Hospitality Inn Page #5

• Short story

								

     After about a week in the big city, Sheli returned to Walnut Meadow. She hadn’t seen any of her friends during her months of body enhancement, and, as the spring flourished, she longed for their companionship.
     She went to the lakefront and got a few things at the boutique. She sat on the deck of the café and had a salad and an orange juice. There were the familiar seagulls, and there was a familiar voice coming from behind her.
     “Sheli?” said the man.
     Sheli turned and looked around. “Martin?”
     Martin squinted at her and dropped his jaw.“Sheli? Well, look at you!” he bellowed, his eyes examining Sheli from head to toe. Martin smiled and then paused as if he thought it was a prank. It couldn’t be Sheli.
     Sheli smiled down at the floor and blushed. “Yes, it’s me. I’m really happy.”
     “I can’t believe it!” Martin took a picture of her and sent it to the rest of them. 
     They were all eager to get a better look at Sheli, so they planned to meet at the lakefront bar. That evening, the five of them found a booth overlooking the water and ordered a pitcher of beer and a bottle of wine. They sat in opposing colored lights; half of the face was red, the other half blue.
     Debbie leaned on Greg’s shoulder. “Sheli, I’m dying to swim in your pool. I can borrow your bathing suit. We should meet at your place again, like old times.”
     “Well, I don’t quite have the house anymore.”
     “What?” cried Kimberly.
     “Well, I’ve done some major renovations. I think it might not suit your tastes now.” She showed them a picture of the log cabin. “This is my house now.”
     They gaped in disbelief. Kimberly was aghast, but Sheli explained to them that it was what she had needed: a change. She had no regrets.
     After she succeeded in convincing them, to some degree, that she had made the right decision, the discussion segued into a debate about veganism and then into one about the qualities of true theater, but then, Sheli repeated her pet phrase, “This is too much for my brain,” and everyone fell silent.
     Sheli came to the lakefront more and more during the next few weeks, but she saw no sign of her friends and always found herself alone. Her friends, in fact, sent no messages to her, and when she messaged them, she just got a short and impersonal reply. She knew that they had new interests, but it was also apparent that they didn’t want the new Sheli.
     “I could have told you it was gonna happen,” said Nancy.
     “They’re just busy.”
     “Too busy for you, but not for each other.”
     “Maybe they’re just jealous.”
     “Maybe, but if they were really your friends, they could look past that. You’ve got to be honest; you never did really fit in, did you? Even when Debbie was single, you were always the extra wheel. 
     “You should get out more, Sheli, and I don’t mean just to the lakefront. Explore. Find people who share your own interests. Like Kimberly says, ‘There’s someone for everyone.’”
 
Clouds rolled in, and an overcast desaturated the springtime colors of Sheli’s journey.
     Her ship departed in the late afternoon. When she came on deck, the passengers were finding their places at the dinner table. A bell rang, and the crew members assembled. Sheli found a place with a good view of the sea.
     His eyes fixed on her. He found a place not far, and she noticed him intermittently. After dinner, Isaac, her tall and attractive admirer, found her drinking orange juice in the saloon. Music from the loudspeaker competed with other music from the TV, creating, with the sound of a distant horn, a haunting cacophony that darkened the mood.
     “Have you tried the chocolate cake?”
     “I’m not that hungry.” She looked at his face more acutely. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before. You go to the gym, don’t you?”
     “No.”
     “What do you do for a living?”
     “I’m an astronomer.”
     “I think I’ve seen you before.” 
     “Think of the weather,” said Isaac, with twinkling eyes catching glimpses of her mouth.    
     “The weather? Oh, yes. You’re a meteorologist. I knew I’d seen you somewhere.”
     “I used to be the weatherman, and I can tell you that it’s going to be a clear night. You might see a shooting star.”
     “Oh, I don’t know about that.” She shifted her narrow hips.
     “About what? About the clear night? Or about the shooting star?”
     “I don’t know about either.”
     He took a sip of his Crown Royal.
     “Well, I can guarantee you that it will be a clear night.”
     “How?” 
     “Every night’s a clear night… somewhere.”
     “But what about the shooting star?”
     “There’s always a shooting star. I know everything about the sky.”
     “So you might say your head is in the clouds?”
    “That’s right. My head is in the clouds and storm systems and Doppler radars and radiation and the asteroid belt. So tell me, what’s your head in?”
     “A variety of things.”
     He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
     “History.”
     “Really? What’s your favorite period in history?”
     “The Renaissance.”
     “I see.” His eyes followed his swirling Crown Royal. “I wonder, was Galileo the first to use a telescope?”
     “There’s not necessarily a first time for anything.”
     He pondered the idea for a moment. “Oh, so we’ve met before… in a past life.”
     “Past lives – that’s too much for my brain.”
     He moved closer. “Nothing is too much for your brain.”
     “And this isn’t the first time you got me a drink.” She put down her empty glass and glanced at his. “It happened in a past life. You got me a dry martini, no lemon twist. But this time, I need a twist.” She crossed one leg over the other.
     When the ship docked, Isaac took her hand and led her up and down the narrow streets of the exotic city, and she introduced him to the esoteric seclusion of warm paradise. They found pleasure in little things such as watching the sun set, collecting seashells, throwing darts, and putting coins into a coin-elongating machine. As the machine ticked, the coin fell in between two steel rollers that pressed it thinly and embossed on it an emblem of two crossed flamingos and two crossed coconut trees.
     She returned with him to the log cabin of Walnut Meadow. He spoke of it as an adorable rural haven for a young couple. Weeks passed, and they discovered they had the same ambition of running a hotel in a place like Walnut Meadow. They imagined the hotel as, unlike the log cabin, comfortable and modern, providing an aesthetic contrast to the nature around it, but they felt that the hotel should not be too large; a small place would give more of a sense of proximity to nature. This new lodging would also have to be personal; it would be nice to get to know the guests. They concluded that they would open a bed-and-breakfast, one with an unusually modern look.
     Isaac rose excitedly. “Minimalist! Shaped like a pastry box!”
     “That’s how I see it, and there’ll be lots of modern conveniences. My guests will never have to feel cold porcelain.”

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