Chapter 1: One Star, One Bed
The door to room eleven let out a sound that was less of a creak and more of a prolonged death rattle. Julian Ashford stood frozen in its frame, his Italian leather carry-on hanging limp from his hand. The interior seemed to suck the air from his lungs.
“No,” he said, the word barely a whisper.
The room was a physical assault on his sensibilities. Peeling floral wallpaper curled like ancient skin. A single bulb behind a smoke-stained glass shade flickered in a syncopated rhythm with the neon “STARLIGHT” sign outside the window, casting a watery, drunk crimson glow over everything. The smell was a complex bouquet of bargain floral air freshener, decades of cigarette smoke, and something underlying—something damp.
But his gaze was locked, unblinking, on the bed.
It was a double. One double. A vast landscape of lumpy quilting in a violently orange geometric pattern. And there, right in the center of the purported sleeping area, was a stain. A dark, amoebic shape about the size of a dessert plate. It was the color of old tea and bad decisions.
Nana Bloom slid past him, her practical flats making a soft sticking sound on the sticky-looking linoleum. She dropped her sensible overnight bag onto a low dresser scarred with water rings. “Well,” she said, her voice dry as dust. “It’s got a certain… forensic charm.”
Julian didn’t move. “This is a mistake. There’s been a cataclysmic system failure. The airline lost our luggage, the rental car agency gave our reservation to a teenager in a Def Leppard t-shirt, and now this… this establishment has clearly misread my assistant’s perfectly clear request for two adjoining suites.”
“I asked for ‘two rooms, please,’” Nana corrected, crossing to the ancient box television. She pressed the power button. Nothing happened. She found a large, yellowed plastic knob and turned it. The TV blared to life with a burst of static snow so loud it made Julian flinch.
“Turn it off,” he pleaded.
She twisted the knob again, clicking through three channels of varying fuzz before it died back to silence. “See? Functional.” She gave the top of the set a pat, which elicited a worrying rattle from inside its casing.
A gravelly voice floated in from the hallway, accompanied by the scent of stale cigarettes. “Breakfast’s at seven. Coffee’s instant. Don’t touch the heater unless you want a shock.”
Darlene, the motel manager, appeared in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. Her bleach-blonde perm was a stiff helmet. The unlit cigarette behind her ear looked like a natural part of her anatomy. She eyed Julian’s three-piece suit, his platinum watch, his expression of naked horror, with profound indifference.
“There must be another room,” Julian said, forcing his CEO voice. It sounded strained, even to him. “A second bed. This is untenable.”
Darlene’s laugh was like gravel sliding down a chute. “Honey, the only other thing I got is Room Nine. And the ceiling fan in there came loose last Tuesday. Took a chunk out of the dresser. So unless you want sleep to be a literal crapshoot…” She shrugged, a magnificent, world-weary gesture. “It’s one bed or the convertible in the parking lot. Your call.”
She pushed off the doorframe and began to amble away. “Oh, and the mini-fridge works,” she tossed over her shoulder. “But stuff in there’s warmer than it should be. Makes the soda taste… anxious.”
Then she was gone.
Julian finally took a step inside, letting the door swing shut. The click of the latch was horribly final. He stood in the center of the room, his arms held slightly away from his body as if contact with the atmosphere might contaminate him. “I cannot sleep in that.”
Nana had moved to investigate the mini-fridge. It hummed with a worried, asthmatic rattle. She opened it. “We’ve got a can of ginger ale that feels like it has a fever, and a chocolate bar that’s melted and re-solidified into a vaguely tragic shape.” She closed the door. “I’ve negotiated billion-dollar mergers with less preparation than this requires.”
“This isn’t funny, Nana.”
“It’s a little funny.” She sat on the edge of the horrific bed. It groaned, a long, low, personal sound. She bounced experimentally. Another groan. “See? It’s communicative.”
“What about the… stain?” He couldn’t look directly at it.
“We’ll drape a towel over it. Build a pillow fort. Establish a demilitarized zone.” She kicked off her shoes. “Look, Julian. Storm flooded the highway, plane got diverted, we’re stuck in the only lodging within forty miles. The Clayton meeting is tomorrow at ten. We either figure this out, or you show up having slept in a rental Kia. Which look do you think inspires more confidence?”
He knew she was right. It was her particular genius, cutting through his spirals with pragmatic, unassailable logic. It was why he paid her an obscene salary.
He walked to the window, avoiding the bed by a wide margin, and peered through the blinds. The neon sign buzzed and sputtered. In its light, he could see their rental car—the compact, non-luxury model they’d been grudgingly given—sitting alone in the vast, cracked-asphalt lot.
“A demilitarized zone,” he repeated, flatly.
“With strict protocols,” she said, lying back and lacing her hands behind her head. She stared at the water-stained ceiling tile. “I won’t cross the 38th Parallel if you don’t.”
He turned from the window. Seeing her lying there, so utterly unfazed on the orange quilt of doom, somehow made it worse. And better. A tiny, hysterical bubble of laughter threatened to rise in his throat. He choked it down.
“Fine.” The word tasted of defeat. “Protocols. I’ll take the side nearest the bathroom.”
“The side with the suspicious dip in the mattress? Brave choice.”
He ignored her, walking stiffly to the bathroom door and pushing it open. The light inside was a cold, cruel fluorescent. The tile was pink. A small, dark shape darted from behind the toilet and disappeared under the sink cabinet.
Julian froze. Every muscle in his body locked. A cold sweat bloomed instantly on the back of his neck.
“Nana.”
“Hmm?”
“There’s…” His voice had lost all its authority. It was low, tight. “There’s fauna.”
She sat up. “What kind of fauna?”
“The… scurrying kind.”
She sighed, a long-suffering sound, and padded over to the bathroom in her socks. She peered past him. “Probably just a water bug. It’s gone now.” She looked at his face. He was pale, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle jumped. A realization dawned on her, and her expression softened from amusement to something perilously close to pity. “Oh. You’re actually terrified.”
“I am not terrified. I have a severe and rational aversion to unsanitary, multi-legged vectors of disease.”
“Right.” She suppressed a smile. “Well, the vector is gone. I’ll do a perimeter check before we turn in. You might want to, you know, not stand in the doorway all night.”
She went back to the bed, opened her bag, and pulled out a laptop and a file folder. Business. An anchor in the surreal.
Julian forced himself to step into the bathroom. He moved quickly, jerkily, keeping his eyes roving. He washed his hands with the gritty, pink motel soap, scrubbing longer than necessary. When he came out, she was cross-legged on “her” side, papers spread around her.
The neon sign buzzed. The bed waited. The stain taunted.
He placed his bag on the wobbly wooden chair, the only other piece of furniture, and began the meticulous process of removing his watch, his cufflinks, his tie. Each movement was a ritual of normalcy. He folded his suit jacket with excessive care and laid it over the back of the chair.
Outside, a truck groaned by on the distant highway. In the quiet that followed, the hum of the anxious mini-fridge seemed to grow louder.
Nana didn’t look up from her papers. “The protocols include no sock theft,” she said casually. “And if you snore, I’m relegating you to the Kia.”
Julian Ashford, who commanded a empire of thread-count and concierge service, who dined with mayors and terrified his board, stood in the dim, flickering light of the Starlight Inn. He looked at the one bed, at his unflappable assistant, at the world that had so suddenly and completely shrunk to this shabby, twelve-by-fifteen rectangle.
For the first time in twenty years, he had absolutely no idea what to do next.
For the first time in twenty years, he had absolutely no idea what to do next.
The solution, arrived at with the grim solemnity of a peace treaty, was sleep. Or, more accurately, a rigid, parallel existence on opposite sides of the contentious bedding. Nana, after a final ritualistic check under the bed and inside the closet that involved a swung high-heel shoe and a muttered “ah-ha, gotcha,” declared the territory secure. They turned off the buzzing overhead light, leaving only the erratic neon glow from the window to paint the room in pulsing shades of hellish pink.
Julian lay on his back, stiff as a board, atop the quilt. He hadn’t removed his trousers or his crisp white dress shirt. Nana, more sensibly, had changed into soft leggings and an old t-shirt. She was a warm, quiet shape a careful eighteen inches away. The demilitarized zone felt both vast and microscopically thin.
“The Clayton presentation,” Julian said to the ceiling, his voice loud in the dark. “The third-quarter projections need more emphasis on the regional sustainability initiatives. The slides feel soft.”
“Noted,” Nana murmured, already half-asleep. “I’ll buff them up in the morning. Go to sleep, Julian.”
He listened to the chorus of the room: the fridge’s rattle, the click-hiss of the neon sign, the occasional thump from the room next door. He tried to ignore the faint, sweet-musty smell of the pillows. He counted the cracks in the ceiling tile until they started to look like unsightly margin charts.
An hour bled by. He must have dozed, because the next thing he knew, a sliver of weak light was cutting through the blinds and Nana was sitting up, her laptop already open, its glow illuminating her focused face. She typed quietly, sipping from a paper cup of instant coffee that smelled like burnt regrets.
He sat up, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, feeling it betray him by sticking up at odd angles. He said nothing, stumbling into the bathroom and shutting the door with a firm click. The shower, when he finally got it to work, emitted a lukewarm, anemic trickle. He stood under it anyway, eyes scanning the vinyl curtain for any sudden, dark movements. He emerged feeling psychologically bruised but physically cleaner, a towel wrapped securely around his waist.
He dressed with his back to the room, a silent reclaiming of his armor: the tailored trousers, the monogrammed cufflinks, the suit jacket that smoothed the world’s wrinkles. He felt Nana’s gaze on his back, not judging, just observant.
“The revisions,” she said, not looking up from her screen as he finally turned around. “I’ve hardened the data on the sustainability slides, tied it directly to brand loyalty in the demographic we want. It’s less ‘save the trees’ and more ‘this is how we ensure your grandchildren will still want to stay in our overpriced hotels.’ More your speed.”
He gave a single, curt nod. “Good.”
She took a final sip of the terrible coffee, made a face, and rose. “Your turn to caffeinate. I’m going to wash my face and attempt to convince my hair that we are still professionals.”
She disappeared into the bathroom. Julian stared at the small, anxious kettle on the dresser. The idea of the instant coffee made his stomach turn. He could hear the water running, the cap of a bottle being unscrewed.
Then, a sudden, violent clatter.
It was the sound of something metal—a toilet paper holder, perhaps, or a cup—hitting the floor. It was followed by a short, sharp, and utterly undignified yelp that was unmistakably Nana’s.
The bathroom door flew open.
Julian exploded from the room. Not a run, but a frantic, high-velocity scramble. His eyes were wide with a pure, unprocessed terror. He cleared the end of the bed in a stride that would have impressed an Olympian, skidding to a halt against the far wall, his back pressed to the peeling wallpaper as if he could phase through it.
He was, Nana noted with a kind of detached, academic interest, completely naked. The towel was gone, presumably left in a puddle on the bathroom floor in his frantic retreat. He stood there, chest heaving, every muscle taut, a monument to abject, polished panic.
Nana stood in the bathroom doorway, one hand still on the knob. In her other hand, raised like a weapon, was her travel-sized hairspray can. She was perfectly dry, fully clothed, and her expression had morphed from initial surprise to dawning comprehension, then to something dangerously unsteady.
Her lips pressed together. A tremor passed through her shoulders. She looked at Julian, pressed against the wall like a startled starfish, then down at the hairspray can in her hand.
“It was the window,” she said, her voice eerily calm. “The window above the toilet. It’s loose. The wind caught it. It slammed shut and knocked my toiletry bag into the tub.” She held up the can. “I was preparing countermeasures for the fauna. You know. Just in case.”
Julian didn’t move. He seemed to be processing the words, but his body was still broadcasting a five-alarm fire. The neon light pulsed across his skin.
A strangled sound escaped Nana. It started low in her throat and burst out as a snort, then a gasp, then a full, helpless, wheezing laugh. She doubled over, bracing a hand on the doorframe, the hairspray can dangling from her fingers. Tears streamed from her eyes.
“You—” she managed, gulping for air. “You should see your face. And—other things. Oh my god.”
The sound of her laughter, real and utterly unconcerned with propriety, finally broke the spell. The sheer, ridiculous reality of the situation crashed over him: his nakedness, his terror, her weaponized hairspray, the hum of the dreadful motel room. A hot, violent flush swept from his chest to his hairline. But beneath the embarrassment, a fissure opened. The tight, controlled seam of his composure split.
A choked sound came from him. It wasn’t a laugh, not yet. It was the release of pressure. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up. He dropped his forehead onto them, his shoulders shaking silently.
Nana’s laughter ebbed into hiccuping sighs. She wiped her eyes, straightened up, and walked over to the bed. She picked up the orange quilt, walked to where he sat huddled on the floor, and draped it over him like a shroud.
“The countermeasures,” she said, her voice still thick with amusement, “were successful. The threat has been neutralized. Mainly by sheer terror.”
From beneath the quilt, a new sound emerged. Muffled, wet, and ragged. Julian Ashford, CEO, was laughing. It was a horrible, broken, wonderful sound. The quilt trembled.
Nana sat down on the floor beside him, their backs against the awful wallpaper. She picked up her abandoned coffee cup, sniffed it, and set it back down. Outside, a car door slammed. The neon sign flickered, but didn’t go out.