Hospitality Inn Page #2

• Short story

								

     In an effort to encourage her to take longer walks, the housekeeper told Sheli that it took an average of 999 steps to get from her cozy little Turkish corner to the entrance of the pastry shop in the village that regularly delivered to Sheli’s front door. On the rare occasion that Sheli made the journey, she stopped halfway and sat on a large stone. 
     It was on that stone on her way back to Walnut Meadow one day that she saw Nancy dressed all in black, as usual.
     “Your body takes the shape of that stone you’re sitting on,” Nancy said as her eyes followed Sheli’s contour.
     “Don’t make fun of me.”
     “What are you going to do about it?”
     “I’m taking baby steps, Nancy,” she said as she looked down at her pink box of assorted pastries.
     “I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.”
     “Leave me alone. I’m not going to get anywhere with your nagging. And anyway, you see I’m walking, and I’m walking longer and longer each day.”
     “Longer by a stone’s throw. Come on, Sheli. You’re 25 years old. When am I going to see any progress in your life? When you’re 30? Who’s going to marry you then?”
     Sheli bit her lip.
     “Think about it, Sheli.”
     Sheli squashed an ant with her thumb.
 
Camera 1: four people are approaching the garden.
 
Two of Sheli’s childhood friends, Kimberly and Debbie, along with Kimberly’s boyfriend, Martin, visited her often at Walnut Meadow. In the summertime, after a swim, they walked in the forest and soaked their feet in a cool stream. When it rained, they sang and played the guitar in the sunroom.
     “Play a song,” said Sheli. White wicker creaked loudly as she leaned over to check the flower garden that the tinted glass of the sunroom turned blue.
      As Martin played his guitar, Debbie whistled dreamily to the sky. Kimberly was attentive, but Sheli was distracted by her cellphone; she saw a message with the words ice cream delivery. She turned a control dial. Her glass of lemonade barely wobbled as the coffee table’s mechanical steel legs hummed up, raising it high enough for Sheli to comfortably open one of its doors and take out a small bucket of coffee ice cream from the freezer underneath. Sheli then turned the dial in the other direction to lower the table to a level slightly higher than that of a coffee table.               
     She indulged.
     After emptying the paper bucket of its ice cream, she threw it on the floor and forgot about it. The patio doors slid open, the lights brightened, and in came the housekeeper along with a humid breeze that rolled the ice cream bucket under the coffee table. The housekeeper announced dinner, and Sheli lowered the coffee table all the way down to the floor, thereby crushing the bucket. She gulped down the rest of her lemonade and left the glass on the coffee table.
     Dinner was escalloped veal, pie, and homemade blueberry juice. Weddings, Christmas, birthdays, graduations, Sheli had a juice for all occasions. She always added a tablespoon of sugar to hers.
     Sugar was a regular ingredient at Walnut Meadow. All meals were accompanied by something sweet, and she never went on trips without taking a bag of caramels. The housekeeper always made lemonade and oatmeal cookies ostensibly for the guests, but she set the tray next to Sheli each time. Martin once suggested that Debbie should try one of the cookies, and she responded with something about her “girlish figure.” She put her hand on her hip and tipped her head back in an exaggerated pose.
     “My diet is very regimented, you know,” said Debbie. “I’m a leading lady of the theater.” She brushed her hair back vaingloriously.
     Kimberly rolled her eyes.
     “It’s quite obvious,” Debbie continued. “To be competitive, I must make no exceptions. I get up early, drink sugar-free orange juice, and always take the stairs, both up and down, no matter how many stairs I have to climb.” She flipped her hair over to the side.          
     “Juice is questionable.” said Kimberly. 
     “No, no, I’m not talking about store-bought O.J. I mean I make it myself, and not with any automatic fruit press or anything either. I make it the natural way; I crush the orange myself. I like crushing fruit.”
     “This is all too much for my brain,” said Martin.
     “That’s Sheli’s expression,” Kimberly grumbled.
     He smiled to himself.
     Martin attended a conservatory and had big aspirations like Debbie, but Kimberly, who studied medicine, guided him along a more sensible path and secured alternative opportunities for him should his musical talent prove unsatisfactory. At 23, he had yet to promote his talent.
     Sheli secretly envied their lives, especially Debbie’s with her stage success. She knew it was time for a change.
 
Camera 7: the cook is leaving the kitchen.
 
The village pastry shop caught fire in August, and the owner sold the property but graciously left some of his dessert recipes for Sheli’s cook. Sheli lost the impetus to walk to the village, and her walks in the forest were less frequent as she no longer had anyone to walk with her; her friends absented. Martin and Kimberly were engaged and planned to move away, and Debbie was occupied with her stage.
     Sheli’s cook consoled her with chocolate éclairs, and her friends regularly sent her electronic updates, one of which invited her to meet Debbie’s new man, Greg, one of her fans she had met backstage and ten years her senior.
 
Camera 10: an empty hallway. 
 
Sunlight shone. September was rosy and sun-drenched. Sheli went to the movies every night and spent the whole weekend at home.  

Camera 8: a bathroom.

Three scarlet maple leaves swirled up in an October whirlwind and fell upon the cold stream that carried them to separate places along the shore. The yellow oaks shivered as the rising sun cast the forest in orange, and the whole mess offed it off in off orange. The doctor’s wife poured brine into overgrown pumpkin halves. The almanac on the police chief’s toilet stank of tobacco. Computer mice clicked. 

Camera 16: the swimming pool.

November rotted. Sheli went on a two-week vacation alone in the tropics and basked under the swaying palms. She watched the swimmers from afar and cleared her mind. She achieved a conclusive reevaluation of her life, but the first few days after her return home she passed in the same lethargy as she thought of how to bring on the major change that she knew she needed. Back in Walnut Meadow, she remembered the tropics, taking oranges off the tree, and how good they tasted just plain and not as the overly sweetened orange juice that she was accustomed to having.
     The experience told her that change depended on the environment and that Walnut Meadow fundamentally enabled her inertia. She imagined a more natural place, one without the electronic amenities and without access to the unnatural products she regularly expected. A famous self-help guru confirmed that Walnut Meadow was facilitating her illness and said that only sudden, drastic, and brutal deprivation could improve her.

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