Partial Fool

HOTEL LIMBO

 

Roz and I share our July fourth birthdays, except Roz will be twenty- one next month and I will be twenty. We have been pals, enemies, close friends on and off for at least fifteen years. Her Mom died recently but mine, who I lovingly call 'Dummy,' is surely going to get on Willard's Schmucker's 110 year old Happy Birthday list. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of Willard on t.v. and silently hope nobody sends my picture in to him someday. Oy, it would devastate me. Right now I am young, pretty (if I say so myself) vibrant, a good dancer,  probably one of the few twenty year old virgins left on this big earth. Roz is everything I am and more, except my last announcement. My mom knows me, trusts me, but if I could crawl into her mind, I'm sure I'd see a big doubtful sign clinging to her brain matter.

 

Thunder is banging thru the skies this morning as I try to lay out a plan for Roz and me to take a trip together. I'll do all the investigating by mouth, email, web searching, travel agents. We have made one tentative decision, the date, June 30th, a Saturday this year. It will be a birthday gift to ourselves. Roz isn't sure where to start but tells me she is already making a list of places. I have no doubt it will be too long, too sloppy and the job will end up on my broad shoulders.

 

An advertised 'five day cruise' turns out to be a cruise to nowhere. The ship docks at the 3 mile limit and sits there, in the sun, while  passengers surely bitch, throw up over the railings, eat too much just to pass the days away. Strike one. A cruise thru the Panama Canal takes hours. According to an acquaintance of mine, Bess has gone thru it and back and has been bored to death, never met a single person she liked. All there is to do is sit and watch tugs creep along, pulled by ropes, chains, humans. That's strike #2.

 

Roz is still pfhumfing around, checking islands. Martinique is intriguing but we are not too thrilled with France's politics. Barbados is too, too British, actually too American. Aruba, sparkles for a minute until I learn that the island often reeks of oil. We don't want to chance that. St. Johns sounds mah-ve-lous, beautiful but quiet, great for elderly people.Tobago and Trinidad, twins, close together are unable to pay their help a decent amount. A neighbor of mine told me he had a barefoot native carry his golf bag for 18 holes and the desk limit for a tip was listed at one dollar. Charley slipped him a fiver when they shook hands, but the caddy  wouldn't take it.

 

Roz and I don't really want to get involved with travel agents so we keep plugging away on our own. I have found the answer, I think. JAMAICA! It is bursting as it grows. New hotels, fine restaurants, nestled pathways near the ocean, steel drums, Limbo, Limbo every night. I google Jamaica and almost burst with excitement, call Roz before I do another thing. There are lots of hotels, all prices from one end of the island to the other. Some are too hoyty toyty. A few cater to children, have counselors, art classes, story time. We spend a lot of time  googling. Our place-to-be jumps off my puter screen–Hotel Limbo, Limbo every nite, double room facing the ocean $85, all you can eat.

 

Roz calls American, Delta, and Eastward Ho. Eastward Ho fits our budget perfectly. We google again and on line get a real deal at Hotel Limbo. We're  booked.  For dinner we decide on Subway, cheap and tasty. Talking between bites into their long stuffed sandwiches isn't easy but we do it. My mom gets nervous, has so many goofy ideas of what might happen to us girls by ourselves with all the blacks running around in almost nothing. I show her a photo on line of La Mirador, one of the newest, biggest hotel in Jamaica. I tell her that is where we will be and she seems satisfied. So I lied a little to make her happy.

 

Shopping for shorts, scanty tops, a sweater just in case, platform shoes, flats, two bikini bathing suits, keep Roz and me busy. We decide not to show each other what we bought and just hope we haven't duplicated anything.

 

Our jet, Flight 600, taxis down the runway. We are fourth in line for take off. It seems to take forever until we are in the white clouds. As Jackie Gleason used to say, 'And away we go!' eventually touch down, escape the planes constrictive seats and follow the line to heaven. The path to luggage claim pulsates with steel drums, singing, straw hats for sale. We look for the car to take us to the Limbo Hotel and it isn't there . Roz calls them and is advised the hotel does not supply transportation.. And so we join others in a similar predicament and wait.

 

The ride is somewhat bumpy but we call it atmosphere and hardly complain. Beautiful hotels, the ocean waving to us pumps up our hearts.. Roz sees the hotel sign before I do, asks the driver if we are in the right place. 'The sign says 'Hotel Imbo'. The driver turns his head and tells her, 'This is it, sign broken for long time.' He carries our luggage into the hotel lobby, stares at us as he waits with his palm open for our tip, gets it and is gone in a flash.

 

The lobby is less than magnificent. In fact, it is small, sparsely furnished, barely bigger than the bedroom Roz and I will share. We hear the steel drums banging directly under our third floor window. At first we love it. In an hour we hate that damn tin noise banging in our heads. We complain to the front desk and ask where is the beautiful ocean view your ad promised? 'Madam, you must walk thru the dance area you see from your room, to the gorgeous palm trees that have been growing in the same place for many years, walk slowly, enjoy and you will come to the sandy beach. Be sure to use sun screen all the time.' The sun is broiling us. We turn and sit under the trees until a young, handsome, lightly tanned man carrying strands of el cheapo glass beads and bracelets approaches us. We turn him away but he decides to sit and become friends with us. I give him a dollar, own a string of junk and send him away.

 

A siren frightens us. Guests we hadn't noticed come from behind shady palms, beckon us to come to dinner. I tell a young woman wearing tight, too short shorts, we will have to dress first. She laughs in our faces. 'Go as you are and you will be over-dressed.' Other couples parade to dinner, but we ignore them, go to our room, dress as we please in long skirts, platform shoes, costume jewelry. As we walk down the stairs. Roz and I feel eyes staring at us. Ours eyes stare at them. Nothing is as we had expected it to be. The steel band bangs endlessly.

 

Dinner is pretty good. By the time Roz and I finish desert we are almost alone. Everyone has gathered around the pool. Limbo time!  Naked white women push to be in line. They shake everything they have. We won't limbo, don't even want to watch and go to bed.  It is peaceful. The full moon shines on our tiny patio. Roz shakes my shoulder., 'Hear that?' I hear something, don't know what it is. Roz knows. The people next door are f–n around. I'm shocked, disturbed. There is laughter and  heavy breathing thru the thin walls. It stops. We are sure we hear the door open, close. The stillness last just a few minutes. The door opens, high heels cross the floor. There is silence, then the bed start to creak, bump our connecting wall. 'Don't tell me, I know what they are doing, Roz.'

 

We dress, with anger in our eyes, fall on the nite clerk. 'This is advertised as Hotel Limbo and what you have here is Hotel Bimbo.
Get us a good room at the Mirador hotel and you cover our cost–or you can bet your name will be muddier than it already is.

 

At home my mom enjoys looking at our Mirador photos. So do I.