American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,18

up, and goes to the keys on the wall. There are about twenty hanging there on the corkboard. He surveys them very carefully, as if searching a bookshelf for the appropriate tome, and with a quiet aha! he selects one from the bottom corner of the board. What marks this key as different from any of the others, Mona cannot tell. Then he lifts it to his lips and blows. A significant cloud of dust flies up from the key to dance around the ceiling lamp.

“Been a while since you guys had customers?” asks Mona.

“It has been a very long while,” says the old man. He smiles and holds the key out to her.

Mona reaches for it. “How much?”

“How much?” He pulls the key back, confused. “For what?”

“For… the room?”

“Oh,” says the old man, a little irritated, as if this were a needless formality he’d forgotten. He lowers the key, grunts again, puts his cup of coffee down, and begins to sort through the papers on his desk. As he does, he notices the dead plant on the floor. He stops and leans forward, examining it. Then he looks up at Mona and sternly says, “My plant has died.”

“I’m… real sorry to hear that.”

“It was a very old plant.”

He seems to be waiting for her to say something. She ventures, “Oh?”

“Yes. I had it for nearly a year. It was my favorite plant, because of this.”

“Well. That’s understandable.”

The old man just looks at her.

She adds, “You get attached to things if they’re around long enough.”

He keeps staring at her. Mona is beginning to feel quite disturbed. She wonders if he is senile, but there is more to it than that: it feels very unsafe in this big, dark office, where only one corner is lit and tangible, and the rest is hidden from her. For some reason she gets the sense that they are not alone. When the old man returns to his papers, Mona checks the corners—still nothing. Maybe it’s just a weird feeling she got from seeing that funeral.

“I am not sure what to do with it now,” he says grudgingly. “I liked the plant very much. But I suppose these things happen.” He sniffs, and produces a tiny note card from the mountain of old papers on his desk. This he consults carefully, as if it is the ace in his poker hand, and pronounces, “Twenty dollars.”

“For a night?”

“It seems so,” says the old man solemnly, and he places the card back on the desk.

“So… you don’t know how much your own rooms are?”

“There are several rooms, with several prices. I forget them. And we have not had any visitors in some time.”

Mona, glancing at the piles of paper and dust, can completely believe that. “Mind if I ask how you stay open, then?”

He thinks about it. “I suppose you could say,” he concludes, “that there is no shortage of goodwill around here.”

For some reason, Mona feels he is telling the truth. But this does not exactly comfort her. “Just curious—is this the only motel in town?”

Again, he ponders her question. “If there is another motel, I am unaware of it.”

“I guess that’s an honest answer.” She reaches into her bag, takes out a twenty, and hands it to him. He takes the bill and clutches it tight in his hand, as a child would, and looks hard at her again. “Have you ever been here before?” he asks.

“Here? In Wink?”

“Yes. In Wink.”

“No. This is my first time.”

“Hm. Allow me to show you to your room, then.” He picks up the key, the twenty-dollar bill still clutched in his hand, and walks out the office door.

As she follows, Mona glances behind the desk. She sees no gun, no weapon, nothing suspicious. But she does not feel entirely satisfied. It is as if there’s a tiny wound in her mouth she can’t quit playing with. Something is wrong with this.

On the way out, she looks at the Chinese checkers board. There is something different about it now. She cannot say why—after all, it is dark, and she didn’t get a good look at the board—but she is sure the checkers have been rearranged, as if someone has just made a complicated play. But perhaps the old man just jostled the table when he stood up.

He leads her down the row of motel-room doors. Night has fallen very quickly. The sky was bright blue, then streaked with pink, but now it is a soft and dusky purple cut short