David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

The box of plastic gloves was still atop the dresser. What on earth did they use those for? She shuddered to think. Everything she saw fed her outrage. She didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, she didn’t like it

“Open this door or I’m coming in,” she called. In truth she had no way to get in short of a hacksaw to cut the chain and she thought, pot for the first time, that all the locks in the motel needed to be changed to ones that she could control. But for the expense, she would have done that job long ago. If George were the least bit handy, he could have done it. Even then he would have complained, of course. Siding with the tenants, as per usual. Babbling on about privacy and tenant rights. George and his precious privacy. Nobody needed privacy unless they had something to hide, Reggie thought. Thinking of George only made her angrier and she pounded on the door.

“Right now!” she demanded, and, as if on command, the man stepped out of the bathroom and faced her.

At the first knock Ash was off the floor from his station by the door and into the bathroom in three strides, bundling Bobby in his arms like a loose package of so many sticks of wood, his hand clamped over the boy’s mouth. His shoulder brushed the plastic garbage bag that Dee had brought home from work and it fluttered from the dresser to the floor.

The woman was yelling and Ash was panicked, but he knew what to do; Dee had taught him, he had done it before. He was to stay out of sight, simply stay out of sight until Dee returned. She would take care of it, she always knew how to take care of everything. Ash just had to hide with the boy until she came home.

Ash stood in the bathroom, clutching Bobby tightly to him, as if for protection. Everything was going to be all right, he whispered to the boy. Or he thought he was whispering but then wasn’t sure if he wasn’t just doing it in his mind. Bobby’s eyes were staring at him over Ash’s hand clamped over his mouth. As the boy wasted away his eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger and now they looked enormous. And frightened.

The woman was yelling again. Ash made sure he spoke aloud this time as he whispered, “Don’t be afraid, this will be okay, she’ll go away and Dee will come back and take care of us.” Bobby’s eyes seemed to show understanding and Ash did his best to smile.

Then it was the woman again. Threatening to come in! Ash didn’t know what to do, but he knew for a certainty that he couldn’t allow her to come into the room. No one had ever actually come into the room before. When they came to the door Ash had just taken the boys and hidden until they left-but if she came in… He could not let her in. It could not happen. He must not let it happen.

Ash placed Bobby in the empty bathtub.

“Don’t make any noise,” he said.

Bobby nodded his head. His eyes seemed to fill his face.

“Please, Tommy. Please, please, please. No noise, no noise.”

Bobby squeezed his good luck medal. He looked as frightened as Ash felt.

Ash closed the shower curtain, leaving the boy standing in the tub, the medal held in front of him as if to ward off witches. The big man left the bathroom, carefully closed the door behind him, then turned to face the woman who was yelling at him. He could see only one of her eyes peering through the crack of the outside door.

“Open this door, please,” she said, but the “please” sounded like a threat.

Ash stared at her, uncertain what to do.

“Hurry up, now,” Reggie insisted. “I’m the owner, let me in.” The big man just stood there, staring at her. Reggie could not believe his size or the kind of bovine stupidity on his face. It was like looking into the eyes of an ox.

“What?” he said finally, the sound rumbling up as if from some cavernous depth through a passage seldom used.

“What?” she repeated. “Well the bedspread, for one thing. Where is the bedspread?”

He swiveled his big head slowly toward the bed. To Reggie’s chagrin the spread was there upon the bed where it belonged. Now they were trying to play tricks on her. It had been gone, she knew it.

“You’re not allowed to take that out of the room, you know.”

He was looking at her again, his movements slow and studied, as if he were moving under water. Reggie thought he must be on drugs. One thing was certain, this man was nobody’s husband. Certainly not Dee’s. Certainly not that sharp, sly, energetic young woman’s husband. She would. just as likely be married to a steer in a feedlot. And if he wasn’t her husband, then Dee was lying to them. Reggie didn’t know what the woman’s relationship was with this huge oaf, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but it wasn’t marriage and that meant she was lying, and if she was lying about one thing, she was probably lying about everything.

Reggie pushed at the door in annoyance, jolting it against the chain. The man was startled. As if I could force it open, Reggie thought. Just as stupid as he looks. And one thing was obvious: he was frightened by the thought of her coming in. Not just resistant; he was scared.

“What are you hiding in there?”

“Nobody,” Ash said. He shook his head from side to side to demonstrate his innocence.

Reggie squinted her eyes, studying the giant. Nobody? Why not nothing?

“You let me in right this instant.”

“I’m sick,” Ash said.

“I have a right to come in there and I insist that you open this door right now.”

“I’m sick,” he repeated.

“I can call the police if I have to,” she said. “Is that what you want me to do?”

Ash closed the door in her face and sat with his back against it while his mind raced in panic.

Bobby heard the woman’s voice angrily haranguing Ash and he pulled back farther from the shower curtain until the coldness of the wall tiles against his back startled him. At first he knew only that his friend was in some kind of trouble.

The hostility in her tone was unmistakable and it pained and frightened the boy to hear someone treating his friend that way. There was another fear, less well defined that seemed to hover in the air, intensified in the seclusion of the bathroom, grew stronger still in the enclosed space of the tub behind the curtain. He had felt it in the first flurried moment following the initial knock on the door, felt it when Ash swept him into his arms, felt it when the big man pleaded-needlessly-for Bobby to remain quiet. It was a fear that was transmitted to him directly from Ash, but one that he harbored on his own, as well, and only now, trying to hear Ash speaking to the woman, did Bobby understand what the fear was. He was afraid of getting caught, of being found out. Ash’s fear. Dee’s fear was Bobby’s own. He crouched in the corner of the tub, as far from the door, and discovery, as he could get.

From his vantage point among the trees George could hear Reggie squawking at someone in cabin six, really going at it with the kind of rage she normally reserved for George himself. He had taken his stroll through the neighbor’s parking lot, making a return loop when he heard his wife’s voice rising in the distance. He reentered his woods just to the side of cabin six. He moved closer to the cabin now, careful to keep out of Reggie’s sight. He did not want to risk having that outrage turned directly at him. It was dangerous enough to witness it from a safe distance; a man could get hit with a stray invective even while hiding behind a tree.

George saw the door shut in her face. And then the volume really turned up. She used her key and pushed with all her weight against the door, but something was blocking it now. Whatever it was, if it had ears, George figured it would be deaf in a few seconds. Or it would wish it was.