Nicole E. Beck has worked various stints as a bank teller, an office drudge, and a retail bookseller, while completing a bachelor’s in filmmaking and art history. She likes history, museums, and long poems.
Interval
His motel room overlooked a patch of grass, a dumpster and the divided highway, seen from the second floor. He heard the bathroom faucet drip. Propping himself up, he noticed a pair of loafers on the other side of the bed. Dirty socks stuffed inside them. His toes wiggled in his own sneakers, and he got up carefully. Under the armchair he discovered sunglasses. On the seat was a plastic grocery bag containing three red shirts, men’s button-downs, neatly folded. In the bathroom, he turned off the faucet and stumbled against an orange cooler. He took a breath and opened it. The inside was dry and empty.
He lay on his stomach but sleep evaded him. He aspired to be tenuous, ignored, unreal. It was a puzzle to him why anyone bothered speaking. He got up and tried on one of the shirts. It fit too tight across his chest. His wrists stuck out beyond the cuff. Looking at his reflection in the window, with his t-shirt sagging under the red button-up, he noticed the stitching on the hem was unraveling. And the red shirt, though fine in all other respects, had one broken button. As he plucked and worried the rough plastic edge a laugh escaped him.
Someone rapped on the door, three light furtive taps. He checked the lock and chain and then for good measure pulled closed the musty curtains. At this point seeing the other face was unthinkable, not even a possibility. In a fit of perversity he pulled on the sweat-stiffened socks. A barrage of louder knocks spurred him to slip on the loafers instead of his own shoes. He had been granted this and he was ready to assume ownership of the orange cooler.
The knocking increased to pounding as he stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. He thought this time he’d find out how long his solitude could stretch. The battering continued as he polished the sunglasses on his shirt, and after twelve hours silence conquered, winning back the room. He took a celebratory trip down the hall, passed the closed blank faces of doors.