Edward Adrift

her glass.
    “Yes. Still does. His name is Bradley Sutherland. He owns one of the bars in town.”
    “Did you have sex with him?”
    “Yes.”
    I don’t make my earlier mistake of suggesting surprise. I just pick a saucer off the table and smash it. It shatters. Sheila Renfro, at the refrigerator and with her back to me, turns around.
    “What happened?”
    “I accidentally dropped it.” This is a lie.
    “Well, don’t hurt yourself.” She comes to the table with the trash can and sweeps the shattered pieces of the saucer into it.
    “Why isn’t he your boyfriend anymore?” I ask.
    “I told you, my daddy said it would take a special person to see how special I am.”
    “I remember that.”
    “Bradley Sutherland is not special enough.”

    Before Sheila Renfro leaves for the grocery store to stock up on supplies, she shows me how the guest register and the credit card machine work. She says she’ll be gone for about an hour and doesn’t want to close the motel. She asks me to run things, if there’s anything to run.
    I am happy to do this. And sure enough, four minutes after she leaves, a man and a woman who look to be in their twenties come through the door.
    “Any vacancies?” the man asks.
    “Sixteen of them,” I say. “Wait. Fifteen.”
    “We just need one.”
    I consult the list of questions Sheila Renfro wrote down for me.
    “How many nights?” I ask.
    “We’re not sure yet.”
    “Business or pleasure?”
    The man looks at the woman—I almost said wife, but that would be an imprudent (I love the word “imprudent”) assumption on my part—and shrugs his shoulders.
    “Business, I guess,” she says.
    “One king bed or two queens?”
    “Two is fine,” he says, and this intrigues me.
    “We’ll put you in room number sixteen, upstairs.”
    “Do you have anything on the ground floor?”
    I consult the motel layout. I’m in room number four, which has two beds. Room number eight does, too, but that room is under repair. Everything else is one bed.
    “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
    “OK, one bed is fine.”
    I consult the layout again. “We’ll put you in room number six.”
    “Fine.”
    “I’ll just need you to fill this out”—I push a registration card across the desk to him—“and I’ll need your credit card.”
    “I’ll pay in cash.”
    I consult Sheila Renfro’s instructions again.
    “I need to know how many days you’re staying. And there will be a three-hundred-dollar deposit for damage, which will be refunded after—”
    “We’re not going to damage your room, man.”
    “I’m just telling you the rules.”
    “Oh, yes, the rules. We must obey the rules.”
    I agree with what this man is saying, but I don’t think he does. He’s saying it in a mocking manner.
    “OK, buddy, let’s call it three days, and I’ll add more if I need them. What’s that plus the deposit come to?”
    I start punching numbers into the calculator, using the base room rental fee and the state sales tax and local lodging tax.
    “It comes to $491.21, sir.”
    The man reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a thick roll of bills. He peels them off one by one and puts them in my hand.
    “One hundred…two hundred…three hundred…” He says this and I hear the voice of U2’s lead singer Bono in my head. “Four hundred…five hundred.”
    “Let me get your change.”
    “Keep it,” he says. He swipes the key off the desk, and he and the woman turn and walk down the hall. I don’t even get a chance to tell him about our continental breakfast.
    Still, that was fun. It made me feel responsible again. Also, I made Sheila Renfro $8.79 extra. Cha-ching! That’s how the saying goes, right? Cha-ching? I’m feeling a little whimsical (I love the word “whimsical”) today.

    When Sheila Renfro comes home, she’s not as happy about the extra $8.79 as I assumed she would be. Once again, the danger of assumptions is made clear to me.
    “Let me see the registration card,” she says. I hand it to her.
    “Steve and Sandy Smith,” she says. “I’ll bet.” She carries the card outside and then returns perhaps fifteen seconds later.
    “The license number matches. Probably figured we’d check that.”
    “What’s going on?” I ask.
    “I don’t have a good feeling,” Sheila Renfro says. “I don’t like cash payers.”
    Sheila Renfro clearly is more willing to trust gut feelings than I am. I prefer to let the facts of a situation bear out.
    “Keep manning the front