Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC)

by Katarina Bivald

  “Like the loving father you are,” Michael suggests.

  “Don’t talk back to me. You’re not too old for a thrashing.”

  “No, I guess you never grow out of that,” Michael courteously replies.

  Mr. Callahan studies him, trying to work out whether the tone is meant as an insult. It is.

  “So you’re back, are you? Left all your pretty rocks behind?”

  “For now.”

  “You’ll soon get sick of Pine Creek again. After all your exciting travels. This is hardly the place for a bestselling author. Too good for your parents, too, I imagine.”

  Michael tenses his jaw to stop himself from saying anything.

  “Dinner. This Friday. Your mother misses you.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll still be here then,” Michael tells him.

  If he leaves, he won’t ever come back. I’m sure of that. I know him. Right now, even without Mr. Callahan’s visit, it wouldn’t take much to make him leave Pine Creek for good, and if he does that, he’ll forget all about me.

  He’ll decide to put it all behind him just like he did when he left me the first time, and though I should be used to it by now, though I should have expected it again, the thought that I won’t even exist in his mind fills me with panic.

  “You can’t leave before my funeral,” I say in desperation.

  Then I freeze.

  My funeral.

  I’m going to be cremated.

  I can’t let that happen.

  Chapter 10

  Never in the History of Mankind

  I close my eyes tight and think: Town or the motel?

  I’m sitting on the hill beyond the parking lot where MacKenzie and I used to watch the cars that slowed down at the crossroads.

  Right turn signal: the motel. Left turn signal: the town.

  A car that turned off meant something was about to happen. A customer, a delivery, anything.

  The motel looks tired and abandoned in the sunshine. Everything is gray and empty. The only hint of color comes from the glossy red of an empty cola can blowing around in the breeze. I wrap my arms around my knees.

  Something is worrying me.

  I haven’t seen any other ghosts.

  What if I can’t make it back inside my body before the funeral? I’m not saying I won’t—I’m going to find a way, I’m sure of it. Only…what if? I might not be brave enough to go back to the funeral home, but I spent a few hours today wandering around our cemeteries. I visited new graves and old graves, the graves of strangers and the grave of my mother.

  Nothing.

  Not even a slight stirring or a silvery outline or any kind of sensed presence. Not even from Mom, and surely she would try to meet me if she could. If people are really allowed to stay behind, linger as I seem to be doing, wouldn’t there be more of us?

  I’m not sure exactly what happens when you’re cremated, but I imagine fire and heat and flames. What could possibly remain after that?

  I make a mental note to hang around Annie Smith’s and try to find out what happens when you burst into flames, but for now I just sit here, thinking about what I’ve done with my life.

  Planning a funeral can do that to a person, especially when it’s your own.

  I think there’s something unique within all of us. A way of looking at the world, I suppose, a kind of inner core or soul, whatever you want to call it. I’ve spent my entire adult life working at the motel, which means I’ve met my fair share of unusual people. We’re all much too weird to not be unique. No one is weird in quite the same way as anyone else.

  Take MacKenzie. She can look at anything and see it as an adventure. Michael looks at the world and sees hundreds of millions of years. Alejandro sees life as a series of still images. If he were here right now, he would probably think the cola can was the most important thing. He must be the only motel worker who cleans rooms with a camera around his neck. He works part time as a photographer, but refuses to quit the motel because he says it gives him so many images of human loneliness. Until now, I never really understood what that meant. We were always there, and surely you can’t be lonely if you’re among friends?

  Or take Dolores. She can look at a person, any person, and see someone who is hungry, who needs to be fed.

  So what did I do? Who was I? I can’t think of a single way that the world will be poorer without me in it. All I know is that I’m going to miss the world.

  None of the cars stop. It’s three in the afternoon, and no one is stupid enough to stop here unless they have no other choice. Lunch is over, so even the restaurant is empty. The afternoon stretches out ahead of me. Then the evening. And night. That’s how it’ll continue until it all comes to an end.

  Not that anything was guaranteed to happen just because a car stopped. Yes, it was exciting, but we could never be sure they would actually stay.

  Some people studied the motel from their cars and decided they were better off trying to find somewhere better. Baker City—named after Edward D. Baker, the only senator in U.S. history to have been killed in combat—is just a few hours away. And nowadays, there’s Airbnb and all kinds of other things, so sometimes people just sit in their cars while they go through their options.

  The first real indication that someone was planning to stay came if they got out of the car. “If they’ve actually bothered to get out, there’s a seventy percent chance they’ll stay,” Juan Esteban used to say, and MacKenzie repeats. “They’ve driven a long way. Once they’re on their feet, they won’t be able to stomach the thought of getting back in the car for another few hours of driving.”

  If they take their bags inside with them, the likelihood of checking in is almost ninety percent. “People hate carrying their bags back to the car. No one likes to feel dumb, and there’s nothing dumber than hauling bags back and forth across a parking lot.”

  The only time that rule doesn’t apply is if it’s a married couple and the man is doing the carrying. “The wife doesn’t care if the man feels stupid,” MacKenzie always says. “And she can find fault in everything.” MacKenzie doesn’t trust married couples, particularly not married women. She’s convinced that they try to take out their unhappiness on her motel.

  Things married people argue about: whose fault it is that they didn’t set off sooner, who was really in charge of reading the map, why he refuses to stop and ask for directions, why he’s so cheap that he wants to stay at this motel, why they even have to visit her mom. There are never any arguments if they’re going to visit his mother; the wife will be stoically resolute then, clutching the mother-in-law’s gift tightly in her lap.

  The parking lot in front of me is still empty. Even the cola can has blown away.

  And then, suddenly, a car slows down and turns off the road.

  I get up and run toward it, the way we used to do as kids, and for a few minutes, I’m caught up in the fantasy. MacKenzie is with me and we’re sixteen again, with so much energy that we would rather run than walk. I sprint down the hill and out across the asphalt, empty parking spaces in front of me, trees and road on the horizon.

  I come to an abrupt halt when the fantasy falters. I should be seeing MacKenzie’s back by now. She was always faster than me.

  Still, the Honda is real and has parked outside the motel. I notice that it has California plates, and when I peer in through the passenger-side window, I see all the usual signs of a long car journey: a half-eaten sandwich, hastily wrapped in brown paper, a Pepsi can, and an open bag of Doritos.

  The woman is alone, and she hasn’t made any movement to get out. Her hands are gripping the wheel, and she lowers her head toward it. She is wearing a fantastic wide-brimmed red hat, and her long, dark hair hangs dramatically over her shoulders.

  She lifts her head, still leaning toward the wheel, and her eyes scan the parking lot and the low motel b
uilding. Her face seems familiar. Not the red lipstick or the pronounced eyebrows, but something about the high cheekbones, the solid jawline…

  I jolt upright. Camila.

  As she climbs out of the car, I’m sure of it. Camila has come back.

  She had a different name while we were growing up, but her new name feels so natural. She’s Camila, as utterly and completely as though she always had been.

  I tear my eyes away from her and run over to reception. I want to see MacKenzie’s reaction when Camila comes through the door.

  MacKenzie is sitting behind the reception desk, staring straight ahead. She doesn’t even have the energy to be bored. She looks up when the door opens, but the sun is in her eyes, so she just smiles politely and makes a slight gesture to the space in front of the desk.

  I don’t think Camila has ever seen MacKenzie’s polite smile. She never used to have one, but now it’s the only one she ever uses.

  For a second, I can see two MacKenzies. My MacKenzie, where all of the details are so familiar that I can barely take them in, and Camila’s, a confused mix of new and old. The same stubborn lock of hair constantly getting in her eyes; the same instinctive, unconscious movement as she impatiently pushes it back. A tanned face that should look healthy but seems more tired than anything, a new and withdrawn confidence in everything she does. The kind of confidence that stems from no longer having to worry about proving anything to anyone. A tired cynicism that has etched itself into her face. I wonder whether Camila has noticed all of this, too.

  One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, I count in my head, and then suddenly there it is: a real smile on MacKenzie’s face.

  She gets up, strides toward Camila, and lifts her up. Camila is much taller than MacKenzie, so she has to lean backward to get Camila off the ground, but she doesn’t seem to care. She spins Camila around and around.

  Camila laughs from sheer surprise, takes a deep breath, and breathes in the scent of MacKenzie, at once new and familiar. When she finally exhales, the sound is halting and jittery, somewhere between a sigh and a sob. She closes her eyes. I think I spotted tears welling up in them, but when she opens her eyes again, I’m no longer sure what I saw.

  “I got your message,” Camila says. “I had to come.”

  “I know,” says MacKenzie.

  * * *

  Camila left Pine Creek just after Michael.

  He was always talking about leaving town, so often that I wasn’t sure it would ever actually happen.

  Camila, on the other hand, had never even mentioned it. She was almost as quiet as I was, but while my silence was from having nothing to say, Camila’s was a case of sheer self-control. She endured her work at the motel and the small-mindedness of the town in silence, never complaining that the work was boring. She never tried to make the town accept her. She had no hopes of anything changing while she was still there.

  Camila never shared the love that MacKenzie and her uncle had for the motel. Juan Esteban always said that freedom was owning a property and running your own business. He had encountered far too much racism when he first arrived in the United States from El Salvador to believe it was possible to forge a career within an existing American business.

  But Camila could never see the freedom in cleaning motel rooms. She watched Juan Esteban slowly wearing himself out, and she dreamed of a different life. I think she longed for the anonymity of the big city, a job you could leave behind when you went home for the day, never having to work in the service industry or smile at angry customers.

  She wanted to make a life of her own, she said.

  A few years after she moved to Los Angeles, we got a message saying that she had changed her name and pronoun, so she can’t have forgotten us entirely. She still wanted us to know.

  I replied, of course, and got the occasional message back from her. Talking about what she was doing. About how LA traffic was driving her crazy, but the nightlife was fantastic. She told me when she started to take hormones; she told me about her operations, the fact she was dating a woman doing a PhD on theater from a queer, postcolonial perspective; she told me when things ended between them, when she experienced a clear day with almost no smog. Big things like that.

  Over time, her messages became more and more infrequent, and eventually they stopped altogether. The last time I wrote to her, the old email address no longer worked.

  When Juan Esteban died and left her the motel, she didn’t show up for the funeral. She didn’t even bother to sell the motel. For several years, MacKenzie sent tax returns and profit statements to a PO box in LA, but she never got any response. The only document Camila ever sent us was a power of attorney that gave MacKenzie the right to do what she wanted with Camila’s motel.

  * * *

  MacKenzie shows Camila to her room. “Beer at six,” she says.

  It’s more of an order than an invitation, and at quarter to six I am in Camila’s room, watching as she gets herself ready. Three quick buffs of powder and blush, followed by a new coat of mascara.

  I like watching her movements. In a way, she’s completely different: a new appearance, a new name. New breasts, too, I think, immediately feeling embarrassed. But in another sense, she’s still the same as ever. She’s herself. No, she’s more herself now. Her movements are more natural, more self-assured.

  After Camila finishes applying her makeup, she pulls on her boots and grabs her jacket, and with that, she is ready to go.

  A sign on the door encourages guests to turn out the lights before they leave. One of Juan Esteban’s many obsessions toward the end—every time the electricity bill arrived, he would be irritable for days. Camila shakes her head, turns out the light, and closes the door behind her.

  I follow her down to reception. MacKenzie is waiting outside, and she waves enthusiastically. Camila’s arrival seems to have given her a new lease on life. I can tell from the way she moves that she’s decided to have fun tonight.

  It’s a delicate facade; I know how thin-skinned she really is. The only thing stopping her from reacting whenever her irritation, anger, or tiredness gets to be too much is a refusal to let others see her break down. Since I disappeared, though, even the smallest of things have cut her deeply.

  Still, for one night, she can forget this mess and have fun. She’ll drink beer and tell funny anecdotes, at least half of which are lies. Why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Sometimes she lies even though it doesn’t even lead to a better story. Imagination’s a muscle, Henny. You have to use it. If you stop lying or telling fibs, you’ll wake up one day and see the world exactly as it is. Terrible fate, huh?

  “You’ll have to hold down the fort tonight,” MacKenzie tells Alejandro. “We’re going to get drunk.”

  Alejandro mutters something without looking up from the computer. It may or may not have been “about time.”

  MacKenzie turns to Camila and says, “We need to pick up Michael, too.”

  Camila seems nervous when Michael’s name is mentioned. I guess things aren’t exactly like normal. We’ve all changed. Some of us more than others. But it’ll be fine. She wants to see Michael. I know that.

  I jump up into the cargo bed as Camila climbs in beside MacKenzie, who starts the engine and flashes her a quick smile.

  “To the Redwood Cabin!” I shout into the night.

  * * *

  MacKenzie pulls up outside the Redwood Cabin, winds down the window, and shouts, “Michael! Beer! Camila’s here!”

  Michael clearly also received the message about her new name and pronoun, because he takes in her new appearance without a word.

  All he says is “You came back.”

  “You too.” Camila sounds tense.

  They glance at each other as they try to get used to being together again.

  “When…?” Camila asks.

  “T
hree days before.”

  Camila swallows. “I wish…”

  “Yeah.”

  “God, I just can’t believe she’s gone. Not Henny. She can’t be. She was always the best of us.”

  MacKenzie quickly interrupts. “Not tonight,” she says. “We’re not thinking about it tonight. I refuse. Tonight we’re going to get drunk and think about absolutely nothing.”

  Michael and Camila’s eyes meet in a newfound understanding that seems to surprise them both. I guess they’re wondering whether it’s really such a good idea not to talk about me at all. Not that they have a chance against MacKenzie when she’s in this kind of mood.

  “Come on,” she says. “To town.”

  MacKenzie and Camila are sitting up front, with Michael and me in the bed of the truck. He has one arm draped over the edge, his legs outstretched in front of him. I lean against his shoulder and see stars and sudden flashes of tree trunks in the headlights.

  Michael bravely attempts to make small talk from the truck bed, even though he has to shout to be heard over the engine. “So what are you doing these days?”

  Camila’s reply comes with the wind. “I’m an assistant. The boss runs a construction company, but his real dream is to write film scripts. I spend half my time reserving writing courses and harassing agents to read his latest incredible synopsis.”

  I rest my arm on Michael’s leg. As we reach the edge of town, the stars are replaced by streetlamps, and when I see the outlines of the meager elms, I know we’re almost there.

  If I really make an effort, I can feel the wind on my face.

  * * *

  Never in the history of mankind has there been a friendship like ours, and as we walk into Timber Bar together, nothing has ever felt so right.

  We’re a conquering army, a cavalry regiment charging across the prairie, ready to capture the night. No, better. A returning army. Scarred, yes, but older and wiser. We’ve turned our setbacks into victories, returned when they thought we were defeated, and look at us now! Grown up, strong, free. Reunited.

  The heat hits us as we step through the door. The tones of Bruce Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love,” too.