It takes so much work to run two bars. It requires a constant presence, a heightened energy. It is both theater and sport. All the ritual preparation. Two shows a day. Us against them. So unpredictable. So often on the edge of chaos and disaster. It is physical work. It takes a toll. And after all those years, we were sore and we were tired. Our bodies hurt. My lower back. Her feet. Then my knee, then her shoulder. We had been doing it half our lives. Maybe it was more.
As a remedy, we began to take short vacations. Out to the San Juans, to the Olympic Peninsula, into the mountains around Leavenworth. Nothing far, nothing exotic. No cafés, no cobblestones. Maybe Tess would read about a little lodge somewhere and we’d stay there, or we’d drive until it got dark and stay wherever we could find. Anyway, we always had blankets in the back and neither of us minded sleeping in the truck. It was just the silence we liked. Just the emptiness of those places.
Even if we were restless for different reasons, even if our respective discontent was born and made of distinct materials, the quiet served us both the same.
It was during one of those trips that we saw the sign staked right outside the mailbox.
For Sale.
The land.
Or, this land.
I am there now. Or, I am here now. Here atop our little hill, looking out across that same perfect clearing into the dark woods.
Dear Tess, Dear Mom, Dear Dad, Dear Claire,
I am writing to you from the house we built on the land we found by the side of the road one late autumn afternoon.
It wasn’t a shared fantasy, wasn’t something we’d been working for. It wasn’t meant to be our next move, or our next life. But we stopped at a sign next to a mailbox and we turned down a long dirt driveway. There was a soft wind coming from the west. And all those pines looked so blue.
So we bought it. It didn’t take very long. It wasn’t very expensive.
Then we sold our bars. Not to some local who owned a good restaurant down the street, but, I am ashamed to tell you, to a hospitality group. Owner of restaurants and hotels throughout the country. There were other offers, but none remotely comparable. None that even entered the same realm.
“If we do this, they will kill them,” Tess said, so full of contempt.
It was true. She was right. There would be branding and mission and dress code. Everything would be standardized and made efficient. Every shot would be measured and accounted for. There would be new language imposed. Scripts to be learned. Our people would have to speak like cheerful machines. All collective, all continuous: How are we enjoying our burgers? How is everything tasting? Are we still working on that?
Problems would become concerns. Customers would become guests.
“Fuck these people,” Tess said.
But even Tess, Tess of our later years, could not turn away from that deadly black figure printed at the bottom of the page—a single number, which held such power, so much promise and possibility.
We fought for the health insurance to remain, for a baseline hourly wage well above minimum. We won those battles anyway. Not that it was any consolation to either of us.
And just like that, just like everything else, with shocking speed, we were wealthy. I don’t want to overstate it. We hadn’t sold an oil field, but for us, for the small life in the woods we said we wanted, we had plenty of money.