When Devils Sing(6)

Neera wrote back: Any chance I could audition Tuesday instead?

The reply came a moment later: No. This is it. Do you want it or not?

Neera’s fingers hesitated over the keyboard for a second. Yes. Thank you.

Neera leaned back on her heels and sighed. She sat there for a second, staring into space, then hit play on the song recording for the third time.

It still wasn’t good enough.

She gave the bathtub one last swipe with her sponge and tossed her supplies back in the bucket, grimacing at the dirtied water. On her way out of Room 11, she returned the rags and bucket to the cleaning cart, then scanned the room a final time to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

Something glinted beneath the chair in the far corner, catching her eye. Neera crossed the room, digging beneath the dusty upholstery. Her fingers found something cool to the touch—a key ring with one key and a worn leather key chain embossed with a deer antler logo.

Neera wouldn’t have given the design a second thought if it weren’t so strange looking. Around Georgia, deer antler iconography was as common as the cross, but this was different.

This buck’s eyes were covered with a blindfold, while the antlers spread across the leather like sprawling, twisted tree branches. A unique design choice if she’d ever seen one. She slipped the key chain into her pocket, intending to return it to Dawson next time she saw him at the lake.

With a final look, Neera stepped out into the night and shut Room 11’s door behind her.

The distant smell of burning leaves hung in the warm night air, turning her throat scratchy. She checked her phone. It was after midnight, and there was still another room to clean. Yawning, she descended the short flight of stairs to the ground floor and made her way toward the laundry room.

Passing by the glass windows of the motel lobby, Neera paused. Inside, Nanaji sat at the front desk, his enormous glasses sliding down his nose as he read the Punjab Times newspaper. An American news channel droned from the old television in the corner. Harsh, fluorescent light shone down on him, casting his brown skin in a dull shade of gray.

Looking in on her grandfather, Neera had one of those rare moments of sadness for him. There he was, a man far from his homeland, reading about Punjab in the run-down motel he had sold everything to own. As though he could feel her pity through the smudged glass, Nanaji looked up. His face immediately pinched into a frown at the sight of her, his heavy eyes sliding to the Yamaha resting across her back. Her tenderness for him evaporated at once.

Neera couldn’t be heard practicing without upsetting her grandparents, but being seen with the guitar was somehow worse. The instrument was a physical reminder of her uncle, Ajay—a memory best kept buried for them all.

Nanaji waved her into the lobby like he would call for a dog. Reluctantly, Neera rested her guitar at the lobby’s door then walked inside.

“All right, Neera?” Nanaji said by way of greeting, his voice low and accented.

“Yeah.” Neera hung in the doorway, letting moths fly in. “I just have Room 6 to clean, then I’ll be done.”

Nanaji nodded absently. “How are your studies?”

It was a question he asked so often that it was almost funny. Neera’s lips thinned as she said, “I don’t start college until the fall, Nanaji. I don’t have anything to study right now.”

He looked up from his newspaper. “Oh? There is always something to learn.”

Neera wanted to say that she was learning a new fingerpicking technique on guitar. That her recent cover of a Reverend Gary Davis song was pretty damn good. Her songs on SoundCloud were picking up in streams. But those were all useless things to him. Nanaji measured success by dollar signs and commas, despite his own struggling business.

Fine. He was a simple man of a different time, a different place. She just wished he wasn’t such a dick about it.

And then there was the other issue—Neera didn’t intend to go to college at all. She hadn’t told anyone that yet, though, not even her mom.

Neera opened her mouth to remind him that for all his talk of education and success, his granddaughter spent her summer nights cleaning blood off the motel’s walls. But her grandfather’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen, his graying eyebrows furrowing, and rose from the desk to take the call in the back office. The door shut behind him with a dull thud.

Neera stood awkwardly in the motel lobby. This time of night, it had to be a relative from India or England calling. Nanaji could be on the phone for an hour or more. The right thing to do would be to watch the desk until he got back.

Neera didn’t often do the right thing.

She turned on her heel and walked out into the balmy Georgia night. Lightning bugs blinked in and out of sight along the tree line surrounding the motel. A symphony of katydids and tree frogs reverberated around her. The parking lot light flickered occasionally, casting the concrete in stilted shades of dark. A television blared from one of the rooms.

Guitar slung over her back once more, Neera made her way to Room 6. It faced the back of the motel, overlooking a weathered swimming pool and the broken fence that surrounded it. Beyond the pool were longleaf pines, towering and swaying with the night breeze. When the wind hit the trees in just the right way, Neera swore she could hear a song. Summers in Carrion were wondrous like that if nothing else.

By the time Neera finished cleaning Room 6, it was two in the morning. As she trudged toward her room, the sound of shouting made her slow, then pause. There was her grandfather’s voice, taut and angry—and he was shouting in English. It wasn’t uncommon for Nanaji to get into vicious phone arguments with his brother, but it was always in Punjabi, his preferred language for anger.