My Dearest Jonah Read Free

from a peeling back room in the type of motel where married men show poor young girls the real value of money, and where accented drug dealers begin empires that will go on to
terrorise communities for years to come.
    “How you wanna pay, lady?” asked the man on reception. “We do hourly, nightly, or by the week.”
    “By the week should suffice,” I said in my haughtiest tones.
    I had, in my blind panic, managed to secure a change of clothes, yet still the grubby marks of the desert and the not-quite-cleaned traces of blood clung to my flesh. The thought of my scent is
enough to make me hide my face in shame even now; three showers and nigh on twenty hours of sleep later. The only reason for choosing this particular establishment was that other than requiring a
safe and distant place to recuperate, my appearance would have caused little stir. Even as I checked in (false name, indoor shades) a recently married couple began touching what I can only describe
as third base on the waxy sofa beneath the neon vacancy sign as their young child shot a pellet gun at the wall.
    “Sign here, here, and here Miss Neave and you’ll be in room 147. Pool view.”
    “Perfect.”
    I used to adore these hotels as a girl. Real life plays out like cabaret in hotels like these up and down the country. The sort of life you don’t hear about, and the sort
of life you do. We were next door but one from the beauty queen and the talk show host the night before the story hit the papers, and I got my first period in our en suite at the Coconut Grove
Nebraska. I lost my virginity to a janitor in the laundry room of The Flamingo Park Lodge Wyoming. Those single-serving packets of fabric softener still send a shiver down my spine.
    What else is there?
    I have the bare essentials. A bed, a desk at either side, two lamps, one of which works, the other provides a mild electric shock and so not worth the effort for the flickering illumination it
emits. The heating kicks in at regular intervals which I can neither control nor tolerate, and so am left to pace the room in just my underwear as having to hand-wash my clothes is proving
particularly arduous and increasingly risky (there has been no indication as to a repeat delivery of tiny soap discs). Everything is here, I suppose. I daresay I could live the rest of my life in
this tiny room, so functional and sterile. It’s not entirely dissimilar to the lives most other people live. Only the square footage would mark it out as in any way eccentric.
    However, there are downsides.
    The strip lamp above the bathroom mirror acts as a cruel reminder of the fallibility of the human form. Each time I step out of the shower the floor-length stretch of reflective surface seems to
capture me at my least attractive, my many imperfections unavoidable. I look both huge and tiny all at once in that mirror with that light on, and as such have taken to showering in the dark.
    The less said about the room service breakfast the better.
    The bed itself is not entirely unsatisfactory, though the unmistakable human stench - the faint top-notes of sweat and sex that are replaced in classier establishments by chemical neutrality -
seems to seep through each and every fabric. It crawls from the dewy walls and up from the carpet so worn as to be almost redundant.
    Worse still is that all I have been gifted are the twin atrocities of daytime television and a pocket bible to occupy myself with. Someone has stolen the New Testament. Ripped it clean out like
a coupon. Did I mention that? Whether an act of calculated rebellion or simply wanton destruction I do not know. All I can say is that having been forced to spend forty-eight hours and counting
with nothing but myself for company, it feels like a personal attempt on my sanity to deny me of such stimulus. I find myself loathing the perpetrator regardless of his or her intentions and ache
only for the thrill of Lazarus’ rise.
    And so all I have is you. Your