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91,000. Neil Josten looked it up once, out of boredom. 91,000 hotels and motels in America. If motels took up even half of that, he’d have seen every one. It was quiet, most of the time, and he didn’t mind it that way.
At least 45,499, he thought, stepping out of the cab of the giant red truck. He waved as the driver pulled away, looking back once. He knew what kind of impression he had barely named, tired, refusing to sleep on the long drive. She side-eyed him as he asked to be dropped off at the shoddy turquoise motel, but Neil had found that people were willing to make up much more convincing explanations for his behavior than he could ever come up with. He switched his bag to his other shoulder.
The parking lot sat between a U-shaped building that held all the rooms, two stories and accessible via a long outdoor balcony that ran down the front. It was ugly and exactly like every other place he’d been. The sign in the window said $40 a night, but the sign on the desk said $45. Neil was running out of money. He wanted to say he was running out of time, but that had happened a while ago. He was still going, miraculously. Most days, it didn’t feel like a miracle.
It was whatever. Neil walked up to the front desk, trying for a smile. The middle-aged white woman looked up at him from where she was typing on her ancient computer. Neil huffed internally. It made it harder if he was going to cover up his tracks.
Some motels still used paper to keep track of guests, but they’d usually write it in pen. He’d spent more nights than he’d be willing to admit just tracing some old lady’s scrawl on a new sign-in sheet.
Luckily, looking at the woman’s screen, most of the entries just seemed to be on a spreadsheet. “Two nights,” he said, pulling out his wallet. He took out 5 twenty dollar bills and showed her Neil Josten’s ID.
She took them without a word and didn’t bother to look back at him, punching his name into the computer. She drops his change and a key on the counter between them. The tag said “Room 14”.
It took him a little while to find his room because the number “4” had fallen off the door. It is up the stairs, and his shoes drag a little on the rough pebbled floor. Neil dropped his duffel bag to fumble with the key. A man around his age held a lit cigarette, leaning against the railing a few doors down. He looked out at the vacant parking lot between both wings of the building.
The room was dark, but not dark enough to check for cameras. Neil didn’t bother flicking on any of the lamps. He dropped his bag near the door to investigate the bathroom.
It was small and yellowing, with a separate room for the toilet. He stuck a comb he found in the drawer behind the mirror, to make sure there was a solid wall behind it. His mother had told him he could never be too safe. He didn’t hear her voice in his head anymore as much, and he didn’t know what it meant.
There was nothing else of much importance, so he turned off the bathroom light and left, making a note to grab some of the soaps from the counter.
He lifted up the sheets and mattress to check for bed bugs. After inspecting them a little too closely, he plopped down on the ruffled covers and pondered his next move.
Neil was already too far east. He should leave the country soon, he’s stalled for long enough. A few years ago, it would have embarrassed him, spending the past six years drifting from coast to coast, telling himself he’ll leave as soon as he can see the Atlantic ocean. Up and down he’s gone, combing the states like he’s looking for something. He doesn’t want to leave, this much he’s accepted, and thus his urgency hasd died out with time.
He’d already been to Canada twice and had a brief stint in Mexico before he realized those were too obvious. There was a stash of money, one of the last ones he’d remembered, near an airport in Virginia, just two states up. It would be enough to cover an identity change and a trip to somewhere in South America. Hopefully, it would be relatively easy to find work.
The horrible urge to stay stirred in him again. It always did, it grew stronger the more time he wasted. What he was wasting it on he didn’t know, and what else it could be used for Neil didn’t think he knew either.
He made up his mind. He couldn’t spend any more time as Neil Josten. If he didn’t leave soon, he didn’t think he would be able to at all. Now or never, he told himself, fiddling with a loose thread on his shirt.
Before he could do any of that, though, he needed to cover his tracks. He didn’t do it at every place, just enough to make it hard to trace his path. Going up and down the country helped.
The office at the front had a camera, but the rest of the motel seemed clear. He didn’t know what kind of model they were or if they even worked, but Neil usually assumed things couldn’t be done so easily. He could probably slip in through the back, though he hadn’t checked around the building beforehand.
He doubted the footage would be checked at all, especially with how empty the parking lot was. Still, the best way to avoid suspicion would be to not cause any suspicion at all.
Neil knew what the easier option was, but there wasn’t a part of him that really wanted to do it. His life had never consisted of things he wanted to do anyway.
Neil shoved his bag under the bed and locked the door behind him. The man who was smoking on the walkway was gone, but the blinds in the window a few doors down were open.
Luckily, one of the housekeepers was loading sheets onto a cart outside one of the rooms.
Neil put on his most pleasant neutral face. “Excuse me,” he said. “I saw you have a computer at the front desk. Is it working?”
She looked up at him, a little surprised. “I think so, why do you ask?” she asked, a little suspicious. Neil couldn’t blame her.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Just wondering. My grandfather owned a place like this, and I always used to help him with it. I travel a lot, and a lot of places like this always have some kind of tech issues. He passed away a few years ago, so now I like to help out in his memory.”
He had lost her a little towards the end, but that was the point. She sighed, barely audible, and put on a clear “customer service” smile that mostly read as “leave me alone”.
“I’ll talk to Betty for you.” She paused to look between her cleaning cart and Neil’s purposely-overeager stance. “Why don’t we just go now?”
Neil followed her to the lobby–if the small, unpleasant room could even be called that.
“Betty, are you having any trouble with the computer?” the housekeeper asked with strained patience. “He said he worked with computers and wanted to help.”
Neil had not said that, but she probably wouldn’t realize it, considering the lines under her eyes. He didn’t correct her; it suited his needs just as well, if not too much.
Betty nodded at her a bit vigorously. “Yes, yes, the screen is too dark and the mouse doesn’t always work.” She looked at him. “Do you think you could fix that?”
Neil nodded and sat at the computer in the seat Betty vacated for him. The housekeeper sighed quietly again and closed the door behind her. The spreadsheet was open, and luckily there were 3 more entries added under him. He could feel Betty breathing on him from where she looked over his shoulder, so he clicked around on in the settings and typed a few things into the files to look like he was doing something. It was a risk, stalling so much while she watched, but he figured that if she couldn’t work out the brightness or plug in the mouse all the way then she was not going to work out what he was doing either.
He messed around for a while more until he heard her sigh from behind him. On queue, he let out a louder, more exasperated sigh of his own and swiveled to face her in the chair. “I’m sorry, but this is more tricky than I thought. I might be here a while. If you want to go find something else to do, it’s okay.”
He could see the relief ooze from her. “Oh, of course,” she said, turning to head into the back. “I’ll be here if you need anything.”
Neil clicked around a while after she walked away until the sound of presumably boiling water from a coffee maker started to drift through the open door.
Neil looked over his shoulder as casually as he could, and deleted his information from the spreadsheet and manually subtracted the money he paid from their total. There was a register on the counter next to him, but it might’ve been too loud for him to open without causing trouble. Neil ducked under the desk and plugged the mouse in all the way, and then fixed the brightness in the settings.
He was about to tell Betty he figured it out when another voice floated in from the back. An older man, no doubt an employee; he and Betty started to discuss something about someone complaining about a leak. They were loud, almost rudely so, but Neil saw his window and carefully opened the register. He made sure to watch the computer instead of his hands, though, hyper-aware of the single, glaring camera in the corner, pointed at the desk. If nothing, he was lucky no one had the sense to put it behind the counter instead.
Neil had to resist the urge to take more cash; his mother’s “gluttony breeds carelessness” echoed somewhere in the back of his mind, though it was quieter than he expected it to be.
Neil closed the register as gingerly as he possibly could and tucked the money into his sleeve under the desk. He stood and poked his head in the doorway, telling Betty he fixed the computer, and to let him know if there’s any other trouble. She had barely looked up at him from the conversation.
Giddy with satisfaction, Neil strolled back to his room. It was getting late and he had no plans for dinner, but he didn’t want to bother with finding the nearest store.
Neil laid down on the bed, his limbs starfished. He felt lost. Less than a week, and he’d be out on the cheapest flight he could find. He figured he would have to spend a day or two trying to get the last of his mother’s stash and a new identity.
Neil had no particular advantage in to being America, yet he was still far too attached to it. He was technically American after all, as much as he’d like to think he was British instead, his mother had him here, in Baltimore; they had mostly kept out of England because of some vague familial trouble his mother had with her own family. As much as he hated being close to his father, it was all he had known. For the most part, he had grown up here, checking the mattresses and sleeping in vacant apartments with his mother. All of this for so long and Neil didn’t know when he’d be coming back.
It wasn’t sad so much as it was hard. Some horrible, magical force of will had tied him down just enough for him to drift aimlessly but never leave like he should have. Neil told himself it would be over soon like he always did.
When he woke, about an hour later, he was hungry. Strangely, it was still relatively light out; the summer sun never seemed to want to set.
The room had gotten stuffy as he napped, so he took his stale, already opened bag of chips outside to munch on.
The guy from before was smoking again, and Neil couldn’t help but be comforted by the fact that someone was having a more pitiful dinner than he was.
Neil was greedily licking the flavor dust off of his fingers when the sad dinner guy spoke. “Are those chips really that good?” he asked, his voice a little flat.
Neil turned to him before he answered. He hadn’t gotten a good look at him through his periphery, unlike the other guy, Neil preferred not to stare at people intently while they minded their own goddamn business. He was around Neil’s height, wearing a white sweater under a black leather coat, which Neil thought was both a little too melodramatic and warm for their current situation. He seemed pretty strong, at least vaguely a good match for Neil, but he didn’t seem drunk enough to brawl. Alcohol was the only answer Neil could come up with as to why anyone would bother him and shitty motel and his stale chips on a perfectly good August evening.
“No,” Neil answered, pointedly licking his last finger. He hoped it would be enough to deter him.
It wasn’t. “What are you doing here,” the man said, his voice blunt and accusatory.
Neil wondered if he was supposed to know him. Maybe he was mistaking Neil for someone who wanted to talk to him. “Nothing,” he replied forcefully. “Why does it matter?”
The guy turned back to him from where he was looking over the parking lot like there was something to see. Neil should’ve stopped at “nothing”.“What is a guy like you doing alone here at a shitty motel in South Carolina?”
It could’ve been some sort of unnecessarily mean pickup line if not for the pointedly unfriendly tone. Neil was mostly offended for the hotel, though. Only he was allowed to call it shitty. “Enjoying my not-good chips and the quiet,” he said, narrowing his eyes a little.
Clearly, this guy couldn’t take a hint. “Are you cheating on your girlfriend?”
Neil was now offended for him and his hypothetical girlfriend. He could be alone at a hotel and not automatically be cheating on her. “No,” he said, a little appalled. “Are you ?”
“I don’t like women,” he replied. Neil didn’t know if that meant “gay” or “misogynistic and self-aware”.
“Can you leave me alone?”
“I don’t know, can I?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m Andrew. Do you wanna get out of here?”
Neil had gotten whiplash before, but not deja vu for it. Not until now, at least.
“Are you trying to sleep with me?” Neil stuck his neck closer to him, incredulous. He really didn’t like blunt people, mostly because they never bothered to hide their suspicion. Or have any semblance of manners.
“Only if you me want to,” he replied cooly. At least, Neil might’ve thought it was cool if he wasn’t imagining himself pushing Andrew off the balcony.
“I don’t,” Neil said, hoping that was it. It was not the first time he’d been hit on, but it was definitely one of the most bizarre. He never had trouble rejecting anyone, but it was always hard to gauge their reactions.
“Okay. What’s your name?” Neil suppressed a loud sigh.
“I said I don’t want to hook up with you.”
“And I said, ‘what’s your name?’ Do you still want to get out of here?”
“I have better things to do,” Neil replied, ignoring his question. He was glad he held such an unamiable tone; he could avoid giving away too much information without much trouble. Neil knew he would have to say something if he kept asking, though.
Andrew eyed him suspiciously. “Do you? Is it something other than looking at a parking lot and getting chip dust all over your shirt?”
Neil looked at his shirt instinctively, but there was no chip dust there. He looked back up at Andrew, glaring.
“C’mon,” Andrew said, walking in the direction of the stairs. Neil had no reason to follow, but he had no reason to stay, either.
Andrew walked down the stairs and towards the center of the building, to a maintenance room labeled “staff only”. The door was unlocked, and they walked right through it tothe outside of the “U” that it formed. This side of the building was even more barren, windowless and only adorned with a tiny ladder that lead to the roof. Andrew climbed it without a word, not bothering to look back to see if Neil was still there.
Andrew was halfway up the ladder when Neil decided he probably wasn’t going to kill him, and if he tried to Neil could just push him off. He knew there were things worse than death.
Andrew was waiting for him when he finally got to the top, notably not peaking over the side and opting to wait and see if he would come up. It was a little suspicious, but Neil figured he was probably too embarrassed to admit he was a little afraid of heights.
Once Andrew was satisfied with Neil’s arrival, he walked behind a giant air conditioning unit and sat down, leaning against it. Neil followed a little more cautiously, easing himself down as Andrew took a swig out of an open bottle of half-finished cheap tequila. They were a comfortable distance apart, but Andrew didn’t look at him. The sun was beginning to set, and Neil couldn’t help but think the view wasn’t half-bad: small grey roofs under a paling sky.
Andrew set the bottle down between them. “I’m not cheating on anyone, either,” he said, his voice cutting through the windy silence. “My brother is mad at me.”
Neil didn’t reply, but he wondered how that could constitute staying at a shitty motel in South Carolina.
“We live together. With our cousin. No one asked me to leave, but I don’t think I could stand Nicky trying to get us to work it out and the stupid look on my brother’s stupid face.”
Neil assumed Nicky was the cousin, but it didn’t seem like Andrew cared much about filling him in on the context.
“Nicky’s going back to Germany once Aaron leaves to go to stupid medical school with his stupid girlfriend. I told him I wanted to sell the house and go to Chicago with him, but he wants me to stay in Columbia by myself. He thinks I would have something better to do than babysit him through college a second time.”
“Do you?” Neil asked, finally. He was just going to sit in his room and flip through the television channels on mute anyway, he might as well try to get some real entertainment.
Andrew didn’t look at him or express any surprise at an answer. “No,” he paused, though it was long enough to be a full stop. He didn’t seem finished, so Neil didn’t interrupt. “But he says he, quote,‘wants me to live my own life.’ I asked him what he thought I was doing and he seemed mad that ‘living my own life’ meant sticking to him.”
“So he doesn’t want you to go with him. Why bother?”
Andrew side-eyed him like he was stupid. “A deal.”
Neil waited, not willing to act any more interested than he was.
“We made a deal in high school that I would protect him until college. We renewed the deal in college, but not after that. Apparently letting him have Katelyn and protection wasn’t enough.”
Neil really wished Andrew would brush up on his storytelling skills. “Are you going to explain anything or am I supposed to understand without any context?”
Andrew side-eyed him again, but he must’ve approved of his question because he went on. “The deal was my protection for his relationships. No girls, no friends, no mother.”
Neil wondered if Andrew noticed the giant red flag he planted on himself, and whether or not it was intentional. He didn’t care much for Andrew’s concerning behavior, though; it would just ruin the story if he pointed it out. He decided to move on. “So after college, you let him have his relationships and keep your protection?”
Andrew nodded minutely, his head still turned towards the view. The pale sky grew more orange.
“Maybe he doesn’t want your protection anymore,” Neil suggested, even though this seemed to be exactly the case.
“He doesn’t,” Andrew agreed.
“So then you know what you should do,” Neil said. “But you don’t want to do it.”
He expected Andrew to disagree, purely out of pride, but Andrew just gestured to the parking lot. “Hence the motel,” he said.
“How long are you running away from your problems?” Neil asked, if only because Andrew couldn’t possibly fathom how hypocritical it was.
“Not long enough. It’s only day two.”
The cloudless sky grew ever more orange. Blue melted into yellow melted into peach. Neil was struck with a profound silence. He wondered if he’d think about Andrew and his story on the plane, at the airport, years from now, in whatever country he ended up in. He wondered if he’d could ever know how it ended.
It was too much, almost. He wanted to ask what he’d do, or when he had to leave, but what came out was “Why?”
“My therapist says I should be more honest.”
“Your therapist?” He couldn’t imagine Andrew in some stuffy office talking to a white lady with a notepad, but then again, here he was, talking to Neil.
“She didn’t even say ‘honest’,” Andrew told him, ignoring his comment. “She said ‘open.’”
“I think she was probably talking about your brother,” Neil replied, though it was obvious Andrew knew. “Not random motel-goers on rooftops.”
There was an awkward beat of silence. “What’s your name?” Andrew asked.
“Neil,” he said, with no hesitation. He was expecting it anyway.
“That’s dumb,” Andrew said like he could’ve known he chose it. “Why are you here?”
It was such a loaded question, but only Neil knew what it was loaded with. He didn’t know how he should answer. Suddenly, he felt like he owed Andrew for his slew of earnestness. It was a bad feeling, one he did his best to avoid, more than fear or anger or sadness. Debt was the worst kind of weakness, especially that of emotional obligation.
It was such a loaded question, and what came out was “do you have your phone?”
Andrew seemed puzzled, but not enough to show it on his face. “No,” he said after a second. “It’s in my room. I turned it off after Nicky started calling.”
The orange light complimented Andrew’s growing red flag quite nicely. Neil thought that was bad enough to warrant at least a look. “Empty your pockets,” he told him, and Neil wondered if he was actually going to do this.
Obediently, Andrew placed everything in his pockets on the ground between them and handed Neil the jacket when he didn’t move. He trusted Andrew’s search of his own pant pockets, though he went through the jacket again himself. Once he was satisfied, he looked at the lighter and cigarettes between them, the only things they had uncovered.
There were only a few cigarettes left, and the lighter seemed fine, but Neil threw them so they rested far enough away on the roof. Andrew looked at him strangely but didn’t ask. Neil gave him back his angsty leather jacket.
“Are you ever going to tell anyone about this?” Neil asked, keeping the nervousness out of his voice.
“No,” Andrew said.
“Are you going to take me seriously if I tell you?”
“Yes,” Andrew said.
Neil inhaled the chilly evening air. The top of the sky started to darken appropriately, though the pale orange still illuminated the rooftops. “If anyone asks you about me, lie as much as you can. If it starts to get suspicious, try to deter them. And for the record, I’m sorry.”
Andrew looked at him, obviously confused.
“You’re fine with this, right? Information is valuable. If you know too much about it, they’ll try to hurt you,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“My dad is a serial killer,” Neil said. It shut Andrew up. He’d always wanted to say that. “Not, like, Netflix documentary serial killer, though. He kills people because he’s supposed to. It’s systematic.”
Andrew watched him like he was trying to figure out if this was an elaborate joke or not.
“I guess ‘murderer’ would be better. He murders people. He’s rich. It made him rich. Not rich enough to buy good enough accountants, though, because he’s in jail for tax fraud.”
Andrew didn’t reply, or rather, had nothing to say.
“You’re not going to find him though. No one knows he’s a murderer. It’s better if you don’t believe me.” Neil scooted closer and grabbed the tequila between them. “This is yours, right?”
Andrew nodded, dumbfounded. Neil took a swig. It strung his throat. He hadn’t had water since he woke up from his nap.
“That’s not the point, though,” Neil told him. He ignored the subtle look of disbelief look on Andrew’s face. “The point is that I have to keep running from him.”
“He doesn’t like you,” Andrew said, not really a question. Neil wanted to laugh. It was such a gross understatement of the biggest thing in more than 25 years of running that he couldn’t possibly express how it made him feel. When he thought about it more, he realized it was perfect.
“Yes,” Neil told him. “He doesn’t like me.”
Andrew nodded like he understood, and maybe he did. He grabbed the bottle from where Neil set it down and took a pointedly less-desperate swig than Neil had.
“The last time I saw him, he killed my mother,” Neil said, trying to figure out where to start. “She had taken me and ran. He was after us. I still went to school and stuff, but she moved us a lot. Enough to make it feel like nothing would ever be permanent.” Neil couldn’t think of a less cheesy way to say it, but Andrew seemed to accept it without criticism.
He nodded, looking at the horizon.
“He killed her. He hurt her and we ran and I watched her die. I was seventeen. I burned her body on the west coast and left the country as fast as I could.” Neil was surprised at how even his voice was. He knew he sounded a little disconnected, but he didn’t know if he or Andrew could handle it if he actually started freaking out.
“Fuck the west coast.” Neil gave him an incredulous look. If that was Andrew’s only takeaway, Neil wouldn’t have to worry about secrets at all. He didn’t know what Andrew had against the west coast, but it seemed like too much to ask.
“He got thrown in jail while I was away. I don’t think they knew where I was, because no one ever really came looking for me. I think they were preoccupied.” Neil took a breath, watching Andrew’s non-reaction. It was admittedly tough trying to communicate with someone whose expressions were so subtle. He couldn’t tell if it was learned or Andrew was just naturally that difficult. Neil probably wouldn’t have minded as much if he wasn’t telling someone his entire godawful life story for the first time ever.
“I came back because it’s harder for me to get around abroad. Either I stick out too much, or there’s not enough poor management and infrastructure to cover my tracks. The U.S. is good for its sliminess.”
That elicited a huff of amusement, but Andrew didn’t smile. Neil wasn’t trying to be funny, though, he was just being honest.
“When I came back, I didn’t see anyone looking for me. There was no indication they knew I was even here. It was good, I could hide in plain sight. I kept running, though, because I was too nervous staying still. Habit, I guess.” Neil paused. The orange started to fade back into yellow and white.
Andrew took another sip from the bottle in reply and handed it to him. He took another swig, more prepared for the sting.
“I have no consistent way of knowing what he’s doing or where he is. It’s like he’s still chasing us. I spent six years going from coast to coast. It was only supposed to be a year at most, but I kept stalling. I went up and down so it would last longer.”
“Why do you even like the U.S.?” Andrew asked, a bit rhetorical.
Neil shrugged. He didn’t have a better answer. “I,” he paused, trying to grasp the words. “I got soft,” he told Andrew. “I’m used to running, but I’m not used to being chased anymore. Six years,” he said to himself more than Andrew. “Six years and I’m not even dead.”
Andrew looked like he understood, and it pissed Neil off. He shoved it down, though.
“I’m going to leave. I’ve already run out of money and I need more to travel abroad. This is the last stop.” He thought he was done, but he added, “I’m doing the thing I had said I would do for six years.”
“What then?” Andrew asked, and Neil wished he would’ve said anything else.
Neil scrambled for the alcohol in lieu of a reply. The air grew chilly, nipping at his ears.
Andrew still looked at him, eyes narrowed in judgment. “Are you going to run forever?”
“I’m going to die before forever, Andrew,” Neil told him. He knew it was a cop-out, but there was nothing more to say. Andrew probably knew the answer better than he did.
“Hey,” Andrew said, watching him set down the almost-empty bottle. “Why are you here?”
Neil didn’t hesitate this time. “Because your therapist says you should be more open.”
“Is that all I am to you?” Andrew asked. “A second-hand medium for my therapist?”
“No,” Neil replied. “The entertaining part is watching you take her advice, not me.”
“I told you about a petty fight with my brother,” he said. “And you told me about how your dad is a serial killer.”
Neil nodded. “That’s more than a fair trade, I would say.”
Andrew looked at him, unamused.
Neil shivered through his thin, long-sleeved shirt. “I’m cold,” he said, absentmindedly.
Andrew took off his leather jacket and draped it on his shoulders insistently. Neil would be more touched if it meant he didn’t have to wear a leather jacket.
“Neil,” Andrew said, but he couldn’t finish his thought. Neil didn’t know what he would say if he were him.
“Andrew,” he said. “I don’t like running.”
Andrew looked at him. Neil knew what he was going to say. “So then you know what you should do,” he said, “but you don’t want to do it.”
“I changed my mind,” Neil told him. Andrew looked at him expectantly. “We should totally kiss.”
Andrew gave him a look that conveyed how stupid he thought the entire situation was. “Stay,” he told Neil, and leaned in.
The sky drained of its orange above the shitty motel in South Carolina.