Motel Arizona

My eyes strained, bleached as the Arizona ground around me, following the stretch of highway out to the horizon, where the top of the blacktop met the bottom of the rose dusk sky. I knew it was time to pull over and find a place to sleep for the night, to rest my weary eyes, and to ease my clenched fingers that had gripped the steering wheel of the rented beige Impala (with the key surprise, discovered in the desert, a faulty air conditioner). These tight vices grasped the molded vinyl wheel ever since I had left Santa Monica that morning. Priority number one was to find some way to escape the oppression of July’s desert heat, still tyrannizing even though the sun was making its last call, dipping behind the mountains.

I exited Interstate 40, and found my way back to Route 66, the mother road. There I found a stretch of generic motorist hotels, familiar cousins of any stretch of motels off any interstate. Super 8. Motel 6. Comfort Inn. I coasted past these until there appeared exactly what I had set out to see – the soft, humming, bright like a circus smile, neon sign of the old Route 66. It read: Motel Arizona. Vacancy. Pool. Perfect.

I pulled into the near empty parking lot and found the t-shirt in the back seat I had abandoned somewhere around Barstow. I procured the room for the night from an elderly woman in the tiny, outdated clerk’s office. $20. Quality. I could tell she wanted me to respond with more than one word answers to her colloquial questions, but I didn’t have the verbal strength. I had not spoken one word since embarking on my trip ten hours earlier, now was not the time to start. Instead, I set myself on cruise control. Destination – the swimming pool.

The pool was silent, the whole area empty. It was after 10:00 pm. The pool had been closed for over an hour, according to the stained sign hanging from the gate. From above, moonlight reflected off the surface of the water. From below, dim pool lights lined the aqua-blue plaster walls. Dotting the water top were hundreds of tiny black dots, the remains of flies, poisoned by the chemicals meant to clean, floating. I dove in from the pool’s edge, headfirst, piercing past the flies, touching the bottom and let buoyancy slowly bring me back up. Night swimming deserves a quiet night, alone. The cool caress of the water was the rush of pure refreshment I had craved throughout the day spent in the sweat-soaked driver’s seat. There are few things in life as simple and wonderful as a swimming pool. Floating on my back across the water. Tiny waves produced from my feet treading, staring up at the low moon. I let the stress of driving nonstop sink away into the chlorine-scented water.

          At some point, I crossed the street to the 24-hour AMPM and bought an imitation pork-rib sandwich (a guilty pleasure) and a six-pack of Heineken and took them back to the pool area. With my feet dangling into the water from the pool’s edge, I devoured my gas station dinner and contemplated what the next day of driving held for me and if I would be lucky enough to find myself ending the day, solitary and swimming.