The Search

There is no place that she leaves unsearched in the inn, but she starts in the main room. Old couch cushions lie strewn across the floor like dead enemy soldiers, and end tables, with their nobly worn facades, stand askew, drawers ripped out, shifted through, and emptied. The mess is violent and shocking, a war on lost objects.

The sun struggles to get inside the room through scratched up windows, but for the most part fails. In the corner there is a broken chair, dejected, and all of the rest of the furniture, though usable, is tired and dull. Along with the grime on the floor and the glasses and dishes left out, the seen-better-days quality of the room tells a clear tale. Nina has been doing more hiding lately than cleaning.  

In the back of the room, Nina looks around wildly before lunging for the door closest to her, a closet which is tucked under the stairs. Soon items in the closet join the couch cushions. The first aid kit, which Nina had pulled out after every fight, scuffle, or accident, is the first. It crashes to the floor on its side next to her, and sprung open. A roll of gauze falls out, unraveling slightly, and a bottle of alcohol flops over out of the kit. The worn, tired broom they hadn't had the money to replace is next, and then a mop, sponges, a bottle of cleaner that bursts open against the wall and fills the room with a sickly lemony scent. Nina has no time to glance at the dark spot it makes as it soaked into the wallpaper and no time to feel dizzy as bleach joins it next. Leaving the main room in a disgraceful shamble, Nina moves upstairs.

She doesn't have very much time before she has to leave, lifting her long green skirt, tempted to take the stairs two at a time. Outside there is a call from Neil, who is her boss, her friend, and very impatient. But she can't leave before her search bears fruit.

This inn is close to Nina's heart. She had made her first friends here, and started to breathe more and stutter less. But slowly the people she trusted have left the inn. She and Neil are the last of the old crowd who had made the inn a warm home. They're taking a woman Nina doesn't know very well with them, and the woman's daughter, because in place of the warm, kind family who had lived at the inn… Loud, often drunk men, cruel and terrifying. This home is no longer safe. Instead it is a gaping maw, attempting to swallow everything that Nina has. The rooms are cold, now, abandoned by their previous owners or lived in by strangers who scare Nina in ways she can't describe.
So Nina continues her search upstairs. Wardrobes are thrown open. Clothing is tossed aside to lie limply on chairs, beds, and the floor, defeated and abandoned. She ducks to peer under beds, where she finds dust, dirt, shoes, porn, more clothing, keepsakes.  Things left behind by people she used to see every day, whether she smiled at them or kept her distance. Nina takes a few things, just in case someday she meets up with the people driven out, but she is not looking for necklaces or pictures of family. Nina is looking for a book.

She can't remember where she hid it but she knows she didn't hide it in Neil's room—she respects him too much, he's her boss, and he keeps everything so neat that Nina knows that hiding something in there would be a good way for it to be found. Not in any of the bathrooms, of course, because the humidity would wave the pages and it was too precious for Nina to risk that.
Finally, in the hall closet, Nina finds it, uncovering it buried beneath wash clothes and towels, pillowcases and bed sheets that she had once washed. The spine peeks out of the folds of a soft brown sheet that hasn't seen use in a long time, the title glinting in the dim light which makes its way past Nina into the closet. She reaches for the book, holding it carefully, pulling it close to her like a child.

This book is not a tome of untold power and will not fix all of her problems. It is a novel, Myles to Go, left behind by a friend. But Nina couldn't leave it behind to the barbarians who have begun to take over the inn. When she had first come to the inn after her father's death, she had found the book sitting out and, in returning it to Daniel, had made her first friend at the inn. Daniel had been the first to leave, run off, and when he had he had left the book behind. Because her room wasn't safe, even back then, from the new people in the inn she had hid it in the hall closet where they would never look, since they didn't bathe or deign to change their bed linens.

Finding the book makes her think of her first days at the inn. She had been so timid, so shy. When they had told her she could stay for free and that her lack of money or family or use wasn't a problem it had been so very hard to believe. The kind eyes of the innkeeper, a man who had since been replaced by his son, had saved her. Nina had become the unofficial cleaner of the inn. Not because she had to earn her keep but because she wanted to, aching to repay the kindness of an old, strange man and the people he had lived with.

Neil calls from downstairs, impatient to leave. Probably, Nina thinks, because the young girl that was going with them was pulling on his hair again. She starts for the stairs, picking her way around blankets and other fallen, forgotten things she had cast to the floor during her search or kicked out of rooms in her haste. A large part of her wants to stop and put everything back to order. It's a habit, a custom. After every fight it was always Nina picking chairs back up, Nina cleaning the floor of spilled beer, soup, or blood. She took care of the inn as best she could, and seeing it in such disarray is nearly painful. But it's not hers anymore.

While Nina is on the stairs, finally catching her breath, Neil calls again. But it's alright, Nina is ready.  Nina takes the stairs carefully, despite Neil's impatience, because they are always slippery, especially when they have not been cleaned. In the main room, which looks like an abandoned battlefield sodden with discarded cleaner and defeat, Nina pauses by the first aid kit she had so carelessly tossed aside. It isn't broken but it is dejected. Nina makes an effort to smile at it, pushes everything that had fallen out back in, and carries it out with her.

Neil is waiting. Nina clutches the first aid box and Daniel's book tightly. Wherever they end up, two things are certain: it will be better than the inn, and Neil's temper will make having a good first aid kit a valuable asset.