A Hundred Paintings Of Her

Chapter One

Chapter OneThe motel is smaller than Lyla had expected for a man who she knows isn't struggling with money. He works as an editor for a popular magazine publication and has a very fast output. His colleagues and bosses admire his work ethics. He goes to work on time and does all the work that is handed to him without complaint. However, recently, he has taken to working half days on Wednesdays. He still gets the same amount of work done, according to the work appraisal that was carried out by his managers a few weeks ago.

The excuse he used to leave the house where his wife and children are waiting, is that he's off to a business meeting, but there's no business meeting.

"And it makes no sense to send an editor to a business meeting!" Mrs. Marcel had cried through a mountain of tissue paper.

She felt bad for the woman, she really did, but it's women like her who keep her in business. She handed Mrs. Marcel another box of tissue from the cabinet. "Tell me more," she said instead of offering empty platitudes.

He had driven three hours out of town to a town that did not even have a welcome sign. The motel did, though it just said 'Motel' in the bright neon light that hasn't been turned off despite it being almost noon. The two-story horseshoe building has a total of forty-five rooms with plenty of parking up front, but not many slots are occupied. The place is more than half empty.

Lyla makes sure to park her car in between several others, unlike her target, who had left his car near the lobby with a familiarity that makes her frown. He isn't trying to hide his car, which is odd because people who have something to hide are generally more timid and aware of their every action. They are overcautious. They don't dark their cars out in an open space.

The building is plainly built and painted beige, likely to keep any discoloring from showing too obviously when the owner loses interest in the upkeep of the exterior aesthetics. There is a little cracking, but nothing too obvious. All the light bulbs are working and it's not the worst place she's ever seen.

She uses her binoculars to peer into the lobby, grateful for the invention of tinted car windows that allow her to do this without anyone outside accusing her of acting as suspicious as she actually is. There are iron stairs outside of the building and she's grateful for that too, because she can see f**k all through the grimy window of the lobby. Marcel exits the lobby and jogs up those same stairs and she see him entering room 212 with a smile on his face, the first once she has seen the entire week she had been tailing him. He doesn't look around worriedly as he does this. Neither does he hesitate at the door. There's familiarity in his steps and the way he turned to the stairs immediately after exiting the lobby, the way he turns the key to the door. His sure steps tell her it's not the first time he's been in here.

She waits what she seems a reasonable amount of time before entering the motel lobby.

She's wearing her normal work outfit, a t-shirt with a pair of slacks that gives men no reason to look at her, but they do anyways because she's petite and they wonder what someone like her is doing outside of school.

She's twenty-five and she carries a pepper spray with her everywhere she goes not just because her profession means she makes enemies in the unlikeliest of places, but because she is unfortunate enough to be short on top of being petite, which makes her look like an easy target.

Behind the counter is a man in his forties who looks surprised to see her. She scans the keys hung up in the little cupboard behind her and is pleased to see that the rooms surrounding room 212 are empty.

Lyla asks him for the rate and he says, after eyeing her outfit for several moments, "A hundred. Two, if you are going to have company."

"For a week?" she asks, incredulous. "And no," she adds after a moment of incredulous silence. She shakes a head. "There won't be any company."

"Good," he says shortly. "And it's a hundred a night."

She purses her lips and peers around. Everything is kept clean, at least inside of the lobby, but they aren't new by any means. "I don't see anything here worth a hundred bucks," she says. "Twenty-five, maybe."

"Don't be ridiculous. These rooms are expensive and don't think I don't know how much money your sort makes," he says.

For a moment, she is stunned into silence at the assumption that he has figured out her profession, but when she realizes what he has just insinuated, she responds with an insulted flush on her cheeks, "I'm not a hooker."

"Escort, sugar baby," he waves his hand dismissively. "I don't care what you call yourselves, so long as you pay," he says.

"Look," she draws a calming breath and stops herself from reaching for the pepper spray in her backpack. "You're more than half empty, practically out of business. No one comes around here because the town is half dead and I can walk out of here and keep driving somewhere with a proper motel and you'll earn nothing, or you can take my twenty-five."

"Fifty."

"Thirty," she says even though she would really like to stick to twenty-five, but she's aware of how negotiations work. She wishes she could just give him the money and ask for information, but if Marcel is a regular customer, then it's unlikely the man will sell him out for a measly fifty bucks. A hundred and fifty, maybe, but she doesn't have that kind of money on herself at the moment.

"Thirty-five."

"Deal," she says, taking her roll of cash out of her pocket. She has fifty and is reluctant to part from it, but she can claim the expenditure from Marcel's wife once she's done with the work. "I want a room upstairs," she says, holding onto the cash when he tries to snatch it from her.

He looks like he wants to argue, but ultimately decides that it's more trouble than it's worth and grabs the keys to room 211, too lazy to reach any further than the keys within arms reach. "It's the one by the stairs," he says with a sneer. The stairs are metal, which means it would make a clanging noise when people go up and down, not a room that he would offer people when there are plenty of others available, but it's petty revenge on his part. "Check out is at twelve tomorrow. Just toss the keys in the box at the door if nobody is in."

She nods and walks out, carefully hiding her grin. His idea of petty revenge works perfectly in her favor, putting her right next door to her target.

The stairs make an awful load of racket as she climbs up it in spite of her effort to be as quiet as she can, and she is careful to look distracted, tapping away at her phone, head bent low, bangs covering her eyes. The last thing she wants is for Marcel to look out the window and grow suspicious of her.

Then again, he has failed to notice her the first few days she had been tracking him and it's unlikely that he would notice now. Most everything is done digitally now, but Marcel is one of those people who doesn't really have an online presence. He is rather boring, honestly.

From inside her room, she hears the sound of a door opening and closing and peers out the blinds. Not Marcel.

She lets out a sigh of relief and sits on the edge of the bed, sinking down as the springs give out completely on her. The place looks more like a storage than anything. Another revenge for haggling over the price. Marcel probably just hands over his cash without a peep.

She stands back up and drags the chair across the room to settle by the side of the window. Then, she rest her head against the wall and looks out the gap in the blinds. The place is eerily empty and very quiet, something she really isn't used to. Her office is located at the edge of the city, not center enough to be extravagantly expensive but still so busy that she can barely hear herself think.

The wide street across the parking lot separates the motel from a diner and a general store, both looking in even more dire state than that motel, which is saying something. Low density. This doesn't bode well for Marcel's wife. Nor Marcel. But she can't make that conclusion without knowing what exactly Marcel is up to.

People meet their mistresses in discreet places, but this is more illegitimate children territory. Or a family nobody knows about.

There's silence from her neighbor. She wishes he were louder, that he would announce exactly what he's doing so she wouldn't have to sit here and wait for something to happen.

If her clients would talk loudly to themselves when they're alone like people do in the movies, she wouldn't have to wait so much for something to happen. The waiting is always the worst part of her job. Sometimes, she would go days with nothing happening at all.

She checks her mail and bookmarks a few potential jobs. A lot of them are for divorce proceedings, spouses trying to get an upper hand. The problem with those jobs is that sometimes she finds nothing and the clients end up being unable to pay her. Her being a bleeding heart makes it harder to reject those jobs, especially when she meets them in person. She normally picks up work for the wives with cheating husbands and it's a reputation that she is gradually gaining notoriety for. Not altogether pleasant, but she supposes she could be known for worse things.

Then, she finds her location on the map and tries to figure out if there's anything here that would let her know why Marcel had driven out to this place. Further down the street, there are houses with fields and gardens surrounding them, and houses converted to offices, farmers, a small clinic, a vet, a few convenience shops, and a singular law office. She finds more houses and farms further down, but nothing of note, nothing that would explain why he had made the trip all the way here.

Was he meeting someone? Perhaps they're already in the room?

The walls here are paper thin, so she doesn't think that's the case. Maybe his mistress just isn't here yet.

She sighs, dismissing the thought.

Those rendezvous are generally in the city and the girls are pretty things, some even younger than her. It makes the skin on the back of her neck itch when she thinks about it. She doesn't think she has ever been so naïve to fall for men twice her age, not even when they're promising the world. She always finds it a little sad that the young women are so willing to lie and submit themselves to being kept as side-pieces, mistresses who aren't allowed to talk about their relationships with anyone.

It would feel exciting for a little while, but after the novelty has worn off, it would just feel utterly depressing. A dirty little secret.

She doesn't think she can live like that.

It's three hours after Marcel goes into the room that she hears the sound of his door opening. She doesn't wait, opening the door and deliberately running into him. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaims.

"It's fine," he murmurs with a high flush on his cheeks. He turns and walks away without a second glance back.

It makes her frown.

She's changed into something nicer, something meant to draw his gaze, a figure hugging tank top and shorts that makes her legs look longer than they are.

She tries to be discreet about following him across the street to the diner, but with nowhere else in the small town to go, there's no reason for him to be suspicious. It's not quite dinner time yet but the waitress offers her the dinner menu and tells her that the establishment has a bottomless cup policy, which she appreciates more than words can say.

Marcel is turning out to be more boring than she had anticipated.

He orders an egg and chicken sandwich with fries on the side and doesn't order and extra set, which annoys her.

"You're not from around here, are you?" the waitress asks when she comes to her table, curious about the new face.

She finds it more curious that the waitress is asking about her, but not the older gentleman whom she appears to be familiar enough to know that he doesn't need the menu.

"Just passing by," she says, shrugging and offering a smile that she hopes looks less strained than it feels. "I had an argument with my boyfriend. I'm expecting him to come in here and find me any moment now. I mean, I know he's a little upset because he thinks we're both too young for children, but he's the good sort. He'll step up." When in doubt, overshare and make the other person squirm. Sometimes, the tactic backfires on her and the other party would ask for even more details, but most of the time, people back off.

The waitress's smile turns strained. "Good luck with that, honey," she says and sashays over to Marcel's table, seeking familiarity and something less upsetting than a pregnant runaway. "Hey, Marcel. Enjoying your meal?" she asks with a little too much cheer in her voice.

"Yes, Lucy," he says, though he looks like he wants nothing else than to be left alone. He is too polite to tell her that, though, and Lucy doesn't look the sort to be deterred easily.

"How's your work coming along?" Lucy asks and Lyla is inexplicably pleased she's made the woman uncomfortable enough to want to talk about something else with who appears to be a familiar customer.

Marcel does this thing suspicious people do, where they look around to make sure that nobody is paying attention to him, which only draws more notice to himself. She has careful averted her gaze when he turns to her. "You know I don't like talking about that," he says lowly, but not in a low enough voice that she wouldn't hear him.

"Oh, I'm sure it's going to be wonderful. All the previous editions have been," she reassures him, which only interested Lyla more, but Marcel clamps up and she knows from the look he's sporting that she isn't going to get much more from him. At least not from eavesdropping.

Decision made, Lyla pays for the meal and stands. Whatever it is that Marcel is working on, it's in his room and he's ashamed of it enough to keep that part of himself hidden from his family, but not so ashamed that he's shared it with strangers. Or perhaps it was a stranger who had given him the idea to do it in the first place? Marcel does not seem like the type to cheat on family. Then again, there is no way to see whether someone's a cheating asshole. She's seen men who goes to church every Sunday with their families and immediately after dropping them to the lovely white picket fence home he buys with his eight-to-five job, head straight to a brothel. There is always a tell when it comes to those, though. Unexplained expenses, secret phones, and so on.

Marcel's record is clean except for the days he disappears into the motel room for a few hours at a time. He will be heading home right after this. She knows because his wife has his schedule written on paper and he is nothing if not punctual. A man dedicated to his family and work, straight-laced and honest... until recently...

What exactly is he hiding?