As I No Longer Lay Dying (Part II)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.


Sighing, and without explanation, Renee leaned forward to eject Motley Crue from the deck. She lingered over it, her thumb twitching and scanning the FM band. So much for our deal.

“Well, let me say this,” she deadpanned, still unable to find any music satisfactory to her, “I am just thrilled to be going to this guy’s house. I just know I wouldn’t have enjoyed Graceland at all.”

I thought about telling her that her complaint was an example of a mempsis, a rhetorical device and that, comically, it was a mempsis about Memphis, but I chose to restrain myself. If I hadn’t, she may have brained me with something heavy.

II

Now that you have heard the material cause of my misfortune, learn how the horrible events to follow came to pass.

It was nine o’clock by the time we got to the hotel. (Renee’s mother said it was two blocks from Lafayette Square, and that you’d have to be stupid, blind, or dead to miss it. I can safely say that she’s at least one-third wrong. For now, anyway.)

The room we checked into was on the ground floor, which I was fine with because I thought it would mean less lugging for me. However, Renee insisted everything be brought in that night. I would have been fine with just a toothbrush and the laptop.

“I wish we could have left that thing at home,” said Renee. I was bringing in the last of our things. She was already undressed and in bed. It wasn’t an invitation—the TV was on and she had settled on Star Trek: Nemesis. “We’re supposed to be on vacation.”

“I won’t be up all night. Promise.” I sat on the edge of the bed.

“Meh.”

“I need to do some writing today or it’s going to kill me.”

Renee shrugged. She sat upright, her back supported by pillows, in only her panties, unselfconscious and appearing slightly bored. This blasé, mildly petulant air of hers clinched it. The tableau hit me like a blunt force trauma, and familiar, limbic stirrings pushed their way into my consciousness.

I closed the laptop.

“You know that package store we saw on the way here? Want me to go get something?”

Eye contact, finally.

Her legs grazed each other subtly. Madness.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I could get some Jack Daniel’s or maybe some scotch. Very Faulknerian.”

She straightened somewhat. Then she shrugged again, gesturing with the TV remote.

“Well, hurry along then. Depending on how much Riker is on before you get back, I may have to start without you.”

For Part III, click here.