learning your ABCs. M is for Motel. It was long and low, made of dull red boards, with a pitched roof of gray asphalt shingle, and a red neon Office sign in the first window, and then a louvered door for storage, and then a repeating pattern, of a broad window with an HVAC grille and two plastic lawn chairs under it, and a numbered door, and another broad window with the same grille and the same chairs, and another numbered door, and so on, all the way to the end. There were twelve rooms in total, all in a line. But there were no cars parked out front of any of them. Looked like zero occupancy.
“OK?” Shorty said.
Patty didn’t answer. He stopped the car. In the distance on the right they saw the second building was shorter from end to end, but much taller and deeper from front to back. Some kind of barn. But not for animals. The concrete ramp to the door was conspicuously clean. There was no shit, to put it bluntly. It was a workshop of some kind. Out front were nine quad-bike ATVs. Like regular motorcycles, but with four fat tires instead of two slicks. They were lined up in three ranks of three, with exact precision.
“Maybe they’re Hondas,” Patty said. “Maybe these guys would know how to fix the car.”
On the end of the line the third building was a regular house, of plain construction but generous size, with a wraparound porch, which had rocking chairs set out on it.
Shorty rolled the car forward, and stopped again. The blacktop was about to end. Ten yards short of the motel’s empty lot. He was about to bump down onto an owner-maintained surface that his expert potato-farmer eye told him was made up of equal parts gravel, mud, dead weeds, and live weeds. He saw at least five species he would rather not have in his own dirt.
The end of the blacktop felt like a threshold. Like a decision.
“OK?” he said again.
“The place is empty,” Patty said. “There are no guests. How weird is that?”
“The season is over.”
“Like flicking a switch?”
“They’re always complaining about it.”
“It’s the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s a getaway vacation. No hustle, no bustle.”
Patty was quiet a long moment.
Then she said, “I guess it looks OK.”
Shorty said, “I think it’s this or nothing.”
She traced the motel structure left to right, the plain proportions, the solid roof, the heavy boards, the recent stain. Necessary maintenance had been performed, but nothing flashy. It was an honest building. It could have been in Canada.
She said, “Let’s take a look.”
They bumped down off the blacktop and rattled across the uneven surface and parked outside the office. Shorty thought a second and shut the motor down. Safer than letting it idle. In case of molten metal and explosions. If it didn’t start up again, too bad. It was already near enough where it needed to be. They could ask for room one, if necessary. They had one huge suitcase, full of the stuff they planned to sell. It could stay in the car. Apart from that they didn’t have much to haul.
They got out of the car and stepped into the office. There was a guy behind the reception counter. He was about Shorty’s own age, and Patty’s, mid-twenties, maybe a year or two more. He had short blond hair, combed neatly, and a good tan, and blue eyes, and white teeth, and a ready smile. But he looked a little out of place. At first Shorty took him to be like a summer thing he had seen in Canada, where a well bred kid is sent to do a dumb job in the countryside, for the purposes of building his résumé, or expanding his horizons, or finding himself, or some such. But this guy was five years too old for that. And behind his greeting he had a proprietorial air. He was saying welcome, for sure, but to my house. Like he owned the place.
Maybe he did.
Patty told him they needed a room, and that they wondered if whoever looked after the quad-bikes could take a look at their car, or failing that, they would surely appreciate the phone number of a good mechanic. Hopefully not a tow truck.
The guy smiled and asked, “What’s wrong with your car?”
He sounded like every young guy in the movies, who worked on Wall Street and wore a suit and tie. Full of smooth confidence. Probably drank champagne. Greed