Page 9 of Lady Sings the Blues

“Finally realize who you’re with?” I whisper, angry now for having wanted it so badly and for allowing myself to want in the first place.

The tears forming in the corners of my eyes, they’re from dust. And if anyone asks me, that’s what I’ll tell them. Although nobody is going to ask me because the one person in this town who acted like he cared just shot me down.

“Elise,” he calls after me as I hurry away, but hell if I’m going to turn around. As much as I’d like him to, he doesn’t come after me either.

We both know I won’t be at the bar tonight or any other time. Get in, bury my father and get out. That’s the plan.

I climb inside my car and wrotely buckle my seatbelt. Instead of starting the engine, I lean my head on the steering wheel letting those “dust”tears unabashedly fall. I haven’t even cried this hard over my dead father yet, which makes me cry even harder.

Guilt’s a bitch.

The tears for Mark go on for exactly five more minutes. That’s as much as I’ll allow myself, and wipe my eyes—checking the level of splotches and puffiness in the rearview mirror—then turn the ignition and drive.

This town has exactly two motels. Not hotels. These are motels which haven’t been updated since probably the early nineteen sixties. I don’t need updated. I’m on a business trip not a vacation destination.

When I walk into the small lobby of the first motel I’m greeted with about five seconds of a welcoming smile before the old man behind the desk realizes who just walked into his place of business.

“Hey, Mr. Ritchie. How are you?”

“Elise,” he says my name as if choking on a sour lime.

Pretending to ignore his tone I continue on as if he’d welcomed me with a bear hug. “I need a room. Just a single will be fine.”

“We’re out.”

“Okay, I’ll take a double, then.”

“Sorry, we’re all full up.”

“But the sign out front says vacancy.”

“Don’t care what the sign says. We’re all full up.”

“I get it,” I say to him as I turn to leave.

But over my shoulder I hear him say, “Your poor father.” So Mr. Ritchie is team hate-me-for-my-dad.

Of the two motels in town I’d rather stay at the Twilight, but as that’s now out my only other choice is the Daniel Boone. I should at least be able to get a room though. They aren’t known for being picky about their clientele at the Daniel Boone. It’s the kind of place you go if you’re having an affair, shooting up or trying to get your date out of her prom dress.

Forget about being updated, I’m not sure this place has been cleaned since the early nineteen sixties. Located on the outskirts of town it has two stories, with rooms over the lobby in the front and then a row of single story rooms behind the lobby.

I walk past the crumbling stucco which used to be white, through the door with the frame eaten away by termites. I’m only hoping I don’t leave with bed bugs as a souvenir from my time here.

A little bell jingles over the door when I enter. And a big head of brown, curly hair and boobs about a cup smaller than mine but packed tight into a white blouse about a size smaller from them and only buttoned at the fourth button down, hot pink bra showing through along with the cleavage spilling out of it, moves from a back room to behind the desk. That’s when I know it doesn’t matter if the bed has bugs or not because there’s no way I’m getting a room here today.

She sees me before I can make an anonymous escape. “Oh how the mighty have fallen.” She sneers at me. Sneers.

I huff out probably the most defeated breath since arriving back here. “Shayla,” I greet her, and huff one more breath for good measure or to remind myself I’m still alive.

“You were never good enough for him and because of it, he’s dead.” Of course she’d say that since she thought she’d almost had him before that fateful day in front of the Whippy Dip when I met Logan. She’d never almost had him. And he left me well before I ever left him. As for the dead part, what happened to Lo was tragic. But I didn’t put the shotgun to his head. I didn’t pull the trigger, though arguing that point now is meaningless. For the rest of her life I’ll be the whore who stole and then killed her boyfriend. “We ain’t got room.”

“Clearly.”

She seems upset that I refuse to engage her in confrontation. I know it sounds bad, but she wanted to be me. She wanted the kind of relationship I had with both Logan and Beau. She wanted prom queen and head cheerleader. She wanted nights in the family cabin off the river on route eight.

Maybe there’s a small chance that eventually she might have gotten it, all of it, if I hadn’t come to town. But I did come to town and now she works the reception desk at the Daniel Boone judging me on things she really has no clue about, based solely on rumors set in motion by an unstable man who was in a bad place in his life. Period.

“You need to walk your stuck-up, whoring ass back outta town.”

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