I unlocked the door and flipped on the light. The interior was dank. On the beige wall-to-wall carpet there was a ghostly foot path from the bed into the bathroom. A small secondary side road ran from the bed as far as the television set. I did a quick circuit. The heating and air-conditioning system, if you want to call it that, was a narrow unit installed just under the windowsill, with seven options in the way of temperature control. Heat: off or on. Cold: off or on. Fan: on, off, or auto. I tried to calculate the number of possible combinations, but it was way beyond my rudimentary math skills. The bathroom was clean enough and the motel had provided me two bars of soap, neatly sealed in paper. One was slightly larger than the other and was intended for the shower. I unwrapped the smaller one, standing at the sink. The chrome fixtures were pitted and the cold-water knob squeaked in protest when I paused to wash my hands. I felt a tap on my head and looked up to find water dripping slowly from a ceiling fixture. I unloaded my toiletries from the duffel—shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste—and lined everything up on the vanity. True to form, there were no other amenities provided, so I was happy I’d brought my own. I tried the wall-mounted dryer and smelled burning hair.

I was getting a bit long in the tooth to stay in places like this. When you’re young and intent on proving how nonmaterialistic you are, a bare-bones motel room is a prize. After all, you say to yourself, I’ll only be here at night and why do I care about the room when I’m sound asleep? At my age, there ought to be more to life than feeling virtuous about how many pennies I was managing to pinch. I could see how the shadowy notion of half a million bucks might alter my perception. Since the money was only nominally mine, I was loath to fritter it away on high-class imaginary digs. What bothered me was the suspicion that when I crawled into bed that night, the sheets would feel moist.