Morning begins with pest control rapid response skidding in to the rescue. The driver hops out & runs around a fence & into the surrounding woods. When I head to the motel lobby for checkout, I make sure my door is locked. There’s a fifty dollar cash deposit on the room — I need the complimentary fly left alive.
The desk clerk leaves briefly for a damage inspection, then returns & passes a crisp fifty through a plexiglass slot after noting the scotch tape still on the bath drain & the doorframe intact. When I pass the room again on the way back to the minivan, the fly is inside, at home on the window.
After scouting for untainted caffeine, speculation begins early with a confident pass at $2.85/gal. The dashboard sucks in The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues.
I’ve always gone quiet from the pangs of its weight, particularly by the song And a Bang on the Ear. & this afternoon, when the player spits out the disc, the stereo itself goes mysteriously silent. The display lights disappear. Even the radio plays dead. I push a few buttons, but just let it go & crack a window, smolder in the white noise & remain lost in lost time. Today's entire six-hour descent includes a generously pointless timezone change blown at a motel strip dotting a ganglia of business parks on the outskirts of Music City. En route, I exit on a hunch near a cluster of gas stations past a Road Work Ahead orange diamond. The jackpot is $2.59. I get back on the interstate, 80°F windows all the way down now, & pass a 2.69er & a shouldered semi with a tire on fire. I’ve beaten the cosmos.
Approaching the motel, late-afternoon traffic is slow, but civil — surprising from my history in this town: