This morning I knew. It was the morning of the third day I had been trapped in a room, two miles from the main drag of the Reno strip in a place called “Motel.”

I stood alone, broke, and in Reno.

There is one road that leads to Reno from the east—Interstate 80, and in Salt Lake City, Utah, 569 miles away, there is a bellman at a four-star hotel who, when asked if there is perhaps a more scenic route than the mind-numbing Interstate, blinks at me his contempt in the sunshine before slowly saying, “In Nevada?”

But there is another road in Nevada that takes you almost there: U.S. 50, the loneliest road in America.

Reno is in the high desert valley, 4500 feet above sea level, but the highway climbs into the mountains before twisting down the black unlit slopes to the washbasin where the lights are. The town itself is one street, Virginia, running in a straight line between the mountain passes.

On Virginia stands the Eldorado and the Circus Circus; the Romantic Sensations Club; Horseshoe, the 24-hr pawn shop (“nothing refused!”); the Wild Orchid Club (“Hustler’s All-new Girls!”); Heidi’s Family Restaurant; Adult Bookstore (“Under New Management: More Variety!”); Limericks Pub&Grill (Once a young lass from Mamaroneck/Decided to go on a trek …); Arch Discount Liquors; Adults Only Cabaret (Filipino waitresses in Island outfits); St. Francis Hotel; Ho-Hum Motel; Pioneer and Premier Jewelry&Loan; “Thunderbolt: Buy Here! Pay Here! We buy Clean Cars and Trucks!”; Adventure Inn: Exotic Theme Rooms and Wedding Chapel; a billboard asking, “Is Purity and Truth of Devotion to Jesus Central to your Life?” and “Motel.”

That’s where I am.

“Motel” is a beige, drab two-story structure with rusted landings built around a cement square courtyard that serves both as a parking lot and a deck for the swimming pool. The cars are parked in stalls around the pool right behind the lounge chairs. Not my car, because that’s vanished, but other people’s cars, sure.

I was waiting for the girl in the mini-skirt to come back. She wasn’t supposed to have left in the first place, so waiting for her was rather like waiting for the unscheduled train to run over the car stalled on the tracks. I came back for her, and she had disappeared. Along with my car. The note she left me could have been written in hieroglyphs. “Shel, where are you? I thought you were coming back. Guess not. I’ve gone to look for you. Here’s hoping I find you.” Two kisses followed by two hugs, as if we were sophomores in junior high passing notes back and forth. She had taken her things.

I was half-hoping the “Motel” manager would throw me out, seeing that I had no money and couldn’t pay for the room, but he said with a smile and a wink, “Room’s bought and paid for till the twentieth, dahrlin’.” As I walked away I was tempted to ask the twentieth of what, but didn’t.

The first day I didn’t get that upset. I felt it was penance. I hadn’t done what I was supposed to; it was only right she didn’t do what she was supposed to.

The second day I spent foaming in righteous, purifying fury. I was eighteen, stopping for a day in Reno, on my way even farther west, to help out a fellow pilgrim I met along the way, and look what I got for my troubles. I whiled away the hours compulsively shredding into tinier and tinier strips fashion magazines, an old newspaper, informational brochures on Reno, and gambling tips, then strewing them all over the room. “TOURIST ATTRACTIONS!” “PLACES TO EAT!” “THINGS TO DO!” all sawdust on the floor.

Paradise, California, Butte County, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Tall Pines, Blue Skies, Paradise Pines, Lovelock and Golden Nugget days. Paradise Ridge was inhabited by the Maidu Indians who lived there ten thousand years before white man came. In Magalia, near Paradise, gold was found in 1859. The Magalia Nugget is world renowned, weighing fifty-four pounds, of which forty-nine ounces is pure gold. And my stagecoach of life had stopped

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PROLOGUE “MOTEL”

PROLOGUE

“MOTEL”