A Single Shot

She vigorously shakes her head no.

John points his chin at the wall. “ ’Sides me, you see anybody this morning goin’ in or out that room I was?”

Again the woman shakes her head.

“See what I mean?”

This time he can read in her eye and furrowed brow, along with her fear, confusion.

John says, “What’s your name?”

The woman tries to tell him, but it comes out all garbled. John reaches up and pulls the underwear to one side. She gasps, “Florence!”

John puts the underwear back in her mouth. “Florence,” he says. Then he repeats the name several times, breaking it into two crisp syllables, and thinking you don’t often hear someone below the age of seventy named Florence. “Was it your mother’s name?”

She shakes her head.

John’s sweating profusely. He rubs the back of his hand over his forehead, then shakes the hand. Drops of perspiration fly against the near wall. Suddenly he has the feeling he may be performing acts—even mundane ones, like wiping his brow—for the last time. His thoughts don’t expound upon the feeling. Then he’s not sure that he felt it at all. “A relative, though?”

The woman doesn’t respond, just shivers like somebody’s opened a freezer in front of her. “It’s a beautiful name. Someone took some time picking it out. Not like mine—John. John Moon—that’s a real simple, common kinda name.” John feels horrible, actually physically sick. He pictures Obadiah Cornish’s head with an ear, lip, and its nose sliced off and his little baby and Moira in the hands of the madman who did it. He nods solemnly at the woman. “Fella sits in the next room with his throat cut who’s got somethin’ to do with stealin’ my wife and kid and even if I was you or the cops, Florence—I’d think I’d done it.”

The woman’s good eye madly squirts left to right like a guppy.

“I don’t know what to do,” says John. Abruptly his legs start hopping up and down as if they’re run by little motors and he feels, between its vicious pounding, his heart whispering extra little beats like the flapping of a sparrow’s wings. He wonders if maybe he’s having a heart attack, only nothing really hurts. He feels more like a jet revving up to take off. “But I got to do somethin’.”

He looks down at the woman’s fingers and they’re white where they’re digging into her pink sweatpants above the pee stains on her thighs. It strikes him that she’s more petrified than he is and that he’s the reason why; realizing this angers John, as he’s twice told her he doesn’t intend to hurt her. A knock sounds on the door and a female voice with a Spanish accent says, “Clean room, okay?”

Florence precipitately bolts up from the bed and bounds for the door. From his sitting position, John dives headlong and tackles her. For several seconds they grapple on the rug, she squealing through her gag and kicking and punching at him, until finally John gets on top of her and pancakes her to the floor. He barks at the hallway, “No room service!”

“Later, you want?” asks the voice.

Suddenly, in the midst of her exhortative squirming, the underpants pop out of Florence’s mouth. She starts to scream, but John points a threatening finger at her, and she stops, her mouth a frozen pink gash. “Later, no!” John calls out, sitting up and, with his knees, pinning Florence’s arms to the rug. “We’ll make our own beds!”

“Sí,” says the woman.

“Wait!” hollers John.

“Eh?”

“I’m in room 229. I don’t want no room service there neither!”

For several seconds there’s no answer.

John yells, “No towels. Nothin’!”

The voice says, “You stay there?”

“Right. Two doors down! Don’t even knock! Comprende?”

“Two-twenty-nine. Sí.”

He hears her walk off down the corridor, stop at the room before Obadiah Cornish’s, knock, and in a few seconds the door open, then close again. He says to the woman, “I guess I got to put you back in the tub.”

“No,” she whispers.

“I cain’t see ’nother way.”

“I won’t tell nobody what I seen.”

“You won’t have a choice once they find ya.”

“I could say there was a stocking over your head and I didn’t see your face.”

John thinks about it. “They’ll know a’ready I was here.”

“What’s it matter, then?”

“I need time.”

“To do what?”

“Get back my wife and kid.”

“From who?”

“I ain’t sure.”

“Mis… John—listen… please?”

“What?”

“You’re hurtin’ my arms.”

John rolls off her, flops his arms out to the sides, and gazes up at the ceiling. The woman sits up next to him. “Can I reach in my sweats?”

John rolls his head toward her. “What for?”

“I got a joint in there. You wanta smoke a joint with me?”

John doesn’t say, but doesn’t stop her when she reaches into a side pocket of her sweatsuit and pulls out a fat cigarette and a Cricket lighter. She puts the cigarette in her mouth, ignites it, inhales deeply, then withdraws it and places it between John’s lips. They smoke the whole joint without talking. Afterwards, John is just as confused as he was, but a little calmer, and the woman acts so, too. “You got bus fare to Enid, Oklahoma?” she asks.

John blankly stares at her.