Alfie unbuttoned his topcoat and put his suitcase on the
floor at the foot of the bed closest to the bathroom. He put
his briefcase on the gold coverlet. He sat down, the sides
of his coat spreading out like the skirt of a dress. He
opened his briefcase, thumbed through the various brochures,
catalogues, and order forms; finally he found the gun. It
was a Smith &Wesson revolver, .38 calibre. He put it on the
pillows at the head of the bed.
He lit a cigarette, reached for the telephone, then
remembered his notebook. He reached into his right coat
pocket and pulled it out. It was an old Spiral, bought for
a buck forty_nine in the stationery department of some
forgotten five_and_dime in Omaha or Sioux City or maybe
Jubilee, Kansas. The cover was creased and almost completely
innocent of any printing it might once have borne. Some of
the pages had pulled partially free of the metal coil that
served as the notebook's binding, but all of them were still
there. Alfie had been carrying this notebook for almost
seven years, ever since his days selling Universal Product
Code readers for Simonex.
There was an ashtray on the shelf under the phone. Out here,
some of the motel rooms still came with ashtrays, even on
the first floor. Alfie fished for it, put his cigarette on
the groove, and opened his notebook. He flipped through
pages written with a hundred different pens (and a few
pencils), pausing to read a couple of entries. One read: "I
suckt Jim Morrison's cock w/ my poutie boy mouth (LAWRENCE
KS)." Restrooms were filled with homosexual graffiti, most
of it tiresome and repetitive, but "poutie boy mouth" was
pretty good. Another was "Albert Gore is my favorite whore
(MURDO S DAK)."
The last page, three_quarters of the way through the book,
had just two entries. "Dont chew the Trojan Gum it taste's
just like rubber (AVOCA IA)." And: "Poopie doopie you so
loopy (PAPILLION NEB)." Alfie was crazy about that one.
Something about the "_ie, _ie," and then, boom, you got "_y"
It could have been no more than an illiterate's mistake (he
was sure that would have been Maura's take on it) but why
think like that? What fun was that? No, Alfie preferred
(even now) to believe that "_ie, _ie," . . . wait for it . .
"_y" was an intended construction. Something sneaky but
playful, with the feel of an e. e. cummings poem.
He rummaged through the stuff in his inside coat pocket,
feeling papers, an old toll ticket, a bottle of pills__stuff
he had quit taking-_and at last finding the pen that always
hid in the litter. Time to record today's finds. Two good
ones, both from the same rest area, one over the urinal he
had used, the other written with a Sharpie on the map case
beside the Hav_A_Bite machine. (Snax, which in Alfie's
opinion vended a superior product line, had for some reason
been disenfranchised in the 1_80 rest areas about four years
ago.) These days Alfie sometimes went two weeks and three
thousand miles without seeing anything new, or even a viable
variation on something old. Now, two in one day. Two on the
last day. Like some sort of omen.
His pen had "COTTAGER FOODS The Good Stuff!" written in gold
along the barrel next to the logo, a thatched hut with smoke
coming out of the quaintly crooked chimney.
Sitting there on the bed, still in his topcoat, Alfie bent
studiously over his old notebook so that his shadow fell on
the page. Below "Dont chew the Trojan Gum" and "Poopie
doopie you so loopy," Alfie added "Save Russian Jews,
collect valuable prizes (WALTON NEB)'' and "All that you
love will be carried away (WALTON NEB)." He hesitated. He
rarely added notes, liking his finds to stand alone.
Explanation rendered the exotic mundane (or so he had come
to believe; in the early years he had annotated much more
freely), but from time to time a footnote still seemed to be
more illuminating than demystifying.
He starred the second entry__"All that you love will be
carried away (WALTON NEB)"__and drew a line two inches above
the bottom of the page, and wrote: "*To read this you must
also look at the exit ramp from the Walton Rest Area back to
highway, i.e. at departing transients."
He put the pen back in his pocket, wondering why he
or anyone would continue anything this close to ending
everything. He couldn't think of a single answer. But of
course you went on breathing, too. You couldn't stop it
without rough surgery.
The wind gusted outside. Alfie looked briefly toward the
window, where the curtain (also green, but a different shade
from the rug) had been drawn. If he pulled it back, he would
be able to see chains of light on Interstate 80, each bright
bead marking sentient beings running on the rod of the
highway. Then he looked back down at his book. He meant to
do it, all right. This was just ... well ...
