Motel Room

Excerpt from short story Motel Room

I open the door with the ice bucket under my arm and close the door behind me.  A smooth pink-turning-red sunset was over the mountains.  The air was hazy with a little dust, but clean from smog or pollution.  I breath in and fill my lungs with the mixture of nitrogen and dust and walk down to a dark corner of this L shaped building.  A handwritten note saying, ICE, with an arrow was duct taped to a rusted, pole that propped up the roof.  Attached to the whitewashed pole, with peeling paint was a downspout hanging on by three rusty brackets.  As I walked past, I patted the gutter with my empty hand with a resounding thud.  “You’ll be busy tonight.”

            The thunder clouds were starting to rumble a little more.  The sun was turning to twilight to the west, and the dark thunder was from the south.  Surely picking up steam with coolness setting in.

            An open faced concrete room was holding the ice machine.  The right side of the wall was slitted concrete blocks, letting in some light of the sunset.  It was painted an off yellow.  The walls looked like the paint that they used to paint schools.  I wonder if that was made by extraordinary bulk in the late 1950’s or 60’s and everyone received their fair share.  The back wall was grey cinder blocks with lighter grey mortar dripping in between.  The workers that laid these were sloppy, easily wanting to get their job done to move on to the next one. 

            The ice machine was buzzing on the back wall with a black extension cord reached to its breaking point to the outlet.  This was an old-style machine with the lift top on the front and ice cascading down every so often.  If I decided to stay at a hotel or newer place it definitely would have been a push button deal with well-formed single cubes.

            I open the brown tattered plastic lid and looked at the steam rising from the arctic mountains that lay inside.  No ice scooper.  No matter.  I dunked the whole bucket in the clear formed cubes and pulled out my reward.  A full bucket of ice.  Slamming the lid down, I turned back and went to the right back to my room.