Kal disconnected. The front desk attendant was opening and closing the doors on the printer one by one, trying to clear a jam. You and me both, buddy.
Kal turned his phone off.
“Can we get a second room?”
“I’m afraid we’re completely booked tonight.”
“How?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How are you completely booked on a Sunday night here?”
The man blinked. Kal regretted his tone, but not quite enough to make him apologize, not with the prospect of a single room with two queen beds in front of him.
“We have a wedding party and overflow from a conference at the hotel across the street.”
“So there really aren’t any rooms.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Does anybody else have any?”
“I could call around if you like.”
Kal thought of waking up his mom to tell her he was moving them to another hotel. She wouldn’t like it. She’d picked this one. “It’s fine.” He scrawled the vanity license plate number for his mother’s Outback into the space provided on the form: EVREST7. Even the walking wounded had their shtick to perform. “We’ll work it out.”
It took a long time to find a parking space, longer to wake up his mother and haul their luggage inside while Rosemary chirped cheerfully about American hotels and snack machines and badgered the front desk attendant into giving her twenty dollars in quarters in exchange for a bill she’d fished out of her purse.
“This is a nice hotel,” his mom said of the room. “We’ll share this bed.” This comment she directed at Rosemary, who agreed, unflappable.
It wasn’t until his mom disappeared into the bathroom with her toiletries that Rosemary widened her eyes and drunk-whispered, “We’re sharing a room with your mother.”
“I noticed.”
“I thought we were going to have sex.”
“You’re talking too loud.”
“I’m going to go find the vending machines.”
“Cool. Take a key.”
Rosemary slipped a plastic card into her pocket and sashayed away.
“It’s room 202,” he said to the sliver of the closing door, because she was far enough gone he wasn’t completely sure she would find her way back.
Kal slipped out of his shoes, changed into the loose pants from Kathmandu and a T-shirt, and laid down on the bed. Through the bathroom door, he could hear the taps turn on and off. His mom would brush her hair and teeth, wash her face with POND’S cold cream and wipe it clean. Her routines were predictable, but he hadn’t predicted she would want to be here doing this instead of any of the literally dozens of other things she could have been doing.
She was having fun at least. Rosemary seemed to be, too.
He couldn’t figure out why it pissed him off.
His mom emerged from the bathroom in her pajamas. “Where’s Rosemary?”
“She went for snacks.”
She turned out the overhead light, sat down on the bed, and got under the covers. Her eyelids were pink around the edges, the only reliable sign that she was blitzed out of her gourd. “Good night, Kalden.”