Don't Stop Now

by Julie Halpern

  Mustard Man scares me when he says too loudly for being so close to him, and, well, being one of only two people in the entire grand room, “You want Tranquility Base. That’s one of our deluxe suites, which goes for a hundred seventy-four a night.” He looks at us dumbly.

  “We just need one night,” Josh tells him while he pulls out the old man’s credit card.

  “But of course you do,” Mustard Man replies without affect. “I’ll just need to see proof of age.” He points with his handy, all-purpose index finger to a sign that reads, two adults, 18 and over in suites only. I dig into my purse, really just an old canvas bag I bought with a picture of vintage Pinocchio on it, and fish out my driver’s license. Mustard Man nods after thorough inspection of both IDs, and proceeds to tap on his keyboard. Still tapping, he tells us, “Indoor pool is down the hall. Outdoor pool is outside. Local calls are free, as is the continental breakfast. Checkout is noon. Your room comes with a hot tub, and there are extra towels in your suite. Call housekeeping if you need more. Just down that hall to the left.” His lips strain out a millisecond smile, and he hands us a key card.

  “Just curious,” I ask Mustard Man. “What other rooms are people staying in tonight?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I cannot divulge that information.” He’s serious about enforcing whatever hint of power he has here. I’m guessing he’s just too lazy to look them up.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” Josh says jovially, and we head off to Tranquility Base.

  There’s definitely suspense as the key card enters the slot. The light flashes green, click, and we’re in.

  “Noooo way,” Josh exhales. He’s right. No way does this place exist anywhere but in some basement dweller’s sick imagination. The walls are faux moon, craggy and gray, alternating with dark blue walls covered in planets of various sizes and colors. To the right of the door is a regular old hall closet (just like in outer space!), and to the left is a regular old bathroom. I walk farther in and spy the hot tub, center stage, fully tiled and surrounded by moon rock. Above it and around it stands a lunar module. Maybe it would look authentic (umm, authentic hot tub on the moon?) were it not for the twenty-inch television next to the average leather chair next to the window air conditioner. A not-at-all-spacey lamp sits on a table with a less-than-futuristic hotel telephone.

  “I do not feel as though I am in space,” I disappointedly tell Josh.

  “Maybe it’s not supposed to feel like we’re in space, just that we’re pretending like we think we’re in space? But more important, how many people do you think have done it in that whirl pool?” Josh asks, sounding both disgusted and intrigued.

  “I hope they have a thorough housekeeping staff. What if it’s just Mustard Man and his index finger?” I shake my head at the thought.

  We’re exploring the room, when I note, “There’s no bed.” Then Josh discovers some gloriously snot green carpeted steps hidden among the crags of the moon. “Lead the way,” I command, and I follow him up the narrow, winding stairway to the top of the lunar module that we saw from below.

  “The bed is the lunar module!” Josh exclaims. “Oh, man. Too cool.” He dives onto the bed and lays on his side. “There’s a TV in the walls of the bed! And check this out.” He runs his hand along the pillows lining the inside of the module. “Vellllllvet.” He draws the word out in a velvety way. I sit down on the bed and look around at the space paintings on the walls. “Where do you think they find round sheets to fit the round bed?” Josh asks.

  “Probably just use regular sheets and tuck them in, I’m guessing.”

  “Don’t ruin the mystique.” He flips around the channels of our in-bed TV. I scooch in so I can see the small screen, and so I can be closer to him on the bed. I’m assuming we’ll sleep together tonight, since there’s only one bed. And by that I mean snooze-type sleeping together, not the other kind. Josh obviously has no interest in the other kind as he settles in with an episode of South Park and guffaws at the TV.

  “I’m gonna go dye my hair,” I decide. I want there to be a note of spite in my voice, like, if you ignore me maybe I will go away, but Josh doesn’t detect it.

  “OK. I’ll do mine when you’re done.”

  I head downstairs to the bathroom and follow the directions on the package. While I let the color sink in, I decide to run the hot tub. Just to see. Josh hears the jets and calls down, “What are you doing? I can’t hear the TV!”

  “I’m filling the hot tub. Might as well get our money’s worth,” I yell.

  “I’ll be down after this episode.”

  The glow of the digital clock, another not-exactly-spacey detail, helps me time my hair color as I slip out of my socks and shorts. I unhook my bra through the back of my T-shirt and wriggle the shoulder straps over each arm, then out the holes of the sleeves. The tub is almost full now, so I set one foot in gingerly to acclimate the rest of my body, then the other. I sit down in the hot, foamy water, experiencing the weird sensation of being in a hot tub wearing cotton underwear. The water hits only halfway up my T-shirt, weighing the rest of it down. I stretch my legs out and touch the bubbly jets with my toes. Using my big toe as a stopper, I plug the flow of bubbles, then open it. Plug. Unplug. I close my eyes for a few minutes, recalling the drama of the day.

  It all started with “I did it.” And she did do it—I’ll give her that. But who does that? I remember being little and planning elaborate runaway scenarios when I was mad at my parents, going so far as to pack a bag with only the most essential items—my blankey, my Snoopy nightgown, a copy of The BFG, and a roll of Life Savers (in case I choked, I could breathe through the hole until it melted).

  Faking your own kidnapping seems like so much trouble to go through to get away.

  I almost drift off to sleep when I hear Josh clomping down the green stairs. My eyes open and adjust to read the time on the digital clock. My hair! I jump up out of the hot tub, wring out the butt on my shirt, and grab a nearby towel to wrap around my waist like a skirt. The bathroom has a tub-shower combo, so I turn on the tub spout until the water is nice and warm. On my knees, I flip my head forward under the faucet and watch as the Copper Rust showers from my hair down the drain. When the water begins to run clear, I sit up, grab a towel, and dry off. I toss the towel on the floor and see I have stained it with orange blotches. Will they charge us for that? Or will they think it’s some menstrual mess and just bleach the crap out of it and pass it along to the next unassuming FantaSuiter?

  My hair looks darker than expected, although I definitely see the brightness of red underneath the dusky, wet strands. I pull the hair dryer from its resting place on the bathroom wall and dry my hair until I can see the true color. It’s quite pretty, actually, shiny and fiery. It could almost look natural if it weren’t for the dye stains around my forehead and on my ears.

  “Ta da!” I walk out of the bathroom for my hair debut. Josh is in the hot tub, shirtless in his boxers.

  “Rrreddd,” he drawls. “Lookin’ good.”

  I walk over to the tub, feeling brazen with my new look, and drop my skirt towel on the floor so that my undies show. I step into the hot tub and slither down next to Josh, not touching, but close. He slides away, just the slightest bit, to get a better look at my hair. “Now no one will recognize you,” he says.

  I so want him to look at me like I see him look at other girls. Real girls to him. But he pops up out of the water and says, “My turn,” then drips water all over me as he makes his way out of the tub and into the bathroom.

  I extend my legs, plug the bubble holes with my toes, and hang out, alone, in Tranquility Base. As tranquil as the name suggests.

  Annabelle hates me. That’s what she told me. She watched me get ready for Gavin, put on the bra that he likes best with the brown and red lace, and the flowy but fitted wrap dress with the red roses on it. It usually almost makes me feel beautiful when Annabelle watches me, like she maybe wants to be me. I imagine her thinking about when she gets older and has
a boyfriend who loves her like Gavin loves me. But when I told her that she had to stay in her room because Gavin was coming over and he wanted to be alone with me, just me, and all we have is one hour until Mom and Dad get home, and I wanted to be alone with him so bad…. She said she hates me. She said that Mom would be mad and ground me when she gets home from her gong yoga session. I said I’m already grounded all the time so what does it matter. That Gavin and I only get to see each other when I’m not bratsitting and he’s not too busy for me. That school doesn’t count, because we’re not alone. Not like we could be if she would just do what I wanted for once. She said I suck and I’m the worst sister and Jenny Blick has a pretty sister who buys her presents and sings her songs and lets her stay up late to watch dirty movies. That’s what good sisters do. And I said good sisters don’t get everything they want and whine and tattle and say they hate you. Good sisters don’t expect me to drive them everywhere without saying thank you. Good sisters look up to their big sisters for real. Then I locked her door and told her I’d give her twenty dollars and my favorite cashmere sweater if she’d just shut up until Gavin left, which wouldn’t be very long anyway because Dad gets home from work soon and Mom will be back right after that. She said she would. And that she hates me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I’d love to be able to share the sordid details of our night together, but, alas, there are no sordid details to share. When Josh finally emerged from the bathroom, not as a blond but as a sort of sweet potato–flavored, I mean colored, mess (the bleach wasn’t enough for his brown hair), I was already a shriveled prune danish and decided to get out of the tub and into bed. Josh, on the other hand, was all ready to chillax in the hot tub, and so by the time he came up to our round space bed of love, I was, as he told me seventy-six times and counting this morning, snoring like a silverback gorilla.

  I dress in one of my new shirts, which reads, wisconsin: BEER, BRATS, AND CHEESE: THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, and throw on a pair of cheese boxers as undies. We partake in the continental breakfast set out in the lobby—choice of three cereals from magical mechanical cereal dispensers in which all you do is turn a dial and *presto* the cereal dumps into your bowl, OJ, coffee, and assorted very dry, but still delicious enough pastries. It’s only eight in the morning, but we decide to get on the road.

  “One thing my dad always taught me”—flecks of cruller fly as Josh speaks from his green dentist-barber chair—“the early bird misses the traffic.”

  “Prophetic.” I nod. I’m a tad peeved about last night because I guess I was expecting something to happen. But Josh doesn’t have a clue. As usual.

  After we stuff our faces to the point of feeling like continents (so that’s why they call it a continental breakfast), I pull out a map of Wisconsin. We sit on a flowery couch in the lobby, having both exhausted ourselves of space-themed jokes (“That’s one small crap for man, one giant turd for mankind,” Josh proclaimed this morning as he emerged from the bathroom).

  “We can either backtrack and head through Madison or take some smaller roads and hit I-Ninety at La Crosse,” I tell Josh.

  “No turning back,” he states, ejecting himself from the green pleather.

  “La Crosse it is.”

  Josh checks out, and I step into the hot Wisconsin summer. It’s already humid, which means today will be sweaty in the Eurosport’s lack of air-conditioning. I face the Don Q Inn and try to imagine who else is in there, doing what they’re supposed to be doing in a FantaSuite theme room. What a waste.

  When Josh emerges from the hotel in his dick shades and I CUT THE CHEESE IN WISCONSIN T-shirt, goofy smile displayed, I drop the spite and remember that we have plenty more hotels to come.

  The car is already starting to look like a tornado hit indoors, so I tidy up by stuffing the maps into the glove box. But there’s so much stuff already inside that the maps keep sliding out. Along with the maps, a photograph falls to the floor. “What’s this?” I ask.

  Josh peers over at me as he drives. “Oh. Um, that was from some party we were at. I thought it was a good picture, so I kept it.”

  It is a good picture. Me and Josh, with our arms around each other, vamping for the camera. My hair looks really good, edgily bobbed, and I have on my favorite perfectly fitted heather gray T-shirt. Josh looks even better. Model hot, but completely unaware of the hotness. I’m so drawn to this perfect couple that it takes me a minute to notice the figure in the background: Penny. She’s holding a cup, shoulders tensed as they often are, and she’s blatantly watching me and Josh. Her expression is hard to read. Is she happy? Intrigued? Jealous? Plotting to murder us in our sleep? Isn’t there some detective trick whereby, in order to catch a killer, you have to get into their heads? Not that Penny’s a killer, but if she was? I don’t know if anyone out there is smart enough to crack that code.

  I put the photo in my wallet, just in case we need some sort of identifying picture of Penny along the way. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. It’s not just so I can look at me and Josh together. Why would I have to, since we’re technically together now? If only we weren’t so technical.

  We stop for gas in La Crosse and marvel at the world’s largest six-pack of beer (really giant beer vats painted to look like cans). I’m not sure if it’s impressive or just slightly clever. How do we even know there’s beer in there?

  Outside of La Crosse and heading west we come upon an enormous bridge spanning a large body of water. A sign reads, mississippi river.

  “Is this the Mississippi River?” Josh asks.

  “That’s what the sign says.”

  “The Mississippi River?” he asks again.

  “Yes,” I confirm.

  “The M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I River?” Josh spells it out like we learned to do as kids.

  “Why?” I ask, wondering what he’s all bunged up about.

  “Because this is like an iconic waterway. Mark Twain and all that. Huck Finn, you know?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” I shrug, trying to get into the spirit of road-tripping. “And we’re like Huck and Jim? Only we’re driving across the river, not paddling down it?”

  “And I’m not black,” Josh points out.

  “And I’m not a boy. But I do have red hair,” I point out.

  “So it’s really the same thing,” Josh figures.

  “I reckon.”

  We enter Minnesota with some fanfare, agreeing that we need a ritual every time we cross a new state line. Cheese hats on, we do a mini-wave (I raise my hands, then Josh does, long enough for the car to swerve slightly), we “Woo!” and then we yell, “Goodbye, Wisconsin, hellllloooooo, Minnesota!” Anything more elaborate and we’d probably forget by the time we get to the next state. Maybe we still will.

  About two hours into Minnesota, I decide we need to change the music. Josh has been flipping the radio dial around the entire trip just to find obscure college radio from every town we pass through. Since my iPod is at home, and Josh’s ancient car only has a tape deck anyway, our options are limited. “This is wrong,” I decide. “This is not road-trip music.”

  “So what then?” he asks, annoyed that I dare usurp his unspoken rule that he always chooses the music.

  “We’ll find something else when we stop for lunch. Only ten minutes till Blue Earth.” I have mapped out some stops along the way that don’t look too small town (i.e., full of hillbilly serial killers waiting to drag me into a cornfield) or too big city (which always ends up in horrid highway complications and never quite lives up to our own big city, Chicago. Plus, big cities have no place in road trips). Blue Earth looks just about right, at least as far as I can tell by the dot on the map. Plus, it sounds sort of otherworldly.

  Once we’re off the highway, I insist that we top off our gas so we don’t get stranded where we’re not wanted (hillbillies in a cornfield, remember?). Josh fills the tank, and I explore the gas station for exotic Minnesotan snacks. Next to some Lurky Jerky, I spot a table filled with $1.99 cassette tapes. “Score,�
� I say to myself. Most of the tapes belong to old and obsolete groups I’ve never heard of, but I manage to find a few oldies compilations and an Elvis Best Of. Driving along a highway just screams for old music, almost like we’re driving backward into another time. I pay for the tapes and a Jumbo Gulp Dr. Pepper, and pick up a Minnesota scratch-off lottery ticket called Fishing for Franklins.

  Josh is perched on the hood of the car, shirtless as ever, and leans on the windshield. I join him and ask him for a coin. “I want to scratch off this winning ticket,” I tell him.

  “Why’d you buy that? Those things are for suckers.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a penny.

  I rub off the silver flakes, one at a time to create some suspense, and end up with three matching number twelves. “What does this mean?” I scan the card for the rules, and figure out that I’ve just won twelve dollars. “Who’s the sucker now?” I gloat. I head back inside the gas station to claim my reward and pick up some celebratory Slim Jims for later.

  In the car, I pop in the new-old Elvis tape. Josh approves with a light nod, not wanting to give up his music monopoly just yet. “What is that?” He points ahead to some sort of huge sculpture just up the road. We drive toward it, and as we approach, we recognize the green man figure. It’s the freakin’ Jolly Green Giant.