Chapter 11 #2
It may not have been romantic, but the dairy’s visitor center was much more impressive than anything I could have imagined if you’d told me that there was such a thing as a “dairy visitor center.” The building, right off the highway, looked vaguely like one of those midcentury houses with an asymmetrical roofline to evoke a ski lodge, but on a massive scale and attached to a boxy, corrugated metal processing plant.
From the overflow parking lot—where we had to bounce over rutted gravel to find a spot amid a surprisingly large sea of cars, mostly with out of state license plates—I was almost certain there were no actual cows on the premises, but a bovine aroma still permeated.
True to its stylish promise, the experience got a lot more polished as we approached the visitor center building.
An elegantly landscaped walkway led us to the glassy entrance hall, and the cow smell seemed to weaken, making me wonder only half in jest if they were pumping something into the air to counteract it.
I’d been given the name and phone number of a member of the dairy’s marketing staff, and I’d texted a few minutes ago to let him know we were coming.
As we approached the front doors, we were hailed by a tall, athletic man of about thirty-five, with stylish glasses and the kind of expensive jeans and work boots that sold on “heritage” and “American craftsmanship.”
“Hey, guys, you’re Oliver and Ricky, right?
I’m Ryan,” he said, pumping our hands enthusiastically.
Again, I’d never considered who might be the ideal person to do marketing for an employee-owned dairy with an Oregon-crunchy vibe, but Ryan, with his hale-and-hearty, corn-fed-meets-collegiate hipster look, made perfect sense for the role.
“C’mon in, and I’ll show you around,” he said eagerly.
Ryan led us through a sort of hybrid museum exhibition-factory tour, talking up the network of local dairy farms that made up the collective and dropping not-so-subtle references to the company’s distribution deals with a rapidly growing list of supermarket chains nationwide.
I definitely smelled the work of Offbeat Traveler’s ad team.
No money would have changed hands to get me here, I was sure; more like a hope that if we scratched the dairy’s back with a little positive coverage, they’d scratch ours at some unspecified future date with some sweet, sweet ad dollars.
Oh, well. I could say nice things about dairy products—after all, it wasn’t as though I was touring a munitions factory or a tobacco processing plant or something.
Our tour had taken us upstairs to a mezzanine overlooking the plant, from which vantage point we could watch machines separating curds from whey and whisking the solids off down conveyor belts to another machine where they were molded and cut into blocks of cheese.
Ryan gave us samples of their cheese curds, made from scraps from the molding machine, and mine were so salty and chewy and delicious that I didn’t think twice about taking Ricky’s, too, when he offered them to me as soon as Ryan’s back was turned.
As he walked us back downstairs toward the cavernous food court that comprised most of the main floor, Ryan said, “Have a look around and take your pick. Lunch is on me.”
We took a lap, checking out the stalls offering artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches, deluxe mac and cheese, salads generously topped with crumbled soft cheeses, and giant waffle cones cradling scoops of ice cream, offered in a dizzying array of flavors.
Knowing what I now did about Ricky’s troubled relationship with dairy, I felt bad, wondering if he could find something that would work for him.
Salads seemed like the safest bet. He surprised me by getting in line for the mac and cheese stand.
He saw my look of consternation and shrugged. “What? So it’s a bad decision. I make bad decisions all the time. Sometimes that’s how you get more out of life.” I grinned and got in line behind him. I liked mac and cheese a lot more than salad, too.
Ryan didn’t wait in line with us. He caught the eye of the woman working the cash register and made a series of complicated gestures that apparently told her to comp our food, then said apologetically, “I’ve gotta run, but thanks for coming, and enjoy your lunch!”
“I suppose we earned it,” I muttered to Ricky as we returned our attention to keeping up with the line.
He gave me a funny look. “I think I’m supposed to be the cynical one,” he said.
“You are? I thought you were the fun one, or the adventurous one, or the one who can drive. What does that leave for me?”
“You’re the cute one,” he said. I arched my eyebrows and glared at him, and he hastened to add, “And the grounded one, and the analytical one. And you can drive, too, kind of. In a pinch, maybe.”
We had reached the front of the line, sparing me from getting too analytical and reading too much into Ricky’s assessment of what I brought to our team.
On the one hand, it sounded like he thought we had complementary strengths, which was probably a good thing …
but on the other hand, did I want the garlic Gruyère mac with broccoli, or the pepper jack mac with spicy linguica?
Suddenly mindful that the day might come when I’d need to moderate my intake of greasy, spicy foods and think of my heart health, I opted for the garlic and broccoli.
Ricky, despite being older and lactose intolerant, went for the zesty sausage.
We took our trays of food and entered the massive dining area, looking for open seats at one of the long communal tables, most of which were packed with family groups in vacation wear.
This novel world of dairy tourism never ceased to amaze me.
We lucked into two seats at the very end of the outermost table along the back wall of the hall, affording us as much quiet as we could hope for in this giant space. As we tucked into our rich, cheesy lunch, I asked Ricky, “How long do we have before this cheese starts giving you problems?”
“A couple of hours, at least,” he said breezily.
“Great. So between now and then we can figure out how this place is romantic.”
“How romantic is this,” he said, pointing a forkful of cheesy noodles over my shoulder. “I’ve got a clear line of sight to that old guy’s butt crack.”
I ventured a peek over my shoulder at the man sitting behind me, whose jeans were riding entirely too low as he sat eating his grilled cheese. I laughed. “Yeah,” I said, “but what about the beautiful music of all these screaming kids?”
“Mmmm.” Ricky closed his eyes and swayed in time as a baby in a high chair down the table started wailing, as if on cue.
Ricky’s mood seemed to have improved since this morning, which made me feel somewhat better, but I was still struggling to shake my fear that I had alienated him.
Looking down at my food, I asked, “Are being grounded and analytical good qualities for a fake boyfriend? For you, I mean?” I looked up shyly.
He was chewing thoughtfully. “For a fake boyfriend, sure,” he said as he swallowed, then winked. “A real boyfriend also has to be cute, and to own his cuteness.”
“Well, so much for me, then,” I said, and he laughed. “But, um,” I fumbled, “what about a fake boyfriend who sometimes gets overwhelmed and freaks out a little?”
He shrugged. “Are you still worried about that? You may recall that I knew that about you before I asked you to be my fake boyfriend.”
Huh. I hadn’t thought about it, but this was true.
“And I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said, leaning across the table. “I don’t always know how to react to stuff, either.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” I said.
Ricky’s eyes softened, holding mine intensely in that way that I’d never been able to manage with anyone else.
“You have seen it, you just haven’t realized it.
I fake it all the time. Everybody does. I think I understand why it’s so important to you to feel like you know—like, unambiguously know—how to deal with everything.
But what I don’t think you realize is that people who aren’t Autistic are maybe better at looking like we know what’s going on or what we’re doing, but we don’t actually know any more than you do.
Maybe less, even, since we’re less concerned about always getting things right.
You try so hard, and I love that you do, and I don’t think you need to change, but I wish it wasn’t so hard on you. ”
Oh, wow. It was as if the cavernous room around us melted away, and the chair vanished from under me and I plopped softly to the ground, which rolled gently into a carpet of lush green grass dotted with wildflowers under the bluest sky, and there were no screaming children, only singing birds, and it was Ricky and me and his endlessly deep brown eyes in his beautiful face, sitting in the grass, and there were cows, but, by God, the cows were romantic.
The hikes and the restaurants had been nice enough; the massage hadn’t done it for me, but I sort of got it; I hadn’t understood how the dairy fit into our allegedly romantic itinerary at all.
And yet, it was here, over a bowl of cheese that he wouldn’t be able to properly digest, that Ricky had finally shown me what romance really, actually felt like.
I was stunned, in a fog. I had no idea what to say.
Ricky didn’t seem to notice. He balled up his paper napkin, dropped it into his now-empty bowl, and started gathering all of our dishes and trash onto his tray.
“I’m going to do the most romantic thing I think you can do here,” he announced, completely unaware that he already had. “I’m going to buy you an ice cream.”
I saved our seats while Ricky went to get me a cone with a scoop of birthday cake ice cream.
While I waited, I pondered. I wanted more than ever to do something big for Ricky, to show him I cared, the same way he kept finding ways to show me—and I was having a hard time letting go of the idea that figuring out what was going on at the Rose Beach Inn was the best I could do.
We had to move on, but maybe there was a way we could keep investigating from a distance, like … like …
Once again, I had nothing.
“A real cone for my pretend lover,” Ricky said, presenting me with the ice cream as he returned.
“Ooh,” I said, mock seductively. “It’s lover now, is it?”
“Sure,” he said with a grin. “As long as we’re pretending, why not go all the way?”
Right when I had started to feel like I was back on solid ground with him, he knocked me off balance again. Why did he keep ragging on the pretend thing?
“How do we figure out what happened to Richard and Cecilia,” I said, changing the subject to distract myself from my confusion, “even though we have to leave?”
Ricky stroked his chin. “We could enlist Erik to be our eyes and ears,” he suggested.
I licked some rogue ice cream drips from my hand. “That doesn’t sound like much fun,” I said. “And besides, I’m not sure I want Erik to have my phone number or email or anything.”
“Oliver, he’s a kid,” Ricky said. “He doesn’t use email or phone numbers. He’d probably want us to communicate through Instagram DMs or something. Which, you’re right, probably wouldn’t work, since you’re Mr. Anti-Social-Media. Plus, it does sound kind of exhausting.”
“What about …” I said, then realized I still didn’t have an ending to my thought.
Ricky gazed out the glassy walls of the food court at the cloudless blue sky. “I thought Oregon was supposed to be super rainy. It would be kind of helpful to get trapped at the inn by a major storm, so we couldn’t leave.”
“Good for the ambiance, too,” I agreed. “Stupid climate change.”
Ricky propped his chin in his hand. “So no act of God to keep us in town. Maybe we have to give up on this one.”
“That sucks,” I said, crunching down the last of my cone. “You said it would help you to know what had happened. And it’s all so weird and confusing. I feel like there’s definitely something strange about the—”
“Rose!” The cry came from halfway across the hall, echoing as if it was the voice of God himself confirming that our destiny lay with the Rose family, though I didn’t think God would sound so panicky.
Ricky and I both jumped and turned to follow the noise to where a middle-aged man had knocked over his chair as he jumped up, hustling around the table to the other side where a woman in a floral print sweatshirt was gasping and clutching her throat and turning blue. “Rose, I’m coming,” the man hollered.
The hall erupted into action, as people scrambled from their seats, most simply trying to get a better view of what was happening.
A few people started rushing toward the choking woman, presumably to offer assistance.
A number of phones were whipped out; I was dismayed to observe that far more people were filming what was happening than were trying to call for help.
Ricky and I rose to our feet, too, almost reflexively, but I hesitated to move closer.
I didn’t know how I could help, and Ricky seemed to come to the same realization.
Things were moving quickly, anyway. The man had started thumping his choking companion on the back, then made a clumsy, ineffectual attempt at a Heimlich maneuver.
Several of the would-be helpers had reached the scene, and one, a short, square-shouldered woman with a boxy brown haircut, gently pushed the man aside, wrapped her arms around Rose, and quickly and efficiently expelled the offending morsel.
A smattering of cheers arose from the crowd as dairy personnel carrying first-aid kits belatedly arrived on the scene.
“Ricky.” I grabbed his arm, staring intently at the woman who had saved the choking Rose. “We’ve seen her before.”
“Yes, we have,” he said.
We may not have gotten an act of God to keep us at the Rose Beach Inn, but this surely felt like some kind of sign.
The woman who had been talking to Lis at the trailhead about her inheritance the morning after Richard died, the one who had first planted the seeds of suspicion in our minds, had miraculously resurfaced.