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A motel room with a kitchenette – ten strides from end to end – I can stay until tomorrow.
On the desk, the phone is pushed to a corner. Last month it was, “Sorry, no money. No, no extra room. No job leads, either. Sorry.” This month? “Please leave a message.” No one returns calls. The wife and the kids have gone to her mother’s.
There’s a letter pad, but what to write? Would she read it?
Time to dress for another interview. I toss the pen. Before the mirror, I fumble a knot into a tie and try a smile but compromise with neutral. I grab the briefcase off the bed. The comforter feels soft, inviting, but I close the door on the room, relax my grip on the briefcase handle, and stride over the sidewalk to the car. Before turning the key, I sit flexing my fingers, but still clutch the wheel as I drive. At a light, I glance into the other cars – everyone in them self-contained. I measure the contained space surrounding me, thinking of tomorrow.
***
The interviewer shakes my hand and smiles as he gestures toward a chair, but as he skims my life, sees the post office box for an address, the phone call through the motel’s desk, he shifts in his seat. He drops my resume on his desk and never again looks me in the eye. The interview is short. That resume will be a rim shot in the round file the second I leave the room.
***
On the way back, it’s rush hour traffic – everyone focused on where they need to be, where they belong. I should stop, get something to eat, but Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, nothing I want. Maybe later. I might flip through the cable channels. See what’s on. Probably, I’ll just sleep.
That same light stops me on the way back. Ahead of me, a PT Cruiser gleams in the sun – sexy, maroon – the color I would have had – until business expansion turned into contraction. The light changes. The Cruiser moves away. A silver Lincoln blurs from the cross street.
I’m out of the car before the thud.
A woman jumps out of the PT, shouting curses. Forget her. The man in the Lincoln – gray, balding – he’s slumped over the wheel. His door is locked. I rap on the window, but he doesn't move. I half run, half vault over the trunk. On the passenger side, a guy in a suit is pulling out a silver-haired woman.
I get the man; lay him out on the street. No pulse, and he's not breathing. For a moment, my mind doesn't tell me what to do.
The guy in the suit drops to his knees beside me. “CPR?”
I nod; focus again. He opens the old guy's mouth, unblocks it, starts breathing. I pump. Stupid, but I will my thoughts through my hands. “Breathe, live, live, live, breathe. . . .”
Wailing sirens come closer, but so slowly in traffic. I pump. The other guy breathes – breathes and then checks, breathes and then checks. He puts his cheek to the old guy’s mouth once more; pauses a second longer. “I think. . . . He's breathing!”
The sirens stop. With cruisers and ambulances arriving, walkie-talkies and urgent voices broadcast everywhere.
I watch the hand on the old guy‘s wrist. “Pulse, too!”
Paramedics jog over pushing and pulling a rattling Gurney. When I look up, a fire truck sits surrounded by the other flashing lights. The other guy nods as if I‘ve done something – I have, I guess. I nod back.
A cop stops me before I can leave, “You a witness? Good, I need your statement. Wait for me?”
I lean against my car. Tomorrow, I know, I’ll still have to move on, but somehow, waiting here, I feel . . . rescued.
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