Читать книгу Endings - Barbara Bergin - Страница 8

“Mrs. Cohen, right?” A thin, very dark, East Indian man was standing behind the counter.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“We do not have many people checking in tonight. You are the only woman, so I figured it was you.” He smiled and said in a pleasant lilting accent, “You’re going to be with us for a very long time, I see. You know your account has been covered and the only thing you will be responsible for is your long distance calls, laundry and any movies you might order. Is this your understanding?”

“Uh huh,” she replied absently. She handed him her credit card, he struck a copy and filed it.

“How many keys you will need?”

“One.”

He put a plastic card into the magnet, then slid it into a little envelope.

“You are in room two twenty-five, up the elevator, to the right. Continental breakfast is served every morning at six o’clock. There is coffee available twenty-four hours a day in the dining area. Will there be anything else?”

“Do you have a few things like a toothbrush and toothpaste? I was in an accident and my stuff is stuck in the trunk of my car.”

“Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry! Is everything okay?”

“Yes, thank you. Everything is fine.”

“Of course, of course, we have some necessary things.” He handed her a simple blue toothbrush in a plastic package, the kind you can’t buy in a store anymore. Just dentist’s offices and hotels. There were a couple of aluminum packets of toothpaste, a small deodorant roller and a little brush. “Here you go.”

“Thank you. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight Mrs. Cohen. If there is anything I can do for you, please call. My name is Raghu Ramaswamy and my wife, Kala, is here during the day.” The soft voice was pleasing and familiar to her Northeastern ear. How did they end up in Abilene? He probably wondered the same about her.

She walked down the hall to the elevator. Mirrors with fake gold marbling covered the wall of the elevator and she tried not to look at herself, but she did. She looked like shit. Her curly hair was frizzing like a halo around her head. She had been nervously twirling it with her fingers so the strands by the sides of her face were clumped together and she looked…really…stupid. She made a squirrel face and squirrel sound into the mirror. The elevator door opened because she had forgotten to push a floor and an older couple got on. They probably didn’t see her squirrel face but she was pretty sure they heard the squirrel noise she made with her front teeth on her lower lip. She pushed two, they pushed three, the door closed and she leaned back into the corner, the naughty schoolgirl.

Her room was clean and as expected. She liked staying in cities where she could find a newer chain of hotels, the kind with inside hallway doors. She could barely hear the highway sounds, eighteen wheelers heading east and west, making time at night. She felt connected, in her own way, with those night drivers. Faceless, driving behind tinted windows.

Now she would go through the litany of thoughts which would bring back the tear soldiers. And come they did. It had been three years since the accident. She had put miles and months behind her but the intensity of her feelings never seemed to diminish. Big tears fell. She threw herself on the bed and lay there, face up. They rolled out the corners of her eyes, down into her hair, into her ears. Her nose became stuffed up.

When she was a kid she had stayed up one night and watched Twilight Zone. Hiding behind a chair, she was unseen by her parents. Years later this one episode became both a nightmare and a symbol of total loneliness. In fact she had described the episode to Chris and it had become their catch phrase for being physically or psychologically alone. “Whoa, Twilight Zone!” Never in her dreams did she imagine she would live in it.

A group of space explorers had traveled to some Mars-like planet with four suns and no nightfall. Somehow their means of getting back to Earth had failed and they were marooned. Out of necessity they developed their own social structure and government. A person who had previously been a lower level worker on the spaceship became a despotic leader on this desolate planet. Many years later a rescue mission materialized and a ship came for the stranded explorers. Everyone was to assemble for the return and there was a specific lift-off time. Their leader was upset for the obvious reasons. He would be forced to resume his lowly position on Earth. He tried to convince people to stay, but they would have none of it. In fine Twilight Zone fashion he stayed behind, only to realize too late the mistake he had made. He ran screaming toward the space ship taking off in the distance. He then returned to the deserted settlement. The sunlight, heat and desolation seemed oppressive.

Leslie had been terrified by this episode despite the absence of monsters. She was sure the show had been in black and white, but in her mind’s eye the stage was red. The four suns intensely yellow. And now, she lived there too.