I stepped out of the motel room I’ve felt like I’ve been in for as long as I can remember, all the same with the hazy, thick glass window by the back door and the heavy curtains drawn with the plastic drawing rod. The bed was made with the same bedspread that I’ve seen so many times, once a white, now an off-white if I were to generously describe it. With a slam of the door, the gilded “9” nailed onto the door rattled with its rusted nails at either end of the number and the red, sun-worn door was locked behind me. Even outside, I could hear the AC system inside the room working overtime once again.

 

My horizon leveled off at where a desert of rolling sandhills met a mountain the same tone, coincidentally. The sand managed to spill into my foreground and reach for the pool, half-filled with purple and blue and yellow floats floating much like the way the planets moved at one time I believe. I saw someone walking across the complex up on the second floor catwalk, and another lounged by the pool in his own world, making like our world hadn’t been standing on its head for sometime now. Another I could see through their open curtains next door to me doing nothing but watching reruns and lounging. What more is there to do?

 

The motel complex was as it was before with its red roof faded and the main area concealed by the walls of rooms from the outside. The driveway pulled up by the main lobby and all the parking was out front where the rusted car bodies rotted between the faded white lines, so the only way anybody got in was through the back of the lobby or through the archway that connected rooms to the main building. If you’re excluding the sand that spills in from its surround of desert into the complex, then those are the only ways in.

 

This is the end of time as it stands. As the momentum of the billions of years presses so hard on the very, very end, it all phases into one frame of time, one single instant. And so this is life.

 

Every so often a caravan of time travelers visits and gives us what we need while we hold up the very end of time. Y’know, morale-boosting things much like Ground Control would reassure Major Tom with.

 

They stay sometimes and try bringing us up by saying what a drag it is to live where it’s impossible to live in the present, it’s only ever the past when you’re talking about the present and everything is escaping into the future before you know just what to do and so on and so on…

 

It’s all just convoluted talk to me anyway, it’s been what’s felt like a lifetime since I’ve had something in the future. But I figure they get a kick out of talking about it in 

such a matter-of-fact way much like an uncle would tell his younger brother’s kid what to and not to do.

 

Those know-nothing’s did one thing good though, they actually got me to sit and talk with half the half-wits whom, like I’ve said, walk the catwalk across the complex, lounge in their rooms and tune the world as it is out.

I almost feel guilty for not ever having really talked to them much since we all got hurdled into this situation. A “Hi” here and there but nothing substantial. I knew they existed, but that was almost the limit to my knowledge. I kept to myself mainly.

 

I found out the man on the catwalk was a man named Cat. He plays guitar and converted to something after a while before we were all by-coincidence pushed by time to the same motel, but I wasn’t listening closely enough to understand.

The man who lounged in the pool the other day was a man named Arnold who was immortal. All throughout time he duped kings and queens all over the world and lived either to be a martyr who never quite died or a Robin Hood. But then he took time off from that and decided to be notorious for once. He found himself in South America sometime after his escapade and then backpacked to America where he resided until the end of time.

 

Lastly, the man who was watching reruns in his room was another immortal. He was the guy who you’d never remember the name of even though he actually did more than the man who lounged in the pool throughout each succession of his infinite life. “That’s how it was” he said. His name was Louie.

 

The irony was that Arnold and Louie crossed paths with the time travelers many times. And never once, not even now, did they ever realize they were immortals, The time travelers were the authoritarian figures they put down time-and-time again which made me wonder if the two finally lost to them or whether Arnold and Louie had them right where they wanted them.

 

“The real trouble is with that hotel manager in the lobby there” Arnold pointed to the black tinted glass at the front of the building. “He sits in his office all day watching us like he’s God. Never steps out, never does anything but sit and watch.”

Arnold, Louie and I sat drinking by the pool for the third time since the time travelers made their latest appearance a week ago. I guess we found a common evil to get together over. That’s always how it goes, isn’t it? After so many drinks, Arnold starts to open up I learned, and speaks about what’s on his mind, and now was one of those times.

 

“I tried going in there one time and I swear, that was the first time he was gone. I checked the whole lobby, every space in his office and even up and down some of the hallways. Nothing.”

“Strange” I said, trying to fit in someway.

“Fuckin’ bet it is,” he finished his fourth drink that day.

“Well what’s the trouble?” asked Louie. “If he’s not doing anything to you, why does it matter so much?”

“Because he could be a real man and step outside instead of being a closeted fuck, always watching what I’m doing. Fuckin’ strange.” He opened his fifth.

There was some silence then while we watched the floats drift in the pool.

“Y’know, I tried shooting him one night,” Arnold abruptly said.

Louie and I turned our heads to Arnold. Louie laughed. But before we could say anything, he started again.

“One night I pulled those curtains back ‘cause I could see there was a light on outside. I looked to my right and down and there he was in his little office, fixed on my room. “The little fucker,” I thought. So I pulled that rifle out you and I found in that cave, Louie, and I opened my door for a split second just to put one straight into his office, teach him to mind his own business… The next morning though, his window was as good as new. To this day I don’t have a clue how he fixed it.

“Well he probably replaced the glass when you were asleep,” said Louie.

“Funny, but I didn’t sleep the rest of that night. And I didn’t hear a thing from down there. The next morning I looked down and it was just like new.”

“Strange,” I repeated.

 

We sat around a fire now as the afternoon turned to evening. The conversation kept going but it was more light-hearted, more about the different lives that Arnold and Louie led and some of the ways Chance found them together and others, too. (Yes, the “C” in Chance is capitalized, because Chance is more than a phenomenon, it’s life at this point).

“Arnold and I met sheerly by coincidence,” Louie stated. “He had the idea of being a hero knowing he was immortal and didn’t have to worry about making every second count, so he took chances. And I had the same idea.”

Louie looked over to Arnold.

“Well, we first met in this little Italian village.” Arnold started.

“We both heard about the local government taxing everybody for everything they could think of,” Louie cut in.

“And I thought that if there was any time to be a hero, it was then. So we both went to the town square, keep in mind, not knowing each other’s plans or even that the both of us existed, and we started to protest almost right beside each other.” Louie signaled they were almost as close as they were in their chairs by the fire.

“So from there,” Arnold said “we started a resistance and found out one night we shared being immortal.”  

“Then that night, actually, we both said we were tired of the whole cause, and we “died” with a resistance thinking that we were murdered, when really, we just left the little village that night.”

“Ever since then, we’ve been playing the governments for fools.” Louie said.

“It wasn’t until later though that we found out that not only were all the governments the same in what they wanted—“

“It didn’t take us long to figure that one out.” Arnold laughed.

“—but they were actually the time travelers.”

“How’d you figure that out?” I cut in.

“In the Middle Ages,” Arnold said. “Back when there wasn’t photography or any sort of profiling for anybody, the time travelers thought they could get away with the same mug, not knowing we existed.”

“But we picked up on it,” pointed Louie. “And we’ve almost sort of taken up being their parole officers. Y’know, taking responsibility for them and having periodic checkups.” Louie shrugged, meaning to say “that’s the how it was.”

 

We sat around well into the night, having sober fun if there ever was such a thing. Fun without a word being spoken for sometime.

“What were you saying about a cave earlier, Arnold?” I asked as the question came to me.

“What? Widow’s Cave?”

“If that’s what you call it, yeah. I didn’t have a clue there was anything off the motel. I thought we were damned here.”

“Damned? Certainly. But there’s more than this here.” speaking about the motel. “You should come with us sometime. Louie and I’ve been going since God knows how long.”

“Sure.”

The fire cracked for the last time as it’d been going down for sometime.

“Well,” Louie started. “I’m heading off to bed, that is if we’ll be going out early tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” complemented Arnold. “Dylan, I’ll see you in the morning then.” They both got up.

“See ya, guys.” They waved as they went off to their rooms.  

I sat there for a while longer while I ran through the day in my head, watching the floats drift in the pool.

The light in the motel manager’s office was on.