There, among the trees, was a pretty blonde braided billboard fraulein wearing an alluring peasant dress; she beckoned to him with her wooden finger, teasingly, tempting him to taste the homemade fudge (sixteen flavors) at the German Candy Shoppe.
“Well,” Pete had said, slowly, “maybe we can stop for just a little while.”
But “just a little while” turned into all afternoon, because there was much more to the Wisconsin Dells than antiquing and golfing and rich gooey fudge — like river rides and go-carts, wax museums and haunted houses...
“Let’s try that one,” Laura suggested, as a road-side motel materialized in the mist. Three hours earlier, she wouldn’t have dreamed of ever stopping at such a scuzzy place; but now they were desperate, and any bed looked good, even this biker’s haven.
Pete pulled off the highway and into the motel — a long, one-story, run-down succession of tiny rooms. The lot was full of pick-up trucks and motorcycles, so he parked in front of the entrance, and got out of the van, leaving the engine running.
Laura locked the doors behind him, and waited. Rain pelted the windshield. The van’s huge wipers moved back and forth spastically, like gigantic grasshopper legs, grating on her nerves. She leaned over and shut the engine off.
Behind her, Andy sighed wearily.
Please, dear God, she thought, let there be a room so we don’t have to sleep in the car. She strained to see through the rain-streaked window, trying to spot Pete. He’d been gone a long time, this time... too long.
That wasn’t a good sign, either.
Suddenly Laura saw him dart in front of the van, and quickly she unlocked the doors. He jumped inside. His clothes were soaked, hair matted, but he wore a grin.
“You got us a room!” Laura cried, elated.
Pete nodded, wiping wetness from his face with the back of one hand. “But not here.”
“Then where?”
He looked at her. “When I went in,” he explained, “the desk clerk was telling another family they had no rooms... so, naturally, I turned around to leave. Then a maintenance man gave me a tip on a place... a bed and breakfast.”
“Oh, really?” They’d never stayed at one.
“I used the payphone and called,” Pete continued. “The woman sounded very nice. They had one room left and promised to save it for us. I got the directions right here.”
He fished around in his pocket and drew out a piece of paper.
“We gotta go back about forty miles, and it’s a little out of our way, but...”
“But it’s a bed,” she smiled, relieved, throwing her arms around Pete, hugging him.
“And breakfast,” he smiled back, and kissed her.
“What’s a bed and breakfast?” Andy asked.
Laura looked at her son. “A bed and breakfast is not really a hotel,” she answered. “It’s somebody’s home.” She paused. “It’ll be like staying at your Aunt Millie’s house.”
“Oh,” the boy said sullenly, “then I gotta be good.”
“You’ve got to be especially good,” Pete said, “because these people don’t usually take children, but they’re going to make an exception for us. Okay, son?”
“I’ll try,” he said, but not very convincingly.
An hour later, as the storm began to die down, the little family drove into the small quaint town of Tranquility, its old cobble-stone streets shiny from the rain.
At a big County Market grocery store, Pete turned left, down an avenue lined with sprawling oak trees and old homes set back from the street.
They pulled up in front of a many-gabled house. An outside light was on, illuminating the large porch, which wrapped around the front of the home. On either side of the steps sat twin lions, their mouths open in a fierce frozen roar as they guarded the front door.
Laura clasped her hands together, gazing at the house. “Oh, isn’t it charming? This will be such fun!”
Pete nodded, then read the wooden sign attached to the sharp spears of the wrought iron gate. “Die Gasthaus...?”
“That’s German for ‘the inn,’Ю” Laura said, utilizing her high-school foreign language class for the very first time.
“So let’s go in,” smiled Pete.
“What’s German for ‘Splatterhouse’?” said a small sarcastic voice from the back seat.
Anger ignited in Laura — why did the boy have to ruin things? And after all they had done for him today! She turned to reprimand Andy, but her husband beat her to it.
“Shape up,” Pete shouted at the boy. “You already have six points — wanna try for seven?”
“No.”
“It’s going to be a mighty long trip without your Turbo Express!” his father threatened.
“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “It’s not my fault this place looks like a spook house...”
Pete wagged a finger at his son. “Now we’re going to go in, and you’re going to behave, and, goddamnit, we’re all going to have a good time!”
There was a long silence.
Laura couldn’t stand it, so she reached back and patted Andy on the knee. “Now gather up your things, honey,” she said cheerfully. “Don’t you know how lucky we are to be here?”
In the parlor of Die Gasthaus Bed and Breakfast, Marvin Butz sipped his tea from a china cup as he sat in a Queen Anne needlepoint chair in front of a crackling fireplace.
A bachelor, pushing fifty, slightly over-weight, with thinning gray hair and a goatee, the regional sales manager of Midwest Wholesale Grocery Distributors was enjoying the solitude of the rainy evening.
Whenever he went on the road, Marvin always stayed at bed and breakfasts, avoiding the noisy, crowded, kid-infested chain hotels. The last thing he needed in his high-pressure job was being kept awake all night by a drunken wedding reception, or rowdy class reunion, or a loud bar band...
Besides, he delighted in being surrounded by the finer things in life — rare antiques, crisply starched linens, delicate bone china — which reminded him of his mother’s home, before the family went bankrupt and had to sell everything.
He couldn’t find these “finer things in life” in a regular hotel, where lamps and pictures and clock-radios were bolted down, like he might be some common thief. (Besides which, who would want such bourgeois kitch, anyway?) And he could never get any satisfaction — or compensation — for the many inconveniences that always happened to him in the usual hotels. Whenever he complained, all he ever got was rude behavior from arrogant desk clerks.
But at most bed and breakfasts, even the smallest complaint, Marvin found, almost guaranteed a reduction in his bill. Why, half the time, he stayed for free! (Charging his expense account the full amount, of course.)
“More tea, Mr. Butz?”
Mrs. Hilger, who owned and ran the establishment with her husband, stood next to Marvin, a Royal Hanover green teapot in her hand, a white linen napkin held under its spout to catch any drip. She was a large woman — not fat — just big. Marvin guessed her age to be about sixty, and at one time she must have been a looker, but now her skin was wrinkled, and spotted with old-age marks, her hair coarse and gray and pulled back in a bun.
He nodded and held out his cup. “With sugar.”
“I’ll bring you some.”
He watched her walk away. She was nice enough, he thought, but the woman would talk his ear off if he let her. When he first arrived around six p.m., she started in lecturing him about how everybody should be nice to one another, and do what they could to make the world a better place to live — if he had known he was going to be staying with a religious fanatic, he never would have come there!