My Idaho Forever

        Rick is my motel’s only patron. Every eight to twelve days he drives up in a dust cloud from either the East or West and asks me if there’s vacancy. I stand tall and proud behind my ply board desk and tell him that I’ll see what I can do. He asks for the penthouse suite of the single-floor building. I tell him that I keep it reserved just for him, and he shoots me a sun worn wink. I pluck the key to room 107 from its hook on the wall behind me and drop it into his open palm. He tells me that I am the best concierge this side of the Mississippi, and I worry about who bests me on the other side of a river I’ve never seen. On his fifth visit to my fine establishment I asked him why he embarks on his continuous pilgrimage across the United States.

“What do you do all that driving for?”

“I can’t pick a favorite ocean.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One’s blonde.”

The twelfth time he visited, and I asked again, he stared over my shoulder for a few beats before answering. I suppose that by going up to his car and asking I had caught him off guard. Perhaps I was being rude.

“Don’t you get tired of being in the car so much?”

“Well, someone has to make sure that there aren’t large pits in the highway.”

“Is that your job?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“How much do you get paid?”

“Paid?”

On his twenty-seventh visit I ask again. I am working on a website in order to counteract my lack of customers, and I am hoping he can offer some insight to what my location offers. Maybe he just loves driving through southern Idaho.

“By Jove Missy somebody has to keep your lights on. Besides, if I provide enough patronage maybe you’ll finally put a pool in for me.”

I keep my chlorine allergy and misinformed fear of sharks to myself.

Rick always checks in around 7pm and asks what there is to eat around here. The empty highway shares no ideas, so I microwave us some Salisbury steaks. I don’t advertise dinner service as an amenity, but there’s no sense in making Rick drive forty-five minutes into town; I’ve kept the freezer stocked for him since his eighteenth visit. After the nineteenth I started microwaving them as soon as I see the sun glint off of the front of his bug-splattered car. We chew on the processed meat while sitting in the lawn chairs (a listed amenity) on the front patio. (Rick says that it is not really a patio, because there is no wood or paving, it’s just an area I cleared the rocks from by the parking lot, which is also just dirt I cleared rocks from.) In between bites he tells me tales of the road, which largely consist of various animals that he almost or did in fact run over. He recites the tunings of various radio stations that have transmission along the groove he has worn in the country, and lists off songs he heard during the drive. 

After his plastic container is scraped clean of gravy he pulls out a thin white cigarette, but I have a strict no smoking rule, so he walks out to the parking lot to light up. I bring my legs up to my chest and tuck my head into my knees. The mountains shield his outline from the setting sun as the sky dies in shades of dandelion. After his cigarette joins the rest of Idaho’s debris he makes a show of putting a mint in his mouth before walking back to the patio. He knows that I hate the smell. 

Rick keeps a surfboard tied to the top of his car, but complains about hippies on the West Coast.

“I thought that hippies were from the 70s?”

“Hippies are a constantly renewing resource.”

“They surf too?”

“They don’t do it right. They don’t respect the water.”

“You sound like a-”

“Shut up. My carbon footprint is too high for that shit.”

I remind him that the hotel has a strict no cursing rule, and he tells me that that’s why no one else stays here. I tell him that he always just misses the other customers; they pull away as he drives in. We know that I am lying. We sit in silence for a while after that, but I don’t mind. The silence is quieter with someone else around. When the sun is gone, and he gets too cold he stands up in a big stretch. In unison, we say, “Welllll, long drive tomorrow” and I escort him to his room, because I am the best concierge this side of the Mississippi. I remind him that checkout is at 11am, and he reminds me that he’ll be gone before sunrise. I let my hand graze the walls of the motel as we walk and feel the parts that need to be repainted rough against my fingers, when he unlocks the door he turns to me and grins.

“You coming in?”

I blush, duck my head, and turn to go back to the office without replying. I walk steadily until I hear the door shut behind him before leaning into the wall again; light blinks from my northern stars. I go inside and fall into my cot. I dream my same listless dreams. 

Rick comes back into the office at the time of morning when frost dreams of the desert, but I am already awake. He tells me that it was the best night of sleep that he’s ever had and drops his key into my ever waiting palm from across the desk. It’s still warm from his hand. My fingers curl around it unthinkingly, and the edge of the desk digs into the bone of my hips.

“Come with me. You’d love Connecticut.”

“I can’t just leave.”

“You’d rather stay in the middle of nowhere?”

“Isn’t that what you do?”

“I’m not staying anywhere.”

“One day someone will find gold in those mountains and put in a strip mall. Families will need someplace to stay, so they can wake up early and go to the wax museum. I’ll need to order new paint and stock a vending machine. Besides, where would you sleep? If I left you’d have to reroute.”

He shakes his head softly at me before turning to go, but I rush around the counter to open the door for him. I follow him to his car like a stray dog that has memories of a single Christmas. He opens the car door he never locked and winks before giving me a line about going off to hunt for adventure and turning his engine over. He’s all lines. The radio crackles emptily as exhaust burns lightly in my nose, and the gravel snaps against itself into rubber tires. After his car joins the endless void of horizon I go to check his room.

Cleaning motel rooms isn’t about removing a mess. It’s about making it so the mess never happened at all, no one has ever been in the room before, no one knows the carpet pattern. Strip the linens from the bed. Rid the room of any trash. I’m not stuck. Wipe down every surface. Lift the indent from the mattress. Rewind the water back into the faucet. Bleach the shower. Bleach the bathroom floor. Bleach any tiled surface. Let the chemicals burn inside the ridges of your fingerprints. Run the vacuum back and forth and back and forth. Tuck the blankets into the bed frame. Re-case the pillows. Restock the coffee. Stare wantonly out the window. Wonder what I’d like about Connecticut.

One day after he heads East my feet stick to the tracks his tires etched. I can’t lift them towards the single task my life revolves around. I collapse into the dirt and let the dirt crawl into my hair. Memories of dreams I used to have flash against Idaho sky, bright and blue and endless. There were big ones, but when I blink them away the one thing I really want is for someone else to make my bed. Or to not have a bed at all. There’s another motel further down the road. They have a Coca-Cola vending machine, and so I never told Rick about it in case he’d like it better. Idaho sings a song of warming sun and silence until I hear the sound of engine enter my frame again, but I don’t lift my head from the ground until the car pulls into my parking lot. It’s Rick.

“What do you say we take turns?”

“What?”

“I’ll run the motel for a bit and you can take the car. That way someone is here if that damn wax museum shows up. Just drive East until you hit ocean and then turn back around.”

I sit up all the way and stare at his grizzled head sticking out his car window. I can’t speak.

“You know how to drive?”

I nod and taking that as my agreement to the idea he gets out of the car.

“Just pay attention to the gas, you wouldn’t want to get stranded again. Steak still in the freezer? I know where the keys are.”

He gives me a hand as I get back up on my feet as an exhilarating feeling of displacement weakens my knees. I hold out my palm to him for his car keys. They’re still warm when they drop into my palm.