Bad Tourist by Suzanne Roberts

Author:Suzanne Roberts [Roberts, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, TRV001000 Travel / Special Interest / Adventure
Publisher: Nebraska

* * *

As we reached our Napa hotel, we noticed a large bus with tinted windows parked in front. In the lobby, Kortney asked, “Are you tired?”

“Not really,” I said, not wanting the night to end. “Should we have dessert?”

And that’s how we ended up at the lobby bar, splitting flourless chocolate cake. Two young men were seated next to us.

“Were you girls at the pool today?” one of them asked.

We said we were.

“Yeah,” he said. “We saw you.”

I whispered to Kortney, “Is that the best they can do?” I was kidding, not really thinking they were hitting on us because they looked like they were half our age.

She nodded and said, “I know. Seriously?”

“Can we sit with you?” the other one asked, and we agreed.

“What are you here for?” Billy asked.

“It’s my friend’s birthday,” I said. Kortney just looked at me.

“How old are you?” Ted asked Kortney.

Before she could say anything, I answered for her because obviously. “Thirty-one. She’s thirty-one,” I said. Billy and Ted nodded and said Kortney looked good for being that old, so I asked, “How old are you guys?”

Billy said he was twenty-four and Ted was twenty-six. They both wore tight black t-shirts, Converse sneakers, tattoos, goatees, and small gold hoop earrings. Aside from Billy’s horn-rimmed glasses and small potbelly, they are interchangeable in my memory.

“Thirty-one must seem so old to you,” I said. Did I bat my almost forty-year-old eyelashes? Why yes, I most certainly did.

“I like older women,” Billy said. If he only knew, I thought. Ted told the waiter we had a birthday, and so within a few minutes another piece of cake arrived, this one with candles, and we all sang to Kortney.

And I was very happy because I have a fondness for flourless chocolate cake.

Billy and Ted said how great it was that I was helping Kortney celebrate her birthday, cheering her up after her recent divorce. Kortney asked them what they were doing in Napa.

“We’re here with Sugar Ray,” Ted said.

“The band?” Kortney asked.

“We’re playing the fair,” Billy said.

“I don’t think I know his music,” I said, shoveling more cake into my mouth.

“Of course you know them,” Kortney said, and she started singing “Every Morning.” Among Kortney’s many talents, she knows the lyrics by heart to more songs than anyone else I know. Don’t challenge her to karaoke. She’ll win. Once she sang the song, I agreed I had heard it before. In fact, it came out around the time we were the same age as Billy and Ted.

“Are you musicians?” Kortney asked. Now she was the one fluttering her eyelashes.

“Nah,” said Ted. “We’re band techs. Do you girls want to see the bus?”

Um, yeah.

We paid our bill and headed out to the front of the Westin with Billy and Ted. Billy fumbled with the keys and opened Sugar Ray’s band bus. From the outside, it had looked like a regular bus with tinted windows. But on the inside, it was like an RV with a dining area, red velveteen couches, bunks for the band techs, and a suite for Sugar Ray.

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