The Smell in the Room
The smell hit us as soon as we entered the room.
At first, I thought it was a bathroom problem.
It was an old motel.
It stood beside a highway exit, and several trucks were parked in the lot.
The sign was half burned out.
We had been driving for more than eight hours.
My wife barely spoke.
She sat in the passenger seat, drifting in and out of sleep.
I got the key from the front desk.
“Room 214.”
The clerk said it while watching TV.
He did not even look at our faces properly.
The room was at the end of the second-floor hallway.
As soon as I opened the door, my wife frowned.
“What is that smell?”
I put down the bags and opened the bathroom door.
The sink.
The toilet.
The shower curtain.
Nothing seemed clogged.
I turned on the ventilation fan.
It made a loud noise.
Maybe because it was full of dust, it rattled.
“It smells like the drain.”
That was what I said.
My wife opened the window.
Dead insects were stuck to the screen.
Outside was the parking lot.
The sound of a truck engine kept rumbling.
The smell in the room did not leave.
It smelled a little like rotten food.
It also smelled like wet towels left too long.
But it was heavier than that.
It was not a smell that simply reached the nose and disappeared.
It caught
