Hours, maybe even days, later I sat at the hotel bar. The place was crowded, and I mean crowded. About ever damn seat was filled. Next to me on my right sat a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. His hair had faded away to a couple of white poofs around his temples and he drank from a bent straw that stuck out of his pina colada like a periscope.

On my other side, a fat woman in an unflattering muumuu designed to make the sun itself look dim and drab.

I said the courteous hello when they each showed up, but made sure they knew that’s all they were getting from me.

I sat there and I drank. First a Malibu and coke, then a vodka cranberry. I didn’t know what the hell to drink. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing in that hotel bar. Hadn’t I been in my room?

Hadn’t I been looking at something?

“Another?” The bartender asked me. He looked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, if Shaggy wore board shorts and an untucked polo shirt. I counted the dandruff flakes around the front of his collar as I shook my head and put my palm over the rim of my glass. No more for me, thanks.

I downed the last of the watery vodka and cranberry juice and looked behind me. I could almost make out a path through the throng of people grinding on the dance floor. I’d have to chance it.

I stood on uneasy feet. Wobbled, and caught myself on the shoulder of the fat woman.

“Sorry,” I said and looked at her forehead.

“That’s ok,” she said through a heavy giggle. “I came down tonight figuring one of these young men would end up groping me.”

She laughed then at her own drollery.

“What?” I looked into her eyes.

“I was hoping to get a little action from someone tonight,” she said and showed me her messy teeth.

“Right,” I stammered. Maybe I’d had more to drink than I thought. “Sorry again.”

I about faced and nearly ran into everyone on the dance floor on my way to the door.

In the quiet of the hotel hallway I could hear my head pounding. I looked down at my hands. A few of my knuckles were bruised and my middle finger had a black nail. I stuck my hands into my pockets, ashamed and worried someone might see the state of them, and headed off in the direction of my room. That’s when I felt something in my pocket. I pulled out what I thought at first was a folded piece of paper.

Turned out to be a photograph. It’d been folded in half twice. When I unfolded it, the picture of a man wearing a white wife-beater in a small, filthy kitchen had been divided into four quadrants. In the top left quadrant his ugly face had been caught in a snarl.

I walked down the hall and stared at the picture. Before I realized where I’d been walking, I found myself outside my room. My hand instinctively snuck into my back pocket and found the plastic card key. It took three tries, but the door eventually opened.

Inside a man lay on the floor. The man from the photograph. My new case still sat open on the bed, and all the woman’s clothing and even the other pictures were still there, where I’d set them before I stepped outside. The door to the balcony had been left open and the sea breeze came at me over the man’s body. It carried a heavy odor of fresh death. A sweet smell that complimented the sea air. I coughed trying to hold back vomit. His face looked almost the same, just as scrunched and pained. He had a button-up, silk t-shirt on over the wife-beater. I rummaged through the pockets on his jeans, found twenty-dollars in a money clip, but nothing else. I pocketed the twenty and dropped the clip on his belly. The hollow sound it made when it landed made my skin crawl. That and the fact that his eyes were still open, for Chrissakes.

I slept most of the way. Even so, every other bump in the track or abnormally large raindrop that smacked into the window of my compartment shook me from a deep sleep to a light doze. That’s probably why I was so tired when we wheeled into the station.

That’s probably why I forgot my luggage on the rack above my seat and had to go back onto the train after everyone else had cleared out.

My second disembarking carried less weight. I remember being more awake, more aware. Ironically, I did have my bag in my hand this time. I couldn’t remember what I’d packed. Couldn’t remember packing at all.

A few feet away from where I landed on the platform a conversation had been taking place. A young woman in a vest and tight jeans was holding some kind of grudge against what looked like a disgruntled ticket agent.

I drew closer because I’m nosy as fuck.

“I have to be on this train,” the woman said. Her blond hair had come out of the purple headband she wore about an inch above her forehead. A forehead currently wrinkled above angry eyes.

“The you should have bought a ticket this morning,” the ticket agent said. His hairless head glistened, wet with the rain. His portly belly tested the limits of the gold buttons down the front of his black uniform.

“I wasn’t here this morning,” she said, the emphasis all on the last word. That’s when I noticed her bag. A really lovely teal hard case with brown straps and a silver clasp. She’s cluttered it with stickers of flags and a collection of seemingly random stamps. During the argument she’d accidentally kicked it over. It lay on its side in a puddle. One of the stickers near the handle had begun to peal, but not due to the rain. It looked as though even the exposed underside of the sticker was aged.

The conversation came back into focus.

“Two-hundred dollars?” the woman shouted.

“That’s the cost for a last minute ticket,” the ticket agent said. He looked like he was trying very hard to be calm, though his cheeks were flushed.

“I don’t have two-hundred dollars,” the woman said. She’d been defeated. I could see it. Not by this conversation, not by anything in particular. This had been the culmination of a difficult few weeks, or even months. The poor dear.

“I do,” I said and I approached them.

“What did you say?” the ticket agent asked.

“I have two-hundred dollars,” I said again and set my own suitcase at my side where I stood beside them both.

“And you want a ticket, then?” the agent asked me. There are some people in this world who make you spell things out, even though you both know the answer.

“No, I want to buy your case.”

I looked pointedly at the suitcase beside the woman’s feet.

“You want to give me two-hundred dollars for a suitcase full of dirty clothes and a toothbrush?” the woman asked.

“I want to buy your case from you. I am prepared to go as high as two-fifty. That should get you home and a meal.” I felt generous.

The woman looked at her case. I felt the decision being made in her mind rather than getting to see it. When she looked from it back to me, I knew where we stood.

“Two-hundred and fifty, and I get to clear out my things,” she said.

“Two-hundred and fifty, and I take it as is,” I said.

Again she went back into her head. It took only slightly longer than it did for her to make her first decision.

“Fine,” she said. I opened my wallet and handed her five fifties. I took my new case, and my old case, and I walked away.

About an hour later I sat on the bed of my hotel room. I could hear the ice machine just down the hall through the thin walls and somewhere even farther down the hall an elevator chimed.

Next to me on the bed I’d laid out every item from the suitcase. Three shirts, all short sleeve. Two had been embroidered with a band’s name, and the third looked as though it had been worn when the girl had gone swimming at the beach. A pair of jeans with cherry Chapstick in the pocket. Five pairs of socks and three pair of panties.

And photographs.

The pictures looked as though they had been developed out of a very cheap disposable camera. Several of these were taken from various hotel rooms or tourist sites and showed only the woman from whom I’d bought the case.

A few others showed scenery that seemed less than spectacular. I was about to put the photos down when I found the last one in the stack. This photo contained neither scenery nor the woman. I stared at it in a somewhat shocked awe. The man in the photo wore a dirty wife-beater and appeared to be upset about his picture being taken, as he could be seen reaching for the camera. He stood in a kitchen that looked as though it belonged in a trainer from the 1970’s, complete with pealing, yellow wallpaper.

I let the other photos drop onto the bed, but I held onto the one of the man. I walked out to the balcony with it in my hand. Outside the rain had stopped, but only recently and no one had come out yet. I watched the clouds for a bit and spun tales in my head about who this man could be. After God knows how long, a knock at the door shook me from my brooding.