I open my mouth to answer, then snap it shut again, because I don’t know what to say. Honestly, I have no idea what I expected. It’s not like I’ve ever had to pay for a room before.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “What do hotels usually cost?”

“The Best Western down the street?” he says. “They charge you ninety-nine dollars a night. The Days Inn on Thirty-fourth Street? They’re seventy-five dollars a night. And the Hilton downtown? Well, they start at one sixty-nine.”

“A night?” I ask incredulously. I do the mental math. I’d be out on the street in less than three days.

“A night,” he confirms triumphantly. “Sure makes the beautiful Star Light Motel sound like a deal, don’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” I finally mumble, discouraged. I can’t even afford the Best Western. I’d run out of money in just a few days. I hardly have enough money to eat as it is.

“So I expect you’ll be wanting this back now?” he asks, holding up the key. I sigh. He grins, tossing the key back across the desk to me. I stare at it for a moment.

“Welcome home,” says the clerk, suddenly perking up, “to the Star Light Motel.”

After chasing the giant cockroach for fifteen minutes and trying to kill him with my shoe, I finally manage to get him to run out the front door and then spend the next fifteen minutes checking behind the dusty blinds, under the bed and in the bathroom for any other sign of life. I try—mostly unsuccessfully—to forget about the fact that he probably has a whole family hiding in the walls. I nap for about two hours, thanks to my overwhelming exhaustion and the fact that I’ve just driven nine hours straight to get here. I lie perfectly still, sure that at any moment, one of the horrible little bugs will climb across me and I’ll completely lose it.

Thankfully, that doesn’t happen. It seems the roaches prefer sticking to the floor.

Nine a.m. I need to buy some Raid. I’ve seen the commercials where Suzy Housewife points a can of Raid at an unsuspecting animated roach, and he turns around like he’s in a stickup, puts his spindly little arms in the air . . . and keels over, dead.

Sounds pretty good to me.

I try the bedside radio alarm clock, twisting the dial a few times until I pick up a station that comes in clearly. I laugh out loud as a song materializes through the static.

It’s “You’re the One,” the song I generally lead my concerts off with.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I listen to the song, absently humming along with the tinny radio, until it ends.