Chapter 2

II

The ceiling fan spins counterclockwise. Slowly, the wicker blades slice through the stagnant, summer heat like a scythe. The thick, humid air is like liquid, making it difficult to breathe. The old fan wobbles and jumps every few seconds as if it might come loose and cut clean through my neck, severing my head like a propeller that has unexpectedly fallen from the sky.
I sit up, rub my eyes and look around.
Everything in this hotel room looks as if it might collapse. The one table, flimsy as cardboard; drawers missing from the nightstand that grins mockingly like a toothless smile; the TV without knobs; bedspread hard and stiff as sheet metal.
A puddle of green wax lies hardened next to the bed. An accident from last night. Other accidents: a shattered wine bottle in pieces scattered in front of the door. A booby-trap for anyone who walks in-or out; a dismembered Bible strewn across the floor; a torn photo of a girl pined to the wall in two pieces.
Accidents are happening all the time, nobody ever stops them.
My friend Joe lost his hand in a machine at a carpet mill. He never played guitar or piano. He never had a lover. My sisters ex-husband ran his motorcycle of an exit ramp somewhere in Florida in the middle of the night hang-gliding on coke. A station wagon found him at sunset. I lost seven dogs and too many cats to remember to speeding cars in the middle of the suburban street I grew up on. A gray one once at its kittens under and old white latter in the backyard. I watched as it picked at the pieces that looked like macaroni. A kid I went to elementary school with died in a car wreck last year. I looked him up in my third grade yearbook. I remembered his face. I hadn’t seen him since then.
Another accident. The severed head of the marble statue is lying in the corner. Im not sure where the body is, or what happened to it.
I keep telling myself that when Leigh Mallory walked back into my life last night, it was an accident, an unavoidable complication that arose out of the fact that both of us live on the same planet .
But it couldn't have been.
There really are no accidnets.
Everything happens, not necessarily for some grand reason, or guided by the hand of providence, predestined by God, but it happens because someone wants it to happen. It's that simple.