017 ☼ Motel Chronicles

Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy

She felt a wave of premonition in the parking lot of the Arizona Public Service Electric building while she took a picture of an old microwave tower. This is where the trip tilts, she wrote. They were off to see a giant crater blasted into the earth, northeast of the Grand Canyon, their eventual but extremely tentative destination.

Driving into nothing was her favorite thing to do. She liked losing signal, fading out, disappearing. Maybe, finally, he would kill her and throw her into the Meteor Crater they were headed towards and she’d finally feel alone the way she wanted to. But he can’t even keep a straight face when he’s angry at her and if she pushed him backwards into the crater, he would grab her without a second thought. They’d turn into skeletons again, laughing and rattling, turning to dust in the Meteor Crater, like it was some big cosmic joke.

“Your coffee, madam,” he said, bringing her a cup of shitty hotel coffee while she shook the depression out of her hair. 

“Did you poison it?” she asked. 

“Not this time,” he said.

“Bummer,” she said mindlessly then stumbled to the bathroom. 

Winslow is where whatever it was that was happening to them solidified into some sort of knowable shape. A reliable touch when reached for, a kiss on command when asked. She felt less afraid of the world now. Now that she was in the middle of nowhere. She could sit in the same room with him without saying a word, a gift. Her new favorite ghost.

In Hualapai Mountain Park, while the sun faded in a Tarkovsky-brown field, he taught her taarof with tangerine slices. They vaped. He placed the small half-moons of fruit on her cheeks and took pictures. “What part of taarof is this?” she asked. He laughed, “It’s not.” He made a gif and sent it to her while she was sleeping.

“This field looks like a Vertov film,” she had said. “Huh,” he said, “It reminded me of Tarkovsky.” Oh shit, he was right, she had meant Tarkovsky but she thought it was maybe the most annoying name she could ever think of dropping and that’s subconsciously why she replaced Tarkovsky with Vertov to avoid being like her friends’ boyfriends in the pubs of Brooklyn or at poetry readings and loft parties. But he was right, the field they sat in, with its perfect oval clearing the size of their picnic blanket, with its brushy brown weeds and the sideways lighting— it looked like a Tarkovsky film shot. Obnoxious. It took her breath away.

Now the second floor of the Best Western in Wishlow. “WIN-slow,” she corrected. It was a stucco block of a building, like a giant beige lego turned on its side in a muddy field with nothing around it, just a freeway and some ceramic cacti. He wanted a Thanksgiving discount, he wanted a better view. Vicky at the front desk was pissed to be working on a holiday. 

“Let’s just leave them alone,” she whispered. 

“Do you want ice cream?” he asked, pointing to the pantry.

Once inside, they surveyed and then fixed the room. He rolled down the duvet while she rinsed out the tub for dust. Sometimes they sprayed the doorknobs with sanitizer, other times they used their sleeves. Often they forgot entirely. He fixed her necklace without thinking while rubbing her back with salve. He checked her healing scar near her right shoulder. “It’s still pink,” he reported. It was cut across a place on her back she couldn’t see from any angle.

Doing nothing was fun.

“Another day in Wishlow,” he said. “It’s WIN-slow,” she said. She woke up at 11am. He handed her coffee and said, “Look,” opening the window. It was snowing outside the Best Western. They booked another night. “So what will we name our child,” he asked. “Now that we live here forever?”

“Peterbuilt,” she said, after the brand of the truck sitting in the mud outside their window.

She stood over the wall heater in her underwear. Sometimes she wore his clothes when she couldn’t find hers. He crossed the room dramatically throwing her clothes left and right while she neatly folded his. She spent more time staring into space, he spent more time staring at his screen. Throughout the day, he stayed glued to his laptop typing, switching between windows trying to remember what he was doing, the frantic "jans?" that slipped from his lips in moments of stress. Falling asleep, waking up. Looking for food. Handing him food. Anytime his guard fell, which was not very often, it rushed her like high tide.

At the Best Western Winslow, they kept their computers by the window so they could catch things go by. But even when they weren’t working they drifted toward it. They watched the liquor store neon blink in the reflection of the pond-size puddles in the empty lot outside the hotel window. The sky was the color of plum jam. She couldn’t imagine anything more peaceful. That muddy parking lot. Turns out the meteor crater was closed for Thanksgiving. They both realized it was Thanksgiving after ordering a Domino’s Pizza that was too small for both of them and took two hours to arrive. They had different rituals.

They were on road time, a concept they established as they went. Time waiting out restrictions, for immunity, for visas, for borders to open. Winslow was the waiting room. Road time meant segmented sleep. He slept and woke every four hours or so. She was the night shift and slept through the morning. They each had a lot of alone time, sometimes too much. Like two trained ghosts passing each other as they switched shifts to haunt the same room.

And it was only because they were born into radically different circumstances and places did the similarities feel like novelties to begin with. They acted like children on a field trip, passing napkins back and forth and getting lost. They ate the same food. She taught him the love of Mexican chili mango from gas station convenience stores, he let her eat the last piece of the crust rice. He kept teasing her with taarof, a meta-taarof. His funny camera. How many other rude things was she doing that he just overlooked or laughed at? American Taco Girl. California Blonde.

In the mornings, or afternoons or middle of the night—whenever one of them woke up—they recounted their dreams to each other. Their dreams were boring. Hers were about packing up and his were about being chased; transparent metaphors for deep anxiety they didn’t know how to talk about yet. They often fell asleep clutching each other like they were about to die with weight and pressure; two Pompeians waiting for the blast.

☼ I have a feeling. I want to write letters in summer. Come find me so we can talk about home. I’ll drive you back when we’re done. ☼

I recommend:

☼ Listening to this NTS playlist Open Hands Real Flames - Lap Steel and Pedal Steel Special by Bass Clef sent to me by my favorite music nerd Jack. The last track is a cover of “Wichita Lineman” that made my eyes well up. For those unfamiliar, here is a live version of Glen Campbell, the Rhinestone Cowboy, singing “Wichita Lineman” which is a song that my Dad and I have sung together in the car with zero irony. It’s a bop, y’all. My friend and I did a deep dive into the lyrics and it broke our hearts even more. Here’s a nice insight from a YouTube comment:

☼☼ One of my favorite music makers, Green House, covered Bill Evans’ Peace Piece, which Miles Davis liked so much he reworked the repeating two chord pattern as the first four bars of Flamenco Sketches the last track on "Kind of Blue." It’s really nice.

☼☼☼ Lastly and most importantly, 🇵🇸FREE PALESTINE🇵🇸. Here is a link to Medical Aid Palestine where you can donate $$$ to get medical aid to Palestinians in Gaza immediately. Donating takes a few seconds and they take multiple currencies. <3

xxA