roundly thereabout

. . . continued from current bearing . . .

	Meandering through free days, on-the-spot lodging decisions are made beyond face value — as much about how many rooms have small grills by the doors as a general mood surrounding the premises. Shifty or sluggish, most are simply existent, expecting & offering nothing.  

Some require a further cash deposit to defend what’s left. You don’t report things like running toilets or leaking air conditioners when checking out in the morning — you just wait in the office while they inspect the room for something worse than the patched walls. There’s always a little anxiety when they return behind the plexiglass until they actually hand back the cash. It’s a feeling of microcosmic exoneration; humiliating yet vindicating, cancelling-out to suspiciously move on, bail returned.

You wonder if the room cleaner’s five bucks left under the TV remote made them trust you. 

	10PM. Outdoor walkway between vending machines & my non-smoking queen. A man is stopped in a sweet blunt fog. As I pass he says Nice boots. I’m a trucker. I’ve been all over. Seen a lot of boots. Those are nice.

I told him how I got them: a lifetime ago in an airport duty-free shop on the way out of Sydney Australia — how I wore them for the flight & they felt tight — how I didn’t wear them again for twenty-five years, but then tried them on again & they fit just right & looked brand new — how I felt strangely younger in them.

The man pointed his blunt downward & said I don’t know about all that, but I’m a trucker & I know nice boots & those are nice boots. 

	When the property & guests alike appear as though they were once something more, time is stopped in collective mid-repair. 

A few decorative upgrades in the large empty lobby play along like a raspy melancholic exhale. Maintenance workers take a smoke break lounging with lodgers at a patio-poolside construction site, ongoing & overwhelmed by the gravity of what just won't return to how it seemed, but all festively surrendering.