“I wouldn’t give you… um…”
“Everyone shovels shit and I don’t like the taste of it from my kind. I already know I really don’t like the taste of it from yours.”
I again didn’t know what to say because it was dawning that she was discriminating against me.
“Not to be rude or anything,” I said softly, “but you don’t really know me. You don’t know what kind I am.”
“Right,” she replied and there was derision heavy in her word.
“You don’t,” I asserted.
“Girl –” she started but I leaned forward and I did it for a reason.
I leaned forward because I needed her to hear me. I leaned forward because I’d been searching for Carnal a long time. I’d been searching for Bubba’s a long time. I needed to be there and to be there I needed that job.
“Right,” I repeated. “You think I’m some kind of lost woman like out of a book, travelling the globe on some idiot journey to find myself?” I asked and before she could answer, I continued, “Thinking I can go out there and find good food and experience interesting places while soul searching, wearing fabulous clothes and being gorgeous and making everyone I run into love me and, in the end, find a fantastic man who’s really good at sex and adores me beyond reason?” I shook my head. “Well, I’m not. I know who I am and I know what I want and I know that isn’t it because that doesn’t exist. I also know what I’m looking for and I know I found it right here.”
“Listen –” she began.
“No, you listen to me,” I interrupted her. “All my life, or as long as I can remember, I thought something special was going to happen to me. I just had this feeling, deep in my bones. I didn’t know what it was but it was going to be beautiful, spectacular, huge.” I leaned in further. “All… my… life.” I shook my head again and put my hand on the bar. “It didn’t. I waited and it didn’t happen. I waited more and it didn’t happen. I waited more and it still didn’t happen. I tried to make it happen and it still didn’t happen. Now I know it isn’t going to. It’s never going to happen because there isn’t anything special out there to happen.”
I sucked in breath, she opened her mouth but I kept talking.
“I had a husband. I had a home. I had a job. I had friends. Then I found out my husband was sleeping with my best friend. Not an affair, they’d been doing it for five years. When the cat was out of the bag, they decided to be together for real. He divorced me and I couldn’t afford the house on my own so we sold it. Then, all of a sudden, after ten years of being with someone, I was alone. They got the friends who always thought behind my back they were perfect together. They all knew. For five years. And no one told me.”
“Fuckin’ shit, woman,” Jim-Billy muttered.
“Yeah,” I said to Jim-Billy and looked back at the blonde. “But, you know, after the shock of it wore off, I didn’t care. I swear. I didn’t. Because all of a sudden I realized that I had a shit marriage to a shit guy and I had a shit best friend and all sorts of other shit friends besides. And all that time I was living in a house I didn’t want, it was too darned big and it was too darned everything. A house should be a home, not a house. And that house was in a town I didn’t like because every house looked the same and every woman dressed the same and every man played around the same and every car was shiny and new and there was no personality anywhere. And in that town I had a job I didn’t much care about even though it paid me good money.” My voice dropped and I told her, “I realized I didn’t have anything special. All of a sudden I realized that life didn’t have anything special in store for me.” I took in a breath and finished, “And I’m okay with that. I don’t want special anymore. I waited and I tried to make it happen and it didn’t. So be it. Now, I want to live someplace that is just a place. I want a job where I can do a good job while I’m doing it and then I can go home to a place that’s a home and just be home. I don’t want anything. I’m done wanting. I’ve been wanting and yearning for forty-two years. The only thing I want is peace.”
“You think you’ll find peace in a Harley bar?” Jim-Billy asked what was possibly a pertinent question and I looked at him.
“I think I can get to work on time, do a good job, feel good about myself because I worked hard and did my best and go home and not think about a Harley bar. I can think about myself or what I have a taste to eat for dinner or what might be good on TV. Then I’ll go to sleep not thinking about anything and get up and get to work on time again.” I turned to the blonde. “That’s what I think. I’m not looking for a thrill. I’m not looking for adventure. I’m looking for nothing special because I can be content with that. That’s what I’m looking for. Can you give me that?”
The blonde said nothing just looked me in the eyes. Her face was blank and no less hard and it stayed blank and hard for a long time.
Then she said, “I’m Krystal. I’ll get you an application.”
* * * * *
I stood at the window of my hotel room holding the curtains back with a hand and staring at the pool.
Carnal Hotel wasn’t much to write home about. A long block of building, two stories, all the doors facing the front, fourteen on top, fourteen on bottom. I was on the bottom in number thirteen. The rooms were clean, mine had a king-sized bed and a TV that had to have been purchased fifteen years ago was suspended from the wall. The low four-drawer dresser and nightstands stuck out of the wall and had no legs. The closet had two extra pillows and an extra blanket. The bathtub and kitchen sink had rust stains but even so, they were clean too. The whole of it was below average but it would do.
That pool, though, that was something else. It wasn’t big but it was pristine clean. The lounge chairs around it weren’t top of the line but they were okay, in great repair and obviously taken care of.
I looked from the pool to reception. It wasn’t so much reception as a tiny house. I tiny well-kept house with a little upstairs. It also had big half barrels full of newly planted flowers out front. It wasn’t quite summer but it was the end of spring so the flowers hadn’t come close to filling out.
Carnal was in the Rocky Mountains, a small valley surrounded by hills which were surrounded by mountains. It was closing on May, there was a nip in the air and I wondered if those flowers were hopeful.
If they were, whoever planted them had the capacity for a lot of hope. There were more flowers in window boxes in the front windows of the reception-slash-house. There were also more flowers in half barrels intermittently placed by the poles on the walk in front of the hotel rooms with more window boxes on the railing of the balcony in front of the rooms upstairs. And lastly there were more half barrels dotted around the pool area.
The parking lot was tidy and well-kept and the hotel and reception-slash-house both had a good paint job.
All of this indicated that Carnal Hotel might be below average but the people who owned it cared about it.
I had checked in with a nice lady at the front desk who said anything I needed, change for the vending machines or laundry room, Wi-Fi access, menus for restaurants and takeout in town, “just holler”.
Then I’d unpacked my car. All of it. I unpacked it for the first time in four and a half months. Then I cleaned it out. All the junk food wrappers, discarded pop cans, fallen mints, lost pieces of candy, bits of paper. The flotsam and jetsam of a killer road trip. I lugged my suitcases (there were five) and boxes (there were two) into the hotel room and took a plastic bag I’d found and filled full of trash to the big outdoor bin tucked close to the side of the hotel not facing any streets.