(16)

I found what used to be called a rooming house on Main Street. It had a large enclosed garage to the left side of it where it met the cross street, and on the right side there was a two-story house that needed a paint job with a sign out front that said For Sale.

I guess I should say room house instead of rooming house, as it let only one room. The one room was simple and on the second floor of an old but well-cared-for two-story house that looked sturdy enough to have a jet land on the roof.

The landlady, Mrs. Chandler, was thin and wizened with cottony pinkish hair that appeared to have been colored by a mixture of strawberry Jell-O and beet juice. There was something about her bone structure, though, that gave me the impression that she might well have been something before paved roads were invented. She led me up the creaking stairs to examine the room.

The room was basic, no TV. It had a bed and a desk with a wooden chair. There was another chair just like it next to the window, and the window had some blinds pulled halfway up and angled.

The lighting was good. There was a painting on the beige wall over the bed that looked as if it had been stolen from a motel. It was a homely thing of a bright day by the pond with a bird dog lifting his paw, pointing his nose toward some tall grass next to it. A duck was flying up. The duck left no shadow on the water. The artist seemed to have died during painting.

There was central heat and air. It hummed like a bee in a jar.

There was a door that Mrs. Chandler said led to a closet, and there was another she said went to the bathroom.

She opened the bathroom door. It was small and tidy with just enough room for a shower stall, a commode, and a sink. There was one of those metal mirrors over the sink that makes your image look warped. There were a couple of towels, one large and one small, as well as a washrag. They didn’t match in color and were a little worn, but they looked clean and had been folded neatly over the towel rod. Everything in there was so close, you could almost shower while you took a bowel movement and combed your hair in the bad mirror. Lilliputians would have been happy there. I wasn’t sure about me.

She closed the bathroom door.

“So, you’re a writer,” she said.

I nodded. I had already told her that. She had asked me earlier what it was I did, as if she thought I might be staying there so I could case the bank across the street. I guess she was making sure my story was consistent a minute or so later.

“Write anything I might have read?”

“I’ve had only one novel published,” I said. “I’m writing my second.”

“Bestseller?”

“No.”

“Why I haven’t seen it. Just read bestsellers. I thought maybe you didn’t write under your own name.”

She gave me the key to the room and the front door. I put it in my pocket next to my pocketknife. She wrote down the number for the phone downstairs in the short hallway, told me no long-distance calls, and said she didn’t serve meals. She wanted me to know she wasn’t a bed-and-breakfast. She said she didn’t do laundry. She gave me a list of things she didn’t do, as if I had expected her to come in each morning and hold my dick while I peed. Even if she had offered that service, it would have been tight with both of us in that little bathroom. Maybe if I put one foot up on the tub, we could make it work.

She said I could use the stairs and the hallway on the way out but to stay out of the living room and the kitchen. The rest of the house was her domain.

I had sort of expected to use the stairs and hallway. I wasn’t thinking of bailing out of the window to go for meals and hadn’t planned on climbing up the drainpipe to get back in.

She went out then, closing the door gently behind her as if to set an example of how it was done in her home. I listened to her trudge down the stairs, heard them creak beneath her weight.

When she was gone, I took my typewriter out of its case and placed it on the desk. I pulled out my paper, spare ribbons, Wite-Out, and carbon paper, stacked everything in neat piles on the desk beside my typewriter. I added a couple of manila folders and a little plastic case full of paper clips, then dropped a notepad and a pen next to them. I meant business. I closed the suitcase and set it on the floor.

I raised the blinds all the way up, sat in the chair by the window. The room was clean, but the window was flyspecked. I looked out of it. A street was in view.

A green lizard crawled from the edge of the house onto the window. It stopped in the middle of the pane and clung there. Its throat swelled in and out and was bright pink. I tapped on the glass, but the lizard didn’t budge. Perhaps he had just seen a Godzilla movie and was emboldened.

I placed my suitcase on the bed and opened it. There wasn’t much there, but I hung up my handful of shirts on hangers in the closet. There was a short dresser under the clothes rod. The dresser had three drawers. I placed my underwear, socks, and T-shirts in the top drawer. I had one pair of jeans in the suitcase. I slipped them in the second drawer. I only had the one pair of shoes, the tennis shoes I was wearing. I took my shaving kit and placed it on the sink under the mirror.

I had a book in the suitcase, and I got that out, put the suitcase aside, and lay down on the bed and read awhile, my feet draping over the end so I wouldn’t get my dirty shoes on the sheets.

My mind wouldn’t wrap around what I was reading. I couldn’t hold a thought for long. I was too overwhelmed with the Buick and the bones. And Ronnie.

I closed the book, slipped off my shoes, curled up on the bed, and immediately napped.

When I woke up, I put on my shoes, got the number Ronnie had given me, went downstairs, and used the hall phone to call her. I wanted to give her the phone number where I was staying, see if there were supper plans. She didn’t answer. Of course not; it had been only a couple hours since I last saw her. She was still at work.

I drove along the streets of the town, trying to get my bearings. I found a little café, Rita’s Place, by accident, had a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee. When I finished eating, I drove around again, still trying to learn the layout of the town, grocery stores and such.

I went to the bank across the street from the Chandler house and opened an account.

When that was done, I drove outside of town looking to locate the Candleses’ house. Ronnie told me they still lived in the same place, but the same place turned out to be hard to find. I’d thought it was solid in my memory, but it wasn’t.

I went to a grocery store and bought a few simple things—bananas, apples, a few Baby Ruth candy bars, and a carton of milk. I filled up the car with gas. I found a newsstand and bought the local paper and some magazines. I picked out a paperback and bought that too. It looked better than the one I was reading. It had an alien on the cover.

I took my prizes back to my room and placed them on the windowsill. I peeled one of the bananas and ate it. I stared at one of the Baby Ruth bars but didn’t eat it. I stared at the paperback but didn’t read it. I went to the desk and sat behind my typewriter and rolled a piece of paper into it.

There was a lot of white space on that sheet of paper. I stared at it for a while. I finally started typing, and when I looked up and checked my watch, I had been at it for three hours. It was still summer-bright outside, even though it was late afternoon.

I went downstairs and called Ronnie again. This time she answered. I loved hearing her voice. I gave her my location.

She said, “I was wondering where you ended up. I know that place. Know that lady a little. Not that we hang out or anything. My parents can’t do dinner tonight. Some kind of event at the church they’re going to. Thing is, though, I thought maybe we could grab something simple and drive out to Moon Lake, if that’s not going to be too much for you. I thought you might like to see it, but if not, if it’s too much, I understand.”

I thought about that idea briefly.

“I think I need to see it.”

“I’ll come by in thirty,” she said.