No, no. This long autumn has tried to turn me away before. No wall has been too high to climb, no bramble too sharp or thick to press through. Now this- kept from a place for lack of a friend, for a failure to be in the know. There is time for friendship, I think. For the lowest bar of friendship, anyway. I dredge my resources, picking through the leaves and mud of the Wayside until I’m sure that I’ve narrowed the ‘Library of Urban Legends’ to a region that spans four counties. I rent a room in the center at a motel that accepts long-term guests. I pay by the week. I set out to make a friend.
It has been too long.
The woman in the room next to me will die there. She tells me as much, but anybody standing in her doorway would know without having to ask. She is painfully old and her sickness hangs in the air around her like a dark cloud. I dare not go into that room and she dares not leave it. We are of different worlds.
The farmer in the room on the opposite side is a young couple the next morning. They are friendly and impermanent- good for practice, though I see them toe the threshold of my room and I wonder what cloud hangs about me.
I drink, alone, at bars. I read books in the park. I take the bike apart and put it together again, exchanging pleasantries with a group of older men who sit and sip coffee at the edge of the parking lot. They see through me- are disturbed by my appearance each morning. I am a ghost, here, narrowing my haunts.
Itake a seasonal job at the local store to make up for three-week’s failure-pay at the motel: bagger,stock-boy, department store jack-of-all-trades. It’s simple work, unionized ifI stay on after the holidays. I wash my uniform in the sink and dry it in theshower. People learn my name.
Myname is the bait, a distraction from the looming prison above it, from the flimsystick-and-string trigger. Sometimes the anticipation is such that I hold my breath without realizing, turningblue as I slide boxes of turkey stuffing onto shelves. The world is filled witha nervous darkness. Hold your breath long enough and it creeps in from thesides.
Another stocker emerges from the shadows and mistakes my sudden exhalation for a gasp of fear.
“Easy,man,” he says, “Didn’t see you was in the zone.”
“Just wasn’t expecting anyone there.”
“You play cards, man? Got a game tonight, need some players.”
“Sure,” I tell him, “Where?”
He wavers at my eagerness.
“You know how to play?”
“Yeah.”
“You play for money?”
“Sure.”
His eyes narrow but the trap has already dropped around him.
“All right, bro. Sunset Condos #9. Come by after your shift. Name’s Eddie.”
He points to his name- embroidered in lush green thread. I point to mine, scribbled on a plastic tag.
Eddie’s not there when I arrive, but they’re expecting me all the same.
“Who’s this broken-faced asshole?”
“A friend of a friend.”
-traveler
