Some towns are so insignificant that cartographers only penciled them in and then lay awake nights fretting about whether or not to include them in the world. And some of us have to see them, if only once, driving slowly to the end of Main and back. The locals who watch you pass by have no more curiosity about where you're from than cash in their pockets. Nor resentment: the last son to leave took that with him.

They ought to be ghostly, their faces weathered away— illegible like signs on the haunted storefronts. Instead, they're solid, immoveable, pressed down hard by hopelessness that adds its excess gravity. Nothing weighs more than those empty hands, and yet they lift slightly as you go, waving goodbye with grace beyond your reach.

You go there overwhelmed, expecting grunge, fetor woven into the sheets, too strong for bleach; everything slightly greasy to the touch and damp with cold fear. You expect self-mockery, sleeplessness, and worse: the drip of a faucet accusing you, the commode whispering lies. And you know you'll have to listen to the world whimper to an end on the other side of the thin wall.

But that's not how it is after all. The room has been freshly painted the color of silence, something like warm buttermilk. Even the mirror turns out to be harmless, recognizing you at once as an old friend, a good friend. Everything is so clean the chambermaid must be a saint. And in that room you're so far away from yourself, so calm, the illusion of sanctuary so convincing that no one could lie down there to rest and not believe in God.