Holiday Inn
Roaming the empty halls at the Holiday Inn with Macy and Katie Lee, I found myself thinking about my aunt Gert. She had a personality like pistachio ice cream, acquired and tolerated by few. The air in her cluttered house, a concoction of gardenia carpet powder and pipe tobacco, was a replica of the motel’s. Pushing those thoughts aside, I decided to concentrate on the positive possibilities. The Holiday Inn could be a secret hot spot, and this could be the night I become a woman with experience.
Macy’s New York banter vacuumed me out of my head fog. “Don’t tell me, there isn’t a bar in here.”
Since dinner, Katie Lee had contained her emotional tsunami. We’d worn the topic of Nash out and hadn’t discussed him for nearly an hour. Springing into action, she said, “Y’all sit tight. I’ll ask at the desk.”
“We’d better wait outside,” I whispered. “Don’t want to look like we’re casing out a room to rob.”
Initially I’d been nervous. Not about the flaming shots and relentless flirting, but about the logistical specifics of how to get into a bar with my student ID. Fast-talking myself into an opportunity or out of a predicament had never been a strength. A soft night breeze cleared my hesitations. I determined I’d be fine once I held a drink. This was college life. I was supposed to get my party fix. In four years, I could leave my wild ways behind to become a responsible adult and contributor to society, or some bullshit like that.
After tucking her red bra strap under her black shirt, Macy hooked her arm around mine. “I’ve got something in my purse to occupy us.”
“You scare me when you say things like that.”
She unzipped her Gucci. “Cigarette?”
“I’m not a smoker.”
“Take one. It’ll relax you.”
Outside the lobby doors, Macy and I huddled near a raised planter window box where I flicked ashes into the overgrown ivy that choked pink geraniums.
“For God’s sake, Rachael, you’re in tobacco country. Don’t mock them. At least make an attempt to smoke it.”
Up until now, I’d only inhaled secondhand smoke at Aunt Gert’s. Trying to save face from additional verbal scolding, I sucked hard on the white filter until I gagged and hacked like an old man dislodging a lugie.
Emerging from the revolving glass door, Katie Lee pinched the cigarette from my fingers for a drag. “Y’all know these things will kill you.”
“Thanks for the news flash. Where’s the fucking bar?”
“There isn’t access from the hotel. It’s a basement bar. The entrance is around the corner.”
A NARROW CEMENT STAIRCASE led down to a lime-colored neon sign. We were just a few feet away from the entrance of “The Lounge,” and my heart palpitated in a synchronized rhythm with my flip-flops. An aged bouncer who wore clip-on shades positioned one leg on the ground and the other on the crossbar of a barstool. Max, according to his pin-on nametag, bore a resemblance to a neighbor in Canton. The one who turned his lights off and blocked his front door with garbage cans every Halloween. Would I be denied access to this drinking hole? Holding my breath, I kept my feet moving, but before I passed, he stuck out an arm. Not bothering to look up from his crossword puzzle, he asked, “Who wrote A Clockwork Orange?”
This had to be a trick question.
“Anthony Burgess,” Macy said.
“Thanks.”
We were in.
With a name like “The Lounge,” I expected mirrored walls and purple velvet high-back booths. My mind threw a complete miss. The subterranean bar was tricked out in hunter green and mauve jungle décor.
Katie Lee’s drama had spilled into my psyche, and I’d worked up a thirst for drinks garnished with fruit, and although thankful to be in a bar, the ease of entry had me wondering why I’d parted with a twenty for a new ID.
Macy and I followed Katie Lee past a window air-conditioner that hummed as it sent beads of rust-tinted water down the tropical wallpaper. Musty air smelled of fermented yeast, and oak veneer tables dotted half of the dimly lit room. In the far corner, a dance floor, smaller than my dorm room, meekly beckoned for company other than the jukebox that flashed SOS signals.
Slapping her purse on the counter top, Macy said, “This place is a dump, and it’s empty.”
A bartender wearing a straw fedora planted one foot on a keg and fiddled with a TV remote, eventually settling on stock car racing. Over his shoulder, he asked, “Ladies, what’ll it be?”
I whispered to the girls, “Is that a canary on his shoulder?”
“That’s not a canary, that’s a stuffed cockatoo.”
“What’s your bird’s name?” Katie Lee asked.
The bartender moved toward us. His nametag read Stone R. Stroking the still feathers, he leaned toward Katie Lee. “Give Lolita a pet. She’s friendly.”
Katie Lee used one finger to touch the taxidermy bird.
“Um, Stone R,” Macy said, “I hate to tell you, but your Lolita is a stiff.”
He smiled at Macy. “Your order?”
As long as the bartender didn’t stir my drink with a feather plume, I was happy to ignore the winged accessory he’d fastened to his shoulder.
Katie Lee straightened the edges of a napkin pile and picked up a handful of snack mix. “Three Fireflies with pink lemonade and a lemon twist.”
“What the hell is Firefly?” Macy asked, making me feel less amateur.
“Trust me. You’re gonna love this drink.”
“Is it a green flaming shot? ’Cause I don’t know how to swallow fire.”
Macy strummed her nails against the bar. “With the right attitude, you can swallow just about anything.”
With a roll of quarters from my laundry money I bought the first round. We settled around a high bistro table, where my feet dangled from the pleather-upholstered stools. Stone supplied a steady stream of the sweet drinks that gradually warmed my face from the inside out. I traced the darkened water stains on the tabletop with my finger while the three of us hashed out the pros and cons of our freshman classes and theorized why campus went quiet on weekends. We agreed the workload was too heavy, and Macy and I needed to find out where the available guys were.
Macy’s stool faced the door. Clunking an empty glass down, she asked, “Where the fuck is everyone?”
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking the entire student body vanished on weekends. None of us had cars, but it seemed the rest of the students did.
Resting her elbows on the tabletop, Katie Lee slurred, “Y’all, boyfriend or no boyfriend, this is not a fast start to experiencing freedom and intermingling with coeds.”
Stone delivered a round on the house, and Katie Lee quizzed the bird-loving bartender. “Why the fascination with cockatoos?”
Sliding a stool up to our table, he said, “I’m studying to be an ornithologist. The US needs to ramp up security in airports and at border crossings to stop the illegal bird trade.”
Macy placed her hand on top of his. “You’re wearing a dead cockatoo. How’s that going to help?”
“Lolita brings about curiosity. Curiosity sparks conversation—the beginnings of awareness.”
The phone under the bar rang, and he left to answer it.
Having listened to a bunch of bird talk from a guy who had a fixation with feathers, I plunged into a buzzed funk, dismayed at yet another uneventful weekend. The truth serum disguised as Firefly freed my lips, and I confessed, “This is not the college life I envisioned. I’ve never been with a guy and at this rate never will.” I threw my arms up in the air and clonked my forehead onto the table. “I feel cheated. Almost an entire month—and nothing. No obsessions, chance encounters, or drunken romps. Zip, zilch, zero. Not even a sniff of romance.” About to throw the towel in for the night, I felt Macy’s nail tips making train tracks in my forearm. “Ouch.”
“I think those are students coming in past Max.”
We watched a steady stream of underage students surge in. The jukebox fired up, and the night didn’t seem entirely lost.
IN LESS THAN FIFTEEN minutes, the bar had filled with late night revelers. I’d been happily sipping my drink and darting my eyes around the room as we ranked all the guys that had piled in. Macy startled us with a warning. “Oh no. Don’t look, but here comes a blond guy, cowboy boots—redneck looking. So not my type.”
If you tell someone not to look, it actually means look, but carefully. I needed to see this one for myself. As I rotated my body, some klutz from behind knocked my elbow, propelling my arm forward. The cocktail I’d been enjoying launched from my hand like a bottle rocket. “I wasn’t finished with that,” I said to the schlub behind me, before I caught sight of a tall, soggy redhead who, thanks to me, was plucking ice cubes from her cleavage.
Standing a few feet from me, the buxom redhead snarled, “Bitch!”
I turned and looked behind me. No one else faced my direction. She was talking to me.
Under normal circumstances, I would’ve just apologized for my clumsiness and hoped the situation would go away. Unfortunately, Katie Lee didn’t share the same etiquette philosophy. Energized with liquid courage, she leapt off her barstool. Gripping my arm, she anchored me to her hip, puffed out her chest, and delivered a scolding. “Back off. It was an accident.”
“I’ll show you an accident,” the redhead replied.
In disbelief, I watched this stranger close the gap and concentrate on aligning her palm with Katie Lee’s face.
An inner panic paralyzed my limbs. Trapped in a duh moment, the only word of warning I uttered was an involuntary hiccup. If I’d blinked, I would’ve missed seeing Katie Lee duck. Despite the noisy bar, a whap noise echoed, and the cowboy guy Macy wanted to avoid became the owner of a left cheek slap.
Eyes wide with surprise, he shook off the blow.
Already unsteady on her feet, post-slap momentum whirled the redheaded she-devil into a stumble that landed her on the sticky indoor-outdoor carpet floor, and she was lost below the heaving mass of drinkers.
Macy confirmed, “It’s over. The Amazonian is down.”
The guy whose name we didn’t know introduced himself. “Hey, I’m Hugh Bass. Y’all like a drink?”
Seeing Macy’s eyes roll, I turned my head to suppress a giggle, and my attention strayed to the far corner where I glinted upon a hallelujah moment. Mentally I concentrated on a tall, undeniably attractive man feeding the jukebox. As he laughed, his smile creased the corners of his eyes, intoxicating me into a dizzying trance. He wore a tent-green jacket that almost camouflaged him into the banana-leaf-themed wallpaper.
My focus became sidetracked when Hugh ducked down and offered his hand to help the girl who’d slapped him.
Swaying to her feet, a devilish spark filled her marbled topaz eyes and crept downward until it curled the corners of her sealed glossy-pink lips. Shaking out her hair, she straightened her shoulders and then began edging two fingers over Hugh’s brass eagle belt buckle. She tugged it in a teasing manner, which amused him.
Her boldness embarrassed me, and I wondered if she had a habit of using men’s pants to steady herself. I didn’t think I should be watching this intimate exchange, but it was better than HBO.
Playfully prying the cold beer out of his grasp, she took a sip, then dumped the remainder down his pants and tossed the plastic cup on the floor. I wondered if women always treated him this poorly.
Hugh jiggled his leg before biting his lip on a garble of choice phrases. Being more polite than she deserved, he asked, “Now why did you go and do that?”
“You psychopath bitch,” Miss Manners, a.k.a. Katie Lee, said as she stomped her foot on one of She-Devil’s open toe, strappy sandals.
From behind me, a freckled brunette delivered a premeditated Vulcan pinch into my shoulder, and I dropped to my knees to squirm out of the grip. Stitches split on my favorite gingham shirt while I suffocated in a cloud of ground-in aged yeast that wafted off the floor. Peering up, I saw a hand reach for Macy’s neck. She dodged the invader’s grip and slammed her own knuckles under her attacker’s delicate chin.
It was an ambush, courtesy of She-Devil’s friends. As far as I could tell, there were four of them and three of us. In the packed bar, we were outnumbered, and the intruders left me no choice but to open my can of whoop ass. I bit the bare leg in front of my face. From my line of sight, the space we’d claimed had become infiltrated with moving Keds, ballet flats, and an outdated pair of jelly shoes. I pondered where to flee or whom to fight when some unexpected company dropped to my level. Curled in a ball, Hugh cupped his wet crotch with both hands.
“Ouch,” I sympathetically mouthed, guessing that one of the girls had sandwiched his peanut butter and jelly.
Straining to speak, he squeaked, “Just clipped the edge.”
Motioning for me to follow him in a crawl, he led the way under a nearby table and out of the mayhem until the two of us popped up at the bar. Looking back, I saw that Katie Lee had somehow managed to climb on top of the bistro table, and like a lion tamer, she pushed a barstool against She-Devil’s chest. Hands tugged on her ankles, and we watched her leap into the crowd. Failing at an attempt to body surf, she ate it and took two male student types with her.
“Damn,” Hugh shouted.
I cringed.
Katie Lee shot up, rubbing her forehead, and I knew she’d be wearing an egg on her noggin. Her limbs seemed to be working, and I didn’t see blood, so I focused on locating Macy.
Back at the table, Macy was clutching the neck of an upside down Heineken bottle high in the air, and there was open space around her.
Stone and Max had abandoned their posts. In a struggle against knees and nails, each chose a girl to secure in Operation Straightjacket that took two trips to shovel the invaders out the door. She-Devil was last and held her ground, working her purse above her head like a lasso until the hot guy I’d seen wearing the tent-green jacket tucked her under his arm, like a piece of timber. What was I thinking? Lusting after someone who had a relationship with a lunatic whose only positive feature was her tasteful choice in shoes.
Fantasy Man hauled She-Devil on a path through the crowd that I realized would cross mine. In an astral body experience, I reached behind the bar and gripped the nozzle of the hose control for soda. With a single nod of his head, Hugh gave me a “go on” look of consent and stood to conceal me. As they passed by, I stretched the tubing under Hugh’s armpit and power washed She-Devil’s ass with Diet Coke.
Hugh gave me a high five. “Damn good shot. I’d think twice about taking you to a rifle range. Might tarnish my standin’.”
Despite the purple turnip on Katie Lee’s forehead, she made it safely back to the table, and Macy, I noticed, had surrendered her empty Heineken.
Powdering her forehead, Katie Lee assured Max and Stone of our innocence. “Y’all, we’ve never seen them before. Those girls attacked us from nowhere, for no reason. We’re certainly not the type to go looking for trouble.”
Hugh backed up Katie Lee’s claim and pointed to his wet front, which convinced them we were the victims.
Stone smoothed Lolita’s feathers. “Y’all can stay, but no more well drinks.”
In hopes of drying out, Hugh stood.
“Go get a bar towel,” Macy suggested, “and stuff it down there.”
“Hey now. That might send a message to all the ladies in the room that I’m not prepared to answer.”
With skinny hips and wide shoulders, Hugh carried a cowboy physique. He was a likeable guy, but I wasn’t attracted to him in an “I want to rip your clothes off” kind of way. My bells chimed for something taller that wore a green jacket and rescued crazed redheads.
Leaning toward Macy, I whispered, “Hugh looks like Tom Petty with a mustache.”
Hearing my comment, she choked, and the two of us left to get an ice water from the bar. “I don’t want to hang out with Cowboy Hugh. He’ll ruin our chances of meeting other guys.”
I had to agree, so we went to the ladies room, smoked a cigarette outside, and strolled the perimeter of the room, twice. Macy didn’t find anyone to pursue, and I was devastated that Mr. Green Jacket hadn’t returned.
Back at our table, a girl I’d never seen before had seated herself on my barstool. With Maybelline looks and a bra size comparable to Macy’s, she flicked her highlighted hair. Katie Lee made a round of introductions. “Rachael’s my roommate. And this is Macy. She lives across the hall from us. Y’all, this is Bridget. She lives in Grogan too and is studying nursing.”
Bridget batted her eyelashes. “I recognized Katie Lee from across the room.”
“She saw my rough landing and came over to check on me.”
Turning to Hugh, Bridget asked, “Are you from around here?”
“I’m a South Florida transplant. My dad lives in Wilmington, and my mom’s in Fort Myers.”
Bridget lifted a camera from around her neck. Instructing us to squeeze together, she snapped a photo. “Which one of you is Katie Lee’s roommate?”
I guessed she hadn’t heard Katie Lee a second ago, so I wiggled my fingers.
Bridget put the lens cap back on. “You’re so lucky. Katie Lee is the sweetest person I’ve met on campus. My roommate’s a sophomore. I never see her.”
“Don’t worry,” Katie Lee said. “You can hang out with us anytime.”
I half listened to Bridget talk about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina. The She-Devil altercation and the hot guy sighting had fueled an overdose of adrenaline, and I had the attention span of a new puppy learning to sit. Intermittently my schizoid gaze locked with Hugh’s mustache.
“Macy,” I whispered. “I have a case of FHF—facial hair fixation. I’m worried I’m sending Hugh the wrong impression. He caught me sneaking peeks. Probably thinks I’ve been scoping him out.”
Leaning into my ear, Macy cupped her red nails over her mouth. “Some fixations aren’t good for you.”
Hugh must have thought Macy and I were hot for him. Repositioning himself between us, he asked Macy “W” questions. “What dorm do you live in? Where is that darling accent from?”
Holding her body in a rigid, I-am-not-interested stance, she didn’t acknowledge him unless she had to. I had trouble deciding if this was a drunken Macy, a New York standoffish Macy, or a you-have-no-chance-in-hell Macy. Cocktail courage numbed his rejection antenna, and he continued his one-way discussion with her, occasionally tossing me a polite consolation question.
Although Macy wasn’t interested in him, Bridget giggled at every syllable he uttered. Flashing a come-hither pouty smile, she rattled her ice cubes, to which he fetched her a drink. When he returned, she slid her hand across his to retrieve it. Sadly, I realized I was a complete novice when it came to men. I needed to find an opportunity for some hands-on training.
NOTE TO SELF
The Holiday Inn turned out to be better than expected, minus my drink blunder, minus ripping my favorite shirt in a fight, and minus the man of my dreams leaving with She-Devil under his arm.
Girl fighting, sport or art? Katie Lee and Macy undoubtedly have experience.
Should’ve asked the PUs for an extra roll of quarters. If they let us back in the Holiday Inn, I’ll definitely run out of laundry money before Thanksgiving.