Checked Out
The following story by Brian Eckert was originally accepted for publication by XRAY Literary Magazine, but the acceptance was withdrawn shortly before the story was scheduled to be published. The reason given for the decision not to move forward with publication was a “conflict of interest,” though the editors did not offer clarification on the nature of the conflict to the author or to Misery Tourism.1 We’re publishing the story as part of an ongoing series of unpublished (and otherwise censored) works.
Checked Out
I.
Todd sat behind the counter of the Days Inn on a dreary, drizzly winter afternoon checking the night log.
The hotel was only one-third booked. It’d be a relatively quiet night. Todd hoped it would pass quickly, because he was off tomorrow, and it was supposed to be warmer and sunnier. He planned to take his girlfriend hiking in the mountains.
Todd was on the home stretch of a 60-hour week. He hadn’t been off since the previous Wednesday, nine days earlier.
Shortly past 3:00 was the afternoon’s first check-in, a high-strung athletic type with Colorado plates on his Subaru. Then there was an Alaskan couple headed through to the Southwest for the winter. At around 4:00 a thick-skulled, barrel-chested, heavily-tattooed Mexican man checked in.
“Upstairs okay?” Todd asked.
“Whatever, man.”
The Mexican unloaded several bags into room 207, running like a cat to avoid getting wet as the rain started coming down hard.
Todd was under no illusions about the types of activities that went on in hotel rooms priced at under $60/night. But this particular Days Inn had a 7.6 (“Good”) rating on Trip Advisor, also making it a tremendous value for the budget-minded traveler. While the lobby had been modernized, the rooms mostly retained their 70’s era quirks, which were either in or out of style depending on the year, and so not worth replacing.
In a time when online customer reviews went a long way towards determining an establishment’s success, the efforts of hotel desk workers did not go unnoticed. In fact, Todd had replaced a girl who on three occasions was described as “rude” by reviewers (and once as “insolent”).
These fuckers, thought Todd. Who did they think they were with their reviews? Did they think they were Rick Steves with their goddamn write-ups?
One asshole had gone on at length about the closing mechanism for the curtains being broken, and a Skittle under the bed. A fucking Skittle. He left a 2/10 rating.
The reprobates, at least, had the decency to not leave bad online reviews.
Todd busied himself with the buffet area condiments. He put out a fresh jug of ice water, brewed a pot of coffee, and watched part of a TLC special about Bigfoot as he swept stray crumbs from the dining area tables.
The evening’s final reserved guest checked in shortly past 6:00. Drop-ins were always possible, though.
He got a call from Room 104 that the heater didn’t work; Room 214 complained about a guest’s barking dog. Overall, however, it was a quiet night, quiet enough that he could read from the newest Terry Goodkind novel and send out a 9-part Twitter thread about the shortcomings of the latest Thor movie while knocking back several cups of coffee.
The mechanical hum of the traffic and the sporadic rainfall drumming on the roof set him at ease. Midnight passed. Only five more hours. On nights like this, caffeinated in the closeness of the night, things weren’t so bad.
II.
An old Chevy pickup swung into the Days Inn parking lot in front of Room 112. The truck was driven by a dirty-blonde and vermin-faced man named Tuck.
Next to Tuck in the passenger seat was an Indian whore named Sheila. Tuck was there with Sheila to buy crystal meth. He’d gotten high earlier in the afternoon and was starting to come down. He smoked a cigarette in the cab. Sheila looked at the dashboard, not saying anything.
“Remember our deal,” said Tuck, opening the truck door.
“Yeah,” said Sheila under her breath.
“What’s that?” said Tuck.
“Yeah,” said Sheila, louder this time.
Tuck took a look around the parking lot before climbing the staircase and knocking on the door to Room 207. A shadow appeared over the peephole. The door opened and a powerful-looking Mexican man stood facing Tuck, who quickly entered the room and pulled the door shut behind him.
“Sit,” said the Mexican, pointing to an upholstered chair. Tuck sat.
The Mexican stood in front of a king size bed that had a duffel bag and a shotgun on it. The Mexican also had a silver-handled sidearm tucked into his jeans waistband.
“What you need, bro?” said the Mexican.
“One gram,” said Tuck.
“That it?”
“Yeah.”
The Mexican reached into the duffel and took out a baggie. Tuck handed him $60. They made the exchange.
Tuck returned to his truck with the gram of meth in his pocket. Buying this way was a rip-off. He usually paid no more than $30/gram. But the Mexican reliably had decent stuff, and there was no other option at this hour.
“You get it?” said Sheila, perking up.
“Yeah. Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where we gonna go? I want to get high. Let me get high and then I don’t care where we go.”
“Goddamnit. Have a little patience. A smidgeon.”
“A pigeon?”
“Smidgeon. SMID-JUN.”
“What the hell’s a smidgeon?”
“I ain’t got the time to sit here and explain it. I’m driving somewhere.”
“Explain while you drive.”
“For chrissakes, you really want to know?”
“Tell me.”
“A smidgeon is a small amount.”
“So why not just say ‘a small amount’?”
“Everyone knows what a smidgeon is except for you.”
“Your language has too many words for the same thing.”
“Ain’t yall’s people got 50 words for ‘snow’?”
“Not us. My people only have two words for snow. But we have many words for ‘water.’”
“Well congratufuckinlations. And we got many ways of saying, ‘a small amount.’”
By now they were chugging down the main drag in Tuck’s Chevy, which thanks to modified pistons and an improved intake system made close to 300 horsepower. Tuck did not believe that discretion was the better part of valor, as evidenced by his muffler volume.
“I want some of that McDonald’s breakfast,” said Sheila. “Will you buy it for me? I mean, later.”
“Hell, I wouldn’t buy you a gas station hot dog,” said Tuck.
He pulled behind the auto parts store. It’d changed from NAPA to Pep Boys to O’Reilly. He turned off the engine but keeping the heat on. He wrapped a rag around the plastic baggie and crushed it in his fingers.
“You got that pipe?” he said.
Sheila had the pipe ready to go. She handed it to Tuck, not looking at him.
Tuck tapped some of the powder into the pipe. He put the lighter to the drugs and a chemical smell filled the cab. He inhaled deeply and held the hit with his eyes closed. His high reestablished, he lapsed into a protective limitedness. He had the drugs, he had the little Indian whore, and things weren’t so bad.
Sheila took her hit, then they each took two more. The white powder in the bag was sand in an hourglass. Hope remained until the last grain drained away.
Even as Tuck inhaled the rest of the drugs he experienced an emptiness as absolute as the empty plastic baggie.
“Come on, girl,” he said. “Do what I’m paying you for.” He took his cock out of his Wrangler jeans.
Sheila never made eye contact as she performed the task with the deadness of a winter’s night. She spit his load into an empty Gatorade bottle.
“Why do you always do that?” said Tuck.
“Yours tastes terrible,” she said. “I can’t stand it.”
“Boy, you’re a real discriminating whore, aintcha? You’re a goddamn cum connoisseur.”
Without the drugs there was no hope. The only thing he had to look forward to was possibly slapping the squaw upside the head. But the way she didn’t even react…was it worth it?
Tuck was cold. He began to shiver. The drugs chilled him. Sheila, on the other hand, tended to overheat from them. She unzipped her winter coat halfway.
“How much money you got?” said Tuck.
“Nothin,” said Sheila. “Anyway, you still owe me. How much money you got?”
“Five bucks for gas that’s got to last me until Friday.”
“You mean you don’t got money to pay me?”
“You said you’d work for ice.”
“And you don’t got no more. And you don’t got no money. What kind of man are you, anyway?”
His arm shot out and he caught her flush in the mouth with an open hand. The sound of the slap was like a bang snap going off.
Sheila retreated back into herself. She hated him, but she hated herself more, and took the slap with a sense of duty. Through him she expressed her self-loathing.
Tuck started up the truck and drove back toward the main drag. Nothing was open at this hour. Then Tuck remembered the hotel.
“What’re you doing back here?” said Sheila, the prospect of another hit allowing her to forget herself long enough to address him. “You said you don’t got no money.”
“I don’t,” said Tuck. “Not yet.”
He reached under the seat, took out a holstered pistol, tucked the gun under his shirt, and walked toward the lobby.
III.
Octavio sat on an upholstered chair in Room 207 polishing his Springfield Armory XD 40.
There was a knock at the door. Octavio stood up, tucked the gun into his waistband, and looked out the peephole.
A nervous looking tweaker stood outside. Octavio opened the door and ushered in the tweaker. He ordered him to sit in the chair.
“How much?”
“Two grams.”
“That it?”
“Yeah.”
Octavio had a large collection of his most popular denominations, one and two gram baggies. He also had a larger amount of product in a Ziploc freezer bag, as well as a digital scale.
He grabbed a one gram and a two gram bag and said to the tweaker, “You got something for me?”
“Weigh it, man.”
“What’s that?”
“Last time it was short, man. Weigh it.”
“This isn’t fucking Ace Hardware, homie. Comprende? Take it or leave it.”
“Fine,” said the man. “But everyone knows you short. Eventually it’ll catch up to you.”
“That a threat, holmes?”
“No.”
But Octavio’s gun was already to the man’s neck. Its polished metal gleamed in the sickly yellow hotel lamp.
“Here’s how this works. You come in, you say how much, you pay me, you get the shit, and you get the fuck out, okay?”
“Okay, man. Sorry.”
“Go on, puta,” said Octavio. He opened the door and gave the tweaker a kick in the ass as he scuttled out of the room like a cockroach.
He didn’t get another customer for an hour. The junkie didn’t exactly hold normal business hours. The junkie came to life after midnight. He usually got a rush of predawn gowed madness between three and four in the morning. Conveniently, at these hours, most of the world was fast asleep, unaware and unconcerned about what the junkies and the drug dealers of the world were up to.
Octavio turned on the TV and caught the end of the West Coast NBA game. The Los Angeles Lakers versus the Portland Trailblazers. LeBron James was with the Lakers now, apparently.
Octavio preferred fútbol, but settled on an infomercial for a kitchen knife that could cut through a two-by-four and still slice a red ripe tomato. A bearded man shouted excitedly and waved one of the knives around.
The hour of Ginsu knives and tweakers was upon him. People buying knives and drugs when they should be asleep in their beds. This was an America of meth and blades that few people saw, like the nocturnal mating ritual of a rare Indonesian lemur.
Octavio never stayed in the same room for more than one night. Tomorrow, if any drugs remained, he would go to the Motel 6 down the road. He rotated hotels to keep his profile down. His regulars always seemed to know where to find him. Tweaker news traveled fast.
Prior to slinging dope, Octavio worked in sales for a proprietary fasteners company, selling screws and bolts and construction adhesives. Despite the risks of his current profession, he found drug dealing to be far more honest than his prior career. In the dealing of drugs there was a perfect harmony between buyer and seller; between dope fiend and dope pusher. There were no hidden motives. One wanted money; the other wanted to get high.
As a salesman, he had to keep up the charade of claiming his company’s screws and fasteners and construction adhesives were the absolute best—that no other would suffice—even though he did not actually believe this.
Octavio was a repeat offender. Getting busted meant a lengthy prison sentence. But in prison, too, he found a greater deal of honesty. In prison, you stayed in your lane, and if you didn’t, you paid the price. The prison code of ethics, although barbaric, was nonetheless rigorously enforced, and this kept everyone in line. You knew what to expect.
On the outside, anything went. The people did not live by any code. It was chaos.
The knock at the door made Octavio jump. He muted the TV. The tweaker sat in the upholstered chair while his drugs were measured out. The knife peddler silently yelled as he sawed through a kayak with a serrated knife. Everything was in perfect harmony at the hour of Ginsu knives and tweakers.
Shortly before 2:30 he sold the rest of what he was holding to a sharp-dressed white boy who peeled off 100 dollar bills from a thick stack like he was peeling a banana. He obviously was a very serious man. Definitely not a junkie or a cop.
Octavio crawled under the covers and listened to the knife man expounding upon his product’s virtues. “This is the only knife you will ever need! It comes with an unconditional lifetime warranty, and if you call right now, you get a special gift of not one, not two, but three knives for the price of one!”
He did not doubt the salesman’s sincerity. Perhaps if he had felt as strongly about screws and fasteners and construction adhesives as the man did about knives, he could have made it in sales.
But on nights like this, when the dope sold fast and he didn’t have to deal with any crazy tweakers and he could get a bit of shut-eye before check-out, things weren’t so bad.
IV.
Todd was working on a New York Times crossword when he heard the lobby door open. A man walked in wearing an old light blue denim jacket slightly paler than his jeans.
“Good evening, sir,” said Todd.
Tuck leaned up against the counter and toward Todd.
“Listen to me,” said Tuck in a low voice. “Gimme the money you have on hand, and we won’t have a problem. I know there’s a camera in the corner. I’m just here asking directions, okay? You go get the money from the safe, or wherever it is, and you put it in a brochure, and you hand it to me, okay?”
Tuck straightened and made like he was adjusting his belt, showing his gun to Todd.
“There’s no cash, mister. This is a credit business.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Tuck. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Look, I can give you what I have on me, if it’ll help. I think I’ve got $54. Honestly, that’s the best I can do.”
At that moment, the phone began to ring in the lobby.
Octavio was cold. He needed another blanket. He phoned the desk. The phone rang and rang. No answer. Why wasn’t that little white puta answering?
He put on his shoes, slipped his keycard into his pocket, and walked across the corridor and down the stairs towards the front desk. He passed a truck with a form huddled in the front seat, knees pulled into their chest, possibly sleeping.
Everything at 3 am was miraculous as it leapt out of the darkness, creating its own light. He was oddly aware of the sound of each step. The night had an austere viscosity.
He stepped into the lobby and saw a man in a denim jacket talking to the puta. He approached the counter and waited his turn. Nobody said anything, so finally Octavo said, “Hey man, I need a blanket, man.”
“Just a second, sir,” said Todd and he walked slowly into the back room. When he was out of sight of the desk he sprinted to the emergency door in the back, pushed it open, and ran out into the night as fast as he could. An alarm started sounding in the lobby.
“What the fuck?” said Octavio, stepping around the counter to take a look and seeing the emergency door agape. The puta had run away, the racist little bitch.
Octavio helped himself to a blanket and a comforter from the back, plus a firmer pillow, and started back to his room. Due to the sound of the alarm, he did not hear the footsteps behind him.
Tuck crouched in the shadows of the stairs. As Octavio opened the door with his keycard and stepped across the threshold, Tuck made a run at the other man. He pistol-whipped him in the back of the head and fell on top of him inside the room.
Stunned but conscious, Octavio attempted to roll over and felt blows raining down on his skull. With all of his strength, he made it onto his side and flailed his arms wildly, temporarily dislodging his attacker. He leaped over the bed and picked up his gun from the nightstand. He cocked the weapon and stood ready to fire.
Tuck was faster. He squeezed off two shots into Octavio’s chest and the Mexican fell backwards onto the worn Berber carpet.
Tuck had not planned on shooting the dealer. This complicated things. Guests would have heard the shots and called the police. He had to move fast.
He looked hurriedly around the room and found the duffel bag under the bed. Inside was close to $10,000. Tuck returned to the truck and put the bag under the seat by his feet.
“Did you get it?” said Sheila.
“Get out, bitch,” he said. “I don’t need you no more.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“It’s freedom, is what it is.”
“I heard shots. What did you do? You killed somebody, didn’t you? I always knew you would get me in trouble.”
“I’ll shoot you, too, if you don’t get out of my truck.”
A door slammed shut on the second level. Octavio flopped against the railing, gun drawn, and fired at the truck’s windshield. He emptied his clip. Tuck slumped, bloody and dead, in the seat.
Sheila screamed. But more than the corpse next to her, she thought about the duffel bag on the floor at its feet. From the passenger seat she could not extract the bag, which was pinned under the body’s weight. She got out, walked around to Tuck’s side, grabbed the bag, and ran with it down the alley behind the Days Inn. She ran until she got to a small park, where she discovered the money.
McDonald’s opened at 5:30. Sheila ordered a full breakfast with scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, and hash browns. Her hand shook as she held a cup of coffee. She looked down and noticed a splash of blood on her parka. The cops would come looking for her.
Still, sitting warm in the booth, the bag of money beside her and Tuck dead, things weren’t so bad.