The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin

with me. The time I was thinking about, right then, it was near spring and she was in her senior year.
    We had planned to move in together. Once she was done with school and could get a job, she and I were going to rent a place off Wells Avenue. It was half of a dilapidated duplex. A guy I worked with was living there, and was moving out at the end of June. Jerry Lee and Tommy Locowane had just gotten a house together with another guy, Gil Norton.
    It’s hard to explain this or, I guess, even to admit what happened. But just so you know, I never got sick of being with her. I would have married her. I know I’m young but I would have. I would have had kids with her too, even though a person like me probably shouldn’t have a kid. But I would have if she’d wanted. At night, if Jerry Lee wasn’t around we’d lay naked under the covers. I’d lay on top of her and she’d talk to me, tell me how much she liked me, how much she loved me. She’d do all this while we did it. I never got tired of it. You hear guys like Tommy or this guy I used to work with, Mitch Harrison, and they’d always say being with the same girl was boring. But it was never like that with me. It wasn’t like that at all.
    When it was summer we’d go down to the Truckee River, and in the evening just after dusk we’d find a deep pool and go swimming together. We could see the city around us, all the people and traffic, the casino lights and noise, but it was like we were all right, that everything was okay, that we were the only two people that mattered, that could see how beautiful the lights of the city were.
    Nothing changed between us for a long time, I mean nothing went bad. Almost a whole year we were together. It was the best I’d felt since my mother died, maybe the best I’d ever felt.
    Then one night I walked down Fourth Street to the Sutro to find her. It was just an ordinary night with nothing much going on. It was a warm evening and not a cloud over the whole city. Jerry Lee and I were supposed to go camping with Tommy and his uncle up in Dog Valley, but the plans fell through so we just stayed at Tommy’s, ate dinner with him and his aunt and uncle, and then left.
    Jerry Lee and I went back to the Mizpah. We were watching TV for a long time, then I got up and decided I’d walk down to the Sutro to see what she was doing.
    When I got there I could hear music inside and people laughing. I could hear Annie and her mother. I could hear a man’s voice. I didn’t think much of it. I beat on the door and her mom yelled, ‘Is that you, Darrel? You back already?’
    I didn’t say anything. I don’t know why, I guess I just figured she’d open the door anyway, and when she did, she was standing naked, and behind her was a man, an older man, and he was also standing naked. In front of him, on her knees, only wearing black panties, was Annie.
    I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The middle-aged guy. The TV on with the sound off, the radio playing. Her bare knees on the worn out carpet. The painting of a cowboy hanging on the wall behind her. The bathroom door open. I just stood there. Her mom didn’t say anything either, she just sorta stood there too.
    ‘Who the fuck is that?’ the man said.
    Annie stopped and looked around. When she saw me her facejust fell. Her whole body did. I looked at her for a second or two, and then I turned and ran away.
    I didn’t go home that night. I tried to walk around, but I couldn’t even make a block without crying. I just wanted to die, to drown myself in the river. To disappear or jump off the Cal Neva or the Fitz and feel my body hit the pavement. I wanted to get into a fight and kill somebody with my fists or have somebody beat me so bad that I’d just lay in an alley and die.
    I walked all through town, up and down the neighborhoods, and finally when I got too tired to keep going I ended up sleeping in Idlewild Park underneath a tree. I curled up tight and fell asleep for a couple