Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

by Morgan Matson

  “Hi,” said Lucien, clearly not picking up on this, and crossing over to me. He held out his hand, and I shook it, feeling that I’d never shaken so many hands in my life as I had in the past few days. His hand was huge, and almost closed over mine. He didn’t look anything like Hadley had in her picture. He had slightly overgrown blond hair that looked sun-bleached, and a sunburn across his cheeks. He was cute, I was surprised to see. I tried to take a step back, forgetting that I was already backed up against the car.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, extracting my hand from his.

  “Sorry about the chain saw,” he said. “I was just cutting back some brush. So,” he said, looking from me to Roger, “y’all are friends of Hadley’s?” Roger nodded, and I nodded as well, thinking that it just seemed simpler than the truth.

  “Yes,” Roger said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “We were in the area, and I talked to her earlier, but then she stopped answering her phone. So I just thought I’d see if she was home. I left a message, but …”

  “You know, this is awful,” Lucien said. Unlike most people—and most people my age, which he looked near to—he actually seemed to really mean the things he said he felt. His brow was furrowed, and I could hear genuine regret in his voice. “I wish you could have gotten through to her, rather than coming all this way. Because Had left for a horse show a few hours ago and isn’t getting back until tomorrow. I know she’ll be sorry to have missed y’all.”

  “Oh,” said Roger, nodding. “Right.” I watched as he stuck his hands in his pockets, his energy ebbing away, looking a little lost. I found myself incredibly mad at this girl I’d never met. Why would she tell Roger to call when he got to Louisville when she had no intention of being there? I could only imagine how he felt—like if we’d traveled all the way to Yosemite, only to learn it was closed on Mondays or something.

  “But,” I said quickly, trying to cover the silence that was edging into uncomfortable territory, “I mean, maybe …” I looked at Roger and could see how much he didn’t want to just turn around and go. “We could crash in Louisville tonight….”

  “Loo-vulle,” Roger and Lucien said simultaneously.

  “Right, there,” I said. “I mean, we’re pretty tired. We came from Missouri this morning and have been driving all day. So,” I went on, trying to see how Roger felt about this plan I was inventing on the spot, “maybe we’ll just head into town now, find a hotel, and come back tomorrow?” Roger met my eyes and gave me a small smile, and I had a feeling that I’d made the right call.

  “Well, excellent,” said Lucien, clapping his hands together, which made a surprisingly loud sound. “That sounds good. I would’ve hated for Had to have missed you if you’ve come all this way.”

  “Great,” I said, turning back to the car. “So …”

  “We don’t want to keep you,” said Roger.

  “Nothing to keep me from,” Lucien said. “The parents are down in Hilton Head for the week, Had’s gone, I’m just holding the fort here by myself.” He rubbed his hand over the nape of his neck, smiling a little fixedly.

  There was something in his aspect that seemed startlingly familiar to me. It took me a moment, but then it clicked into place. He was alone in his house, with his sibling and parents gone. He had seemed so happy to talk to us. He was, most likely, as lonely as I’d been for the month I lived by myself in our house. There was something about being alone in places that were usually filled with people that made them seem particularly empty when it was just you.

  “It was good to meet you, man,” Roger said, extending his hand.

  “Do you want to come to dinner?” I asked without even thinking about it, surprising myself. Roger glanced over at me, eyebrow raised, hand suspended in midair. “I mean, we were probably just going to grab something in town. And if you haven’t eaten, I mean …”

  Roger dropped his hand. “Yeah, you should come,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t have plans, that is.”

  Lucien looked from Roger to me. “Really?” he asked. “I don’t want to impose on y’all.”

  “Not at all,” I said, surprised that these words were coming out of my mouth. I had spent so long trying to avoid strangers, and now I was inviting them along? Apparently, I was. I wondered when that had happened. “You should come.”

  “Well, okay,” said Lucien, smiling at us. “That’s real nice of you. I appreciate it.”

  “Come on,” Roger said, as he opened the driver’s-side door. “I’ll drive.”

  “Great,” Lucien said, heading over to the Liberty. “All our cars are around back.” Roger met my eyes as he said this, and we exchanged a tiny smile. I wondered how many cars he was talking about, how many there had to be to use the the word “all.”

  Lucien opened the passenger-side door, and startled, I took a step back, figuring that maybe he really liked riding shotgun, or something. It took a silent, confused minute of him holding the door open expectantly for me to realize that he had opened it for me, and was just waiting for me to get in.

  “Oh,” I said, climbing in. “Um, thanks.” I reached to close it, but a second later, he did it for me, shutting it gently.

  He got into the backseat, buckling himself into the middle and leaning forward between our seats. “Have either of you ever been to Louisville before?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Roger said, and I shook my head.

  “That decides it,” he said, leaning back against the seat and smiling. “We’re going to the Brown.”

  The Brown, it turned out, meant the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville. Before we got there, Lucien gave us a quick tour of Louisville, which was lovely. It was the cleanest city I’d ever seen—certainly cleaner than Los Angeles. But it was beautifully landscaped, with trees in bloom all around us, making the air smell wonderful. The streets were wide, and nobody seemed to be in a particular hurry—another big change from L.A. There was horse stuff everywhere—which made sense, considering that this was the home of the Kentucky Derby. I noticed that some of the license plates in front of us even had horses on them, which seemed like a nice touch. Louisville just felt peaceful, which I hadn’t expected.

  Lucien had us drive past the Louisville Slugger Museum, which had a bat the size of the building leaning against it. I gawked at it and made a mental note to have Roger drive by in the morning again so that I could take a picture. Charlie would get a kick out of it—he’d always loved baseball. This thought jarred me a little bit, and made me realize how little I’d been thinking about my brother—or how much I’d been trying not to think about my brother. I had a suspicion that it was the latter. But I didn’t want to think about Charlie. He was too tangled in everything that had happened, and then everything that had happened with him afterward…. I stared out the window, trying to concentrate only on Louisville passing by.

  Lucien directed Roger to a very fancy-looking hotel. It had a huge red canopy, with THE BROWN written on it in gold lettering. It looked nice, and way out of our price range.

  “This looks great,” Roger said, glancing over at me, and I had a feeling he was also thinking of the four hundred dollars and change that was all the money we had. This place looked like it probably cost that much for one night. “But I’m not sure this is exactly the kind of place we were planning on staying tonight….”

  “No worries,” said Lucien. “We’re just eating here.”

  “Oh,” Roger said. “Got it.” It seemed like restaurants at this hotel might also be a little more expensive than the fast-food and diner dinners we’d been having, but I figured we could probably afford it for one meal.

  Lucien’s directions brought Roger around to the valet entrance, and before we could say anything, three doors were opened simultaneously by valets in white coats. I stepped out, glad once again I was wearing Bronwyn’s clothes. I noticed that Roger was tucking his white T-shirt hurriedly into his jeans. Lucien stepped over to the valet who’d opened Roger’s door and shook his hand, and I saw a flash of gre
en pass from his palm to the valet’s as he did this. Then he motioned us inside the hotel, as the doors were pulled open for us by two more valets, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. We stepped inside, and I looked around, my mouth hanging open a little. I was now certain this was out of our price range—this was an extremely nice hotel. There were chandeliers above us, and thick, patterned carpet on the floor, and there seemed to be a lot of shiny brass fixtures everywhere.

  Lucien led us across the lobby—filled with antique-looking couches, Oriental rugs, and oil paintings of horses—and down three steps to J. Graham’s Café and Bar. There was a crowd standing around the host’s podium, but Lucien just walked up to the front, and we were seated right away, in a corner booth that looked out on the quiet street, lit with streetlights. “Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Armstrong,” the host murmured as he handed us menus and departed.

  I looked at Lucien, surprised. “They know you here?” I asked.

  Lucien shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “We’ve been coming here a long time,” he said. “Every Derby season, the parents rent out a suite on the eleventh floor. So you get to know the staff.”

  “Right,” I said, as though this was perfectly normal, and not at all intimidating. I looked around the tastefully decorated, clearly expensive restaurant and realized how long it had been since I’d been somewhere like this. Roger and I hadn’t encountered cloth napkins in quite some time. I started to open up my menu, but Lucien laid his hand on top of it.

  “If I may,” he said, looking between Roger and me. “The Brown makes a famous dish that originated here, and if you haven’t had it, you really should.”

  I thought about Roger asking me before where my sense of adventure was. I knew that he’d been kidding, mostly, but the question was now reverberating in my mind. Even Old me had always been a little cautious. I had to be, with Charlie not taking any caution at all. And I’d been reading maps too long not to want to follow some sort of plan and have an ending in sight. But I had told my mother off, and the world hadn’t ended. And here I was, cut loose and in Kentucky, with Roger and a stranger, at a fancy restaurant, wearing someone else’s clothes. Maybe my sense of adventure wasn’t lost. Maybe it had just been lying dormant. I pushed my menu away. “Sounds good,” I said, hoping immediately after I said this that the famous dish wasn’t snails. Or anything to do with sweetbreads, which I’d found out the hard way in England were neither sweet nor breads.

  I saw Roger give me a little smile across the table, though it faded when he heard Lucien order for all of us, something called a Hot Brown.

  “You guys do eat meat, right?” he asked when three skillets were placed in front of us simultaneously by three waiters. “I should have checked, with you being from California and all.” We’d done the basic introductions while we’d waited for the worrisomely named food to arrive. We’d found out that Lucien was eighteen and beginning college at Vanderbilt in the fall.

  “No vegetarians here,” Roger said.

  “Good,” Lucien said, “then dig in.”

  I looked down at the skillet that had been laid across my plate. One of the waiters had explained the dish: A Hot Brown was a turkey breast on big pieces of soft-looking bread, covered with parmesan cheese and a creamy sauce, flanked by tomato slices and finished with parsley and two pieces of bacon laid across the top. I had just been taking it in, wondering where to start, when I realized Lucien hadn’t started eating yet. He was looking at me expectantly, and only after I’d raised my fork did he raise his. I’d heard about Southern manners, but I’d assumed they’d died out a hundred years before. Apparently not. The proof was sitting in front of me, waiting for me to take a bite before he would begin to eat.

  The silverware was surprisingly heavy, and I cut a small piece and took a bite. It was fantastic. I took another bite, and saw that across the table, Roger was eating with gusto. I realized as I ate more that these were all foods I liked—why had nobody except people in Kentucky realized how good they might be when combined and covered with melted cheese?

  Roger had ordered a Coke, since root beer was not on the menu. But I’d taken Lucien’s lead and ordered what he had, something called sweet tea. I took a small sip, then another one, realizing that cream soda might just have been eclipsed as my favorite drink. It was iced tea, but very sweet, with the sugar not grainy and mixed in, but part of the drink itself. Between this and the NuWay, I decided that from now on I would always follow the recommendations of the locals, as I hadn’t been steered wrong yet. Lucien said that he would take care of ordering dessert, and I was happy to put myself in his hands.

  I headed to the ladies’ room, leaving the boys in an intense discussion of sports movies. I only hoped, for Lucien’s sake, that he would have the sense not to bring up Hoosiers. As I washed my hands, I looked at my reflection. I thought back to the me reflected in the bathroom mirror at Yosemite. I looked different, and not only because I hadn’t just been crying, then rubbing my face with paper towels that felt like they’d been made from some kind of bark. I was more tan now, and I had a new wardrobe. But it wasn’t that, entirely. I looked at my reflection a moment longer, pulling my shoulders back.

  When I returned to the table, the boys stopped talking immediately, which worried me. But before I could say anything, dessert plates were presented. “Derby pie,” Lucien said. “A Louisville tradition. Enjoy.” He motioned the waiter to come closer, then said, “And a glass of Maker’s Mark, please.”

  The waiter looked from Roger to me and back to Lucien again, who just stared back at him coolly. “Absolutely,” the waiter said, leaving.

  “Did you just order a drink?” I asked, baffled, wondering if Kentucky was somehow exempt from the drinking laws of the rest of the country.

  “Dude,” Roger said reverently around a mouthful of dessert. He saluted Lucien with his fork and went on eating. I took a bite myself. The pie was a mixture of chocolate and strawberries and pecans, and it was great. I found myself wishing that Kentucky was better about exporting their local dishes to the rest of the country.

  The waiter placed a short glass half-filled with two ice cubes and a dark brown liquid in front of Lucien.

  “What is this?” I asked. “Do they not card in Kentucky?”

  “Not always,” Lucien said with a smile. “We have in front of us a glass of genuine Kentucky bourbon. You know that bourbon is the only drink native to America?” Roger and I shook our heads. “It is,” he continued. “And unless it’s made in Kentucky, it can’t be called bourbon. Otherwise, it’s just called sour mash.”

  “Like champagne,” I said, recalling the fact I’d once learned while rehearsing a Noel Coward play. “Unless it’s made in the Champagne region of France, it’s just called sparkling wine.”

  “Well, exactly,” said Lucien. He set the glass of bourbon in the center of the table. “So who’s driving?” he asked. “I’m happy to, if y’all are comfortable with that.”

  Roger glanced at me and took a sip of his soda. “I’ll keep driving,” he said. “Not a problem.”

  “Oh,” Lucien said. “Okay.”

  “I’m not really driving right now,” I said after a moment of silence, feeling like some explanation was called for. But after I said it, I realized this explanation hadn’t actually clarified anything. “Just … not,” I said, stopping when I realized that without going into why, I wasn’t going to be able to make myself any clearer.

  “Well, whatever works,” Lucien said. He gestured to the bourbon. “Would you like it?”

  “That’s okay,” I said, drinking my second glass of sweet tea.

  Lucien raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re turning down a glass of our authentic local bourbon?” he asked.

  “Oh,” I said, glancing over at Roger, who for some reason was looking up at the ceiling, smiling. “Um, sure.” With both of them watching me closely, I slid the glass toward me and lifted it up. It was surprisingly heavy, and I sniffed the liquid, then stopped, wondering if you
were only supposed to do that for wine. At any rate, it smelled kind of like a stump. I took a tentative sip and almost spat the entire mouthful across the table. It tasted like stump too. Smoky stump. It was kind of like what I imagined it would be like to drink a forest fire. I forced myself to swallow it, and it burned my throat going down and made my eyes water. “Mmm,” I choked out when I was able to speak again. “That’s … smooth.”

  I looked up and saw that both Roger and Lucien were laughing. “Sorry about that,” Lucien said, moving the drink away from me and into the center of the table again. “We just wanted to see if I could get you to drink it.”

  “What?” I asked, still coughing a little. Roger was still smiling. “Both of you?”

  “Small side bet,” said Lucien, slapping a twenty on the table. “Welcome to Kentucky.”

  “I thought I was going to insult you if I didn’t drink it,” I said, feeling flustered and betrayed, but also noticing how Roger looked like he was having fun as he leaned back against the booth, pocketing his twenty. I mentally added it to our current total.

  “Nah,” Lucien said. He edged my water glass toward me. “You’ll probably need that.” I grabbed the glass and took a big sip. “I think bourbon’s disgusting. I have no idea how my mother drinks it. I think you actually can’t drink it until you’re in your fifties and can no longer taste anything.”

  “Sorry about that,” Roger said to me, looking a little sheepish.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. I tried to glare at him but found I couldn’t keep the expression on my face.

  “Cheers?” asked Lucien, holding up his water. I raised my sweet tea glass and Roger lifted his Coke.

  “Cheers,” I said, and we clinked.

  Lucien looked across at Roger. “So. You and Hadley, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Roger said, clearing his throat. “I mean, we were dating this year at school. We broke up right as classes were ending.”