BY
L A P LAZA D EL S OL S HELAGH P OW ER -C HOPRA
Frank checked into the hotel around midnight, swapped weather stories with the clerk behind the counter and stepped outside. “La Plaza Del Sol” was lit up in dirty neon, high above the road; he rolled the words around his tongue and said it aloud in a bravado Spanish accent. He pretended he wasn’t in the middle of swampy, rural Ocala but instead surrounded by dark bosomed ladies bearing sweets and Sangria. The plaza of the sun, of the dirty little sun, sun, sun. In reality, it was a seedy place just off the highway, tucked away in a grove of dying dwarf palms. It had an ornery pool, smack in the center of the plaza, a misplaced pie hole filled with dark, dank water and a layer of green scum on its surface. His room was right before the pool, so close that if he opened his door, one wrong step and he’d be in the pool. Got yourself two showers there, the clerk said when he gave the room key. The room had a refrigerator, two brown paintings of ships on one wall, a double bed and a spiral staircase that led up to a closed door in the ceiling. It was disconcerting, and he climbed the staircase and banged his fists at the door in the ceiling, hoping someone, anyone would come. He had bought a bottle of cheap red wine with him and asked the clerk for some glasses but he didn’t have any. So Frank drank the wine from a yogurt container he found in the trash, said a nimbly cheers to the sky and flipped on the TV. There were three stations, and he soon learned Stuart Pinhope’s wife had triplets and how to knead something doughy. The last channel was full of fuzz and static with traces of a blurred and ghostly figure dancing. He was supposed to meet Dina there and thus begin an affair, begin the stipulation of all rotation and whatnot, he liked to think. He had never had an affair before, but he thought one should always try something once and when she winked at him at the office he was sure something good could come out of it. Even when Sal died in that fire last May, when his body was dragged out and plopped on the lawn and half his skin was peeling off his bones, he didn’t feel too bad about it, Sal had a crappy life, a fat wife and a job down at Croby’s bar, the swill of humanity lying before him at all hours. Dina was late, but wasn’t she always? He was always late, late to life, late to the miserable curls of the cow and the dregs of the fodder in the fields. He had grown up on a farm, not far from here, chased alligators and sweated a musty odor much of the time, up to his knees in the swamp and how he loved the humidity–heck, the humanity of the jungle down here. Once he traveled up North for a holiday trip visiting some cousins mid-winter and the snow trailed him like a relentless stalker, it was exhausting, trying to keep warm and remember who you were, remember that the earth was still kind and loved you, not hated you with its whimpering and ragged claws and when he returned he felt at peace, felt the world had settled down for him, stepped down and buried him with its warm, temporal glow.
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