This brings us to the biggest mistake of all: I shouldn’t have run out in front of a truck. If only I’d left Michael’s cabin fifteen minutes later! Let’s say an hour, so I could have slept with him one last time. And maybe I could have taken the trail back to the motel, rather than the big road, just to be on the safe side.
Surely not even I could have managed to get hit by a truck there!
I don’t know enough about philosophy or theology for this kind of thinking. Maybe our time on earth is predetermined. Maybe someone up there has measured my life and said, This is how much Henny gets. No refills. I’m afraid we can’t serve you anymore. You can have one last weekend with Michael as consolation, but that’s it, okay? Or maybe they threw in that weekend with Michael as a particularly cruel joke. I don’t know.
Maybe I would have tripped on a root and hit my head if I’d taken the other way home.
There’s no meaning behind it, Henny, Michael would have said.
And MacKenzie: Sometimes bad things just happen. It is what it is.
Fatalism isn’t any consolation, I discover, but at least it’s not as provocative as thinking of my death as the will of some kind of God.
If God exists, he hasn’t even realized that I’m dead yet, or I would be up there by the pearly gates checking if Saint Peter has a reservation for me. But maybe it’s just as well. Heaven would be too big and scary for me. I’d get tongue-tied among all the new people. And I’m really not cool enough for hell.
MacKenzie would have been much better at this…whatever this is. She would have seen the darn light, or maybe she would have created it herself. Made her way straight to heaven, fascinated by the new experience.
If she hadn’t ended up in hell, that is. That would really have annoyed her. “Cheryl Stone and the rest of Sacred Faith Evangelical Church will be unbearable when they find out they were right about me,” she’d say, but she would at least have found some comfort in the fact that they would definitely end up there, too, sooner or later.
Maybe I’m just stuck in some kind of waiting room at an existential airport?
Flight HE0847 to hell: delayed
Flight HI1284 to heaven: delayed
But that can’t be how it works. People would have complained.
* * *
The restaurant is full of people. We serve the best breakfasts in Pine Creek, and today the food also comes with an irresistible side serving of fresh disaster. Eggs and bacon aren’t the only things cooking; the air itself seems to be sizzling with rumors.
The restaurant is a long, narrow room with booths along the windows, smaller tables in the middle, and high stools along the bar. From there, the guests can enjoy the spectacle of Dolores’s cooking. Or, on days like today, her dramatic tears. The place is so full that people are actually standing in the narrow walkway between the tables and the booths. Others are crammed in behind the people sitting at the counter, ordering over their shoulders. MacKenzie leaves the reception desk to help with serving.
I nervously follow her movements. I don’t know whether she should be working today.
She’s an unreliable waitress at the best of times, more likely to be making chitchat with her favorites than remembering strangers’ orders, and today is worse than usual.
I walk alongside her, patting her awkwardly on the arm as if I’m trying to calm an anxious horse, but it has zero impact. She is clutching the coffeepot in front of her like a shield, refilling cups at random without even pretending to take down people’s orders.
“I was drinking tea!” an old man protests, but another shakes his head and sits down next to him to explain the scale of the catastrophe that has struck us.
“Not much over thirty… Worked here all her life… They were…friends.”
“Yes,” the old man says irritably, “but what am I supposed to do with my tea now?”
If MacKenzie can hear them, she doesn’t show it. Her face is so blank that people instinctively move out of her way.
Before long, Dolores’s son, Alejandro, develops a system of simply following her around the room. We become a kind of team: me by her side, constantly patting her on the arm, and him one step behind, swapping coffee cups and amending orders as necessary. MacKenzie doesn’t notice a thing.
People keep flashing her concerned glances when they think she isn’t looking. Her dogged expression makes them far more uncomfortable than Dolores’s hysterical sobs, which can be heard from the kitchen every now and then. All the regulars are used to Dolores. Her emotions make the breakfasts taste better; she’s never as masterful as when she’s in the grip of a mood swing. A few tears in the scrambled eggs or pancake batter are just right in a situation like this. It’s MacKenzie’s expressionless chill that unnerves people.
Clarence, who has been living at the motel for a few years, takes out his hip flask and spikes his breakfast coffee. As a rule, he normally waits until after nine.
Cheers, Clarence, I think.
As the morning wears on, the majority of breakfast guests slowly drift away. The only person left is a man who happens to be passing through town. He has no idea what all the fuss is about, and he grabs MacKenzie’s arm as she walks by.
“Excuse me, miss,” he says. He has an incredibly whiny voice. “I ordered pancakes.”
MacKenzie looks down at his hand on her arm. He quickly lets go of her.
“And you got a breakfast burrito,” she says.
He gives her an expectant look, assuming she is about to apologize and correct her mistake. But MacKenzie just smiles at him—more of a wolf’s grin than a smile, really—and the man leans back as far as his seat will allow him.
“Enjoy!” she chirps before Alejandro gently takes the coffeepot from her hand and places it on an empty table.
“But my pancakes!” the man says.
“Eat your blasted burrito,” MacKenzie says, and Alejandro takes hold of her shoulders and pushes her out through the door.
* * *
Pine Creek Motel and Cabins was built during a time when the open road was the great miracle, when cars were exciting and nature boring. Every single window at the motel looks out onto the parking lot.
It’s a motel built for dreaming, I’m sure of that. There are dreams in the walls here. Dreams, and hard work and family and friendship. You just have to know how to see beyond the drab colors and the hand-sewn curtains that have started to fray at the seams.
I know many people think that motels are impersonal, or boring, or sometimes even slightly, well, shabby, but that’s only because they don’t know them like I do. Our kind of motels are run by families. They’re temporary homes created for others by moms and pops and sons and daughters working together.
Sure, it’s the kind of motel that has never had enough money or staff, but that’s part of the charm. That’s what makes working here so interesting. The last owner sewed the curtains by hand because new custom-made ones were too expensive. Michael, Camila, MacKenzie, and I painted the walls, back when everything was still a game and it didn’t really matter whether we were paid or not.
So now, every time I look at anything here, I see me and MacKenzie and Michael and Camila, the most glorious friendship that has ever existed; and Juan Esteban, Camila’s uncle, who made it all possible with his dreams and visions and occasional madness. That’s what a motel is.
The design of the motel is like a kind of sideways L, where the long side is a two-story building containing just under thirty rooms. Even numbers downstairs, odd ones upstairs. We have coffee makers in every room and microwaves in roughly half, and on a good day both the fans and the air-conditioning work.
The familiar, homey environment cheers me up. I can’t do anything about the mistakes I’ve made so far. The real question is what I’m going to do now.
Not that I have an answer to that, of course. But I run after MacKen
zie as she cuts across the parking lot on her way toward reception. A lone car is parked outside. On the other side, the neon sign glows even more faintly in the sunlight.
The first thing she does as she steps inside is to kick the couch.
It’s old, battered, and uncomfortable, but it hasn’t exactly done her any harm. The floor lamp next to it is also largely innocent, but she gives that a kick, too. The rip in the dusky-pink shade has been there for some time. The brochures full of tips about local tourist attractions are tired and dog-eared, but it’s from age rather than any guests flicking through them. They cascade sadly to the floor as MacKenzie gives the stand a shove.
“Crap,” she says. “Crap crap crap crap crap.”
The wall is next on her list of targets.
She slumps down behind the desk. For several minutes, she just stares straight ahead as though she can’t remember what she is doing there. Then she leans forward and starts hitting her head against the desk. Slowly and methodically. Each one makes me wince.
She straightens up and calls Alejandro to ask if he will take over from her at the desk.
“Sure,” he quickly says. “Anything. No problem. You just have to ask.”
MacKenzie rests her forehead on the desk. Closes her eyes. She is still clutching the phone to her ear after Alejandro hangs up.
“I’m going to have to tell Michael,” she says.
* * *
She finds him around the back of the cabin. Michael is looking out at the creek, toward the mountains, and he seems… He looks happy. Rested and tanned and utterly carefree.
I was right. He doesn’t know. The level of interest at breakfast showed that news of my death has spread across town, but Michael isn’t in touch with anyone here. His face is calm and relaxed, his gaze lively and amused, his body strong and full of energy. To him, it’s just another sunny morning.
I turn sharply toward MacKenzie and hold out my arms to stop her from getting any closer. “Don’t tell him!” I beg her. “He’ll just be upset. Me and Michael can have one more happy day together, can’t we? Tomorrow. You can tell him tomorrow. If you really have to.”
MacKenzie looks about as reluctant as I am to go over to him. She just stands there, dithering, until Michael spots her.
“MacKenzie,” he says, sounding surprised. He’s smiling. To him, this is just an unexpected but welcome encounter with an old friend.
MacKenzie doesn’t return his smile.
He seems confused by her stony face. They haven’t seen each other in fifteen years. “Is this about Henny?” he asks.
MacKenzie seems relieved. “How did you know?” she asks. “Did someone…?”
“You’re worried I’m going to hurt her, right? Did you come over here to tell me to leave her alone?”
“Jesus, Michael.”
“Or to ask what the hell I’m playing at, coming back like this, without giving you any warning? I hope that’s not what this is, because I can’t give you any answers. I was just driving through Oregon and couldn’t help myself.”
He gives her a convincing smile, as though he is trying to make her laugh both with and at him. “Come on, MacKenzie,” he says. “Is it really so bad? We’re still friends, aren’t we?”
“Could you just shut up a second?”
“Okay. Not friends, then.”
I glance back and forth between them, paralyzed by the acute need to do something, say something, anything at all to protect him and keep him easygoing and happy for just a few more hours.
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll never be able to say this,” MacKenzie says. “I can’t… There’s no easy way to tell you this.”
“MacKenzie, what is it? Did something happen?”
“She’s dead. Henny’s dead, all right?”
All around us, everything is just like it was a few seconds ago. The sun is shining. The clear, icy stream is glittering in the sunlight. The mountains are in the background. The scent of rosemary in the air. But Michael can’t see any of that now. His face is worryingly pale.
His jaws are so tightly clenched that it hurts even to look at him. Cramped, tensed muscles: his arms, his thighs. It looks as though he wants to launch himself at something and just punch and punch and punch.
It takes real effort for him to relax enough to say even a single word: “How?”
“There was an accident. A truck. That’s all I know. Sheriff Ed called the motel.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. It happened sometime in the afternoon.”
“Where?”
MacKenzie hesitates. “On the road between the cabin and the motel.”
Michael instinctively turns his head toward the cabin. “She was leaving here.”
“I guess so.”
“She was in a hurry. She’d stayed too long. She had to get back to work.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“She said…” He struggles to swallow and doesn’t manage to say anything else.
“Michael…” I don’t know whether it’s me or MacKenzie who says that.
“I should’ve… If I hadn’t…”
“It’s not your fault,” MacKenzie says. “She could just as easily have been walking over there anyway. Besides, it’s as much my fault. She was heading back to take over from me in reception.”
But Michael is already striding away from us. His body explodes into motion. When he reaches the cabin, he jumps into his car and tears away, tires screeching. The car skids on the gravel. He’s gone before I even have time to react.
I stand there like an idiot, watching him leave.
* * *
“Are you sure you should be working?” Alejandro asks, but he immediately gets up from behind the desk so that MacKenzie can slump onto the chair. Maybe he’s scared she will collapse if she remains on her feet. The brochures are back in their stand, and the lamp is in its usual spot.
“Why not?” she says.
“Shouldn’t you—uh, I don’t know—get some rest or something? You look a little weird.”
“I’m fine. What would I do otherwise? I can’t spend the whole damn day in bed. I’d really go crazy then.”
Alejandro nods. Then he leaves her alone.
I assume that MacKenzie is going through the reservations, but when I peer over her shoulder, I realize that she is on Facebook.
She is working her way through the list of people called Camila Alvarez.
Camila. Being hit by a truck clarifies a lot of things in a person’s mind, and I suddenly know without a shadow of a doubt that we shouldn’t have let her leave all those years ago. Technically, this motel still belongs to her, but more importantly, she belongs here. If I could still drive a car, I would jump right into it, take off to California, and get her back here.
But I guess a Facebook message is a start.
We haven’t seen her in fifteen years, but several people can be dismissed right away: One is too white. One is too old. One too young. Every time MacKenzie spots someone who could fit the bill, she sends them a message: Henny is dead.
I guess she thinks it’ll mean something to one of them.
Henny is dead. Henny is dead. Henny is dead.
Chapter 5
The Redwood Cabin
There used to be four of us. Me, MacKenzie, Michael, and Camila. And then there were only two, right up until Friday, when Michael showed up at the motel.
He just walked right in like he had never left.
We were surprised to see each other, but I was the only one who had the right to be. He must have known he would run into me sooner or later, given that he was checking into my motel. Still, he tensed up. Kept clutching his two backpacks, didn’t put either of them down.
When he first left me, I used to daydream about him coming back just like that. I would be stand
ing in reception on a perfectly ordinary day, except that I’d look unusually pretty. Wearing my best jeans and having a good hair day. He would say: Henny. I’ve missed you. I’ve changed my mind. I can’t live without you.
“Henny,” he said.
I wasn’t wearing my best jeans.
He was standing too close to the automatic doors and they kept trying to close on him, so he had to take a half step forward. He put down his bags and glanced around.
“I… Sorry, I should’ve…”
His eyes swept over the stand of tourist brochures about Pine Creek County and Oregon, then focused on the painting above the desk, by a local artist from Baker City. For some reason, he found the oil painting of Hells Canyon at sunset fascinating. He stood there for a long time, just staring at it.
The depressing thought that I matched reception crossed my mind. Drab, gray, and nondescript, like I always had been, but older and wearier than when he saw me last. I tried to smooth my hair and wished I had organized the brochure stand. And vacuumed. And put on some makeup.
He smiled, half-embarrassed and half-apologetic. “I should have come up with something to say in advance, right?” he said.
I can still hear how my heart started racing in my chest. Dunk-dunk. Dunk-dunk. Dunk-dunk. It feels weirdly calming to remember that now, but at the time, all I could think was that not even fifteen years of absence had taught my body to stop reacting to his.
“And I shouldn’t be feeling this shocked. I wanted to see you. I just thought… I didn’t think.”
“Clearly,” I said, noting with satisfaction that it was precisely what MacKenzie would have said.
“I’d like a room, please. Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here with my bags.”
“You could have just wanted to say hi on the way to your parents’ place.”
“Christ, no. Definitely not.”
“No, then you wouldn’t be quite so surprised to see me here.”
“Not surprised, just…”
Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC) Page 3