Curried Away

Curried Away

“ Vacancy,” the word by the road lighted for the world to see. I walked the few steps to the door which hosted a handwritten message; “return in ten minutes.” It being 6 AM, I was not surprised. I pulled the door open and was accosted by the unforgettable smell of curry. I recognized the smell immediately despite having grown up in the Polish quarter of Chicago. There is something about the aroma when used liberally that brings tears to your eyes without it being the cause of pain. The hall adjoining the front desk was thick with curry fog. It seemed to hang in the air as if it knew it was defying gravity and was proud of it. I could barely see the soda machine at the far end of the hall; its lights blinking as though a beacon from a distressed lighthouse on the Michigan shore.

There were a series of comatose camera shots on the screens behind the desk. I supposed it was the security that was to keep guests safe, from whom I had no idea, but in this day and age when fear is sold by the pound you can never be too explicit. It looked to be a reasonable facility for the price. The imitation carpet was adequately worn, the walls had lost the luster they once held, and the woodwork had been painted to resemble the George Washington period in our history, and a rack of attractions was guarded by a sign that said “Free.”

I have an aversion to paying for luxury accommodations when all I intend to do is sleep. I can only hope the beds are not too soft and not more than three feet off the floor. I don’t know who came up with the new recommended bed height for motels, but they were obviously not a normal sized person. When you need to get a running jump at the bed in order to make use of it, someone should have recognized the fact that there are few people with the athletic ability of a high jumper. When you calculate the distance from your knee to the floor and subtract that from the bed height, you will discover most people need a boost to access its supposed comforts. Of course this is all conjecture based on experiences from my last motel stay.

I’ve stayed in a variety of accommodations over the years as my job requires me to be available when and where needed. The last place I stayed was one of the more interesting places I’d inhabited. The TV worked sporadically, the mini fridge mistook itself for a microwave which believed itself kin to a nearly functioning fridge. The bed was…let’s just say, I’ve spent more comfortable nights sleeping on a concrete floor, but that’s another story. At four O’clock in the morning a siren began to wail and shortly thereafter there was a loud pounding on the door. Being awake I wasn’t startled, just curious. I opened the door after attempting to look through the peephole with no luck; it had been covered by a piece of now petrified gum. There were dozens of people gathered in the parking area focused on the second story of the building. I followed the trajectory of stragglers stumbling into the parking lot. A number of heavily clad men in what appeared to be rubber suits were running up the steps carrying axes and wearing respirators; the deafening siren continued to blare.

There is something about motels that prevent interaction between guests. It is a phenomenon that spilled over I believe from the overcrowded nature of city life. We seek privacy and yet it is impossible, therefore we wall ourselves into our houses and apartments assuming every stranger is a threat to our safety and wellbeing. The connectedness we once felt, came from a place of similar uncertainty, but with an entirely different reaction; the immigrants that made up the majority of the population were living on the same page of circumstance. It wasn’t until television came along that we found a reason to abandon the need to connect with living beings and became content to divert our attention to the face on the TV screen. That feeling of the fear of intimacy has spilled over onto the travel agenda. No one had as yet heard of a TV personality harming anyone. That would come later.

There is something about the unknown that breaks down the barriers to socialization. The man standing next to me was at the desk when I attempted to checked in. I nodded respectfully and he pretended not to see me. I assumed he was not used to being seen and therefore found it safer to ignore all unsolicited notice. A mere ten hours later he began to speak like Pee Wee Herman, talking feverishly about what was happening. I assumed from the details of what he was revealing it was not just conjecture, but he’d somehow managed to obtain the inside scoop. According to the woman on the other side of where I stood, he was entirely wrong. “It is not a fire, but a faulty fire alarm, no smoke!” I didn’t challenge her although I’d just been advised by a person behind me that it was someone who had been overtaxed by the non-working appliances, and had a heart attack. The sirens suddenly went silent, the men clothed in black suits and masks descended the stairs, jumped into their truck, and fled, leaving me wondering if I hadn’t fallen asleep after all, and this was but a dream. If it hadn’t been for the smells emanating from the donut shop across the road I might have believed my own supposition.

We found ourselves standing in the parking lot with nothing to do. No action to scrutinize, no one to blame, so we drifted back to our personal stockades and pretended nothing of worth had occurred. I was tempted to say good night to my three confidants, but thought it might throw them into a form of hysteria, that I, at four in the morning, was not ready for. Not being able to sleep I watched one of the two channels available. I didn’t realize how many wonderful items there are on the shopping channel that I didn’t want or need. I left shortly after daylight and didn’t return until that evening.

I have become used to the fact that security has different meanings to different people, therefore I take things I value, clothing, electronics, etc. with me when I leave. Upon my return I opened the nearly functioning refrigerator and found the supplies I had left were no longer present. I marched down to the office and told the desk clerk that someone had been in my room and taken all the food items I had in the refrigerator. She looked worse for wear having only been awake for some of her night shift; she yawned several times during my rendition of events leading to the empty fridge. Her response, I’m sure, is blazoned on a plaque somewhere in the universe, “WELL! That’s too bad." It wasn’t the words that surprised me as much as the deadpan face from which they emanated.

I knew from the platonic face she exhibited that no further discussion was warranted. I would eat the banana left from lunch and the popcorn from the night before. I was too exhausted to attempt to navigate the halls of an eating establishment in search of peace and fulfillment. My consolation was that after not sleeping for several nights I tend to pass out, relieving me of the anxiety of attempting to sleep. I lodged a chair under the doors handle just in case I was mistaken.

I managed to sleep an entire six hours that evening and decided sometime during that period that if I was to die in my sleep, it needn’t be there. The response to my murder during an attempted food heist would have met the same response as is on the infamous plaque somewhere in the universe. It was after leaving the donut shop across the road that I found availability at the home of, what I have come to think of as, Curry and Garlic LLC.

I know better than to attempt to reclaim a missed event, supper, by investing in foods with a heavy fat content, but hunger has a way of causing you to abandon all forms of self-protectiveness in favor of personal satisfaction. The donuts weren’t bad as far as donuts go. The chocolate covered ones could have done without the multi-colored sprinkles that looked like frosted tooth picks and had as much flavor as you could expect from a colored tooth pick. I managed to avoid embarrassing moments during my day, for a lack of a better word, gas, and make it back to the Halls of Curry to spend the night. I had been informed that morning by a sleepy night attendant that check-in wouldn’t be for 7 hours, but I was free to wait in the lobby if I liked. I politely declined and was off to another day of hard work and avoiding embarrassing gas distribution scenarios.

I have stayed in a variety of motels since that momentous day, but only a few that rivaled the luxurious odors that permeated not only the air, but the walls and furnishing as well. I attempted to break the spell of non-connectedness by asking the manager where a good place to eat might be. “One that has the same ambiance and aromatic allure as your fine establishment?” He didn’t answer right away. I assumed he was going over various establishments in his mind that he might recommend. I was wrong.

“Neither I, nor my family, eat out. We find it a waste of money when you can’t get any better than what we already have. And the aromatic essence you speak of…here it is free. So enjoy, breathe in the ambiance, as much as you are capable of handling. No one will think less of you.”

He was right of course. The only problem was that the smell cannot be duplicated without going through the process of cooking, and despite the fact that the micro wave hummed like a champ, I’d have to settle for popcorn with artificial butter and hopefully not too many un-popped kernels.

My hats off to the motels with ambiance and aromatic stimulants that set the mood for sleepless nights by giving you thoughts to ponder, while recognizing how grateful you become when the motel’s air is not permeated by gravity defying fried chicken, cigarette smoke, and pizza, masquerading as ambiance.