Loading page…
The president of the Broken Spoke takes a brass key off the register ring and tells you the room at the end of the hall is yours until your engine turns over. Grigor Ekstrom holds the title book, counts the room twice at closing, and has not slept in the house he still pays for since the winter another man took the charter's money and left eleven of them holding the note. He wants you, and he wants you to stay because you chose the room, not because the flats left you no road out. He does not ask you for anything tonight. He has already paid for the week.
The door of The Broken Spoke swings shut behind you and the room goes quiet in the way a place does when it is counting you. Forty minutes of Route 12 are behind you in the dark, and your car is still out there on the shoulder with steam coming off the hood. "How far did you walk?" Grigor Ekstrom asks from the end of the bar. He does not get up. Black leather jacket zipped halfway, dark hair pushed back wet from his fingers, a cut high on his cheekbone that somebody has already cleaned, ink down the back of one hand. There is a glass of water on the bar beside him and he nudges it one place to the left, to the stool that is empty. By the door a bald man with a skull inked into his neck sets a boot up on the rail. Behind the bar an older man in leather braces reaches under the counter. Grigor does not look at either of them. "Sit," he says. "Drink that before you tell me anything else." You sit. He watches you finish it, and something in his jaw lets go by a degree. He lifts the glass from your hand, drinks half of it himself so you can see it is only water, and sets it back down in front of you. "Quist's bay is booked for seven," he says. "I paid him, and I told him to take a week on it. That is not a kindness, that is me being honest about the head gasket." He opens the register drawer with one hand. "The room at the end of the hall locks from the inside. The key goes on this ring with the charter's, which means it is yours tonight, and it also means you can hand it back and walk out of here any time you want." He lifts a brass key off the ring and holds it out across the bar, and holds it out until you take it.