The Sun Down Motel

Fell, New York

November 2017

CARLY

It took them four days to even realize Viv was missing,” I said. “Four days. Can you believe it?”

I was in the AMENITIES room with Nick. It was two o’clock in the morning. The candy machine wasn’t working, so Nick had agreed to take a look at it. He’d gone into the motel’s maintenance room—I hadn’t even known there was one—and come out with a toolbox. Now I was sitting on the ice machine while he poked at the candy machine in the tiny, closet-sized room. We’d found an old brick and propped the door open with it, because the door kept trying to close on its own.

“What do you mean?” Nick said. “No one called the police?”

“No. The papers said she likely went missing during her shift on the twenty-ninth of November. She talked to the guy who was on the shift before her, and that was the last anyone saw. Four days later, when the cops started looking for her, they found her belongings in the Sun Down office.”

Nick unscrewed something and the front of the candy machine popped open. “I’d say the staff wasn’t very observant, but then again I’ve been here for weeks. There’s barely any staff at all.”

“I know. Most of the time no one relieves me at seven in the morning. It makes me think that if I disappeared during my shift, no one would know.”

“I would know,” Nick said.

My cheeks went hot. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

He was looking at the candy machine and he didn’t notice. “I thought she had a roommate,” he said.

“The roommate’s name was Jenny Summers.” When Nick was focused on the candy machine, I could stare at his profile without him noticing. His profile was pretty much perfect when you looked at it closely. His blue eyes were set under a more or less semipermanent scowl, especially when he was concentrating. His nose was just right. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and he had a dark brown shadow of beard along his jaw and under his cheekbones. When he turned the screwdriver, mysterious and amazing things happened in the muscles and tendons of his forearms, and his biceps flexed under the sleeve of his T-shirt. It was time to admit I had a crush on the mysterious occupant of room 210.

Nick paused, and I realized I’d stopped talking in order to ogle him. I recovered and remembered what I was saying. “I looked up Jenny Summers today,” I said. Nick’s frown eased a degree and he went back to work. “Her name is still Jenny Summers—she hasn’t changed it. And get this—she’s in the Fell phone book. Because Fell has an actual, physical phone book.”

“I know,” Nick said, picking up his screwdriver again and flipping a switch on the inside of the candy machine. Nothing happened. “There’s one in the motel office.”

“There is,” I said, pointing at him in congratulations, though he wasn’t looking at me. “I found it in the desk drawer. There’s also a copy at the library. It’s like the Internet never happened in this place.”

“You have to get used to it,” Nick said.

He crouched down to pick a different screwdriver out of the toolbox, and the pose made his shirt ride a few inches up his lower back. I stared fixedly at that slice of skin and said, “Anyway, Jenny Summers is listed in there. I called her and left her a message, telling her I’m Viv’s niece. I also tried to contact the cop that worked on the case. I want to know why no one knew she was gone for four whole days.”

“She didn’t have friends, a boyfriend,” Nick said. “When you’re all alone, it can happen.”

“That’s the other thing,” I said. Beneath me, the ice machine made a random rumble, like a belch, and the inner workings clicked. It was weird, thinking about this machine making ice year after year when no one ever needed it. I waited politely until it was finished before I continued. “The news stories all described Viv as pretty and popular. And she really was pretty. But no one who is popular disappears for four days without anyone noticing. I mean, I’m not even popular, but I at least had to tell my roommate I was leaving college for a while. She would have thought I’d been taken by the Silence of the Lambs guy if I didn’t come home.”

“That’s now,” Nick pointed out. “We’re talking about 1982. It was different then.”

“Maybe. But why describe a girl as popular when no one even notices she’s disappeared? That doesn’t sound very popular to me.”

Nick scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe the reporter who wrote the story just assumed she was popular.”

“Because she was pretty? They just looked at a photo of a good-looking girl and decided she must be popular? Like a woman who’s pretty can’t have problems. She can’t have any depth. She can’t have any life except a perfect one.”

Nick glanced at me, amused. “Nice rant, but I didn’t write the article.”

I was talking his ear off, I knew, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I should probably shut up about Viv, but I was obsessed, I’d already told Heather all of this, and the longer I talked to Nick, the longer I could look at him. “Do you really think you can fix the candy machine?” I asked.

“No,” Nick said honestly, standing up again. The slice of skin disappeared, but a different slice appeared when he raised his arm and grabbed the first screwdriver, which he’d left on top of the machine. Was his stomach honestly that flat? “I can’t even figure out how it works in the first place. It has to be a few decades old. Have you ever actually gotten candy out of this thing?”

“No. I came in here to get a chocolate bar, because the machine says they’re twenty cents, which is insane. I put two dimes in and it just ate my money and made strange noises. So I figured it was broken.”

“Well, it’s been broken for a while. There’s dust on these M&M’s. This Snickers doesn’t look too bad.” He held it out to me, so I took it and he turned to the machine again, using the screwdriver to pry open a panel on the side. “I wonder if it’s jammed.”

“Jammed with what?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t see anything in there. But this machine is definitely not dishing out candy. Breaking in is your only option.”

I sighed. “All this work, and all I got was a dusty Snickers bar.”

“Don’t knock it,” Nick said. He inspected the panel he’d just opened. “Yeah, this is definitely broken. I’m surprised the thing is plugged in.”

I ripped open the Snickers bar. Because why not? It wasn’t that old—like, not decades old. A year or two, maybe. “My guess is that a repair person costs money. We do not spend money at the Sun Down. Not on new phones, not on electronic keys—nothing.”