"
"My brother," Alan said.
"Oh," she said. She went back around the bed and sat on the edge, facing
the wall. "Sorry." She crossed her leg and jiggled her foot, making the
springs squeak.
Alan wasn't listening. He knelt down and touched George's cheek. The
skin was soft and spongy, porous and saturated. Cold. His fingertips
came away with shed white flakes of translucent skin clinging to them.
"Davey?" Alan said. "Are you in here?"
Mimi's foot stilled. They both listened intently. There were night-time
sounds in the motel, distant muffled TVs and car engines and fucking,
but no sound of papery skin thudding on ground-down carpet.
"He must have come up through the drain," Alan said. "In the bathroom."
The broad pale moon of George's belly was abraded in long grey stripes.
He stood and, wiping his hand on his bare thigh, reached for the
bathroom doorknob. The door swung open, revealing the
sanitized-for-your-protection brightness of the bathroom, the water
sloshed on the floor by Mimi earlier, the heaps of damp towels.
"How'd he find us here?"
Mimi, in her outsized blazer and track pants, touched him on his bare
shoulder. He suddenly felt terribly naked. He backed out of the
bathroom, shoving Mimi aside, and numbly pulled on his jeans and a
shapeless sweatshirt that smelled of Mimi and had long curly hairs
lurking in the fabric that stuck to his face like cobwebs.
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