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The first thing we noticed was the dead body in the pool.
We'd arrived at about seven at night, with Josh still groggy and Alex still asleep - or knocked out, or whatever she was - and we didn't notice the peeling walls or the doors that had their locks broken off, or the homeless man sleeping under a flattened box outside; no, we noticed the dead body in the pool. He was lying face down and he was bare naked apart from an extension record wrapped tightly around his midriff.
'Maybe we should go to a different motel?' suggested Dave.
'No, this one seems nice,' I said.
'You mean apart from the floating dead bodies?'
'Look,' I said, 'I'm tired, I've had a long day, I don't feel like walking any damn further around this place, and I'm the one with the gun here, so I think we're staying here. Besides, I like the name.'
Even Dave had to admit that The Shitting Virgin was a good name for a motel.
We went into the foyer and I sat Alex's prone body down in a green, ugly seat. A tired, bloated lady looked up from the desk and fixed us with an expressionless, tired look.
'We'd like a room that can fit four of us,' I said.
'Every room can fit four of you,' growled the woman. She sounded like she'd smoked all her life. 'Do you want something that can comfortably fit four of you?'
'Sure,' I said.
'That'd be the Midnight Pleasure room,' she said. 'Sixty bucks a night.'
We didn't have any money. All our money had been lost in the crash; all our wallets, all our cash, all our spare change. We were broke. We'd only been able to hire out the doctor costumes because Dave had promised the guy a handjob and double the money when we got back with them.
'There's just one thing,' I said. 'We kind of don't have any . . . money.'
'No money, no room,' said the lady. 'This ain't a charity.'
I looked to Dave expectantly. He shook his head quickly. Of course, he'd only promise to give handjobs to dudes.
'I don't care if you even are doctors,' said the lady, 'you're not staying the night without pay.'
'We'll clear the dead body out of the pool if you let us stay the night,' I said.
'There's a body in the pool?' asked the lady.
'A dead one,' said Dave.
'Pablo!' cried the lady. 'Pablo!' A man came down the stairs. He looked young, and he didn't look like a Pablo.
'For the last time,' said Pablo, 'my name is Jim. I don't know why you think it's Pablo.' The woman laughed, and turned to us.
'Thinks just because he immigrated here now he's an Australian!' she said laughing.
'My family has been here since the 1800s,' he said.
'1700s!' cried the lady, jabbing herself in the chest emphatically. 'Here before you, Pablo, my boy! Eat it, eat it!'
'My ancestors came from Scotland,' wailed Pablo. 'I'm not even Spanish!'
'Who said you were Spanish?' demanded the woman. 'You think just because your name is Pablo you're from Spain? Don't be a racist, you damn dirty Spanish son of a bitch!'
'I quit,' said Pablo. 'I quit your stupid fucking job.'
'Good riddance, Pablo. We don't want your racist Spanish kind around here, anyway.'
Pablo stripped off his uniform and into his underpants and marched out. The lady turned to us. 'I was going to get him to clear out the dead body, but I guess he's gone off to have some burritos or something. If you guys take out the dead body, I'll let you stay the night for free.'
'We can do that,' I said. Dave sat Josh down next to Alex. We went outside to the pool. The body floated in the pool in much the same way it had been floating before. Dead, that is.
'Scissors, paper, rock to see who goes in and gets the poor bastard,' said Dave. I agreed to it and we played. I put down rock. He put down paper.
'Go for it,' said Dave.
'If I get Hepatitis, I'll slit your throat,' I said.
'If you slit my throat I'll give you Hepatitis,' retorted Dave.
I slipped into the pool. The water was freezing. I sank in until my calves were covered, preparing myself for the dive that would send the whole of me under the icy water and stand my hairs on end. I didn't have that dive, though, because Dave pushed me and I careened into the chilly waters uncontrolled. The water felt kind of greasy, like there was a little bit of oil through it all, and a thick carpet of leaves covered the surface. I swam through the murky, tepid water and grabbed the dead dude. He floated among the leaves and pigeon shit and smelly water like a cancer cell amongst cancer cells. My doctor's uniform stuck to me and weighed me down as I climbed out of the pool brushing dead leaves off me and dragging the guy by his extension cord.
'I smell like an ass,' I said.
'So nothing's new, then,' said Dave. 'I'll go and ask the crazy lady where to put him.'
'Sure,' I said. Dave walked off to the foyer, and I sat down next to the pool with the dead guy. He was stiff, and his eyes were glassy. Definitely dead, by all accounts. I didn't have a hand mirror on me, but I'm sure if I did it wouldn't have fogged up. Therefore, I was pretty surprised when he sat up, brushed the leaves off himself, turned to me and said, 'You look awful.'
'Speak for yourself, buddy.'
The dead dude held out his hand and I shook it. He still felt cold and clammy, but there was a bit of warmth coming back to him. 'I'm Tandy,' he said. 'Tandy Smith.'
'I'm Mike,' I said. 'And . . . well, I don't mean to be rude, but weren't you dead before?'
'Well, yeah,' he said. 'But that was ages ago, dude. You gotta move with the times.'
'Oh, I see,' I said. 'Well that makes perfect sense.'
Tandy stood up and looked over to the parking lot and out to the road. 'Nice to meet you, Mike,' he said, 'but I reckon I'll be going.' He unwrapped the extension cord from around him and tossed it on the ground.
'Where?' I asked.
'Oh, I dunno. We'll see where shit takes me.' Tandy got up and wandered down to the parking lot, stark naked. Moments later, Dave came back out of the foyer.
'She says put him in a bin somewh - hey, what happened to him?'
'He walked off,' I said.
'The dead dude?' asked Dave.
'Yeah,' I said.
'The dead dude walked off?'
'That's what I said, yeah.'
'That's retarded,' said Dave. 'He was dead.'
'What hasn't been retarded today?' I asked. 'He's gone anyway, so let's just go up and sleep.'
'It's half past seven, dude. Too early.'
'I'm tired,' I said.
'You just had three days of rest,' said Dave.
'Well a few more hours can't hurt, can they?' I said. 'Come on. Midnight Pleasure, right? Right.'
*
Vowing to myself that I would go to bed no later than eight, I resiliently didn't keep to that promise. I stayed watching the clock until eight, climbed into pajamas, smoothed out my bed, and was immediately shanghaied into watching the complimentary copy of Freeballs the motel had left as the only film next to the DVD player.
Freeballs was an amateur, low-budget film produced, directed, and acted by two guys who had won a few million dollars in the lottery. It was about two vampires trying to start a hair metal band. It was the kind of film that reached so-bad-it's-bad status, went past it to so-bad-it's-good status, then transcended even that to an unintelligible plain where humour, irony, or even emotion, no longer existed and the whole 100 minutes of the film blended into one solid stream of a man with fake rattling vampire fangs having sex with a girl in a bear suit that was supposed to be a werewolf groupie. Calling it a film in itself was an insult to film-makers; hell, calling it rubbish was an insult to hard-working discarded packets of two-minute noodles. It was beyond terms, or labels, or anything making any kind of believable sense. Needless to say, it was Dave's favourite film.
I watched all 100 minutes, saw it was 9:40, and vowed then to go to sleep. Alex hadn't woken up at all and was still asleep; Josh had mumbled his way through a few half-hearted conversations then collapsed into bed, probably still a little concussed, and Dave was insisting that we play chess with two old packets of macaroni cheese in the cupboard. I didn't know how that would work, but I didn't want him to even think I was interested, so I declined politely and collapsed into bed myself. I came out again twenty minutes later, and Dave was watching porn. It was a pretty simple affair; one guy, one girl, both of them having sex with the other. He wasn't wanking or anything, just watching it with dull interest. Probably admiring the cinematography.
'Hey, Mike,' he said. 'Watch this.' He rewinded back from the bit he was currently watching, where two people were having sex, to a bit before it, where the same two people were having sex.
'That's definitely some sex right there,' I said.
'Didn't you see it?' he said. He rewinded again. There was a five-second close up the girl's face, then it went back to good ol' sex.
'That's definitely a face right there,' I said.
'Watch the eyes,' said Dave. He rewinded again and this time I watched the eyes. The clip was short, but I did notice something . . . a gleam in her eyes, or something?
'Rewind it again,' I said. He rewound it again, and I watched carefully. It wasn't a gleam in her eyes. She'd cried a single tear. Who the hell even did that these days?
'She was crying,' I said.
'I know, right?' said Dave. 'Weird.' He turned off the television and dropped the remote on the floor. 'Hey, I thought you were going to bed.'
'I tried to but I kept imagining you coming into my room and filming me sleeping,' I said.
'Pretty weird thing to imagine, dude,' said Dave.
'Hey, I'm not the one that would actually do that,' I said.
'I'd never film you when you were sleeping,' said Dave. 'That'd just be weird. I'd only film Josh or Alex when they were sleeping.'
'Thanks,' I said.
'No problem,' said Dave. He rolled over on the couch and stretched. 'What do you want to do, man? You wanna go pick up some chicky-babies?'
'At 10 at night in a shitty motel? No thanks.' I sat down on the couch next to him.
'We could write erotic fiction,' said Dave.
'What?'
'Not, like, gay erotic fiction,' he said. 'You know, straight erotic fiction.'
'It's a good idea, but I don't feel like it,' I said. 'Also, that's a horrible fucking idea.'
'I don't hear you coming up with anything,' said Dave.
'I think I'll go to sleep.'
'Sleep is for pussies.'
'Then I guess I'm a pussy,' I said. I went back into my room and fell back on to the bed. My head spun over Macy Flake, and the corridor full of 12s, and the magical Tandy Smith and, lastly, the fact that somewhere in my room was the gun. I slipped on to the floor and picked it up then crawled back in to my bed like an ancient sea creature. I slipped it under my pillow, and soon all of my ponderings were so much that they melted into insignificance and I fell asleep, not thinking about anything at all.
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