The second tire followed. Fourteen.
Cyrus adjusted the strap of his bag, saluted the tires, and, leaving his shoes, walked barefoot around the side of the motel and into the parking lot. Empty. No strange man. No Dan. No Antigone. He walked to the peeling white door labeled 111 and checked the knob. Still locked. He slid his key into the dead bolt. Sticking knee-high out of the wall beside him, an air conditioner hiccuped. The knob turned and the door swung in.
Compared to the parking lot, the room was arctic. The lights were off, and Cyrus didn’t turn them on. This was his space, and after two years, it no longer felt like a motel room. Maps — his father’s — were tacked all over the walls. Tired shelves slept beneath his overcrowded collections — scavenged animal skulls, comic books, bones, license plates, oddly shaped or glistening rocks, and army relics that had been his grandfather’s. In the corner by the bathroom, a plaid couch drooped with a broken backbone. Four skis stuck out from underneath it, mounted the previous winter. Dan had refused to pull it behind the station wagon. There was no television. Most of those had been sold. A three-legged record player sat on a dresser covered in dust. Six months ago, when Cyrus had found it in a ditch behind his school, he had intended to fix it. Now he had no intentions at all.
Cyrus threw his bag onto a rickety desk covered in pocketknife scrawlings and dropped onto his bed. When he’d skipped out of school at lunch, there had been stacks of papers in his bag — it was always that way on the last day. Grades. Accumulated math tests and quizzes. Science. Compositions. And they’d been good. Good enough. Not great. Better than his brother and sister would have guessed. Not that it mattered. After the red station wagon had disappeared without him, Cyrus had carried them into the fields for a somber ritual. They were all underwater now. Pinned beneath a heavy stone, never to be resurrected. Fish would learn the taste of math.
He would have shown his parents.
“That was different,” Cyrus said out loud.
The air conditioner choked, struggled, and died. Cyrus didn’t notice. Rolling onto his side, he shoved his hand under his mattress and pulled out two worn California drivers’ licenses. Splaying them between his fingers, he studied the faded photos. His mother, known to the State of California as Catherine Smith, was described as 5′7″ and 122 lbs. Her eyes were bright, even in the smudged photo on plastic. Cyrus had gotten her dark skin and black hair. So had his sister. Daniel was an early reproduction of their father. Straw-blond, at least when there had been California sun and salt water to keep it that way. Daniel’s hair had been brown by their first Wisconsin Christmas.
Cyrus picked at a bent corner on his father’s license. Lawrence Smith. 6′3″ and 190 lbs. Smirking, not smiling. Cyrus had gotten the smirk. And the height.
Cyrus held his two grainy parents next to each other.
Twelve years ago, on a cliff overlooking the sea, he had startled these two people by being born. According to family legend, he had spent the rest of the day wrapped in a picnic blanket. For ten years, he’d heard his parents tell the story — he could hear them now, bantering in front of friends, his mother’s accented voice assigning humorous blame to his father for the ill-timed hike, and finally, always together, delivering the closing line of his birth story with a pair of proud smiles: “That’s Cyrus for you. He hasn’t changed at all.” And he wouldn’t. Not ever.
But that story and its closing line were from another life and another time. Cyrus would never hear his father’s voice again. And his mother breathed only the faintest whisper of whispers, trapped in her hospital sleep.
Cyrus exhaled, long and slow.
“Daniel!”
Thrusting the keepsakes under his mattress, Cyrus slid off the bed and jumped toward the door.
“Daniel Smith!”
Backing out into the parking lot and the sun, Cyrus looked up. At least the wind was moving now. The Pale Lady was wobbling and a black cloud range was chewing on the horizon. Old Mrs. Eldridge was perched on the walkway outside room 202. She was wearing her pink robe and a straw gardening hat. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been in 115. Before that, it had been 104, overlooking the empty pool. Three rooms in the past month, closer to a dozen switches on the year.
“Daniel Smith!” she yelled again. This time, she cinched her robe tight and began to move toward the stairs.
“You’re looking pink today, Mrs. Eldridge.” Cyrus moved farther back, shifting bare feet on the hot asphalt. “Do you need something?”
Mrs. Eldridge stopped, covered her right eye, and leaned over the rail, squinting down at Cyrus. “What if I do?” she asked.
“Then I’ll try to act like Dan,” Cyrus said. “What do you need? But it better not be your toilet. I don’t do toilets. You’ll have to plunge it yourself.”
The old woman straightened up and pointed down the stairs. “No one is answering the phone. Someone ought to answer. What if a guest had an emergency?”
“Daniel’s gone, Mrs. Eldridge. He ditched earlier. And you’re the only guest.”
“Well, what if I had an emergency?”
Cyrus grinned up at her. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Lotta good you’d do me.” The woman scrunched her mouth. “I want the girl. Where’s Antigone?”
“She’s with Daniel in the city. Visiting Mom.” Cyrus spread his arms wide. “I should be with them, but I’m not. It’s me or nothing, Mrs. Eldridge. What’ll it be? What’s your emergency?”
The woman sniffed. “I want my waffle. Daniel knows I usually like it at six, but there’s a storm coming and I want it now. I’m not going to miss my waffle for any power outage, no sir.” She squinted at Cyrus. “And scrub those hands before you make it. And change your shirt. You’re filthy. Where are your shoes? You should eat something yourself. You look like you’re made of broomsticks. Your poor mother would be ashamed.”
Cyrus felt his body tighten and his toes clench at the pavement. His smile vanished. “Not like your mom, then?” He closed his mouth; he swallowed. His forehead was suddenly clammy, cool in the breeze. He shouldn’t have said that. Another shouldn’t. He liked Mrs. Eldridge.
“Sorry. I—” He bit the rest back. “Sorry.”
The old woman in pink and the boy in bare feet stood in silence. Dust shuffled across the parking lot. The Pale Lady shook on her pole. Cyrus could feel guilt in his stomach, but he wasn’t going to look away.
After a moment, Mrs. Eldridge turned slowly and began to walk back to her room. “Scrub your scrawny paws!” she yelled. “And you better not turn up at my door in that shirt. Not too doughy, and no crunchy bits either!”
The door slammed on 202, and Cyrus puffed out his cheeks. The sky above him was filling with dust, and the wet, warm air was growing heavier. It might rain mud. The day needed the storm. He needed the storm. And he hoped the station wagon roof leaked on Daniel and Antigone all the way home.
The original architect of the Archer Motel had blueprinted a full dining room and an enormous kitchen capable of producing three spectacular roadside buffets per day. Where the architect had dreamed his kitchen, the builders had put a broom closet. Where he had drawn his expansive dining room, they had put a small square with green carpet and fake wood paneling. There was enough space for one round table, one giggling refrigerator, and one pink Formica counter bolted to the wall. The counter held a chrome four-slot toaster and an oversize waffle iron built like an antique printing press.
Steam slipped out of the iron’s sealed jaw, and a red light blinked lethargically on its back. Cyrus yawned and slapped his shorts, watching the dust slip away in clouds. He’d sprinkled chocolate chips in the batter as a sort of apology. He’d even washed his hands. At least he’d apologized. But crazy old lady or not, she shouldn’t talk about his mother.