ND 2

We pulled over at a local motel. There was a bar attached. Before either of us even checked the front desk to see if there was a vacancy, I went straight to the restroom. L wandered into the bar.

I looked at myself in the dim light, poorly reflected against dirty white walls. I felt very far from Los Angeles, but closer, right then, to home. I looked tired, but not like myself. My hair was short and my stomach rounder than usual. Once I'd made the decision to leave LA, I started to fill up and fast. I ate all the food. I stopped pacing myself. Instead of a night out for cuban chicken one week and an Indian food feast the next, I started packing them in night after night. By the time I started to drive east, my favorite jeans didn't fit. But, that seemed fitting.

L was standing outside the door, scowling at the petite blond bartender. The girl's eyes were far apart, practically on the sides of her face, and when she turned to look at me, she seemed to be glancing far behind me. Then she scoffed.

"What?" I said.

L shrugged. "She did the same thing to me," she said. "I asked her what was on tap and that's the answer I got."

We walked back into the lobby where the night manager was stood and looked at us. He didn't say "welcome." He didn't say "hello." I was less than a week gone from working for one of the top hotel brands in the industry and this guy couldn't greet two potential guests.

"We'd like a room," I said.

He shook his head. "No," he said. "All booked."

I didn't understand how a motel off an interstate could be booked on a weeknight. There weren't many cars in the parking lot. We'd been one of three people in the bar. I made a face, and the manager sighed.

"The owner of the gas station's wife passed away and everyone's in town for the funeral," he explained.

L and I looked at one another. She sat down on the brown sofa in the lobby. Everything in the room was brown. The light was brown. The mood was brown. The night manager's eyes were brown.

It's true that I was headed home, to live near the small town in which I'd grown up. I'd traveled far and wide. But I'd never felt as foreign as I did in that unfriendly motel off the 2 in North Dakota.