David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

The woman came out of the cabin as soon as he approached, closing the door behind her. Reggie could see her lift her head in laughter, hear the sound of it ringing across the grounds. She must have said something funny, Reggie thought. She certainly couldn’t be responding to George, who hadn’t said anything original in a couple decades at least. Reggie could tell what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth, and, often as not, she could tell she didn’t want to hear it. Which was one of the reasons they spent so much time in silence nowadays.

There was nothing silent about the woman in number six, however. She was one of the talkiest women Reggie had ever seen. And so good natured that Reggie sometimes had the urge to ask her what world she was living in. She was a pretty thing, if you liked that type with the shortish dirty blonde hair. More brown than blonde, of course, but Reggie, whose own hair was a faded pink, did not hold the use of artifice against anyone. A girl did what she had to do. Still, the woman actually seemed like fun and if she weren’t a guest, Reggie might have liked her.

She never allowed herself to really like any of the guests because she didn’t trust them. They always wanted something more-more blankets, more towels, more channels on the TV. As if they had pulled off Route 78 and into the Ritz, not the Restawhile. And they treated the cabins as if they were kept clean by an army of Puerto Rican maids, not just Reggie herself. And George, of course, when he felt like catering to the fancies of pretty guests.

Look at him now, leaning against the post supporting the phony porch roof, arms folded in front of him so the towels flopped down like some sort of high-waisted breech cloth. As if he had anything to cover up. Leaning and smiling and chatting away like a teenager. She wished a gust of wind would come along and blow those carefully arranged remaining hairs atop his head into disarray. He was so vain about those silly, forlorn-looking white scraps that he composed so meticulously each morning. As if they hid any of his shiny scalp. As if they fooled anyone but him. Reggie was forgiving about cosmetic deception for women because that was how that particular game was played and you played the cards you were dealt, but in men it seemed nothing more than the last crow of the dying rooster. She wished she had a video camera so she could tape him and then make him watch himself acting like a foolish old man for the benefit of this young woman. No fool like an old fool, and none bigger than George Lampert.

Now he was returning to the office. Reggie busied herself behind the counter. She could have made it into the next room and settled herself in front of the television before he reached the office if she had wanted him to think she hadn’t been watching. By staying behind the counter she could keep him in doubt. Maybe she’d watched him, maybe she hadn’t. A little uncertainty would help keep him in line. The trick was to not let him think he was getting away with anything so he got cocky, but not to make him think he was spied upon so he got rebellious, either. Being a good wife required a precise understanding of nuance.

“She’s a pisser,” he said approvingly as he entered, letting the screen door slam behind him as usual. She had told him a thousand times. Just as he had promised to fix it several hundred.

“Oh?” Reggie did not bother to look up.

“Got more juice running through her veins than a dozen women. You know who she reminds me of? That girl on television, the spunky one who’s always getting herself into trouble, then getting out again. You know the one I mean; she’s on that show you like.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know her name, she’s on that show you like. What do you call it.”

“Who are you talking about?” Reggie asked, trying to conceal her annoyance. Just like him, to come in trying to cloud the issue with his very first breath, bringing in irrelevant people, television stars. Unless he was comparing her to a star now. She wasn’t that pretty. Or that young, either.

“Dee,” he said. “Full of piss and vinegar, she is.” He chuckled as if just thinking of all that piss and vinegar made him happy all over again.

“Dee? Dee? What’s-a Dee?”

“The woman in six,” he said, pretending he didn’t notice the acid creeping not very subtly into her tone. “We just had a chat.”

“Oh, is that right?”

As if you weren’t watching every second of it, he thought. As if you didn’t act like I was going to whip into one of the cabins and boff a guest every time I stepped outside the door. Well, this guest I wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t mind at all. I’m not so certain she’d mind, either. She was cute and bright and friendly and had a way of talking to a man as if she’d known him for years, as if she knew him so well she knew what he was thinking all the time-and didn’t disapprove of it, either.

“She seems like a nice person,” he said. “And she’s going to save us some work.”

“Oh?” Reggie liked the “us.” As if he did any work that anyone could notice.

“We don’t have to clean her room. She’ll take care of the linens herself, so I told her to just let me know when she wanted towels or anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her husband’s got a problem with his eyes. Opto, opto something or other, I didn’t get the name. He can’t take the light. It’s all tied up with migraines and such. She doesn’t want him disturbed. So she said she’ll do the cleaning herself. We don’t need to bother.”

“He’s sick?”

“Not sick. It’s a condition, he’s got a condition. It’s not contagious or anything. It’s just a temporary thing, it will clear up. You know how it is.”

“I haven’t got any idea how it is. She didn’t say anything about a condition when she checked in.”

“You’re not going to catch it,” he said, beginning to wish he hadn’t brought it up, not so soon after he had been seen talking to Dee, anyway. Reggie was bound to think it was some kind of trick. As if he were being manipulated and duped in some way. She was the most distrusting woman he had ever seen. He should have left her when he had the chance, before they’d sunk all their savings in this motel, while he was still young… Not that he wasn’t still young enough. He might take a hike to Utah at any moment. And maybe he’d take Dee with him. She must be getting pretty weary of being saddled with a husband with a condition. Not that you could tell it by talking to her. Not a whisper of complaint. Unlike some women he knew.

“In other words, we’re supposed to keep out,” Reggie said.

“She’s entitled to privacy, for Christ’s sake! The man has got a condition, he needs to be left alone. What do you care? It’s one less cabin to worry about.”

“It’s one cabin to worry more about, if you ask me. What’s she up to?”

“Maybe she keeps him naked and tied to the bed with the sheets. That’s why she doesn’t want you to change them, because he’d get loose and ravage all the women in the neighborhood.”

Instead of dignifying his statement with a response, Reggie pulled aside the curtain and studied cabin six. The curtains were drawn, the door closed. It might as well have been empty for all the signs of life it revealed. Number six was the farthest from the office of any of the cabins, and Reggie remembered now that the woman, “Dee,” had requested it especially. At the time she had said she thought it was the cutest, and in truth it did have rather better shrubbery in front than the others. The angle of its alignment had kept the sun at its back and consequently it had weathered less than the others… Now, however, Reggie wondered if it wasn’t simply that it was the farthest away from scrutiny. “I told her it was fine with us,” George said.