A rather unpleasant road trip.
We get back on the bike after a stop where we got gas and some food.
I ask whether the last time I left Colorado was with you.
I am speaking slowly and carefully to be heard over the wind but even I notice myself pronouncing “Colorado” with very posh round vowels.
“Cawl-oh-rah-doh”.
“Cahllihradduh”, you say. What? As if. Nobody pronounces it THAT wrong.
We have barely started this cross-country run, we are still in our own time zone. Long way to go.
The next exit has signs for a lot of pastel pink and blue attractions, some of which we can see from the highway. You are on the handlebars and you take the exit. We JUST stopped at the last exit and now you are stopping again. Well, alright, we can take a look and maybe make some notes for next time. You are slowing down, pulling over.
“Are we actually stopping or just driving through?”. You don’t answer me.
The attractions are weaker than they seemed from a distance. The signs are cute, Easter egg pink and baby blue everywhere, but most store fronts are just pretty signs pointing toward about one block’s worth of businesses.
You park across from the one block showing signs of life.
It’s not much better close up. Mostly candy stores. They look pretty, but all the candy is just colored sugar molded in to shapes.
We get some kind of door prize. A cylinder of wedges full of candy. It’s got a helmet or robot head or something on the lid. I don’t recognize it but that doesn’t mean anything. Not really up on my robot lore. Somebody tells us the descriptions of the candies. The names are exciting and elaborate, but they are all just colored sugar. I try some. Tastes like fake color fake flavor sugar. You grab the cylinder for your own pocket. I don’t get one. Yep, fine, alright, you like pure sugar more than I do. Amidst all the the candy stores is a restaurant which is several floors inside a clear glass rectangle, like a mini skyscraper. There are stickers scattered around the glass. “Food”. “Burgers”.
Well, now I want a burger. I am actually feeling hungry, despite having just eaten at the last stop. We try to speak to the lady who just seated us, but she is already hustling to join the rest of the wait staff, who are all heading toward some doors near the stairs. A show on a small stage starts up.
It’s a magic show. I’m not a big fan of magic shows. I don’t really like magic tricks at all. They are illusions designed to belittle the audience, make you look stupid. I am not interested in playing the magic trick game. Feigning surprise at a dove flying out of a hat.
The magician’s intro reveals that ‘they’ worked in New York and now they are “spreading the magic around”. All the way around to a highway service town in Somewhere, USA. Poor guy. Who is “they” though? I don’t see anyone else. There are no signs with names up, the stage walls are just covered with stickers, like the doors downstairs.
The magician’s dark suit is cheap and doesn’t fit very well. It is very plain. Not really theatrical at all. Not so much as a sparkly tie. He’s not even wearing a hat. It takes me a minute but I recognize him.
He did a bit on tv, something like be a magician who needed rescue from real magic in maybe two episodes of some supernatural show. I suppress a snort as I think, “I am not a magician but I play one on tv.”. This is unkind, I shouldn’t snort at the man. He is up and working, he is doing his thing, he is trying.
I do have to willfully hold back the unkindness because the magician is not the greatest showman. He is walking around the room, with some floppy beige thing held up in his hand, it looks like a piece of overcooked chicken. He looks like a tea kettle. He seems to be showing off its limpness, probably it’s going to leap up or fly off at some point.
I don’t want him sneaking up on me to pull some stupid prank, so I keep eyes on him for a while. He is not doing anything very special. Flowers, cards, quarters.
I am still hungry, and I would like to order, though what I would really like is to finish up and get going. We are never going to get anywhere like this. Day one of a cross-country trip and we haven’t even left our time zone yet. We haven’t even ordered our burgers and now we have to sit through a magic show because the wait staff won’t serve during the show. How long is this going to take? I don’t want to stay over here.
I am grouchy. I am hungry. My head hurts. Seems like the chicken nuggets I had at the previous stop weren’t enough. We have the candy but I don’t want sugar pellets,
I want a real dinner.
I admit that maybe I am just judgey because I am hungry, so I take out my phone and start trying to save the town in my map for when we are near here again. If this town does have some kind of real attraction we could plan a better visit next time.
Without looking away from the show you grab my phone and slap it back on the table face down. I start to say that I was just saving the place for later, but why bother. You are glued to the show and I don’t even want to be here.
You have turned the phone over, but not turned it off, so I’ll just wait a minute.
The magician continues his course around the room. The floor is all four-tops and the clear walls are all two-tops and it seems like every table is full except ours.
When the magic guy is safely performing way over there and you are utterly absorbed in your rapt attention to the show, I look at the phone again, looking for reviews to see what else is around. A place where I could get a real dinner without a magician would be nice.
The reviews are unpleasant. Low-star reviews.
The photos attached to the reviews are very unpleasant. No appetizing photos of gorgeous dinners. Lots of pictures of weird things on plates. They look like dry cabbage rolls, but uglier, almost hairy.
Some of the things on plates don’t even look like food. They looks like dead, wet animals curled into balls. What am I looking at? Some kind of local cooking tradition? It looks awful. Suddenly I can smell the dead mice I used to thaw when I worked in animal rescue. Thawing death and wet sawdust and droppings.
The wording of the reviews seems like people are under-reacting. Things like, “This place wasn’t really trying very hard” with a photo of an icky wet thing on a plate.
I would really prefer not to stay.
You are enjoying the show. You don’t want to leave. The way you’re acting even if you didn’t like the show you’ll defy me no matter what. If the devil leapt off the stage right now you would sneer at me and refuse to move.
I am looking around, trying not to be rude about it. The magician is doing his thing with people in the audience. I don’t want to draw his focus and have him start finding doves in my ears. What do I do? Can we avoid the strange plates by leaving before we order dinner? Can we just get out of here? The magician is still walking around still talking himself up more than doing tricks, and still holding the floppy thing up at shoulder height, no end to his blather in sight. I don’t want to know what the limp thing in his hand is.
I am not sure whether I smell the unpleasant frozen dead animal smell for real now, or whether the ugly pictures on the reviews just won’t leave me.
I look out the window and see clouds rolling over the mountains. I see what looks like a real skyscraper off in the distance, like the TransAmerica building in San Francisco. If only I were there now, instead of this plastic sticker town, with a traveling companion who is mean to me, with a mediocre magician in a town that smells like dead mice.
You are watching the magician. I’m gonna go.
I pocket my phone and glide backward toward the stairs.
I turn and a waitress with a tray is in my way.
“Where are you going?”
“Merch?”
She nods to a stairway –
“That way.”
Is she sending me back down to the counter where we got the candy? That’s not merch, that’s just sugar. Whatever. I’m going.
Down the stairs the smell is real. The smell of dead, frozen mice, mixed in with frozen sawdust and frozen droppings. The mice always drop their droppings as they freeze, so you always get droppings in with a bag of frozen mice.
The smell is so real it’s getting stronger.
I am thinking up a story about buying my boyfriend a shirt and putting it in the car for later and ready to be a bitch about it if anyone tries to stop me leaving, but there isn’t even anybody down here. Nobody at the round glass counter, nobody at the candy dispensers. Where are they? Is everyone in the vicinity upstairs at the magic show?
I find the bike and mess about a bit with the bags, looking around, trying to discretely scan the street. It’s quiet out here. Everyone is inside. I can see the room full of people at the magic show through the clear glass walls.
I can see you, hunched over the table. You like magic shows more than I do. You like this town more than I do. Have you even noticed that I’ve gone? Are you glad to be rid of me? Are you hoping I will get stuck in the bathroom so you won’t have to look at me for the next two hours? Maybe you’ll order me a burger and when I don’t show up you’ll just keep it and go.
I can smell the smell out here. Was it here before and I didn’t notice?
Have I brought it with me? Check my bag, check my pockets. There it is. A dead mouse in my pocket. White, wet. Not a wild dead thing. A domesticated frozen bred-for-food dead thing.
I put it back. I’ll get rid of it later.
I straddle the bike, kick up the stand, and let it roll.
I coast down the hill toward the highway. No helmet.
I set my face downward. Don’t scowl, just resting basic face. Like I’m not really going anywhere, just down the hill. Past all the pastel signs pointing toward the sugar stores.
The highway ramp is coming up so I’ll need the the motor now. Please, bike, just start. I stamp the starter and roll the throttle. Get outta here.
As I am pushing up the ramp toward the road, I dig the dead mouse out of my pocket. Get rid of it, but at the last minute.
Mind the merging, don’t get hit.
At the last minute, just at the last of the on-ramp, I throw the dead mouse away. Off the ramp, down the bank, back in to the town’s verge. Keep your mouse.
I pull the pocket inside out. Get it some fresh air. Have fun at your wretched little magic show. Find your own way home.