Writing Contest

Douglas Patrice of White Plaines, New York is the winner of our Autumn 2015 short fiction contest. His entry below was selected from all entries written to the prompt: "She was a liar and a con-artist. How could I resist?”

 

This was Doug's first submission to a Big White Box contest. He is an aspiring novelist and poet. Congratulations Doug!

 

 

Vacant

 

I clutched a brochure for the motel in one sweaty hand as I approached the registration desk. In 1962, Los Angeles baked in an autumn heat wave, Santa Ana winds whipping up brush fires as quickly as they could be extinguished.

 

There was no one at the front desk. I waited patiently, noticed an inverted silver bell and rang for service. Nothing. Sweat trickled down my temples and tickled my spine, soaking the back of my shirt, annoying and uncomfortable. The air conditioning in the lobby was either broken or unable to keep up with the sweltering devil winds.

 

Impatiently fanning myself with the dampened brochure, I rang the bell again. The previous polite tap was now an open handed slap. Neither had the desired result.

 

When the blonde desk clerk finally entered the lobby through the outside entry where I had passed, it was with the same strained facial expression I had since developed. She wore little more than a glistening sheen of perspiration and a pair of flip-flops. Her bright yellow bikini was outrageously tiny by the standards of the day. The world would catch up with her eventually, one sexual revolution and three assassinations later.

 

She quickly disposed of a circular drink tray behind the front counter when she saw me waiting. She was doing double duty as poolside waitress. The motel was mostly vacant, a remnant of the illusory glory days promoted in the brochure.

 

“Well hi there!” she said, instantly perky and lighting the lobby with her smile. She was sunshine. Her name was Star.

 

“You returning that?” she motioned to the upraised pamphlet in my hand, frozen in mid-fanning motion. I was stunned.

 

I looked down at my own motionless hand, laughed nervously and mumbled, “I’m, just in, um, checking for a room.”

 

She giggled slightly, but not to offend. It was flirtatious. Or was it? I couldn’t be sure.

 

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she prodded, leaning forward to hand me a pen and the guest register, “Just put it here,” she motioned toward the breast-level book.

 

“I think we still have a room available,” she said, turning away and bending unnecessarily toward a rack filled with room keys. She glanced back over one shoulder. I quickly averted my eyes, caught.

 

“You like a view?” she asked.

 

“What, I don’t, know…”

 

“The pool, honey, you want a pool view?”

 

“Oh sure, that’s fine” I said, then skidded my eyes to the book in front of me.

The Ocean View motel was my new favorite place, and I stuffed the brochure clumsily in my shirt pocket while I scribbled my name and address.

 

“There’s a ten dollar deposit in case you lose your key,” she said convincingly.

 

I had never heard of such a thing. I reached for my wallet.

 

“Follow me. I’ll take you to your room.”

 

The room was, by any standard, an utter disaster. The draperies were soiled and torn free from several curtain rings, closed tight to keep out the blazing sun, darkening the room and hiding its many sins. A cable of twisted wires dangled from the wall in the middle of a filthy shadow. It framed the spot where a television had lived and died, or been stolen.

 

“She noticed my glance, wiggled as if about to do a dance, and said, “It’s out for repair.”

 

“I wasn’t planning on watching,” I lied. “The TV, I mean,” fumbling. “I was hoping to go for a swim.”

 

“Tell you what honey, I’ll meet you by the pool. She stepped close and tapped my chin with her slender index finger. You get a complementary drink. It’s only five dollars,” she laughed, “but I’ll compliment you when I serve it.”  She winked, turned and walked slowly from the room, grasping the doorframe as if her momentum required restraint as she swung into the blazing light of the sun-drenched balcony. She paused to stretch, arms raised above her head and outward, glorifying and energizing the sun. “See you there,” she said, and was gone.

 

* * * * *

 

I met Lenny near the deep end of the pool. The deck was his kingdom, and he invited me into his world of tables, chairs and tattered sunshades. He recognized youthful prey instantly. Introductions were quick and mostly one-sided. He did most of the talking. Lenny was about thirty-five years old, worldly, prematurely greying at the temples. I listened like an awestruck schoolboy.

 

A five-year-old floated in an inflatable red rubber ring near the shallow end of the pool.

 

“I’m a little boat float-ing. I’m a little boat float-ing,” he sang incessantly.

 

Lenny glanced nervously at the boy, irritated by the monotonous child-song.

 

“He’s hers,” he motioned as Star approached. “Asked me to watch him while she checked you in. She was a liar and a con-artist. How could I resist?”

 

I was shocked by the revelation. So young. So un-motherly.

 

“You sure look good in those swim trunks,” teased Star, tousling my hair as she handed me a vodka-lemonade I hadn’t ordered. “That’ll be five dollars.”

 

“See what I mean?” said Lenny. “Hey Momma,” he leered, making an ill-timed grab at her backside.

 

Star strolled to her towel on the pool deck, comfortably distant from Lenny. We both watched her lay down on her stomach and reach back to untie and remove her top. Lenny noticed my hopeful gaze and took it upon himself to correct her behavior.

 

“Un uh Momma,” he said, shaking his head disapprovingly, and in the same breath squinting up at the roof of the three story motel, elbowing me in the side and asking, “Buy me a drink if I jump off the roof into the pool?”

 

“No!” I replied, shocked that he might be crazy enough to attempt such a stunt.

 

“I'm a little boat float-ing,” continued the boy, his song carried by the devilish Santa Ana across the pool, past the conniving partners. The searing wind dried the sweat on my forehead and burned the image of the ocean, a billboard mural behind the pool, forever into my memory.