“So why are you hesitating?” she asked.
“I’m not hesitating.”
“Do you need…help, paying for the room?” she asked.
“Jesus, no! Why would you think that?”
“Sorry! I’m trying to figure out why you’re…kind of just sitting there…?”
“I’m moving very slowly,” Peter said. “I got a little sidetracked before, trying to imagine exactly what that meeting’s going to be like tomorrow.Dad, I need to borrow twelve thousand dollars to pay off the loan shark I used to support my drug habit. Oh, by the way, in Sacramento, I accidentally-on-purpose killed a man for his mocha latte. Have fun raising my meth-addicted baby with your new roommate, Dingo, while I spend the rest of my life in jail!”
Shayla laughed. “Peter, my God, that is someserious,professional-grade worrying.”
“And yet…” He smiled at her. “I need a shower,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her. “And maybe this means I’ll never be a hero in a romance novel, but I desperately need you.”
Smash cut to love scene.
If Shayla were writing this story, after a line likeI desperately need you,she would’ve cut immediately to them having literally steamy sex in the shower, skipping over the humorously awkward reality of the too-lengthy check-in that included a key card that didn’t work. Twice.
Yeah, that third trip to the motel office was a hoot.
Harry popped into her head as they finally got the motel room door unlocked and…
Oh, dear, he said, as Peter muttered, “Ah, Jesus.”
“It’s not that bad,” Shay said. But it was. The room was decorated in Quiet Desperation, circa 1972, complete with cheap paneling on the walls, dark green indoor-outdoor carpeting, and a worn-out bedspread that was no longer quite as emphatically flower-power since its yellows and oranges had faded about two decades ago. The “art” on the walls consisted of pictures of owls with big eyes.
Peter went up to one to look more closely. “This is what the desk clerk meant bythe Owl Room.”
Harry laughed.I don’t want to know what the other choices were.
“At least it’s clean,” Shay said, attempting to bright-side it as she pulled back that spread to reveal bright white sheets.
“These are paint by numbers,” Peter pointed out.
“That makes it sweet,” Shay said. “Like, someone’s kid or elderly parent painted them.”
“Hmm,” Peter said, as he headed for the bathroom at the back of the room.
A kid with a devil-mutant, crazy-eyed owl fetish at age twelve, who is now in his forties and regularly murders the guests at the motel he inherited after pushing his grandmother down the stairs?
“Shh,” Shay said. Those owls used up the full crazy allotment for this room. Because of them, there was space in hereonlyfor even reason and carefully considered sanity.
Like, at least we’re on the ground floor in case there’s another earthquake?
Yes.
But not: we’re doomed if there’s a tidal wave.
Right.
But definitely check to make sure the security lock is on that door.
She did. It was.
The toilet flushed, and Peter came back out of the bathroom and washed his hands in the sink that was out in the main part of the room.
“I’ve been nurturing a fantasy about making love to you in a real bed,” he said, looking at Shayla in the mirror as he dried his hands. “But I don’t think that one counts.” He unbuttoned his white uniform shirt and hung it on one of the bent hangers that dangled from the sad-looking metal rack bolted to the wall next to the sink. He pulled off his T-shirt and hung that, too. “I mean, yeah, it’s slightly more real than an air mattress, but not by much.”
