Hick - Andrea Portes [51]
But Eddie’s back to flipping channels. My head could catch fire and he wouldn’t notice.
“When’s Glenda supposed to get here?”
He ignores me. Switch. Wait. Switch. Wait. Switch.
“Eddie, when is Glenda supposed to get here?”
Nothing.
“Hello?”
Eddie hits the mute and lets out a huff.
“Well, that’s the thing, kid, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
And I know right then and there that I am never gonna see Glenda again.
“You see, me and Glenda had a talk, well, actually, she came to me first and . . . well, she asked me if, well, she asked me . . . to take you.”
I am trying not to hear what he’s saying. I am trying to pretend that it’s a few minutes before. I am trying to make it come out different.
“Whattaya mean, take me? Take me where?”
“I don’t know, wherever, she just said she couldn’t keep you around, cause of Lloyd and all, and that she wanted me to take you . . . off her hands.” He shrugs. “Sorry.”
“I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh yes she would. She would and she did. Look, she even gave me a grand to take care of you.”
Eddie takes out a wad of bills from the bag next to the bed, showing it to me. it’s the other wad of bills from Custer’s Last Stand. Her half. “She said she felt bad but that she wanted me to take care of you, make sure you stay out of trouble.”
I am looking at myself in the middle of this cork-pile room, wood-paneled and cubby-holed, in the middle of this Motel 6, two miles outside Devil’s Slide, Utah, and realizing that this is it. This is all there is for me.
“Look, kid, I know you think I’m some kinda freak and Glenda is little Miss Perfect, but let me tell you something, she’s trouble and you’re better off without her. Besides, I ain’t so bad. I don’t bite.”
And I am watching him swigging his Jack Daniels, getting surly and meaner with each swig, till I can see something else, something that does bite, cueing up behind his eyes, some demon sent from drunkville to drown the Devil’s Slide Motel 6.
I am not sticking around for the show.
“You know, maybe I ought to get some ice.”
He’s burning a hole into the carpet, forest green, turning brown around the edges.
“Want anything?”
“Huh?”
“You want anything, you know, like some Fritos or something?”
“Did I say I wanted anything?”
“No.”
“Wull, then, I guess I don’t, then, do I?”
He’s getting to that mean part of the drunk show. Drink number four or five.
It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. I guess he left the romantic part back in Jackson. I guess he left that part for the day.
Maybe if he ate something he might just get grumpy mean but not mean mean, like the kind that does that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing where you’re watching a person and they get that faraway staring look in their eyes and, around drink number six, transform into someone else, some dark version of themselves sent from a parallel universe where everything you say is wrong and you’re gonna get a beating for sure, so you might as well buck up and stop trying.
I walk out, slamming the door behind me. I do not want to stick around for drink number seven or eight through nine.
We’re on the second floor and you have to walk on the outside balcony, past all the rooms, to get anywhere. The floor is covered in Astro-turf, wet and worn, like there’s a pool somewhere nearby. I wander around, looking for the ice machine, ending up in a dead end and then another dead end and then one more.
It’s misty out here, quiet. There’s an eerie buzz underneath everything, like there’s a plug buried deep beneath the hotel that you could just pull out and the whole place would vanish into thin air, never to be seen again. I’m beginning to think I just stepped into some late-night fluorescent Astro-turf mirage, some spaceship version of reality, going nowhere fast, walking around in circles in some made-up maze with aliens watching for their own personal amusement. And then another dead end.
I give up on the upstairs and decide to venture down to the first floor. There