The Sun Down Motel

He left, and when the light blinked on the phone a few minutes later with its whispered click, she lifted the receiver and listened to the low, pleasant hum of his voice. Hey, man, I’m checked in. You on your way? He made and took a dozen phone calls from customers, and Viv—who had never even seen a joint in real life, let alone held or tried one—listened to all of it, learning the lingo of the measured bits of weed and how much they cost, appreciating Jamie’s droll sense of humor at his line of work.

On another night a prostitute called her babysitter in between taking her clients, checking in on her four-year-old daughter, Bridget, as Viv listened in. Make sure she drinks her milk. Let her have a little popcorn but not too much. Did she go to sleep right away or did she get up? Sometimes she has to go potty two or three times. Call you later, I gotta go. The woman left at five thirty, tying back her long hair as she walked to her car in tight jeans and flip-flops. It was still dark but there was something about the light at that time of morning, something that let you know dawn was coming soon. It was a different darkness than midnight darkness. In the darkness of five thirty, Bridget’s mother almost looked pretty, her hair shiny and long, her shoulders back. Alone in the office, Viv watched her walk, the effortless way her hips moved, with perfect envy.

“Don’t you see creepy things in that job?” Viv’s roommate, Jenny, asked her one night as they both got ready for work. Jenny was eating yogurt, dressed in her hospital scrubs as Viv stood at the kitchen counter, making her bologna sandwich. The TV was on, showing the ten o’clock news with the volume on low. Viv was wearing high-waisted jeans and a white T-shirt that was cut loosely, billowing from where she had tucked it into her pants. She’d added a slim red belt she thought was pretty in the belt loops.

She looked at her roommate, startled. “Creepy things?”

Jenny shrugged. She’d just redone her perm last week, and Viv quietly envied the perfect curls in her hair, wondered if she could scrape up the budget for a perm herself. “You know, creepy things. Perverts. Homos.”

Viv was more worldly now, after nearly two months at the Sun Down. She knew what homos were, though admittedly she had no idea how to identify one and no idea if she’d ever seen one. “I see lots of hookers,” she said, pleased that she’d used a worldly word like hookers. “No homos, though.”

Jenny nodded, taking a scoop of yogurt, and Viv felt like she’d passed a test. “The homos probably go to the park. Still, it must be creepy, working that place at night.”

Viv thought of the ghost woman telling her to run, the shove in the AMENITIES room. “Sometimes, yes.”

“Just be careful,” Jenny said. “You’ll end up like Cathy Caldwell.”

Viv wrapped her sandwich in waxed paper. “Who is Cathy Caldwell?”

Jenny waggled her eyebrows dramatically and put on a Vincent Price voice. “Murdered and found under an overpass two years ago. Stabbed to death!” She dropped the dramatic voice and went back to her regular, bored one. “She lived down the street from my parents. My mother calls me every week. She thinks I’m going to be Cathy Caldwell any day because I work nights. It must be rubbing off on me.”

“Was she working a night shift?” Viv asked.

“No, she was coming home from work,” Jenny said, dipping her spoon into her yogurt. Viv could smell its sour-milk scent. “It terrifies my mother. She thinks she’s going to get a midnight phone call: Your daughter is dead! Oh, and don’t go jogging, either. That will turn you into Victoria Lee, who was killed and dumped on the jogging trail on the edge of town.”

Viv stared at her, sandwich forgotten. Something was tightening in her chest, like a bell tolling. “What? You mean there’s a murderer in Fell?”

“No.” Jenny seemed sure of this. “Victoria’s boyfriend did hers. It just makes us all scared of jogging. But Cathy Caldwell . . .” She widened her eyes and waggled her eyebrows again. “Maybe it was Michael Myers. Or, like, that story about the babysitter. The killer is inside the house!”

Viv laughed, but it felt forced. She remembered the man who had put his hand on her thigh when she was hitchhiking. How she’d realized that he could leave her in a ditch and no one would ever know.

“Okay, no jogging trail,” Viv said to Jenny. “I don’t jog anyway. I’ve never had anyone bother me at the motel, though.” Even Jamie Blaknik the pot dealer was nice, in his way.

“No one has bothered you yet,” Jenny said in her practical, no-nonsense way. She looked Viv up and down. “I mean, you’re pretty. And you’re alone there at night. We single girls have to be careful. I don’t leave the nursing home at night, even to smoke. You should carry a knife.”

“I can’t carry a knife.”

“Sure you can. I don’t mean a big machete. I mean a small one, you know, for girls. I was thinking of getting one myself. And then if one of those old guys at my work gets creepy—whammo.” She mimed jabbing a knife into the countertop. Viv laughed again. The only stories Jenny told about being a night shift nurse in a retirement home were that it was boring, and old people were weird and useless. Jenny didn’t seem to like very many people, but tonight Viv was in her good graces.

Jenny left for work, and Viv bustled around the apartment, getting her last few things together to go to the Sun Down. The TV was still on, and the segment on the news featured a beautiful brunette anchor with the words on screen in front of her: SAFETY TIPS FOR TEENS. “Always go out with a friend if it’s after dark,” she was saying from her beautifully lipsticked lips. “Use a buddy system. Never get into a stranger’s vehicle. Consider carrying a whistle or a flashlight.”

Viv turned the TV off and went to work.

* * *

• • •

At her desk at the Sun Down, wearing her blue vest, she pulled out her notebook in the deserted quiet. Using the meticulous penmanship learned since first grade in Illinois, her letters carefully swirled with feminine loops, she wrote: Cathy Caldwell. Left under underpass. Victoria Lee. Jogging trail. Boyfriend?

She tucked her pen into the corner of her mouth for a minute, then wrote: Buy a whistle? A flashlight? A knife?

Outside, she heard a car come into the parking lot. She’d expected this; Robert White, the fortyish man cheating with the woman named Helen, had checked in half an hour ago. Alone, with no luggage, as before.

Curious, she put her pen and notebook down and slipped out the office door, taking a quick trip to the AMENITIES room. Helen’s Thunderbird pulled in and parked next to Mr. White’s car, and as Viv watched through the crack in the AMENITIES doorway, Helen got out. She was wearing a one-piece wrap dress of jewel blue that set off her short, styled dark hair. This time Mr. White opened the door before she could knock. They smiled at each other and then he followed her into the room, closing the door behind him.