Toby Olson - Seaview

IT WAS ONLY AFTER HE WAS HALFWAY TO THE MOTEL that he began to come back to himself, to the matrix of real life and the structures he was involved in. First the gas gauge took his notice; it was below half full, and he pulled into a self-service station and filled up. He had worked in gas stations when he was a boy, and he liked to fill his own tank, to catch the smell of the gas fumes as he pumped. The station was at the side of a small shopping mall. He saw a liquor store with its light on, even though it was only six-thirty and still light, between two other stores in the mall’s crescent, and when he had finished with the gas and paid the attendant, a young woman in white overalls, he drove over to the liquor store, where he bought two bottles of good chilled champagne. Melinda liked champagne, and he liked to surprise her with it. When he left the liquor store, he saw that there was a flower shop near the far edge of the crescent, and leaving the car with the champagne on the front seat he walked over and bought some roses. Then he left the mall and got back on the road that ran in front of it.

When he drove onto the gravel drive of the motel, dusk was beginning to come on. There was a nice reddening sky near the horizon above the Sangre de Cristos; the mountains were beginning to become shadows that would get back light when the sun lowered behind them. He heard the sound of voices as he approached the door.

“Here I am,” he said, knocking and speaking at the same time, the paper bag with the champagne in it in his hand and the bouquet of roses held in the crook of his arm. Bob White opened the door, smiled, and bowed slightly from the waist, extending his left arm, his palm open, directing him into the room.

The voices had been the two of them talking. Melinda was sitting in her robe in the roughly upholstered chair; a straight-back chair had been pulled up in front of her. She had her back to them. She turned in her seat as he entered, smiling.

“Hi,” he said. “Look what I got here.” He handed her the flowers, and put the bag with the bottles of champagne in it in her lap.

“Terrific! You did it good, huh?”

“I did it very good,” he said, and he sat on the chair in front of her and reached his head over to her and kissed her, a rose brushing the tip of his chin.

“What have you two been up to today?”

She smiled in the direction of Bob White, who stood somewhat behind him, and nodded. Bob White came into the side of his vision when he went over to the drapes that covered the large sliding doors in the back of the room. He looked over at Melinda when he had located the lines tucked behind the fabric. She nodded again, laughing softly, and Bob White slowly pulled on the lines, opening the drapes, revealing the small lit patio on the other side of them. He had turned in the chair, and he laughed when he saw what the patio contained.

They had put the low, dark, imitation-wood formica table from the motel room out in the center on the bricks. On it, on top of a white towel and to its right, were the ice bucket and three of the plastic glasses from the room. In the center of the table was the rectangular motel room tray. Melinda had covered it with aluminum wrap, pinching bits of the foil along the edges to create a scalloped pattern. From the ends of the tray inward were rows of small cherry tomatoes, olives, slices of cucumber, and radishes. There was a large rectangular pocket left in the center of the tray, and this was lined with crisp lettuce leaves. On the far right of the table was a tall, fat candle covered in foil, with a foil lip about the wick as a wind guard. The candle was lit. To the right of the table, in the corner of the patio, was the hibachi, the coals ashen but with a glow of light emanating from their center. On top of the hibachi, in the boat of aluminum foil, in the bed of odd and colorful clippings, the strips of snake meat were cooking. Above and away from the hibachi, to its right, the carefully hung snake-skins shone in a row over the latticework at the end of the patio.

“Snake,” Bob White said softly, looking down into the carefully formed boat of foil.

“Allen, it’s rattlesnake!” she said, touching him lightly on the shoulder.

“Fantastic!” he said.

While he was showering, standing among the golf balls, Bob White and Melinda tended to the preparations. They put paper plates and plastic knives and forks on the counter outside the bathroom door. They put a bottle of the good champagne down among the cubes in the ice bucket. They waited for him, watching the snake cook and smelling it.

When he was finished drying himself, he put on a pair of shorts and a blue terry shirt, brushed his teeth and brushed at his hair. When he came out he went to the champagne and opened it. Beside it on the now crowded table were the roses, standing in a plastic pitcher. He popped the cork and filled the three glasses with the wine. He handed one of them to Melinda and one to Bob White, who was over close to the hibachi, keeping an eye on the cooking.

“To the snake,” he said, lifting his glass.

“To the snake,” the other two said in reply, and then they drank.

“Snake’s ready,” Bob White said, and he and Melinda, using white washcloths from the bathroom, lifted the boat of foil to the table. When they got it there, Melinda put her end down in the corner of the waiting space, and Bob White, using his knife, held the snake and the cuttings back while he pulled out the foil, letting the snake come to rest in the place they had prepared for it. Then the three of them just stood and looked at the rare and delicate strips of snake meat and the cuttings.

“Let’s eat ’em,” Bob White said, and he stepped up with a slight flourish and took the small blue flower he held in his hand and dropped it among the strips of meat. It was a soft blue in color, but it was the only blue thing on the arrangement, and it seemed to command its small portion of space, distinct in its petals and stamen. Melinda got the paper plates and the plastic knives and forks. He got the upholstered chair from the room. When Melinda returned, he helped her to sit in the chair, and Bob White served her snake and brought her a fresh glass of champagne. He and Bob White remained standing, holding their plates in their hands. They ate, making sounds of pleasure and smiling at each other between bites.

When they were finished and the coals from the hibachi glowed brighter as night came on, he sat on the arm of the chair with his hand on Melinda’s shoulder, holding his glass, full of champagne from the second bottle. Bob White squatted on his haunches on the patio bricks, taking occasional sips from his glass, which he replaced at the side of his right foot without looking at it. They talked a little, quietly, about the snake, the pool, the golf course, and the weather, the look of the Sangre de Cristos that day. After a while, Bob White told a kind of story that had to do with what Allen had told them about the play. When he was finished, Melinda raised her glass to him, and she and Allen toasted him and his grandmother. Then Bob White raised his glass, and he and Melinda toasted Allen on his win. After that, chatting and laughing softly, they cleared things to the sides of the patio, making a place for Bob White to bed down. Soon after that, Bob White said he thought he might retire, and bidding them good night, he went outside, pulling the glass doors shut behind him. He did it in such a comfortable manner that neither Allen nor Melinda were concerned that he not be sleeping in the room with them. When Bob White had left, Allen and Melinda caught each other yawning, laughed a bit about it, and decided that it was time to go to bed. They decided to leave the end of the cleaning up until the morning. Allen waited until Melinda was in bed and set, and then he turned the light off and got into bed himself.