The good room is good because it is big. I gave you the good room, he said. It’s on the second floor. There’s an empty nook where a desk could fit. There are two sinks. One in the bathroom where it belongs and one across from the bed. It has its own mirror. If I sleep on the left side I wake up to my face. In the shower there’s mini shampoo and mini conditioner and mini something called body. There are hangers for my clothes. They’re attached to the rod so I can’t steal them.
The main problem with the room is the curtains. They are purple and sheer. And they don’t close all the way. Last night the gap between them lined up with the only streetlight, blinding me. I couldn’t sleep. Sun gets through them. Everything gets through them. Did I mention they are purple? The worst shade of it. Picture the ugliest purple you can imagine, and that is what the curtains are. They cast a purple glow over the entire room.
Outside there is one red tree and mostly green ones. Cars drive on the only visible road and people walk down it, too. If I were sitting closer to the window, I’d have a view of the parking lot and I could watch the smokers argue. I could watch the man who plays Arlo Guthrie in the chair he brought outside from the lobby. Instead I see the tall sign against the sky and the price for unleaded and diesel. I have the TV on. The commercials distract me. Are you looking for an affordable shaver that provides perfection? Ned is worried his plaque psoriasis will take center stage. Doctors have been prescribing Otezla for over ten years.
Behind the bed there’s an old black-and-white photo of a windmill. It takes up the entire wall. It’s pixelated because whoever printed it printed it too big. They printed it wall size. I tried to take a picture of myself on the bed and all I could see was the giant windmill behind me. Looked like I was at a museum for the Great Depression. The background of my life.
The bedspread is brown with blue circles. There are two lamps. One’s missing a lightbulb. The microwave sits on the mini fridge and its clock is broken. The screen shows a naked colon with no numbers, not even zeroes. That’s how you know you’re in a dream, I heard once: The clocks don’t work.
I’m here to see a woman play music. She’s playing music in the woods in a barn that is famous for its history and the people who recorded there. The barn burned down in the ’90s, but then it was rebuilt. Now anyone can go for the price of a ticket. On the website you’re encouraged to stop by the gift shop, where you can buy a hat with a man’s face on it. I booked the cheapest hotel. My life was going one way and then it wasn’t. There was a man and another man and another one after that. After the last one I decided I never want to know another one as long as I live. I want to be a different person. I want to be on a quiet street and feel the air. I want to be in a car and be the one driving it. I want to control the AC and the music and turn my headlights on when the sky turns dark. I want to have my bags in the trunk. I like being between places. I like the going. So now I’m here. The Super 8 by Wyndham off I-87. I’m here to make new things happen to me and to forget everything that already did.
Last week I was stuck underground for almost an hour in a hot, crowded train filled with unpredictable people. My greatest fear was that someone would break out into song or want to play a group game. I kept thinking, I would rather someone have a gun than break out into song or want to play a group game. I would rather someone just end it all than try to make the best of things.
That’s where I’ve gone wrong in life. I’ve tried to make the best of things when really I should get out. I’m good at tricking myself, good at seeing things as I want them, not as they are.
For example, when I’m on a bad stretch of Atlantic Avenue, I pretend I’m in Key West. I say to myself in my head, You are in Key West. And I pretend Jimmy Buffett is playing. Pretend I’m wasting away again in Margaritaville as I pass CubeSmart and Divine Beautty Salon with two t’s and Castillo Seafood and Auto Fresh Window Tinting and Riviera Motor Inn and two men chasing each other with crowbars.
I’m done thinking that way, done pretending. Do you know where that’s gotten me? One second I’m sitting across from a man in some dark corner of a restaurant, my eyes shining and alive after one, two, three, four drinks and I’m making him laugh and he’s telling me that I deserve the world, that he wants to be the one to give me it, that it’s dangerous when I look at him like that, that they don’t make women like me anymore, whoever they is. In the next he’s somewhere he won’t tell me and I’m alone in our shared kitchen with the sink that’s been broken for six months, making his mother’s birthday cake.
At the rental car place, I had to sign paperwork confirming I wasn’t going to Canada. After I signed, the woman asked me, Are you going to Canada? I said no even though I’d just written it.
She gave me a black Mitsubishi with scratches and dents in the door that don’t count as damages. We don’t count these as damages, she said.
An elderly couple approached the counter. They said they’d spoken on the phone to someone named James.
I’m afraid nobody, the woman said, by that name works here.
On the drive I passed two accidents, a billboard for free HIV testing, and a PC Richard & Son whose sign was so broken it read: Rich &.
I stopped at the CVS in I don’t know what town. I bought a protein bar and box hair dye and bug spray. I spent twenty-two dollars on a wire that converts one kind of USB to another then imagined explaining that to the oldest person on Earth.
When I got to the hotel, the man at the front desk asked a question I’ve only ever heard in movies: What brings you to town. When I hear it in movies I always think, Nobody really asks that. But here he was asking me it. He wore his hair in a low ponytail and his two front teeth had identical chips, like they were cut with a laser.
I told him about the woman playing music. I told him I had a few hours to kill if he knew of anything I could do. You could look over there, he said, and nodded his chin towards a bookshelf filled with brochures of local attractions. Then he slid the key for the good room across the counter.
I read about something called the Escarpment Trail. Faceless people of the brochure said it offered unparalleled views. They said it was located in a wild forest. That’s what they called it: the wild forest. I dropped my stuff in the room and changed my clothes.
At the wild forest I pay ten dollars to park. Ask the woman working the gate where to go. I practice saying escarpment in the car. When I say it to her I don’t want it to be the first time I say it out loud.
She tells me to go left at the fork and to just keep going. She says, You’ll see it. I hate when people say that. No way I’ll see it, I always think. Out of all the things to see.
I try to understand the old maps that are wrinkled behind glass. I look for You Are Here stickers like they have at the mall. But it isn’t the mall. I’m lost. I watch a park employee go into the bathroom. I wait for her to come out so I can ask her where I am, but she never does.
I walk on a mostly paved road with no view except for abandoned houses with papers where the windows should be. Building permit. Beware of dog. Warrant. I walk past a firehouse. Rest easy chief, a banner reads in big letters. We’ll take it from here.
An old woman on her front porch yells something to me. I jump. She just saw me by the water, she says. She’s right, I was by the water. I parked in a lot by some lake where I saw a shirtless man with a snake wrapped around himself. He was standing with his friends who all acted like the snake wasn’t there.
They were in swimsuits holding their wet towels, gathered around his open trunk saying things like, Let’s aim for Tuesday. He played reggae music from a boom box.
I get out of the interaction with the woman by thanking her. I don’t know what else to say. Thank you, I yell.
I take a shower at the hotel. First I dye my hair in the bathroom which leaves brown smudges on the doorframe and behind my left ear.
I press my forehead against the window for parking-lot entertainment. Before my shower the man with chipped teeth was making out with some woman against her car. She was wearing a uniform for a job but I couldn’t tell what. Her vest was bright blue. Now her car’s gone and nobody’s out there.
On TV it’s the end of the movie. A guy with a burned face pleads with the airport attendant. Someone is playing the slots. It’s Brad Pitt. He leaves. The burned guy wins eleven million dollars. People surround him. The credits flash. I change the channel to a documentary about Billy Joel’s life. The documentary makes me think about the last man. About the night we got high and drove around Long Island and he pointed to every house and said, Billy Joel lives there.
Onscreen Billy Joel’s driving a convertible. Man in the passenger seat says, I get paid to be suspicious when I’ve got no reason to be suspicious.
The sun’s in my eyes on the drive to the barn. Can’t figure out how to navigate the roundabouts. Each time I make it through one it feels like a miracle and I whisper yes to myself. I listen to Lucinda Williams and sing along to her. I play the wrong version of Something About What Happens When We Talk and then I play the version I like. In the version I like, her voice is young and open to anything. When she sings, Does this make sense, it sounds like she actually wants to know.
I roll the windows down. The air feels like when I open the freezer. I let the wind ruin my hair. Dusk happens. I pass Motel 19, which advertises Safe Clean Room since 1972. I almost stayed there but it was sixty dollars more a night. The truckers switch on their headlights. The dashboard adjusts to its nighttime setting. I see the shape of mountains in the distance. They remind me of the man before the last man. Once we were driving through I think West Virginia and I pointed out how beautiful the jagged peaks and ridges looked through the windshield. He said they looked like the shoulder blades of a malnourished cow. Now that’s all I can think of anytime I see mountains through a windshield. Starving cattle.
They don’t sell drinks here. Only different flavors of sparkling water. They don’t have the right permit, I guess. Or maybe that’s how the fire happened: A drunk guy dropped his match. Also the barn isn’t really a barn. I don’t know why it’s called that. It’s more like a church. It’s a two-story wooden building with stairs and bathrooms and windows and red exit signs and a pitched roof and rows of benches facing the stage. Something religious could happen here.
I’m in the balcony, standing room only, stuck behind the tallest man on Earth and his terrible girlfriend. She keeps taking his hat off and putting it on herself then back on him and back on herself. Every time she does it she laughs and then checks for his reaction. I can’t see a thing. I try to pretend I’m a blind person. Music is meant to be heard, what do I need to see for? See what? What an honor it is to listen, I repeat in my head as a mantra. Plus other people are in the same boat. Showing up late to discover they have no view of the stage. It’s an interesting experiment, watching people handle something they feel they don’t deserve.
In a perfect world we could all see the singing woman under the lights. But the cards of the barn are unfairly dealt. There are winners and losers. Seers and non-seers. Some people accept what’s happening. Others deny it, spend the whole show dragging their limp, begrudging husbands and wives and fiancés all across the room, convinced the view, surely, is better from over there. Eventually they all go back to where they started.
I first heard the woman onstage when I was in a bad place in my life. I don’t remember how I discovered her. I was living with the first man at the beach and I was lonely. It was winter. All he did was look at pictures of tattooed women wearing leather and talk about how everything is rigged. All I did was walk on the sand and wait for things to change. I played her album and walked until I got to the faraway jetty. I wore my green jacket. My fingers turned numb from cold. Sometimes I took the dog. Sometimes I listened to a song and then listened to it again. My favorite one was about a woman who gets a new bikini. She gets a new bikini so she can go to the ocean and deal with her pain. I always played that one twice. It reminded me of my life. It was the only thing that made me feel like I was doing anything right.
The tall man and his terrible girlfriend are gone. She got too drunk on whatever she snuck in. When they left, his hat was back on his head. I take their place and rest my chin on the ledge in front of me. I watch through the space between two wooden beams. When the woman sings about going to the ocean, I like that I can see her.
At the hotel my key doesn’t work. Nothing even lights up. No red or green or anything. I swipe it then I swipe it again. Nothing. The door stays locked. I take it as a sign.
I go back downstairs, walk past the room called Vending where there’s three empty machines and an overhead light that buzzes, past the brochures of attractions, past the front desk, and past a handwritten note that reads: IF I AM NOT IN HERE I AM OUT BACK I WILL BE BACK SHORTLY.
I get into the Mitsubishi with the dents that don’t count as damages and leave.
I’m at a bar. I found it by typing bar into my phone. It’s nice, dimly lit. There’s dead animals on the walls. They’re playing Reflections After Jane.
I’m on my second drink. Couple next to me argues. Why isn’t your sister coming apple picking? She doesn’t like apples. That’s it? That’s it.
Man on my left slurs, Can’t say no to money, that’s my curse. Can’t say no to friends, that’s my other curse.
The bartender’s wearing a shirt of a band I like. I say to him, I have that shirt, which I do. Oh yeah? he says. Then he smiles and so do I. What else is there to say.
An old man walks in, somehow quiets the room, announces to it: My father used to own this building.
Eventually the bar closes and everyone leaves except me. The bartender changes the music. He plays a song by a guy who killed himself.
Shame what happened to this guy, I say. He asks, What happened? I say, He killed himself.
Then I look it up because suddenly I’m not so sure. Sometimes I invent deaths, confuse facts. But turns out he did kill himself. This time I’m right. I say, Thank god.
I tell him to give me a task. I don’t like just sitting there. He hands me a stack of menus in their vinyl sleeves. He asks if I want to swap the old beer menus with the new beer menus. I like his voice. I have to stop myself from wondering if it’s a voice I’d be comfortable hearing for the rest of my life.
I laugh because I’m doing a bad job with the menus. I keep wrinkling them. I say, I’m doing a bad job. Then I say, Never mind. I’m doing a great job. They look rustic.
He says, People love rustic. Then he asks if I want another drink which I do.
I go to the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror. I talk to myself. I say OK. Then I pee. Then I wash my hands. Then I look in the mirror again. Then I fix my hair. I tell myself this doesn’t count, whatever’s about to happen. This isn’t knowing a man. This is something else. I don’t know what, but it’s something else. This isn’t even my life. I don’t live here. I’m just having fun. It just feels good. Is that wrong? I tell myself this is not a big deal. People do this. People do this and then they move on with their lives. I tell myself it’s normal. I tell myself I’m normal. You are normal, I say to the mirror.
I don’t know how we end up back at the hotel but after another bar and then another one after that, we do. All I remember is we met one of his friends who told a story about someone who fell off a ten-story building and survived.
I don’t know what time it is. I tell him about how the key doesn’t work. Then it lights up green and perfect. He says, Well there you go.
When we get inside the room I feel responsible for its appearance, like the giant windmill and the bedspread. I feel embarrassed. I accidentally turn on the lamp with no lightbulb. The room stays dark until I turn the TV on. I don’t know what else to do. I sit on the edge of the bed.
He walks around, says, Nice. I don’t know about what. I don’t know what’s nice.
He walks over to the sink, the one that’s not in the bathroom, and says, What’s this for.
I’m distracted by the TV. John Travolta is undergoing a totally insane operation. They’re taking his face off.
Face/Off, he says. I love this movie.
Then he sits down next to me and kisses me. I pull away and look at him for what feels like a long time. I laugh. He laughs. John Travolta’s face becomes Nicolas Cage’s face. I kiss him back. John Travolta’s freaking out. He takes a coat rack to a mirror. Screams, Fuck you fuck you fuck you to the man who betrayed him. He helps me take my shirt off. John Travolta says, When this is over I want you to take this face and burn it. The doctor says, I’ve implanted a microchip in your larynx. I lie on my back. I unzip my pants and he pulls them over my ankles. He asks if I’m sure and I say I’m sure. Nicolas Cage as John Travolta is shrieking and wailing. The clock’s ticking and here’s the thing—so is the bomb. He stands up to undo his belt. I slide off my underwear and he gets on top of me. Nicolas Cage as John Travolta sets the doctor on fire. John Travolta as Nicolas Cage is in prison. I pull his neck so it’s close to my neck. The prison guard yells, The Geneva Convention is void here. Amnesty International doesn’t know we exist. Nicolas Cage yells, How can I get out of here? You can’t. How can I get these boots off? You can’t.
He tells me to flip over.
In the morning the sun breaks through the purple curtains. He gets up and tries to pull them closed. I look at his purple-tinted back.
I tell him they don’t close more than that.
What can we do, he asks. Nothing, I say. I have the brown bedspread tucked under my arms like a strapless gown.
He gets us water using the disposable coffee cups that come wrapped in plastic. He grabs two of the extra pillows off the floor. He puts one of the pillows over my face and the other pillow over his face. I can’t breathe, I say. He tells me to move the pillow up so it’s just over my eyes, not my whole face. I do what he says. It works. It blocks the sun. It blocks everything.
See? he says. No, I say. But that’s the point.
We lie there like new corpses. We make circles on each other’s palms with our fingers. I ask him to tell me things about himself that he probably already did.
He plays drums. Has three brothers. His family’s lived here for eight generations. They own a restaurant. He went to school out West. He’s reading a book about how the American chestnut tree went extinct because of some fungus. He had a woman he loved but then he didn’t.
I tell him about the men. I tell him about the last man. I tell him there won’t be any more men after that. That I’m done for good. He says, What about this. He says it in a joking way. He doesn’t really mean, What about this. My chest feels tight. I don’t feel like laughing. I notice he stops making circles on my palm. I don’t know what to say. It’s quiet for too long. I ask him if the pillow is still over his eyes. He says it is. He asks me if it’s still over mine. I say yes. 
Leila Register is a writer from Atlanta. Her fiction has appeared in The Baffler, Joyland, and R&R, among others. She lives in New York.
Illustration: Calum Heath
