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A Piece of America

Oz Hardwick

A bland motel in the Mid-West. Grand Rapids, maybe, though it’s not too grand and nothing’s moving at all. Snowbound. Casual conversations with the few other guests dried up after the first night, with nothing to talk about but the weather, and that’s stayed the same. There are sit-coms on TV, so broken by adverts that by the time the programme comes back he’s lost the thread. The other option is the news, which is all about the weather, and that’s stayed the same. On balance, the ads are the best thing on, full of false hope and cynicism, with slogans almost haiku-like in their sadness:

own a piece of America
and see your life change
for the better

    The airport is tantalisingly close, but who knows when the next plane will leave? So here he is, drifting between adverts on TV and blank snow through the window, trapped in a small piece of America, where the dream has become recurring and everything stays the same.

    He is running on two timescales, six hours apart, phoning in the gaps between disjointed patterns of work and sleep, making tired conversation with nothing to say. But now, in the early evening, it is her small hours and she will be sleeping. On a whim, with something like recklessness and something like desperation, he picks up the phone, pushes 9 for an outside call, and hits numbers at random. What will the response be? Confusion? Indignity? Fear? It doesn’t matter – he just needs to hear a voice.

    A ringtone, then silence. But not true silence. Instead, it is a silence crackling with distance, the echo of falling snow, and everything staying the same.

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