Write-On Prompt: Staying on the Road

Note: It was prompt night last night (2/15/22) at the Write-On Writing Group. We had a list of prompts last night to choose from that included "Write about an argument" and "Write something that includes the color red." So I combined the two. I am on a stretch of traveling both personally and professionally, so I guess the feeling on being alone in a hotel room was in the back of my mind.

Staying on the Road 

The desk clerk at the hotel was an Indian man who spoke in broken English from a mouth with broken teeth in a hotel with mostly broken amenities. Ice machine – unplugged. Air conditioning on life support. Television, four channels, all of which were in Spanish. Pool drained. Shower leaky. Key card defective.

“Enjoy your stay,” the clerk had told Harold, probably assuming only a person that enjoys inconvenience would follow through with staying the night there.

Harold grumbled a thanks out of habit.

“You are always soooo damn polite,” Susan shouted in his mind. “Tell that idiot this place looks like it fell out of his butthole.”

“What good would that do?”

“Maybe it’d inspire him to pick up a mop or something.”

“I doubt it.”

Harold had these conversations in his head all the time with Susan. The bickering little back-and-forths that had marked their twenty years of marriage. After a few minutes, his key card found the right spot near the door handle for his room, a dim green light flashed and there was a croaking sound. He grabbed the handle and the lock gave way.

The room reeked of stale marijuana and old cheese. The bedspread was a dark red with an even darker red spot about the diameter of a basketball in the middle.

“Jaysus,” Susan’s voice sounded. “Call the cops, we found the crime scene.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Yeah, if you were staying in Baghdad, maybe.”

“Where was I supposed to go?”

“How about the Holiday Inn five minutes down the street?

“Who do I look like, Donald Trump?”

“Jaysus,” Susan’s favorite expression sounded again. “All I am saying is you might as well sleep in the dumpster; it would be cleaner.”

Harold dropped his bag on the floor. It had his change of clothes for the conference the next day. He attended a dozen conferences a month these days, peddling his company’s shit while wearing a wrinkled suit and thinning hair. None of the young kids wanted to hit the road like this, shake hands with a customer, look a man in the eye when he gave him his word. These kids couldn’t sell water to a dying man in a desert.

“You’re kidding yourself,” Susan replied to his thoughts. She was always only a moment away from interjecting. He went to the bathroom, turned the handle for warm water on the sink and something brown spewed forth from the faucet.

“I know sales.”

“You don’t know, jack. Those kids make a dozen sales with emails while you’re trying to find a parking spot.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Jaysus, this doesn’t have anything to do with sales.”

“Oh yeah, Ms. Smarty, what’s it about then?”

“You know.”

Harold looked in the mirror, his sad eyes refusing to meet the reflection. He’d been on the road for the better part of the last two years, stopping at home only long enough to retrieve bills and use the washing machine.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he whispered, unbuttoning his shirt and removing his belt.

“You stay on the road so you don’t have to admit that I’m not at home.”

He turned off the bathroom light, wanting a hot shower, but assuming the water here would probably only make his skin itch or burn. Plopping on the bed, he switched on the TV, a bunch of masked Mexican wrestlers jumped about on the screen.

“I miss you.” He said to the empty room. 

 

Pandemonium Season 1, Episode 5: Jailbreak (1991)

 

The walls of the kitchen were like a vise squeezing in on Maggie as she juggled a hot casserole pan and a barrage questions and comments winged at her from both directions. Richie was stuck on her medical issue, and RJ was trying to get the story on Richie’s suspension. And both were answering for her.

“He told the teacher what?”

“Will they cut your boob off?” 

“No, Christ, Richie.” 

“Get bent.” 

“Don’t say that to me, boy!”

“No, that’s what I said to the teacher.” 

“You both should take a break to eat something.” 

“Will all your hair fallout?” 

“Well, she doesn’t have much hair left.” 

“That’s true.” 

“Why the hell did you say that?”

“Well, it is true.” 

“No, why did you say that to your teacher?”

“Oh, that.” 

“He was washing his hands.” 

“Who?” 

“I was.” 

“When?” 

“When he should have been in class.”

“Do I have to go to your appointment? I can see the germs from here.” 

“Don’t start in on that shit!”

“That’s what got us in this situation to begin with.” 

“What?”

“You got a lump from the germs? I knew it!” Richie jumped from the table and went straight to the sink, poured a quarter of a bottle of dish soap on his small hands and turned the water on full blast. 

“Stop that,” Maggie shouted. “Washing your hands for twenty minutes is what got you in trouble, I didn’t get a lump from the germs.” 

“Christ!” RJ said. 

“Oh,” Bubbles were floating from the sink and into his hair. 

“I have had it with this shit,” RJ stood, grabbed his son by the elbow, and dragged him away from the sink.

“Hey, that hurts.” 

“RJ, stop that.”

“You are going to spend the next two weeks getting over this once and for all. We’ve spent thousands of dollars at the shrink and that hasn’t worked. Now, it’s my turn, I am going to break you of this washing business if I have to beat it out of you.” 

“RJ!” Maggie yelled, but her husband was lugging Richie from the kitchen and down the hallway to his bedroom. The boy was screaming, and her husband was listing all the things he was taking away. TV. Books. The record player. Candy. Soda. Anything that could be named, RJ was shouting it, not that Richie could possibly have heard him. Not that it mattered anyways, come five in the morning, RJ would be out of the house for twelve hours leaving Maggie to be the warden of this prison he was creating. Typical of him, set a bunch of rules that he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to enforce, putting her in the position of dealing with her angry son or dealing with him when he came home to find most everything had returned to normal. 

RJ plopped Richie on his bed. 

“You’ll stay in here and think about what I just said.” 

“I hate you!” Richie’s face was beat red, his eyes filled with tears, and his hands were still drenched in water and soap. RJ slammed the bedroom door, behind it something heavy and hard hit it. 

Maggie eyed her husband, who was wearing a dirty t-shirt and blue jeans. His stomach pushed at the seams at the shirt. He was still basically fit, but the years and the beers were catching up with him. 

“Really.” 

“I’m done coddling him.” 

“You think taking everything away just a few hours after finding out his mother might have cancer was the right move?”

“Someone had to do something.” 

She wanted to slap him. That damn line: “Someone had to do something.” He had said the same thing to her the night they had met, seconds after he leaned in for a kiss. 

“What was that?” she had asked, flirting at the time with the sounds of Led Zeppelin roaring from the bar’s jukebox. 

“Well, someone had to do something,” RJ had said, grinned and kissed her again. 

That felt like a thousand years ago, and the charm of the line was completely lost on her now. She followed him back to the kitchen. She had met RJ Glenn when she was in college, and he was working construction on a bridge at the edge of campus. He had walked into a bar one Thursday night while she was filling the jukebox with quarters to play about two hours of Zeppelin. That was enough to win him. He was young, bronzed from working outside, and still had a hint of bad boy gleam in his eyes, that little gleam she’d learned later he’d inherited from his father, the real bad boy of the family. RJ and his father had never got along, and even though RJ was determined not to make the same mistakes as Ricky Dean Glenn, he was doing a grand job of finding all kinds of other mistakes to make. 

“You can’t just expect Richie to stop because you say so,” she said. 

“Why the hell not? I’m his father.” 

“Because he can’t control it no more than you can control having to go to the bathroom. It’s his compulsion.” 

“Oh, don’t get me that psychobabble, if we give him some tough love, he’ll change.” 

“No, he’ll get worse.” 

“Whatever.” 

“So, are you going to stay home and enforce all these rules for the next two weeks?”

RJ eyed her. Their arguments had verged on the precipice of violence for the last few weeks, both too proud to admit part of their anger was fear over her prognosis. Neither could admit that much like their son, their emotions compelled them to behave in certain ways, and this tension brought out the worst in both of them. 

“Fine, do whatever you want,” he said. “I’m going to the bar.” 

He stormed away.

“That’s just great, and who is that just like?” She went to the sink, finally turning off the water, and didn’t bother to listen to his reaction. She knew where to hit him where it hurt. Running had been Ricky Dean Glenn’s specialty, and any comparison to Ricky would just spur RJ’s anger. Maggie didn’t cry, she just put her hand to her heart and then felt a little lower to that alien being clinging to her body, the one that reminded her that when life felt like it was going completely to shit, there was always something worse just waiting around the corner. She squeezed it like a zit, but the damn thing wouldn’t pop. Maggie didn’t cry. She never cried.