Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [245]
We walked to the desk, and he looked up, smiling comfortably. "How can I help you?"
"We need a room with two single beds," I said.
He muted the television, put his feet on the floor, and thumbed through the guest registry. "I've only got a double," he said. "Sign here please." He slid the registry towards me. "Write the names of anyone else staying in the room with you and your license plate number."
I entered my name and Orson's along with the plate number of the Buick. Orson stared over my shoulder while I wrote, looking down at the registry with peculiar concentration. When I'd finished, I closed the book and slid it back across the desk to the man.
"$39.50," he said, and I took out my wallet. While we waited for the charge to clear, I glanced at Orson. His eyes ran from the closed door on the opposite wall, to the old man, to the locked key cabinet behind the desk. He looked again at the registry and smiled strangely at me. The man handed my card back along with a receipt. Then he stood up, unlocked the key cabinet, and took out one key. He handed it to me.
"Check out's at eleven," he said. "Leave the key on the dresser."
We walked out of the bright trailer into the night, and I parked in front of our room. 218 was in the middle, on the lower level of the complex, and lights glowed from every first floor rooms except ours. I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, and we got out and locked the car.
"I'm going to get a drink at that bar," I said to Orson as I forced the key into the lock.
"No. I want you to stay here," he said, and I didn't argue.
The room was warm and cozy, in a fake, cheap sort of way. The wood-paneled walls made it seem even smaller and kept it dark like the interior of a cabin. A double bed with a table on each side, rested flush against the left wall, across from which sat a dresser with a television on top of it. A tiny bathroom and a closet were located at the far end of the room, and the walls were adorned with a quilt, a Charles M. Russell print of a cowboy riding a horse into a bar, and a photograph of two bighorn sheep butting heads.
I set my suitcase on the brown-carpeted floor beside the dresser and turned on one of the bedside table lamps. It produced only a weak, orange light, giving the room a jaundice-like glow. My stomach ached with hunger, but I didn't complain. Sitting down on the bed, I kicked off my shoes and tossed my leather jacket onto the dresser.
"I'm taking a shower," Orson said. "Why don't you go to bed."
"I haven't eaten," I said.
Orson sighed heavily. "Can't you wait till morning?"
"What the fuck do you care whether I eat or not?"
"I don't want you to leave this room tonight," he said.
"Got a particular reason?"
"Just drop it, all right?" he said. He slid off the white fleece pullover, tossed it onto the bed, and began unbuttoning his black shirt. With his chest exposed, it amazed me again how cut he was. He laid the shirt carefully on the bed so it wouldn't wrinkle.
"You wanna read something good?" he asked. "Before you go to bed."
"No."
"Come on, Andy, it's a masterpiece. Open that bedside table," he said, pointing to the one nearest the door. I opened it and extracted a black hardback copy of a King James Bible.
"Get out of here," I said. "You said the Bible was soma for the weak-minded."
"One verse," he said. "It'll blow your fuckin' mind." He waited for me to ask.
"Which one?"
"First Corinthians 13:12."
I thumbed through the thin pages.
"Read it out loud," he said.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I closed the book and returned it to the drawer. "So?"
"Just think about it," Orson said, unbuttoning his jeans and letting them fall to his ankles. Leaving them in a blue pile on the floor, he walked to the dark bathroom and stopped