Page 1 of The Vacancy In Room 10

1

CASS

There’s a Shell gas station across the street. That was the first thing I noticed when I moved here because I arrived at dusk and the sign’s S was burned out. As I approached the motel, the only thing I could see on the dusty horizon was the word HELL lit up in orange and yellow, which seems appropriate once you get to know the area. I only saw the sad S hanging off the billboard by a hinge and swinging ominously as I got closer, and I wish to God that I took it as an omen and turned around.

There are a few other landmarks on this desolate stretch of two-lane highway between The Sycamores apartments and the good side of town—an Arby’s, a Motor Inn, Larry’s liquor store, some strip malls with hand-painted signs, and Teaser’s Gentlemen’s Club.

I shuddered when I saw this dump that’s now my home. It used to be a motel, and they didn’t even change the name. It’s three strips of two-story building connected in a U shape, with a dumpy pool in the middle. They renovated the motel rooms to be apartments...sort of. They are now slightly-better-than-a-shitty-motel-style apartments with a couple bedrooms, but they didn’t even change out the paisley carpet or burgundy drapes. I literally gasped when I first laid eyes on the semen-stained bedspread in my fully furnished oasis.

Room 10. It used to be apartment 100, but one of the zeros is missing, and in its place is a gash that looks like someone once took a machete to it, but I don’t ask questions. It’s the smallest apartment and sits adjacent to the boiler room, so now I’m Cass from room 10. It’s so pathetic the others don’t even consider it an apartment.

I’m used to it now. The shock wore off weeks ago, and here I still am, just after Christmastime, curled up in front of my window with a Brandy Alexander, watching sleet tap the icy pool water’s surface with a backdrop of Barry from number 206 trying to jump-start his pickup in the parking lot.

I think I’ll start to cry again, so I close the hideous drapes and sit in front of my laptop at the table. The tears don’t come. Today is one of those numb days, as it turns out.

I can’t really predict what I’ll get from day to day. Sometimes it’s the impossibly sad version of myself who will sit for half a day scrolling through my ex’s social media sites to torture myself with images of him and my replacement, Kimmy. What sort of grown woman calls herself Kimmy? Sometimes the Diazepam works, and I feel the emptiness of it all in a different way—the pain presents as a dull ache around the edges, but I can function, put one foot in front of the other, offer a thin smile when I pass people, sometimes even a nod hello so I appear relatively normal. Whichever version of myself shows up from day to day, I don’t forget for a second that Kimmy is living in my four-bedroom house in Santa Fe, and I’m in this dumpster fire of an apartment complex outside town. With nothing.

It all unfolded too fast for me to explain why I’m even here. I was being kicked out. I wasn’t just being cheated on and left but was actually displaced from my home with nowhere to go, so in my desperation, and after scrolling through dozens of cheap short-term apartment ads that someone with no job can’t afford, I answered a want ad for this place because they needed someone to do the apartment cleaning and light repairs in exchange for free rent.

In my old life, you couldn’t pay me to stay here for one night. But that life is so far away it’s like it never happened—like leftover wisps of a dream you try to hold on to and remember when you wake up, but they float through your fingers. When I saw the ad, I took it, because what choice did I really have?

A red flag, my dad said. “A man who doesn’t believe in marriage but will live with ya and play house. Reddest of all the reddy-red flags, Cass.”

I argued it was noble because Reid thinks marriage is a sexist construct and we don’t need a piece of paper to prove our love. My dad sprayed his sip of beer out through his nose on that one.

And he was right about it all. I have no protection now. I didn’t work the last few years because that was how we both liked it—I was able to volunteer and cook my way through Julia Child’s cookbook like someone in a movie.

He liked the way it looked, that he was a bigwig Realtor who could support us both, and he liked his crêpe suzette and quiche lorraine ready to eat when he got home. It worked. There is nothing wrong with that, I told myself.

And then it stopped working. And I have no job or money, and although I think I had every right to punch him in the back of the head when I discovered them at a restaurant together—discovered he was cheating—with my own eyes, I made it worse because there were no late-night crying arguments or discussions about how we’d get through this—no sobbing apologies or denials on his part, begging me to stay and telling me it didn’t mean anything. Just an eviction and a cold shoulder. After six years together, it was over just like that.

I usually have to sit with my head between my knees for a minute to avoid hyperventilating when I think about this too long, but today is a numb day, so I don’t have the energy to look at Kimmy’s Instagram. Well, okay, I peek at it for just a few minutes, to see if there is anything new.

The numbness turns into a tapping up my spine that feels something like rage when I see her in her white puffer coat and ice skates laced up, standing next to my person. My Reid. Not hers. How is this possible? They’re holding two candy canes together making the shape of a heart. Gag. They’re smiling at the camera, rosy-cheeked and glittery-eyed. She looks more like his daughter than his new lover.

Okay, I’m being an asshole. I’m sure she’s at least legal because Reid is very informed on legal matters of all sorts, which is why he was so prepared to screw me out of everything and even write up an official eviction letter from his house with thirty days notice when I refused to leave.

Fun times at Deer Head Lodge the caption reads. I vibrate with fury, but before I can do anything, like maybe drive to the lodge like a psychopath and push Kimmy from a ski lift and watch her plummet to her death—maybe get impaled by a candy cane if I’m lucky—my phone buzzes.

It’s a tenant. Mary Hidleman from 109. And I have to take the call and fix whatever problem she has this time, because as much as it pains me to say, I need the job.

Where else can I go? I quickly run over all my options in my mind the way I often do and always come to the same conclusion. I lost touch with my actual friends years ago when I met Reid, and they’re married with families for the most part; they don’t want some loser on their couch. My father’s a drunk who rents a room in his buddy Oscar’s basement, and our mutual friends sided with Reid. He was expert at making me look like this was all my fault, from the crumbling of our relationship to the restaurant “assault.” So, I’m here now. I’m somehow the caretaker of The Sycamore apartments, and I’m trapped.

Mary calls for me to come in when I knock. Her apartment is mostly dark, lit only by a droopy string of Christmas lights loosely draped around the front window and flickering light from the television. The Shopping Network is selling adult onesies that look like giant creepy gingerbread people. Mary’s in slipper socks and a threadbare housecoat that, in her braless state, leaves little to the imagination.

She sits in her rocker recliner with her legs spread open, chatting to the TV about the economy and the ridiculous prices they’re charging for adult pajamas.

“I see London, I see France, Mare,” I say matter-of-factly, and she closes her legs and gives me a dismissive wave of her hand. A cigarette hangs from her lips, and she points in the direction of the tiny kitchen.

“I saw him under the sink, but I don’t know where he got off to. Little fucker.”

I notice a small pistol, sitting right out in the open on her table that’s cluttered with ashtrays and junk mail.

“What’s that for?” I ask.

“Well, I was gonna try to shoot it, but I thought I’d call you first. See if you got any of those traps that snap their heads off. Or poison, I guess, but I poured some antifreeze on a clump of peanut butter last time I saw a rat, and it didn’t do nothin’.” She leaps up and starts bending down in search of one.

“You can’t shoot a gun in your apartment.”

---