The Ottoman Motel

Simon's cheek stung. The winter sun had followed him all morning, baking his idle passenger skin, giving him slow seatbelt burns through his T-shirt. He slipped lower in his seat, adjusting his head below the window until the land disappeared. He watched power lines snaking black against the sky, their tension changing, forking and converging. He counted the thick tick of power poles, each one noted by pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

The car passed some trees and Simon closed his eyes to let a projector-flicker of sun and shadow stutter his vision. He smelled, suddenly, the tang of new leather. His mother's voice floated from the front seat. He peered through his eyelashes.

‘Can you sit up, Simon?'

He didn't move. It was painful, the seatbelt buckle digging at his waist, but he waited.

‘Sweetie?'

Simon's mother turned around and placed a hand on his knee. Simon felt one of the scars on his leg begin to buzz. That strange feeling where the skin was numb, but itchy. He heaved himself up, making a show of vast effort, letting his head swing alarmingly on his shoulders. His mother stared past him, out the back window. ‘Can't have the police pull us over, can we?' she said, already turning back to her seat. Simon leaned his head against the window. He peered at the small sliver of his father's face visible between the headrests, the portion of skin between temple and beard that was white like milk.

A flat voice slid into the silence:
Turn left in five. Hundred. Metres.

Simon's mother sighed.

‘You want me to turn it off?' said Simon's father.

‘No.' Simon's mother plucked a loose thread from her sleeve with a violent tug.

‘I just thought, with the sighing—'

‘No, it's just—do we need it on?'

‘How else am I supposed to find this place?'

‘Seriously, Bill?
This place
?' She made quote marks in the air. ‘Just leave it on, I don't care.'

‘Well Louise, clearly—' Simon's father lifted his left hand. ‘Forget it.'

Simon turned away, back to the window, allowing his eyes to slip from focus. He let the road's bumps and dips turn to wavering lines, made fences and reflector posts become repeating patterns. The sky and grass and hills melted into easy flowing colours. Simon liked how things became simpler when you sped them up, when you just let them go by.

The trip. His parents had talked—and actively avoided talking—about nothing else all week. Arguments about departure dates and stopovers and work schedules, hardly mentioning why they were actually going. It had been Simon who'd taken the call in the first place. In their new house, with the answering machine not yet connected. The phone's clammy electronic bell going on and on, bouncing off the bare walls. The voice, at first, he didn't even recognise.
It's Iris, Simon. It's Grandma
.

Late afternoon now, the sun drawing lower, inescapable. Simon picked crumbs from between the creases in his shorts. Stale cake from a roadhouse they'd stopped at earlier, where he'd drunk a cup of weak tea, suffered a series of family photos in the parking lot. The rest of the day a procession of cluster-housed coastal towns summed up by their billboards:
Welcome
flashing past and
Thanks for Visiting
disappearing behind.

‘Can we get some lunch soon?' Simon asked.

His father huffed and cleared his throat. ‘We'll have something when we get there.'

‘Won't be long now sweetie.' His mother had an open magazine in her lap. She tore open a perfume sample, sniffed at it. ‘Well,' she said. ‘
They've
gone downhill.' She held it up so Simon's father could smell it.

‘Cost cutting,' he said. ‘Inferior ingredients, inferior product.'

‘Simon.' His mother twisted around in her seat. ‘Smell this. It's terrible.'

Simon leaned forward and took in the scent, nodding. It just smelled like perfume as far as he was concerned. His parents' business was to promote beauty products, and they approached it with dogged and cold devotion. Every product was the result of a long, unromantic list of ingredients, fragrances broken down into carbon chains and chemical processes. Each new product tried to recreate something it had no right to be. Simon preferred the smells of real things: baking bread, deep cold dirt. He wondered, sometimes, about the smell of truly plain skin.

A sign appeared as the car rounded a turn. It was a clean sign, smaller and simpler than the others he had seen. All it said, in large blue letters, was
Reception
. No
Hello
or
Hope You Enjoy Your Stay
. Just
Reception
. This, Simon knew, was their destination. The car began to climb a hill, beyond whose crest was simply blank sky. Simon flicked the button to draw his window down and put his head out. As the wind bent his eyelashes back, he noticed flecks of sand at the roadside. They crested the hill, and there was the ocean. Not blue, but rather a pale grey stripe across the horizon. The town appeared, just as grey, little flat clumps of buildings fanning out towards the water. A piece of land stuck out abruptly from the centre of the town, a foot-shaped bluff, pointing. The place struck Simon as particularly lifeless. A ghost town, perhaps.

The car dipped down into the valley and Simon heard the strange strangled beeping of an appliance in distress.

‘Bloody hell.' His father tapped the GPS screen.

‘Bill,' said Simon's mother. ‘Language.'

‘We've only had the thing two weeks and it's conking out.
No range?
What does that mean?'

‘Maybe it means we're out of range.'

‘Well,
yeah
, but the guy said it had 99 per cent coverage.'

‘I guess we're in the one per cent then, Bill.'

Simon's mother only called his father by his first name when she was fed up with him. Usually, it was
sweetie
or
honey
or, worse,
babe
.

Simon's father pulled the car to the side of the road, the tyres sinking slightly into the sandy earth. ‘Just going to fix this up,' he said to no one in particular. He took the GPS out of its holster. ‘If I restart it, maybe.'

‘Do you have to?' Simon's mother sounded even more annoyed now. ‘The town's just straight ahead.'

‘I like to know where I'm going. The address is already plugged into the memory.'

‘Let's just stop and ask somewhere, can we?'

Simon let his mind wander. It was a skill he practised: phasing out his parents' words, blurring the tones of their voices. Focusing instead on something far off, something unrelated. While the GPS squabble continued, a white shape a little way down the road snagged Simon's eye. A building, a barn, like dozens he had seen that morning. What made it unusual, though, were the rows of gum trees standing like sentries on each side of it. All you could see from the road was stripes of white steel in between the trees. ‘There's a farm or something,' he said. ‘Just down there.'

His mother snapped her head around. She had a look on her face that Simon knew well, like when you woke up suddenly and weren't quite sure where you were. She collected herself. ‘What was that, sweetie?'

‘There's a farm just down there,' said Simon, pointing. ‘Maybe they can help us.'

Simon's father cleared his throat again. He'd put the dead GPS back in its holster. ‘Yes,' he said from his seat. ‘Talk to a local. Maybe they'll know about this network problem.' He started up the car. ‘Seatbelts on.'

As they drew closer to the barn, Simon noticed a small cottage hidden at the other side. The yard was littered with car parts, a large trailer sitting at the other side of the house, nose tipped upwards. Simon's father parked and switched off the engine. He opened his door and the thick smell of ocean air swirled into the car. It was colder than Simon had expected.

‘Come on,' said his mother, unbuckling her seatbelt, reaching back to touch Simon on the leg. His scars tingled.

His father had begun to stalk the yard in giant strides, palms pressed into the small of his back, elbows out in wings like a pregnant woman. The red in his beard flared in the low sun. Simon opened his door in time to hear his father say, ‘Nice feeling. Quiet.'

Simon's mother left one hand on the car door. ‘Is anyone home, though?'

Simon's father strode up to the front door of the house and knocked. Simon felt something flicker in his stomach. A wide spider web flailed in one of the trees by the barn, shimmering reflections metres into the air. There was hardly any wind, but it kept waving.

Simon's father waited a moment, then knocked again. ‘No one's here,' he shouted.

‘Let's keep going,' said Simon's mother. ‘Try somewhere in town.' Simon noticed she had taken off her shoes. She rubbed one foot with the other, stretched out her toes.

‘Maybe I'll try the shed.'

‘It's okay, Bill, there's probably no one here.'

‘Won't hurt to try.' He stepped over a pile of blue netting by the door. ‘Might just be working, or something.'

Simon shifted his gaze to the shed. It was much newer-looking than the house, much more modern. It had a roller door at the front of it, like a garage might, but the door was about three times as big. Simon noticed the door wasn't closed all the way to the ground.

‘Quite a structure,' said Simon's father. He hit it with the side of his palm. It made a deep clang.

Simon's mother walked towards the shed. ‘Bill, that's someone's property.'

‘It's solid,' he said, grinning. ‘It can take it.' He peered under the door. ‘Hello?'

Simon was constantly bemused by the way his father treated the world as if it was always glad to see him. He'd told Simon often about his early working days, cold-calling for the company. Knocking on strangers' doors, ‘charming' people into buying cosmetics.

Simon's father hooked his hands under the door. ‘Simon, give me a hand, can you?'

‘Bill, I don't think—'

‘We're in the country, Louise. Different rules.' He beckoned Simon over, nodding his head. ‘We'll just get this up.'

Simon reluctantly put his hands under the door. His fingers felt dust.

‘On three—'

They began hauling up the door. A mechanism squealed horribly somewhere inside. The door was heavy, but eventually began to yield. Simon felt his shoulders stretching in their sockets.

Simon's mother came over. ‘Bill, this isn't right!'

Simon's father grimaced. ‘Just a little more.' His cheeks had turned almost crimson, and Simon was close enough to see moisture at the corners of his eyes.

‘This is crazy.' Simon's mother had raised her voice. ‘Can you just stop for a second and think?'

The door reached Simon's eyeline and he could suddenly see what was inside: rows of big shiny tin cans, the kind his mum sometimes got with juice inside, but missing the label. There were maybe hundreds of them, up on shelves like in a supermarket. A spiky black shadow caught his eye. When he tried to follow it, the shape ran out of view. Maybe, he thought, it was the spider, missing from its web. He was about to duck under the door when he felt a hand land painfully on his shoulder. ‘Ow!' He twisted his neck to see his mother's fake nails digging into him. ‘Why are you—?' He stopped.

A man was standing behind his mother. He had on dirty yellow overalls, slung up high around his armpits. He was old—Simon thought nearly a grandpa's age—but his cheeks were ridged red with ill-conquered acne. ‘Help you?' he said.

Simon's father stood up, smiling. ‘Oh, hi. We were just—' He dusted his hands off on his jeans. ‘We were just looking for directions.'

‘In my shed?'

Simon's father laughed nervously. ‘Well, we knocked on your door, and didn't get an answer.'

‘We're just passing through,' said Simon's mother. ‘We didn't mean to invade your—' she gestured vaguely, ‘but my husband can be a bit…
unthinking
.'

‘Bill Sawyer,' said Simon's father. He stuck out his hand. ‘Nice structure you've got here.' He thumped the shed's wall again.

‘Don't really use it that much,' said the man. ‘Just takes up room mainly.' He smiled grimly and shook hands with Simon's father. ‘Name's Tarden,' he said. ‘Jack Tarden.'

‘Pleasure. This is my wife, Louise. And my young fella, Simon.' Simon felt his father's hands in his hair. Simon knew he was just putting on an act for Jack Tarden. Going blokey.

‘Pleased to meet you, Simon,' said Tarden. ‘Looks like you're a bit of an explorer.'

Simon realised he had dirt all down his T-shirt. He brushed it off quickly. He didn't think he liked this man.

‘Anyway,' said Simon's mother, checking her watch. ‘We should be on our way. We've got some time to make up, I'd say.'