Claire Hopple
She recognizes all the symptoms. The recurring dream has affixed itself to her subconscious again. Shaking it loose is always an undertaking.
In the dream, her favorite dead actor would beckon her into a duel, the results of which could fissure into a dozen outcomes, but flank her waking behaviors regardless.
Encumbered by a constant rustling, Gretchen plunges her hand into her pocket. A page she'd torn then harbored there during a visit to the public library ornaments her palm, though she has no recollection of doing it.
The page resounds with details of her favorite dead actor's lifestyle in the mid to late seventies, including the hotel where she took up residence in a corner suite.
Gretchen reads it like an itinerary.
The sun's vampiric leeching turns a billboard's giant onion rings into pallid and sickly advertisements to avoid the place altogether.
Her car's vents release a familiar wet-gravel smell.
She makes it into the lobby. The people in charge have been replaced by clipboards. A velvet curtain conceals the remainder of the front desk.
Gretchen awaits any kind of signal. She prowls near a table holding cookies, a water dispenser, fanned cocktail napkins, and equally fanned brochures that orbit the napkins.
A guest feigns interest in the brochures so he can embark on another cookie grab.
"Where's the hotel staff?" she asks.
But he doesn't hear her or pretends not to hear her.
Gretchen slaps her chest to gesture at an imaginary name tag. He startles.
"Are you having a heart attack? Do you need an ambulance?" he asks, panic morphing the chocolate-smeared corners of his mouth.
Someone emerges from behind the curtain.
Gretchen approaches the woman to request a corner suite.
"Does the room have a working fireplace? I have some items I need to incinerate."
The customer experience associate shakes her head and pushes a mini-folder of room keys across the counter.
On her floor, Gretchen demonstrates proper awareness of her surroundings by looking in the peepholes of every door.
One flies open while she's still leaning forward.
"Did you know the hotel gives you this little sign to hook onto your door handle that informs everyone when you do and do not want to be disturbed?" she tries.
The door is propped open with a foot. Her view ends with a shin bone.
"This must be very embarrassing for you," Gretchen says to the shin.
The door closes, capsizing her enthusiasm. She'd planned on asking all the guests where they were going.
Two double beds. What a waste. But maybe the actor had required such accommodations. She trusses up her memory with research to infiltrate the celebrity's psyche.
Yes, it's working. It's as if Gretchen has her tied up in the bathtub right now.
She turns to the shower curtain and says, "Start talking."
Getting into bed, she tucks the top of the flat sheet into her collar just like a napkin, ready to consume hours of sleep.
At breakfast, a TV anchored to the ceiling reports that the world's largest cave has its own ecosystem. Like that's hard to produce.
Another visitor approaches with a Belgian waffle. He sits at a table right next to her.
Gretchen swigs her orange juice and exhales.
"Things will never be different enough to be the same as they were," she says.
"Oh yeah?" asks the man.
His tongue lolls around syrupy morsels, revealing a tattoo of what looks to be an AK-47 atop his papillae.
"Definitely. Though my childhood was rather unmemorable, I guess."
"Tell me about it," he scootches closer.
"I was born at the edge of an animal rendering facility. Right beside the carcass compost bin. My mom worked as a fabricator for the metal snap manufacturing plant nearby. I come from a long line of fabricators."
Powdered eggs roil in her stomach. The stranger interprets it as past trauma resurfaced. He pats her shoulder.
"There now, was that so bad?" he says.
Gretchen twitches back into character.
"If you'll excuse me."
Last Saturday, a pack of dogs had followed her around town. Her dishes had been cultivating a sheath of dust from eating every meal over the sink. And look at her now.
Gretchen constructs a small platform in the lobby. She runs up to change clothes and produce a stack of glossy portraits.
Before she knows it, an autograph line rings the perimeter.
She cracks her knuckles and calls the first one over.