Three Times a Lady...
We stayed at the Prescott Resort for the wedding. The "resort" is on the Yavapai reservation, so the rules are different. You can smoke drink and gamble in the hotel. Throughout the hotel there is an impressive collection of southwestern art on display all year round. Bronze sculptures of horses and cowboys and Indians. Enormous paintings of the Grand Canyon, fields of cows, and hay. Every Christmas they host a gingerbread house contest here. The most elaborate gingerbread villages you every saw are set up in the lobby and conference halls. There's a big fountain inside the lobby, next the bar. The west side of the building that faces Prescott is mostly glass for the view. Outside, they are reconstructing the road that climbs the hill to the hotel. Workers with bandanas tied around their faces flag traffic coming and going. Dust covers the cars that trickles from the tractor's overfull loaders. It might be a quarter of a mile up and down.
The rooms are set up like suites. Two rooms. The hotel is high on a hill overlooking all of Prescott. You can stand on the balcony outside of your room. The wind picks up momentum as it sweeps the town in the valley-bowl below and then collects itself at the bottom of the hill so that it explodes against the face of the hotel with a formidable thrust. Five stories up you can stand on a balcony and feel that unreasonable jumping urge. Spit over the rail. Pull your coat close to your neck and cry, the wind will wipe your tears.
Most of your family loves to gamble, and when they are not eating or gathering, you will find them in the casino. Bucky's casino is attached to one end of the the hotel like an awkward collection of misshapen boxes with unfinished paintjobs. Out of the main entrance of the hotel, guests flow with luggage and garment bags. Transport busses unload retired folks and crazy people at the door of the casino all day and night. Everyone in the casino looks poor, desperate, dazed. Like the crazy lady I saw once each day while I was in Prescott for my mother's wedding.
The first time I saw her was the first night I was there, in the casino. I went to the bar in the casino to order a beer. Since I don't really gamble, I usually grab a beer and walk around the casino from family member to family member, visiting and checking out their progress. So, I was elbowed up to the bar, in a daze, the machines ringing and beeping and clicking cacophonously around my ears, not realizing right in front of me on the bar was an open wallet bursting with receipts, papers, photos, money. My elbows were touching it, and I didn't even notice it. In a minute a wild eyed woman appeared, reaching over my shoulders and grabbing the pile of money on top of the wallet...I backed away from it startled by her and the idea that I hadn't noticed it. A flash of unwarranted guilt passed through my eyes...she--about 50 or so, with salt and pepper pig-tails (huge pigtails) and bad teeth, in a man's cowboy shirt and dirty jeans and dirty white tennis shoes--smiled at me and said, "hey, watch my stuff for me," while I simultaneously spurted out, "I didn't see it, I'm sorry," but...it didn't seem to matter to her. She looked me hard in the eye and just smiled her rotting tooth smile at me. A goofy, tricky, strange smile, and then she walked off. I felt caught at something I didn't do, or had I been "served" with some kind of message? There I now stood, stuck in charge of an open wallet, at the bar waiting to order a beer. Suddenly I didn't want the beer anymore and so for a few moments, I struggled with whether or not to leave my assigned post. I walked around the corner, tapped her on the shoulder where she sat hunkered down at a slot machine, kept walking...I left my post.
The next day we had to go to the mall to get K a jacket. Before we left home K left her coat in the hall, and it was cold in Prescott. So we drove out to the mall for a quick shopping jaunt. The parking lots were packed, with cars driving up and down the aisles searching for open spots. It was chaotic and I was frustrated and tired. I was driving the car, also searching for a spot. All of the sudden I came around the end of an aisle and had to slam on my brakes...I almost got in a head on collision with another car. Both cars screeched to a halt within inches of each other's front bumper. Beat up oxidized black Camero to shiny white Malibu rental. The driver of the Camero was that crazy pigtail lady! Again, she looked me right in the eye and gave me that weird smile. I cringed and shook off the chills before I drove on.
On the last day we left the hotel early in the morning to get K's mom to the airport in Phoenix. We didn't have time to get coffee in town, and the coffee in the room was NOT good, so we decided to get out of there and pull over in Prescott Valley (about 15 miles out of Prescott) where we knew there was a Starbucks in a Safeway store there. I missed the main entrance to the shopping center and had to double back via back streets to reenter the shopping center lots at the back of the store. I parked on the far end of the store in a dirt lot where no other cars were, K jumped out and ran for the coffee. I decided not to sit there and wait for her because I hate sitting and waiting. So I turned the car around to drive around toward the back alley, where the loading docks and dumpsters are. As I pulled around a blind corner into the alley, I had to swerve the car in order to miss hitting a parked car's open door. Yes, it was the pigtail lady, hunched over the trunk of an old beat up dirty white four door something or other...unloading cardboard boxes. She stuck her head up just in time to give me that freaky smile again, and wave! I sped up the car to get through that alley as quickly as possible. Without thinking, I had waved back.
Nothing more interesting than that happened. I cried a lot this weekend. I gave an ok toast at the wedding reception. My little sister gave two toasts, one sober and the next toasted. Five other people gave toasts. The toasting went on a long time. My Uncle Sal opened a magnum of champagne my grandpa made--the last bottle of it he's been saving for 30 years--to toast my mother and her new husband. Everyone cried and drank it, though it had lost its bubbles and tasted like vinegar. My mother said through tears, "I can taste my father in it." Thousands of pictures were taken, thanks to digital cameras. I lost my wallet and keys about a dozen times, and found them. Nobody won big at the casino.
The rooms are set up like suites. Two rooms. The hotel is high on a hill overlooking all of Prescott. You can stand on the balcony outside of your room. The wind picks up momentum as it sweeps the town in the valley-bowl below and then collects itself at the bottom of the hill so that it explodes against the face of the hotel with a formidable thrust. Five stories up you can stand on a balcony and feel that unreasonable jumping urge. Spit over the rail. Pull your coat close to your neck and cry, the wind will wipe your tears.
Most of your family loves to gamble, and when they are not eating or gathering, you will find them in the casino. Bucky's casino is attached to one end of the the hotel like an awkward collection of misshapen boxes with unfinished paintjobs. Out of the main entrance of the hotel, guests flow with luggage and garment bags. Transport busses unload retired folks and crazy people at the door of the casino all day and night. Everyone in the casino looks poor, desperate, dazed. Like the crazy lady I saw once each day while I was in Prescott for my mother's wedding.
The first time I saw her was the first night I was there, in the casino. I went to the bar in the casino to order a beer. Since I don't really gamble, I usually grab a beer and walk around the casino from family member to family member, visiting and checking out their progress. So, I was elbowed up to the bar, in a daze, the machines ringing and beeping and clicking cacophonously around my ears, not realizing right in front of me on the bar was an open wallet bursting with receipts, papers, photos, money. My elbows were touching it, and I didn't even notice it. In a minute a wild eyed woman appeared, reaching over my shoulders and grabbing the pile of money on top of the wallet...I backed away from it startled by her and the idea that I hadn't noticed it. A flash of unwarranted guilt passed through my eyes...she--about 50 or so, with salt and pepper pig-tails (huge pigtails) and bad teeth, in a man's cowboy shirt and dirty jeans and dirty white tennis shoes--smiled at me and said, "hey, watch my stuff for me," while I simultaneously spurted out, "I didn't see it, I'm sorry," but...it didn't seem to matter to her. She looked me hard in the eye and just smiled her rotting tooth smile at me. A goofy, tricky, strange smile, and then she walked off. I felt caught at something I didn't do, or had I been "served" with some kind of message? There I now stood, stuck in charge of an open wallet, at the bar waiting to order a beer. Suddenly I didn't want the beer anymore and so for a few moments, I struggled with whether or not to leave my assigned post. I walked around the corner, tapped her on the shoulder where she sat hunkered down at a slot machine, kept walking...I left my post.
The next day we had to go to the mall to get K a jacket. Before we left home K left her coat in the hall, and it was cold in Prescott. So we drove out to the mall for a quick shopping jaunt. The parking lots were packed, with cars driving up and down the aisles searching for open spots. It was chaotic and I was frustrated and tired. I was driving the car, also searching for a spot. All of the sudden I came around the end of an aisle and had to slam on my brakes...I almost got in a head on collision with another car. Both cars screeched to a halt within inches of each other's front bumper. Beat up oxidized black Camero to shiny white Malibu rental. The driver of the Camero was that crazy pigtail lady! Again, she looked me right in the eye and gave me that weird smile. I cringed and shook off the chills before I drove on.
On the last day we left the hotel early in the morning to get K's mom to the airport in Phoenix. We didn't have time to get coffee in town, and the coffee in the room was NOT good, so we decided to get out of there and pull over in Prescott Valley (about 15 miles out of Prescott) where we knew there was a Starbucks in a Safeway store there. I missed the main entrance to the shopping center and had to double back via back streets to reenter the shopping center lots at the back of the store. I parked on the far end of the store in a dirt lot where no other cars were, K jumped out and ran for the coffee. I decided not to sit there and wait for her because I hate sitting and waiting. So I turned the car around to drive around toward the back alley, where the loading docks and dumpsters are. As I pulled around a blind corner into the alley, I had to swerve the car in order to miss hitting a parked car's open door. Yes, it was the pigtail lady, hunched over the trunk of an old beat up dirty white four door something or other...unloading cardboard boxes. She stuck her head up just in time to give me that freaky smile again, and wave! I sped up the car to get through that alley as quickly as possible. Without thinking, I had waved back.
Nothing more interesting than that happened. I cried a lot this weekend. I gave an ok toast at the wedding reception. My little sister gave two toasts, one sober and the next toasted. Five other people gave toasts. The toasting went on a long time. My Uncle Sal opened a magnum of champagne my grandpa made--the last bottle of it he's been saving for 30 years--to toast my mother and her new husband. Everyone cried and drank it, though it had lost its bubbles and tasted like vinegar. My mother said through tears, "I can taste my father in it." Thousands of pictures were taken, thanks to digital cameras. I lost my wallet and keys about a dozen times, and found them. Nobody won big at the casino.
posted by name at 10:43:00 AM
2 Comments:
Ah, the trick: is it for you or someone else?
If it's for someone else, I hope it's someone reading my blog...cuz...uh...I wouldn't know who else to pass it on to. Anyway, it may not be any more interesting than "don't eat yellow snow."
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