Roger stood in front of Room 33. It was dark and he was nervous. He shifted and held his right hand up in a fist in front of him, but set it down quickly. Roger swallowed, feeling it like a rock down his throat.
***
Roger had been writing in his journal alone on a park bench. It was the morning and he decided not to come into work that day. His boss had called him but he just turned off his phone. It was autumn. The sun was shining but it was cold. The busy people were busy. Retired men sat outside in fold-up chairs smoking cigarettes. They nodded to him. He nodded back. He wrote.
Roger was lost in thought. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Writing. Thinking. His eyebrows furrowed. He was troubled. He kept writing.
Suddenly someone was in his presence, standing in front of him. He felt the shadow. He looked up. There stood a tall, pretty woman in a long black jacket. She was maybe 30. She had brown curly hair, smelled like cigarettes, and had wandering eyes that penetrated his skin. It made him nervous. His face flickered with polite greeting. She spoke first.
“Are you supposed to be at work?”
Roger was momentarily stunned. She was looking at his chest. He looked down at his green tie and beige button up. He understood her observation.
“Why?” Roger said.
“Just wondering,” her eyes locked on him.
He shifted and set his journal down.
“Can I help you?” He asked.
“Is your name Henry?”
“No. I’m Roger.”
She laughed. “I thought you’d be a Henry.”
Roger didn’t know what to say.
“Are you okay? You look upset or something. Am I upsetting you?”
“No, no. I’m just hanging out here. It’s all good.”
She looked at his hand. She looked back at him.
“What’s the matter?”
Roger looked at the retired men across from him. They were talking to each other.
“Nothing’s the matter. Like I said, just hanging out here.”
She made a face and then casually sat down next to him. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She slid two out and offered him one. He declined. She put one behind her ear and lit the other, looking away to exhale away from him. She turned back to him.
Her eyes scanned him up and down. “Are you married?”
Roger was shocked by the intrusive question. “Yes. I’m married,” Roger quickly said. He felt his chest tighten. Her face was unchanged.
“Are you happy together?”
Roger scowled. He was about to snap at her for the absurd question, but didn’t. Instead, he began to consider the question, just for a moment. He almost spoke but stopped himself. He considered more. He was about to say something but it pulled back in his throat. His face tightened. Roger couldn’t find the words.
“I… don’t know.”
Roger was surprised by his own answer. As if it weren’t his.
“Hm.” Her face flickered and she exhaled away from him again. She turned back to him.
Roger sat and didn’t say anything. His body was tense. He looked at her and looked forward again. He felt her stare. She then turned her body towards him and crossed her legs, slanting her head and leaning it on her hand. She pursed her lips and gave him a sad, understanding look. Her voice softened.
“It happens a lot, Roger. It’s okay.” He turned to her, feeling her words penetrate him. It worried him that she seemed to know this well. It worried him that he felt like she could see right through him. He swallowed.
Roger let out a nervous laugh. She leaned in more and spoke with a quiet and gentle tone.
“If you wanna talk about it more, I’m staying at a motel near here. Sunrise. Room 33. Just knock on my door if you want to. Okay?” She smiled at him and touched his shoulder. Her hand stayed for a moment. A moment longer. She stood up.
“Room 33. Just knock.” She smiled nicely at him again and walked away
He watched her walk away until she was out of sight. He looked down at his hand. He looked up. One of the retired men was looking at him. He looked down again, thinking.
***
Roger finally knocked on Room 33. His arm fell to his side. He was stiff. He was listening for movement in the room. Movement toward the door and his body went cold. The door opened. “Hi.” The woman’s eyes flickered with knowing and she smiled warmly. “Come in.”
He stepped in. The room surprisingly didn’t smell like cigarettes like he anticipated, he thought to himself. He scanned the room. There was a king-sized bed; bottles of rum, vodka, wine, ginger ale, and a scented candle burning on the table near the shades; an assortment of luggage sat in the far-most corner. Everything was neat. She was wearing a tight black shirt and white pants.
She moved toward the table and prepared two glasses of rum and ginger ale and handed him one. Roger sat down on the desk chair. He didn’t take off his coat.
She sat at the edge of the bed. “How was your day of hooky?”
Roger laughed nervously. “Oh, fine, fine. Wrote a lot.”
“So Roger’s pensive.”
“Not exactly,” he said quickly.
“He’s also the stoic type, I can tell.” She took a sip and maintained eye contact. He took a drink.
Roger looked down, then up again. She was so inviting, he thought to himself.
“How does this work, exactly? I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I think I need to.” His tone was serious.
“Well, how about we just talk for a while, first.” She leaned forward.
“Okay.” Roger sat for a moment and exhaled. He looked at her.
“So, is this what you do normally? Like, again, I hope you don’t mind me asking. Is this how you make a living?”
“I don’t know if anyone makes a living. You just do. Don’t you think?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant.”
“Well, I like to get to know people and help them with their problems. If you call that a living, then I guess it is.”
“Problems,” Roger said. “What kinds of problems?”
“All sorts of problems.” She took a sip. “Most people are miserable.”
“Hm,” Roger said as he nodded. He gulped a big drink.
“People just get stuck and don’t know how to get unstuck, so they don't do anything. They stay trapped in relationships they shouldn't be in, jobs they hate. They live lives they don't actually want to live. But people don’t realize that most of the time they’re not stuck at all. They choose to be.”
Roger thought about this.
“What do you mean? You make it sound like most people, I don’t know, like most people don’t really want to be happy.” He felt looser and the words flowed out easier. He gulped down the rest of his drink.
She stood and took his empty glass. She walked back over to the table and mixed the rum and ginger ale. He sank more deeply into his chair and stretched out his legs.
“I guess I do believe that.” She said softly, pausing as she stood staring down at the glass.
She walked back over to him, handed him a new glass and sat back down at the edge of the bed.
“I’ve met so many people who don’t even know who they are. I’ve been all around and it’s all the same. Doesn’t matter where. It’s like- it’s like they don’t even have a voice that’s their own. They don’t know what’s theirs. They haven’t claimed it.
Roger was struck by this. He somehow believed her words. She began to talk faster, and with more fervor.
“It’s like- It’s just like they’ve got this ocean of feeling underneath them, just sitting there. And they go their whole lives never touching it. Never going inside, seeing how big, never feeling how magnificent it is.”
Roger looked down. He felt the grave seriousness of what she was saying. It somehow felt more important than anything. Her tone sank.
“So much has happened to me in my life that I could say was out of my control, that I got dealt a bad hand. So much fucked up shit I’ve dealt with. But that’s not the story of my life. I am who I am because of it. I’m not caged. I’m alive. I’m here. And I just want to show people they’re not doomed. They can be alive too, if they wanted.”
He looked at her, transfixed. He felt suddenly fragile, vulnerable, words both soothing and paralyzing him, like a deep trance. He felt awake and asleep at the same time.
Her hand patted the space beside her and she moved her head gesturing for him to come sit next to her. He felt a twinge of fear, but the feeling felt farther away and easier to ignore. He stood up, somehow feeling new, ready. He walked over, and sat next to her.
They looked at each other for a moment. He looked in her eyes and felt completely understood, somehow.
She reached over to his shoulder and pulled on his coat. She began to take it off. His arms pulled out of the sleeves. She took the coat, but stopped. She felt something. Her hand reached into the pocket and she pulled out Roger’s notebook. She opened it on the bookmarked page and began to read.
Roger didn’t move, didn’t protest.
“I bought that the other day because I thought I should get to know myself better.”
Her gaze was unchanged, her eyes slowly moving down his words.
“I wrote for a while-”
Roger laughed. “I wrote for a long while. Until I realized something.
She looked at him and waited for his answer.
“I just- I realized it’s just, paper.”
Her expression unchanged, she fixed her gaze back to his journal, reading the rest of the day’s entry. She closed it slowly, and set the coat and journal to the side. She looked at him. He looked back. Neither of them moved. Roger suddenly felt as if she could see his soul. A knot formed in his throat. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt a well of emotion rise in him. Words he had never said, words that needed to get out. He had to say them.
“I’m not sure if I’m happy or not. How would you know?” Roger asked in a hush, his voice cracking.
She said nothing, before looking down, thinking. She was still for a while and Roger wasn’t afraid. She looked up, and her face slowly shifted what seemed to be the faintest of smiles, like a glorious secret she was about to share.
“Could you die? Would everything be fine?” she hushed back.
Roger closed his eyes and thought. And when he closed his eyes, he began to think about Maggie. He thought back to when he and Maggie were young, when they smoked cigarettes and stayed up and wandered, before they had Mary. And then he began to think about Mary. Little Mary. He loved Mary more than he had words for. He loved being her father. He always had. And he began to think about his life and about how as time went on things became more and more stale and Mary grew up and now she’s almost out of the house and he doesn’t even know Maggie anymore. He didn’t even know his wife anymore. And he couldn’t believe how it all changed and flew past him, faster than he could’ve ever imagined. Roger thought about this for a while. He thought and thought and the more he thought the more he began to feel something he had taught himself to forget. And then he started to cry. He couldn’t believe it, but he started to cry. He didn’t know the last time he had.
He then felt her hand on his back and her head on his shoulder which made him cry even harder. And then he was weeping. He pressed his hands into his eyes. He didn’t have words for it. The woman gave him soft reassuring words and he wept.
After a while of this he opened his eyes and wiped them with his sleeve. The woman got some tissue paper from her purse and offered it to him. He laughed and blew his nose.
“Thanks.”
She nodded and put her head back on his shoulder.
“I should go,” he said quietly.
“Okay,” she hushed softly.
But he stayed for a moment and felt the warmth of her body against his a moment longer.
The door knocked suddenly and they jolted. He looked at her questioningly and she mouthed ‘one second’. She went over and opened the door. It was a man’s voice. She asked for a few minutes. She closed the door and then looked at him. Roger understood and collected himself. He walked to the door but stopped. He laughed to himself. He had almost forgotten. He reached into his pocket and took out the stack of bills he had gotten from the ATM earlier and left it on the table. He opened the door. An older man in a tie was waiting. He walked past him, got in his car, and headed home.
About Author
Graham Neil (he/him) is a fiction writer, screenwriter, filmmaker based in Portland, Maine. His favorite authors include Raymond Carver, J.D Salinger, and Ray Bradbury, You can read more of his work on Substack: @humbleboggy.
I’m a big fan of this