by Mamrie Hart
“Cove Haven, this is Barbara, how can I help you?” The woman’s voice was so calming, so relaxed. Meanwhile, I responded with the fervor of a woman who’d just been locked up in Thailand for drug trafficking and was allotted ten seconds on the phone with her lawyer. There was no time for punctuation.
“Hi my name is Mamrie Hart and I am checking into a champagne suite tonight I’m on the way there from the Wilkes-Barre Airport and so we won’t get there till eleven and I need to know if I can buy wine to be put in the room before it’s too late and also what time does the bar close?”
“Slow down, Miss Hart,” she replied sweetly. It was a bold move to assume I was single, considering where I was staying for the weekend. Perhaps the desperation to get liquored up in my voice gave it away? “The bar is open till one A.M. And yes, we’d be happy to do that for you. Would you like red or white?”
“Umm, I guess a bottle of each? No. Make it two bottles of red and one white? Wait, no. Two of each . . . and a bottle of champagne.”
“Let me get this right—you want two bottles of white, two bottles of red, and one bottle of champagne?” I looked at Hayley, who was doing “bring it home” hand signals like a damn third base coach.
I could sense the judgment in Barb’s voice, so I combatted it with my ultimate weapon: my Southern charm. “Five bottles total would be wonderful, Barbara. And thank you in advance for your warm hospitality and impeccable customer service. Looking forward to seeing you shortly.” I am 90 percent sure she had her hand pressed to her chest from being so flattered before hanging up the phone.
Hayley and I spent the next hour catching up on life as I drove through the light snowfall. The farther we drove, the more we realized that we were in the middle of nowhere, passing town after town of abandoned businesses and sketchy gas stations.
“Is that it?” I asked, pointing to a massive red heart-shaped sign in the distance. We pulled up closer and, sure enough, the sign read “Cove Haven.” “What do you think the next-door neighbors think of this place?” Hayley said, nodding toward the yard across the street covered in broken lawn tools and a rusted-out kids’ bouncy horse.
I turned into the gate. The driveway was so dark, it could’ve been surrounded by water, or a rainforest, or a single-file line of escaped convicts, and we would’ve had no idea. After what seemed like forever, we pulled up to the check-in center, which from the outside had all the glamour of a senior center, and ran in as fast as we could out of the cold. Who knew that Pennsylvania would be so freezing in January?!*
The interior was not much of an improvement. We walked on the old-school carpeting, past the fake champagne tub filled with packing peanuts, to meet the sweet, smiling face of Barbara. “Welcome to Cove Haven!” she said as we strutted in. “You two are the last guests to check in. We’re fully booked this weekend.” I was taken aback. I didn’t realize that so many people still even came to this place. Were they here ironically? Maybe the word had gotten out among Brooklyn hipsters about this frozen-in-time novelty just a few hours away from NYC.
We grabbed the keys to our suite from Barb and hightailed it up the road. As we passed one drab brick building after the next, I started to get nervous. There was not a soul in sight, despite Barb saying they were fully booked. Finally, Hayley broke the tension. “Mamie,* be honest with me, is this an extremely complicated murder plot? ’Cause you could’ve just killed me at home, in that case. I sleep very hard.”
“Oh come on,” I said, trying to keep the faith. “I’m sure everyone is just passed out from making sweet, sweet love all day long.” I forced a smile as we continued driving through what looked like a desolate community college, with row after row of redbrick, ranch-style buildings that looked to be from the seventies. Finally, we spotted our building number and pulled in without saying a word. An abandoned shed with police tape lay on its side in front of us.
What the fuck have I gotten us into? I thought. I’ve taken my friend away from her adorable daughter and husband, promising a ridiculous adventure, and this is where we’re staying? This place was just plain creepy. And this is coming from someone who understands middle-of-nowhere weirdness—after all, I hail from an area that is the home of Andy Griffith and has a huge OxyContin problem. The Land of Opie and Opiates!*
“Let’s just check out our room,” I said hesitantly as I stepped out of the Dust, which immediately raised up as if it had hydraulics on it like a hooptie in a Snoop Dogg video. The snow was falling harder now, and the grounds were eerily quiet. I thought at any moment we’d hear the breathy “ha ha ha”s of a slasher movie and a deranged serial killer would come out of the toppled shed. Being brutally murdered would be bad enough, but everyone learning I was found in the parking lot of this place with Hayley? That’s a son-of-an-obituary way to go.
I slid the key card through the slot on the painted red door, which was peeling harder than a redneck’s back after the first sunburn of the summer. We held our breath as we opened the door slowly, scared of what we might find. But as soon as our eyes adjusted to the red lightbulb–only lighting, our fears dissolved. IT WAS MAGNIFICENT.
The living room was all eighties furniture all the time, with a small fireplace and a glass-enclosed hot tub room. There were rose petals scattered across the floor, luxurious red drapes, and the pièce de résistance: the champagne tub. It was almost too much to take in all at once. We instantly started jumping up and down and running around the room, like Kevin McCallister when he first realizes he’s “Home Alone.”
“There’s a red leather massage table and little sauna down on a level below the hot tub!” Hayley yelled. “There’s mirrors and twinkly lights above the bed!” I screamed down from the third floor, as I grinned at my reflection from the mirrored ceiling. I looked to the unbelievably eighties red bedside table to see our five bottles of wine, lined up perfectly like cans on a fence about to be shot by a BB gun. Beside it was a welcome card and one of those classic heart-shaped boxes of chocolates that’s bordered with lace—you know, the kind that your high school boyfriend gifts you on Valentine’s Day along with a single red rose from a gas station, thinking it’s a fair trade for a hand job. I immediately ripped open the box. Could these be vegan? Was that realistic in rural PA? Nope! Veganism be damned! I thought to myself, as I popped one in my mouth. I was on vacation!
After we were fully winded, we piled on the bed, cracking open our sparkling wine. “Cheers,” I said, lifting my glass to Hayley. “To what will no doubt be a fever dream of a weekend.” And with that, we clinked glasses, downed the bottle, popped a weed gummy, and headed down to the nightclub. If we were lucky, we’d be able to catch the second set from the cover band. Oh, did I fail to mention that Cove Haven has not one but two entertainers booked every single night? Their schedule had hypnotists, magicians, local bands, and every nighttime cruise ship activity your heart could desire. My only regret was that we hadn’t made it out in December to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra cover band.
The nightclub felt like walking into that box of chocolates. The walls were coated in rich red wallpaper; the barstools were red; the bar itself was red. We grabbed one of the tables for two that lined the curved wall facing the stage. Around us, tuxedoed waitresses took orders as couples danced to the cover band’s rendition of “Drops of Jupiter” by the United States’s most underrated band, Train.* I wondered for a moment if our Dust had actually run off the road on our way here and “Cove Haven” was just a weird dream I was having while in a coma. Before I could tell this theory to Hayley, our waitress approached.
“Hey, girls, I’m Maureen. What can I get you tonight?” Good ol’ Maureen had a Helen Hunt vibe and sounded exactly like Molly Shannon.
“I’ll take a double vodka soda,” I said. “Make that two!” Hayley agreed as we continued observing the premises, watching the couples slow dance to all the top smooth jams of the early aughts.
One double turned to two,
two to three, and by the time we were liquored up enough to invite our waitress to sit down with us, our table had more doubles than Wimbledon.
“Maureen, give us the scoop on this place,” Hayley asked between sips. We’d already learned that Maureen had been working at the resort for more than twenty years, so surely she had the dirt. “Yeah, what’s the deal with this place?” I asked. “I mean this as a compliment, but it feels like we just walked into a David Lynch fuck palace that hasn’t had any renovations in fifty years.”
Maureen laughed. “I don’t know why they don’t put any money into upgrading it. But people keep coming back, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I pointed to a group of couples taking shots at the bar. “Be honest, Maureen. Is this a big swingers’ destination? Did those couples just meet tonight? Oh! Or are they all just dudes here with their mistresses?”
“Oh, them? I don’t know what happens behind closed doors, of course, but they didn’t meet tonight. Those couples have been coming here together for years.” Apparently, Cove Haven was known for its repeat customers. Maureen even told us about a couple who had come there on their honeymoon in 1965 and still returned every year on their anniversary. She pointed to an old woman sitting by herself. “Her husband passed away a few years back, but she still comes on their anniversary every year.” Hayley and I aww’d so loud that we could’ve made that eighty-year-old whip her head around if it weren’t for the band playing Santana featuring Rob Thomas’s “Smooth” so loudly.
I glanced back at the dancing couples, they looked so sweet. Everyone gazing into each other’s eyes lovingly, men dipping their wives and sneaking in little butt pats as the wives giggled. Meanwhile, from their point of view, we were just two wastoid Statler-and-Waldorfs from the Muppets, coming there to raise hell and make fun of everyone. It was like getting up and giving a roast of a toast at your friend’s wedding, ragging on all their exes, and then the next person gets up and reads a sonnet, making you look like a real grade A-sshole. Little pangs of guilt filled my stomach, so I took a big sip of vodka to try to drown those suckers.
Maureen continued, “Yep. It’s pretty sweet. We call those couples Forever Lovers.”
“We want to be Forever Lovers!” Hayley and I shouted in unison. Maureen laughed. “I’m so happy you’re here for a few days! You two gals are fun!” We felt instantly comfortable, and those pangs started to fade away. We weren’t being judged for being judgy! And the longer we were there, the more charmingly perfect the place felt.
The night kept on, and so did we. When we moved from the table to the bar, we met our second-favorite person, Mike the bartender. He kept the drinks flowing and didn’t complain one bit that he was staying there later than normal, which is the opposite of how I would’ve acted if that happened to me back when I was bartending. Put it this way: You know that Snapchat filter that makes you looks normal, but as soon as you open your mouth, bats fly out and you become a demon? That is what you would’ve seen IRL if you dared sit at my bar after I had started wiping it down.
But not Mike! Mike was such a good sport that he bought us a round of shots to apologize for the swingers couples at the end of the bar who had asked me if I was a witch. In their defense, I was going through a new hat phase, and what was fashionable in LA must’ve looked to a dude in a Steelers windbreaker like I was Stevie Nicks on her way to a goat sacrifice.
We stayed until they had to legally shut down the bar. We were drunk and blissful, calling out, “Mike, we love this place! We love you! We love Maureen!” as we stumbled out. There we were, back in the flurrying snow on the eerily quiet grounds. Besides Mike, we must’ve been the only people awake in the whole place. We had a choice: optimism or pessimism. We could look at our glass as half empty, or fill that mothafuckin’ champagne glass tub half full!
The next few hours can only be describe as a hazy, crazy, honeymoon turned funnymoon.* We ran around our room butt naked to all the jams we would make our campers listen to back in the day. We pressed our ears up against the walls to see if we could hear our neighbors. An hour in, we had destroyed the box of chocolates and were getting to the end of the wine. We laid on the bed doing dancing routines into the mirrored ceiling. “Fuck. We are going to be so hungover tomorrow,” I said, shoveling the last truffle into my mouth as Hayley sat on the floor opening the fourth bottle of wine. “Mamie, I got a plan. Let’s jusss sweat out all the toxins in the hot tuuuuub.” I looked down at her. Her eyes were half open. Bish was at half-mast, but she had a point. If we just steeped ourselves in the hot tub for an hour, we could sweat out a chunk of our hangover. . . . Bikram that shit! It was science! (Or at least science for two idiots at five A.M.)
We hobbled down the stairs, and before I could dip a toe, Hayley cannonballed right in. She emerged from the water screaming. “It’s not a hot tub! I repeat! It’s not a hot tub. It’s a pool, and it’s freezing!” Before I could tell Hayley I wasn’t feeling a polar bear plunge, she pulled me in. It felt like what I imagine coaches feel after a big victory when the team pours ice-cold Gatorade over their heads. Why someone would make the world’s tiniest heart-shaped pool instead of a hot tub was beyond me, but I had stopped looking for rational explanations here at the Cove.
For the next hour, we performed tiny synchronized swimming routines until we were tuckered out and our hands were prune-y. The day had been a long journey, and I was finally ready to call it a night. We put on our pj’s and crawled into the bed. As tired as I was, Hayley was even more so, as evidenced by this pic I took in the ceiling mirrors. In the words of 2 Live Crew, she was “face down, ass up, that’s the way we like to fuck”–ing passed out.
Star added so you don’t see Hayley’s bare ass. Although, it is a star of an ass if I do say so myself.
—
THE NEXT MORNING was shockingly not a struggle. Why? Because we slept right through it. One P.M., however, came at me hard. It felt like there was a pocket-size Property Brother perched on each ear, thrusting a sledgehammer at my temples like it was demo day. I let Hayley keep snoozing as I ventured out to find us coffee. Outside looked like a winter wonderland, or at least a wonderland of brick buildings covered in two inches of snow. Magical! I walked past the restaurant that was shaped like the Colosseum and the outdoor bar (closed for winter) called TanLines, with its heart-shaped sign of a butt in a thong, before finally ducking out of the cold into Spooner’s, the café/pool hall/basketball courts building.* There was even a woman in the corner taking orders for caricature drawings. I sidled up to the bar to get some coffees to go and, lo and behold, Mike was behind the bar again. If I hadn’t known any better, I would assume Mike and Maureen were either the only two people who worked there, or they were both sets of triplets who rotated shifts.
Back in the room, I attempted to rouse Hayley. “Mamie, I just threw up, like, four times,” she said miserably from under the covers. I spent the next hour cuddled up in the living room on the first level, reading my book, and watching Hayley occasionally get up and head to the bathroom to do her thing. One would think that while building a place meant specifically for banging that they might throw in some soundproof walls, but nope, I could hear her every breath as she was puking her guts out. It was like being on a very romantic vaca with the chick from The Exorcist.
After an hour of her bathroom-to-bed relay, it looked like everything was finally out of her system, so I convinced Hayley to hop in the car and come with me to a local greasy dive a few miles away from the resort. Whenever I’m hungover and the holy trinity of Advil–Club Soda–Coffee doesn’t work, there’s only one thing to do: fry, fry again.
When we got to that hole-in-the-wall, I knew what had to be done and ordered the best hangover options: “We’ll take fried zucchini sticks, fries, fried pickles, and onion rings, please.”
Just the mention of food made an audible shift in Hayley’s stomach. It sounded like the closing grunt Tim Allen makes in the
opening credits of Home Improvement. It was loud. Quizzical, even. “Where is your restroom?” Hayley asked with fear in her eyes.
“Down the hall, second door on the left. But I’m warning you—” Hayley was off before the waitress could finish her sentence, so I was the only one that got to hear, “It’s pretty icky.”
Hayley came back a few minutes later and said she wasn’t touching any of the food. As an avid member of the Clean Plate Committee, I considered finishing all the food myself. At a Mexican restaurant in college, I once ate a three-pound burrito just for the free T-shirt. So, I knew I was capable of pounding this grub, but without a fully functioning live audience, I didn’t see the point. We headed back to the resort, and Hayley somehow looked worse than when we left. Not even the TanLines sign, in all its giant-butt glory* could make her smile.
We curved past the roundabout and started up the hill to the champagne suites when Hayley threw her arm in front of me. “Mamie, pull over,” she said with her hand over her mouth. To our right, a wholesome young couple walked down the hill hand in hand. “Oh shit, wait just a sec to get past these—” It was too late. Hayley flung open the door and released the beast just steps away from the horrified-looking couple’s sensible shoes. This couple had the type of innocence you see only on those TLC shows where couples wait until they are married to kiss. Their mouths were agape until the girl’s small mouth eventually peeped, “Oh no.”
I covered my face with my hands. Hayley waved at the couple and slammed the door shut. “Drive!” she said, ducking down onto the floorboard. I stepped on the gas, and we peeled off, laughing to the point of wheezing the whole way up back to the suite. The cry-laughing stopped only when it made Hayley cough enough that she was back in the bathroom. She came out shaking her head.