“Well, read this book and live vicariously. Write your address down right now! You’ll see the book in your box when you get back home. So when are you going home?”
I gave him a triple big tip, for waiting so long, and “for France.” He sent Turk’s book. I loved it. It didn’t make me want to take a kayak or anything, but I couldn’t put it down. I sent it back swiftly with a thank you letter and my own list of favorite exploration books by different authors. And I sent a vintage bon voyage card that I found in my mysterious stationery drawer—to the man who learned early how he wanted to live, then did it.
No Room at the Inn
IT’S A TERRIBLE FEELING WHEN THE DESK clerk at a hotel says they gave your room away to somebody else. Especially when you just got off a plane, it’s dark, and you’re tired.
“But I have a confirmation number,” you say.
The clerk says, “Sorry. We gave it away.”
Then the kicker. “Hate to tell you this, but there is no hotel room available in the entire city of Chicago. That’s why we gave all the reserved rooms away in the last few hours. Due to the huge restaurant convention which is being attended by all the restaurant people of Canada and Europe as well as the United States, every single room in the city is taken. We have made a reservation for you in another town and will pay a taxi driver to take you there right now.”
Another town? I can’t go to another town. I have to work here, very close to this hotel, beginning at nine A.M. tomorrow, which now seems very soon.
I’m distracted by another thought. Are all the restaurants of the world closed right now? If the managers are gathered in Chicago, who is running the restaurants?
The desk clerk motions discreetly to the concierge, who grabs my bags and runs off with them to a waiting taxi. This feels like a conspiracy. The clerk thrusts three tens and a five into my hand and says, “Pay the taxi with this. We’ll tell him where to take you.”
I’m stunned. Then I’m in the taxi’s backseat and he’s pulling out into the street.
“Okay then,” says the driver with an Indian accent. “We will be going.”
I stutter, “Where is this place you are taking me? I have to work tomorrow very early at the Chicago Art Institute. I do not wish to leave the city. How far away is this other place, actually?”
He says, “Madame, I cannot tell you that. You are the first person I have ever taken there. A while ago I took some other guests to Evanston, but I am not sure of this place I am taking you. The hotel wrote down directions for me.”
“Did those other people want to go to Evanston?”
“They did not.”
“Don’t you think this is a little strange? How far away do you think the place is?”
“I don’t know. Twenty miles, maybe.”
“Terrible! Do you really think there are no hotel rooms available in all of Chicago?”
“That is what I hear. Other drivers were talking about this over the radio; it seems to be accurate.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“It is difficult to believe. But what can we do?”
We drive and drive, beyond the glittering neon late-night cafés and under the tall legs of the elevated railway where I would prefer to unfold my tent, if I had one. Should I ask him to stop at the hotels we are passing? Suddenly I feel exhausted. Surely that nasty hotel would have sent me to a closer place if they could. I take some deep breaths to calm down. I give myself a frenzied hand massage, one thumb pressing the base of the other thumb. Everywhere hurts. Certainly I have friends in Chicago, but I can hardly call them at this late hour and don’t have their numbers with me anyway. Nor do I have a cell phone yet.
So I say, “Are you from India?”
The driver says, “Yes! How did you guess?”
We talk about India. When I am feeling gloomy about one thing, I try to ask questions about another thing. If a plane flight becomes excessively turbulent, for example, I grow extremely curious about my seatmate’s job history, even if he is a banker or a purveyor of medical tools.
This driver and I, forging into the ominous darkness together, discuss the south and north of India, the vivid, spicy curries, the quirky Bird Hospital in old downtown Delhi, the Red Fort, an Indian circus we once saw where a small, weeping bear was forced to dance with a teacup on his head, and the sand dunes of the Thar Desert, where my husband and I once rode camels for days, feeling suspended in the vastness of space. My husband and I stopped calling out to each other after the first few hours, soaking and baking in silence, and we slept in a tiny village, in a manger filled with rank hay and the warm breath of sheep. We may have used small lambs as pillows or I may have made that up. Anyway, we survived it. Although my husband grew very ill afterward, we did not die.
The taxi is now out of the city, on a dark two-lane road, passing between groves of tall trees. When did we exit the interstate?
“Tell me about your family,” I say, trying to quell my uneasiness about the distance and the dark.
“I am worried about my daughter,” he jumps right in. “She is caught between two cultures, the old and the modern. She is trying to find her way. It is hard to keep traditional Hindu culture alive when you are surrounded by so many influences and distractions. We moved to the United States from India when she was nine—now she is sixteen, and often seems confused.”
I say, “Everyone is confused when they are sixteen.”
He says, “She wants things.”
I say, “Everyone wants things when they are sixteen. But don’t we all want things? I want to be in Chicago, for example, not on this back road to—where are we now exactly?”
He says, “Frankly, I do not know.”
There are no signs, no markers, no lights—a suddenly desolate region. Maybe we have entered a national park wilderness. Lake Michigan Nowhere. If he did not seem to be such an honorable Hindu, I might feel more edgy. He appears to be gripping the wheel very tightly now. He says, “It is truly dark here. She watches television constantly.”
Squinting to read my watch in the dark, I see it is ten-fifty P.M. I cannot imagine how I am going to make it back to the Art Institute by nine A.M., and I am furious.
Take a deep breath. I say, “Television is very violent. Does she watch nice shows?”
He says, “How can I know what she watches? I am away from home all the time, driving a taxi to make a living. I fear the music channel and the naked shows. My wife is working in a school as an aide, then a second job in a Dollar Shop for extra dollars. She begs our children not to watch television, but they feel distance from their friends if they do not do what their friends are doing.”
I feel distance from everyone I have ever known on earth.
I say, “Is your wife at home right now?”
He says, “I would certainly hope so.”
Trees and more trees, ferocious, shadowy tree-silence looming in all directions, and not a signal or scrap of sign to go by.
I say, “Sir, it seems to me we have been driving thirty minutes by now. Would you say so?”
“Yes.”
I say, “Could we please take the first turnoff to anywhere? It will be impossible for me to get back into the city early enough in the morning. I am having a nervous breakdown, and I suggest we exit immediately.”
He says, “Madam, I am sorry for your condition.”
“I am Naomi, by the way.”
“Madam Naomi, I am Rajiv. As in Ghandi, but not quite.”
We do not see an exit or another street to turn onto for at least ten more miles. He says, “It seems we have found the last forgotten place.”
I say, “It is imperative that we get advice. The hotel idiot gave me thirty-five dollars to pay you and already your meter says sixty-five dollars. Of course you must be paid fully, considering the fact that you have a long way to drive home as well. I am feeling quite grim.”
Rajiv says, “I will stop wherever you tell me.”
Finally a restaurant looms o
ut of the dark, rimmed with festive red lights around the edge of the roof and a blinking sign: LORENZO’S ITALY.
“Here! Stop.”
Rajiv turns off the taxi and comes into the restaurant with me, after locking the doors.
A woman swabbing down the counter inside the restaurant lobby says, “I’m sorry, we’re closed.”
“I’m sure you are,” I say. “As well you should be. We just need help please. We are lost and we are very upset.”
She rings a bell and a large man steps out of the kitchen. He looks at us curiously. “I am the manager. May I help you?”
“Lorenzo?”
“No, Jack. Lorenzo’s the owner. He’s not here.”
He’s probably at the restaurant convention.
Rajiv shows Jack the ragged scrap of paper on which our directions are scrawled. Jack reads the address and looks pensive. “But why are you here if you want to go there? You’re lost! This hotel they wrote down is on a different road from this one and it’s not very close to here, either. Hate to tell you that. Hmmmm. You can get there, though. It will take a while.”
We tell him the whole horrible story in a few choked sentences. I say, “I could just start crying.” Rajiv looks deeply worried. He excuses himself and steps into the restroom.
Jack says, “Wait a minute, please.” He disappears back into the kitchen. He probably doesn’t want to be alone with me.
When Jack returns, he is carrying five fragrant brown paper bags with handles, shopping bag size. He says, “I can’t house you, but I can feed you. Here is pasta Alfredo, our specialty, and two spinach and mushroom pizzas and eggplant Parmesan with a little garlic and herb pasta on the side and spaghetti and meatballs and bread sticks and salads. I think they put some lasagna in there, too. I hope you will enjoy it.”
I say, “You are incredibly nice. This is unbelievable.” I hug him. He smells like comforting garlic, like my dad when he helps in the kitchen. Rajiv looks confused. Jack gives Rajiv more directions. Rajiv scribbles them wildly on the same paper, on the back. I think he writes them in Sanskrit. We climb into the car with our vast trove of Italian cuisine and drive off into the night.
“But are you hungry?” I ask Rajiv.
“No, thank you.”
“I will insist that you take this food home with you for your daughter and wife and family.”
“No, certainly not. It was given to you.”
“It should feed you for about a week or more,” I say.
Rajiv says, “Jack was very nice. I am not partial to Italian food, however. I will only take half of it. My daughter likes spaghetti.”
“I will write Jack a thank you letter from both of us. I picked up a business card off the counter.”
After quite a few more miles, after turning where Jack told us to turn—profoundly subtle turns which we would never have discovered on our own—we find our despicable destination. “Stay here a moment,” I beg Rajiv. “Please, you must wait. What if you leave me and they don’t have room for me either?”
“I will be waiting.” He sighs.
I speak to the desk clerk as I would speak to a lifeguard if I had just been hauled out of the deep end of a pool. “I need you to help me,” I gasp. “Tell me you have a room reserved in my name and how long do you think it will take to get back into Chicago during rush hour in the morning?”
She chews her gum. “A long time. Yeah, we have your name. You came from the Fairmont, yeah.”
“Not by choice, trust me.”
“They called.”
“I hate them.”
When I go back to the sidewalk to collect my baggage, Rajiv has lined all five food bags next to my two pieces of luggage and is standing there looking very sad.
“Please,” he says. “Just take it all.”
“What am I going to do with it? You have a family! I can’t carry seven bags!”
I plop three of the bags on his backseat.
“Here, you promised. We split the bounty.”
I pay him one hundred dollars, planning to force the Fairmont to pay me back the difference. He says, “The Fairmont only gave you thirty-five dollars, I can’t take this much.”
“Oh please,” I say. “We’ve been driving for hours. Consider it a tip. In fact, if you don’t take it and beat it out of here, I’m going to make you drive me back into Chicago in the morning.”
“I am going now. I actually live on the south side of Chicago. It will take me twice as long to get there as it took us to get here. If I can find it.”
“I am so sorry.”
“And I am also sorry. It was not your fault. It was no one’s fault.”
“You’re wrong; it was someone’s fault. And I am going to go call them right now. Thank you for being so nice to me and not tying me to a tree. Good luck to your daughter. Drive carefully.”
“I will eat a salad,” says Rajiv.
“Viva Italia!” I say. But no one laughs. It is impossible to be funny at this time of night.
And I realize, after unlocking my shoddy Clorox-scented room and unpacking one of the food bags, that I have all the salads. Rajiv must have the pizzas. I actually sit and eat a salad. I close my eyes, tasting the vinegar, the lovely olives, the Parmesan-crusted croutons.
Then I dial the Fairmont.
“Manager, please.”
When the manager comes on, I summarize the story, ending with:
“You will pay for this. You owe me for the taxi. You will also pay for the taxi I have to take to get back into Chicago. Do you understand the word confirmation? I am occasionally a travel writer and will not hesitate to call your hotel by its full name in whatever I write. I will not mince words. This is not a picnic.”
Actually, it has turned into something of a picnic, food sprawled all over the bedspread, but I do not tell him that part.
The manager stutters. He says he was not on duty when all this happened. He says he will personally send a taxi to pick me up at seven A.M.
The next morning, after a grim night under the garlicky polyester bedspread, I eat a bread stick for breakfast. A taxi is miraculously waiting. A driver from Bosnia, with a square blond head, drives me back into the city. He says, “This is strange place to be staying. How you find it?”
I growl. I am sure he knows stories that are much worse. I ask if he could possibly be interested in fettucini at this early hour and he says no.
At the Fairmont, as the desk clerk is counting out tens to pay me back, I learn the penthouse has been reserved for me. The penthouse. Gratis. I may check in after three P.M.
“We are terribly sorry about your inconvenience.”
I go to work at the Chicago Art Institute, where the newsletter has mistakenly broadcast that my preferred poetry workshop audience age is two.
Luckily one of the curators has a guitar in a back closet. I sit on the carpeted floor against the wall, singing kooky songs, while three two-year-olds comb my hair and one plays with my shoes. There are about fifty of them in the room. I have never been with so many two-year-olds at once in my life.
Back at the penthouse, I iron my shirt for the evening’s reading, hoping the audience is old enough to read. I stare out the window at beautiful, glittering Chicago, first favorite city of my life. I wrote my Poem Number One here, at six, in a hotel. Not this hotel. Another one. It’s dust.
I wander around and stare at my glamorous quarters. The hotel is doing penance now. They are afraid of vengeful travel writers, apparently. I enjoy the complimentary plate of crackers and cheese, the purple grapes. I pack the wine to take home to my husband. And I stare out the window, wishing Rajiv and Jack and Rajiv’s daughter could join me for a little toast to fortune, the down and up of it, in this room with so many channels, above the deep and silent lake.
Bruce
THE YOUNGISH DRIVER WITH CURLY BLOND hair at Newark Airport says he has lived most of his life in New Jersey, so I ask if he likes Bruce Springsteen. It’s a little dumb, I guess. Is he going to ask if
I like Willie Nelson next?
But he’s so happy I asked! “Bruce is my main man! I’ve even been out to his farm to pick up some of his band members! He was doing yard work off in the distance like a regular guy, isn’t that crazy? I almost passed out at the wheel when I saw him. I even know the license plate number of his black Land Rover by heart! I can’t believe you asked me that!”
I say, “Well, I always think of him in New Jersey. I’ve been a big fan of Bruce since 1973.”
“No way! Same here! Me, too! The E Street Band!”
“You don’t look that old,” I say.
“Neither do you! Neither does he, come to think about it. Neither does anybody.”
I say, “Bruce is the fountain of youth.”
We talk about Bruce’s recordings of Pete Seeger songs and his concerts during the Kerry campaign. I say, “I just clipped a Bruce quotation out of the newspaper and stuck it to my wall with tape. ‘When it comes to luck, you make your own.’”
“That sounds like Bruce,” he says.
I say, “I know some guys that fly all around the country just to hear him perform live. I think I’ve heard him three times. I never saw anyone on stage with more energy, did you?”
“Never! He’s the best!” We rave back and forth over the shiny seat. We’re juiced on Bruce. I tell him our son memorized the entire Tunnel of Love album when he was two and used to sing it loudly, even in inappropriate moments. He says, “No way! Well, my wife and I played only Bruce songs at our wedding reception a few years ago. It was outdoors. We blasted them. She didn’t really know that much about him when we first met, but I converted her.”
I say, “So did you get out of the car that day at his farm and fall on your knees in front of him?”
He laughs and sighs. “Unfortunately not. Wish I had, though. I meet celebrities all the time, so I’m very subtle. I can’t show my feelings. I’m a fly on the wall.”
“Do you drive them around?”
“Yes! I work for another agency that specializes in celebrity service. I only do this taxi thing half-time. Want me to tell you some insider stuff? Just don’t use my name if you tell anyone else.”
I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK? Page 7
