Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

Mom didn’t talk after we had escaped the rest stop chaos. She was so quiet that I kept looking in the rearview and asking, — Are you there? Mom? Still there?

I was kidding, but that only made her fainter. The sound of her breathing even disappeared for the rest of the drive. At the Comfort Inn, even as Mom got into the elevator with Grandma, she didn’t say good-bye.

My sister sat down on one of the brown lobby couches. Late as we were other girls were still arriving.

Nabisase looked most like a thirteen year old as she read the Miss Innocence contract; running a finger under each line; reading aloud.

The Miss Innocence pageant portrayed virginity as something sacred and I don’t feel like mocking them for it. I remember one of my freshman scholarships at Cornell demanded that I remain patriotic all the years until I died. In my own way I was trying.

How were they going to check and see if she was telling the truth about her hymen?

— They would trust me, Nabisase said, too serious for a child.

— I’m not trying to down you, I assured her.

This Comfort Inn was excited to host the pageant hopefuls. There were balloons of ever y color and clipped dogwood flowers in bowls. The lobby smelled like lemon rinds; from another part of the first floor I heard the thrum of a floor buffer on wood.

— Are you actually a virgin?

— Sure I am, she said.

— I thought you’d be insulted.

— No, it’s all right.

— Does it say in the contract that you can’t ever have done anything? Like with your hands on a boy or anything else?

— What could ‘anything else’ mean? she asked coyly. My feet?

— Never mind. Let me look at the paper.

She put it behind her back. — You can’t say that word? I’ll help you. It starts with a B.

— I’m not going to talk to you like that.

— You just asked me if I ever used my hands!

— Come on.

I tried to go around the side, but only managed to nip her elbow. She stood. She walked backward toward the exit doors.

— I’m trying to help here, I said. Just let me read it. Contracts are made to cheat you. They might have fines listed in the small print. $100 dollars for every French kiss you ever gave.

— How would they find that out? She laughed because her older brother was squirming.

— You’re like a nun now, church girl, you’ll probably tell them. Let me see it.

She held the contract up to one of the ceiling lights. — There’s a word you won’t say, but maybe it’s in here. Bl. Blo. Blow.

— Shhhh!

The desk clerk bestowed electronic key cards upon a father and mother as their daughters slapped at the buttons of elevators to make them race.

— Maybe I should ask Ledric to help me? she asked.

— He can only help you plan a big meal.

She said, — ‘Blow job’ isn’t the worst thing you could say to me.

I covered my ears. — If I was a judge and heard you say that word it’d be automatic disqualification.

— You shouldn’t worry about girls acting dirty, she said. That’s not the meaning of Innocence.

The Hampton Inn was accepting the other men; brothers, cousins, uncles, pals. For all the stridency about separating us Comfort Inn was on the same street, eighty-five feet away. There wasn’t a fence or even a line of trees. If there had been a natural barrier then at least wickedness would have to be an act of imagination, but boys could look out their windows and see right into any chaste girl’s room.

Besides the American and Virginian flags the blue and white Hampton Inn banner was stuck up on a pole in the parking lot. They charged $49 a night.

I wanted a shower, but first I walked across the street to the large twenty-four-hour convenience mart inside Sheetz gas station, where I found a bag of caramels to lull me through the night. When I went back to the Hampton Inn I found room 603 to be quiet except for the heater in the corner burbling in a deep voice.

There were two handbills under my door. I picked them up. I turned the shower on and took off my shoes; while I sat in the armchair beside the room’s single window the sound of hot water slapped softly against the shower walls.

‘Goodness Girls’ the flyer said. Those were the two biggest words, right across the top. Then there was a picture of a tiara, the diamonds in it badly oversized. A hand-drawing. Under the image there was a question, ‘Haven’t you always wanted to win?’

My love of horror movies, I can’t say how far back it started, but the books came first. I never read fantasy, my personality was more terrestrial. Misty marshes; deserted backwoods; an apartment closet that, whenever opened, exhales a sepulchral breath.

A muffled trumpet woke me at four that morning. Not a genuine instrument, but a children’s toy. The sound was from the hallway outside my room door. This was at four o’clock, the hour of grand regrets. I heard shuffling but was too tired to make sense of it. I looked at the time again. Four-twenty.

My curtains were open; I was sitting in the armchair. I could see there was still a lot of night to go before dawn. Maybe someone’s dumb kid was playing reveille in his sleep. One flyer was in my lap and the other was on the floor. The one that had fallen was water-stained.

My room was much hotter than it should have been even with the heater running through the night. Steam was coming out of my bathroom in bellows. Everywhere the carpet was wet.

Outside the room I heard sticks knocking together. I looked at the bed hoping Lorraine would be there. Still wearing my socks, my green suit, I walked on the wet carpet.

The shower must have been going three hours now; forget puddles, there were pools. I must have passed out sitting up; the bed was made.

Panic less, I told myself. Be calm. Go get more towels from the front desk.

I opened the hallway door. There was the idea of driving back to Queens but I’d given my real name and home phone number when checking in. Why hadn’t I thought ahead and used an alias; I wished I had a criminal mind.

The power was out in the hallway, which really started me shivering because I couldn’t ever work off a debt the size of a hotel-wide electrical failure. I touched the light switch in my room, but current wasn’t running. Had I blown the whole floor? Could I have destroyed an entire town while sleeping? My eyes adjusted in the darkness until I saw clearly that the hallway was full of dead soldiers.

— What?

I just stood in the hall asking, — What? What?

Four-foot-tall Confederate soldiers in those distinct gray uniforms. In the darkness I saw twelve. Shadows were shawls over their faces.

I said, — No thank you.

But they were children, not dead men. And far down the hall stood one grownup.

Just twelve boys dressed as Rebel forces and six more sat on the ground wearing Union blue. Some knocking short thin sticks together. One carrying a play trumpet. Half a dozen of the standing boys turned then shrank from me.

— We’re practicing, said the grown man when he reached me. He was slim, bearded and talked to me dispassionately. I thought, This guy has never been scared in his life. He wore a striped buttoned shirt and Hagar slacks. It wasn’t that he seemed tough, just easy.

— I didn’t know they used kids for wars anymore.

He smiled politely. The kindest way to deal with any stupid tourist’s questions. — We’re in the pageant this weekend.

— Miss Innocence? My sister’s a contestant. I didn’t know they’d have a marching group at the show, I said. Usually it’s just music.

— Yeah. There’s a band, but our boys show out at just about anything. They’d march before every baseball game if we let them.