Crime

— Aye, Tianna.

— You’re going to spend the night, spend the night, with this young girl in a hotel?

— A motel, Lennox says, thinking about the ones they’d passed earlier, stuck alongside the strip malls of Highway 41. — I mean… we’ll be in different rooms, obviously! Fuck sakes, gie’s a break.

— You give me a break, Ray! Trudi says. — Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you! Ginger’ll come and pick me up.

— It isn’t safe.

— You’re mad. You’re mad and deluded, you – She gasps, suddenly visualising helping him into her apartment, his hand shattered, him gibbering nonsense about the Britney Hamil case, Thailand and God knows what else, and sees her own fingers with his engagement ring, around a real-estate dealer’s circumcised, veiny cock. Her tone softens. — Ray, please listen to me. You… you’ve had a terrible time. I know you haven’t got your pills, Ray. You need them. If you don’t want to come back, let me come to you…

Lennox is blown away by her about-face. When the anger dissipates, she is genuinely worried about him. He’d missed everything she’d done for him. Failed to see that the hiding in the wedding plans was a manifestation of her own personal stress. His voice croaks, pregnant with emotion. — No, baby. Honest, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. We’ll go round the dress shops and sit down and finalise the guest list…

— I don’t care about the wedding! I care about you! Trudi says miserably, thinking of that stupid tryst with the smarmy real-estate guy. Ray loves her. He needs her. — I couldn’t see it, honey, couldn’t see you were still breaking apart inside. I thought you were on the mend. Please come back to me, baby, please!

Lennox shrinks and sucks in his breath. — I need you to trust me. I’m begging you to trust me.

You don’t know what the fuck men are like.

— I need you to trust me, Ray. At least tell me where you are, Trudi sobs.

— I’m about three hours’ drive west of where you are, across the Everglades, on the other coast, the Gulf of Mexico. That’s as much as I can tell you. I’ll call soon, I promise.

An excruciatingly long pause follows. Eventually, Trudi’s voice: — Promise?

— Yes.

— Okay. Be careful, she says. — Bye for now. Her voice is flat, and when she adds, — I love you, it almost seems to be coming from beyond the crypt in its tired resignation.

Then the line dies. Lennox stands looking at the receiver, the guts ripped out of him.

She lies back on the bed, her body aching in that satisfied way it does after a good session at the gym when the adrenalin has been spent and a delicious fatigue sets in. There had been no Aaron which was good and bad news for her, but one guy had hit on her; also good and bad news. There is life without Ray; potentially a very good life. She is young. This is her time. Can she afford to waste it on a guy who might never shape up?

This obsession with sex offenders. This obsession about sex. The weirdness about sex.

That stuff he’d said, in the tunnel, when he had his breakdown. About Thailand. About young girls in Thailand.

Ray has secrets. Not silly little secrets. Big ones. Possibly bad ones. Trudi Lowe shivers and sits up. Takes a sip of water. Moves over and lowers the air con.

Earlier on they had passed the American Inn, with its one-storey H-blocks, tatty Stars and Stripes flag, and dull, red neon sign which buzzed the word VACANCIES. Its walls looked like they’d housed all kinds of desperation and broken dreams. Now Lennox fancies he can smell the stale sperm of a thousand beasts impregnated into the building’s fabric. It compels him, challenges him to confront it. Tianna looks blankly at it, betrays no emotion as he says in fake breeziness, — Looks as good a spot as any.

They stop off at a Walgreens to get some bars of soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes. In his weary irritation, Lennox is aggrieved at the discrepancy between the marked and actual price – he still hasn’t gotten his head round sales tax – then they’re back at the motel, ready to check in.

The desk clerk is a cadaverous old white man. His skin is translucent and his face so weary and pained he gives a sense that you’d be able to see the tumours inside him if he removed his shirt. He asks Lennox for some ID. This time he produces his passport. The clerk’s body stiffens like a hangman’s rope under its consignment as he swivels to produce a simple register, which he requests Lennox sign. As he complies, the old man looks at Tianna, who is going through the garish brochures that sit in an ancient plastic mounting on the wall, below a map of the area that looks like it dates back to pre-white settler times. He turns pointedly to Lennox. — Daughter?

Lennox meets his stare. — No, I’m a family friend, he states, adding, — We’ll need two rooms.

The clerk briefly raises his brows, evaluates Lennox for a second, and then lowers a sulky head as he checks them in. Lennox shudders, now feeling that this is not a good idea. But he’s clapped out and desperately needs to rest. He catches a long yawn from Tianna. Wonders how much sleep she’s had over the last few days or weeks or months.

As they head back outside to check out their rooms, an ochre brass-plaque sun like a logo to life lost is falling before Lennox’s stinging eyes. Underneath it, he notes, through the thin fading light, the welcoming glow of a neon sign of a Roadhouse by the strip mall across the highway. It isn’t that late. A couple of beers – no more – would be great, ensuring that he slept soundly. But he can’t leave her, even if she falls fast asleep. Instead, they go to a drinks vending machine back in the reception, getting a Pepsi for her and mineral water for him.

Stressing his exhaustion, Lennox tells Tianna he is retiring for the night and advises that she does the same. She hesitates for a second before heading to her lodgings, two doors down from his.

Lennox’s room is shabby and functional: bed, nightstand with lamp, table and chair, bathroom with toilet, sink and shower. Two battered green easy chairs with yellow cushions containing more tales than anyone would want to hear sit close to a big but venerable television set. Walking across an anaemic carpet scarred with cigarette burns, his parting of the rear window curtains unveils a vista as uninspiring as the freeway to the front. Rows of high-fenced, prefabricated buildings of a storage and distribution estate glisten defiantly in the fading sun, limelight-hogging starlets enjoying their bit-part roles.

He finds the implausibly tatty handset and clicks the TV on. Turning up the volume to drown out the industrial thrashing of the antiquated air-con unit – a big metal box dug into the wall – he picks a glass from the table and holds it up to the light. It looks clean so he fills it with some water from the bottle and puts it down on the nightstand. He sips at the remains in the plastic container, slumping into one of the easy chairs, leg draped over the armrest, as he regards the telly. Surfing the channels he feels his tight mind unwind and empty, thought spooling into nothingness. Trudi had been okay, better than okay. She was loyal, one in a million.

A knock on the door tears him back into the shabby room. He opens it to see Tianna standing before him. Her eyes are big and hopeful. — I ain’t tired. Can I sit here a lil’ while and watch TV with you?

— Sure, Lennox says, — but just for half an hour, cause I’m really beat.

She sits down in the other chair. He can really do without the company, but he reasons that the kid has been left on her own so much, he should try and make the effort. Besides, she might feel relaxed enough to volunteer some more information about the Miami crowd, and this Vince in Mobile. Picking up the handset, Tianna settles on MTV. Queasiness rises in Lennox as he’s confronted with the old Britney Spears school-girl video. She was telling the world she was a virgin when they were shooting that one. He was scornful at the time, but it now made some kind of sense. Tianna is transfixed by it. Eventually she turns to him and says: — Do you think Britney’s still hot? I saw her in my mum’s magazine and she looked so fat and gross. Ugh!

And he thinks of Britney Hamil’s throttled body, lying dead on that table in the mortuary. A child named after a pop star who would outlive her.

— She’s just had a baby, Lennox says, — give her a chance.

He’s not comfortable watching it with her, and urges her to change channels on the remote. — It’s a bit old hat, he lamely explains. Tianna moves through the programmes, excitedly stopping at one show. — Beauty and the Geek! she shrieks.

Lennox finds himself secretly enjoying the dating programme, although he’d’ve preferred to watch it alone. The premise was that these supposed ‘beauties’, most of whom were actually pretty ordinary young, poorly educated lassies, would pair off with the specky, obsessive-compulsive, repressed but intelligent nerds, who