Anyhoo…
When last we met, my shooting partner and I were approaching our first indoor accommodations in quite some time, following a long stint of shooting our way through most of Big Sur and the Sierras. A fun ride, but the prospect of a real bed and a hot shower loomed large. Our destination was the small town of Bridgeport, not far from the northern edge of Yosemite, an area we presumed would be fairly hopping in rally August, the height of the high season for Yosemite tourists. We had felt pretty fortunate to be able to snag an actual hotel room, but after a late departure from Yosemite proper, it was doubtful we would reach the hotel at anything even remotely approaching a reasonable hour. In the waning light of the high Sierras and the patchwork quilt that is cellular service in the area, I made a quick call to the hotel to let the powers that be know of our delay.
No luck. Judging by the voice on the answering machine (and I use that term specifically, because the clicking and whirring noises during the message made it clear that voicemail was a technology that would have been considered an almost otherworldly advance with unimaginably futuristic implication to whoever left the message I was listening to. The voice was old. Very old. I imagined him taking a day or so to carefully step out of his coffin in order to make his way to the machine, figure out how the danged thing worked, and with any spare reserves of air left in his long deceased lungs, rasp out a request to leave… (wheeze)… a (cough)… message (clunk)… after the… (wheeze) beep.
Odd.
I explained who I was, where we were and that we would be a late arrival, and apologized. Hey, we had done our best. time to settle in for a long evening of staring at each other on the way to Bridgeport. Three hours later, having memorized each lien in eahother’s aces, along with every possible place to hide a quarter in the rental car, Bridgeport revealed itself on the horizon. Sort of. Downtown Bridgeport on a Saturday night is not the center of the universe. I’m not sure it’s even the center of the Bridgeport. While there weren’t exactly public works crews literally rolling up the sidewalks as we pulled onto the main drag, it wouldn’t have surprised us at all if that had been the case. Business after business with the equivalent of their courtesy lights on. Very quiet is what I’m saying. At the hotel, when we found it, we noted with some dismay that there was not a single light on outside.
More odd.
As we got out of the car and mounted the porch steps, we saw an envelope taped to the doorknob. On it was scrawled “#6.” Inside the envelope were two keys.
“Think that’s for us?” I said.
“Only one way to find out,” Bobby said, taking both keys and trying them in the locke. The second one worked. Peering inside, we saw a dim foyer.
“OK,” he said. “Let’s get out stuff.”
“Don’t you thin k it’s a little strange that nobody’s come outside to se who just unlocked the front door?” I said in a whisper. It seemed a little strange to be whispering at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night alongside a public street, but human beings are remarkably adaptable animals. It seemed appropriate.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Bobby said. “Come on, let’s ditch our stuff in the room. I’m starving.”
I had to agree. Our emergency rations at this point consisted of three bananas well past the yellow stag, two packs of jerky and a roll of cinnamon flavored dental floss. Grabbing our more stealable gear, we breached the foyer.
The front desk was unmanned. A single light with a Tiffany shade, the kind you imagine Scrooge McDuck hunched over while counting coins to throw into the dollar sign embossed sacks on the floor, hunched on the coiner. There was not a sound anywhere, but I have to admit that I jumped a bit when the air conditioner kicked on somewhere down the hall.
“Do we check in?” I said.
“”How do you suggest we do that?”
A good point, and well made. In the near total darkness, we made our way up the narrowest, steepest stairs I’ve ever seen that weren’t in an M C Escher drawing. The darkness, however, was not total enough to obscure the fact the ratty carpet tacked to the stairs was well past its prime, probably last having been cleaned when that young whippersnapper Kerouac was hammering out copy by the pound onto a roll of butcher paper, but it was a qualitative match for the cranberry red carpet on the second floor, and I use the adjective “can berry” on purpose because comparing it to blood is just too easy. At the far end of the hall, we saw a door with a big brass “6” on it.
“We’re going to die tonight, aren’t we?” I said.
“Maybe,” Bobby said. “Come on, let’s find something to eat.”
Bridgeport did not disappoint when it came to dining options, in the sense that it exactly matched our expectations at this point by not having any. Wandering into the one bar that was open and seeing it occupied by the forlorn female bartender you see in every movie that has ever run out of ideas, the one wiping down the one corner of the bar again and again, she told us the kitchen had closed at 7. Natch.
“Might be some food at the gas station. If it’s open,” came a voice from the far corner of the bar, where the other half of this archetypal scene – the two lonely sad sacks nursing beers and not talking to eau other – had taken up residence. I was pretty sure Edward Hopper was hiding in the shadows with an easel and a look of grim satisfaction.
Muttering our thanks, we left the bar, only to confirm the gas station was, as was the custom, closed, and would not have had any food even if it were open. I’m not sure when the last time I saw gas pumps with actual dials was, but it’s been a while.
We trudged back to the hotel, and while I know creative writing teachers like to have their students avoid using words like that when they should use less obstructive words like the perfectly serviceable “walked,” I’m telling you, we trudged. We had forgotten to lock the hotel before we left, but hey, it’s not like the deed was in our names. and the place seemed to be in the same shape we left it. Without a word, bobby crawled into one of the beds and pulled the sheet, the one sheet, over his head. IMe? I enjoyed a good flossing and called it a night not long after that.
Morning came quickly and was not much better. We were up before sunrise again, and this seemed like an especially good idea, not because of the lure of the magic hour, but because our strong feelings were that sunlight would not be this hotel’s friend. Or a blacklight. The three or four trifles of water that emerged somewhat reluctantly from the shower were not welcoming in any sense of the word. We were clean,, but only in the sense we wren’t as dirty as yesterday.
The slowly approaching sunrise that greeted us as we emerged on the porch was wan and seemed slightly apologetic, as if it were saying it was really sorry that this was the world it had to greet us with, and that it would try to make it up to us later. Agan, nobody was at the reception desk, although we noticed that there was a sign out card. with, and by God this is true, a survey.
“Did you pay for this room online?” Bobby said.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
I had to agree. I felt more exhausted when we left than when we arrived, but that may have just been the dental floss talking.
There was coffee on the wind. Our senses had become so finely attuned to the whiff of any sustenance by now that the aroma beckons to us like the tendrils of pie from a windowsill in a Petunia Pig cartoon. there was a bakery about three blocks away and we practically made Bobby and Michael sized holes in the plate glass as we stumbled in and practically cleared out the pastry rack. thirty minutes later, we were on our way to the nearby hot springs for the next shoot.
In the time that has passed since that night, we have reflected on the fact that we had entered, slept in and departed a hotel without ever seeing another human being. We remind ourselves it wasn’t technically breaking and entering because we had a key and had paid for the privilege, but still…
Someday, and I absolutely convinced of this, I’m going to meet someone from Bridgeport and when I share this story, I completely expect the response to be as follows: a long, puzzled and quizzical look, and after a long pause, “but… that place has been closed for thirty years.” This is not even up for debate. I’m sure there was some awful incident, and the remaining ghosts have somehow learned how to use hotels.com for their amusement. I don’t know why they didn’t nab us, but perhaps they found something wanting in us and decided to let us enjoy the award winning cobweb art, the crepy hallway and the shadowy stairs which, if they were in an amusement park, would have a name like “The Paralyzer,” or “The Widowmaker,” and wouldchortle with Lovecraftian delight as we tossed on the mattresses last used before the brutal slayings of that nice family from Sheboygan who just wanted to see El Capitan and maybe a grizzly bear or two, but found something rather more unpleasant in Bridgeport instead. Perhaps they just wanted to get the word out. Bridgeport? Keep movin, buddy.
Whatever the reason, next time, I’m staying in Fresno.
