Chapter 23: Night Clerk

Chapter 1.  Chapter 2.  Chapter 3.  Chapter 4.  Chapter 5.  Chapter 6.  Chapter 7.  Chapter 8.  Chapter 9. Chapter 10.  Chapter 11.  Chapter 12.  Chapter 13.  Chapter 14.  Chapter 15.  Chapter 16.  Chapter 17.  Chapter 18. Chapter 19.  Chapter 20.  Chapter 21. Chapter 22.

     The night clerk at the Holiday Inn, “Buck,” was a short pudgy fellow with black hair and small, yellow teeth.  He wore a pressed white oxford shirt and a blue polyester tie, which was knotted loosely and hung from his neck like a dead, blue polyester salmon.

     I know his name was Buck, incidentally, because he had a Holiday Inn nametag pinned to his shirt that read, “Hi, I’m Buck.”

     “Hi Buck,” I said, though naturally he couldn’t see or hear me.

     For all he knew, I could’ve been standing there stark naked with a lawn chair hanging out of my ass.

     Liz walked up to the counter beside me, the rims of her eyes still red from crying.

     I can’t say for certain whether or not Buck realized Liz had been crying.  From the dull look on his pudgy face it’s quite possible he thought only this:  “Hay fever sufferer.”

     Liz propped up her overnight bag on the counter and began searching through her wallet for a major credit card.

     “Room for one?” Buck asked professionally.

     Liz looked at Buck and then at me.  I was sitting on the countertop, reading a pamphlet listing the locations of all the Holiday Inns in the world.

     “Sure,” she said.  “What the hell.”

     Liz handed Buck her Visa Card, which he scanned quickly.

     “Thank you, Miss Seidel,” he said.  “Now if I could just see your driver’s license . . .”

     I watched Liz closely, her thin downy wrists and slender fingers fumbling for proper identification.  She was so beautiful, this girl.  And so young.

     What on earth was she doing in a Holiday Inn in Bar Harbour with a sixty-nine-year-old dead trout fisherman?

     Who knows.

     Maybe Velveeta Cheese and blackberry jelly sandwiches are addictive.

     And the sex didn’t hurt either.

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Chapter 24.