{"id":1462,"date":"2019-09-15T01:35:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T01:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2019-09-16T17:36:03","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T17:36:03","slug":"interval-by-nicole-e-beck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/09\/15\/interval-by-nicole-e-beck\/","title":{"rendered":"Interval by Nicole E. Beck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nicole E. Beck has worked various stints as a bank teller, an office drudge, and a retail bookseller, while completing a bachelor\u2019s in filmmaking and art history. She likes history, museums, and long poems. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Interval<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     He lay on his stomach but sleep evaded\nhim. He aspired to be tenuous, ignored, unreal. It was a puzzle to him why\nanyone bothered speaking.  He got up and\ntried on one of the shirts. It fit too tight across his chest. His wrists stuck\nout beyond the cuff. Looking at his reflection in the window, with his t-shirt\nsagging under the red button-up, he noticed the stitching on the hem was\nunraveling. And the red shirt, though fine in all other respects, had one\nbroken button. As he plucked and worried the rough plastic edge a laugh escaped\nhim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Someone rapped on the door, three light\nfurtive taps. He checked the lock and chain and then for good measure pulled\nclosed the musty curtains.  At this point\nseeing the other face was unthinkable, not even a possibility. In a fit of\nperversity he pulled on the sweat-stiffened socks. A barrage of louder knocks spurred\nhim to slip on the loafers instead of his own shoes. He had been granted this\nand he was ready to assume ownership of the orange cooler. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The knocking increased to pounding as he\nstepped in front of the bathroom mirror. He thought this time he’d find out how\nlong his solitude could stretch. The battering continued as he polished the\nsunglasses on his shirt, and after twelve hours silence conquered, winning back\nthe room. He took a celebratory trip down the hall, passed the closed blank\nfaces of doors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole E. Beck has worked various stints as a bank teller, an office drudge, and a retail bookseller, while completing a bachelor\u2019s in filmmaking and art history. She likes history, museums, and long poems. Interval \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His motel room overlooked a patch of grass, a dumpster and the divided highway, seen from the second floor. … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-nA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}