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he looked away.

“The doors,” I said. “Have, um, have you noticed any problem with them?” When he still didn’t say anything, I said, “They were opening and closing, and I think . . . It was really strange.”

Now I sounded ditzy and lame at the same time, but he didn’t seem to notice. He still looked away and absently scratched his stomach. The motion made his shirt lift. Under the T-shirt, his stomach was very flat. “Christ,” he said, almost to himself.

“Right,” I said. “You were sleeping. Here’s your wallet back. I’ll go.”

“You new here?” he asked. He didn’t reach to take the wallet I held out.

“Sort of.” Yes.

“You’re new,” Nick Harkness said. He dropped his hand from his stomach, which made his shirt drop, unfortunately. “Jesus, I didn’t think they’d actually hire someone. The last guy left weeks ago, and Chris never even comes out here. I thought he’d given up.”

“It’s temporary. At least, I think so. Do you . . . You’ve been here for weeks?”

“Chris and I have an arrangement.”

“What arrangement?”

Nick gave me another glare—he was good at it—and said, “An arrangement where I stay here and call the cops if there’s trouble, and he leaves me the fuck alone. Is that enough detail for you?”

Jesus. Now I really did toss the wallet, dropping it to the floor the way he had done with me. “Well, someone could have told me instead of scaring the shit out of me,” I said. “It would have been nice. I can see why you’re staying here alone. Have a nice night.”

I turned, but he called after me. “Let me give you a word of advice, New Night Clerk. If you think you hear the doors up here, don’t come up and fix it. Stay in the office and don’t come out. In fact, don’t come out of the office for anything. Just close the door and sit there until your time’s up. Okay?”

I turned back to tell him he was rude, that it was uncalled-for, that he shouldn’t treat people that way. But for a second I could see past him into his room. The words stopped in my throat. I just stared.

He didn’t notice. “Okay, go,” he said to me. “Go.”

I turned and walked back to the stairs, my numb hands gripping the rail so I wouldn’t stumble on the way down. My eyes were watering with cold, my blood racing in my veins.

Two things kept moving through my brain as I walked back toward the office.

One, he knew about the doors. He knew.

And two, when I’d seen past him into his room, I’d seen a bed, a TV, a lit lamp. The bed was made, but the pillow had an indent, as if he’d been lying there.

And on the nightstand next to the bed was a gun, gleaming in the lamplight. As if someone had just put it down. As if he’d been holding it before he opened the door.

Fell, New York

November 2017

CARLY



   Wait a minute. Back up,” Heather said. “Tell me that last part again.”

I took another bite of my peanut butter toast. It was the next day, after I’d come home from my first shift at the Sun Down and fallen into bed, dead asleep for nine straight hours. Now I was in pajama pants and my favorite T-shirt, a baby blue one that read EAT CAKE FOR BREAKFAST on the front. I would have liked to eat cake for breakfast, except that I only had toast and it was five o’clock in the afternoon. “I know,” I said. “Maybe he was a cop or something.”

“Carly.” Heather glared at me, a little like Nick had. She was wearing her black poncho, and we were sitting across from each other at the apartment’s small kitchen table, Heather with her laptop in front of her where she was listlessly working on an essay that wasn’t due for another six days. “No cop is staying at the Sun Down Motel for weeks on end. Dead girls, remember? The goal is that you are not one. Men with guns are the first thing to steer clear of. You should have Maced him.”

“I don’t think he would have hurt me,” I said. “I didn’t need the Mace. I went back to the office and I sat there, like he told me to.”