Jess Lourey - October Fest

Dog and cat followed me into the house where I rinsed out their water dishes and poured a fresh drink along with kibbles for the dog and pebble food for the kitty.

“How was your day? Were you good to each other?” Luna looked at me hopefully, like if she played her cards right I might make her as smart as a cat for a day. Tiger Pop ignored us both. I scratched them until one rolled over in ecstasy and the other purred against his will.

Animals sated, I cobbled together some vegetable soup to settle my sour stomach. I still hadn’t made up my mind whether or not I was going to the motel tonight, and the indecision was making me queasy.

Crap. Who was I kidding? I’d made up my mind the minute I’d received the invitation. If only I was one of those women for whom good sense won out over inquisitiveness. Or, let’s face it, for whom dead bodies didn’t pile up like unwashed clothes. It occurred to me, then, that I hadn’t seen a dead body since the State Fair. Maybe October would be my first corpse-free month since May, I thought hopefully. If I’d known I was less than twelve hours shy of ending that good luck streak in a most gruesome fashion, I wouldn’t have bothered shaving.

You’re stupid, you’re stupid, you’re stupid, I told myself as my Toyota hugged the corner into town, spraying gravel. When I was six years old, my mother took me to see a movie in St. Cloud, the closest town with a theater. I don’t remember where my dad was; probably my mom was trying to get us out of the house and away from him for a few hours. It was my first big screen experience: a remastered release of Bambi . The theater had also been updated, an old 1920s burlesque hall regilded, repainted, and recurtained to host modern film. I begged for seats in the balcony and was hypnotized when the theater went dark and the music came on, vibrating the chairs. Words appeared on the screen, followed by magical animation. We didn’t even own a television at the time, so this was heady stuff.

For a while. Then, I spotted a group of boys a few years older than me on the main floor below giggling and passing something between them. I slid away from my mother-poor thing probably needed her own break-and over to the edge of the balcony. I could see that what they were passing was shiny, catching the glint when the screen went bright. Was it a knife? A metal bottle for drinking out of, like my dad had? A decoder ring? I couldn’t quite make it out through the intricately patterned wrought iron barrier. Lucky thing there was a hole just big enough to squeeze my head through, if I wiggled and pushed. So I did, and to my great satisfaction, I saw that they were passing candy back and forth, a mother lode of U-No bars. I smiled-they’d snuck those in. I knew this because I’d begged my mom to buy me a Caravelle bar and I would have begged her to buy me a U-No bar instead if they’d sold them-and I kept smiling even as my horrified mother realized first that I was no longer seated next to her and second, that my head was wedged in the wrought iron tighter than Excalibur in the stone. It took two firefighters, a tub of Noxema, and a lot of elbow, neck, and ear grease to free me. I’m pretty sure no one in that theater has but a secondhand idea how Bambi ends because watching the dumb girl with the brown braids wrestle with a wrought iron balcony was a much more riveting show.

But I sure enough got to see what those boys were up to, and that made it fine that my ears were pink and raw for a week. You’d think curiosity of that magnitude, so powerful that it overrode common sense and maybe even the survival instinct, would have bred itself out of the gene pool by now, but I was evidence that it hadn’t. I was on my way to the Big Chief Motor Lodge smelling like sandalwood, wearing clean clothes, and maybe, just maybe, I’d applied a light coat of mascara and honey-flavored lip gloss.

I hadn’t yet explored the new motel. My home-away-from-home in cases of extreme mosquito invasions at the house was the Battle Lake Motel, a cute and clean log-cabin-sided destination across the street from the Big Chief. It wasn’t directly on the banks of the lake, but it was friendly, family-owned, and hospitable. The Big Chief, on the other hand, was going for the sprawling resort look with its bland exterior and massive parking lot.

I pulled into the crammed parking lot of the two-story motel, staying in my car for ten minutes, studying the cream-colored building. I could hear the oompa-whomp of polka music emanating from the football field at the other edge of town. Not With My Horse didn’t sound too bad from this distance. To my right was West Battle Lake and to my left was Highway 210. And in front of me was certainly my demise.

Like most motels, this one had exterior entrances for all the rooms. I counted six doors on top and four on the bottom, the bottom ones spread on each side of the brightly lit lobby. I assumed there was the same arrangement of rooms on the other side, the side facing the lake. Why, if this was about sex, would Johnny bring me here? He lived with his mom, whom he was taking care of after his dad had passed suddenly, and so there wasn’t much privacy at his place, but why not come to mine?

Only one way to find out.

I sighed, left the safety of my car, and dragged my feet toward the lobby. I could see the full moon sparkling off the lake through the other side. The glass-sided lobby was a smart design choice. It made the place seem modern and steeped in nature at the same time. Room number 2 was immediately to the left of the main entrance and room number 3 was directly to the right. Above me, on the second floor, the rooms started at 5 and went to 10. It was a good bet room 20 was on the other side top floor, far right when facing the motel. I could walk through the lobby like I knew what I was doing, up the stairs, and knock confidently on the door. Or I could pee my pants and whistle Dixie. I decided on a compromise and went to the front desk, feeling like the Whore of Babylon.

I waited my turn. The combination of the Octoberfest weekend and the political candidates and their entourages in town for the debate seemed to have filled the motel to its rafters. In fact, I recognized the emcee from this morning, Sarah Glokkmann’s redheaded assistant, Grace, in the front of the line. There appeared to be a mix-up in her room key because she was trading one plastic card for another. Seven minutes later, I was at the head of the line, still not sure what I was going to say.

“Um, I have a… well, I’m meeting someone in room 20 tonight, and I’m wondering if he, I mean, if they have checked in yet.”

Donning her best gynecologist’s face, the older woman behind the counter pressed a couple keys on her computer. I didn’t recognize her, which hopefully meant she also didn’t recognize me. “Ah yes, the Jacuzzi suite. Nicest room in the resort.” She smiled at me, and my cheeks blazed red. “There’s a fireplace in there, though it’s maybe too warm tonight. Let’s see. Yes. The other party checked in an hour ago.”

“Thanks,” I croaked. A Jacuzzi suite? What the hell? Mrs. Berns must have lied to me about Johnny’s intentions, or she was blind to them herself. I lurched toward the lakeside door, my embarrassment turning to suspicion evolving to anger. Send me a fancy linen invitation booty call, my ass. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been fooled into believing some guy was a gentleman, and I knew exactly how to deal with this. I marched up the stairs, steaming past a vaguely familiar dark-haired man, down the cement walkway, and knocked loudly on the last door, number 20.