Fifty-Four Miles to Amarillo
Road Tripping with Danny Torrance
Road trip to from Alabama to New Mexico and I want to get there fast so I head for Elk City, Oklahoma on my first day, make a reservation not at my usual trusty stay but at a place that will save me a few bucks. It will be dark. I make it at around 10 p.m. and head for the motel, using Google maps because I have no sense of direction at all, and even with help telling me where to turn I have a tough time, but I get there and drag my stuff in and there is no reservation.
I check my email and sure enough my reservation is at another motel, they all sound alike, and I am afraid of losing my deposit so I schlep back to the car with all my stuff and plug the other motel into my Google search and “she” starts taking me down these completely lightless empty streets that seem to go to nowhere and I am talking to her like are you crazy, where are you taking me you bitch, and I am saying to myself, because I read too many thrillers, even if you see a naked woman covered in blood you cannot stop to help her, just keep driving, and now I am like WHAT THE FUCK, this has to be wrong, but sure enough I see some lights and there is the generic motel, I do a scan and it seems safe enough even though it is surrounded by construction and empty lots so I park near the entrance and go in.
Lovely Latina woman working the night desk, but I am a little creeped out by this point and there is something about the carpeting that reminds me of The Shining and the wall behind her is painted a bright kind of murder red. I am on floor 2. I go to the elevator and it is so small I can barely turn around. The Shining carpeting is in the tiny elevator and in the second floor hallway, and in my room, which has a tiny entrance hallway I drag my stuff into and lock the door post haste and turn around and there is a mirror in the tiny hallway, WHY, and I scare the shit out of myself.
Okay. A quick scan, check the sheets and there appear to be no hairs of any type on them, and the bottom sheet seems fine, but the top sheet seems to be made of a polyester/plastic mix. Well, I’m here now. Just shower off the 12 hour drive and get into bed. Surprise, the bathroom is really tiny, the door almost hits the toilet if you try to close it, but I undress and the lighting is so bad that — ok, i have put on some weight and I am not happy about it but in this space I look like Mama Cass but I shake off the self body-shaming and step the three centimeters back to the shower and turn it on and step in and the water is harsh, needle-like, but it’s bearable and the shower curtain is odd, it seems to be absorbing the water instead of repelling it, and I start to think they should be using the plasticky top sheet in the shower, problem solved.
Dry off, towel feels like sandpaper but I guess I can use some exfoliation. Then back to the bed trying to will my feet to not really touch the carpet because God knows. I sleep like a log for some reason and awake to make a coffee and this room coffee maker is like the cheapest looking thing ever, and I start to imagine a bunch of hotel suits and panty hosers going through the hotel catalog and picking a substandard coffee maker and then going on to the next level down because what the hell, every little bit adds up when you have that many hotels in places like Elk City.
So I have the coffee and get the hell out of there, grab a coffee from the lobby and, oh yeah, I forgot this part, when I checked in the nice woman said it was a no smoking establishment, which meant I couldn’t even smoke OUTSIDE. I guess that makes it a classy place. So I book it out of there and look for a nice place to sit and have a smoke and some coffee but it is all construction and dead businesses, so I pull into a parking lot and sit on a curb and, of course, the coffee is swill and I glance over at a very dead Long John Silver’s with a sign that reads “CLOSED PER ANETLY.” Damn straight its closed peranetly, that place is so dead it will never rise again, not even in a parallel universe.
I gotta get out of here. The interstate is close thank god and I start booking it and after a minute I look down at the speedometer and I am going 110 miles per hour. Ok, breathe, put on your Tidal playlist, and the sky starts to open up because I am almost to Texas and over the sound system comes Oscar Peterson playing Hymn to Freedom, and the wind turbines are moving to the tune and all is well. That’s what you get for saving 25 bucks on a hotel room, the cost of about three specialty coffees in Santa Fe, which I will be drinking thank you very much. And thank you, Mr. Peterson.
