Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC)

by Katarina Bivald

  “For God’s sake, Buddy,” MacKenzie says. “Put something happier on.”

  She is our commander, just as she always has been. Ready to lead us into adventure or battle, or both.

  Buddy grins. He likes MacKenzie, so he swaps the Tunnel of Love CD for Born in the USA, and soon even Bruce Springsteen is refusing to retire or give up.

  “No surrender!” I sing along with Bruce, standing a little taller as I walk alongside Michael, smiling at everyone we pass. Timber Bar has never been more inviting, its subdued lighting more cozy, and the dark tables more homey.

  Michael goes over to the bar to buy the first round of drinks, and I look up at him in confusion when he returns with three beers.

  Why only three?

  Ah. Because I’m dead.

  He could have bought me a beer all the same, I think. As a kind of tribute or something. “She’s with us in spirit, and she wants a Pabst Blue Ribbon,” he would say, “since she has zero taste and prefers her beers wishy-washy.”

  I toast with them anyway. “To us!” I say, high on friendship and expectation. “To all the days we spent together at the motel, to Michael and Camila being back, to all of us being together again, to tasteless beer, and—why not—to Bruce Springsteen!”

  “So, uh, how do you like your job?” Michael asks.

  It strikes me that Michael and Camila don’t seem to be in quite as high spirits as MacKenzie and me. Camila has chosen a table in the back corner of the bar, as far away from everyone else as she can get. We’re sitting in half darkness in the corner by the dartboard.

  “Come on,” says MacKenzie. “Talk about something fun!”

  Michael glances anxiously around the room. Camilla uses her nail to scrape tiny pieces of the label from her beer. Silence settles over the table.

  MacKenzie fills it with tales from the old days. Every time she opens her mouth, she says something like “Do you remember when…?” or “Can you remember the time we…?”

  We shouldn’t have gone our separate ways, I think. MacKenzie and I had each other, but we’d let Michael and Camila go off on their own.

  “I never thought I’d be back here,” Camila eventually says.

  She looks skeptical as she says it, but that just reminds me that it really is a miracle. We might be shy and nervous, but we’re also together.

  If you’d asked me two weeks ago, I would have said that my life was going to go on like it always had. But now I’ve slept with Michael, and suddenly we’re all here. I remembered us and missed us, but I’d also given up. I can see that now. I judged the future on how life had been up until that point. We hadn’t been reunited before, and that meant we never would be.

  It’s a form of arrogance to think that life won’t change.

  Camila seems to be scrutinizing the bar. She looks out of place, but on a deeper level she also seems incredibly right here. Her bottle of beer belongs here, between Michael and MacKenzie’s; her long, slim fingers look right between Michael’s strong digits and MacKenzie’s practical hands.

  I can’t explain it in any other way but this: it suddenly feels inevitable that we’re all here. Just two weeks ago, that was impossible.

  “I can’t believe everything is still the same,” Camila says. “Shouldn’t more have changed? Anyone who says that you can’t go back has clearly never been to Pine Creek. I don’t think I’ve even thought about it in ten years. It’s like it stopped existing when I left. Like it’s all just an old backdrop that’s been dragged out again for the Christmas play.”

  “Nope, it’s here year-round,” MacKenzie tells her.

  “It’s the opposite for me,” says Michael. “I think everything seems a bit too real. Like the town has just been waiting to grab hold of me and pull me in.”

  He turns the bottle in his hands. Even MacKenzie seems to be working off some kind of restless energy through small, pointless movements.

  “Come on!” I say. “We need to have fun. We’re back together!”

  But they aren’t listening, of course.

  Michael leans in to MacKenzie. “You never thought about leaving?” he asks. Camila has picked off the last of the label. The remnants are heaped in front of her, and she seems unsure what to do with them.

  MacKenzie shrugs. “Where would I go?”

  Michael hesitates. “What about Henny? Didn’t she ever want to move away?”

  My name hangs over the table like a depressing reminder of why they are here. I wish he hadn’t mentioned me, but I’m happy he’s thinking about me.

  “She never met anyone? Got married, had seventeen kids, bought a house on the same street as her dad?”

  “We never talked about it,” says MacKenzie. “But…”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was so tragic. A traveling salesman. He had charm, looks, a great body—poor Henny couldn’t resist him.”

  “MacKenzie!” I protest. Both Michael and Camila seem fascinated by this new and completely false story about me.

  “What happened?” Camila asks.

  “Turned out he was already married. To four other women. I don’t think he quite had seventeen kids, but it can’t have been far off. But…sometimes I don’t think it was his betrayal that hit her hardest, but the baby… Her dad made her give it up for adoption. She was never quite the same after that.”

  “MacKenzie!” Camila blurts out. “None of that’s true, is it?”

  “Of course not. But it’s truer than your depressing idea of small-town life. Henny loved it here. Show some respect.”

  Michael looks troubled, but also relieved.

  Over by the bar, an argument about “goddamn Bruce” has flared up, but it’s an easy victory for Buddy. Bruce can keep dancing in the darkness, and if that makes Stacey Callahan go completely fucking crazy, then so be it. That’s all Buddy has to say on the matter.

  Michael leans forward over the table. “Is that…?” he asks as Stacey staggers over to us.

  “Stacey, Camila,” says MacKenzie. Stacey doesn’t even glance at Camila. No hint of recognition, not even a surprised remark. Camila relaxes. “And you know Michael.”

  Stacey leans against the table. “Welcome back,” she says. “Your brother’s an idiot.”

  “Uh, good to see you, too,” says Michael.

  She tries to focus on MacKenzie again. “Sorry about the whole Henny thing,” she says. “Should’ve been my husband that died instead.”

  “It’s an unfair world,” MacKenzie agrees.

  “And, uh, how’re things with Derek?” Michael asks.

  “Yeah, you know, he keeps himself busy. Managed to sleep with everything on two legs and almost everything on four.”

  Michael chokes on his beer. “You’ll have to tell him I said hi,” he pants once he eventually stops coughing.

  “Do it yourself,” Stacey says, staggering back over to the bar.

  MacKenzie tells an anecdote about crashing Cheryl’s brand-new Volvo the first time she borrowed it. Do you remember, do you remember, do you remember. “And then she always gave me bumper stickers saying stuff like ‘Honk if you love Jesus’ and ‘I’m driving fast for Jesus.’ Or my personal favorite: ‘Next time you pray, ask Jesus for more driving lessons.’”

  That’s the second time she has told that anecdote this evening.

  Michael buys another round of beer for MacKenzie and Camila. He has voluntarily taken on the role of designated driver. The new bottles jostle for space with the empty ones on the table.

  Something catches my attention, and suddenly I can no longer see the half-empty bar or the dark wooden paneling. All I can see are flashing blue lights and gravel at the roadside, police tape flapping in the wind and the absolute silence after the shock.

  The truck driver.

  Paul. He is etched into my mind just like everything else from that S
unday afternoon, but right now he is sitting alone in a dark corner, with a full beer in front of him. I think it must have been his plaid shirtsleeve that caught my eye. I remember how he kept pulling at it.

  I don’t know what I feel. He’s a reminder that I’m dead, but he’s also the only person who really knows what I went through. We share that small stretch of road, only a hundred yards or so, where our lives changed forever. At least I wasn’t alone.

  I’m just about to get up and go over to him when Camila says, “I hate the motel,” and I decide to stay where I am.

  She says it in roughly the same tone anyone else would say, “What beautiful weather we’re having today!”

  “Do you know what my first thought was when I got to my room today?” she asks.

  “What?” says MacKenzie.

  “The walls need painting again. Juan Esteban worked there his whole life. The motel ate him up. It sucked out all his energy and personality, and the only proof of all his hard work is that the walls need repainting. It’s like a goddamn never-ending story.”

  “Don’t look at me,” says Michael. “I already painted them once.”

  “I was the only person who saw it for what it really was. A run-down, tired, lonely place. Everyone else just saw Juan Esteban’s enthusiasm. He was like an illusionist who pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. While he was talking, no one saw what it was really like. All those lonely men who stayed for one night and then went on with their miserable lives. Small, dark rooms. And the apartment we lived in! That was hardly any better. It barely even had a kitchen! No cooking, no kitchen table, nothing to make it into a home. It was just a waiting room. Thirty minutes or so until the bell rang and someone needed something, or the next thing had to be done, until finally you could go to bed. And Juan Esteban acted like the whole thing was completely normal. No, worse, like it was something positive. All I wanted was a home, and I got a motel. And now I’m back here.”

  “Cheers to that,” MacKenzie says.

  Camila takes a few swigs of beer. “Do you remember how he always used to go on about leisure time? ‘Leisure time is the future. When you grow up, you can run your own motel.’ As though that was the height of success in life. As though there was nothing I wanted more than to stay here forever and continue his life’s work.”

  She shakes her bottle and seems surprised to realize that it’s empty. Michael gets up and buys her another. Unfortunately, the bartender also sends over some whiskey, which Camila immediately knocks back. She eventually empties Michael’s untouched glass, too.

  “He was like a magician in some cheap show. Standing there with his arms outspread, not realizing his tricks would never save the motel.”

  A new swig of beer. She pulls at this label, too, but it just peels away from the bottle, irritatingly intact. She scrunches it into a small ball instead.

  “I’m only here for Henny’s sake,” she says. “I’m leaving after the funeral.”

  I glance over to the other corner, but the truck driver is gone. A half-empty beer is all that is left in his place.

  * * *

  On the way back to the motel, Camila sits in the bed of the truck. Slumped against MacKenzie as Michael drives. I dithered between getting into the front seat or the truck bed, but eventually decided on the other side of Camila.

  She is incredibly drunk and keeps mumbling to herself: “Henny is dead. Henny is dead. Henny is dead.” It’s like a melody. Her head droops onto MacKenzie’s shoulder.

  “Your message,” she says, turning to face MacKenzie. “Those words have been going round and round in my head ever since. Message request from MacKenzie Jones.”

  She closes her eyes.

  “I only came back for Henny.”

  “Of course you did,” MacKenzie says wearily. All of her energy seems to be gone. She lifts her face to the edge of the truck so that she can feel the cool breeze on her cheeks. Her hair swirls around her face until eventually I can no longer see her expression.

  Michael parks outside the motel. MacKenzie declines his offer of help and supports Camila, who is still humming to herself as she walks up the stairs. Fishes the key out of her jacket pocket. She waves it at Michael in a gesture that means: We’re all good, everything’s fine here.

  He lingers down below, watching as MacKenzie manages to open the door and get Camila inside.

  She dumps Camila on the bed, on top of the floral covers. She does, at least, pull off Camila’s boots.

  Camila stares up at the ceiling, and raises her arms in a sweeping gesture. “Allow me to introduce the great, magnificent Juan Esteban Alvarez. For his next trick…nothing!”

  She is still talking to herself as MacKenzie leaves the room. Saying: “Absolutely nothing is fine.”

  Chapter 11

  Fault 1…

  The next morning, I’m waiting outside Camila’s room. When I hear the unmistakable sound of someone trying to open the broken blinds, I decide that she must be dressed and walk straight through the door.

  She is standing with her back to me and spends several minutes fighting with the blinds. She swears quietly to herself. Stuck in eternal half darkness.

  “Do you remember when you first came here?” I ask. “You were so much cooler than us.”

  I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was about her. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, just like the rest of us, but somehow it was clear that her jeans and T-shirt came from the big city. And like her clothes, she was also subtly different from us. There was something about the way she moved. She was tall and thin and graceful, and she always made me feel slightly countrified. She looked at the world as though she could see straight through it. In my world, everyone loved MacKenzie, but Camila would look at her with a strange, reserved expression. She studied her often, always completely openly, but without showing any emotion whatsoever.

  “You hated the motel,” I say.

  In fact, she hated the whole of Pine Creek, and possibly even the state of Oregon. Not that she had been particularly fond of Los Angeles, either. It’s not the kind of place you can love, she always said. It just is, but what it is is bigger and crazier and dirtier than any other city. You can learn all about life in LA.

  “You can do that in Pine Creek, too,” MacKenzie muttered.

  Camila’s seventeen-year-old self had never even considered that it might be possible to miss the traffic in LA, but she did. “The roads in Pine Creek don’t even get busy,” she said.

  “There’s a line of cars every time Dolores makes tamales,” MacKenzie argued.

  Camila had arrived in town roughly a month before summer break, and she walked around as though she refused to acknowledge she was actually here. I’m not here, her stubborn eyes said. You can’t force my body to exist here, her tense posture screamed. Her body always seemed to be turned away from whoever she was talking to.

  Back in the present, Camila lies down on the bed. All I can hear is the hum of the air-conditioning and the sound of her breathing. Louder when she breathes in, softer on her out breaths. In. Out. In. Out.

  She stares up at the ceiling.

  Says, “Goddamn it.”

  I guess she remembers.

  Eventually, I think her need for caffeine forces her into action. She struggles up, checks that her clothes aren’t creased, and leaves the safety of her room.

  On her way downstairs, Camila studies the motel as though she is writing one of those angry TripAdvisor reviews where the guests seem to have spent their entire stay methodically and enthusiastically looking for faults.

  Fault 1: Broken blinds.

  She passes a woman in a poncho and dark sunglasses who is in the process of checking out, and pokes her head around the door to inspect the woman’s room.

  Fault 2: Peeling paint in several rooms.

  The woman returns before Camila has time to che
ck whether the blinds are working properly.

  She tries to sneak into the restaurant, but she barely makes it inside before she is caught in a bear hug. She stands there, stooping uncomfortably, her arms pinned to her sides, as Dolores holds her tight and rocks her back and forth.

  Fault 3: Enthusiastic staff who want to talk about the past.

  Dolores makes a big deal of showing Camila over to the best table, by the window, with views out onto the empty parking lot and the overcast day outside. There isn’t a single crumb on the tabletop, but Dolores wipes it all the same.

  “I’m so glad you’re back… Camila?” she says, slightly hesitant toward the end. Almost as though she is trying out the word in her mouth.

  Camila smiles tensely. Beneath the table, she digs her nails into her thighs.

  “I knew you’d come back,” Dolores says. “Eventually. Do you remember…”

  “Not now, please, Dolores,” Camila says. “I need coffee. I can’t deal with any memories right now.”

  Dolores looks wounded, but she quickly nods. “It’s hard for all of us,” she says compassionately. “I’ll leave you be.”

  But not before she has straightened the pointless little tablecloth and swiped a plastic flower from beneath the nose of a surprised construction worker at the next table.

  “I can tell you want to be alone for a while,” she says as she sets the flower vase on Camila’s table.

  Dolores pats Camila on the shoulder and double-checks that the flower is standing straight. When she finally leaves, Camila closes her eyes in relief.

  I don’t think the flower is helping. Its plasticky orange petals can’t compete with the compact grayness outside. An irritating, stubborn drizzle has just started to fall, the kind you just can’t escape.

  After perking herself up with a cup of coffee, Camila finds MacKenzie in room 11.

  She is standing on a stepladder, trying to fix the ceiling fan. She has a tool belt around her waist and is wearing a thick red-plaid shirt.

  Fault 4: Broken ceiling fan.