The Sweet Spot

As the young couple speeds away from the motel, the moon glinting off the bumper sticker California: The Total Recall State!, Grace retreats back into the office. She's been at the desk for hours, answering the occasional phone call and giving out directions to addled out-of-towners and the just plain lost. Maggie's gone, let go last week, and that leaves the night to Grace. Beyond the windows, Santa Augusta lies flat and livid, a bend of lights in the distance. Nothing is far, but nothing is close either. The radio's on, mostly static, and Grace is fine with this, because this is who she is now: mistress of the motel, indentured servant, mother.

When another car pulls up, Grace is in the den adding water to the cockatoo's bowl. She doesn't love or hate the bird, but Brando's her captive; for that, she tends to him, letting him out of his cage on occasion to spread his wings. Decades old, he's a spectacular bird: George's first pet, a present from the laconic Marlon Brando ("Here, it's for you"), though she's always had her doubts.

"Don't trust anything they say," she says to the bird as the office door swings wide and Doug wanders in.

"Mom," he says, too loudly. Then again, "Mom."

"In here," she says, and walks through the door that separates her apartment from the office.

She goes to hug him, but Doug, more standoffish than usual, pulls away. "No one's on the desk," he says, his voice turbulent.

"I'm on the desk," she says. He wrinkles up his handsome face, the idiosyncratic destinies of his father written in it: his blue, hangdog eyes; pencil-thin bridge of his ski-sloped nose; his small ears fuzzed with blond down. Her child. "Well, I am."

"And Maggie," he says and turns to the window, where the vacancy sign flickers, the green letters a warning rather than an invitation. At least to Grace, who still can't believe she's here, in Santa Augusta. "What's going on around here?" he says.

You would know if you came by more often, she thinks, but says, "Everything's under control. Really. Now, do you want something to eat? I bought the most amazing avocadoes in town yesterday."

"Was that before or after all heaven erupted?" he says.

"Don't be such a drama queen," she says, as the door swings open again and Flynn staggers in. He's drunk and smoking and wearing aviator glasses. His face is drawn, and under the beard Grace sees the outline of the handsome boy he must have been. If Grace had friends out here, she'd tell them about Flynn: this shabby roustabout, this out-of-work actor and musician preying on her son. It's enough to chill the next words out of her mouth: "Flynn, what a pleasant surprise."

"Grace Baker Bettencourt Schaefer," he says and bows, his voice as rough as the rest of him, his lips silken and wet. She frowns at this list—her maiden name, first husband's, last husband's. They pop like firecrackers and hurt her ears. "Have you told her yet?" he says, his breath a pinwheel of rum and cigarettes. "Big surprise, Mrs. BBS. Great big news and, like, wow. Spinning room. Need air." He trips out the door as Grace wags her head.

Doug shrugs, and then leaves the office for Flynn, who's fallen on his face before the pulsating vacancy sign, his slender arms an alien green under the neon lights. Behind every disappointing man is another disappointing man, she thinks, stepping outside, the night cool and soft. "Should I make some coffee?" she says, as Doug lifts the dead weight of Flynn onto his shoulder and carries him to the motel.

"Don't bother," he says. "It's been—quite a day."

"Why are you here?" she says. "It's so late. I thought you were in Napa stomping grapes."

"That was last month," he says, and props Flynn against the door of their room...