Excerpt of Sweet Dreams at the Goodnight Motel by Curtiss Ann Matlock

From: Vella Blaine
To: <haltg@mailectric. com>
Sent: May 20, 1997, 6:30 p. m.
Subject: Hello from Valentine

Dear Harold,

I want to say that you pay me a lovely compliment to take the time to let me know of the good that the sore gum remedy I posted on the caretaker list has done your wife. My husband, Perry, was a very fine pharmacist for fifty years and invented the tooth powder for his own uncle's sore gums. We have used that powder on our teeth for thirty years, and we still have every one of them — teeth, not years, although I guess we have those, too.

Of course now, after Perry's stroke, I am the one to use it on his teeth. I guess he'll have his teeth, even if there isn't much left of the rest of him. It worries me that with him like he is, I may not know if he has a toothache, so I like to keep up with his dental hygiene.

And yes, I live in a real town named Valentine. It's in Oklahoma. Some people think the name is romantic, but there was no romance intended; it was simply the name of one of the early families. The town might have ended up being named Blaine, from my husband's family, who were most prominent, but the Valentines were always a pushy bunch and got their way.

Valentine certainly isn't much compared to your Newark, I'm sure, although I have not seen Newark. I have never traveled all that far and wide. I used to go with some regularity to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to buy for our drugstore — Blaine's Drugstore and Soda Fountain, providing a young, upto-date pharmacist an extensive selection of health and beauty aids, and drinks, ice cream and sandwiches. Our store is a town landmark, seventy-five years old, seventy of those in the same place on Main Street, and still going strong. It's harder for me to get away from the store these days, since I have both it and Perry to handle.

One place I went years ago was Galveston. Oh, my, I loved the beach, but Perry wanted to get home, so we didn't get to stay more than three days. That used to be Perry's limit anywhere, three days, and then he quit going at all, even to see his mother after she married for a fourth time and went off to Tulsa. Perry always used to say that Valentine was his home and there was no place like home.

I can agree with that. There likely isn't, or else why would one ever want to get away and see someplace else?

Well, thank you again for letting me know the sore gum remedy helped you and your wife. What is her name? I know your struggle as a caretaker, and it pleases me to think that I helped you in some small way.

Vella, in Valentine.

She pressed the send button, then sat there for a few seconds, staring at the silvery screen of the computer monitor. She always had the odd feeling of wondering where her message went and imagined it disappearing into thin air. She imagined typed words floating out into space. Maybe her message would be stuck with thousands of other messages on one of those countless satellites that she had heard of on CNN, ones that didn't even work anymore but were just space debris.

Who knew what alien might read her message from Valentine and look down on it, a small town in a great big world.

It kind of made her wary of what she said.

Shreveport, Louisiana

Sometimes a person sees or hears something at a particularly pivotal moment. Behind the moment, though, is a lot of time, years maybe, where all manner of unfed desires and dashed dreams have been jammed down and compressed, very much like packing in an explosive. Then comes that particular moment that ignites the fuse. The lid is blown off, and all those desires and dreams come spewing forth, which accounts for all manner of both passionate crimes and daring new lives.

This is what happened one evening to Claire, a lonely but mostly reasonable woman, when she read the words on the bathroom wall: On my way, just passing through, looking for real life — wish her well, this Lily Donnell!

It was on the inside of the stall door of the ladies' room at the truck stop out on I-20, where Claire and R. K. had ended up coming for supper because R. K. loved their ribs and no one bothered him. R. K. was a television weatherman of long-standing for the prime-time news hour — the weatherman with the highest ratings in the market — but most people at the truck stop restaurant were travelers and thus didn't recognize him, and those regulars who did had seen him eat ribs often enough to no longer be impressed by him.

Inside the bathroom stall, Claire studied the comment as she adjusted her black thigh-high panty hose. It was written in blue marker, right between Call Heather for a good time and the phone number, and I love Johnny Deland in Bossier City in a big lipstick heart.

Just passing through…looking for real life.

"My, Lord, aren't we all? I wish you well, Lily Donnell, " Claire muttered.

Her mind went into a buzz as she almost slammed out of the stall, washed her hands at the sink and applied lipstick in the mirror.

She paused and looked at herself. A blank face gazed back at her.

Oh, she was attractive enough. She caught the eye of many a man, and both R. K. and her ex-husband Andrew termed her a good-looking woman. Had she not been, neither of them would have been interested in her; such was their nature, and that was not criticism but truth.

She took the paper towel to the mirror, wondering if it were filmy. It wasn't. The woman looking back at her was gray. She needed something. A new hairdo. A new shade of lipstick.

A life.

She went back to the table, played with her napkin, and broke things off with R. K. She waited for him to finish his ribs, though. After the lengthy months of feeling like she needed to break off with him and not doing it, she didn't see any point now to hurry and ruin his supper.

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