There were two things I liked about the town of Whakatane on the Eastern Bay of Plenty in New Zealand; it had an agreeable city center and a nice waterfall that landed almost right into the center of town. The downtown is nestled up against a cliff, and from this precipice the Wairere falls leap off, glance the side of the cliff side a few times, and plunge into a lower pool at the bottom, quite a worthy site for a small hamlet such as Whakatane.
My primary mission as my car rolled down the main drag was to secure lodging. Now this may sound like an easy enough task but I had a pesky road rule to adhere to if you recall, lodging to be no more than $NZ30 ($15US) a night.
Motel alley greets you as you drive into Whakatane with names like Villa Vista Motel and Sunny View Lodge; they’re lined like dominoes along the street. I drove up and down the road a couple of times noting the many vacancy signs and empty parking lots. It was a Wednesday night in Whakatane, and with no disrespect to the wonderful residents of Whakatane, I can’t imagine much happens here on a Wednesday night.
I finally settled on a comfortable, although bland, looking place called the Coachman Inn. It had that wonderful medieval look that only stained balsa wood and plaster can achieve. I swung into the empty lobby like a wrangler after a hard day doing wrangling stuff. At the front desk stood a meek looking woman in a polyester outfit that management must have chosen for her. I thought about asking for a whiskey to ease my parched throat, but I doubted they stocked whiskey behind the front desk.
“Um, excuse me. Hi. Do you have any rooms available?” I lowered my voice. “There’s just me…a single I guess.” An involuntary nervous laugh came out of my nasal passages.
“Hello.” She tapped a few fast keystrokes on the computer behind the desk. “Yes, we have a single available for eighty dollars a night.”
Now there’s an ocean of difference between eighty and thirty dollars. It would take the haggling of a lifetime to garner the kind of a markdown I was looking for. I was up for the challenge. I made a point of it to slowly scan the lobby, which was empty, and the parking lot, which was nearly empty, hoping she would take the hint, but her gaze promptly returned to the computer screen.
“Ah, that’s a bit more then I can, uh, spend.” I hung my last word out to dry. I let it linger like yesterday’s seafood surprise, and stood there waiting for the haggling to begin.
She looked up, smiled briefly, and then looked back down at her computer so engrossed in a task that I ceased to exist.
If I had but a scrap of gumption I would have jabbed my index finger on top of the desk and in an exasperated fluster pointed out the fact that it was now after 7pm, the Coachman was virtually devoid of customers, and for the love of Christ it was a Wednesday night. By god, if there was ever a time for haggling, this was it!
As it turned out, I left the Coachman without so much as a sniggle about the price. Oddly enough, I even thanked the polyester woman as she stood behind the counter with a blank stare and a manufactured smile. It was the same position I found her in when I first stepped into the lobby.
It was getting late, I was tired, and willing to stay just about anywhere. After a short drive, I stumbled upon the Commercial Hotel in the middle of town. The facade oozed art deco charm and sat above an inviting pub. I thought I was wasting my time, ninety, one hundred dollars, why bother? But when I stepped into the lobby and looked around it became clear that the Commercial wasn’t targeting the cosmopolitan traveler, I doubt the word marketing was ever used by anyone associated with the Commercial.
The lobby hosted furniture most noted for its durability than for its pleasing eye-catching qualities. Thick glass separated the front desk from the lobby with a little gap at the base to conduct transactions. Index cards were taped to the glass barrier denoting various plumbing problems and dire warnings of what happens if you’re not out by 10am.
As I stood there trying to find a sign of life behind the desk, a man swaggered in off the street carefully balancing two fish and chips and two beers in his hands. He regarded me for a moment with wild bloodshot eyes. And then said something that sounded like a battle between vowels. “Aaawuuuu!” His breath alone could have intoxicated bystanders. He hovered, I thought waiting for some type of response.
“Hi.” I said, looking at him briefly, and then feigning interest in the linoleum floor pattern.
He lingered on, filling the lobby with a scent of alcohol saturated road-kill with a hint of urine. I began to spin defensive scenarios in my head. Should I scream like a woman or go into a mock epileptic fit? At length he grunted, turned, and then slowly made his way up the stairs. I watched riveted. He used the breadth of the staircase and ranged back and forth between the banister on the right and the wall along the left side. I was waiting for chips to fly and for his body to pitch over the banister. No way I was going to do CPR; it just wouldn’t be possible.
Without so much as a dollop of beer on the stairs he disappeared around the corner. “Laura!” he bellowed, no doubt the lucky woman who was the object of his affections.
No matter how much clamor I raised and ‘Hellos!’ I helloed, no one appeared behind the front desk to service my needs. I ambled around to the pub to enquire after the proprietor and discovered that the bartender was he; stained Hawaiian shirt, greasy hair, and a cigarette that somehow clung to his lower lip. By the look of his pants he didn’t hassle with an apron. I prepared for a grisly encounter, but he was a regular Mary Poppins once we got to talking. Rooms were fifteen dollars a night and it was with a gracious relieved smile that I paid and accepted the room key. What a bargain.
I roamed the halls above looking for my room, getting more concerned the further I went. I walked past an open door, and peered in to see a pair of unkempt feet hanging off a bed. Coarse laughter followed by foul language could be heard behind another door. When I found my room I wished I hadn’t. You couldn’t imagine a more desperate enclosure. It qualified as a hotel room because it had four walls and a bed, but all analogies stop there. The bed looked and felt to be stuffed with dead weasels. The pillow had more stains than a used napkin at a barbecue, and the carpeted floor had obviously never felt the caress of a vacuum cleaner. It was then that I praised myself for the foresight to pack a sheet and pillow. One of those little things that ends up saving lives.
I decided to hit the community showers, as I was grimy from my earlier game of golf. Intuition told me to expect a bad shower experience, but intuition had nothing to draw on when it came to the Commercial.
If you’re partial to yeast, molds, smuts, and powdery mildews then the showers at the Commercial are worth a visit. It was a festival of fungus. Between tiles I saw a Ferris wheel constructed entirely of spores, and a gang of smuts appeared to be harassing a carney on the fourth tile up.
The shower nozzle violated at least several accepted laws of fluid dynamics. Ninety percent of the water went up, out, and over the shower curtain, leaving a trickle that lightly patted my head. Halfway through my abbreviated shower, as I marveled at the water display, I recalled that my clothes were neatly hung on a nail just outside the curtain.
I made my way back to my room with a ball of sopping clothes and a strong sensation that a unique form of fungus was just now taking up residence between my toes. I changed, and then sat on the corner of the bed and considered what chain of events in my life led me to this bleak position. I decided it would be wise to spend as little time as possible in this place and with that I walked down to the street and set out to kill time.
I walked up, down, beside, between, in, and out of every street. No shop escaped my notice, however most of them were closed. I strolled past the waterfall four times and found a natural stone arch next to the cliff. Loose rocks from above the arch were shattered on the floor; I added a briskness to my step as I passed underneath.
I took in a movie, ‘The Sixth Sense’, and new fears of the dead and dispossessed took root. Dinner was a bucket of popcorn and a coke.
Then finally when the town was utterly deserted except for one black cat that insisted on crossing my path no matter my attempts to dodge it, I went back to the Commercial exhausted, and now slightly cursed.
Although the town was empty, the pub beneath my room, directly beneath my bed actually, was a hot bed of activity. The walls were alive with the beat of the music.
It was stuffy in the room and smelled funny so I opened the window, and discovered that just outside was an air conditioning unit with a fan blade that rubbed the metal grill and created a horrible, horrible noise. Beyond the A/C unit I could hear the waterfall in the distance in a continuous roll of thunder. I wrapped my sheet around me like a burrito, still fully clothed, curled up and tried to focus on the waterfall. Somehow I liked the idea of sleeping next to a waterfall more than an air conditioner with a clattery fan blade.
About three hours later, just as I was drifting off, someone from down the corridor screamed, “Is anyone asleep!!?” Then laughed raucously.
I curled up into an even tighter ball and uttered but one word in the darkness, “Mommy.”
Copyright 2000 Douglas S. Sassaman
About The Author:
Douglas Sassaman is a freelance writer, aspiring novelist, and self-described humorist (who some think should be self-committed). He writes the humor column, 'Life in the Cosmic-Burp' on the web at http://CosmicBurp.com.
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