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PRAIRIE REST MOTEL.
And underneath, in flickering red:
VACANCY.
“Mark,” I said. “Stop. Please. Right here.”
He opened his mouth.
“Mark,” I said. “I am fifty-one years old and I have been sitting in this car for eleven hours and if you drive past that sign I will open the door and roll out onto the highway.”
He looked at me.
He took the exit.
The place looked old.
One story. Long and low. Built in an L-shape around a gravel parking lot. White painted cinder block with blue doors. A faded blue sign out front that matched the neon. Flower boxes under the office window with geraniums in them, red and real and carefully watered.
A vending machine humming beside the office. The kind with the spiral coils. Lit up bright in the dark.
Ezoic
But the parking lot was nearly full.
Pickup trucks, mostly. A couple of semis parked along the edge of the lot. A minivan with Nebraska plates. An old Buick with a bumper sticker that said I’D RATHER BE FISHING.
