by Rowan Bagley
The Lonely Hearts Motel had been closed for almost a decade after three-quarters of the rooms had burned out to empty husks when Mrs. Rose Davenport had fallen asleep smoking a cigarette next to a man who was not Mr. Davenport. They both died in the fire, but they were the only ones. The owner of the motel didn’t have the money to make the repairs and refused to knock it down so it remained, smoke-stained and alone. In the years that followed, it became a favorite place to commit acts of mediocre vandalism and hookup in the conveniently unlocked rooms, but I had never joined them. Nichole, on the other hand, wanted to go there for her birthday.
“Come on, Margot, we have to,” she said as she pulled on my arm. We were eating lunch at our usual table in the cafeteria.
“Why would I want to go? Anyone stepping foot there runs the risk of catching at least one venereal disease,” I replied, not looking up from my salad.
“Because it’s romantic! You don’t want to take your girlfriend to explore an abandoned building? I heard there’s a heart-shaped pool out back.” She rested her head against my shoulder and tried to kiss my neck, but I pulled away.
“It’s called the Lonely Hearts Motel, a heart-shaped pool is pretty on-brand.” I tapped her on the nose with my fork, laughing as she tried to push my hand away before I got any vinaigrette on her.
“I just want to hang out with you and do something exciting for once,” she pouted. “We only ever do homework or watch movies in your basement.”
“So an abandoned motel is fun and exciting, but my basement isn’t? You’ve got weird priorities.”
“Well, you’re one of my priorities and you’re the weirdest person I know.” She wrapped herself around my arm again and looked up at me with her huge brown eyes.
I sighed. “Fine, but it’s only because you’re so pretty.”
Nichole sat up, eyes widened in surprise, and let out a squeal as my agreement set in. Her excitement almost made me forget about my apprehension.
“Are you and Nichole doing anything for her birthday?”
Mom had her back to me as she washed dishes while I sat at the kitchen table with my U.S. History homework. The AP exam was in a few weeks and I couldn’t keep the War of 1812 and the French and Indian War straight.
“She wants to go to the motel. She thinks it’s romantic.” I twirled a piece of hair around my finger as I read through a question about the New Deal.
Mom gave a short laugh, “I’m surprised she hasn’t dragged you there already. She seems like the artsy type. Beauty in decay and all that.”
“Can you at least pretend you don’t want me to go? I need an excuse to get out of this.” I looked up from my homework to watch her. Her graying hair was twisted up in a bun and she was barefoot in a pair of baggy jeans. When she moved, she moved with the confidence of someone utterly sure of themself.
“Oh, no way am I going to play the bad guy. I know you two and I know you’re not going to get in trouble, regardless of where you are. I’m not suddenly going to become a hardass because you’re too chicken-shit to say you don’t want to go.” Her tone was playful, part of her “Cool Mom” aesthetic.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Do you think he ever gets lonely,” Mom asked, her voice soft. I looked up again, thrown by the lack of segway, and saw her staring out the window. Across the street, our aging neighbor, Mr. Davenport, was on his hands and knees in his flower bed. I could see the last remaining wisps of hair drifting around his head as they caught in the breeze.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Seeing him always made me tense. Mom didn’t seem to feel the same way. How could she? She’d worked nights when Mrs. Davenport was still living with him, she’d never been around for the worst of the screaming.
“I don’t think I could live alone. Good thing I’ll always have you, right kid?”
“I’m only going to live here for the rest of my life if I can paint my room. The Winnie the Pooh theme I chose when I was eight is played out.”
“Not a chance,” Mom laughed.
We were both still watching Mr. Davenport hunched over his garden, but I got the feeling it was for different reasons.
That Friday night, Nichole and I left her house at 6:30 under the pretense of going to dinner and a movie. Her mother gave me that tight little smile she did whenever Nichole mentioned me and her father didn’t look at me at all. I don’t think he ever had. He believed I was temporary, like an experiment or a pet, and the fascination with me would pass.
We drove down Route 2 in my Jetta as the sun was setting, throwing shades of purple and gold across the sky. It was early April and the winter chill had only recently left the air, but nights were still cold. Despite that, Nichole had her window down and her short, dark hair was being whipped into spiraling tendrils over her head. Her feet were up on the dashboard and she sang along to every song on the radio. Beside us, the road was flanked by miles of empty fields broken only by gas stations or the odd split-level ranch. I stayed silent but my left leg bounced continuously.
The motel sat just off the highway, its parking lot cracked and sprouting weeds, its roof showing patches of rust where the red paint had flaked away to expose the metal underneath. The white building was an L shape, with the office being closest to the road and the rooms bending away from it, each of the doors not charred or missing were labeled with tarnished gold numbers between 101 and 112. The fire damage was worst around what used to be Room 105, the glass in its picture window blown out and gaping open like a mouth. The road sign loomed over us, heart-shaped and dead. I parked the car and exhaled a shaky breath as I killed the engine. Nichole got out of the car without noticing.
“I used to dream about staying here as a kid. We’d drive by on the way to my uncle’s house and I always imagined what it would be like,” Nichole said as she stared up at the dead sign.
“Was that before or after it burned?” I asked, my voice muffled as I pulled a sweatshirt over my head. Despite the extra layer, my arms felt numb.
She looked at me sideways and grinned. “Both.”
She sidled up to me, pressing her hips against mine and grabbing my chin. Her lips felt hot against mine and she kissed with an intensity she’d never had before, even the night she snuck me into her room and we spent the whole night with our hands under each other’s clothes. When she pulled away, her eyes were almost manic.
“Come on, I want to see if I imagined the rooms the right way.” She took my hand and led me toward the closest door.
The doors alternated pink and red and each room once had lace curtains in their window. Our door was pink somewhere underneath all the spray paint and the curtains were now yellowed by sun exposure. Nichole pressed her whole hand against the door and pushed it open, breathing in the smell of mildew and dust, of cheap wine and old sex. She pulled me forward and I felt my feet sink into the pink shag carpeting.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
The walls, now water-stained and warped, were covered in wallpaper with tiny pink and red hearts racing up and down in slim lines. Condom wrappers lay scattered like confetti, cans of Natty Lite and a bottle of strawberry Arbor Mist were stacked on the table in the corner, and someone had left a ripped pair of purple satin panties on the arm of one of the little chairs with the curved back. The bathroom door was missing and I could see most of the tub, a peachy color that reminded me of raw chicken. Nichole sat on the edge of the bed and sent up a cloud of dust. I stayed standing, my hands balled into fists in my pocket.
“Hardly. Years of people came in and spilled cum and beer all over it and ruined whatever beauty it had.”
She leaned back against the mattress, dried yellow and brown stains blooming out from dark centers around her, and closed her eyes. When she spoke her voice was almost serene.
“You don’t think beauty can exist in ugly spaces? People loved in here. People had stupid, reckless fun in here. Isn’t that what life is supposed to be?”
I shook my head. She didn’t understand and I didn’t know how to make her. I turned around and left her laying on the bed.
The pool was around back, through a narrow breezeway separating the section of the building housing the office and rooms 101 to 103 from the other nine rooms. Thick spiderwebs now clung to the alcoves, drifting listlessly in the breeze. Red and white gingham deck chairs clustered around the edge of the pool and under skeletal awnings stripped of their vinyl coverings. I chose the chair with the fewest plastic bands missing and sat on the edge with my forearms resting on my knees.
Nichole had been right about it being heart-shaped. It was a deep red that had once been glossy and would have turned the water the color of blood. Or love. I guess it depended on who you asked. Now it was a quarter full of rainwater and snowmelt and choked with weeds and dead frogs. The late evening light was fading and the pool looked more and more like a black pit in the gathering darkness. My toes were numb inside the thin canvas of my sneakers. I heard Nichole approaching before I saw her.
“I’m sorry I can’t be as excited about this place as you are. I know you really wanted to come here,” I said, not looking up.
She knelt in front of me and rested her hands over mine.
“Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“It’s…difficult to explain. I don’t understand it fully.” I brushed a stray hair out of her eyes.
“I’ll listen while you try.”
I looked out across the pool and to the empty fields and woodlands beyond, trying to find the words
“People died here and no one talks about it anymore. They talked about it right after the fire, but everyone said the same thing. They said Rose had it coming because she was cheating on her husband. They said they felt sorry for him. All anyone said about Rose after the fire was that she was a slut and Mr. Davenport was the long-suffering husband. But I knew her and Mr. Davenport still lives across the street from me. I heard the fights and the screaming and everyone else pretended they didn’t hear it too.
Rose and her lover died here because she had to get away from her husband, they died here in this god-awful motel because they couldn’t be in love in public and people hate them for it. And I have to wonder if we died in some freak accident, how many people would say we deserved it? How many people would say that I had it coming because I was a dyke or you deserved it because you should have been dating a guy? How long would it take before people started treating our deaths as a joke and using the place we died in to fuck and get drunk?”
By the time I was done I was out of breath and angry it took me this long to understand and angry I was the only one who cared. Nichole traced circles on the back of my hand with her thumb as she thought.
“Would you rather she died when her husband finally lost it?”
She said it gently, but it stung.
“That’s not the poi-” I began.
“No, but listen. Would you rather she died when her husband finally lost it or would you rather she died in bed next to a man who actually loved her? I’m glad she got to die happy, not many people get to have that.”
I shook my head.
“But it’s the shit people said about her, Nic.”
“She’s dead, Margot. She died in her lover’s arms and she doesn’t give a shit what these people think.” She grabbed my chin and made me look her in the eyes. “And I wouldn’t give a shit what people said if I died in your arms, either.”
She pushed me back into a reclining position against the back of the chair, crawling up to rest her head on my shoulder. She was warm and smelled like her strawberry. The stars were out above us.
“There are ghosts here, Nicky, can you feel them?” I whispered into her hair.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice muffled and soft, “but I think they’re glad we’re here.”
Rowan Bagley (they/she) is a 2020 UMaine Farmington graduate and the Editor-in-Chief of Not Deer Magazine. Their work has appeared in The West Review, Misplacement Magazine, The Sandy River Review, littledeathlit, as well as featuring in the 2021 WriteHive anthology “Duplicitous”. She currently lives in Vermont with her girlfriend, her little sibling, and their two cats. Follow them on Twitter or Instagram @rowanbaggins.
