HOT SPRINGS ETERNAL, Part I
EDITOR’S NOTE: For the next four weeks, we will be featuring fiction by Emma Straub, Flatmancrooked’s first LAUNCH author. If you like what you read, you can invest in Emma’s future. Head over to her LAUNCH page for more details.
The vacation was Teddy’s idea: see the West! If you asked Richard, driving across deserts and mountains in the middle of the summer sounded more like punishment than reward, but Teddy was exuberant, and that could be convincing. Richard thought that if he put it off, and waited until just the month before to say yea or nay, Teddy would give up, as he often did, and they could spend the summer dashing across the city from air-conditioned room to air-conditioned room. Instead, when the semester was over, and all of Richard’s grades were in, with the students’ papers marked and duly returned, Teddy pulled a gigantic, messy burrito of a file folder out from under their bed. Tiny newspaper clippings slipped out onto their duvet. Richard worried about the smudgy ink against the white cotton, but let it happen anyway. He could clean up when Teddy, distracted, left the room.
“How have I not vacuumed that up?” Richard asked.
“You only vacuum on Thursdays,” Teddy said. “On Thursdays, it lives in my closet.” He tittered, so pleased.
New York was bad in the heart of the summer—that was true. Richard could trade stickiness for scenery. They’d fly into Denver, rent a car, and head towards the Pacific. Teddy’s idea of a good time was pulling off the highway every so often to look at giant man-made objects: balls of twine, plaster dinosaurs, diners shaped like hotdogs. He’d grown up in Ocala, Florida, which had given him a taste for the bizarre—that and the need to add sugar to most beverages.
The car they rented was small and boxy, Japanese. Teddy said “Arigato” to the attendant at the lot and then later to a teenage girl working a drive-thru window where they stopped for food, but still complained they weren’t driving something larger, more imposing.
“Like a pick-up truck?” Richard had asked.
“Ooh,” Teddy said. “Yes, please.” He mimed a giant steering wheel, and careened off the road. But for most of the trip, Teddy rode on the passenger’s side, an open map ignored in his lap.
“Do you know how much gas it takes to fill up a truck?” Richard said.
“Killjoy.” Teddy was younger by five years, still in his early thirties.
When they’d met, Richard had been an older man. Somehow, though, no matter how much older Richard got, Teddy never seemed to age. Every year at Richard’s birthday party, which Teddy invariably threw, he would cover his ears and shriek at the number, as though such a thing could never, never come for him.
Richard’s therapist, Robin, was a large woman—not merely heavyset or pleasantly plump, but so big she spilled out of her normal-sized office chair in several directions. She reminded Richard of Edna Turnblad from Hairspray—Divine, not John Travolta. This was one of the things he liked best about her. Richard didn’t spill, exactly, but he was what Teddy affectionately called “schlubby,” and he was soft everywhere one could be soft, right down to the wispy brown hairs still clinging to his hairline. Richard had been proud when the word came out of Teddy’s Catholic mouth—a win for the Jews.
Robin believed in Jesus, which Richard knew from various objects in the office and on her person—a cross here, a crucifix there. She also seemed to believe that Richard and Teddy could make it work, which Richard chalked up to the fact that Robin had never actually met Teddy, and was picturing someone far more suitable. She was interested in success. During their sessions, Robin and Richard talked about ways he could stop being condescending to Teddy, which she seemed to think was a problem.
“And your last fight?” Robin sat at a desk, which Richard liked. It made the whole thing seem more official, less touchy-feely. These were real problems—why should he be on a couch? During every session, Robin demolished an impressively large bottle of Mountain Dew. She used a straw, which had something to do with protecting her tooth enamel. Richard had asked.
“Oh, you know, more of the same.” Richard thought about ways to make himself sound less insensitive, less harsh. Teddy was the better looking of the two; that had always been the case, and still was. He had a rakish quality, with slightly wild eyes and well-groomed hair that seemed to betray his usual state of excitement. Was it so awful that Richard had noticed the growing belly, the softer cheeks, when Richard himself had always possessed such things?
“Yesterday, I was telling him about one of my students, and right in the middle of the conversation, he looks at me and says, ‘You didn’t tell me I looked cute today.’ And then he made a pouty face! Right in the middle of what I was talking about.”
“Uh huh.” Robin’s face was impassive—all white, all clear. Her dark brown hair hung straight to her shoulders, curving out slightly to accommodate her cheeks. She nodded, which Richard knew didn’t mean she agreed with what he was saying.
Here was the goal: see the country. New York was always the same. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston. There were the same boutique hotels, the same shops, the same museums. Richard and Teddy were looking for the parts in between. It was either this or go on a gay cruise, and Richard had some pride, after all. He hadn’t driven so much since he was a teenager on Long Island, and the wheel felt good in his hands, the pedal familiar under his foot. Teddy cheered every time they crossed a county line, sometimes giving Richard’s bicep a little squeeze.
Motels with flashing vacancy signs lined the main drag of Glenwood Springs. The springs themselves were the reason that Teddy wanted to stop. He read aloud, rapturously, using his finger to guide his eye across the small type. “Featuring the world’s largest outdoor mineral hot springs pool, this touristy town offers innumerable activities, both for the active traveler and those in search of relaxation….” Richard scanned the shops and bars and gleaming new chain stores. Colorado didn’t look that different from Long Island, if you took the mountains and rivers away.
According to the guidebook, the natural hot springs were what drew Doc Holliday to the town, where he eventually died. “I guess he wasn’t really a doctor after all, if he thought some boiling hot, rotten egg bathwater was going to make him feel better,” Teddy said, then snorted. Teddy had always been adept at amusing himself, which Richard liked. He was excellent at dinner parties, no matter who he was sitting next to. “Ooh! Look at that one!” Teddy pointed out the window and wiggled in his seat, sending the guidebook and an already crumpled map of the United States to the floor of the car.
Richard was not surprised at Teddy’s choice. In their previous travels, Teddy had never once wanted to stay at a Holiday Inn or a Marriott, places where you could count on clean sheets and the comforting smell of bleach in the bathroom. Instead, he liked the hotels that looked on the verge of destruction, with words spelled incorrectly, or ones that looked like cottages where Snow White or the Swiss Miss might work at the front desk. Teddy’s finger now pointed at a small motel with two stories and external staircases. The entire structure was painted sea foam green, with plastic mermaids and seashells affixed to the exterior walls in a haphazard fashion. It reminded Richard of his dead grandmother’s living room on the Jersey shore.
“Honey, they think we’re at the beach. How can we disappoint them?” Teddy knit his fingers together, as if in prayer. Behind him, a mermaid peeked out from behind her molded plastic hair. Richard turned the wheel and pulled into the parking lot of The Seashore Inn…The Mountains. “Come on, baby,” Teddy said, nuzzling against Richard’s cheek as they took the bags out of the trunk. “You’ve got to love those dots.”
“Ellipses,” Richard said. “They’re ellipses.”
The inside of the office looked alarmingly normal—no sand, no ambient sounds of lapping waves. A young woman with icy blond hair waited expectantly for them to approach the counter.
“Hello,” Richard said, reading the woman’s nametag. “Inga. Are there a lot of Ingas in Colorado?”
She smiled generously. If her hair hadn’t been pulled back so tightly, Inga might have looked like a wide-faced version of one of the motel’s resident fish-women. “I am from Sweden,” she said, bowing her head slightly. Teddy bowed back, lowering his torso until it was perpendicular to the floor. He’d been a dancer once upon a time, and Richard knew those impulses were hard to contain. Whenever they stood on a street corner back in New York, waiting to cross, Teddy’s feet would turn out to first position, which he swore was unconscious. Some of Teddy’s former lovers had been dancers, too, and whenever they ran into each other on the street, Richard imagined an elaborate, naked pas de deux. Certain things he had to let slide.
Inga-from-Sweden gave them the keys to Room 105, and momentarily vanished into the depths of the office.
“Oh, god, Richard, look.” Teddy nudged him in the shoulder. “They’re ranked.” On the wall behind the desk, The Seashore Inn proudly displayed its AAA single diamond rating, given every year from 1984 through 1989.
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost,” Richard said, shaking his head. Inga-from-Sweden reappeared, the apples of her cheeks rosier than before. She thought Teddy was handsome, Richard could tell. He’d seen it before. Women always liked Teddy; they tried to make him their best new girlfriend.
“So,” Teddy said, sidling up to the counter and sticking out his bottom like a teenaged girl. “What’s the deal with the hot springs?” He was cute, that was for sure. Richard could deny lots of things about Teddy, but not that. Teddy turned towards Richard and smiled. There were times when Richard was sure Teddy could hear his thoughts. It was strangely comforting.
Inga-from-Sweden told them to wait until after nine o’clock to hit the springs, when the rate would be discounted to seven dollars apiece—nobody needed more than an hour in there, anyway, she said. Richard stretched out on the bed in his swimsuit with his own, imported pillow behind his head. Teddy stood, nude, at the foot of the bed, and recited their dining options from the guidebook.
“O’Kay’s Cattle Ranch—riverfront dining in the heart of town. Expect plenty of crowds in season, but Colorado-sized portions and a full bar. Wonder if they have a mechanical bull. Don’t you think someone in this town probably has a mechanical bull?” Teddy raised one arm overhead and did a little giddy-up, sending his tummy and lower bits jiggling.
“What else?” Richard covered his eyes with his forearm. Slivers of the green walls peeked through, along with flashes of Teddy’s rear end as he paced back and forth across the carpet.
“Maria’s Cantina—as authentic as you can get this far from the border. Wandering mariachi…okay, no way. Lemming’s New York Diner? Are they serious? Oh, god, Richard, let’s go get some pastrami. Who do these people think they are? What do they use to make their bagels, rotten egg water?” Sometimes, when he was excited, his barely southern accent became more pronounced. Teddy had lived in New York for ten years, and with Richard in Chelsea for five. In no way was he in any position to question the presence of pastrami on a menu in Colorado. Nonetheless, Richard acquiesced. On the map, the diner seemed to be a short walk from the hot springs, and Richard wanted red meat. What was the point of being in the middle of the country if you couldn’t eat a local cow? Surely that marbled flesh wouldn’t have traveled too far.
Lemming’s New York Diner was inside the lobby of another hotel, just across the street from O’Kay’s Cattle Ranch, which seemed to have more screaming five-year-olds than cowboys, judging from the scene through the restaurant’s picture window. The walls at Lemming’s were lined with subway tiles, and each table was a stop of its own, as signified by a sign overhead. Richard and Teddy were Fourteenth Street—not far from home.
A waitress appeared. She was wearing an apron with a sea of bagels on it, or mountains of bagels, depending on your perspective. Her name was Nadia, and she had a voice like a linebacker. Teddy’s eyes flew open, enthralled. They ordered pastrami and roast beef sandwiches, and potato pancakes on the side, with both applesauce and sour cream. Two cream sodas. One banana split.
“It’s like having Marlene Dietrich ask you if you want lettuce and tomato,” he hissed across the table, after she had gone.
“They call the borscht ‘beet soup.’” Richard said.
“Well, isn’t that what it is?” Teddy didn’t look up from the plastic menu.
“I guess.” Richard watched as a small replica of a subway car rattled around the restaurant ceiling. Tiny people stared out, justifiably alarmed that they’d never reach their destination.
By Emma Straub
