grabs the squirming rodent by its tail, whips it in a fast circle over his head, and hurls it at the bushes bordering the motel. The rat lands on the pavement just short of the bushes, shakes itself, then runs off squealing. John walks to the building’s rear entrance and enters the office, where on a crippled recliner behind the desk sits Skinny Leak, watching television. Leak waves at the set. “You b’lieve them titties is real?”
John doesn’t say.
“Well, they ain’t. It’s a man got plastic tits and a pussy made from the skin off’n his own leg!”
“Obadiah Cornish staying here?”
“Doctor cut off his dick and sewed them things on.”
John reaches down and turns around the register so that he can read it. Skinny nods at him.
“A Moon, ain’t ya?”
“The on’y one.”
“What ta hell happened your brothers?”
“Never had none.”
“Who ta hell am I thinkin’ you is, then?”
“Somebody I ain’t.”
“Fer Christ sake! Your old man worked to the mill sure as I sit here.”
“He was a farmer,” says John, running his finger down the names on the register, but seeing no Cornish.
“Let me get this straight now—you’re a Moon”—Skinny pushes his bird-like body out of the chair and hobbles over to the desk—“but there ain’t but one of ya and your old man was a farmer and never worked to the mill?”
John nods.
“Mickey Moon, right?”
“John.”
“Shit.”
“I know he’s in room two-twenty-somethin’,” says John.
“Know what that makes you?”
John wordlessly glances at the old man, running his pink tongue over black, toothless gums.
“Makes you the man in the moon!” He slaps his knee and hisses. “Got to be, don’t it? You the on’y fucking one?” He reaches out and turns the book back around. “Who you looking for there, man in the moon?”
John tells him.
“No hens in this house. What’s he look like?”
“Tall, gangly son of a bitch.”
“Got him an alias.”
“Okay.”
“That’s why he ain’t in the book.”
“Where is he?”
“Guess he’s expectin’ ya, is he?”
“I aim to find out.”
“Want me to call ahead?”
“I’ll just go on down and knock.” John pulls out his wallet, withdraws from it a ten-dollar bill, and lays the bill on the desk, with his hand still on it. “Who b’longs that Cadillac yonder?”
“Which one?”
“Ain’t but one.” John nods his head at the wall beyond which, obscured from his view, lies the long side of the L. “Down the end. All beat to hell.”
Leak cranes his head back and peeks out through a little porthole-shaped window behind the desk. He hisses again. “Musta beamed up, man in the moon.”
“Gone?”
Leak throws his bony little fingers into the air.
“Was here how long?”
“On’y you says it e’er was.”
John lifts his hand from the bill. Leak reaches for it. John slams his other hand down on Leak’s. “Let me guess. Cornish’s down there all the way the end.”
Leak tugs free his hand gripping the bill, folds the bill, and slips it into his shirt pocket. “Twenty-two-niner, man in the moon. Coulda saved yerself a sawbuck.”
At the building’s front, John walks down the long cement corridor facing the rooms, each one fronted by a dead or dying spruce bush planted in gravel, to a set of metal stairs adjacent to where the Cadillac had been parked. He climbs to the second floor, again turns left, quietly tiptoes up to room 229 and puts his ear to the scratched wood door. Inside, a television loudly plays the same talk show Leak was watching. What sounds like a fan or air conditioner blows. Intermingling with the din is a gurgling noise, like running water or percolating coffee. John starts to knock, then, changing his mind, reaches down and with one hand pulls the .45 from his belt. He raises his foot to kick in the door, when, two rooms down, another door suddenly opens. He jumps back, holding the pistol out in front of him.
“Jesus God! Don’t shoot!” Dangling a Tiparillo from her mouth, a breast-sagging, middle-aged blond woman freezes in midstride.
John puts a finger to his lips.
“Huh?”
“Who’s in here?” he whispers.
“I don’t know.” The woman gasps. The cigar drops from her mouth. “And I don’t fucking want to know.” One of her eyes looks like a clump of frog’s eggs. The other is half taken up by its dilated pupil. Her sweatsuit’s too tight. “I’m from Oklahoma. This shit’s all new to me. I ain’t had no breakfast, no coffee—I just got in last night.”
With his pistol John waves her back into her room.
“I gotta go breakfast,” she whines.
John walks toward her, vaguely aware that his life is spiraling downward from bad to worse, and against the descent, his own sense of powerlessness. A part of his mind, already faded, blinks off. He thinks if the whole world boils down to a person’s last view of it, his won’t be of the Oaks, but someone’s might. He’s three steps from the woman before she moves, then she does so hesitantly, backing into the room as if she’s forgotten something inside but not sure what. John follows her in, then quietly shuts the door.
The woman moans.
The air smells of cheap perfume over cheap detergent and cigar smoke. A faucet drips in the bathroom. In the center of the stained yellow rug lies a large, open suitcase. John reaches into it and picks up a pair of stockings and underpants. The woman’s mouth falls open. She keeps backing up until her knees hit the bed. She lets out a little groan and sits down. “What happened your eye?” asks John.
“My eye?”
“Are you blind in it?”
“A man…”
“What man?”
“Some guy in a bar where I was dancing…” She takes a deep breath like she’s having trouble breathing. John shoves the pistol into his belt. “I was a dancer…”
“A dancer?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to.”
“You are, though.”
“I know it. Me too.”
The woman looks at him confusedly.
“Was you with your clothes off?”
“What?”
“Dancing?”
“Nobody’d pay me otherwise…”
John moves farther into the room. His balance seems affected. He has a feeling he’s listing to the right. The
