“Yeah, well you’re sure acting like no one else is here.”
He stared at me—a tall, lanky guy about fifteen years younger than me, with shoulder-length dark brown hair, a wide mouth, aquiline nose, wire-rimmed glasses. He wore corduroy jeans and a suede jacket over a white shirt, none of them very clean. After a moment he shoved his glasses against his nose and gave me a wry smile. It made him look younger but also oddly familiar. I had a spike of amphetamine panic. Could this guy know me?
Unexpectedly he laughed. There was nothing overtly sinister about that, but I felt such a powerful rush of fear—not just fear but genuine terror—that everything went dark: not just dark outside, but dark inside my skull, like there’d been an abrupt disconnect between my mind and my retinas. The only thing I can compare it to is what I felt the one time I shot heroin: a black wave that buries you before you even know it’s there.
Damage. This guy reeked of it.
I backed away and glanced down at his hand. A scar ran from his middle finger to his wrist, as though someone had tried writing on his flesh with a knife. When I lifted my head, he was still staring at me.
“You don’t belong here,” he said.
His eyes were such a pale brown they were almost yellow. The left iris held a tiny starburst just above the pupil, emerald-green, rayed with black. It made me think of the trajectory a bullet makes through thick glass; it made me think of that scar on his hand, and how I’d seen it, him, somewhere.
But I’d never seen this man before. I knew that. My brain is hardwired for recalling bodies, eyes, skin; I absorb them the way emulsion paper absorbs light. I would no more have forgotten that scar, or that iris’s imploded green, than I would have forgotten my own face in the mirror. I continued to stare at him, until he began to lift his hand.
Without a word I darted past him toward my car. He took a step after me, stopped. I jumped into the Taurus and locked the doors, fired up the engine and the headlights. The windshield was glazed with frozen mist; I waited for it to defrost then peered out.
The man was gone. My hands were shaking so much the steering wheel trembled. I definitely needed to eat something and then try to sleep. My car was halfway out the parking lot before I realized I’d left my bag in the room.
I swore and glanced back at the motel office. The lights were on, and I could see a figure seated in the alcove—Mackenzie—and another, taller, figure: the guy I’d just bumped into. I sat in the car and waited until he stepped out of the office and walked over to an older gray Volvo sedan, watched as he drove off. Then I hopped out and ran back inside my motel room. I grabbed my bag and Deceptio Visus—I wanted something to hide behind while I ate. No more small talk with the natives. I headed back outside to my car then stopped.
The door of the room next to mine was ajar—in the confusion of running into me, my neighbor had forgotten to close it. As I watched, a gust of wind pushed it open another inch.
I hesitated then stepped over and placed my hand on the doorknob.
“Hello?” The hairs on my arms rose as I thought of that green-shot eye. “Anyone there?”
No reply. I pushed the door open.
The light was on and the room empty. I looked back quickly to make sure no one saw me. Then I went inside.
You might think I’d never done something like this before. In fact it was exactly the sort of thing I did.
It was a room identical to mine. Clothes tossed were over a chair. On the bed was a computer case, open, with a laptop inside. A few books were stacked on top of the laptop, along with a small notebook. I picked up the notebook, flipped through lists of names, phone numbers, dates.
No interest there. I tossed it aside then peered into the computer case.
Pens, a calculator, cell phone charger; a thick yellow Rite Aid One Hour Processing envelope stuffed with photos and a CD-ROM. I took the envelope and walked to the window, angling myself so I could see outside without being seen, and looked through the photos.
They were color pictures, overexposed 4x5s. There were two copies of each. Hard to tell how recent they were. I guessed maybe a few years old, though some people still use film and transfer the images to CD-ROM. The photos showed some kind of family gathering—a brilliant sunny day, women in pastel and tropical-bright dresses, men in light-colored jackets or shirtsleeves. A white-haired woman in a broad-brimmed red straw hat held a champagne flute. Two dark-haired women who looked like sisters cocked their heads and pursed their lips in an effort to look disapprovingly at the photographer. A big dog ran past a crowded table, a black blur, its tongue hanging from its mouth.
Everyone looked happy, even the dog. A wedding? No one takes pictures of funerals.
But there was no bride or groom that I could see; no wedding cake or birthday cake or anniversary cake; no presents. A few darting children in the background, but not enough to herald a kid’s party. Round tables where people sat and smiled for the camera, their faces shadowed by big striped umbrellas, yellow and green. Pink blossoms strewn across some of the tables, wine glasses, wine bottles.
Most of the photos were like this. I’d almost reached the last of them before I found one in which I could pick out the figure of the man I’d nearly run into. He stood in a group of men and women, all dark haired, though sunlight and distance made it impossible to discern any other resemblance between them. All were nearly as tall as he was, and there was a similarity to the way they held themselves—squinting, shoulders canted slightly to one side, as though flinching from something—the light? a sudden cold wind?—that made it seem as though they might be siblings or cousins and not just friends. I stared at the photo for a moment, glanced out the window at the parking lot, then looked at the last two pictures.
Both showed the man I’d seen. In one he was sitting alone at a table. Light filtered through a canopy of leaves and splattered his face yellow and black. He seemed brooding, distracted, though maybe he was just bored or tired. Behind him the hindquarters of the black dog could just be glimpsed, its tail an arrow aimed at the man’s outstretched legs.
The last photo was different.
It was the same man in the same chair at the same table. The black dog was gone. Now the man’s head was turned, looking at someone out of camera range. He’d moved just enough that sun fell full on his face, which was bright but not overlit. His hair had blown back a little from his forehead; his face was split with a smile so rapturous it seemed contorted. It made me uncomfortable, and I looked away.
Then I looked again. I tilted the picture back and forth, as though the unseen thing he stared at might materialize; waiting for that same sense of damage I’d felt outside to rise from the image like a striking cobra.
But it didn’t.
I frowned.
What was he looking at? His lover? His child? The black dog? It wasn’t just that no one had ever looked at me like that. I’d never seen anyone look at anything like that. His expression changed everything. I went back to the first photo and skimmed through them all again, as though they might now make sense, offer up a shared secret like a shell prised open with a knife.
Of course that didn’t happen. It would never happen. I knew that. They were nothing but a bunch of snapshots of someone else’s party. I would never know who these people were, or where they were. I would never know what the man saw, or who he was, or why he was in the motel room next to mine.
Only he wasn’t in the room next to mine. I was in his room. I glanced out the window. The parking lot was still empty. I slipped the pictures back into the yellow envelope, retaining a dupe of the man with that rapturous smile. Then I stuck the envelope back into the computer case and left. I made sure the door closed tight behind me, made sure no one saw me leave. I got into my car and started it, sat for a minute and waited, just in case someone appeared who might have seen me emerge from Room 1.