Chapter 2 #2
The inn isn’t that far from the highway. We pull into a nearly empty gravel parking lot. It’s just past ten o’clock and the windshield is fogging up. I zip up my black puffer coat as far as it goes. I grit my teeth and clench my jaw. This is it. It's time to go. Time to bear it.
The Waverly Inn. The look of it is more like a shack than a highly rated inn and restaurant. There’s the main entrance to the bar and restaurant, and a strip of motel style rooms attached in the back. I flip up the takeout menu and skim the letter clutched in my hands.
It’s the first stop on Andy’s tour. He played a set of Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen with his original songs.
I’m frozen in place for a beat, while Dean stares at me from the front seat.
Fuck. This was a bad idea. I’ve faced Andy’s mortality about a hundred times, but in the comfort of my own bedroom and not in the scrappiness of a motel
“Are you going?”
“I’m getting there.” I start rooting around in my bag for something, anything to help me feel better. I already took a pepto—what about an ibuprofen? Dean gets out of the car and rounds the hood. He opens the door for me.
“Let’s go.” He hauls me up by the arm and out. I’m just another limp body. I’m playing my part, and this may as well be the morgue. “I didn’t drive you all the way here for you to chicken out. I need a drink.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I announce to him. “We should go home.”
“You’re not going to throw up. You ate a pepto before we left the car. We’re not going home.”
“You don’t eat a pepto,” I say, as if I had not just…well, eaten a pepto.
“Whatever. You chewed on one.” He drops my arm and takes a step back.
Dean and I walk the dark, stony path towards the entrance. There’s a small vestibule before the main entrance, littered with a thousand cigarettes and a hundred posters plastered across the wall. I scan for Andy’s poster, but I don’t see it.
I’m tempted to start tearing down posters, just to find it, but Dean opens the rusty door to the bar and I’m jolted, frozen, a deer in the headlights.
“It’s darker in there than outside. I think I’ll stay out here.”
“Madeline, please go in,” His voice is raspy, he’s had enough.
As soon as I take a step in, a wall of sound reverberates off the walls and into my head—it’s the band.
Even though the parking lot was quite empty, it’s bustling inside.
Locals, guests, tourists. It’s a happening place.
There’s framed photos and posters adorning the paint-peeling walls.
Chandeliers with real candles hang low over the bar.
I’m looking for a place along the wall to settle in, but Dean spots a high top table and steers me towards it. I have to jump to hop into the seat, and my feet dangle. The jump sends my heart racing.
I try to control it with a deep breath, but the noise. The people. The thick, steamy atmosphere is too much for my body to take. People are moving in every direction, every space of every plane, and I can’t take it. My head starts spinning almost immediately.
I’m going to fall out of my chair and get trampled.
I’m going to have a heart attack and get carried away on a stretcher.
I’m going to die.
Dean is looking around, not paying attention to me. He’s looking for an out, any way to abandon me.
“I’m going to die.” I catch his attention with my comment, and I look Dean directly in the eyes. “Do something.” I’m beginning to hyperventilate.
“You’re not going to die, Madeline.” Dean looks back. “I don’t need to do anything. Just breathe.”
“I am breathing.” I wave my hands up and down with my breaths, which are long and slow, yet I still feel like I’m hyperventilating.
My heart is racing. This is it. Just like Andy.
I’m going to die in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of strangers and none of my loved ones. My fucking garden.
My vision is fading in and out like I’m going to pass out. I’m heaving and huffing, and Dean grabs my cold, dead, fish-like hand. He squeezes my hand into a balled-up fist and nods, and then flags down a cocktail waitress. He orders me a ginger ale and himself a beer.
“Exposure therapy. Huh? That’s one way to go about it,” He reassures me.
“Right.”
“What did I tell you?”
“If it was a heart attack, I’d know it. I’d be on the floor by now.”
The waitress arrives with a ginger ale and the beer. She sets them on paper coasters. I gulp down about half my glass in half as many seconds. I bring a massive intake of air into my lungs.
I’m not dead yet. Not dead yet. Not yet. Not now.
There’s a man, albeit a strange man, who cared enough about me to drive me here. I pull it together. “I—I can see why Andy liked it here so much,” I stutter, begging my body to get a grip.
“Yeah? Why?” He takes a sip of his beer, totally at ease. He doesn’t seem to mind me.
“The music.” My eyes dart around. There’s a three piece set. A saxophonist, a drummer and a singer. “It’s right—right up his alley. This is his sound. One of them anyway. Andy loved jazz.”
“But he wasn’t a jazz singer?” Dean asks.
“No.” I take a sip of bubbly ginger ale. “He was not.”
We’re silent, and we listen to the set. I don’t know much about jazz music, but I like it.
I think Andy would have liked it even more.
There’s something about a saxophone late at night that makes you wish you were dancing.
There’s many others dancing, but Dean and I stay still at the high top table, lest I freak out any more.
“You don’t have to stay,” I tell him.
“Oh, I’m staying.” He orders another drink. This time a shot. He downs it before he finishes his sentence. “Someone needs to watch you.”
As much as I want to deny it, someone does need to watch me. But I don’t know why he decided it has to be him.
“Maybe someone needs to watch you,” I say. “You’re sure drinking a lot for someone who has somewhere to be.”
“My thing can wait,” Dean says, the wrinkles in his forehead appearing. Then why did he need a rental car so damn bad?
I swing my feet above the floor and pivot to watch the music.
There’s a small, tight wooden stage in the corner of the bar area, where three or four lights are shining on the band.
The singer is an older man, dressed to the nines.
His face is radiating in the lights. He was made for this.
His bandmates are following his lead. The song ends and the singer takes a gulp of water—he’s sweating.
It must be hot under the lamps in that suit.
The cocktail waitress arrives with Dean’s third drink.
“What is that?” I ask as he stirs in an olive on a toothpick.
“Have you never seen a martini?”
“It’s been a while. I didn’t peg you as the kind of guy who goes for a martini.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” Dean gives me a dark glare and turns away from me. “Let’s keep it that way.”
We stay through til the end of the set. It’s 2:30 in the morning when they finish, and Dean has gone through another beer, another martini and a shot, yet he’s not sloppy or belligerent or loud.
He sits quietly on his stool, probably waiting for me to say something.
I’m just happy I made it through the night without dying or combusting or anything in between.
“Give me the keys.” I hold my hand out to Dean.
“What? Why do you want the keys?” It’s hard to tell, but his voice is slurring.
“I can drive,” I say. “You’re too drunk.”
“No. You’re not driving me five hours through the night. It’s way, way too late for you to be driving.” Dean waves me off.
“I meant, I’ll drive home,” I say.
“No. Like I said, it’s too late. We’ll just stay at the inn.”
“What?” I ask.
“Don’t you have, like, a whole suitcase packed for your little road trip?”
“Yeah, but, us? Together? In an inn?” I’m flabbergasted. “It’s like a 40 minute drive. I think I can handle it.”
“You haven’t driven in what, a year? Do you even have a license?” Dean is zipping up his jacket. “No, thanks. Let’s go.” Dean drags me by the scruff of my puffer jacket out of the bar and through the main doors of the inn. I can’t tell if it’s me holding him up, or him holding me up.
We walk through the hall like we’re in a three-legged race contest, but we make it to the counter in one piece.
The woman behind the counter looks sleepy and is slow, but she gives us a good price on two rooms that I put on my credit card.
I make a note to tell Dean in the morning that he owes me $64.
Finally, I feel like the one in charge as Dean follows me like a puppy on a leash to our next-door rooms. The hallway is dusty, dank and dimly lit. I fumble with the keys, because Dean is towering over me, swaying, watching as I put the key in every which way.
“Are you the drunk one?” He laughs, and then immediately belches.
“No.” I finally get the door open and once in the room, he immediately flops onto the small double bed, not bothering to take off his long jacket.
I dig through my tote bag once more, looking for my bottle of ibuprofen.
Unwilling to give up the whole bottle, I open the lid and shake out two for him.
I hold my hand out, two red pills in my palm.
“Here. Take these. Your head is going to kill you in the morning.”
“I don’t want these,” He groans, waving my hand away.
I put them on the nightstand anyway. “Unzip your jacket so you don’t suffocate.”
“I’m not a baby, I can take care of myself,” He moans, shedding the jacket like a second skin. At least he has the wherewithal to listen to me.
“Fine,” I say. “Goodnight.” I align his shoes by the doorway, and close the door, praying he’ll still be there when I wake up.