PART ELEVEN
(Published in 1999)
After my heartbeat comes back down to tolerable, I notice on the beautifully glowing dashboard clock that it’s 3:45 a.m. The booze and the pills are like a heavy throbbing weight behind my eyes. My gut is leaden and a touch of paranoia is creeping in. The question I begin to ask is: Do I—we—drive up to the Moser’s at this time of night and start this thing off on the wrong foot for sure, or find some place to crash for a few hours and get after it in the morning when I can see straight.
I pose the questions to my erstwhile guide and well-paid chauffeur, and much to my surprise, he answers by pointing to the glowing light of a small motel right up ahead. He, however, recommends some cabins a little ways further along, where we can park the car out of sight from the bulk of traffic.
I vote for the second alternative, and that is how we choose the Evergreen Point Resort and Motel.
Roy turns off the highway at the Evergreen Point sign; a green arrow points the way. It’s a bumpy little road that crosses over some railroad tracks as it winds downward to the lake and then to a brushy point with a gravel shoreline that stretches out into the bay about a hundred yards. A few small, green old-time cabins stand among the pines and birch trees. Up ahead in a cul-de-sac sits a newer, but definitely not new, motel, OFFICE glowing above the door in orange neon.
I get out of the car by the office and stretch. A small paper sign on a bulletin board informs us that we are to choose a room from the available keys on the board then place the fee in one of the provided envelopes and drop it down into the slot on the door of the manager’s office.
We take cabin number four, the farthest from the office.
Roy parks behind a barren hedge at the back of the unit. I grab the rest of the beer from the trunk. Roy unlocks the door on our little cottage.
It’s a little musty and damp, but the scent of cleanser and Lysol and ammonia from countless washings keep everything on the pleasant side. I put the beer in the faded, Coppertone fridge and sit down on the brown hide-a-bed couch. Roy is pacing around, stretching and growling. “I’m a little strung out, I confess,” he says, working his jawbone. “If I’m going to sleep tonight I’m going to have to reach into the ol’ bag of tricks. Maybe I should just stay up all night. Maybe we should’ve driven straight through, it’s not that much farther.”
“I told you I’m not sure what’s there waiting for me. At least in the morning I can get a look at it beforehand. And if you don’t sleep you won’t be in any shape to guide me in the morning. That would mean you’re not earning your pay. I’m afraid I’d have to dock you.”
“Fuck you, dock me. I could drive these roads blindfolded and drunk in a snowstorm. I could stay up for three nights running and still be better then the rest of these assholes around here. But you are right, boss; I should sleep. I’m getting too old for all-nighters on drugs. My god, the toll it takes.”
“Just make sure you take your vitamins, Roy, and you’ll be all right. You seem like the resilient type.”
“I’ll drink to that. Vitamin S it is then.”
Roy reaches in his jacket pocket and brings out four red capsules and lays them on the red, Formica table. Vitamin S. Seconal. Some of the worst shit there is. I take one; he takes two. We leave the other one on the table for the mice.
We sit there drinking beer for a time, waiting for the slumber to overtake us. I look over at him every so often, and there’s this glowing ring around him, sometimes blue, sometimes red. He talks about living up in this country as a kid: how his father disappeared before he was old enough to remember much about him. Some said the old boy was a shape shifter, he says. Others said he was just shiftless. In that paternal respect, Roy and I share an unspoken bond.
The shape shifter business kicks off a whole weird bunch of stories. Stories about weird shit that I don’t believe for a minute, but I get nervous inside anyway and stumble into the bedroom just to escape.
(To be continued)
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