Peter Orner - Esther Stories

SET BACK beyond the highway trees, the ruins of the Motel Rainbow five miles west of Iron River, Wisconsin. In its day a perfectly respectable place to stop and sleep for the night, but now long abandoned. Since ’91, when the owners, Duane and Theresa Fjelstad, split up for good and the mortgage stopped getting paid. Neither of them wanted or could afford to run the place alone, and they couldn’t live together anymore. Fourteen years and poof, and few people even noticed the Rainbow was no longer, except for a couple of fishermen from Escanaba who’d made a ritual of staying there during the week they fished the Brule. The two of them had camped out in the parking lot the year they found their favorite motel closed. The state bank in Hayward has sat on the land ever since, waiting it out for some white-knight developer with plans for a minimart. Or better yet, for a casino-happy tribe with state authorization to construct a warehouse of slot machines like the one in Black River.

But for now the place remains. One long, narrow, red brick building, with the old manager’s office in the middle painted yellow. A wooden sign with a rainbow out front. A broken neon NO VACANCY/VACANCY light under it. Out of one window hangs the remains of a curtain, twisted like a girl’s braid. And by the road a wind-mangled cardboard FOR SALE sign leaning crookedly out of the ground. The place is mostly boarded up, but somebody did a poor job of it and there are a few gaps, entry points. Local kids from Chetek High School climb through the exposed broken windows and smoke dope and drink in the old rooms. Although most of the rooms are empty now, there is one room—12C — that still has a ratty mattress and a broken television.

Wade brought his own sheets from home. They didn’t fit — the mattress was a queen — but Sue wrapped herself up in them to avoid touching the mattress with her skin and laughed, saying he could at least have taken her to a place that wasn’t condemned. Then she kissed him and told him that she didn’t care, that she’d never care, and that she’d always remember this place like it was the new Ramada in Duluth. Wade was proud of himself, proud that he’d remembered to bring everything. (Sue always busted his balls because he forgot his wallet that time he took her to the Chinese place in Washburn.) Condoms, beer, blankets, sheets, tape player, flashlight, C batteries, double A’s, a magazine so that if Sue got bored he could read to her. They didn’t wait very long. They were both so excited, they went right ahead with it — Wade on top, and the two of them gripping each other’s shoulders as if the other was the seat in front on a crashing plane. It was over quicker than either of them had dreamed, especially Sue, but it was great, and actually different from everything else. And after, Sue squeezed her legs around him and nibbled his chin and told him she loved him a lot and how weird that was considering he was such a complete flake. Wade, who’d forgotten to turn on the music before they started, reached to the floor and found the Play button. The tape was a mix he’d made for the occasion, with Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way” and mellow U2. It was around 9:45 and finally getting dark. This was a Tuesday in the middle of July. Tuesday night, the night Wade had scoped out, the night nobody ever went over to hang out at the Rainbow.

Wade hadn’t thought of bringing a candle, so he stood up and tied the flashlight (using the rubber strap attachment) to a rusty fixture above the bed. The whole time he was fiddling, Sue kept leaping up and kissing his stomach, tugging at the little hairs above his belly button with her front teeth. When he had the light rigged up, he pushed it so that it circled, the beam exposing the room. One of the two big windows was boarded up, as was the door. The other big window was kicked out (that’s how they’d got in), and the small window above the door was also broken. That one probably by a rock, just for the hell of it; the hole in the glass was jagged, star-shaped. The TV was ancient, a big Zenith built into a large wooden case, a throwback to the time when TVs were more like furniture. The knobs were ripped off, and somebody had spray-painted SUCK across the screen. They were sixteen and they had their own room and the flashlight twirled above them. Wade held Sue’s elbows. They squinted at each other, both their expressions a combination of pride, fear, and embarrassment at the line they’d crossed, because now even just walking around the halls at school would be different. Everybody said it was no big deal, and everybody lied, and though they both knew there was no reason to look back at those virgin days, there was equally no point in not reveling in this moment. So they lingered in the fact of sex. The walking around school would come later. They would learn that swagger soon enough.

“Are you going to tell Marcy?” Wade asked.

Sue clucked her tongue. “You want me not to?” The flashlight above their heads stopped circling and now pointed straight down at them like a small spotlight.

“I just wanted to know.”

“No. Not for a while at least. She’s a total mouth.”

Wade squeezed her elbows tighter. Giddiness kicked up his heartbeat. Everybody knowing. He didn’t say anything.

“My stepdad thinks you’re a fuck-up and you probably won’t go to college,” Sue said.

“Tell him next time I feel like mixing paint at Poplar Hardware for the rest of my life, I’ll give him a call.”

“Okay,” Sue said, and kissed his ear. “I’ll tell him, peanut. And he’ll tell me he’s one-third owner of Poplar Hardware, a True Value subsidiary, and then he’ll say my little boyfriend’s afraid of real work.”

“Tell him I’m going to college in California and then I’m going to drop out and just drive.”

“Drive to Mexico, drive to Russia. Drive to damn Hawaii. You think you can drive everywhere and gas money’s going to flow out the glove compartment like a cash machine.”

“You want to come with?”

“To Hawaii, yes. And to Jamaica, maybe.” Sue paused and looked at him straight on. “Wade, this place doesn’t even have a toilet.”

Wade undid the flashlight, and they both pulled on underwear and shoes and stepped out through the window. The temperature had dropped into the sixties, and Wade felt a little wind on his arms. The moon glowed behind the clouds; the night was pale and starless. Sue walked over to the pines and squatted. Wade pointed the light at her. “Don’t be an asshole,” she said, and he swung the light at the row of dead rooms and the yellow boarded-up manager’s office in the middle. Then he walked around the side to check on his car and to take a piss himself. The car was tucked into the trees where he’d left it. He rubbed his trunk. Also back there was an old swimming pool. As he pissed, Wade looked at the hole in the ground and the flimsy and trampled plastic fence that surrounded it. Old danger signs in the mud. He thought of people actually splashing around in that pool, and now look at it. An eyesore, dirty rainwater at the bottom. A couple of times Wade and his friends went to the empty pool to skateboard, that year he skateboarded. He touched his car again before walking back around front. Sue met him in the parking lot. “Next time let’s go real camping, or at least to a place with a real bathroom, like a Yogi Bear. My dad used to take us to a Yogi Bear. The one near Minong. God, did that place suck, but at least it had bathrooms. We could go to a camp-ground next time, Wade.”

“I thought you liked this place — Watch!” Wade turned the flashlight on his own face and shook it hard, moved his head a little. His face blanched and eerie in the handmade strobe.