RONAN

On the back of the gas receipt I use for a bookmark, in pencil, the things I will never ask her for.

A blanket. A late checkout. Her name. One look.

Added tonight, under the list: the plate of a county car that came in with its lights off and parked behind her dumpsters.

JUNE

Nobody at the Starlite asks for extra towels at two a.m. unless they've done something with the first set.

"Of course," I tell room 12, in my desk voice, which is warm and helpful and has heard everything. "Right away."

I hang up. Then I tell the phone what I actually think, which is shorter.

It wasn't Deacon on the line. Deacon sounds like a gravel truck backing up. This was a softer man.

Through the office window, across the empty pool, Room 9 is on his lounger with a paperback western, the way he is every night. He hasn't turned a page all night. I know because I've spent all night not watching him.

My pulse is doing something it has no business doing at this hour.

What I want, right now, is for nothing in the back wing to be my business. The Iron Saints rent the whole back wing one week a month, cash in advance, in a fat envelope. That envelope keeps my lights on. I don't mean that as a figure of speech.

But the light outside room 12 is on.

That bulb has been dead since July. I own the only ladder on this property, and it's chained up behind the laundry room. Tonight there's a clean white circle on the concrete outside 12's door.

The back of my neck goes hot before my brain has filed the paperwork.

Somebody on my property is doing maintenance. At night. For free. That's the most frightening thing to happen here since the health inspector.

And there's the car. An hour ago a gray sedan came off the highway with its lights off and rolled around behind my dumpsters. Clean tires. A stubby antenna. A spotlight bolted to the driver's-side pillar, which is not a standard feature on anybody's mom's Corolla.

Years on the night desk of an airport hotel teach you three cars on sight. A rental, a repo man, and a cop who'd rather you didn't know he was a cop.

Across the pool, Room 9 gets up off his lounger and goes inside. Line 9 lights up on my switchboard.

In all the nights he's been here, room 9 has not called the desk one time.

"Front desk."

"Don't take those towels over yourself."

Low. Even. Since March I've heard that voice say four things to me: "Evening," "Thanks," "Night," and once, in a dust storm, "Ma'am, shut your door."

"Mr. Kelly," I say. "Are you listening to my phone calls?"

"I'm looking at your window. You've put your shoes back on."

I look down. I have. I kick them off under the desk by midnight every night. I put them back on when that sedan rolled in, and he saw it from across a swimming pool.

"Is there something you need?" I ask, in the voice. "A blanket? A late checkout?"

A pause. Long enough to hear him decide.

"No."

"You're sure? We have both kinds of pillow."

"I'm sure."

"Then I'll be at room 12 in five minutes. That's what the desk is for."

"Then go the long way," he says. "Past the pool."

"What's wrong with the short way?"

"Nothing I can see from here."

"So that's a no."

"That's a past the pool."

"Why?"

"Because I'm by the pool."

I hang up on him. I've never hung up on a guest in my life. It's wonderful.

A sensible woman would call room 12 back and say housekeeping closes at ten. I take down an armful of towels and hold them against my chest like a riot shield.

I bought the Starlite in March with my divorce settlement: a horseshoe of rooms around a pool I can't afford to fill, on a road where the only things that stop are truckers, lovers and the lost.

The sign out front says VACANCY in pink neon, whatever the truth is, because the NO hasn't lit since before I could drive. That sign has been lying to the highway for decades. I respect it enormously.

I go the long way.

The back wing's lit at one end: music low, a laugh, somebody's lighter. By the pool, on the lounger with the broken slat, Room 9 is reading.

Leather vest. Boots crossed. One big hand holding a page he isn't turning.

I have a strict policy about guests.

I've broken it in my head in every room on this property.

I've never looked at his face. It isn't shyness. A woman alone on a desk at two in the morning doesn't hold a man's eyes, because some men read eye contact as a menu.

So I've studied everything else. His forearms. The silver ring on his right thumb that he turns when he's deciding something.

I've thought about those hands. At length. In the apartment behind the office, in the dark, with the air conditioner rattling and nobody's business but mine.

"Stand in the light," he says as I pass. He doesn't look up.

"I beg your pardon?"

"When you knock. Stand where the light is."

So that's who owns a ladder.

Room 12's curtains are drawn, which is normal. What isn't normal is my towels.

Two are wedged along the top of the curtain rail, closing the gap where the fabric never meets the frame. A third is rolled tight against the bottom of the door, to keep out a draft. Or keep in a voice.

So that's what they did with the first set.

I stand in the white circle. I knock. "Housekeeping."

The door opens on the chain. He's in his fifties, clean-shaven, a pressed shirt tucked into khakis, which on this stretch of Route 93 is practically a disguise.

"Appreciate it," he says, and takes the towels with a little wince. "We, ah. Used the others."

"I can see that."

"Late night for you, ma'am."

"Every night's a late night for me. Checkout's eleven."

When he reaches, his shirt pulls loose on one side. Clipped to his belt beside the buckle, catching my brand-new light, is a gold badge.

Behind him, Deacon sits at the little round table in his undershirt, his club vest on the chair. One thick hand is flat on a manila folder, sliding it toward the empty chair.

He looks up.

"Thanks, sweetheart," Deacon says, and doesn't take his hand off the folder.

He looks at me the way a guest looks at his bill when there's a charge on it he'd hoped I'd missed.

He saw me see.

"Sleep well," I tell the badge, brightly, because the desk voice runs on its own. The door shuts. I hear the chain come off and go back on, as if somebody needed to check it.

Room 9 isn't on the lounger.

He's at the edge of the pool with his book closed on one finger, and when I come level he falls in beside me, half a step behind and to my left.

"Did he see you?" he says.

"He saw me."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Now he knows you were seen."

The back of his hand brushes mine once, warm, and doesn't come back. The whole way across, he's between me and the back wing. I don't notice that until later.

He holds the office door, then follows me in, which no guest does after midnight, and sets his paperback by the bell. He turns the ring on his thumb, once.

"You didn't see anything," he says.

And I look up. At his face. For the first time.

He's forty-two. I photocopied his license the first night and have been pretending ever since that I didn't read the date. Gray coming into the beard. A nose somebody set in a hurry. Pale eyes, washed-out blue, the blue of a pillowcase that's been through the machine too many times.

They're looking straight at me, as if he's been waiting a while.

"I saw towels," I say.

"Good."

"A lot of towels. Some of them were on the window."

His mouth moves at one corner. It isn't a smile. It's somewhere a smile has been and might come back to.

"You're very calm about all this," I say.

"I am calm."

"I'd like to check."

I reach across the counter and put two fingers on the inside of his wrist, the ring hand, just below the cuff, the way the nurse does at my checkup. His skin is warm. And he goes completely still.

Not relaxed. Held. His other hand closes on the edge of my counter until the knuckles go pale, and he doesn't move one inch toward me.

Under my fingers his pulse is pounding like it's trying to get out.

"You're not calm," I say.

"No."

"How long have you not been calm?"

He looks at my mouth, then very deliberately back at my eyes.

"Since March," he says.

I bought this place in March. I don't take my hand away. He doesn't ask me to.

"That's a long time to hold still," I say.

"I've had practice." His voice is lower than it was. "June."

"I never told you my name."

He tips his head at the frame on the wall behind me. "Your business license. Small print."

"You read the small print."

"I read everything you put up."

That shouldn't land the way it does.

The office door opens behind him. Deacon fills it, undershirt and vest over his arm. "Need a word with the lady. About my bill."

"The lady's closed," I say.

"Then I'll wait."

Room 9 doesn't turn around. He doesn't take his wrist out of my hand.

"Your friend's car is blocking her dumpsters, Deke," he says, in exactly the voice he uses to say goodnight to me. "Trash truck comes at six. You'll want him gone before then."

Nobody moves for a long second. Then Deacon goes. He doesn't slam the door. Somehow that's worse.

"Was that a threat?" I ask.

"That was a parking notice."

I laugh. I don't mean to. It comes out of me like a cork.

His pulse didn't change once while Deacon stood there. It was already going for somebody else.

I let go of his wrist. It's harder than it should be.

"You knew," I say. "About the car."

"I know about most cars."

"Who are you?"

"Room 9."

"That's a room. I rent it to you. I could rent it to somebody else."

"You could," he agrees. "You won't."

"Why not?"

"Because I pay cash, and I've never once asked you for anything."

He's right, and he knows he's right, and I hate it. "You changed my bulb."

"It was dark."

"It's been dark since July."

"I know. You walk that stretch most nights, with your keys in your fist."

"Is there anything you don't know?"

"Whether there's somebody you can stay with tonight."

"I own the building."

"That's not what I asked."

I think about it honestly, because he asked honestly.

"My friends were my ex-husband's friends," I say. "They went with the house. My sister has three kids and opinions." I stop. "No. There isn't anybody."

He doesn't say he's sorry. He nods slowly, as if I've confirmed something on a list.

I look down, because I can't hold his eyes any longer, and I see his book. The gas receipt marking his page has slid partway out. On the back, in pencil, small and neat:

G-4471. 1:12.

The plate of a car I only figured out was a cop's at 1:20.

I file it where I file the cards that decline twice. I don't say a word.

"What's the book?" I ask instead.

"A man rides into a town."

"And?"

"There's a hotel." He closes it over the receipt and picks it up. "I'll let you know. I'll be by the pool."

"You're always by the pool."

"Then nobody will think anything of it."

"Mr. Kelly."

"Ronan."

"Ronan." It's strange in my mouth. Good strange. "Thank you for the bulb."

At the door he stops with his hand on the frame, and for one second I'm sure he's going to ask me for something. He doesn't. He goes.

I don't sleep. I sit at the desk with the lights off and my shoes on and watch the lot.

Before four, the gray sedan rolls out from behind the dumpsters, lights off, and doesn't put them on until it hits the highway. Soon after, the light in room 12 goes out.

At four, Room 9 turns a page.

Everyone out here knows what clubs do about a woman who's seen something she wasn't meant to. Nobody says it. That's how you know it's true.

Then the desert goes gray, then pink. The sign switches itself off on its timer, and the dead NO gives its little tick in the tube, the way it does every morning, as if it's thinking about it.

"Don't look at me like that," I tell it.

The Saints always park around the back. It's their rule, so my front doesn't look like a biker bar to a family on vacation.

By sunrise there are fourteen motorcycles in my lot, and every one of them is parked facing my door.

Thirteen men sit on them, watching it. The fourteenth is reading.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I tell the window.

I make fourteen coffees, black, on my one good tray. Then I unlock the door and carry them out.