Theodore shut the door. The girl, still wrapped in the blanket, quickly whisked her way to the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her. Theodore tossed his hat on the pillow carelessly as he made his way to the window. He drew the shades as close as he could to block all signs of light out of the room. He then tossed his jacket on the foot of the bed. He lit a cigarette, pinched it in his lips, and stared at the room for a brief moment. He looked over to the chair that the old man had occupied. Crushing his cigarette in the ash tray, he rushed over to it, grabbing it by the top, and dragging over to the door. He wedged it under the handle of the door, taking the heel of his shoe and securing it firmly. As he kicked, he heard the faint sound of something tearing. He looked under the chair, hoping he had not torn the upholstery. Under the chair was a black tape recorder, slowly breaking through the bottom fabric of the chair.

He pulled it out, tearing more of the fabric, and held the recorder in his hand. His hand started to shake uncontrollably, and the recorder fell from his grip onto the floor, bouncing on the carpet, knocking the two reels off the recorder. Theodore felt a burst of fear climb over him. He rushed to the drawer between the two beds, flinging open the drawer, and grabbing the black leather-bound Bible; without thinking he ran back to the recorder and easily smashed the first reel into pieces with the corner of the Bible. He lifted the Bible again and shattered the other one with the same amount of ease. He stared at the broken corner of the Bible in his hand. He clutched the book close to his chest and leaned against the back of the bed. Still holding the Bible, he sobbed into his coat. The sobs were small, like a mixture of a hiccup and moan. He quickly brushed the tears out of his eyes and kicked the broken recorder under the dresser. Small bits of plastic remained on the carpet. He slowly set the Bible back in the drawer and closed it. She came out of the bathroom still wrapped in the blanket.

“Are you okay?” She said, dragging over every word in a meek monotone.

“Yes. Just more problems,” he said with a smile.

She nodded and hopped up on the bed. She peeled back the blanket revealing burn marks on her gray back and small burlap sack she was using as a toga. She crawled under the bed’s blankets, snuggling up to his hat. He wanted to take a shower to wash the dust off him but knew leaving her here would put her in danger. Her fingers were still covered in the bright cherry syrup and started to stain the pillow as she lay there. Knowing the fit the hotel manager would have, he pulled himself over to the bathroom. He peered inside. Small pieces of bone and blood filled the sink as well as what appeared to be a green discharge of unknown origin. He fought to keep down his steak and quickly washed the horror down the drain. He snatched up a towel from the rack and ran it under the water, saturating it. He shook it out and returned to the main room. Her giant eyes were starting to droop, making them appear normal sized. He reached for her sticky hands and tried to clean them. She snapped her hands back and glared at him. He stepped back in defense.

“I am sorry, but it is just like with the wire, you need to trust me. Can you do that?”

She nodded reluctantly and handed her hand back to him. He scrubbed the cherry syrup off her fingers. The syrup had dripped into creases of her finger, running down her arm to her elbow. As he cleaned, she looked away from him as if she was trying to ignore his process. He decided to break the tension.

“I never got your name. We rushed out of the wasteland so quickly it never came up. What do I call you?”

She shrugged.

“I was given a number the first day I arrived – 39. I was called that for as long as I can remember,” she said wearily.

He kept cleaning unsure of what to say next.

“My daughter, her name is Alice and my wife’s is Sally. Those are names, a number isn’t a name, it is organization unit designed to find a book in a library or item off a shelf in a store, but not for people. We have names so people know what to call us.”

“But I am not human, so your name structure does not apply to me.”

He finished cleaning the last bit of cherry syrup off her arm and set the rag on the floor. She tucked her arm under the blankets and turned from him. He sighed and started to take the rag into the bathroom when she called back to him.

“My mother called me Eollx.”

“Eollx?” Theodore asked confused.

“The last time I saw her she hid me in a rock saying, “Goodbye Eollx.”

Theodore tossed the rag on the sink and returned to the room. He sat down on the floor and leaned his head against the dresser.

“My mother named me Theodore after our president Theodore Roosevelt. My father fought alongside him in the Rough Riders. A battalion of sorts during the war in Cuba. I am sorry all these places must seem strange to you.”

She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“No, I have been to Cuba, but it is not where I met Roosevelt. He was good, wasn’t he?”

“Wait, you met Theodore Roosevelt?”

“Yes, during my first round of travels. He was very loud, but I felt he was good. Good in the sense that he was doing his best. Was he?”

“To hear my father go on about him there was no greater man. Though not everyone was as fond of him as others. Where did you meet him?”

She turned away from him again and attempted to cover her head.

“The place I told you about…the abyss.”

“Do you remember where it was.”

She covered her head in the blanket, hiding like an ostrich in the sand.

“Please don’t let me go back there. Not even in thought.”

Theodore stood up and patted her shoulder.

“Okay, let’s get some sleep, Eollx.”

He could feel her ease up and she laid flat on the bed. He walked back to the bathroom, pulling a towel off the rack, rolling it up, returning to the main room, and set the towel on the floor. He turned out the light and laid his head back on the towel and closed his eyes. He unfastened the hooks that wrapped his glasses to his face, folded them, and set them next to the towel, taking deep heavy breaths before slowly falling asleep. He did not dream. His thoughts instead ran equations through his mind. Something that had not happened to him since he was at Stanford. He would hear a voice, mechanical in nature, like a robot. The voice would shout an equation whether it was something simple like arithmetic or more complicated like calculus. No matter what the question he would always get the answer right. What made it strange to him was no matter what question was posed to him tonight, the answer was always 39.

“19+20!” He would hear the voice call out. Without thinking, he would respond.

“39!”

“3x13!”

“39!”

“6.2449979984 is the square root of what?”

“39!”

This would go on continually. Always the answer landing on 39. He was jostled awake, looking straight into the large saucer eyes of Eollx. She was fully out of the bed. Her long slender limbs leaned out, taking up a good portion of the room. Each hand was placed next to his ears, her long fingers, reaching out over his head. She had her back arched and she stood over him like a frog looking down on the pond. Her long black hair dropped down like a waterfall, landing just above his head. Still in the mind of the equations he mumbled coherently, but not loudly.

“39, AH!”

He tried he keep his shout quiet, but she had caught him out of a deep slumber, and he couldn’t help but yell. He rolled to his side, grabbing his glasses that he had knocked under the bed, and fastening them back on his face. He then looked back up at her.

“You were calling my name,” she said meekly.

“39 is not your name, Eollx is. Remember, you are not their numbers anymore.”

“I know but you were calling “Eollx.”

“I was? I must have been dreaming.”

He stumbled up. His back and neck felt incredibly sore from the towel. He walked over to the wall. Fumbling for a brief moment, he found the light and tuned it on. Eollx was still in a crab walk stance, then she slowly leaned back on her legs into a sitting position. He peered at his watch, the time was a little past 4:45am. Theodore glanced at her shoulder, cut and scabbed, peering slightly out of the burlap sack. He shook his head.

“We need to get you something more suitable to wear in the morning.”

“And what would that be? A poky a dot skirt for my gray legs to shine through?” She asked bitterly.

Theodore looked perplexed. She shrugged pulling the burlap sack over her shoulder.

“The men would bring in these thin books with pictures on them of the females of earth. They always looked so…put together… staged. The white gloves fitting perfectly on their elbows. Their dresses would hang just right. They were happy. I tried to style my hair once to appear as one of them, but I couldn’t do it.”

Theodore smiled at her.

“My daughter when she was seven came running to our bedroom with curlers in her hair. One had gotten stuck tight on the side of her temple; it was digging into her head. My wife and I had to cut it out of her hair just to get it free. We asked her what she was thinking. She started sobbing and held up a JC Penny catalog someone had thrown away, she pointed to the model with poofed up hair. She cried, “I just wanted to be pretty like her!” I picked her up in my arms and told her she was the second prettiest girl in my life…after her mother of course, then I styled her hair to the beauty she was. My point is, that is very human.”

Eollx dragged her fingers across the floor.

“She is very lucky.”

Theodore walked over to his satchel. He unclipped the top and flipped through the contents. He produced a small brown bundle and unraveled it. Inside was a brush, straight razor, scissors, and a bar of shaving soap.

“If you like, I can give you a haircut. Style it like those girls in the thin picture books?”

Eollx still seemed like she didn’t want to look at him. He walked over and sat on the carpet with her.

“I know, being down there, with them, must make all of us seem like all we want is our own selfish desires. I am not like those men. You can walk out of here any time you want, and I won’t ask you to do something you don’t want to. If you don’t want the haircut, I won’t give you one. Alright?”

Eollx nodded her head.

“Can you make it like that Monroe woman. Everyone seems to like her.”

“I will do my best,” he said with a smile.

As she rose to her feet, he unwedged the chair from under the door knob, and set it in front of the mirror in the bathroom. She sat in the chair, moving her hair completely to the back. He unwrapped the towel from the floor and draped it around her. He grabbed a handful of her hair and dropped it in the sink. Slowly grabbing handful after handful till nearly the whole sink was filled with her mane. He turned on the faucet and drenched the entirety of the hair in a long stream of water. The strands gave off a light glisten in the dim light. He brought the scissors to her hair and with a quick snip of the blades, a lock of hair fell to the floor. She winced at the first cut, looking back him.

“That is all?”

“That is one strand we have a long way to go.”

She leaned back as he continued to cut. They stood in silence; the only sound was Theodore quick hands working the scissors against the hair trying to keep it all in order. Once he had the majority of her hair removed, he started to style it, running the scissors against the hair to curl it like a ribbon. After near an hour of cutting he set the scissors down on the sink. Like a barber he spun the chair and had her look in the mirror. Her long ratty hair had been shed off like skin leaving a short crop with slight curls at each tip. She ran her hands through it, her longer fingers breaking through each lock as if it was the softest lace. She smiled up at him, her eyes looking like he had just performed a miracle.

“Thank you, it does look like hers.”

“Happy I could help.”

He moved his hands in and out trying to work out the cramps. She continued to play with her hair, amazed at its shortness and trying to uncurl each strain playfully. She tapped the top of her cranium. There seemed to be one hair out of place that stood up and away from the rest. She tugged on his sleeve and pointed at it.

“I think you missed one.” She said tapping the small hair.

“It does seem that way. I am very sorry.”

He picked up the scissors again and looked at the hair. The hair seemed different from the rest, ridged, not flowing, almost like a blade of wheat stuck to her head. He pinched it, rubbing the object in his fingers. He placed the blades around the hair and with ease snipped it off. As the scissors cut through the object, he could see it, wires, one red, one white, and one blue break from the “hair” that he had cut. She screamed. A loud scream that sounded like a sheep being slaughtered. She screamed again. Standing to her feet, she slammed her hands into the mirror shattering it. She jumped on the sink and grabbed the light fixture hanging just above the now cracked mirror. With one pull she yanked it from ceiling, sending it crashing to the floor. She screamed a third time and ran into the main room.

“Eollx!” Theodore called out in fear.

She overturned the bed. The base dug into the wall, almost destroying the window. She threw the dresser against the wall, breaking it to pieces, leaving large gashes in the wall. She continued to scream.

“Eollx!” Theodore called out again.

She turned him running at him like a wild animal. She grabbed the scissors out of his hand and swung them at him, repeatedly digging the blade into the wall, tearing the wallpaper. Her screams were guttural, a mixture of pain and anger as she continued to swing wildly. Theodore closed his eyes; certain she would stab him in seconds. He opened his eyes again and shouted.

“39!”

She stopped swinging and let the scissors fall to the floor. She fell over and collapsed on the carpet, her face landing square on his shoe. He could hear small pieces of glass falling to the tile floor in the bathroom. He was about to lift her to her feet when a loud pounding on the door filled the whole room. He froze in place.