La Llorona

by Don Waters

for Amy Hempel

On my way through this desert border town, I’d plucked an orange HELP WANTED from the motel’s office window. I’d been heading someplace else.

Zephyrs sharp as knives slashed grooves into the endless dirt. The motel’s yellow-bulbed arrow had shifted with the wind; it now pointed away from the office entrance toward the hot, lonely flats.

Mondays, I did towels. Tuesdays were carpets. Thursdays and Fridays, I wiped dust from the windows I peered through. Nights, late, I stood in the office, lit up by blue neon, staring at the TV, my sunstruck mind fluttering to a close.

Toothbrushes in the vending machine drooped like fallen soldiers. The belly of the icebox was a dirty trench.


The newlyweds arrived in an old Ford. There was a dent in the hood in the shape of a hand.

A purplish birthmark dripped below her ear down her neck. Green-red dragons snarled on his arms. She did not wear a diamond. His third finger had a white band, from someone before, from someone not the wife.

At dusk, they cooled down on plastic beach chairs, shaded under the breezeway. They propped their feet on the old Ford, plugging their laughs with beers.

I hid behind soiled linens.

“Toss me a full one,” he said.

And she said, “But you forgot to say the word precious.”

A wood-panel door, bolted for privacy, separated their room from mine. At the bottom was a two-inch gap. Their shadows flickered inside an orange glow. Their low discussions were edited, abbreviated by the door.

“Wake up,” she said, in the middle of one night.

He said, “But I’m awake.”


Guests did not leave tips. Guests left toilets clogged. Guests hid loose pennies in the backs of drawers.

I found: bloody towels, lipstick-ringed cigarettes, a child’s soft blanket. A handgun on a pillow, loaded. I buried it in the desert, inside a jackrabbit’s rust-colored hole.

All the remotes in all the rooms were doweled into the end tables.


Afternoons, they went for drives. Her T-shirts clung damply to her ribs.

Nights, he caulked the door’s gap with a wet bathroom towel. Wheels squeaked on the queen-sized bed.


People pulled in late with garbage bags beneath their eyes. They slipped their keys into the slot before I woke. This had been a place obstructing them from where they wanted to be....

Don Waters lives in Oakland. He recently produced “Dennis,” a collaborative concept album featuring writer Dennis Cooper (ZYZZYVA 26), visual artist Amy Sarkisian, and 14 bands and musicians. He notes: “This story was inspired by Amy Hempel’s ‘Beach Town.’” E-mail: donwaters at gmail dot com