Excerpt from: “No Vacancy”

“I might’ve broken his arm,” he said.

I felt a rising thrill in my throat.

Lester headed for the water valve against the wall. He removed his flannel shirt, held it under the hose. I noticed a dark copper bloodstain on the sleeve.

I never had anyone care about me so much as to hurt another person only because they hurt me. I thought there was no going back after this. Once someone broke an arm for you that meant they were yours forever. You had a dad. He wouldn’t slip out in the middle of the night months later. He wouldn’t leave a note on the front desk like a guest would leave a set of keys, a note that said only SEE YA with no explanation, no forwarding address.

Even now, it’s a flood of motorcycles going past that reminds me of him. My mother has long since stopped her vigil at the plate-glass window. She has a new husband now; her motel has the ocean of rooms she wanted, the inground pool. She says she’ll make me part-owner someday, now that I’ve finished school. We don’t talk of Lester or of our dog Lucy, who met her fate with a semi on Route 23. I don’t have anyone to talk to. Nights, I go out in the parking lot and look down at the thruway, never void of light. It’s when the bikes roar past that I can’t help but wonder about him. The sound of their engines ripping over asphalt like they’ll keep blazing past this town and never stop—I hope that’s what pulled him away. Not a gun, not a rope but a fast machine all his own on a good, long road.

(2005, LIT)