The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [2]
“No problem. We have space for all.” The wiry Asian man behind the reservation desk smiles. “Twin bed or double? Smoking or non? You already see 1906 shipwreck?”
I answer his questions—double, non, and no—then trade him $96 cash for three keys on green plastic rings. “I like you hair,” he says. “Blue streak. Very fashion.” He shows me a sepia-tinted postcard picture of the old ship at Clatsop Beach to the south. “Still stay where it wreck one hundred year ago,” he says. “Half cover with sand now. You go see?”
“I’d like to,” I tell him, gathering up the keys and his tourist brochures.
He adjusts his glasses. “No one die there. Everybody save. You like.”
Up a metal staircase and behind a pink door, the first darkened room smells of lemon disinfectant. I scan our quarters: two square beds with polyester spreads, a small TV, a brown minifridge, a microwave oven, a Mr. Perks coffeemaker and a tub of dry coffee, packets of sugar and creamer, a nightstand with a Goodwill green lamp and a copy of Gideon’s Bible, a round plastic table with a phone book and a Guest Services binder that amounts to a few pizza parlor ads.
Towns change, but every motel room is the same.
I stretch out on the closest bed, stare up at the cottage cheese ceiling. “Not hungry,” I whisper. Mind over reality. I close my eyes. Not hungry. But just as I manage to push the food fantasies out of my consciousness, a new doubt starts pecking at the corner of my mind. Maybe all these years on the road are finally starting to take their toll. We’ve crisscrossed the country two dozen times. Everyone but Magdelena and Madre has stopped reading the previews and the write-ups. As we roll into each new town, Madre Pia’s great bellowing promise, “The lost will be saved, the saved will be amazed!” But I don’t know anymore which group I belong to. Lost or saved? Twenty-eight years old, and out of the quick blue nowhere it occurs to me: With each passing performance, I feel less sure of who I am.
Chapter 2
DESTINY
Sometimes when I walk through the rain, I know that each drop that falls on me wasn’t meant to fall on anybody else. Other times I take an umbrella to shield myself from the randomness.
You are the product of your upbringing. You are the product of your society. You are the product of your times. You are the product of your astrological chart. You are the product of peer pressure. You are the product of your maker. Which is it? Maybe God was really hungover the morning he stumbled out of bed and created me.
I peel myself off the motel mattress, fish around in my duffel for my saint book and pen, sit down at the white plastic table to scrawl myself a story.
Julian the Poor
(IF YOU NEED SHELTER)
A.K.A. Julian the Hospitaller
FEAST DAY: February 12
SYMBOLS: a hawk, a stag, an oar
Now imagine Saint Julian the Poor as a kid—before sainthood, before poverty. Thirteenth-century mama’s boy dressed in velvet and silk. An only child, he dined with all the fat cats of Normandy and Angiers at tables draped with linen damask. Even adolescence didn’t make young Julian’s feet itch with rebellion, but life had more in store for him than crab cakes and cranberry cocktails.
The day started like any other: A casual morning. Catered lunch with the king. Champagne and a light dessert. A few of the guys were headed out to hunt. Would Julian like to join them?
“Of course!” Julian loved nothing more than a hunt.
“Cheers and see you later, then.” Ting, ting.
But those forests of western France can be dense, the trails narrow. Maybe Julian stopped to admire a beetle. Maybe he fell into an indistinct daydream. It seemed only a moment, but suddenly everything was deathly quiet. Just the slow steady breathing