Earl was embarrassed by his heavy breathing, but followed Scott into the tower room. This was the first time he'd actually been in the tower and Earl immediately felt that this was a much better room than his. Although it looked to be about the same size as common ones downstairs, the existence of two windows and the placement of them made this room much more light and open. Earl knew from looking up at the tower from the outside that there were two windows, so that didn't surprise him, but this room quickly made him ashamed of his own hovel downstairs.
     Where he had the one window fitted next to the door, the tower room had two, one next to the door overlooking the parking lot and the rest of the motel and one on the opposite wall that looked out across the street. It was that one that Scott was opening now, after having left dropped his bags on a small couch that sat next to the window.
     Earl could imagine himself sitting on that couch looking out that window and he wanted it to happen. His room didn't have a couch, just the bed and a solitary chair, and the extra furniture in the tower room made it just that much more desirable to him. Not only was there the extra window and small couch, but a small corner of the room had a linoleum floor instead of carpeting and boasted a slim counter and a sink. There was a hotplate on the counter and a small electric grill, and Earl's determination to move into this room skyrocketed.
     That was the extent of the room: a bed, two nightstands, two windows, a counter and a sink. To Earl, it meant everything, and he felt sure that Scott didn't appreciate it.
     Scott moved his duffle and knapsack from the couch to the floor at the foot of his bed, and Earl saw him glance over at his telephone. The instrument had a big flashing 15 on it and Earl guessed that was the number of messages that Scott had received while he was out of town.
     Earl wondered about that a bit, wondering how long he would have to go without answering his phone to accumulate fifteen messages. It would be longer than a week, he felt, but he wasn't counting all the telemarketing calls.
     Scott opened his knapsack, dug around a bit and pulled out a bottle of water that he began drinking. When he was finished swallowing, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned to Earl. "So what's up?" he asked.
     Earl realized that he was still huffing from the short climb up the stairs, and wasn't yet comfortable with talking. Also, the speed that was in his system was causing him to sweat profusely and he could feel it forming on his forehead and around his neck. He finished the beer that he'd dragged along with him before answering.
     "You're gone a lot," Earl said. Scott looked back at him, his face a blank. "Y'know, you spend a lot of time away from here."
     "So?" Scott answered. He sounded defensive.
     "So I was wondering if you liked this place," Earl said.
     "What place? You mean LA?"
     "No," Earl answered. "I mean this place, this tower room."
     Scott glanced around the tiny room. His face didn't register any surprise, didn't look as if it was seeing anything new. "Y'mean *here*?"
     "Yeah."
     "It's okay, I guess." Scott took another drink from his bottle and looked at his room again. "It's okay. Why?"
     "I was wondering if you were thinking of moving," Earl said. His face felt quite flushed now and he wiped some of the sweat away with the shirt sleeve. "Y'know, like maybe you found another place to live."
     "No, I wasn't looking for anything like that," Scott said.
     "But do you like it here?"
     "It's okay, I guess. It's cheap and people pretty much leave you alone."
     "How much is the rent?"
     Scott looked at Earl, then up at the ceiling. "I think it's $20 a week more than your place."
     "Twenty bucks? That's not too bad," Earl said. "You thinking of moving?"
     "I just told you that I wasn't. Lookit, what do you want? I want to take a shower and change clothes and shit. I just got back from driving to Vegas and I'm beat."
     "You get high?" Earl asked. If Scott was tired, maybe he could give him some of his speed and make a friend out of him he thought. Or maybe he could trade him some for the room.
     "Um, yeah." Scott answered. "Well, sometimes."
     Earl stuck a hand into his back pocket and pulled out a thin, crushed joint. He lit it, took a deep hit, and passed the cigarette to Scott.
     While Scott was sucking on the joint, Earl began to tell him of a fight he'd heard in one of the rooms last night. He wasn't sure if Scott heard them up here in the tower, but there were several fights each week that he could hear coming from one room or the other.
     Scott handed back the joint and by the time they'd burned it down to a roach, Earl had described the fight in some detail. It had involved a lot of loud voices, a little bit of things being thrown around, but no police and no violence that he could tell.
     "I got some killer meth," Earl said.
     Scott just looked at him, saying nothing. It didn't look to Earl as if Scott got wired, not judging from his reaction. Most speed freaks he knew would be all over some good meth.
     "Y'know, crystal." Earl added.
     Again the blank, wary look came back from Scott. This didn't look to Earl as if it was working out. "Ya high?"
     "Yeah," Scott answered. "Thanks for the weed."
     "So what do you think about switching rooms?" Earl blurted.
     "Wha?"
     "I'd like to have this room, and what with you being gone all the time, I thought you'd be cool with letting me have it."
     "This is MY room," Scott said. He looked over at his bed, his couch, protecting them by taking inventory of them. "I don't want to leave here."
     "It's not a big move, just downstairs," Earl said. "You'd be closer to the street," he added, as if that made it better. He knew he didn't have any good arguments, but he hoped that Scott would just take anything.
     "That's true," Scott agreed, and Earl could see him thinking about something.
     "And you wouldn't have to lug your stuff up the stairs all the time," Earl said. He was thinking of the times he saw Scott, after work, trudging up the stairs carrying his tool belts and lunch chests and things. "It would be easier for that."
     "Tell ya what," Scott said. He used the heel of his right hand to rub his eye, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'll think about it and let ya know."
     Earl sighed, deflated. Getting to move into the tower room had been a growing obsession for him, a way of showing Gerry and the other people who came over that he was making something of his life, that he was moving up. He wanted to live here to be on top, to be above the hassles and common shit going on in the other rooms, and he didn't think that Scott deserved it.
     Earl had nothing going for him, he knew that. He didn't mind it much, not most of the time, but sometimes he would sit on his bed and look out the door at the parking lot and want something a little bit better.
     He didn't think in terms of beautiful homes with picket fences and detached garages, that wasn't part of his world. He'd never lived anywhere with bedroom sets or matching furniture and because of that he never missed or aspired to those, but he was aware of the tower room and saw it as a better thing that he could have.
     Scott had been living up here for as long as Earl had been in the Single Spire Motel, and Earl felt that was long enough. Scott should be moving on by now.
     "Yeah, do that," Earl said. Scott turned his back and stripped off his shirt on his way to the bathroom. Earl could see the muscles tightening and flexing across Scott's back and was instantly aware that he never took off his shirt around other guys. They would never understand why he was so fat. "Let me know."
     Earl turned and went down the stairs, leaving Scott's door open. If he wanted it closed Earl figured he could do that himself. He felt a heat, a flush, cover his face as he wound his way between the cars and back to his room and his throat was parched. Instead of returning to his room, he turned around and backtracked across the parking lot and out to the sidewalk. He passed under the tower and couldn't help glancing up at the window.
     It was so close, he thought, and maybe he could still talk Scott out of it.
     He kept walking and headed to the liquor store, which was right next door. He walked in and noticed Mort at the counter. The old guy must be nearly seventy, Earl thought, and had probably been working here all his life.
     Earl grabbed a couple tall cans of malt liquor and a bag of pretzels and took them up to the counter. Mort looked up at him, gave a perfunctory smile, and rang up the purchase.
     Earl said nothing to him, and rarely did, pocketed his change and went back home. He opened the door and was suddenly struck by how depressing this place was. There was nothing here, no hope, no past, and only a veneer of present. This was a stopping place, not a destination, and Earl was more convinced than ever that his time stopping here was over.
     He cracked open one of the beers and took a large mouthful. It was cold, it was good, and the taste of the beer washed the funky taste from his mouth. The liquid momentarily quenched his parched throat and tongue, and Earl set the can down to retrieve his cigar box from under the bed.
     He didn't need another hit, not yet, but wanted to finish off what was left in the cap and the cotton ball and cooked a small amount of water. He filled the syringe through the used cotton and gave himself another shot.
     "Yes, yes, yes" he said aloud as the speed in his veins distributed itself throughout his body. He smiled, all by himself, clapped his hands again, and turned on his small radio.
     The room filled with the music from an oldies station, and Earl got up and began dancing to the sounds of some 1960s British Invasion music. He didn't play air guitar, but he moved with an surprising agility to the simple beat of the old Gerry and the Pacemakers song.
     He picked up his beer and danced with it, smiling and content with the world. He wasn't worrying about this room, not thinking about the tower room, and was caught up in the rush of the drugs in his system. His misery and lonliness were forgotten, were obliterated by the euphoria created by the speed coursing through his system.
     Moments like this, when it all worked, were everything for Earl. The music was wonderful and cheerful, there was nothing to think about, no great or weighty issues were contained in the simple love song. It was innocent, it was happy, and between that youthful expression of optimism and the feeling of power and completion that the speed gave him, Earl felt wonderful. He was alive, he could rip phone books in half if he chose, and his pounding heart and quivering, extended hairs all proclaimed his existence.
     Earl wanted to do everything and to do it all right now. He spun with his beer and spilled some more on the matted shag carpeting and neither noticed nor mourned the loss. He wasn't thinking about tomorrow and going back to work, he wasn't thinking of the tower room, he wasn't worrying about his weight. He was thrilled to be alive and had no problems at all. It was the feeling he wanted to have all the time, and when he felt like this, he never even remembered that he ever felt bad.
     He opened the door and a slim cool breeze managed to slip inside his room. It felt great as the air touched and spread around his face, and Earl lifted his hair and enjoyed the cool feeling across the back of his neck. Sweat that lived in the folds of his neck evaporated and if Earl had ever felt better, he couldn't remember it.
     The sky outside was gray, tinged with roses and golds in the west, and birds clustered in random groups on the wires overhead. He could hear other music, Latin music, coming from one of the other rooms and the smell of onions frying mingled with the dusty air. Earl stood in his doorway, taking it all in, filling his door with his bulk and grinning like a madman out at the parking lot.
     Someone had a TV on and Earl could hear the applause and laughter of the audience, but none of the dialogue. He could hear the sound of the cars as they drifted past the motel and from some of them loud, booming music and snatches of rap hit and subsided. There was a world full of things, and Earl was taking in as much of it as he could.
     As he stood there in the doorway, the headlights of an approaching car swept across the lot in front of him. He heard the crunch of gravel as the tires bit into the lot and could see the top of a compact white car making its way behind the row of cars facing him. As the car eased from the street to his right across his view, he recognized it as Vicky's. The slighlty rusted top, the faded plastic flowers on the antenna, identified it to him and Earl stretched and took another swig of beer, knowing that she would soon be passing.
     He watched the car get to the end of the row, along the rooms that ran along the bottom of the U, and turn toward him for the short trip to the leg of rooms where his room was. It slowly made the tight turn and passed from his left to his right, heading back out to the street. There was nowhere to park in the center of the Single Spire Motel, but everyone always tried.
     Earl waved at Vicky as she drove by, frowning. If she saw, she didn't respond, and he watched her head back out to the street. She turned onto the boulevard and a short time later Earl saw a young woman with light brown hair, a perturbed look, and tight faded jeans walking into the motel's lot.
     "Hey ya," he shouted, when she was a room or two away.
     Vicky looked up and Earl was happy to see that she smiled.
     Not only that, but she waved a little greeting while answering him. "Hey, yourself."
     "So, just coming home?" Earl asked. He was trying to stand as tall as his average height would let him inan effor to spread his fat over a larger area.
     "Yep," she answered, breaking her stride and pausing near Earl. She looked tired, he thought. "End of my week, y'know." Again the little smile and Earl was struck by the intensity of her stare. She was looking directly at him, straight in his eyes, but it was a cold stare, not an open, friendly one.
     "I see ya sometimes on Sunday," Earl said. "About this time."
     "Were you waiting for me?"
     Earl made an effort to swallow, but his throat was once again dry. He wasn't sure what would be the best answer to her question, whether it would be better to lie and say he was waiting for her and to let her think that he was interested in her or if it would be best to just pass this off as the coincidence it mostly was. "Maybe," he answered.
     She laughed, and Earl was glad that he hadn't given the wrong answer. "I was just out here enjoying the view, and then you came by and made it better," he said. He smiled his best and brightest smile.
     "How 'bout that?" she said, and Earl was mometarily flummoxed.
     "Nice evening, huh?" he asked.
     "It really is. I would like some rain, though."
     "Really? Why's that?"
     "I miss it, for one thing," she said. "And for another, I think it would do good to wash some of the filth away."
     "You mean the dirt?" Earl asked, looking over at the lot in the middle of the motel. He was relieved to be away from her unremitting stare for a second. It was unnerving to him to be the object of such scrutiny. "Or the shit in the streets?"
     "Both, I guess. I think this city needs a good washing and I haven't seen any rain since I got here."
     "You're pretty new, though, right?" Earl couldn't exactly remember, but he felt that she'd only been here a couple months.
     "I guess. It doesn't feel like it though. I moved here in April, and it feels like I've been here forever."
     Earl looked back at her and was nailed again by her stare. It made him uncomfortable, but she didn't seem to notice or mind if he looked away or not. "Well, it hasn't rained since you got here, huh?" He couldn't remember for sure, but felt that was a safe thing to say. He was pretty sure that it hadn't rained all summer, not here, anyway.
     "Not a drop."
     "I think we'll get some soon," he offered.
     "I'd like that." Vicky made a move, as if she were getting ready to go to her room, and Earl clapped his hands for attention.
     "Say, are you free tonight?"
     She stopped, just on the other side of Earl, and turned to face him with that stare again.
     "Free? What do you mean?" Her face was a blank, and her unfocused eyes betrayed nothing. Earl couldn't see any fear, but he also couldn't see any interest.
     "Nothing," he said. "I just thought maybe you'd like to get some dinner or something later."
     Without looking away, without blinking, she stared at him without talking. Earl felt that she must be thinking it over, that she must have retreated back inside her head and was just presenting this face. He didn't know where she was mentally, but she didn't display any of the signs that he usually got from someone's face.
     When he asked someone out, and he did it much more often than he was successful, there was either a look of horror or, more rarely, one of pleasant surprise. In this case there was nothing, nothing at all, and he was on the verge of asking the question a second time when she agreed.
     "Yeah, I'd like that," she said.
     "I can pick you up about seven..." he said.
     "Okay." Vicky broke off her stare long enough to look at her watch. It was now quarter to six. "About an hour, then."
     She turned and began walking away and Earl watched her butt wiggle in her jeans as she stepped down the sidewalk and toward her room. She stayed in the bottom of the U, in the room nearest the leg where Earl's room was. After she opened the door, she looked back at Earl and he gave a little wave. She must have seen it, he thought, since she waved back before closing her door and sealing him off.
     Earl let out a huge sigh, emptied his beer can, and smiled. He took a step or two out toward the lot and kicked a few pebbles around before heading back to his room.
     He sat on the bed, looking out the door and listening to the radio. He could scarecly believe his good luck in getting a date with Vicky. She was easily the most attractive woman he'd ever seen in the Single Spire. She wasn't worn down, she wasn't hardened and she wasn't desperate. She was regular, he thought, and he hadn't been with a regular woman in a long time.
     He thought of her shoulder-length hair that had been held in pony tail. Her face was fresh, devoid of makeup, and even without all the staring her eyes were crystalline light blue and bright as rhinestones. Even under the jacket she wore and even though he hadn't seen them close tonight, he knew she had nice breasts and a thin frame. He knew that it was important for him to make a good impression tonight since it was unlikely that there would be a second date if this one went poorly.
     The thought of fucking her excited him, but the speed in his system kept him flaccid. He could deal with that later, he knew, but he also felt that it wasn't likely that he'd be getting her tonight, anyway.
     He got up and closed his door and headed for the bathroom to take his shower. He'd showered in the morning and Earl couldn't remember when he last had taken two in one day. He stripped his shirt off and undid his belt, letting his pants pool around his ankles. Earl avoided looking at his body or even looking in a mirror that would reflect it. He knew he was fat, that his skin was white and flabby in all the places where someone would want it to be taut and tanned. Earl had long ago given up any pretense of attracting women through his physical appearance and as he sat on the toilet to remove his shoes and socks, he wondered what about him had attracted Vicky.
     He stood and turned on the shower, lathered his hair and washed the sweat from his body. He took special care to wash his beard and to do his best to drag the thin cotton washcloth over his immense back. He couldn't reach most of it, but did the best he could.
     After drying off he got into some pants as quickly as he could. He didn't like being naked because it made him feel both vulnerable and inadequate. He shaved around his beard and even trimmed it before going to his closet and pulling out another velour shirt. This one was striped like the other one, but this one had forest green and muted purple stripes. His jeans, he noticed, had a burn mark or two at each cuff, the result of welding, but they were his last clean pair and he didn't have enough time to load any of the others into his car and take them to the laundry.
     It wouldn't have mattered much, in any case, since his other pants were also burned and stained in numerous places.
     About ten minutes before he was set to get Vicky, Earl helped himself to another shot and another dousing of after shave. As the drug slammed against his psyche, Earl felt rejuvenated and, once again, alive. He pulled his sleeves up to three-quarters length and fluffed the extra fabric over the cuff. He rolled a couple joints and put them in an empty cigarette package that he put in his right rear pocket. His wallet was in the left rear, his keys and nail clipper in the left front, and his change in the right front. He patted them all to make sure he had the things he normally carried, dusted off his shoulders in case he had dandruff or had picked up some dust, and turned off the meager light that sat on his nightstand.
     He opened his door at the same time that someone pounded on it and was surprised to see Scott standing there, his face contorted in rage and red with fury.
     "You fat fuck, I'll kill you," Scott spat.