Extended Stay

A few winters back, I went up to Milwaukee for a Celine Dion concert.  The concert was on a Saturday, but I ended up hanging around town the following week because I’d happened upon a deal for an Extended Stay.  Figured I couldn’t let it go to waste, and I actually ended up having a really nice time, despite the cold and the snow.

The Sunday morning after the concert, I went downstairs to grab a cup of tea.  I was beat, and my throat was a bit sore from screaming my lungs out.  Celine played every song from Falling into You and Let’s Talk About Love.  All certified bangers.  Turns out, the Extended Stay didn’t have any tea, but there were a couple of those big coffee burners and pots—the kind you always see in the waiting rooms at a Jiffy Lube or Valvoline.  My teeth are more porous than the average bloke’s, so coffee can do a real number on them if you don’t get to brushing them quickly enough, but, like I said, I was beat, so I poured myself a cup, which looked like the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  All I could think of was how my tongue and the rest of my insides would look like those poor seagulls and pelicans covered in that black sludge.  Remember those dish soap commercials? 

Anyways, I sat down at one of the tables.  I noticed there was an older fellow sitting by himself a few tables over, and I was about to ask him if he’d like to join me when another gentleman suddenly appeared and sat down next to him. 

“Hey, Frankie,” the newcomer said.

“Chip, how goes it?”

The two discussed everything from the weather, to how the coffee tasted compared to other days, to the Celine concert—this last one surprised me; these gentlemen didn’t look like Celine men, but that isn’t to suggest they didn’t seem quite pleasant.  They obviously knew one another, and I figured they must’ve previously lodged at this particular Extended Stay, which they soon confirmed.

“So, what are you in for this time?” the one named Chip asked.

Frankie proceeded to chronicle how he wound up at the Extended Stay (again).  His wife wanted him out of the house for the week.  Gave him the boot, she did, because she’d ordered him to shovel the driveway and, in an attempt to warm himself up for the task, he polished off the 12-pack his buddies had left outside from the night before.  The shoveling wasn’t that bad after that, but he’d gotten a little sidetracked because he quickly deviated to constructing a pretty sick sledding track out back for his son, Cooper.  Said it had some incredible banks and turns, that you could really pick up some speed on it, even wondered why he’d been wasting and slaving his life away as a security guard at the local bank and hadn’t taken up engineering or something like that.  Well, Frankie crept inside through the back door and summoned Cooper away from his mother without her knowing.  They walked up the hill and he got his son situated on the sled and then, poof!, he was off, and wouldn’t you fucking know it, he took the first turn like a goddamn pro—Go, Cooper! Go!—but the cheers quickly turned into cries of panic—oh, God! slow down, Cooper!—but it was too late.  He didn’t hit the next turn as intended.  In fact—call it a design flaw, or maybe his son was just not that good at sledding, who’s to say?—he took it more like a ramp, and oh boy he soared through the air for a good three seconds before hitting the side of the shed in a loud, metallic bang.  He ended up breaking his collar bone and a rib or two.  “But they’re back from the hospital and he’s fine,” he said.  “She’s always babying him.”  Frankie then asked Chip what he’d done. 

Chip said his was not an all too different tale.  His wife was hosting a breed reveal party for the dog of one of her friends he’d never met, never even heard of.  But that wasn’t surprising, he said.  She was always making new acquaintances—at yoga, at the grocery store, at book clubs.  Why they were hosting the stupid party for this random dog, he didn’t know, but he said he’d done his fair share of the preparation.  He bought the ice, he made the Jello shots, he booked the bouncy house company.  Hell, he even kept his mouth shut and didn’t ask why the fuck they were getting a bouncy house for a breed reveal party!  When I heard this, I silently agreed.  I almost missed the rest of his tale because my mind was littered with images of rabid and barking canines ricocheting off the inflatable floors and walls of a bouncy house like electrons in an atom.  Anyways, the wife’s friends and their dogs started showing up, and the party got going—lots of yapping and barking and nonconsensual humping.  It was enough to roast even the coolest cucumber.  So, Chip did what I think anyone in that situation would’ve done and slurped down a few dozen of the Jello shots.  He was really in his stride then, and his wife called him over to meet the belle of the ball, the dog whose honor for which this entire shindig was being thrown, a dog named none other than Charcuterie, or Cooter for short.  Well, when Chip heard that he burst out laughing and, when asked what was so funny, he let it slip that it was quite possibly the stupidest fucking name he’d ever heard.  That, as you can imagine, did not go over well.  Ruined the entire party, his wife said.

This went on for a few more days.  A couple other men came and went throughout the week—showed up and joined the coffee table with Chip and Frankie and recounted their tales of exile, of banishment, while I sat at a nearby table and listened.  I spent the afternoons and evenings wandering around town in the cold slush, searching for activities with which to occupy myself—mini golf, Dave & Buster’s, etc.—doing nothing really, because all I was really looking forward to was the next morning, when I’d head downstairs and listen to the morning crew, whoever it might be that day.  On Friday morning, Chip and Frankie were already sitting down at the table by the time I’d made it downstairs, and they nodded at me as I walked over to pour my coffee!  I was then fully initiated into their club when they asked me how I—me!—had ticked off the old ball and chain.  I was so excited that I nearly forgot I was (and still am) hopelessly single, but they took my delayed response and the dumbfounded expression on my face as that I’d really ticked the missus off and that I might be staying at the Extended Stay for an extended period of time.  They simply shook their heads, tsked their tongues, and wished me the best of luck before they stood up and headed out.

On Saturday morning, it wasn’t until after I’d gone downstairs and grabbed my coffee that I realized I was the only one there.  I hung around for another hour or so, but there was and would be no sign of Chip or Frankie.  I was disheartened at first, seeing as I’d just recently been initiated and welcomed into the club, but I soon understood that their absences meant that each had made up with his respective wife.  Out of the proverbial doghouses, as they say.  I also remembered that I was checking out that morning, so it was time for me to bid adieu to the Extended Stay and the friendships that I made there.  Cheers!