Montana Motel Blues #4

She got into the motel a few minutes past midnight. She’d been driving for the better part of the day and she felt as much tired as excited for making it to Billings to start her new life. Her feet were pumping under the red nylon trainers as she got off the car. As soon as she opened the door to room 22 she could smell the strong odor of detergent in the air trying to disguise the distinct odor of vomit mixed with mildew and tobacco smoke. She wheeled her bag inside, closed the door behind her and stretched her back.  She took off her trainers and went into the bathroom. She turned the cold water faucet in the bathtub and sat on the edge of the tub running cold water on her swelling feet. She closed her eyes but she could still hear the hiss and roar of the interstate traffic in her head. She tilted her head back and flexed her muscular thighs and went into a trance. For a moment she thought she was falling with no one there to catch her. She opened her eyes and took a glance at her reflection in the mirror and that broke the spell. She dried her feet with a small towel and sat down on a bed and turned on the TV. She went through the channels without knowing what she was looking for. With no intent of watching TV she left a rerun of “The Dukes of Hazzard” on. She set the bag on top of a bed. The Western-themed bedspread released some dust into the air making her cough repeatedly. She paced the room impatiently, looking everywhere around her but with no particular target in sight. She reached into her hand bag and pulled out her cell phone. She checked for new messages and then started dialing. She peeked through the drawn curtains at the pitch black night and waited. When no one picked up she threw the phone at one of the beds. It bounced on the bedspread and fell swiftly to the carpeted floor. She didn’t bother picking it up. Instead she sat on the edge of a bed and opened her bag, digging around the small inside pocket until she found the small black box with the diamond ring. She opened the box and took the ring out which he had given her as a promise of his commitment. She walked over to the mirror and looked at the image of herself wearing the ring. She smiled briefly then began to panic. She took the ring off and looked at it and at its reflection in the mirror. She got angry for letting herself fall for a married man living almost 600 miles away and letting things get to this point. It took this long for him to make a decision that she wasn’t certain he would abide to without some struggle. In the meantime, in the last six years, her life stalled, waiting for him. She sat on the bed and started to play with her long curly hair and tapping her bare feet on the carpeted floor repeatedly. She felt her heart skipping. Was she really gonna do this? Break up a family? Was it all worth it? She reflected back on the six years since they met in Colorado at the Realtors Conference. She couldn’t find any reason to reaffirm her life to strangers, let alone to her frayed friendships and distant relatives in that period of her life. She felt that for them it was like she had ceased to exist. She felt powerless and more alone because of it. She threw herself on one of the beds with her arms stretched out above her head. She lay there flat and stiff staring up at the ceiling. She squeezed her eyelids tight together, trying to see herself with him, but couldn’t. Without opening her eyes she could sense her aloneness. She kept her eyes shut tight and pictured the life she missed these past six years. She leaped out of bed and put the ring in the box and caught a glance of herself in the mirror. She didn’t like the person that she had become and that it was staring back at her in the mirror. She threw the box at the mirror, shattering it to pieces on the carpet. She took her time cleaning up all the little pieces of the broken glass off the carpet fabric with a wet towel. After it was done, she took a deep breath and sat on the floor with her legs curled up and stared at the diamond ring on the floor for a while. “The Dukes of Hazzard” was still on the TV. She began to pack. Her cell phone rang in the middle of it but she kicked it under the bed. She knew it was him. She left it there for the maid to find it in the morning. She left the diamond ring next to the TV remote, with a note underneath, to pay up for the broken mirror. Outside, the moon was hanging low and orange on the horizon. The lights were out in all of the rooms. The motel neon sign was switched off and from inside the office only a glimmer of light was coming from behind the desk. She got in the car, turned on the engine, and drove off in a hurry, leaving a trail of gravel dust behind her. She had six years to make up for and the road was wide open in front of her.