Francis Wise in The First Person
part I
part II
part III
part IV
part V
part VI-
lay Lady lay, lay across my big brass bed...
I WOKE UP AND I COULD SEE. I wasn't in my apartment. It was a hotel. Or a motel. A hammer pounded in my head, but I could see. And I could hear. Cars outside; we were facing a road, so yes. It was a motel, by definition. We?
There she was, still sleeping beside me. She was alive too, breathing quick and shallow. The same way Lydia slept, but this wasn't Lydia. It was Madeline, the wife of Nick Tarantino---Nick Toronto or Toronto Nick, whichever you prefer. She slept with her long, damaged hair draped across her face, unwashed and in clumps like wet hay. The sunlight bled into the room through the cheap motel curtains as a yellow haze that lit up her cinammon roots and again I thought about how beautiful she must have been before anybody knew her.
I lifted the starched motel sheet off me and sat up. I didn't have pants on, only my boxers. I was hard and, frankly, surprised. Morning wood, as it is known when we are kids, had not happened to me in a while. With a young and similarly disrobed woman in bed beside me, you might draw certain conclusions, but I wasn't sure yet. For the moment, I couldn't remember.
I stood up and the bed squeaked and jostled with my weight. Madeline murmured and sighed. I stood and stretched my back, smacked my mouth---it was hangover dry---and rubbed my belly like it was every other morning. With each second the dread grew in my mind, and I found myself staring down, not just marvelling at my erection but also wondering just where in the hell my pants were. I opened the cheap motel curtains to see what could be seen.
It was the motel on Morse Street, outside of town. I knew exactly where we were at the moment I looked across the street to the Omlette House. It was the motel on Morse Street, where I had had my first sexual encounter, many years previously, with the lady cop who was now known as Sgt. Jessica Hernandez. It had to be a motel; she was married at the time and I was involved with an overwrought actress named Lane. These women, I thought, and the intersections I make. It's all been about them so far, hasn't it. I might have even whispered "These women" from my spitless mouth.
"Don't stand there they'll get you," she purred. I couldn't tell if that was directed toward me or whomever she was dreaming of. And that's when it came upon me, the location of my pants. I crossed the motel room and into the tiny bathroom---a toilet, something of a lavatory area, and a shower I couldn't fit into sideways. Piled in the tub were my pants and my shirt, as well as Madeline's. The blood had dried on them. The tiny pool of stagnant water in the tub's lowpoint was stained pink, as was the off-white plastic of the tub itself.
"Francis. Where are you?" Madeline called from the bed. Slightly alarmed? I couldn't tell, but at least she was awake now. And at least I could now remember what had happened the night before. Madeline leaned against the door frame behind me. Her hand pressed warmly against my back. "So..." she began, and her voice cracked. "So...how much trouble are we in?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "It depends on who's still alive."