Day 4

Day 4

I have to canvass the Motor Hotel, a huge old building that takes up about half a city block. It no longer functions as a hotel, but there is office space available, as well as a quasi-rundown barber shop and a couple of similarly depressing businesses. The whole day is overcast and windy, very ominous and threatening. The addresses I have to canvass are a confused jumble. I ask a woman who I need to speak to to find out what the correct addresses are. She directs me to a man who is missing most of his right index finger. Whenever you have to get directions from someone with mangled limbs, very little good can come of it. He points with his nub and I head up the elevator, which opens to dark and narrow hallways with every other ceiling fluorescent burned out, unmarked doors with pebbled glass and wire mesh. It is like visiting the offices of a seedy TV detective. There is no sign of human life. Finally, I get some help from an immensely fat dwarfish woman who is so heavyset that she can't bend her knees and instead waddles from side to side. I follow her down this bizarre dreamscape to the office where she works, which is some kind of brightly lit daycare/drug rehab(?) facility. She disappears behind a door and I'm left standing in the middle of what seems like a pediatric waiting room, prancing cartoon characters on the wall and pamphlets about drug addiction fanned out on the end table. I can hear voices from the depths of the office. Finally, she comes to the glassed door and slides a paper with the number of the building's superintendent under the tray. I thank her and make my way out of this David Lynchian nightmare.