“I’m happy he comes from you,” Maya whispered, too quietly for Laurel to hear under the roar of her engine.
+
Sheff City was not a city — it was smaller than Adelaide, with only one real street, and bad cell-phone service. The Yellowstone River, which Maya could hear but not see, a silver rush in the darkness, explained why the town had three motels to Adelaide’s one, and why the Hansen Motel could afford to make the Dundee in Adelaide look freshly renovated by comparison.
There was only one window that showed burning light. Unwilling to think harder, Maya walked to it and knocked softly. She turned around to see if she could recognize Marion’s car in the parking lot, but realized she didn’t know what he drove. There were only three cars in the parking lot. The season was ending.
She was about to knock again when Marion opened the door. He blinked repeatedly, like a child trying to waken.
“You were asleep,” she said.
“It’s not really a sleeping night,” he said. “I don’t know when I went under.” He squinted. “You’re standing in front of me.”
“I’m standing in front of you. Whatever made you follow us to Adelaide, Marion — I hope it will also keep you from asking me to explain.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he said. He moved so she could walk in.
It was the flower room. There were flowers on the wallpaper, the towels, the bedding, even in the air, industrial jasmine hitting the room from plug-ins in the sockets.
“I haven’t seen a hotel room in ten years,” Maya said. “And now two in one day. It’s awful, this room.”
“It’s awful,” Marion said.
She sat down carefully on the edge of one of the unmade beds; there were three in the room. Alex disliked street clothes mingling with sheets where they slept nearly bare. She marveled bitterly — in her lover’s hotel room, she respected her husband’s predilections. She wondered what her son had gotten from her, but she did not have to wonder what she had got from her husband. She was struck by the simple headlong power of twenty years together. She felt like a survivor.
“Can I fix you something?” he said. “Tea? Well, it’ll be time for coffee soon.” The clock said after four.
Maya’s eyes filled with tears. She didn’t bother to bring her hands over them. She couldn’t bear to wipe down more tears. Soon, she would have hands like Wilma Gund, only because of sadness, not work. Marion sat down and covered her. She turned into him and cried harder, cried as she would have to her mother. She used him for her mother. She felt that he knew that and didn’t mind. She loved him for that.
“You should sleep,” he said. “A long day.”
“I don’t believe it will end,” she said.
“Were the parents there?”
Maya shook her head, unclear whether she meant they were not or she could not bear to speak about it. He didn’t press. She loved him for that, too.
“I don’t want to sleep yet,” she said. “I’ve been thinking of you since morning. You are the only person I’ve wanted to speak to all day. Even more than Laurel and Tim. How can that be? How can I be this person? And then you appeared.”
“Come,” he said. “Stand.”
“Why? Look at your shirt, I’ve made a mess of it.”
“This prize number?” he said. “Stand with me. You said you wanted to dance.”
“Dance?” she said through her tears and laughed sourly.
“What kind of music do you like?”
“Please don’t distract me. Alex is always steering me away. He thinks he’s committing a kindness. I used to think so, too.” She looked up. “I’m sorry to mention him.”
“It doesn’t matter if you mention him or not,” Marion said. “And I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what kind of music,” she said. “The kind they played in the bar. The kind that was on when we spoke — not what they were playing at first.”
Marion rose and pulled a little radio out of his duffel bag and played with the dial. He set it on the night table and held his hand out to Maya. She came close and he wrapped her up.
“This is going to be a disappointment if you expect much better than swaying,” he said. “My last dance was at high school prom, thirty-five years ago.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head; don’t speak.
They swayed clumsily, though little by little they eased into it and found more of each other’s rhythm. The radio station had no short supply of bluesy, wailing songs. Marion had not pulled shut the shades, and any passing guest could get an eyeful of two people slow-dancing. Marion called out the names — Gene Autry, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Horton — as they came on. They were just sounds to Maya, pure foreignness. But she felt calmed by the plaintive, twanging music, the gentleness with which the men and women sang of ungentle things. She couldn’t make out most of the words, but what she caught did not suggest major happiness.
She opened the top two buttons on Marion’s shirt and wedged the side of her face into the open space, up against his breastbone.
“You have a good one,” she said.
“Do you know?” he said.
“It’s beating fast.”
“Cigarettes and dancing.”
She removed her face and looked at him. “Will you lie down with me?”
He motioned to the three beds. “You choose.”
“Why are there so many? Do people never come through here alone? I would come here alone and sleep for a year.”
“You can put three snoring fishermen in here for fifteen dollars a person. Makes them feel like the away football game all over again.”
“The one by the window,” she said. The large, three-paned window was the room’s only grace; the owner knew he could not compete with the landscape. You could see none of it now, only blackness swirling with motes of snow in the sharp triangle of light that fell from a streetlight somewhere above the motel. The motes settled like dust; evidently the wind had died down. The cold, antiseptic brightness of the fluorescent light was mellowed by the silver shadows given off by the dusting of snow.
Marion started to unfurl the bedspread, but she motioned against it. She was in street clothes and could not muster the force to remove them. She went down and he fitted himself around her. She smelled the wood smoke with sweat. They watched the snow.
“I’m so tired, Marion,” she said. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and it fell under his touch. “Aren’t you?” she mumbled. “Just for a minute.”
“Shhhh,” he said.
She dreamed of nothing.
+
She awoke with first light; the sun was difficult to imagine behind all the gauze in the sky, but even its gray hit her eyes with unfamiliar sharpness. The knowledge of what she had done worked its way through her with terrible force. The alarm clock was on Marion’s side of the bed, but it didn’t matter what time it was; it was light outside.
She slid from Marion’s grasp and stepped toward the window. Now the mountains were visible; in the daylight, you could not look away from them.
“One thing you’ll never be able to do,” he said. She looked back — she had woken him. He was propped up on an elbow, the other hand rubbing an eye. “See yourself the way I can right now.”
“What do you see?” she said.