The Guest Book - 19

Stabbing Clark in the heart was the simplest, most obvious solution, so Romeo picked up the guy's empty coffee cup, slipped a knife up his sleeve while he refilled it –– halfway, no sense wasting a full cup of coffee –– then held it out to him like the gracious host that he was. When Clark reached out and took the cup, Romeo leaned in and drove the knife into the sweet spot, without so much as a, "Sorry, pal." Romeo expected the gasp of shock, the tumbling coffee cup and the gush of blood, even the low gurgling scream that gave out with the guy's last breath, he expected all that and then he expected silence and a mess to clean up. He didn't expect the telephone on the front desk to cut in with its shrieking ring, jarring the tiny bones in his ears and echoing obscenely in the predawn darkness. He didn't expect Clark to stand up, towering above him and clutching at the knife plunged in to the hilt exactly where a knife would need to go if you wanted to skewer a guy's heart, and he didn't expect him to get that disappointed look on his face as he said, "I know you had to do it, but couldn't you have just listened to me first?" He didn't expect Clark to keep coming at him as he backed out of the kitchen into the lobby, the big, black telephone getting louder and louder behind him, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of Clark insisting, "It was all that little dame's fault, 'cause she wasn't just a dirty little tramp, there was something evil hiding inside her eyes, and I saw it, I tell you, I saw it..."

The Guest Book - 18

"I'm not up for the scenic route," Romeo said, "get to the point." Clark frowned, stared at Romeo for a few moments, rubbed at his unwanted beard, then resumed his story, "It was like this, the little dame was trouble, they liked her, especially next to a guy my size, because she looked... younger, but she was nothing but trouble and it was her that set those guys on the other girl. I didn't mind the artsy stuff so much at first, the other times, regular girls, more normal situations, but she, Dee Dee was her name, she was really dirty in a way that, you know, put me off." Romeo thought, set those guys on the other girl...ahh, Christ... and then suddenly got what the guy meant when he said the girl looked younger next to him... and despite his efforts to keep his temper out of things, he was instantly mad as he said, "Wait a minute, you guys were making smut about underage girls?" Clark protested quickly, "This dame wasn't underage, she was just, undersized, and anyway, I'm telling you I didn't like it, they wanted me to do things that were..." he struggled with how to put it, "unmanly." This was exactly the kind of situation Romeo hated, and he regretted not checking the guy into a room and waiting for the call from Mr. G to punch his ticket, because no doubt about it, this guy was on the schedule, but having given in to the urge to experiment, his thoughts turned back to how to do him quick and clean so he wouldn't have to hear him anymore... maybe a little blood in the kitchen would be worth shutting him up.

The Guest Book - 17

"It wasn't like a regular gig or anything," Clark said, "just every once in a while to pick up some extra cash." Romeo didn't say anything, though his upper lip was slowly betraying his disgust. Clark went on, "I got started with the photo shoots, really easy money, just my hands holding ladies shoes and touching their feet and stuff." Romeo said, "What?" Clark rolled his eyes and sighed over dramatically, then explained, "The guys that produced this stuff didn't want to just make the usual nudie smut, they had a particular... artistic slant."

"Anyway," Clark said, ignoring Romeo's incredulous expression, "what started the trouble was this dame they found that was a real looker, but very petite, almost, but not a actual midget, and the dirtiest mouth you ever––" he held up a hand as Romeo began to protest, "just wait, you're gonna see that none of this was my fault if you'll just listen."

The Guest Book - 16

"You know those guys that work for the Boss out in Jersey?" Clark asked, after staring down into his empty coffee cup for a long moment. "You know the ones," he insisted when Romeo gave him a look like, guys... which guys... "they all look alike, dark, hairy, can't hardly understand them, their accents so thick, but not like regular Jersey guys..." "Like they come from the old country, but not our old country," Romeo said mostly to himself, remembering the strange pack of "brothers" that would show up at the motel from time to time. "Yeah, those guys, yeah," Clark nodded, "you do know, the ones that always just show up out of nowhere when there's real work to be done, like moving big crates of goods or building stuff. We had a warehouse out there, you know, out in Jersey, set up like a little film studio for pin-up photo shoots and stag films, and I, you know," he shrugged and moved his hand around in a circular motion Romeo wasn't sure he got the meaning of until Clark continued, "I did some acting, with the girls..." "Aww, Christ..." Romeo muttered into the back of his throat, it was going to be one of those kinds of stories, and the dark hairy guys were involved... his stomach went queer in anticipation and he wondered if he had any bromo tablets close to hand.

The Guest Book - 15

Romeo took another sip of his coffee and swallowed the small lump of dread that tried to crawl up his throat. He'd seen this before, the guy was going to tell some crazy story, some unhinged shit that was supposed to justify his innocence, but instead would only prove they should have sent the men in the white coats after him. Romeo hardened his mind as he brought the plate of eggs and bacon and the other cup of coffee to the table where Clark sat, the food still steaming as he set it down. Clark looked up at him, eyes bulging with that needy desperation to let the poison out of his head, to share his misery with the nearest pair of ears, but was clearly used to soothing himself with food – he grabbed at the bacon as soon as Romeo pulled his hands away and crammed a piece into his mouth, folding it in like a stick of gum. Romeo went back to the sink, leaned against the comforting solidity of cool, clean porcelain and prepared to resist whatever infecting madness Clark would spew out. "So," Romeo said, watching as the guy gulped down his coffee like an antidote, "let's hear it."

The Guest Book - 14

Romeo was not a deer in the headlights kind of guy. He gave Clark a steady, noncommittal look to answer the man's inappropriate question, then turned back slowly and deliberately to the cooking food on the stove. He put the eggs and bacon on a plate, poured them both a cup of coffee, took a sip of his and looked at Clark's reflection in the night mirrored kitchen window. "What did you do?" he asked. The man met his eyes in that dark reflection and all thoughts of a quick easy end for the guy evaporated from Romeo's mind. "I didn't do nothing," he said with an ironic smile, "I saw something, something nobody was meant to see, and what's worse," he paused to poke his chest, strangely aggressive, "it saw me, too."

The Guest Book - 13

Romeo had to make an effort to keep a friendly look on his face as he made a fresh pot of coffee and got busy with eggs and bacon for Clark, because every word out of the guy's big mouth – though he seemed oblivious to his effect – grated and annoyed. "I can't believe you been gone from the city so long, I don't know how you keep from going nuts after being such a big shot and all, and then," he punctuated the observation with his weird, high pitched giggle, "to end up out here making beds in some fleabag motel." Trusting in the intoxicating effect of frying bacon to keep Clark salivating in the kitchen and off guard, Romeo ticked off options in his head; shoot the guy...no, too much noise would wake Madge, stab the guy...no, the kitchen, while easy to clean was still not a place he wanted blood all over, bludgeon the guy...no, that was one thick skull, poison the guy...hmm, maybe... Romeo turned around to consider what and how much he would need to use and was startled to see that Clark was staring at him, his eyes moistening with despair as he said, "Maybe you're the lucky one, getting out of town when you did, Mr. G ain't right on top of you out here, not like how it is back there now, the pressure..." he paused heavily, "a guy can't get a break." Romeo leaned on the counter and watched the expression in Clark's eyes shift from mushy self-pity to angry resentment, to cold calculation as the bacon sizzled, the fried eggs popped and the coffee perked. The big man sat forward on his chair and considered Romeo a long time before he said quietly, "Is it true what they say about this place, what they say about you," he pointed a sausage sized finger at Romeo, "is it true you're Mr. G's gun?"

The Guest Book - 12

Romeo smiled a smile that was little more than a tightening of the muscles at the corners of his mouth and considered Clark through narrowed eyes. Clark yawned, exposing Romeo to every tooth in his cavernous mouth, lifted his arm to reveal sweat stains as big as continents on a map, and sniffed at himself unhappily. “I’ve never needed a shower worse in my life,” he said. Romeo remembered the dream he’d had in the grove about the guest book, Joe’s voice saying, “You’re just going about this all discombobulated...” and the thought he’d had upon waking to kill Clark before he could make trouble, but he knew he couldn’t just off the guy before Mr. G said to. Then the thought hit him –– what if he didn’t check the guy in, what if he made it so somehow the guy was never a guest to begin with? Romeo spread a friendly grin across his face and said, “Hey, first things first, come into the kitchen and I’ll do better than a sandwich, big guy like you needs a decent meal...”

Interlude, Not Death

Romeo started a pot of coffee and stepped out of the back door to survey the vegetable garden in the soft morning light. If he didn't look beyond the edge of the neatly arrayed plot, he might be able to take comfort from its lush bounty, the glowing beauty of ripening tomatoes, the safety of picket fence incarceration. The road was too near not to draw his eyes, and then his feet, and he found himself standing in front of the Bella Vista Motel gazing out at a land that seemed to have no order and no end. The road mocked him, as ever with its false promise of escape. He could smell the coffee on the clean morning air and he knew what every monotonous minute of the coming day would hold. As he went back to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee for himself and Madge, he wondered if things would ever start happening again, and he tried not to hope that she was coming back.

The Guest Book - 11

Clark Mannish was pacing around in the lobby bellowing, "Hello? Anybody here?" when Romeo stepped out of the hallway to greet him, mere moments after he had banged on the desk bell. The guy was a mess, as guys always are after untold days on the road in varying states of shamed anxiety, or angry resentment, or depressed resolve, or some combination of all that and more for having been exiled from New York City. Romeo wasn't yet privy to what Mannish had done to earn himself a stint at the Bella Vista, but sooner or later, as he always did, he'd find out. Mannish was god damned enormous and that annoyed Romeo right off the bat. Romeo was a respectable six feet tall with a fine muscular build, but this guy stood a whole head taller than him and though not exactly fat, somehow seemed to overfill the space he occupied in a way that made you want to step back and give him more room. Mannish scratched his fingers through beard stubble that would have made a scrub brush look soft, and continued up the side of his head to rake his disheveled mop of black hair as he said without pause, "Oh, good, glad somebody's on the night shift here, you got a room ready for me, sure you do, Mr. G said I'd be expected, listen, I'm starving, have a couple of sandwiches sent to my room and I'll need my suitcases out of the car right away... say, aren't you Romeo... sure you are, I remember you used to be something of a big shot a while back," he giggled in that way that set Romeo's teeth on edge, "how do you like that, well, we're all in the same boat now."

The Guest Book - 10

Madge lay in Romeo's arms, sleeping in her soft way, as light as a doll against his chest. He felt his body begin to settle against the mattress, the tension of the day loosening its grip on his muscles, his jaw unclenching, his mind giving way to allowing the sounds of crickets, night birds, the soft click and whir of the oscillating fan, and his own steady heartbeat to blend together and fade out into beautiful, blank sleep. The jolt that went through his head when the front desk bell rang––unreasonably clear and as loud as if it had been on his bedside nightstand instead of all the way out in the lobby––was like a cramp in a cold muscle. He glanced at the alarm clock as he slid quietly out of bed, 4 o'clock in the god damn morning. He pulled on pants and a shirt on his way to the lobby and wondered, as he had many times before, if he could get away with just shooting every inconsiderate bastard who showed up after midnight, sending them straight to the incinerator and telling Mr. G, "Hey, I don't know where so-and-so could be, must of bugged out and kept on driving right over the border into Mexico." But he knew that would never do as he shuffled down the hall in his slippers to check in that giggling ass, Mannish, because after all, even if he could successfully lie to Mr. G, having to dispose of all those cars would be a real headache.

The Guest Book - 9

Romeo had to laugh at the sight of Joe, the man's big, simple face smiling beneath his undersized Yankees ball cap had always reminded him of the apes back in the Bronx zoo, but also because now he knew what was going on; he'd just dozed off somewhere, that was all. He looked around for his friend in gray — surely agent Ramiel would come along any minute to harangue him about all the harm he'd done to his immortal soul — but he saw no sign of him, just big Joe, doing up his fly and shaking his head as he said with a grin, "Romeo, for a smart guy, you sure can be dumb." Romeo raised his eyebrows, and put his hand out in a, "come on, let's hear it" gesture, so Joe went on, "We're signed in to the guestbook 'cause we're still here, and you can't get rid of it, 'cause you can't get rid of us, not the way you been doing things anyway..." Joe wasn't making any sense to Romeo, but he reasoned, that's how dreams are... except, he heard the sound of footsteps on dead leaves and saw that Madge had stepped out into the clearing, and though she was looking right at him and he could see her lips moving, he couldn't hear her voice, even as she came closer and stood right in front of him, right next to Joe, all he could hear was Joe, saying, "You're just going about this thing all discombobulated and if you don't figure it out..." Romeo felt a slight, "Pop," in his ears as Madge stepped in front of Joe, put her hands on her hips, cocked her head and asked, "What's the matter with you, why are you just sitting there staring at me?" Her quizzical gaze fell to the guestbook lying open on his knees and he looked down at the ledger columns, filled with various signatures, real, fictitious, dead, then smiled back up at her as he closed the cover and said, "It's all right, honey, I was just day dreaming."