Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elyssa Friedland

Author:Elyssa Friedland [Friedland, Elyssa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

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Yogi Land Farm was about a forty-minute drive from the Golden, but it might as well have been on a different planet.

“What is this area?” Fanny peered out the window in wonder, the way the twins used to when they took long car trips.

Amos shared in her amazement. Along the road they saw one hippie-dippie shop after another: local jewelry, local apples, local candles, local e-cigarettes, and the kicker, a general store called the Locavore anchoring a strip of smaller boutiques. He rolled down the window and discovered the whole street stank of patchouli.

“Did being local change its meaning since we were young?” he asked rhetorically. Local had used to mean “from the neighborhood,” and it certainly wasn’t a label you’d slap on a product to help it sell.

“Mr. Weingold, the farm is just up ahead,” said Carlos, who was behind the wheel.

The driver was Brian’s doing. His son was being impossibly cautious, not letting Amos drive himself even though he could see perfectly well with the eyedrops. That lamppost from the accident a year ago had been in a blind spot! And he drove a hell of a lot better than these yokels texting in their Priuses.

But there was no point in fighting with his son, so he’d acquiesced to having one of the gardeners drive him and Fanny to the yoga class. It turned out being a passenger wasn’t too terrible. He and Fanny had sat in the back together, and Carlos had run ahead to open the doors for them. It reminded him of the fancy building Benny and Louise had moved into on Central Park West after fleeing the suburbs, where the doormen flailed around to serve the tenants, flinging themselves into traffic to hail taxis and relieving their hands of grocery bags. He wouldn’t have minded the gilded life, but Fanny was insistent they stay put in their split-level home on Long Island. We’re different, she’d insisted. Why did being different mean he had to plunge his own toilet and replace the burnt-out bulbs when Benny could just call downstairs to his super? But Amos had never pressed too hard. He wanted to keep his wife happy, and Fanny wouldn’t have liked living in a place where the women lived at their cosmetic dermatologists and lunched in fine restaurants. She wanted to play cards and see her grandchildren. And that, Amos could give her.

“Good grief, thank goodness you drove us,” Fanny said as they approached Yogi Land. She was right. There wasn’t a space to park. Solar-powered cars and pickup trucks plastered with bumper stickers were double-parked for nearly a mile.

“I’ll be right here when you’re done,” Carlos said, jumping to help Fanny out of the car and into her wheelchair. “Look over there. I see Mrs. Goldman and her daughter.”

Amos made out Louise across the road. She was hard to miss in the neon pink jumpsuit and matching visor. He wondered if she was trying to attract the goats or scare them off.

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