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What was the name of this place? Zeke couldn’t remember. Maybe it was embroidered on the complementary bathrobes, ha ha. It was hardly even a motel, more like a single-unit apartment complex for transients. An apartment complex whose tenants paid thirty bucks a night to live in a box with little more than a bed, a television set and a mildew-caked bathroom. Zeke had been in a million places like this, but he’d never willingly stayed in one so long. They’d been there…how long? A week already, and Zeke had paid the rent in advance for another week. Casey didn’t ask him when they were leaving. Casey hardly asked him anything anymore, much less seemed to notice they’d been in the same crappy room for almost two weeks.
Three days before, Zeke had gone to the office to pay the rent. Since then, he hadn’t left the room. He’d barely gotten out of bed except when he needed to rifle through his pockets for cigarettes or hunt for something on the T.V. that would keep Casey occupied. Zeke had noticed Casey’s rash two days ago and had taken him off his meds. The rash hadn’t cleared up and Casey had completely freaked out with nothing in his system, and scratched himself bloody on top of it. So it was back on the pills, the few of them that Zeke had left, and at least Casey had gone back to sleeping at night, even if he was starting to look like a walking infection.
Gotta do something about that, Zeke thought, and sat up in bed. Casey was huddled in a chair in front of the T.V., shakily smoking a cigarette. He scratched himself now and then and ashes flurried onto his clothes.
“Casey,” Zeke said, and repeated his name until Casey turned around. “How do you feel?”
“Hot,” Casey said, and turned back to the television. Zeke hauled himself out of bed and put his hand on Casey’s neck.
“You’ve got a fever,” Zeke said. He plucked the cigarette from Casey’s fingers and ground it out in the ashtray. “This isn’t helping.” Casey gave him a dirty look.
“Did you eat anything today?” Zeke asked.
Casey shook his head. “Not hungry. Nothing to eat, anyway.”
Well, that was true. Zeke had ordered pizza a couple of days ago; the remnants of it were still in the box on the floor. There was a half-empty liter of Pepsi and a case of Ensure—Zeke could sometimes get Casey to drink that when he wouldn’t eat anything else.
What the fuck? Zeke thought. What’s wrong with me? Zeke rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the dirty room, feeling sick and weary. His eyes came to rest on Casey’s rash-mottled face.
“I’m going out,” Zeke said abruptly. “Get something to eat, something for that rash. You wanna come?”
Casey shook his head.
“You should come, get out of this room for half an hour. It’d do you good.”
Casey shook his head again. “I’m sick,” he said, then looked up anxiously at Zeke. “You’ll come back, right?”
Zeke passed his hand through Casey’s hair. He could feel scabs on Casey’s scalp.
“I always come back.”
_____
Bayside, that was the name of the motel, at least, that was the name on the sign. Zeke couldn’t see any bay, but a few seagulls were circling in the leaden sky and a damp breeze was blowing, so water wasn’t far away. The ocean? Which ocean? The Pacific, of course—Portland. Oregon. The Bayside Motel in Portland, Oregon.
Even in the northwestern gloom, Zeke found himself blinking against the daylight. He hadn’t opened the room’s curtains in days, and it had been cavelike in there except for the blue glow of the television.
Bayside, the sign said when Zeke drove past it. End of the line is more like it, Zeke thought. The End of the Line Motel, wonder why they didn’t call it that .
He drove through a misting drizzle to a strip mall. At the drugstore he bought three bottles of anti-itch lotion, a box of antihistamines and a pack of cigarettes. At the convenience store next door, he bought tomato soup, a bag of Cheetos and canned peaches. Casey’s favorites, at least they had been.
Back in the car, Zeke turned his collar up. The heat didn’t work, and Zeke leaned forward at the red light to defog the window with his sleeve.
What’s wrong with me? he asked himself again. In five years, he’d never felt like this. Five years gone. I always come back, he’d told Casey. Maybe that was the problem. Not the coming back, but the always. For five years, they had always kept moving, always stayed just one step ahead, always made it, somehow. Zeke was sick of always. He thought Casey had probably been sick of always for a long time.
A horn blared behind him and Zeke snapped out of his thoughts and stepped on the gas.
The pills he’d bought were in a bag on the dashboard. They rattled annoyingly as he drove, and he pitched the bag onto the seat. He didn’t know why he had bothered with them—over-the-counter shit wasn’t going to help Casey. But he had nothing else, and he had neither the money nor the will to go looking for it.
He’s dying, Zeke thought suddenly, and although he’d often thought the same thing over the years, now it felt not just true but inevitable. He’s dying and I can’t help him.
Call Stokely, his mind whispered, not for the first time since they’d gotten to Portland. Each time Zeke had rejected the idea, and he did the same this time, too. Zeke hadn’t spoken to Stokely in more than a year, not since that business with Delilah, not since the one time it had almost been over. They might have gotten to her. Even if they hadn’t…Zeke imagined his phone call going through thousands of miles of cable and wire, bouncing off satellites, who knew what? A thousand places to tap, to listen. He had hesitated once, once before, in Arizona. What if he did so again?
He pulled into the parking lot at the motel. End of the line, he thought again. Welcome to the end of the line.
_____
Casey was no longer in front of the television. When Zeke’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that Casey wasn’t in bed, either. For a few seconds his chest tightened, and then he heard the shower hissing in the bathroom. Casey was taking a shower. Zeke couldn’t remember the last time Casey had taken a shower without Zeke prodding him to do it—maybe it was a good sign. Maybe he was feeling better.
Zeke put the things he’d bought on the table. He turned on the light next to the bed. The room was even uglier with it on. He crumpled up the pizza box and stuffed it in the trash. He made a half-hearted attempt to smooth out the bedsheets. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the T.V.
“I was drowning in debt!” the actress in the commercial told Zeke. The worst commercials came on in the middle of the day—all debt consolidation, no-money-down used car lots, home-study courses that promised great careers but would never, ever land anyone a job. He got up and switched off the set.
By the time Zeke finished his cigarette, he realized something was wrong with the sound coming from the bathroom. Running water. That was it. None of the splashing sounds of someone actually showering. Just straight running water.
Zeke put his cigarette out, crossed the room, knocked on the bathroom door.
“Casey? Hey, Casey, you okay in there?”
No response.
Zeke turned the knob, relieved that it wasn’t locked. The bathroom was damp, but not warm. The shower curtain was open. Casey was crouched, still dressed, in the bottom of the tub. His knees were drawn up and his forehead was pressed into them, his hands were laced on the back of his head. Water drummed on him from the shower, far above. For a few seconds, Zeke could do nothing but watch.
Then he leaned over and turned off the shower. The water was ice cold. He knelt down by the side of the tub and put a hand on Casey’s shoulder.
“Casey?” he asked. He could feel Casey shivering under his hand. “Casey, look at me. Look at me, buddy.”
Casey looked up slowly. His teeth were chattering.
“What happened?” he asked quietly. “Did you feel that sick?”
Casey shook his head. “I thought I could…I wanted to wash it away…”
“The rash,” Zeke said.
“No. Everything. My head. And this place. Everything. Wash it away. When you came back, it would all be gone. Washed away. Washed away. We’d be free.”
Zeke stared at Casey in silence. He touched Casey’s face.
“Okay. Okay, Casey,” he finally said. He could have lain down on the floor and wept.
He helped Casey out of the tub and out of his wet clothes. Beneath his clothes, the rash had spread; it was everywhere. Zeke plastered anti-itch lotion on Casey. The calamine smell made him think of summertime, of childhood. He dressed Casey in dry clothes.
He popped three antihistamines into Casey’s palm, and Casey took them without question. Zeke knew he could have given him the whole box, and Casey would have swallowed them just as trustingly. For a moment . . . just a moment . . .
Zeke towel-dried Casey’s hair, instead.
“Better?” Zeke asked. Casey nodded, his eyes downcast. He was getting groggy from the pills. Zeke deposited him on the edge of the bed and hunkered down in front of him. “I bought some soup. And peaches. Maybe you could try eating something.”
Casey shook his head.
“Okay well . . . maybe later. Get some sleep now.”
Zeke sat back against the headboard and propped Casey against him. He lit a cigarette and let Casey have a drag before taking one himself.
“It’s almost over, isn’t it?” Casey asked, his words slurring against Zeke’s shoulder.
“I think so.”
“Good,” Casey answered.
Zeke set his cigarette in the ashtray and listlessly watched the smoke curl up through the stained lampshade. He let his eyes roam around the room until they came back to the lampshade; the smoke passing through the light gave it the illusion of being on fire. He stared at it for several minutes until he followed the smoke back down to the ashtray, and next to it, the telephone.
Zeke reached out picked up the receiver. He held it until it grew warm in his hand. Twice, he started to dial and stopped. Finally, he set the receiver back in the cradle.
Against him, Casey shifted and sighed. The room was dim, quiet. Zeke closed his eyes.
_____
“Hello?” Stokely mumbled into the phone, not fully awake.
“I need your help,” Zeke said, and then she was wide awake.