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.