I pulled around the corner, and there was Kurt “PBS Is Fake News” Butler, in the quickly darkening evening, rummaging through a heap of detritus at the back of the hotel. As soon as I was all the way around the corner, he looked up at me, at first guilty and then confused as our eyes locked and, I assumed, he recognized me. I should have stayed calm. I should have pretended like I was just witnessing a weird cable guy rummaging through a trash pile. But instead I freaked out and hit the accelerator way too hard. I wasn’t familiar with the truck. It had more kick than expected, and I was looking more at Kurt than the road. I drove into a utility pole.

Kurt, familiar with utility poles and my face, then needed to make a decision. Did he get in his van and ignore maybe the weirdest thing that had happened to him in his whole life (the Black girl he had messed with at Cowtown for overfondling his weird rocks snuck around the back of a sleazy hotel in a Nissan Frontier to witness him dumpster diving, only to then drive into a pole)? Or did he walk over to ask if I was OK and also what on earth I was doing there?

I didn’t like my odds, so as Kurt began disentangling himself from the pile of old shelves, bar stools, and wiring, I threw the Nissan in reverse. Luckily, the truck had enough horsepower to get me off the curb. Kurt was running up to me, yelling, “Hey! What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?!” I fumbled with the shifter, and then I was off, Kurt running behind me.

So, good news, Kurt “Very Probably Thinks the Deep State Is Out to Get Him” Butler and I did not have a physical, or even verbal, confrontation. Indeed, Kurt Butler still (thank god) knew nothing about me. I could only hope that he hadn’t gotten a look at my license plate, though I’m not sure what he’d be able to do if he did.

I drove for half an hour, taking random turns, not paying attention to where I was going, before pulling into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts to check how jacked my truck was. It was jacked enough that I spent the next hour on the phone with the rental company and my insurance company, feeling deeply incapable. But I didn’t cry and I didn’t call my mom because I’d helped lead an international movement and, damn it, I could handle a fender bender.

And then I went back to the hotel because now I knew that either:

Kurt Butler was doing some kind of official business in a trash pile behind a gross hotel.

Or:

That is where he had found the rocks.

I decided that I’d start inside because I wanted to ask a question. The check-in desk had been sprayed with stucco to make it look like stone. And yes, an Egyptian Eye of Horus had been pressed into the stucco, because it was Wolton, so of course it had.

I walked up to the check-in desk to a gray-haired man in his fifties.

“Hi, I’m sorry to trouble you about this, but have you been visited by Carson Communications recently?”

“Goddamn it, this is the last time, we are not doing anything hinky here!”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re in and out of here every week telling us that we’re up to whatever, I dunno, but we’re just a hotel. Our guests use the internet … when it works, which it doesn’t more often than not. I’m sick of this.”

He had a North Jersey accent, which I had discovered was different from the more Philly-inspired accents I heard day to day in Wolton. I love the accent, and I don’t mind the lack of pretense that often comes with it. Still, I was caught off guard.

“I’m sorry, I just have a friend who works for them and he said he might be here.” I thought of this lie on the fly, and I was pretty proud of it.

“Well, tell him he better not be because we’re not doing anything, and they better start solving some problems instead of accusing us of being the problem!”

“I’m sorry, this sounds really annoying. Can you tell me more about what they say is going on?”

“They say that the whole neighborhood is down because we’re using too much internet. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t times, like evenings, when, y’know, people are watching a lot of pornos. But we’ve had high speed here for twenty years and nothing’s changed. They even made me go through each room to make sure no one had hooked up something to steal our internet. I did it, and like I said, there was nothing. But they keep coming in, telling us that we’re the reason the internet’s down. Well, it’s down for us too, and it’s costing me customers.”

“I’ve got a good friend who runs the coffee shop in town, and they’re in the same boat. Hard to have a coffee shop with no Wi-Fi.” I said this mostly in the hopes that he’d keep talking.

“Did they accuse him of being the problem?”

“No.” I laughed. “I don’t think so anyway.”

“Well, that sounds nice. They’re in here every week telling me I’m up to no good. I’m just trying to make a living here.”

“When was the last time you saw them?”

“A couple weeks ago now, I guess. And then I catch the guy sneaking around the back looking through our stuff!”

“The cable guy?”

“Yeah, he was back there looking for who knows what. I’ve seen homeless guys do that, trying to find something to sell. But this guy’s got a job. What is he doing going through our trash? You ask your friend about that, OK?”

“That does sound like him, actually. He’s always looking for a way to make a quick buck.”

“Tell him to do it some other place!”

My heart was pounding with the lies and the unapologetic North Jersey flair for confrontation. I decided there wasn’t much more I was going to get.

“Well, I’m really sorry this has been so rough. I’ll give Kurt a piece of my mind for you when I see him.”

“You do that.”

I got back in my truck, drove out of view of the front windows, and then pulled around the back of the hotel. It was time to dive into that pile of detritus that Kurt “Everything I Don’t Like Is a Conspiracy” Butler had been illicitly wading through earlier that evening.

I wished I had gloves. It was cold out, and, under a dusting of snow that had just begun to fall, a lot of the stuff looked broken or dangerous. It was fully dark now, so everything I saw was under the harsh glare of my cell phone flashlight. What I found was what you would expect. Trash. Two soggy bar stools with split faux-leather tops, a printer and an old CRT monitor, an ancient mop and its broken bucket, some warped plywood, a bike frame, scraps of carpet, Pop-Tart boxes, and a ton of empty water bottles. Maybe this is where the neighbors all brought their junk. But what there wasn’t was anything at all that you wouldn’t expect to find in a big pile of trash behind a crappy hotel.

So then I decided to look deeper. It felt just the slightest bit like the Dream, a shadow of that sensation of knowing that, somewhere, something was waiting to be found. I lifted up a piece of splotched pink carpet and found, underneath, a couple hypodermic needles and a soggy old book.

“Nope!” I said aloud, and then I tiptoed my way out of the mess as fast as felt safe. I couldn’t help but imagine what my dad would think if he saw me in that moment. Then I got mad at myself for caring. And then I got mad at myself for giving up.

I mean, it was dumb. I was at a hotel, so it was probably a Bible. But it wasn’t really big enough to be a Bible. OK, this wasn’t actually like the Dream, it was colder and muddier and with a higher chance of contracting hepatitis. The weather was always so nice in the Dream, and you never got tired. And you never had to talk to other people. This mystery sucked.