The Sun Down Motel

As she watched, the man raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were black and blazing.

“Goddamn bitch,” he said.

Viv backed away and walked on shaking legs around the corner, toward the empty pool. It was nearly pitch-dark back here, farther away from the lights of the road and the sign, and Viv made out the black shape of the fence, the inky pool filled with leaves and garbage. Her tennis shoes scraped loudly on the broken concrete. Overhead there was a sliver of moon that gave barely any light.

She made herself take a breath deep into her lungs, letting the cold sting her chest. She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. The exhaustion had left her and she only felt the pumping of her blood in her veins, the humming of her own skin. She closed her eyes, then tilted her head down and opened them again.

In front of the fence was a boy, sitting on the ground, his knees up, his back to the fence. His skin was pale and he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts in the icy cold. He was the boy who had hit his head and died. He, too, raised his head and looked at Viv, though his expression was helpless instead of angry.

“I don’t feel good,” he said, his voice high-pitched and insubstantial in the chilled night air.

“I can’t help,” Viv told him. “I’m sorry.”

But the boy still watched her, unmoving, waiting, and Viv took a step back, unable to look at him anymore. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

He was still watching her when she turned and walked back past the office, careful not to turn her head and look at the man inside. She rounded the corner and saw that the motel doors were open—every single door on both levels, ajar as if someone had forgotten to latch them closed. The lights at the end of the row blinked out, and then the next lights, and then the next. On the second level, a woman in a flowered dress appeared in one of the room doorways, then turned away again.

“Betty,” Viv said, and this time it wasn’t a question.

Behind her, the motel sign went out. Now there was only darkness, growing and growing as each light went out at the motel. I’m alone in the dark, Viv thought. There’s only me here. But that wasn’t quite true. And this time, she wasn’t afraid.

She walked to the stairs and climbed them, her hand numb with cold on the railing. Her cheeks were losing sensation and her nose was starting to run. But she kept walking. She reached the doorway where she’d seen the woman and, with only the briefest breath of hesitation, she stepped inside.

It was dark in here, with a stuffy smell. Viv’s tennis shoes went silent on the old carpet. The wind skirled in through the open door, but it was no longer cold. It was airless in here instead, unpleasantly warm like a chair that someone else has just sat on, the smell a little sickening, like a stranger’s armpit. Viv made out a bed, a cheap nightstand, a mirror. And the woman.

It was the woman from that first night, the one who’d stood in front of Viv’s car as she cowered inside. Run, she’d said then, and Viv had simply stared in terror, unable to process any other emotion. Now the woman stood with her back to her, wearing that same dress, and all Viv could feel was pain and a horrible, horrible kind of pity.

I couldn’t just leave her, she thought.

“Betty,” she said, the word coming out a rasp from her dry throat.

Slowly, the woman turned. Viv’s eyes had adjusted to the dark—or perhaps it wasn’t as dark as she’d thought—because she could see the woman so clearly, the line of her neck and the white of her skin. The hair that fell just past her shoulders, dark honey brown and carefully brushed, pinned back from her face. The way, Viv knew now, that Betty had pinned it back that final day before she opened the door to the wrong man.

Her stomach dropped because in the strange light she could also see Betty’s scratches. The bruises and scrapes on her cheekbones. The deep marks on her neck. The blood smeared over her hands, over her fingers and palms, the nails ruined. Betty’s lip was split and her left eye was swollen mostly closed. Below the hem of her dress, blood ran from her knees down her shins.

Horror came over Viv, so complete it was a wash of sensation crawling up her back and burrowing into her stomach, like cold hands on her neck and cotton in her throat. She stared with cold tears on her face as Betty spread her hands and looked down at them.

And then she spoke, like the man had spoken, like the boy. Her voice a far-off reedy sound in the wind. Coming from somewhere and nowhere at once.

“How did this happen?” she said.

Viv raised a hand to her cheek, smeared one of her tears with her icy fingers. “Betty,” she said in a whisper.

Betty lifted her face and looked at Viv, and her expression was confusion and burning rage. “How did this happen?” she said again.

“I don’t know,” Viv said, and she had no idea if Betty could hear her or not, because she simply stood unmoving, her bloody hands held out. “Who was he? Tell me.”

Betty stared with those blazing eyes, and through her terror Viv had the urge to step forward, get closer. Her feet wouldn’t move. A plume of white rose in the air, and Viv realized it was her breath in the suddenly freezing air.

Betty’s mouth moved. Her voice was fainter. “How did this happen?”

“Tell me!” Viv shouted. “I can fix it! Please!”

A horn honked from the parking lot and Viv jumped, a scream coming from her throat. Red and blue light briefly flashed through the window and the half-open door, and there was a blip of a siren.

Viv turned her head, distracted, and when she turned back Betty was gone.

On shaky legs, she walked to the door. In the parking lot below her was a police cruiser, parked diagonally in the middle of the empty space. Next to the driver’s door stood Alma Trent, flashlight in her hand.

She looked up and saw Viv. “Jesus, you gave me a heart attack!” she said, her voice ringing clear through the night air. “The office door is wide open and there’s no one inside. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought some creep had stuffed you in his trunk and drove off.”

Viv stood, staring down. Cold sweat trickled down her back, beneath her shirt and her sweatshirt.

“Aren’t you cold?” Alma asked. “Why are the lights out? I didn’t hear anyone call in a power outage.” She flipped on the flashlight and raised it to Viv’s face. “Are you okay? Why are all the doors open?”

Viv opened her mouth to say something—she had no idea what—and with an angry buzz the neon sign suddenly flipped on, the yellow and blue glowing in the darkness. Then the lights turned on, starting at the end of the L and moving up. One by one the doors clicked closed.

It took a silent stretch of minutes. When it finished, Viv still stood staring down at Alma, who had lowered the flashlight. The two women locked gazes for a long minute.