Other People We Married (21 page)

According to the guidebook, the natural hot springs were what drew Doc Holliday to the town, where he eventually died. “I guess he wasn’t really a doctor after all, if he thought some boiling hot, rotten egg bathwater was going to make him feel better,” Teddy said, then snorted quietly. Teddy had always been adept at amusing himself, which Richard liked. He was excellent at dinner parties, no matter who he was sitting next to. “Ooh! Look at that one!” He pointed out the window and wiggled in his seat, sending the guidebook and an already crumpled map of the United States to the floor of the car.

Richard was not surprised at Teddy’s choice. In their previous travels, Teddy had never once wanted to stay at a Holiday Inn or a Marriott, places where you could count on clean sheets and the comforting smell of bleach in the bathroom. Instead, he liked the hotels that looked on the verge of destruction, with words spelled incorrectly, or ones that looked like cottages where Snow White or the Swiss Miss might work at the front desk. Teddy’s finger now pointed at a small motel with two stories and external staircases. The entire structure was painted seafoam green, with plastic
mermaids and seashells affixed to the walls in a haphazard fashion. It reminded Richard of his dead grandmother’s living room on the Jersey shore.

“Honey, they think we’re at the beach. How can we disappoint them?” Teddy knit his fingers together, as if in prayer. Behind him, a mermaid peeked out from behind her molded plastic hair. Richard turned the wheel and pulled into the parking lot of the Seashore Inn… the Mountains. “Come on, baby,” Teddy said, nuzzling against Richard’s cheek as they took the bags out of the trunk. “You’ve got to love those dots.”

“Ellipses,” Richard said. “They’re ellipses.”

The inside of the office looked alarmingly normal—no sand, no ambient sounds of lapping waves. A young woman with icy blond hair waited expectantly for them to approach the counter.

“Hello,” Richard said, reading the woman’s nametag. “Inga. Are there a lot of Ingas in Colorado?”

She smiled generously. If her hair hadn’t been pulled back so tightly, Inga might have looked like a wide-faced version of one of the motel’s resident fish-women. “I am from Sweden,” she said, bowing her head slightly. Teddy bowed back, lowering his torso until it was perpendicular to the floor. He’d been a dancer once upon a time, and Richard knew those impulses were hard to contain. Whenever they stood on the street corner, waiting to cross, Teddy’s feet would turn out to first position, which he swore was unconscious. Some of Teddy’s former lovers had been dancers, too, and whenever they ran into each other on the street, Richard imagined
an elaborate, naked pas de deux. Certain things he had to let slide.

Inga from Sweden gave them the keys to Room 105 and momentarily vanished into the depths of the office.

“Oh, God, Richard, look.” Teddy nudged him in the shoulder. “They’re ranked.” On the wall behind the desk, the Seashore Inn proudly displayed its AAA single diamond rating, given every year from 1984 through 1989.

“’Tis better to have loved and lost…” Richard said, shaking his head. Inga from Sweden reappeared, the apples of her cheeks rosier than before. She thought Teddy was handsome, Richard could tell. He’d seen it before. Women always liked Teddy; they tried to make him their best new girlfriend.

“So,” Teddy said, sidling up to the counter and sticking out his bottom like a teenaged girl. “What’s the deal with the hot springs?” He was cute, that was for sure. Richard could deny lots of things about Teddy, but not that. Teddy turned toward Richard and smiled. There were times when Richard was sure Teddy could hear his thoughts. It was strangely comforting.

Inga from Sweden told them to wait until after nine o’clock to hit the springs, when the rate would be discounted to seven dollars apiece—nobody needed more than an hour in there anyway, she said. Richard stretched out on the bed in his swimsuit with his own imported pillow behind his head. Teddy stood, nude, at the foot of the bed, and recited their dining options from the guidebook.

“
O’Kay’s Cattle Ranch: Riverfront dining in the heart of town. Expect plenty of crowds in season, but Colorado-sized
portions and a full bar
. Wonder if they have a mechanical bull. Don’t you think someone in this town probably has a mechanical bull?” Teddy raised one arm overhead and did a little giddyap, sending his tummy and lower bits into a jiggle.

“What else?” Richard covered his eyes with his forearm. Slivers of the green walls peeked through, along with flashes of Teddy’s rear end as he paced back and forth across the carpet.

“
Maria’s Cantina: As authentic as you can get this far from the border. Wandering mariachi
… okay, no way.
Lemming’s New York Diner?
Are they serious? Oh, God, Richard, let’s go get some pastrami. Who do these people think they are? What do they use to make their bagels, rotten egg water?” Sometimes, when he was excited, his barely Southern accent became more pronounced. Teddy had lived in New York for ten years, and with Richard in Chelsea for five. In no way was he in any position to question the presence of pastrami on a menu in Colorado. Nonetheless, Richard acquiesced. On the map, the diner seemed to be a short walk from the hot springs, and Richard wanted red meat. What was the point of being in the middle of the county if you couldn’t eat a local cow? Surely that marbled flesh wouldn’t have traveled too far.

Lemming’s New York Diner was inside the lobby of another hotel, just across the street from O’Kay’s Cattle Ranch, which seemed to have more screaming five-year-olds than cowboys, judging from the scene through the restaurant’s picture window. The walls at Lemming’s were lined with subway tiles, and each table was a stop of its own, as signified by a sign
overhead. Richard and Teddy were Fourteenth Street, not far from home.

A waitress appeared. She was wearing an apron with a sea of bagels, or mountains of bagels, depending on your perspective. Her name was Nadia, and she had a voice like a linebacker. Teddy’s eyes flew open, enthralled. They ordered pastrami and roast beef sandwiches, and potato pancakes on the side, with both applesauce and sour cream. Two cream sodas. One banana split.

“It’s like having Marlene Dietrich ask you if you want lettuce and tomato,” he hissed across the table, after she had gone.

“They call the borscht ‘beet soup,’” Richard said.

“Well, isn’t that what it is?” Teddy didn’t look up from the plastic menu.

“I guess.” Richard watched as a small replica of a subway car rattled around the restaurant ceiling. Tiny people stared out, justifiably alarmed that they’d never reach their destination.

Glenwood Springs’s actual hot springs were owned and operated by the largest and most expensive hotel in town. Teddy rattled off figures from the book:
Each year, more than two million people dip their toes in the naturally warm water—some for relaxation, some for healing, some for the smell!

“It does not say that.” Richard pulled his wallet out of his back pocket as they approached the entrance, which sloped down toward the basement of the hotel—it was like a water park, with gleaming turnstiles and a damp, slippery floor.

Teddy laughed, and then sniffed the air. “It’s not that bad, really.”

A dark-haired boy in his twenties manned the cash register. “Just wait.” He, too, had a heavy accent, which made his jaw sound as though it weighed fifty pounds.
“Jah-st way-ate.”

Teddy raised an eyebrow. “Where are you from?”

“Czech Republic. You know Praha?” The boy was maybe twenty-one. He looked like one of Richard’s students, like any of Richard’s students. His hair fell in a low swoop over his forehead. The boy hopped down off his wooden stool and bent over to reach a stack of thin, well-worn towels.

“Is your name really Bill?” Everyone under the age of thirty in the entire town seemed to have a nametag and a voice that moved like molasses. Bill’s nametag was pinned to the back pocket of his jeans.

“Yah, like Billy the Kid?” Bill smiled a sideways smile, first at Teddy, and then, after a moment, at Richard. “Don’t stay in hot tub too long.” He took another moment to drink them in, to see if he had judged right. “Party tonight at hostel, on Grand Av-noo.” He slid their towels across the counter, and then reached down and grabbed two more, and piled them on top. “Extra,” Billy the Kid said. “For friends.” Richard thought he saw Teddy’s tongue snake across his lower lip.

The slick floor led through the basement of the hotel, past changing rooms and lockers. Armed with their extra towels, Teddy followed Richard through the swinging doors, out to the pool.

The scene reminded Richard of a nightclub, the kind of place he’d spent his adult life trying to avoid; the kind of place with go-go
boys standing on pedestals, dancing in nothing but their underwear. It was the energy of the place, the thick cloud of steam over the surface of the water, all the people, people, people. Richard turned around to find Teddy’s mouth open.

“Come on, you,” Richard said. Plastic lounge chairs with colorful towels draped over them lined the pool, which stretched all the way back toward the mountains. “Let’s get smelly.”

The truth was, though, that the smelliness had subsided. Even though the air was warm, now down to the midseventies, the water was warmer and looked inviting. They found unoccupied chairs halfway down one side of the pool, which stretched on interminably, bigger than Olympic-sized. Over their heads, dark, craggy outlines of mountains loomed and seemed far away. The sky was all that was above them.

“Shall we?” Richard asked, but Teddy was already jogging on the pads of his feet toward the shallow steps.

The pool was jammed. At the shallow end, by Teddy’s wet calves, a boy in water wings paddled on his stomach. Richard took a step into the water and felt the warmth close around his left ankle, and then his right. He couldn’t imagine coming in the daytime, what that would be like. It seemed appropriate to submerge oneself in the darkness, as if floating through the giant, open sky. He let the water take him, inch by inch. A body’s length ahead, Teddy was already on his back with his arms outstretched, oblivious to the crowds walking heavily and slowly swimming around his prostrate form.

The small boy’s father appeared when Richard was up to
his belly button, the water swishing in and out like an overflowing drain. Richard’s body had never been taut—fit, perhaps, at various points—but never precisely taut. The boy’s father was just that; it must have made for an easier canvas. Tattooed across his rib cage, there was a six-inch portrait of the Bride of Frankenstein, her hair standing justifiably on end. The man leaned down to scoop up his son, and as he carried him off, feet kicking and splashing, Richard saw Frankenstein’s monster himself on the man’s other side—the couple separated forever by his lungs.

Teddy floated closer, using his hands as oars. “Let’s move here,” he said. “I want to live in the rotten eggs.” His wet hair waved under the surface, electric.

“You got it, sister.” Richard took Teddy’s feet in his hands and plunged forward, sending them both toward the deep end.

It had taken Richard exactly three months to tell Robin what the problem was. He’d spent his first dozen sessions calmly describing his issues with university hierarchy, the Bush administration, and his younger sister’s manic procreation. But Teddy was always there, lurking quietly in the back of his throat, somewhere near his uvula.

“There is this one thing,” Richard started. It had to do with Florida, and sugar, and Teddy’s mother. Robin nodded. The window behind her looked out onto Twenty-Second Street, and Richard could see people’s heads bobbing along as they walked their dogs and talked on the phone. He’d had other boyfriends before, though nothing as serious, and certainly nothing as long. He thought about how funny it would
be to see one of them walk by, just then, how he could take that as a sign and run out the door, winding up in someone’s unsuspecting arms. Oh, the thrill! In Richard’s life, there seemed to be no cinematic flourish. Maybe that’s what he was missing. Maybe that’s what they had on the open road. “He’s not, I don’t know, worldly.” Teddy, on the other hand, had had a string of boyfriends: actors; the other dancers; limber, elegant smokers. All of Teddy’s friends had probably laughed when he first introduced them to Richard. They had probably guffawed. He probably reminded them of their parents.

“Worldly?” Robin had no doubt learned this trick on her first day of therapist school. She was excellent at repeating back key words and phrases. She took a slurp of Mountain Dew and crossed her arms over her stomach, clutching her turkey-leg forearms.

“He never wants to go to Paris, or go to the symphony, or read poems.” Richard looked at the spines of the books on Robin’s shelves, the cross around her neck. There was a gurgle in his stomach. He wondered what kind of books Robin read in her spare time, if she read at all. He couldn’t imagine her doing the crossword puzzle, or playing Scrabble, or leaping out of her chair to let a poem spill from her lips. He knew what she was going to say.

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I feel like I’m always the one pushing us to do the things I want to do. It would be nice to have him just do them, you know, without my having to ask.” Richard closed his eyes for a minute. Sometimes he and Robin did that together, at the end of their sessions. At first, he thought she was insane, and only did it to humor her. Now he closed his eyes at the drop
of a hat: on the subway platform, at the dinner table, in bed. Robin called it “taking stock.” Richard called it “the no-Teddy zone,” but only to himself. Sometimes Richard would open his eyes and find Teddy staring at him, mystified.

“And how do you say that?” Robin’s legs were crossed at the ankle. Her sandals were beige, like the carpet. Everything in her office was as neutral as possible. Richard liked that about her; she had chosen nothing personal.

“What do you mean? I tell him exactly that, that it wouldn’t kill him to think about someone else for a change. That after five years, he should know what day the garbage goes out, and to send my sister’s kids birthday cards every year and not just when he feels like it.” Richard took a tissue out of the box on Robin’s desk and ripped it into tiny little pieces.