The Day it Rained Forever

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The hotel stood like a hollowed dry bone under the very centre of the desert sky where the sun burned the roof all day. All night, the memory of the sun stirred in every room like the ghost of an old forest fire. Long after dusk, since light meant heat, the hotel lights stayed off. The inhabitants of the hotel preferred to feel their way blind through the halls in their never-ending search for cool air.

This one particular evening Mr. Terle, the proprietor, and his only boarders, Mr. Smith and Mr. Fremley, who looked and smelled like two ancient rags of cured tobacco, stayed late on the long veranda. In their creaking glockenspiel rockers, they gasped back and forth in the dark, trying to rock up a wind.

«Mr. Terle…? Wouldn't it berealty nice… some day… if you could buy… air conditioning…?»

Mr. Terle coasted a while, eyes shut.

«Got no money for such things, Mr. Smith.»

The two old boarders Hushed; they hadn't paid a bill now in twenty-one years.

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