The rest of the night, as if light diminished inexorably with each hour, proved no better. Ever-resilient Mac began to register pangs of dismay.
Once he idled beside an early-sixties orange Ford Falcon with a boy and girl in front, mouths involved. The girl blushed seeing him see them, then yelled Pervert and put the boy's hand upon her breast and began to bounce, flicking her tongue.
Mac gunned it through the red light and out Highway 80 to where he rents a room, face still stinging. Cooper, with whom he works, relocates the trailer whenever rent gets behind to the point of certified letters. The family of wife and four-year-old are used to sudden still-in-bed midnight hauls behind a tractor cab. Their current base is opposite the bayou a mile east of the university—sort of on the edge of the edge of town.It is not even within the city limits.
Cooper and Sybil appear to be having an argument. Their sole concession to Mac's appearance is to disguise points of reference with obscure proper nouns. The child sits on the floor absorbed in a coloring book that has long been finished, tracing lines into the available space.
Before Mac can move past, Cooper is warning him that Meyer was plenty hot when Mac didn't return to the warehouse after the last delivery trip that day. "I had to make another goddamn run for you at ten till five—"
Mac begins a story about two women in a white Jeep; Sybil shrieks Cooper back into the argument. Mac hits the shower.
After Mac drying off he ventures to watch TV. Sybil is not in the room. From the sofa Cooper balefully stares at the wall above Mac's head. Abruptly his face shudders with the thought of another grievance and he rushes back to the bedroom.
Loud voices, and the door slamming. Mac asks the child if there's anything else on that's good. She says this is a scary movie, as if that were evidence enough.
"You don't want to watch that, do you?"
"Uh-huh. It's good."
"It'll give you bad dreams."
"Do scary movies give you bad dreams?"
"No! Not, I mean, no. They don't at all."
"That's good."
"I'm just talking about, for a kid, for you."
Then she looks up squarely at him, her mouth pulling slightly open, and glances around the room. The child displays unease whenever she finds herself in a room with a lone adult.
Despite the clamor of the argument she trudges down the hall, settling upon the carpet in front of the closed bedroom door, and before long is asleep.
Mac switches the channel to a comic whose jokes seem far away and unfinished. At some imperceptible point the argument in the bedroom ceases. Sybil comes out very quietly and crosses the room, sheepish to his gaze. She has changed into a t-shirt, barelegged. Visiting the kitchen for a coke can, she winks at Mac, flashing a bit of undies.
He switches the set off.
He goes to his room at the opposite end of the trailer from the master bedroom—actually a flattened berth up a set of brief steps, containing only a shallow mattress crooked above a larger room Cooper uses for storage. His clothes remain situated in the trunk of his car. He searches for what's left of his last paycheck beneath the mattress, stuffing crumpled bills into his pockets.
Lying down, he hears them at the other end of the trailer. It goes on a long time, slows, then starts again.
At this time of night solitary eighteen-wheelers on the Dixie-Overland Highway rattle through. Occasionally an airplane drones from the airport, a couple of miles south. Somewhere a car radio is on. Mac can clearly hear something like a computer saying the Lord's Prayer.
Stepping lightly he goes toward the bathroom. The bedroom door is open. Mac peers hesitantly inside, above the inert child. He shouldn't look. Mac knows that. But here he is, drawn, as the wounded examine a cut to see if bone shows.
The room is totally trashed with clothes and spilled food and empty shoeboxes. Cooper looks asleep. Something like snoring issues from his closed mouth, only rawer. Sybil sits erect against the backboard, sheet pulled up, dull eyes forward, unfocused. Mac sees her hand beneath the sheet, working at something like a persistent itch.
At length she makes the discovery of Mac and interrupts herself with a bizarre arch of the mouth. She flips him the bird and yells savagely "Get the hell out! Out! Now!!"
Back to 80, now Cypress Street, past the river. This is the region of forgotten motels: ancient neon and stuttering "Vacancy" signs. The names: Mab's Shady Oaks, the Century, the Canary Court, Green Gables, all U-shaped stucco buildings around festering-green pools.
The Grotto has a new night clerk. Haired only in scabrous patches above the ears, he offers grudgingly "Vincent" as Mac introduces himself. Vincent accepts the completed registration slip and cash without rising from his stool, eyes trained upon his counter-top set and leotard exercise dancing. Mac grasps the key and perveives he has been in 104 before. The wood slats of the floor sag and creak as he undresses.
Just as the warm red figures begin to appear beneath his eyelids he hears the noise. He perceives grunting and heaving from some adjacent room. Lying still, he tries to extinguish the sounds so reminiscent of extreme bodily discomfort, clamping his eyes shut, fingers in ears, but the couple's staying power is remarkable.
Minutes pass with the weight of entire days. Having paid already, he gets dressed and drops the key upon the rumpled bed.
Mac will ride around for a while, getting a breakfast biscuit somewhere with the loose dollar bills left in his pocket before heading to the warehouse to begin his day of work and more driving.
Morning accomplishes itself, among its routine sounds the grunting itself. Around ten o clock Vincent lets himself into the empty room, looks around, finding the key. He notes the sound. He walks to the wall, listens to the cavity, envisioning the hidden aging water pump and its contingent creaky attachments. He gives the wall one stiff kick, rattling the pipes. Silence.
