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Frankie had to bang on the  door of the motel office to get our key.

She had called ahead and warned the manager that we would be late, and he had said no problem, we’ll wait for you, but I could tell he was angry when he unlocked the glass door. It was midnight.

The manager was Indian, or Pakistani. He wore a white cotton night shirt.

“You are the Blooms?” he asked, his voice rising in pitch as he spoke our name.
    “Yes,” Frankie said. “Sorry  we’re so late. We had no idea it would take so long.”

“No problem, no problem. Come in.”

We walked into the motel lobby and the manager turned on a light. Three moths immediately began to dance around the light, and in their shadows hundreds of gnats circled the round yellow globe that hung from the ceiling. The motel manager did not close the door to the office after letting us in. Insects flitted in and out of the building, choosing between the relatively dim light of the office bulb and the hypnotic burn of the orange sodium lamps that lit a railroad yard across the street.

Three locomotives idled on the tracks. One engine farted a gush of whooshing air and rolled forward just enough to cause a calamitous crash of metal on metal that echoed briefly as the entire thousand-car train lurched forward and then stopped, each car crunching into the next. The tracks screeched as the wheels of the engine cars seized to hold back the incredible cascade that was nearly unleashed. I could see the shape of a man in the first locomotive, his head stretched out the window and turning forward and then backward to see his train. In the distance I heard the hoot of another train.

The motel manager walked behind the counter and looked at me and then out the open  door that I was standing near. Behind him another door was cracked open that must have led to his apartment. There was a soft blue glow and the murmur of a television.

“Hot night,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, not thinking.

The manager was fumbling with papers. He handed Frankie a form to fill out.

“Can’t sleep in this heat ,” the manager said. “I got an air conditioner, but it’s too cold. Can’t sleep with the damn thing on. Damn bugs come in through the screen.”

Frankie turned to me and said, “Close the door.” I stepped in and closed it. The manager ignored our interaction and continued with his own thoughts.

“Don’t worry, your air conditioner works,” he said. “Mine, it freezes us and I’m too lazy to fix it. My wife, she’s ready to chop my head off. I’ll fix it tomorrow. This is very bad, very bad. The children can’t sleep tonight.”

A car whizzed by the motel, a huge dark American thing lit by the lights of the train yard. Frankie and I had been speeding along just moments before, for twelve hours that day  we had raced on the interstate, and we had driven for nearly five hours without a break. Frankie slept most of the last two hours. I told her I didn’t mind. I woke her about fifteen minutes before we got to the motel because I needed her to read the instructions. I was also having trouble keeping my eyes open. I wondered if the driver of the big American car that just sped past the motel was awake or asleep, perhaps looking for this very motel and unaware, in sleep, that the car had driven past the motel.

Getting to the motel was simple. Exit 495. South one mile. The guide book didn’t mention the train tracks.

“Mastercard?” the motel manager asked.

“Yes,” Frankie said.

“Okay, I need the card,” he said.

Frankie searched through her wallet until she found the right credit card and she slid it onto his desk. He took the card and passed it through a machine and then he handed it back to her.

“Just one night?” he asked.

“Yes,” Frankie said. “What time is check out?”

“Eleven.”

Frankie slouched a bit and leaned her weight against the counter and although I couldn’t see her face just then, I knew her eyes were drooping.

The day had started out so magnificently, a clear blue Montana sky and cool air blowing in our faces at 75 miles per hour. Cement highway and browned grasses rolled by hills speckled greened with Ponderosa pine. We listened to the Stones, the Dead, the Eagles, we searched for public radio and news, and we turned the stereo off, sick of the noise, and we turned it back on desperate for more music, five minutes of Beethoven string quartets, The Talking Heads, Jimi Hendrix, The Sundays, and the day grew hotter and we stopped for gas. We ate fried chicken for dinner and  left Jane’s Good Eats  next to the Texaco station in a cloud of dust. Back on the Interstate the snow-capped Rockies appeared in the distance and remained in the distance, circling us, playing with our imaginations and taunting us. In the hot car, with the sun setting at our backs, we imagined ourselves in the snow.

Mountains had been looming in every direction but the road had managed to skirt them. Then we began to climb. It happened suddenly and there was no warning. The grasses disappeared and the trees grew thicker and shorter and our little Toyota was speeding past trucks that had slowed to a crawl. At the top of the pass we stopped to read  warnings to  truck drivers: Warning: Dangerous Curves. There have been fatal truck accidents between mile post 235 and 241. Test brakes before proceeding slowly. Truck Speed Limit 35.

We were at the continental divide.

The curves did not seem as dangerous as the warnings had suggested. Frankie was driving and I was watching the mountains recede into plains. The trees thinned and then disappeared, giving way to endless fields of brown grasses. The highway sliced through  rolling land. Then the last flickers of sunlight curving around the earth fainted to darkness and the land vanished altogether. We drove on, listened to the news, ate a candy bar, potato chips, sipped Coke. We pulled over at a rest stop to stretch our legs. The air was warm but refreshing.

I took over the driving and Frankie slept and I watched the darkness go by. The car rolled with the hills that must have been out there. A gust of wind nearly pushed us off the road, tumble weed tumbled in front of the car, we passed through thirty seconds of rain, and then the wind and the rain stopped, and we rolled on through the darkness, gliding through the great plains like an airborne seed. Sometimes a car passed going in the opposite direction, its high beams blinding me. Then the road and the planet went dark again, silent beyond the squeal of our tired struggling engine. I watched the illuminated cement in front of the car and the fence that paralleled the road to the right of the shoulder. I watched the green digital clock in the dashboard and the minutes stretched on forever like the fields lining the highway. I opened my  window and stuck my hand out and the air was warm. The noise woke Frankie, who asked, “Are we there yet?” Almost, I told her. I asked her to read the instructions to the motel.

The manager handed Frankie a key.

“Room 14,” he said. “It’s at the corner, where the building bends.  There’s ice by the stairs and soda and cigarettes.”

“Thank you,” Frankie said.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling weekly at the stranger.

“Sleep well,” he said as he showed us out.

I hadn’t noticed that the motel office was particularly warm, but the air outside felt cool and I wondered why the manager’s family needed an air conditioner.

“We’re here,” I said to Frankie.

“Thank god,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“She’s you’re friend.”

“Yours too.”

“Yes, but this was your idea.”

“I know,” Frankie said. “Still, I can’t believe we’re doing this. God I’m tired.”

“So am I.”

“How far tomorrow?”

“Far.”

We got back into the car and parked in front of our room. Frankie unlocked the door and I pulled our two bags out of the trunk. I hustled in and slammed the door behind me to limit the bug infiltration.

The room was stifling hot and musty as if it had been locked up for a year. It was a typical budget motel, really not bad. It had a large soft bed, a lamp, a dresser, a table, two chairs, a luggage rack, and a shower and toilet in a bathroom with a heating lamp. The small still life painting cemented to the cinderblock wall above the dresser was of peaches and apples on a red and white checkerboard table cloth. And there was a television with cable.

Frankie turned on the air conditioner and went into the bathroom.  I dropped the bags in front of the bed and turned on the television. I took off my shoes and sat on the edge of the bed in front of the television and with the remote control I started at channel two and spent about ten seconds on all 47 channels.

The noise and the colors hurt my head. I turned off the TV, fell back on the bed and listened. I heard Frankie unroll toilet paper, I heard her shifting, moving about in the bathroom, and I heard the air conditioner and the sound of my breathing. That was it. If there was still noise outside our room, we were cut off from it.

Frankie came out of the bathroom in her white nightgown. Her face was clean, her cheeks scrubbed red,  her long hazelnut hair damp at her forehead. Many hours before I had looked forward to this moment in the motel when we could be two lovers in a strange place that would forget us. I had worn her favorite t-shirt and Old Spice, which she loved.

But that was in the morning, at home, when we both looked forward to a week away from work, a week away from the morning commute and the computers on our desks. It was in the morning of our anticipation that I had  looked forward to the romance of the road and of the silent motel after the road. I don’t know what Frankie looked forward to. The birds? The plants? Me?

My cologne had long ago evaporated or been covered by the thin film of dust that coated all of my exposed skin. My deodorant wore off and my shirt was foul. My stomach was in rebellion from the fried chicken, or the soda, or the candy, or the potato chips. My legs were cramped from the long drive and my back ached. I was thirsty.

Frankie was exquisitely beautiful that night in her nightgown in the motel in the middle of nowhere, her breasts showing through the lace, her eyes sparkling despite her fatigue and the bags beneath them.

“Hello sexy,” I said.

“Oh shush,” she said.

“You are,” I said.

“Oh quiet, I am not. I’m a mess.”

I walked to her and kissed her. Her lips were full and soft and warm, but they said, “Oh shush, quiet.”

Turning from me, she said, “I’m sure our clothes are wrinkled. I hope we can get them pressed before the wedding.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“Of course it matters,” she said.  “We’ll look ridiculous.”

“So what?” I said. “It’s not our wedding. Since when do they care what we look like?”

“I care,” she said.

I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door and turned on the fan and partially relieved the pressure mounting in my gut. As I washed my face and brushed my teeth I felt the weariness surge through my legs and into my arms and eye sockets.

By the time I came out of the bathroom the air conditioner had cooled the room. I turned it down so we wouldn’t freeze.  Frankie was  in bed, asleep.