Getting off at NW Topeka Blvd seemed the right move. Heading south we crossed the broad sand-barred Kansas River again and into town. I stopped at the first gas station to buy a city map and ask directions to the police station.
Back at the bike I found Moira brushing her hair. She gave me a crossed-fingers look and off we went, down to 10th Avenue, if I remember right, and on past the Capitol building that looked like a Greek temple with a Catholic dome on top. A left on SW Kansas Avenue and there it was, 'Moira's Hope.'
She did her dancing dismount. I told her I'd be in the patio of the convenience store a block down the street. She looked at me funny. I didn't explain that I wanted to give her a chance to ditch me if she so desired without having to face me when she did it. I figured that if she bothered to walk a block to find me, then, alright, she trusted me; more than that, she wanted me.
"It won't take long," she said, looking at the several empty parking stalls. "They'll run me through their computer to see if there're any warrants on me and..." She chattered on while I was burning in neutral. "Just straight down the street," I assured her. "You'll see me at one of the tables outside."
When I saw that this didn't console her I worried that she thought I was the one who would do the ditching. So when she pinched my whiskered chin I said, "Okay I'll park here and wait." She smiled and trotted off to the entrance. Before she got there I was parked and had the keys in my pocket, loitering near the sidewalk rolling a smoke.
She came back sooner than I had hoped, the sunny smile glowing at me with good news. She couldn't believe her luck, she said. They gave her a three-day voucher for an Econo Lodge on Topeka Blvd and coupons for ten pizzas at a Papa Murphy's across the street from the lodge, near the Holiday shopping center. She said the watch officer was apologetic about the coupons because she would have to bake the pizzas herself, presumably in a microwave. She wondered if there would be a microwave in the motel lobby. I said, "Don't worry about it, we'll get them cooked even if I have to smoke them."
I stopped at the convenience store for a six-pack of beer and a three-liter of Mountain Dew. The plan was to drop Moira at the Lodge and then get two pizzas from Papa Murphy's. I told her to limp into the motel office and beg for a ground-level room, to say that she wasn't able to climb stairs without suffering excruciating pain in her knees. The reason for this ploy was that I couldn't park the bike at the Lodge without the risk of it being towed; and I didn't want to fork out the ten bucks or so that Moira would be charged to have a second person in the room. If she got a ground-level room I could roll the bike inside when nobody of significance was looking. She laughed at that and said okay, she'd play the cripple.
Thirty minutes later I was strapping two boxes onto the sissy seat outside the take-n-bake pizza joint. Twilight was coming on. The traffic noise was like the gutteral wheezing of an old man sleeping and the air was silky and warm.
I was toting up the number of days since my last shower. That was in Salt Lake City where I had got a bit of work, a week and a half ago. I had camped near Denver after that, but except for cleaning out the basement of a schismatic Catholic Church for twenty bucks I hadn't found any work. I had something like thirty and change in my pocket. But I wasn't thinking about the Labor Ready office in Topeka that I would check out tomorrow; I was thinking of eating pizza, drinking an iced beer, and watching a movie with Moira snuggled beside me in the bed. Moira had said that she couldn't believe her luck. Well, I couldn't believe mine either.
This was reinforced when I saw her standing outside a ground-level room near the end of the Lodge's north wing, waving a motel brochure at me and doing a little wriggle. As I rode up to the walkway I shouted at her to open the door. She had a plastic card that she swiped through the bulky lock mechanism about a dozen times before the door finally unlocked.
I did a minor wheelie to get the front tire over the curb and revved a tad to bring the rat up on the walkway. Then I cut the engine and with a series of grunts I got us into the room. Moira shut the door and turned to me with her blue marble eyes frozen in that peculiar mania. I found out why, after I had parked the bike near the archway to the bathroom.
The explanation was in the brochure. I had a look at it while Moira was unpacking her few items and peeking into the pizza boxes she had eagerly freed from the bungee cords.
The Econo Lodge had an indoor swimming pool.
No comments:
Post a Comment