the only thing missing

We were positive that the hotel we were about to stop at would give us a decent price. It was, after all, outside Seattle’s city limits. My husband, Jeff, drove our little black car up to the office door and I jumped out, eager to check in. We had spent the entire day on a friend’s ski boat on Lake Washington. We were exhausted from being in the heat and playing in the cold water. We had forgotten to pack a lunch for the day, too, so by the time we left the lake, it was evening and we were really hungry.

As I pushed open the hotel’s heavy door, cool air blew on my face and I realized I hadn’t had a break from the sun all day. The air felt wonderful. The hotel seemed to be a diamond in the rough. The outside of it was non-spectacular—which we figured meant an okay price. I was shocked, once inside, to be surrounded by new furniture, decorations and artsy flourishings. I breathed in new-carpet-smell, and noticed an entire wall made of glass dedicated to housing large, bright-colored fish—this place had undergone a beautiful remodel. The furniture was my favorite part. I decided we’d be willing to stay here even if the price was a little spendy. I loved the round, orange couches and the squiggly bright colors on the hip, new throw rugs. Even the hanging, retro lamps made me want to splurge a little. I approached the front desk noticing that there were only young people hanging around the lobby. Three guys with reflective, shaved heads sat in a perfect row at the computers, two girls sat close together on a couch in the back and talked quietly, and the front desk person looked like someone I’d seen in a local band recently.

“The rooms start at $300,” he said. I swallowed and looked him in the eye. I was not prepared for that price. Giving him the look I had practiced numerous times with my husband, I fluttered my eyelashes just slightly and asked if he had any discounts for me.

Just at the moment when I was enjoying my own charming abilities, his cell phone rang loudly and he immediately lost his connection to me and grabbed his phone. After waiting for several minutes while he talked to someone about band equipment, I decided that he was rude, and I didn’t want to give him our business. Just as I decided it wasn’t worth the wait to hear if he had any discounts, one of the guys on a computer gave me a look as if to say, “That guy is crazy!” I took it as validation in leaving.

“Sorry, honey, we’re not staying here.” I said when I returned to the car. I told him the details and we decided to head north, further out of town.

“I’m hungry, aren’t you?” Jeff asked over the loud Tusk album. “We forgot to eat lunch, didn’t we? I ate some chips on the boat but they were too salty.”

“I had some carrot sticks but I felt bad about forgetting to bring a lunch. They didn’t have that much food, anyway. Now I’m starving!”

Eventually, I got grumpy. We started discussing if we should eat first, or find a hotel first. We argued back and forth about this, and then agreed that whatever we came to first was where we would stop. But we wouldn’t settle for fast food or a cheap, one-story hotel.
When we found ourselves far north on Aurora Avenue, things started feeling a little creepy. I think we both realized that we’d gone too far, but no one said anything. I turned down the music.

The street was dark and seemed to have an unusual amount of cars with tinted windows and loud stereos. A few girls were out walking and each one held a beverage in a paper sack, and wore similar, short mini skirts and high heels. It dawned on us that we were probably not in the best area of town and that a hotel out here was a really bad idea. We talked about returning to the orange-decorated, hip hotel. For some reason, we had lost interest in trying to find a nice place and a decent price.

We decided to turn around and head south on Aurora Avenue when all of a sudden a white tower stood before us on the right side of the road. It appeared to be a brand new hotel, with beautiful white stucco walls lit up by a series of pretty lights. There were plush, green bushes spaced evenly all around the driveway, and it looked sharp, so we decided to end our hotel search here.

We learned on our honeymoon, two years ago in Belize City, that if you are in a bad part of town, you can always stay locked up in your room. Jeff pulled into the small lot at the front door to the hotel. I jumped out, looked back at Jeff and winked, then walked confidently into what I assumed would be our lodging for the night.

The young guy at the front desk was watching me when I walked in. “Can I help you?” Covered in tattoos with symbols, numbers and strange diagrams, his eyes met mine. I looked him over quickly and didn’t feel like his tattoos fit the innocence I perceived right away in his light, blue eyes.

“Do you have a room available tonight?” I asked without batting my eyes at him. I scanned the lobby. There was a giant sign that read, “NO SMOKING. NO PETS” and a small counter with two coffee thermoses and a plate of organized sugar packets.

“It’s $60 for the night and I can put you on the third floor away from the street. Is a queen-sized bed okay?” he asked. His voice was soft and friendly, and I pictured him for a moment with white arms.

“We’ll take it! Let me go outside and check with my husband first. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s only $60 a night! I can’t believe it! Can we check in and then go get some food? Maybe we can just order a pizza and have it delivered.” I was hyper and excited to have found a place. It was 9:30 pm and I was starving, but somehow, I wasn’t grumpy anymore—it must have been a second wind.

“Let’s do it.” Jeff agreed. I grabbed my wallet and skipped inside to pay for our room.

After paying, we drove to the back of the hotel and into the “underground parking” area, which was ground level parking underneath the second story. We parked and looked around us. The lights were dim and yellow, and we both secretly noticed that our little black car was the nicest one in the lot.

“This car looks like it’s been through a fire!” Its roof was missing and replaced with duct tape. Jeff nodded but didn’t say anything. The other cars seemed really out of date and a few looked as if they hadn’t moved in months. When we gathered our luggage, we stepped up onto the walkway and noticed someone exhibiting strange behavior. A homeless man was pretending to wash the windshield of a car we had overlooked. It was a brand new Mercedes convertible with shiny silver hubcaps. The man in question had a dirty rag that he dipped into a plastic bag and then pretended to scrub the glass windshield of the Mercedes. It looked like he was hardly touching the glass, however, and he looked nervous as we walked by. Jeff and I glanced at each other and kept walking. I made up a silly question and pretended to be pre-occupied by Jeff’s answer until we were safe inside. We both let out a sigh at the same time and set our luggage down in the hallway. I raced him to the back window to spy on the man out in the parking lot. As we both had secretly suspected, he was no longer at the windshield, but walking slowly around the Mercedes looking inside of it with its top down. We whispered to each other and decided that we should go upstairs to our room. We had no valuables in our car and neither of us felt like doing anything about that guy.

We entered the elevator and pushed the button to the third floor. The doors closed and graffiti surrounded us on all sides. The inside of the entire elevator was covered with graffiti-not spray painted, but rather all four walls had been keyed from top to bottom. We rolled our eyes at each other and smiled. We were at last checked in and done looking for a hotel. When the elevator opened at the third floor we were immediately greeted with the stench of thick cigarette smoke like you would smell at a small bar with no airflow.

“The sign said ‘NO SMOKING’!” I told Jeff. “I can’t believe it! It reeks up here!”

“Our room better not smell like this…” Jeff’s voice trailed off as a door opened and two women stepped into the hallway, obviously intoxicated. The stench of cigarette smoke increased as we walked past their room. I tried casually peeking into their room but someone was on the other side of the door pushing it shut. Silently, we arrived at the last door on the left, and swiped our key card.

Having been in the car for hours, looking for a place to eat and a place to stay, I had put off using the last available restroom we had access to earlier in the day. The power of suggestion of having my own little bathroom overwhelmed me as I pushed the door open to our room. All of a sudden I had to pee immediately or I was going to explode. I shoved my luggage into the small room and flicked the light switch on. Nothing happened. I saw the shadow of a lamp sitting on a small entertainment center and quickly pushed the button to turn it on. Nothing happened. There was a tiny little kitchen area with a small, unplugged refrigerator sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, and I saw another light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. I could feel a flow of frustrated heat start in my chest; move through my neck and into my face. I had to pee but I was angry that the lights didn’t work. Jeff had set his luggage down in the middle of the room and was fidgeting with the television remote by the light of the outside street lamp. I had to pee!

“Ughhhhhh!” I let out an angry sigh and grabbed the doorknob to the closed bathroom door. I would deal with the light situation after I relieved myself. The light switch worked in the bathroom but I wished it hadn’t. The bathroom was filthy. The first thing I noticed looking at the toilet seat that I was about to sit down on, was that it was covered in little drops of light yellow liquid. “Great,” I thought to myself, “someone peed on the toilet.” I almost decided to not use it, but I was seriously hurting. I took a giant wad of toilet paper and made a quick swipe of the seat. Then I hurriedly folded about five layers of toilet paper and lined the seat with it so I could sit down. “Ahhhhh…..” as I was feeling totally relieved, I looked around the bathroom some more. The floor was covered in long, black curly hairs. The shower curtain had once been all white, but the bottom half was pinkish orange from mildew and mold. I stood up and as I reached to flush the toilet, I saw that the lid to the back of the toilet was largely cracked in three places.

“Oh my gosh, you’re not going to believe this!” I yelled through the door to Jeff. He did not respond. I reached for the tiny bar of soap sitting on the bathroom counter and as I did, I stopped myself. It was used and filthy. My hands were just fine as is. I reached for another piece of tissue to blow my nose, and when I looked down for the garbage, it was nowhere to be found. I opened the little wooden cupboard under the sink and took a step back. Other people must not have been able to find a garbage can either, and the cleaning crew had failed to check under the sink. There was a pile of garbage that I tried not to look at as I added my tissue to it. I tucked my hand into my sleeve and opened the bathroom door. The room was still dark and only lit by the glow of the television.

“Grab your bags, we’re leaving.” Jeff said with no-nonsense authority.

“Oh my…” I stopped in mid-sentence as I glanced down at the carpet, now visible by the television light. “Do you see the pile of fingernails down there?” I pointed to the carpet at the end of the perfectly made bed.

“That’s nothing, look at this!” There were giant stains throughout the entire carpeted area. Some looked dark and still wet. The only thing missing was a chalk outline of a body.

“The bathroom was so…”

“Let’s just get out of here. Tell me in the car.” Again, he spoke with resolute authority and I did not question him.

Instead of taking the scenic elevator back down, we walked rapidly down the back staircase and through a dark hallway to the front desk. The guy at the front desk looked up from folding towels. “Do you want your money back?” he said without missing a beat.

“Sometimes the cleaning crew doesn’t get to all the rooms….” He stopped talking and looked down at the towels he was folding. He looked embarrassed all of a sudden.

I wanted to be nice and let him know we were dissatisfied with the room, but not with him. He looked like he had a hard life for someone so young. Looking more closely at his face in the fluorescent light, I noticed hard lines around his eyes that only a 60-year-old person should have. I felt sorry for him. This was no life for an apparently sweet, young man.

“Here, I’ll take your card and swipe it again for your money back. I’m sorry about this.”

Jeff immediately looked at me as if to say, “Do we trust him with our card? He just put us in a pit!” I shot him a look that said, “Trust me.” I trusted the guy behind the counter for some reason. I actually really liked him. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was working here, though.

After scanning our card and handing me the receipt, he apologized again.

“No problem-you’ll want to have that room cleaned, though….” There was nothing I could think of to say that would let him know that I wasn’t upset. My husband was waiting for me with our luggage. “Thanks…Have a good night…” I said over my shoulder as I walked back to the hallway were Jeff was standing.

“Oh my gosh, do you think that homeless guy will still be out there?” I whispered to Jeff.

“Let me look,” he said with that no-nonsense authority again. I knew he was being extra protective of me. He knows I think it’s adorable.

After glancing quickly through the tiny back window, he grabbed our luggage and said, “Let’s go!”

I gripped my purse tightly and followed behind Jeff. A girl in a mini skirt and high heels was talking to the “homeless” man who was now holding an expensive leather briefcase. She had a hand on his arm and held a shiny yellow purse in her other hand. She never looked our way, but starting giggling just as I sat down and shut the car door. The man was talking quickly and quietly and making gestures toward the back door of the hotel. Something caught my eye and I quickly observed that his shoes were expensive, Italian leather shoes with elegant sharp angles at the toe. All of a sudden his grungy jeans looked like fashionable jeans made to look grungy. I had seen a pair of jeans like that once in Neiman Marcus. His disheveled hair also looked all of a sudden trendy and rock star-ish. As our car drove past them, I could hear the woman giggle again.

“No way!” Jeff and I looked at each other and laughed as we rolled out of the parking lot.

“We almost stayed at a Pimp Hotel!” I yelled.

“You should have seen the bathroom floor…..” I started but Jeff stopped me.

“I’m sorry, honey, tell me later. I’m a little stressed out because we still have to find a place to stay. Do you mind doing me a favor and calling information for the number of a Comfort Inn in Federal Way?”

For some reason that made me instantly grumpy again and I immediately tuned into my growling hunger pains. I was stressed out, too, but I couldn’t believe what we had just seen.

“Whaaat?! We’re driving that far south tonight? I’m starving! Can we at least stop somewhere to eat first?” Oh, my stomach was really mad at me.

“Please call information, honey. I’m really tired and we need to find lodging before too much longer or we’ll be in trouble.”

Jeff and I drove south and eventually found a place to stay, but we went without dinner that night.

-Nicole MacDonald of Battle Ground, Washington
http://myyearwithout.blogspot.com
http://betterlivingthroughsimplicity.blogspot.com