Nefarious Muse

He liked the town, so small, barely an exit off the highway, it was hidden from what he knew, was perfect.  He checked into the Coltrane hotel because it had a restaurant attached, having pulled up in the predawn minutes and needing a cup of coffee.  It was good so he got a room.  Twenty-seven.  He didn’t even lie about his name to the clerk, just told him he would be there for a week.  The hotel bed was comfortable, the window had a view of rolling tobacco fields, there was a decent bar within walking distance.  He knew of no reason to leave.

In the mornings he would go downstairs and buy a paper, which he would read sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee, every article no matter how mundane.  Once finished he would return to his room and get to work, filling up the pages of his notebook until his stomach urged him back downstairs.  On sunny days he would keep the curtains closed.  He found a jazz station that came in and out of frequency depending on how the wind was blowing, the clouds in the sky.  He didn’t smoke that whole first week.  The room phone never rang, and he never picked it up.  He kept his cellular in his bags at the foot of the bed.

At the restaurant, he occasionally talked to the waitresses, his favorite a big woman named Maddy.  She talked about her former husband who spent time working the fields until a stroke fell him one day in the middle of a brutal summer twenty years prior.  She never remarried, but went to the unaffiliated church a mile off the interstate.  She invited him every week, but he didn’t take her up on it until she told him about a revival they were having.  He sat in the back and tried to not move in the heat.  He stood when everyone else stood, didn’t sing but let those songs come over him, and some people came down with the Spirit and he envied them.  Maddy never charged him for coffee.

He didn’t drink much, but walked to the bar every other night to be around people, even though the only people he talked to were the bartenders.  He would have a couple, three beers and pay his tab and walk back to his room, sit on the bed and drink water from the bathroom sink and watch the small television, simply turning it on and not noticing what was being broadcast.  One night a man a decade older offered to buy him some drinks if he told his story, and after a moment of thought he relented.  The man asked if he was Irish, and he told him probably.  The man showed him the shamrock tattoo on his chest he wore honorably.  He had a wife who was in South Carolina because her mother just died.  He met her, his wife, on the internet and was having second thoughts.  He liked the man, though he couldn’t remember his name, simply called him Irish.  Three drinks in Irish noticed two women at the end of the bar who were drinking wine and smoking, talking in quick words, and Irish dragged him down to them.  Both were in their thirties, same as Irish, one with dark hair and a barely noticeable black eye, the other a redhead with a nice ass.  Irish started talking to the redhead.  To the brunette he apologized.  She would not break eye contact and that made him uncomfortable, so he told Irish he needed to get home and left without buying the woman a drink.  Halfway on his walk home, he noticed he was tipsy, and by the time he got back to the room he calculated he had had three beers and three shots and it made him sad that was enough to do him in.  He tried to sleep but couldn’t.  He turned on the television to a low volume but that old trick didn’t work.  He found a channel broadcasting a preacher from Texas with perfect hair and an annoying smile, bright teeth.  They showed views of the audience, the place the size of a football stadium completely full to capacity.  The preacher talked about love, how he couldn’t live without his beautiful wife who they showed in all her plastic glory.  The preacher loved his wife and thanked God every day for her, and that coupled with the drink drove him to get out of bed and get his cellular from his bags and turn it on for the first time in close to two weeks.  The last time he did so it had been silenced for three days.  He had many missed calls from a handful of people, several voicemails and texts and he knew it was unwise but he listened to, read them all.  She missed him, he learned from four people before her own voice came on.  She was sorry.  Then his roommate Shirley started talking.  She missed him, too.  People had been asking about him.  She wasn’t worried about the bills, he’d left her more than enough money for those, plenty extra for her and her young son.  Neither she nor the boy were his, but he loved them like they were and that was all.  She said his girlfriend kept calling, and he didn’t even whisper “ex”.  When she got back in town she came directly to their apartment looking for him.  She was in tears, and Shirley let her stay in his bed, crying.  Shirley made her tea and tried to console her.  He turned the television off and turned on the jazz station.  It came in and out.  He called Shirley, who picked up on the fourth ring, saying hello in a deep, sleep filled voice, having not even checked to see who was calling.

Continue reading ‘The Coltrane Hotel by Chris Deal’