Derailed

THIRTY-FIVE

Okay,” the deskman said. “How long you want it for?”

This deskman was the very same one who’d given me the key to room 1207 back in November when I’d stood in front of him with Lucinda on my arm.

I was back at the Fairfax Hotel, and the deskman was asking me exactly how long I’d be needing room 1207 for.

Good question.

“How much is it for two weeks?”

“Five hundred and twenty-eight dollars,” the man said.

“Fine,” I said. So far, I was on paid suspension. And $528 was a bargain in New York City, even if the room had bloodstains on the carpeting and the stink of sex in the mattress sheets.

I paid in cash and received my room key. There was a pile of magazines sitting on top of a beat-up couch, the only true piece of furniture in the lobby. I stopped to peruse them: a Sports Illustrated from last year, a Popular Mechanics, two issues of Ebony, and an old U.S. News & World Report: SHOWDOWN IN PALM BEACH COUNTY . I took the Sports Illustrated.

I rode the elevator with a man wearing a University of Oklahoma jacket who actually looked as if he were from Oklahoma. He had the slightly bewildered look of a tourist who’d fallen for the picture on the cover of the brochure — the one taken in 1955, when the Fairfax wasn’t being subsidized by federal welfare checks. He’d probably tried his hand at three-card monte and already purchased a genuine Rolex watch from the man on the corner. He looked like he was ready to go home.

So was I.

But I was on a mission now, so I couldn’t.

For just a moment as I was opening the door, jiggling the key inside the somewhat resistant door lock, I couldn’t help tensing up and waiting for someone to blindside me into the room. No one did, of course, but that didn’t stop me from sighing in relief as soon as I made it inside and shut the door.

It looked a little smaller than before, as if my imagination had given it a size more commensurate with what had gone on there. But it was just a room in a cramped downtown hotel, big enough for two people who pretty much intended to stay glued to each other, conducive to sex if for no other reason than its restrictive dimensions. The kind of room where two is company but three’s a disaster — remembering what it was like to be stuck in that bird’s-eye seat on the floor.

I lay down on the bed without taking my shoes off and closed my eyes. Just for a few minutes.

When I woke, it was nearly dark.

For a few seconds, I had no idea where I was. Wasn’t I home in bed? Wasn’t Deanna next to me or downstairs whipping up something tasty for dinner? And Anna — chatting away on-line in the next room, homework spread out on her lap like a prop to throw me off the scent?

There was a musty odor in the room, mustier even than my furnished apartment; the mattress felt hard and lumpy at the same time; the ghost images of a chair and table I didn’t recognize were hovering precipitously by the foot of the bed. And I finally woke to my current surroundings as to a radio alarm that’s been set too loud — I groaned, winced, and looked furtively for a stop button that didn’t exist.

I got up and made my way into the bathroom to splash some cold water onto my face. My body felt like pins and needles, my mouth dry and pasty. I looked down at my watch: seven twenty-five.

I’d slept the whole day away. When I walked back to the bed, I saw the Sports Illustrated I’d taken from downstairs lying on the floor.

I saw the date.

November 8.

One week before I’d walked onto the 9:05 to Penn Station and my world had come tumbling down.