EDVARD TUSK: without his face

Pablo D’Stair

[Part 2]

I’d forgotten how cold it was outside, the slight wind across the nearly carless lot bracing, causing me to slink to the corner by the restaurant’s entrance door and the newspaper vending machines to do up my coat better.

I turned my back to the lot, cupping hands around cigarette in my lips to get the lighter to catch, eyes watering, tingling all along their surfaces from the chill. It was when turning back to head over to the motel I noticed—it took a moment, he was now in coat, scarf, hat, gloves, a striking alternate to his previous appearance—the man in the tinted glasses was just at the end of the walkway, shielding himself to the building corner, getting his own cigarette going.

He was having a considerable spot of trouble, crouched over in agitation to protect the flame, the smoke not yet going when I looked away from him to the thin smattering of cars, wondering which he might belong to.

I fixated on a stout red van, rust discoloration above one wheel, chuckling at how I was considering this fellow, who had done absolutely nothing wrong—hadn’t even done anything out of the ordinary, had used the toilet and eaten a late meal at a restaurant, just exactly the same as I had—some sort of degenerate, a ghoul in a crumby red van, a lurking perversion of some sort. ‘Idiot,’ I muttered, sniffling to find my nose running, only my sleeve to give it a quick clean, ‘you need to go to sleep.’ I nodded.

Yes. This observation was correct. Needed to call Justine and go to sleep, my fatigue getting to that dangerous point where it would prompt me to stay awake if I didn’t actively force myself in to bed—my mind would flip around until I’d somehow fell I needed to last the night out in vacant staring at television screen or pacing the room I’d make putrid with smoke before passing out at the first honest sight of the morning sun.

I dropped my smoke, stepping it out with harsh twist of toe, staring still at the scabby van, a last little, somewhat forced, grin and sniffled giggle while saying, ‘Same as me, yeah, except I did it with my eyes open, of course.’

It startled me to find the man was no longer where he had been when I looked for him, a jolt to my system the same as if I’d turned to find a stranger suddenly looming over me, my heart rattled in my ribs and I took an instinctive in breath that went bad, roughing a coughing hobble out of me.

There was moisture in the air, the area around the streetlights buzzing with it, color to the dark sky, undercoat of bruised pink, signs of a coming snow I rather wished would start—it’d lend reason beyond claiming illness to get out of driving the next day, reason enough for any sensible person to say to me ‘Don’t bother coming out then, it’s no good to drive in such weather, stay put and then head back home, I’m sorry for the headache.’

Justine was not a sensible person, though, and the shrill, knifing tone I’d given her voice in my interior imitation was evidence of how piercingly I thought so.

‘Then don’t sleep, you’ll lose even more time,’ would be her more probable response, ‘maybe you can get ahead of it, the roads will be clear of drivers overnight, maybe even more so from no one wanting to risk the drive.’

I squinted at the sizzle of wet around the orange lot lights, willing it to thicken to a gentle sway or tumble of snowfall, then grimacing I turned to spit, aiming at some discarded fast food bag but missing it entirely.

Ahead of me, as I looked up, he just then coming in to clear view under the furthest streetlight, the one at the curb lip before the motel lot, was the man, his arm extending out beside him a jab, an arc of the lit tip of his now down-to-the-stub cigarette visible in the dark as it spun away from his finger flick, landed on the pavement, smoldering wink of it disappearing.

‘Of course he’s staying in the same motel, of course he is,’ I hiss whispered in a kind of absurd, sarcastic way while at the same time doling out to myself the logic of how correct a remark it was: It was midnight, this was a rinky-dink diner all but affixed to the motel, every patron in there was likely a guest. Same as me.

The few cars parked in the restaurant lot—and the van, which I glanced to in particular—were all either those of the employees of the restaurant or else of guests in the motel.

‘Obviously,’ I sighed, small belch following the word, then another, shifts of heavy air down inside me, ‘obviously.’

Yet still, I regarded the form of the man’s back with an edge of skepticism, a particular need to have it, that back, this man, specifically explained. Everything about him was oblong and backward to me.

It felt as though he was approaching me rather than I getting nearer to him, as was the case—my pace was faster, hence I got closer, but it had the flavor like he was walking in reverse to meet me, the sensation as irresistible as it was irrational.

I stopped a moment, truly expecting him to do the same, but he just kept on, half way down the motel lot by the time I gave up trying to get another smoke going and began to trod on.The Motel Delon the place was called—though the sign bore a smaller, trademarked symbol of a national chain, as well, and the signs on the highway indicating its presence had identified it by that brand—a four story set-up, train tracks beyond it, highway on-ramp beyond those, my room on the third level.

There was an elevator, but after pressing the summon button I decided against it, started up the stairs—the set in the middle of building, other sets at either side—first slouching against the railing then, abruptly, making myself take the flights and turnings at a hurry, completely winding myself between the only fifty steps it could have been.

I steadied myself on the top stair, nauseous, spit and felt certain I was going to throw up. Nothing. Nothing. Spit again, roughed my face and stepped forward to the railing, tensing my abdomen, giving my neckside a squeeze, looking out across the lot I’d just walked, saw the diner, more distant than it seemed it should have been.I discovered that apparently the man was staying on the same floor as me—there he was, all the way down the end of the row, seemed he’d come up the set of stairs at that end of the place and, like me, was now leaning to the railing, his stance, like mine, uncomfortable, though a different tenor to his apparent unease.

I watched him digging his knuckles in to his left temple, eyes closed as if against physical pain, rubbing and even hitting himself on the side of his head in little jabs. A curl of pity passed through me and I averted my eyes abruptly, went to my pocket for my room’s keycard, verifying the number on the envelope slip it was contained in.

As I looked up, starting to move to my door—right in the centre of the half of the building between myself and the man—I found the man was now walking right towards me, highly agitated, his left leg jerking with each step.

I didn’t slow, some instinct instructing me not to seem like I was put off by him, though his sudden twitchiness was unsettling, his lumbering form on approach feral seeming for his still closed eyes and one fist pressing his forehead, his wide steps, shoulder to building wall then hip to railing, rising a cluster of anxiousness in me, animal tendrils of caution replacing the brief waft of sympathy from just a moment before.

I wound up arriving at my door, inserting the key exactly as he leaned hard—forearm to door, head to forearm, grubbily trying to get his keycard from his coat pocket—to the room door just next to mine. I got my door closed, latched, but did not move from just behind it until I heard he had entered his room, his door obviously closing without his aid, a sharp slam like mine had when I first entered after check in—like all the doors did, I imagined, if one did not guide them shut with fingertips or shoulder side—and through the wall I heard the percussive noises of a chair being moved, shoes, it seemed, being thrown on the floor or table or against the opposite wall. Then quiet.