The Room

Jim Keeler slides the master key into Room 7 on a Sunday morning in September to flip the mattress and finds the walls full.

Every surface. Floor to ceiling, inside the closet, behind the toilet tank, along the grout between tiles. Black Bic pen. Red Sharpie. Brown ink that flakes at the touch, leaving rust-colored dust on the fingertips. The handwriting starts neat in the northwest corner: Palmer Method, the loops and bridges of Catholic school penmanship, each letter perched on an invisible ruled line. By the southeast wall, the handwriting has lost its mind. Strokes jag and spike like an EKG losing its patient.

The previous guest paid cash. Signed "J. Smith" in a hand that left no impression on the carbon copy. Checked out before dawn. On the nightstand: burnt matches arranged in a perfect circle, their heads pointing inward.

Jim runs the Sunset Motor Lodge, twenty-three rooms on Route 66 between a boarded-up Stuckey's and a cell tower disguised as a saguaro. Sixty-three years old. Salem Lights, two packs a day. His wife Ellen died in 2011. Ovarian. She left him the motel and a closet full of quilts she'd sewn for grandchildren who never came, each one folded on the top shelf of Room 14, cedar chips scattered between the layers. He checks the cedar every first of the month. Replaces what's crumbled.

Her reading glasses live on his nightstand. Wire frames, bifocal, the left temple bent from when she fell asleep grading the church rummage sale inventory and rolled onto them. Every morning Jim picks them up, breathes on the lenses, polishes them with the hem of his undershirt, sets them back on her pillow. The prescription warps everything past arm's length. He has never put them on.

The writing won't come off. Jim tried Goof Off, Kilz primer, three coats of Zinsser. His nephew Daryl hauled a belt sander from the job site and the motor seized on contact, smoke threading from the housing, the air bitter with burnt copper. The words sat under every coat and bled through.

Daryl crossed himself in the doorway. He hadn't been to Mass in eleven years.

Jim stood looking at the walls. Then he drove to Walmart and bought a lockbox, a folding chair, and a box of Kleenex.

Fifty dollars for two hours. Cash only. No photos. He sets the chair outside the door and waits with a Salem and a Louis L'Amour while they read.