EDVARD TUSK: without his face

Pablo D’Stair

[Part 3]

To give myself the best odds of Justine not answering the call I still revolted against making, grumbling aloud ‘I don’t need to call you’ when I first took out my cell phone, I decided to run a shower, the idea to get as numb, as near to sleep as possible so my urge to become argumentative would be subdued, I’d be willing to merely say my piece, wait out her retorting, tell her I was going to bed and would let her know how it turned out in the morning.

‘This isn’t a drive I am required to make, Justine, I am under no obligation to do this,’ I snarled, menace-face given to my reflection, voice normal volume now that the shower was running and I felt more secluded.

I sunk, chastised myself as pathetic after the outburst, even said ‘Sorry, I’m sorry okay,’ down in the direction of my feet, glad I’d not been careful with the shower knobs, that when I did eventually step in it was to a freezing stream of water, an appropriate punishment, a shake-up I deserved.

The entire motel room was laced in steam when I got out, a fog of it presenting as layered wisps in angles of light from the bathroom and in through the drawn-curtained room windows—I found this strange, as I’d had the overhead fan running and the water had by no means heated to the point I’d considered it anything but lukewarm, but there was nothing I could about it.

I couldn’t even get a look at myself in the mirror, the glass all slathers of moisture in down arcing trickles in a glaze of cloudy off-white.

While I dressed in some of the casual clothes I’d packed for nighttime, I felt obnoxiously awake, making puffing sounds and pacing around, giving my belly some slaps as though preparing to go out someplace.

In fact, there was the distinct pull to throw on my coat, head out for some food, even as the weight of what I’d only so recently ago had at the diner greasily expanded in my gut—there was a pleasant strum of thinking to go out for a walk, have a bite, an undercurrent to the rhythm of my interior monologue as though it were morning and I’d just risen with an empty, casual, and altogether pleasant day awaiting me.

A sound through the wall took my attention and I spent a full minute staring at the painting between the room’s two twin beds—typical motel art of a farmscape, vague human figures in the distance, a not-so-well-rendered horse at the foreground—ears cocked to listen.

The sound started and stopped in patches, but once it got a steady regularity I was able to determine it was a typewriter clacking away, the spit snap of the keys striking down, a vague electric hum.

A quick glance to the clock showed it was almost one in the morning, which made the presence of the sound more curious than it needed to be, a further layer of the growing, if formless, suspicions I had of the man in the next room.

Ridiculous, really, as this addition of late night typewriter—the pace of it getting steadier and steadier, the man on an easy roll with whatever he was setting down—should have normalized things. He was a writer, having a rough night of it, riddled with headache, trying to get out some prose in whatever snatches of time were peaceful and painless enough to allow it—nothing odd.

His eyes? Yes, peculiar I’d only seen them closed, but I’d only seen them in flickers, each time accompanied by obvious distress to the fellow, every reason they’d be shut.It was my fatigue that had cobbled a mysteriousness out of it all, this evidenced by the fact that my odd bout of feeling awake was erasing, methodically, each blot of curiosity or oddity to it all, explanations and dismissals of any boogey-man quality coming quicker than “weird evidences” to debunk.

Settled to the bed with the television on at mute, I took out my phone to dial Justine, and just as I started to enter her number there was the sound through the wall of the next door’s room phone ringing, the typewriter sounds abruptly stopping.

The phone in the next room rang seven times before going silent and a moment after that the typing began again. I continued on with placing my call, pressing the Send button exactly as my own room phone began to ring, so I hit the End button, staring at the hefty, old style telephone until it went quiet.

The room stood silent a moment, except for the vague ghost a telephone ring always leaves in the dark, and it was only when the faint sound of the typing started up again that I realised the man next door must have stopped his writing at the sound of the phone in my room.

Dismissing the brief feeling of disquiet this rose in me, I started dialing Justine again, stopping when I heard—only thought I did, at first, had to cross to the opposite wall of the room, ear against it, to verify—the telephone in the other room attached to mine begin ringing.

After another seven rings it cut off, my room now soundtracked only with my breathing and the typing through the wall, all set in the bluegrey of television flicker and light from the bathroom seeping through its partway shutted door.

Justine picked up straight away, asking me why I hadn’t called earlier. I seethed where I lay—calming myself by making eyes at the attractive actress playing the part of an ear doctor in some television advertisement—then remarked, as though in good humor, how I hadn’t known I was expected to give her a detailed debriefing on check-ins to motels, asking if I should keep receipts for reimbursement, too.

She took the snark in better humour than I’d have imagined her capable, this putting me at ease enough to explain I was not feeling so well, was thinking about taking the next day in—I hurriedly went on how I wouldn’t wake until afternoon, certainly, and was in no shape to press on immediately, having driven eleven hours that day, how it would only be the loss of one day, the recuperation on my part really more of a benefit than the slight bit earlier I would show up otherwise.

But her take was to be confused about what the problem was: could I not—‘by all means sleep in,’ she said as though it was an affront to her I’d imagine she wanted me to start out at the crack of dawn—just leave in the evening, thereby, really, not losing any time.

‘What difference is it if you drive during the day or at night—isn’t it better to drive at night, anyway, so you never have to deal with traffic?’ she said and, really, there was nothing I could counter to it, this having been my own point in an earlier discussion we’d had about when I’d likely arrive, this earlier conversation something she made no indication of being cognizant of but probably was, would catch me out on it if I pressed.

I told her I’d think about it, but that the thing was I was not feeling so terrific, either, the main issue that since there were a few days of driving left, anyway, not exhausting myself to the point I’d be useless when I arrived made the most sense. And she went on—and on and on—all while I stood, agitated, cigarette lit, pacing the room, explaining how she had, on my giving my itinerary, made her own arrangements for time off work, for other people to show up, all of which would have to be changed.

‘It’s up to you,’ she ended off, exasperated tone of voice, as though I’d roused her from peaceful slumber to tell her some arbitrary woes of mine, ‘but unless you’re really sick and not just tired I think you should take other people into account, okay?’ I said that was fair enough, but she had already hung up.

Laying down after pantomiming throwing my phone against the wall and after pantomiming strangling Justine dead with my hands made vicious claws an inch from my scowling, teeth-bared face, I reached around for the television remote to turn up the volume. I heard another sound behind me through the wall at the head of the bed, a swishing and a light thump which I tried to copy by roughing my hand along the wall, patting my palm once—perfect match.

And when the sound of typing started up again, in time with the still subdued volume of some film I vaguely recognised returning from commercials, I realised the typing sound had not been present during my entire chat with Justine.