Viaticum by Natelle Fitzgerald

Author:Natelle Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing
Published: 2019-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Matt got up from the hotel room bed and looked out the window to find the view obscured by fog. Even the parking lot directly below was barely visible, the fluorescent sign at the entrance a blur of colour, the streetlamps down the hill faint smudges of light suspended in the darkness. Saltery Bay, he reminded himself again. I’m at the Captain’s Inn in Saltery Bay and yet a queer doubt remained, a strange dream-like feeling, like he’d been cut adrift and was floating, a floating man in a floating hotel at the edge of the world.

He lay back down on the double bed. There were football highlights on the TV. The talking heads talked. He drank a beer, then another. On the ferry ride over, he’d imagined that this would be a kind of personal vacation, a night off from Daddy duty with a few beers and sports on TV and no one to tell him otherwise; but now he felt trapped and listless. The hotel lobby, with its nautical theme and rope trim, had been quaint and tidy, but the room itself was shabby and cheap. Everything in it was beige or tan, the only decoration a nondescript still life of brown flowers in a brown vase. The whole place smelled faintly of smoke.

Restless, he put on his coat, went outside and started walking in the direction of the town. It was down the hill by the water, he knew, yet he couldn’t see it for the fog. Christ, it was black out! He walked along, then came to a stretch of road with no streetlights where he had to feel for the pavement with every step, unsure of what angle it rose or fell. It made him dizzy, made the whole world seem off-kilter and strange, as if the very ground were playing tricks on him. He’d had this feeling before, one time when he’d gone down to Mexico, back when he was single. He’d gone on a boat tour and been fine onboard, unfazed by the choppy seas, but then, back on land, he’d been barely able to stand, the whole world pitching and rolling beneath him.

He inched along until he came to an intersection where the streetlamps started again, then he followed them down the hill. Soon, he came to a cluster of buildings that he assumed was the downtown. He passed a health food store, a massage clinic, a small grocery and a barber shop but they were all closed. There was no one else in the streets.

Then he heard music, a single guitar screeching out a bad cover of Guns and Roses. Thank God, he thought. He wanted to sit down somewhere and have a drink, no matter how awful the band, to get out of the cold, deserted street and be around other people for a while. He began walking towards the sound but then the music stopped and didn’t start up again. He wandered for a while looking for the bar but couldn’t find it.

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