Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 12

We like the being of her inside us, little girl Rosa, so dark, so inward looking, so secret wishes keeping.  To the man man Romeo, she is quiet and obedient, to the Romeo girl Madge, she is well behaved, and all the time working and working to make nice our window eyes, our hard white shinies, our tree-skin ground.  She peels off the hiding shrouds from the sleeping places, she lays down fresh hair for the feet, she brings and she takes away.  She touches us all over with quick little hands and they forget to see her eyes, so they are not knowing her.  But we see her pretend woman hips in the mirrorways, and we see her eye sparkles sliding sideways when the boy man Slappy passes near, oh yes, we are all the time seeing little girl Rosa's eyes, so we are knowing her very well.  Sister girl Maria waits for her, lonely in our belly, but we want to roll little girl Rosa around on our tongue, we want to hold her in our mouth, tucked between teeth and wall for slow tasting, happy waiting, sister girl Maria has gone quiet, she will happy wait too.

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 11

Slappy didn't like to admit it, but the new maid seemed to be working out okay and it was a relief to have some help.  As soon as Rosa got to work, he and Madge could see she was a better bargain than her sister had been, so just to be on the safe side, they took care to keep room number 12 locked up and not let her in there.  Madge insisted the girl get to stay in the room right next to the lobby and was very mother hen about her, even going so far as to take her on a shopping trip to San Angelo when she realized the poor kid only had the clothes she'd arrived in.  They had a lot to do to get ready for the guys that were on their way from the city.  From what Slappy could find out, there had been trouble between the Boss' guys and some other gang of Irish bastards from Boston, some of the Micks got nicked in a fairly ugly way and now some guys had to come lay low to avoid an all out war.  Listening to the reports on the radio about Poland falling to the Krauts, Slappy couldn't help thinking the world would be a better place if guys would just stay in their own neighborhoods, and keep their noses out of other guy's business.

Slug

 

Finally, here you are, I been waiting for you for hours.  I only had one or two, though, I know how you feel about me being messy out in public.  When other guys tried to buy me one, or talk me up with those lines of crap, I told them to dry up.  It ain't right to leave a girl sitting in a bar alone for so long, people get wrong ideas.  But you're here now, and it's all over with, so let's just be glad together, okay?  Here baby, have a drink, it'll remind you to love me.

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 10

The surprising thing about Rosa, was how little she had seemed to care about her missing sister once she'd looked around the motel and had her questions answered.  Madge had walked her around the motel courtyard and showed her the rooms, dreading what the girl might see in the room where her sister had disappeared, but when she took her into room number 12, it had just presented itself as a clean, empty room with no sign of any kind of violence, no strange odor, and though Madge held her breath in the silence, no cries coming from inside the walls.  Rosa had been quite impressed with the washing machine, insisting Madge show her how to work it before they continued with their tour, and had stared wide eyed in the lounge at the fancy red pool table, the piano, all the mirrors in their gilt frames on the red walls and the paintings of the matador, the bull and the Spanish dancer.  She'd said she couldn't understand why her sister had run away, because it seemed like a very nice place to work and would she please be allowed to take her place?  Rosa's understanding of English was little better than her ability to speak it, but with Madge's basic Spanish they could communicate well enough and once she got over feeling awkward about the lost Maria and convinced herself there was no need to explain the odd circumstances of her disappearance, Madge found she liked the younger girl.  The motel had been without guests since the last guys to stay had gotten into that terrible fight and shot the hell out of the motel and each other, but there was a whole new gang on the way according to Romeo, so she was really going to need the help.

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 9

Madge had seen women come and go at the motel. They fell into two categories as a rule, whores who tagged along with the men who came to stay, and whores from the Shy Violet in San Angelo who came over to service the men who came to stay. Either way, other women were an infrequent and insignificant presence at the motel and Madge had very little cause to do more than ignore them politely. Madge was the woman of the house who held her own among the ever changing gang of men by doing what she had always done, keeping her guard up and projecting a strong attitude of unavailability... as well as relying on their fear of Romeo to keep them in check. The vulnerability of a young girl in a servant's position hadn't occurred to her when she'd gone out and picked up Maria, but she worried about it now that Maria was missing and hesitated, grasping at the first thing that came to mind to hold Maria's little sister back, "Shouldn't we let your mother know?" she said. The girl whirled around and glared at Madge, her black eyes flashing indignation and contempt as she hissed, "Esa bruja no es mi madre."

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 8

By the time Madge made it out to the flats, the late afternoon sun slanting sideways and brushing the rocky landscape with vivid gold, she nearly had herself convinced that Maria would be there, maybe hiding in the back at first, but then coming out into the cantina at her mother's urging to face Madge with apologies and regrets for having run off. The cantina was closed, and there was an overslept siesta quiet all around, but the youngest sister peeked out of the window when Madge knocked on the door, and opened it right away with a perplexed expression. She was prettier than the middle sister, though they all looked very much alike, waist-length black hair hanging down in a single fat braid, large obsidian eyes and high indian cheekbones in a face as brown as toast, but not a day over fifteen, Madge guessed. Facing the girl, Madge found herself unable to muster the determination that had propelled her out there, and instead, her pulse began to race and her voice came out higher, more alarmed than she would have preferred to sound when she said, "Your sister Maria didn't finish her work at the motel and I can't find her, I thought perhaps she came back here." She wasn't sure how good the girl's English was, but her expression said she understood enough to be worried, and she quickly stepped outside and closed the door, ready to go with the lady who had taken her sister away only that morning and somehow managed to lose her. Madge hadn't intended to just replace the missing girl, she hesitated in front of the cantina staring at the youngest sister and thinking to herself, Oh no, what have I gone and done... what if I lose her too?

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 7

Slappy scratched his unruly mop of dark curly hair, and said, "Humph," in response to Madge's insistence that the cleaning girl had "run off." He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he looked at her, glanced at the wall, and then walked over to the edge of the clearing to gaze out at the featureless wasteland surrounding the motel grounds. He pulled his pack of Luckys out of his shirt pocket, stuck one in his mouth and turned to look at her again as he struck a match with his thumbnail and lit it. She straightened her shoulders and stuck her chin up, ran a hand over her hair to smooth it unnecessarily and started back toward the courtyard. "You want me to go out to the flats with you?" He asked before she stepped into the walkway. He saw her hesitate briefly before she glanced back over her shoulder and met his eye with that stubborn expression he had come to know so well and assured him, "I got myself out there just fine the first time, thank you all the same."

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 6

The West side of the Bella Vista motel suffered the full force of the afternoon sun every day, but the last room, number 12, gained a small advantage from the shade of the trees in the grove, and the back wall never saw the sun. Madge felt the improbable coolness of the smooth plaster next to her ear, and on her palm as she steadied herself against the wall. The scent of the plaster came up softly, a clean smell to her nose, its mineral chalkiness, strangely, causing her mouth to water and stirring up a fleeting image of her own small hands squeezing white clay. She swallowed and listened to the sound of nothing happening; a blank wall and her own pulse stretching out the minutes. Slappy stepped out of the walkway into the clearing, stopped, put his hands in his pockets and swung his face around to meet her eye before he said, "All cleaned up in there, any sign of her out here?" She took her hand off of the wall self-consciously and wiped it on the side of her skirt as she turned to look out at the vast open land outside of the clearing and answered, "I think she must have run off back home, and I mean to go and get her back."

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 5

Madge ran into the clearing behind the motel, the afternoon sun marking her body with crisscrossed shadows from the tree branches above. It was quiet and still, but for the birds flitting from branch to branch and the tiny, tear-shaped leaves that always floated through the air like soft rain. She could hear her own heart pounding as she peered out through the trees, down the long irregular path that led out deep into the grove where the light gave up to murky twilight and losing your way was as easy as taking a stroll. She could also hear the girl crying, not hysterically, not wailing, but softly, indistinctly, muffled as though she was still inside somewhere, a pause, a few words in Spanish, then quiet moaning sobs like a child who knows they've lost sight of their mother in a crowd, but aren't yet convinced they've been abandoned. Madge began to walk out toward the path into the grove, but heard the sound grow quieter as she did so, and she stopped to call out, "Maria!" There was nothing for a moment, even the birds went silent, but then the crying started up again behind her and Madge had to clasp her hands together to steady herself, to make herself walk over and press her ear against the wall of the empty room she had just left and listen... though it made no sense at all.

Madge Makes Up Her Mind - 4

Madge turned to leave room number 12, working herself up into a huff, overriding her unease with irritation at the cleaning girl's disappearance and locking on to the idea that she had run off. Before she made it to the door she heard a sound coming from the other side of the wall, a sound like a cat meowing far away and it stopped her cold. Room number 12 was the last room in the row on the west side of the motel and on the other side of the wall, there was a clearing that led into a deep grove of trees. She moved nearer to the wall listening to the muffled sound as it faded in and out like the stations on the radio when the strange voices cut into the usual shows. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear listening closer and caught two words in spanish that she understood, "perdido," and, "ayuda." She stepped back from the wall and hesitated only a moment before she ran out the door and around the corner into the clearing, hoping she could get to the girl before she wandered too deeply into the grove of trees.

The Guest Book - 21

Dawn was creeping in all around him as Romeo hung up the telephone and took a few shaky breaths. He wiped his hand across his mouth and felt the slick smear of blood spatter, stared at his palm for a moment, already moving his mind past what had just happened and on to what came next. Assess the situation... remove the corpse from the lobby, big heavy bastard, going to need help, wake up the kid and get him in here, blood, good amount of blood on the floor by the kitchen table and trailing out to the front desk in the lobby, but not too bad, not on the ceiling or the walls, with any luck, Madge didn't hear the phone and would stay asleep back in the bedroom for another hour. He heard Slappy's shuffling footsteps coming up the walkway outside the lobby, and turned just in time to see the boy throw open the door and stop short as he caught sight of Clark's body. He let out with a low whistle and said, "Heard the telephone ringing, figured nobody was calling with good news this hour of the morning, Jiminy Christ, he's enormous, where'd he come from?" But Romeo didn't answer him right away, he was staring at the guest book, spread open on the front desk, the ink gleaming wet on the signature at the bottom of the page, the paper speckled with the same spatter as Romeo's grim face, then he reached out and smacked the cover closed as he said, "Help me take care of this mess before Madge wakes up, you know how she feels about blood in the kitchen."

The Guest Book - 20

The ringing telephone pulled Romeo into the lobby, the shattering bell sending waves of sound pounding against his back and throbbing with his outraged heart. Back, away from the monstrous error, the man, the abomination, not dead, though the knife Romeo had put in him still protruded from the precise place where his beating heart could not be beating any longer, but yet, the blood coursed from around the knife in regular throbbing rhythm, so maybe, holy Christ, maybe... Clark moved slowly toward him, his huge body heaving with effort, the whites of his eyes filling with blood, as if the burst heart in his chest was squirting its contents everywhere inside him, his voice wet and gurgling as he said, "Let me tell you all about Dee Dee, the midget whore who wasn't a whore at all, who wasn't a midget, who wasn't even really a woman..." Romeo's hand reached out behind him, leading the way, pulling him back to the telephone, itching with the need to pick up the receiver, answer the phone, answer the phone, answer the phone! Clark loomed as Romeo bumped up against the front desk and wrapped his grateful hand around the, answer the phone, answer the phone, spraying Romeo's face with a fine mist of blood as he went on in that strangely calm, gurgling voice, "Let me tell you how she called those guys over and set them on that other girl, and how she laughed when they tore her open, and what was in her eyes when she turned her face and looked at me, what I saw inside those black eyes of hers, and what it did to me to know that thing saw me..." Romeo brought the receiver to his ear with teeth gritted at the metal wrenching sound of Mr. G's voice coming out of those tiny black holes, "You should always wait until you're told, Romeo," he said, as the big man's body hit the floor like a hundred pounds of lead, the click of the connection cut off like the click of a trigger pulled on an empty gun, and the silence rushed in to surround the mess on the floor that Romeo would be more than happy to clean up.