I finally manage to drag him to the next segment of our Ultimate Experience when a little freckled redhead starts to cry. Once we make it through the cramped house, the place opens up into this massive compound of bizarreness. Rooms filled with giant calliope music-box things (that play themselves if you feed them money), a huge room with a giant whale blaring the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” and other nautical nonsense, and the greatest, yet grossest, of all sights, a room filled with an enormous carousel. This is not a carousel one rides, however, but one you must watch, in horror, as it rotates in garish decadence. I need a thesaurus to find as many words as required to describe the monstrosity of the House on the Rock carousel. Everything here at the House on the Rock is BIG (except, of course, for the miniatures, of which there are many, including an entire circus recreated in tiny painted clowns).
“What the frig…?” Josh can’t even complete his sentence, he’s so struck by this lewd creation. One might be able to get past the thirty zillion Christmas lights (in June) strung about, or the paint chipping off the numerous mystical beasts attached to the double-decker carousel’s poles. But no one can ignore the tasteless “angels” floating above. “Are those mannequins?” Josh asks, incredulous.
“Why, yes, Josh,” I answer as the House on the Rock authority. “Yes, they are.” And they are. Above the carousel hang dozens of underdressed store mannequins, suspended by obvious wires, wearing trashy wigs and all looking kind of slutty.
“This place rocks!” Josh proclaims. “House on the Rock pun intended.”
Two hours, one very large funnel cake, and way too many quarters spent on calliope music later, we’ve made it through the House on the Rock. Josh and I rest on a glossy log bench, when my cell phone slips out of my pocket and clatters to the floor.
“Freakin’ phone,” I declare. “I bet road trips were so much cooler before people could find you whenever they wanted.”
“That’s why I don’t have a cell phone. If I want people to find me, I’ll let them find me. Cell phones are like tracking devices. And if I need to know the time, I’ll just ask someone. Why don’t we just get rid of it,” Josh suggests. “Toss it out the window in the long H-O-R room, over the rocks of H-O-R.” We have officially shortened House on the Rock to the shorter and funnier HOR.
“I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of freedom.” I shake my head. “What if my mom calls?” My mom! I haven’t yet told her about the impromptu road trip. She should be OK with it, since I already took a short road trip over spring break with Josh and some friends to the Wisconsin Dells. But just to be safe, I call her before we leave the HOR and explain, “Josh has commandeered me, Mom, to take me on one last road trip before I leave him and go away to college.” She laughs, knowing full well that she can trust Josh (to keep his hands to himself, sadly, plus the financial aspect of the whole thing). She’s a pretty great mom as far as moms go; she gave me a card a few months ago for my eighteenth birthday telling me that I’m finally free but to stop by for coffee and a hug every once in a while. It was her mom way of telling me that I’m an adult who still has a mommy. I love her so much for that.
“Just keep me posted on how you’re doing. I suppose this can be your substitution for backpacking across Europe?” she asks, hopeful. Mom always used to talk about her backpacking trip before she went off to college, which sounded amazing to me. But, really, I couldn’t ever be bothered to sit down and plan something like that. Mom doesn’t know that, though, so—voilà!—perfect excuse for this trip instead.
“Do you want to call your dad?” I offer the phone to Josh.
“I don’t want to waste the batteries. Besides, what’s the point? He probably won’t even notice I’m gone. If he comes home at all while we’re away.” The mood is darkened just a bit, so I don’t press it. He probably wouldn’t share much more even if I did.
Josh and I hang out in the HOR entrance, looking over the plentiful pamphlet displays for nearby tourist attractions. When I was a kid, I used to collect the pamphlets, plucking out ones that looked interesting and might be worth visiting someday, when I was grown-up enough to make those kinds of decisions. I’d gather pamphlets of natural formations, water shows, outlet malls, and doll museums. Most of them ended up on the floor of our car to dissolve under the muck of winter boots.
We decide to spend the night somewhere nearby, so we can head out early the next morning. Scanning the lodging section, I spot the hilariously named “Don Q Inn.” “Like Don Quixote?” I ask, referring to the wacked-out movie (based on a book, of course) we watched in Spanish class, which inspired my Spanish class name, Dulcinea. Even better, the Don Q Inn is a FantaSuite Hotel in a nearby town.
“FantaSuite?!” Josh and I yell in unison, and I note a couple of grannies glaring at us from a table cut from a great redwood tree. “Sorry.” I shrug at them. Don’t want to upset the grannies.
The Don Q Inn is one of those hotels in which each room has its own theme. “‘Let our FantaSuite suites transport you to the world of your dreams. Each is a unique experience, an adventure, a romantic retreat designed to completely immerse you in the getaway of your choice,’” Josh reads.
“I want to be immersed!” I yell, too excited at the doofosity to contain myself. We proceed to read the room themes to each other: Arabian Nights (Aladdin!), the Blue Room (complete with three-hundred-gallon copper cheese vat tub!), Casino Royale (Vegas!), the Cave (Caveman!), the Float (a Viking ship!), Indian Summer (a wigwam!), Mid-Evil (a poorly spelled room with shackles on the bed!), Northern Lights (full-size igloo!), the Swinger (a hanging bed!), and Shotgun (hunting theme!). Josh and I both zero in on one, and we don’t even have to ask.
“Tranquility Base, baby. That’s where we’re headed,” Josh informs me.
“You took the spacey words right out of my mouth.” The room choice is a no-brainer: a recreation of a Gemini space capsule, complete with moon crater whirl pool. “But wait. Wasn’t Tranquility Base part of the Apollo 11 mission?”
“I suppose,” Josh muses.
“So wouldn’t that make this suite historically inaccurate?”
“Right. They’re very concerned with historical accuracy at the Don Q Inn. That’s why they plopped a heart-shaped bed in the middle of a cave.”
“You never know. That could be historically accurate. I have heard of cave paintings with heart-shaped beds in them. Right next to the wooly mammoth wearing a Snuggie.” Josh smiles at me out of the corner of his eye.
The buzz of HOR and the prospect of Tranquility Base are enough to get any human jazzed, but in the back of my mind (OK, more like really close to the front) is the fact that Josh and I are going to be staying in a hotel room together. Alone. With a whirl pool and a round bed. The Penny Quest has just taken a very interesting turn, and I’m not talking about the one aiming us at Portland.
My mom gave me a birthday gift today. A week and a half early. She said she couldn’t wait. Couldn’t even wait to wrap it, so she didn’t. The box was from QVC. I had a million guesses based on recent shows I caught her watching. Was it from Joan Rivers’s collection? Quacker Factory? Iman Global Chic? But no. None of the above. Not even anything I saw her watching. She really surprised me this year. An olive tree. Because I once asked for an olive off her salad plate. I guess that’s thoughtful. But where will I put it?
CHAPTER NINE
Let me back up to the History of Me and Josh to explain the platonicity of the situation.
It all started freshman year, study hall (as most things do). Josh had on these insanely huge, chain-bedraggled purple pants, and I had on these really skinny jeans, also in purple. We ended up alphabetically next to each other (yes, they gave us assigned seating in study hall so that they could easily spot the ditchers by the holes in the grid). Josh leaned over my desk and asked, “Excuse me. Do you have a purple pen I could borrow?” Hilarious, right? Turned out he had some friends who were dating some of my friends they met at DQ while I was away being a junior counselor
at overnight camp. At the time he was dating a friend of a friend (the first in a long list of dullards who never interested me, or him, enough to make much of an impression). We started as friends, so I guess we just kind of continued that way. I think guys—some, maybe most, but hopefully not all—are incapable of liking girls in a girlfriend way if they like them in a friend way first. Because Josh has never even attempted to be physical with me beyond hugging (nonsexual), kissing (on the cheek or forehead), or smacking my butt (football player manner). He still sometimes says things in flirty ways (using names like sweetheart, baby, cutie), but I think that’s more out of habit than due to the fact that I could possibly be an attractive female if he’d just screw in his eyeballs correctly. I just grossed myself out.
I, on the other eyeball, have had a crush on him from purple day one. Since before we met, actually, when I saw him play guitar at Lizzy Rubin’s junior high graduation party. I’m such a sucker for guys in bands, even more of a sucker when it comes to guitarists who also sing harmony parts (So supportive! Yet, what do we really know about them?). I’m very good at playing it cool around guys (which probably accounts for the very small, count them on one hand, not every finger, number of boyfriends I’ve had in my life), which makes me, well, very cool to have as a girl friend.
Fast-forward to the end of senior year, exactly four weeks before prom. I’m embarrassed, ashamed, hitting-myself-in-the-head pathetic because I wanted, no needed, to go to the prom. Who can explain why? Was it all the movies and TV shows and books that glorify the crap out of this ritual? Did I really believe that I’d be the girl, so common and blendy until my glorious, glam debut in some bud get hotel’s ballroom that everyone would whisper, “Who’s that?” “Don’t you know? That’s Lillian Erlich.” “But she’s so beautiful…” And then Josh would swoop in, my date in powder blue, and say, “I didn’t need a prom dress to tell me how hot you are,” and he’d grab me, dip me, and kiss me passionately while balloons and sparkles fell from the ceiling and the whole room applauded.
Not how it happened. Four weeks before prom, neither Josh nor I had dates. Josh could not have cared less, but I had a countdown in my head that said if no one asked either of us by four weeks prior to prom, I would ask Josh. As a friend. So I did. And he answered, “Why not?” Six hours of dress shopping later, I was ready for my close-up in, what else, a skimpy little purple dress. Only one week later, I got a call from Josh.
“Yeah. About prom…,” he started.
Of course like a douche I had to interrupt with “Do you think we should try to match? Like in a kind of funny way? But so we look good in pictures? Or is that stupid? Or is that funny stupid? Do I have to get you a corsage? What do you call a guy corsage? A boutonniere?”
“Lil.” Josh caught a break between my pathetic desperations and said, “Look, I’ve been thinking. This is our senior prom and all, and maybe I want to go with, you know, someone I like more than a friend?” No response from me except in my stomach, which initially jumped up to my lungs but quickly plummeted to near bathroom floor horror. “I kind of just asked Liza Bell.”
I know, I know. It makes him sound like the biggest prick when I tell that story, but when I put myself in his shoes, I mean, I wanted to go with someone I liked more than a friend.
I ended up spending prom night on the couch, watching prom-themed horror movies (Carrie, Prom Night, Prom Night 2) with several boxes of stale Girl Scout Cookies I found in the pantry and a bottomless bowl of popcorn I whipped up in the Whirley Pop. Not exactly a memory for the keepsake book.
Tonight, now, it’s just us. No boyfriends. No girlfriends. No external crushes who may sneak their way into the lunar module. One bed—one round, somewhat hysterical, space-themed bed. And the two of us. Heading west. However we get there.
CHAPTER TEN
“We need to pick some stuff up at the drugstore,” Josh says through bites of Pizza Hut thin-crust cheese-and-pineapple pizza. There are very few food options near the Don Q, and we wanted something quick, easy, and familiar. We called the Don Q to reserve Tranquility Base and were pleasantly surprised to find it available at such short notice. Maybe it’s more popular during seasons of high space travel.
I pick out my salad from the salad bar, which I got because I always pretend I’m going to try and eat a little healthy on a road trip, when, really, what’s the point? It’s a road trip. But more important—what does Josh need at the drugstore?
When someone says they need to stop at the drugstore, particularly someone who will be staying at a hotel later in the evening, the first thing I assume is condoms. Does that make me a perv? Or just hopeful?
After picking out lettuce, tomatoes, croutons, and Thousand Island dressing, I return to the table with my response. “So what do you need at the drugstore?” Casual, real casual.
“Well, seeing as we didn’t plan on a road trip, we’ll need to get toothbrushes and multivitamins, stuff like that.”
“Naturally.” I nod.
“And what else, Lil?” He’s prodding me to answer for him, to anticipate his thoughts and needs.
I would hate to be wrong on this one. Mortified to be wrong. So I just say, “I give up.”
Josh sighs. “Hiding Out, dude. The hair dye? We still haven’t done our hair, Cryer style.”
“Right. Hair dye. Of course.” Remind me to hit my head against a wall later.
At Walgreens we scan the shelves of hair dye. I don’t know how anyone chooses between walnut brown and espresso brown and hazelnut brown, except by what they might want to eat.
Josh saunters over to me with a box, holding it near his face as if straight out of a commercial. “What do you think?” He glances shiftily at the box. “Is it me?” I read the box, “Sunshine Blonde,” complete with bouncy-headed babe on the cover.
“Looks just like you,” I say. “Except she has blue eyes.”
“So who are you going to be?” he asks. “How about we do a Legend of Billie Jean on you?” The Legend of Billie Jean is yet another late-night TV movie of the eighties, about some small-town Southern folk who get themselves mixed up with the law after a lecherous old guy gropes the main character (Billie Jean), and something involving her little brother’s bike. A little too complicated for my late-night lucidity. The most memorable part of the movie is when Billie Jean cuts off her long, blond hair into this tough short cut and gets all badass. She keeps shouting, “Fair is fair!” My other favorite part of the movie is when this other character thinks she got shot, but really she just got her period for the first time. They just don’t make movies like that anymore.
“I never said I’d cut my hair,” I argue. “I need enough for a summer ponytail.” I scan the shelves for a color that I like. It’s hard to look past the absurdly posing faces on the boxes to imagine what the hair color would look like on my head.
“How about this?” Josh walks up behind me, leans his head on my shoulder, and wraps one arm around me with the box in his hand. “You know I like your hair red,” he says in a way I want to describe as purring, but that would imply something. The color is called “Copper Rust,” which I think might technically be a shade of green. I take the box from his hand and walk over to a small mirror in the beauty aisle. Holding the box next to my face, I squint to try and imagine what it would look like translated onto my head. I don’t know if it’s really me. I’ve kind of always wanted to dye my hair dark, add a little brooding mystery to my look. Red hair doesn’t seem very brooding, and how can I be mysterious if my tall red head stands above a crowd? But, Josh…
“OK.” I sigh with acceptance.
We pick up loads of other toiletries and snacks, as well as a local newspaper so I can read the comics and Dear Abby. I scan the last-minute-impulse buys while Josh spills the contents of our tiny shopping basket onto the less-than-ample counter. Thanks, Josh’s dad.
We pull up to the Don Q Inn, an unassuming, almost barnlike building that I half expected to look like a castle. Strike two on the cast
le front. There are only four other cars in the parking lot. Maybe Sundays aren’t the busiest nights. I’m picturing kinky couples on weekends and discreet affairs on weeknights. Sundays are sacred after all. So I’ve heard.
Standing behind the desk is a vulture-bald man wearing a mustard yellow suit jacket, red tie, and white shirt. He stares ahead, not at us, not at a TV, or even a wall, but in that locked stare that means your body may be present but your mind is somewhere else. Maybe he’s picturing himself in one of the suites, I’m thinking Mid-Evil, with a saucy wench.
A hotel bell is perched on the desk in front of Mustard Man, and even though by this time the man has unenthusiastically noticed us (his eyes now look at, not through, me), Josh finds the need to ding the bell.
“Yes?” Mustard Man breathes.
“Hello. We have a reservation for Tranquility Base. Under Erdman,” Josh says formally.
Mustard Man lets his index finger fall onto his keyboard. Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. I take a long look around the lobby as I wait for Mustard Man to finish his turtle typing. There’s a rustic charm to this place, if you enjoy wood paneling, wagon wheels, and hideous patterned carpeting. The theme is hodgepodge, by the looks of the flowered sofas, brick walls, and multiple television sets. The centerpiece of the room is a large, round, metal fireplace, complete with midsummer fire, and surrounded by what are either old-fashioned dentist chairs or old-fashioned barbershop chairs, but I don’t know which since I’m not old-fashioned. Whatever they are, they all come in a variety of pleather colors, sure to delight any dental or barber patron.
Don't Stop Now Page 5