Walter Mosley_Leonid McGill_01 by The Long Fall Page B

elevator. On the right was a clear plastic cage where there sat an emaciated and sallow-skinned white lad whose eyes had seen more years than he had actually lived.
    The young man didn’t have a proper desk. He was seated on a swivel stool at a turquoise ledge that jutted from the ochre wall. When I cleared my throat he stood up and approached the plastic barricade that sealed him away from danger. I was thankful for the barrier, certain that if he got a whiff of the sour odor of garbage on my clothes he wouldn’t have given me a room.
    “How many nights?” the old-young man asked. He was wearing a blue shirt and blue pants but still the colors managed to clash—with each other and with the dirty yellow walls.
    “Let’s start with one,” I said.
    “Thirty-six ninety-six a night, including tax,” the impossibly skinny and long-faced kid announced. “Two-night minimum. The second night is a deposit against damages. That’s seventy-three ninety-two. Cash, no check.”
    “What if I gave you a credit card?”
    “Huh?”
    “Never mind.”
    “There’s an extra fee of ten dollars,” the kid droned on, getting back into the groove of his spiel, “if you have guests.”
    “No guests for me,” I said.
    Some feeling must have escaped with those words because the kid gave me a closer look then. He seemed to be gauging me, but I wasn’t concerned.
    He opened a sliding panel in front of him and placed a pen and registration form down on the plastic top, closed the panel, pressed a button, and then gestured for me to lift the panel on my side. I filled out the sheet, using the name Carter, with an address in Newark, New Jersey. I placed four twenty-dollar bills on the sheet and slid the panel closed (it locked shut immediately).
    “Keep the change,” I told the kid.
    He didn’t crack a smile or even nod in thanks, but I didn’t mind.
    He passed the keycard over for room 4B and flipped a switch that opened the elevator door. I didn’t even have to push a button to go to the fourth floor. The kid did that, too, from his remote control.
     
     
     
    I’VE BEEN IN third-class cruise-ship cabins that were larger than that room. Just one big bed that ended a few inches from a sliding, hollow pine door that opened onto the toilet. Standing at the sink, my butt was in the shower stall. To look out the window I had to get on my knees on the bed.
    On the bright side, Jonah’s two blows hadn’t even caused my jaw to swell. It really didn’t even hurt all that badly. I took two aspirin and a shower, lay down on the mattress, which felt hard like rolled canvas, and fell into a light doze.
    The dream was oddly altered in that cubicle room. Fire blazed all around me but I wasn’t frantic. My flesh was burning but that was of no consequence. When I got to the smoky glass I just pushed it out, effortlessly. On the other side, standing in blue sky, was the kid from downstairs. He gave me a calculating look and I waited for his request. He opened his mouth but the sound that came out was not in words; it wasn’t even human. It was a kind of electronic static. This sound slowly transformed into an insect-like buzzing. I wondered if the alarm clock was going off, if it was morning and I had slept through the night. But I hadn’t set the alarm. When I sat up I realized that the noise was coming from a telephone that had been left on the window ledge next to my head.
    The buzzing stopped and I wondered who could be calling. It started again and I answered, “Hello?”
    “Mr. Carter?”
    “Who is this?”
    “Jimmy from downstairs, sir.”
    Sir?
    “What do you want, Jimmy?”
    “I was just wondering if you needed some company.”
    “What kind of company?”
    “You know,” he continued, “a girl.”
    A girl. Jimmy had called to offer me a girl. I realized that I had moved from a light nap into deep sleep. I was confused about the material world but quite lucid in my mind.
    “How much?” I asked.
    “Hundred bucks a half