Chapter 20: Chapter 20 - The Last Room
Chapter 20 - The Last Room
The door closed and Teo put his back against it.
The room was the room. The lamp on the nightstand, the cone of warm light on the bed, the dark corners. The curtain pulled across the window, the expressway's sodium-orange bleeding through the gap at the edge. Trucks ran on the Bruckner forty feet away, the specific low groan of the overpass doing what it always did. The A/C unit in the window sat dark and silent. He had not switched it on when he came in. He was not going to.
Cami set her bag on the bed and stood there a moment, her back to him. He watched her.
The quiet stayed quiet.
A half minute passed that way. Beyond the curtain the expressway ran its sound and the lamp threw its cone on the bed and the cold pulled in from the walls. The adrenaline from the highway was still retreating in his chest, slow, leaving things behind it. His jacket sat heavy on both sides where the money was. The weight pulled with each breath.
She turned around and sat on the edge of the bed.
"You warm enough?" he said.
Her eyes came up to his face. "Don't turn it on."
He came off the door and took the jacket off. The inside pockets were swollen with the banded stacks from Ricky's safe and the loose bills from the secondary shelf. The jacket went onto the chair by the door, the one with the broken back leg that leaned slightly left. The chair had leaned that way every time they had been in this room. Nobody had ever done anything about it.
He started on the pockets.
The money came out in two movements: the banded stacks first, then the loose bills on top. The pile went onto the bedspread and the counting started. The banded stacks stayed banded; the count ran on the bands themselves, with one stack's total checked against the rubber-band number. The loose bills got counted twice, always twice, always the same direction.
Cami sat on the bed's edge with her hands in her lap, watching.
Her watching registered at the back of his neck. The counting continued.
When the last stack was done he said the number.
She looked at the money on the bed, the banded stacks and the loose bills spread across the bedspread, and reached down for her bag without moving her eyes off the pile. She set the bag in her lap and unzipped the main compartment.
The denim jacket came out first and went on the bed beside her. A change of clothes after that, rolled tight. A paperback then, spine cracked, the Hurston, which she set on the nightstand without looking at it. Then, from a side pocket of the bag that he had not known was there, she lifted a small black box and set it on the nightstand next to the book.
The box was the size of a paperback, matte black, with a combination wheel on the front and a small metal handle along one side. Her fingers turned the wheel through three numbers without hesitating. The latch clicked.
Inside sat the cash in rubber bands. Two folded sheets of paper rested on top of it.
She lifted both sheets out and set them on the bed, then set the open box on the nightstand.
His eyes went to the cash inside, and then to her face.
The question he could have asked stayed in his mouth.
She caught that, the staying. Her shoulders released a fraction of something. She reached into the box, took out the money, set it on the bed beside his, smoothed out the folded sheets. One was a printout: a Pittsburgh neighborhood, an address, a note in her handwriting in the margin that read studio / $425/mo. The second was a Greyhound route schedule, New York to Pittsburgh, with two departure times circled in blue pen.
His eyes moved across the printout to the schedule and stopped at the handwriting in the margin. He had seen that handwriting on napkins and on the back of receipts she used as bookmarks. He had not seen it on a printout before, and he had not seen it on anything that looked like a plan already in progress.
He picked up the lockbox. The Ziploc bag was at the bottom. Hundreds banded together, fifties banded together, the largest band on the twenties. The stacks sat tight in the space, edges square from being touched and recounted many times. The number was old in her head.
The lockbox went back down. The printout he read once, put back, slid to the nightstand with the schedule on top of it. Then he counted her money alongside his.
The total came to thirty-eight thousand, two hundred and forty.
Thirty-four thousand had come out of Ricky's safe. Eleven hundred and forty had come off the floor of his room at Fernando's. The last forty-two hundred sat in front of them now from her box. He said the number out loud because numbers spoken were different from numbers in the head. She was quiet for a moment.
"Y después?" she said.
"After Pittsburgh's covered. The tickets. The first month."
"Más," she said. It was not a question. The math was already done in her head.
"Más. Enough for the rest of the year if we go slow."
The lamp threw its cone across the bed and the money and her face and left the rest of the room in the dark. Her eyes were clear. She had already arrived somewhere and was waiting to see if he would catch up.
The catch-up registered between them without language.
She reached across the money, flattened her palm on his chest over the sternum, felt him breathe. His hand covered hers and held it there. The money sat between them. The clock on the nightstand read 1:07.
The money came off the bed. The banded stacks went back into the jacket's inside pockets in the order they had come out, and the jacket went onto the chair. Her cash went into a separate pocket of her bag, the outside zip. Where she was putting it was not announced and was not asked. He watched her hands at it. Her economy was the economy of someone who knew exactly how things needed to be arranged, someone who had done this a hundred times without telling him.
The $4,200 had been her plan, running quietly under a floorboard on a schedule with nothing to do with his. The lockbox had sat there in September. The lockbox had sat there in October. The Pittsburgh printout had been printed weeks before he had bought the train ticket. The alley behind the club tonight had been her last station on a route already drawn.
She had waited for him anyway. Her bag had been on her shoulder and her weight on her back foot and her eyes on the service road instead of the kitchen door she could have gone through alone. She had stood there until he came out.
His jacket was on the chair. The lamp threw its cone between them on the bed.
"Ven," she said. It was not loud, and it was not asking.
The jacket went on the chair and he went.
This was slower than any of it had been. The room was cold, the A/C off, the heat off, the only warmth what they made. Her face was in the lamplight and so was his and there was nothing in this room that required performing.
His forehead pressed to hers. Her hands rested on his arms. Her breath came against his mouth and went out again.
The quiet stayed between them.
He kissed her. She kissed back. The clothes came off in pieces. Her bra went onto the chair on top of his jacket. The floor would have been wrong for it. Why that mattered was unclear to him. It mattered.
The bed took their weight. She pulled him down to her and he went, and the lamp threw its cone across both of them while the rest of the room stayed dark. Her hair moved off her neck under his hand and his mouth went there. Her pulse came up against his lips, fast and unperformed. A sound moved low in her throat that was not theater. He stayed where he was. The sound came again.
He took his time. She let him. Her hand went in his and up above her head against the pillow, and his other hand went on her, and her face stayed in the lamplight while he watched. When her eyes closed his stayed open. When her eyes opened they came to him. Neither of them looked away. He kept his hand on her until she made the sound she made when she was close, and then he did not stop, and she went through it under his fingers, her hips lifting off the bed, her grip tightening on his hand and then opening.
After that he took longer. His mouth went to the inside of her wrist, then to her stomach, then her ribs, then the hollow of her throat.
When he was inside her she put her hands on his back and pulled him down so there was no gap, skin to skin all the way down. He kept slow. She set the pace with the pressure of her palms, the angle of her hips, the small shifts he knew now. She said aquí once, against his ear. The word meant stay. He stayed.
Her hand went to the back of his neck and pulled him in, her face pressed against his shoulder, and her body went still all over, completely. He held her through it. Then her hands opened flat on his back and he followed her, his face in her hair, the expressway running its noise forty feet away.
His weight came down beside her.
Her palm settled on his chest over the heart and stayed there, warm, the slight pressure of it under his ribs. His breath went out against her hair.
The lamp was on. The curtain gap threw its thin line of amber across the floor. The clock on the nightstand read 2:12.
Her mouth came against his shoulder. Her breath evened out there.
After a while she said, quiet, not quite to him: "Pensé que íbamos a tener más tiempo."
The answer to that would involve telling her things he could not change. He did not give it. His lips pressed to her hair and she exhaled, and they lay still, the lamp burning down the room's distance to this bed, this dark, this cold that was only warm where they were.
The lamp's cone held its shape on the bed. The Pittsburgh printout sat on the nightstand at the edge of his vision. It described a studio for $425 a month in a city he did not know, and a room that would be theirs. He thought about Cami on the phone on a Sunday morning with Abuela Luz on the other end, in the register she used for that call, the register he had never been in the room to hear. He wanted to be in the next room when she made it. He wanted her to make it from somewhere that was not a motel and not a club and not anywhere that belonged to Ricky.
Her hand stayed on his chest. His own hand came over it and held it there, warm against the sternum, her palm and his heartbeat under her palm.
She fell asleep with her hand still on his chest, the fingers gone loose, the warmth not going anywhere.
Sleep stayed away from him.
The ceiling was the same water-stained drop ceiling it had always been. Her breathing ran even and slow against his side. Outside, the expressway kept up its noise, trucks at speed and the overpass joints and the register of a city that did not sleep and did not know they were here. Which was the point. The Motor Inn did not care who was in Room 9. The lot camera did not reach this far. The concrete walls absorbed everything. This room had always been the one place where the system's eye did not reach, and for three hours more it would stay that way.
The clock on the nightstand read 2:40.
The route from here to Penn Station ran in his head. Highway to the bridge approach, then bridge to Manhattan, then surface streets the rest of the way. Midtown at this hour was thinner than the rest of the city but not empty. Cris's car had to be ditched before the station, and the parking structure on Eighth was the option already worked out. From the structure to the Eighth Avenue entrance was four blocks on foot. Then the escalator down to the main concourse, the PA calling boarding, Track 7, the 5:08 westbound.
The whole thing came to one hour and twenty minutes from room to platform if the bridge stayed clear. The margin was built in. Margins were not something to trust.
Then there was Ricky. The safe would have been opened within the first hour, and the name on the missing cash would have arrived with the count. Cris's Civic was gone from the rear lot. Ricky would have the direction of travel by now. Westbound was not hard to figure out. Ricky did not let windows close without putting something in them.
The room had to be empty at 3:45.
The clock had moved to 2:52.
Her hand on his chest rose and fell with his breath. The printout on the nightstand had been made by someone planning for months, with two departure times circled in blue pen. Eleven months of a woman doing the math alone, building a number toward a number, not telling him. The silence had not been hiding. The plan had needed to survive without him. The waiting had not been for him to be ready. It had been to see whether he would get there.
His lips pressed to her hair, once, quiet. She did not wake.
By 3:10 the room had been inventoried in his head: the bag, the jacket with the money, the lockbox on the nightstand. The lockbox would stay. The box was empty and she would not want it back. Nothing was leaving this room that had not come into it. Nothing ever had.
At 3:30 her breathing was still even. His arm came out from under her, slow, and he sat up on the edge of the bed. The clock face read what it read. His hands sat steady in his lap.
The carpet was the same carpet. His hands stayed unwashed.
The clock read 3:44.
He turned back to the bed.
His hand went to her shoulder, firm enough to wake her.
Her eyes opened on the first contact.
The wake had not been from sleep. Her eyes were clear, oriented. Her hand had come off the mattress and gone for the bag before her face had even finished turning to him.
"Vámonos," he said.
She sat up. Her hair went back into the band from her wrist in one motion and her hands went for the clothes at the foot of the bed. His own clothes came on next, jeans and shirt and the jacket over the shirt. The inside pockets settled heavy and correct against his ribs. He checked the buttons.
Her dressing finished before his jacket did.
The bag came onto her shoulder. The Hurston paperback came off the nightstand and went into the outside pocket of the bag. Her eyes went to the lockbox on the nightstand, matte black, the combination wheel turned back to its default. She left it where it was.
The room key sat on the dresser, a physical key on a numbered fob, the fob a square of yellow plastic with the nine stamped into it. The same key had been handed to him the first time and every time after. He set it on the nightstand next to where the lockbox sat.
His eyes moved across the room. The lamp threw its cone on the empty bed and the corners stayed dark beyond it.
She was at the door. She caught him looking.
He pulled the door.
The exterior corridor fluorescent kicked on, motion-triggered and white and harsh after the lamp. The Bruckner ran loud forty feet east. To the west the parking lot opened, and across the service road the gas station threw its amber overhead onto the pumps. Cold came in from everywhere. His breath went visible in it, and hers too.
The door locked behind them under his hand. Why his hand had locked it was not clear. The key was inside the room and the locking was habit.
She was already moving west toward the lot. Her bag shifted on her shoulder and she adjusted it without breaking stride. The back-foot hesitation from the alley was gone. The door she had been building toward was now behind her.
He went after her.
The lot stayed dark where he had parked. The broken light above the space was still broken. Cris's Civic sat where it had been left, backed into the shadow against the chain-link, its silver paint gray in the ambient dark. The locks clicked. She got in without being told, bag onto her lap, the door closed with the deliberateness she used in every car they had been in together.
The engine turned over.
The dashboard clock read 3:51.
The car pulled out of the space and rolled west to the lot's exit, then onto the service road toward the highway. Room 9 stayed in the rear view and his eyes stayed off the rear view. The looking had already happened.
The on-ramp opened ahead of them. The highway took them south.
Her hand sat on his arm through the jacket, at the wrist. The silence in the car was theirs and held. The Bruckner ran south through the edge of the city and the city spread its light across the clouds on both sides and they drove through it together while the dashboard clock moved toward the number that mattered. Behind them, on the nightstand in Room 9, the lockbox sat empty in the dark beside the key.