Frankie’s Choice

Chapter Ten, Part III

Dinner that evening was brought to the motel, inspected by the two Secret Service agents on duty outside, and then deposited on the small table in Alberic’s room. Frankie was so bored she felt she’d have eaten almost anything just to have something to do. The TV only had a restricted set of cable channels and all of them seemed to be screening repeats of very old shows from long before she was born. The alternatives were channels entirely devoted to encouraging people to impulse-buy low-quality junk or born-again Christian pastors encouraging viewers to send as much money as possible so Jesus would know how much they loved him. Frankie began to wonder about the impact of all this mental junk on the minds of the USA’s inhabitants.

The meal, supplied by a local restaurant, was an oily but tasteless pasta swimming in a heavy cream sauce that completely covered the few tiny morsels of overcooked carrot and broccoli that had been tossed in as a vague but ineffectual gesture toward dietary adequacy. Once the three of them had given this meal time to settle in their stomachs, Einar helped Alberic to his feet and they went into the bathroom. Once there, Einar put a plug into the drain-hole and turned on the hot tap. When he reached out to turn on the cold tap, Alberic gave him a look that clearly meant “don’t.”