Page 31 of Here We Go Again
Joe starts to protest in the back, but he’s drowned out by Hale’s loud stammering. “I’m—I mean—You’retall. You should go.”
“What does being tall have to do with anything?”
“You can protect yourself! I’m dainty!”
Joe curses loudly before things devolve into another screaming match. “Girls, why don’t we all go inside together?”
Which is how they find themselves, ten minutes later, in the lobby of the Stag’s Head Inn: a tall woman, a short woman, an old man in a wheelchair, and a dog, surrounded by the absolute weirdestassortment of shit because they didn’t feel safe leaving any belongings in the car. They had to press a buzzer to be let inside, and the inn really lived up to its moniker, re: the number of heads mounted on the walls.
The white man behind the check-in counter is wearing a T-shirt that somehow simultaneously praises fly fishing and insults his wife. He has a humorless face and a questionable mustache. He studies them with a look Logan has seen before. She does not like this look.
“Checking in,” Hale squeaks, “reservation for Hale.”
The man pulls out an honest-to-God ledger. There is no computer. “Two rooms. Adjoining. One with a king bed. One with two queens.”
“For my two queens,” Joe says in the gayest way possible. Logan elbows him.
The man peers over the counter, his unsmiling mouth barely visible through the ’stache. “You didn’t mention you’d have a dog.”
Hale cringes, and Logan knows she’ll beat herself up for that oversight as she falls asleep tonight. Odysseus pulls back a leg and begins licking his groin. “Is… is it okay if we have a dog?”
The man sucks on his teeth. “Gonna have to charge you fifty bucks more.”
Hale nods emphatically. “Of course.”
Joe is bankrolling this whole misguided adventure, so Hale hands over his credit card.
The man eyes Hale for a beat too long, then lets his eyes slide over to Logan. “What are you?” He points at them with his Bic pen. “Sisters? Friends?”
Tig fucking Notaro. If she had a dollar for every time she’s been asked that question while in public with another woman. “Sisters!” Hale blurts before Logan can answer.
Logan flashes the man her biggest smile. “Yep. Sisters.” Then she sells it by putting a sisterly arm around Hale’s shoulder and giving her a noogie with the other hand.
Hale looks mutinous but brushes aside the flyaways in her hairand tries to smile. Hale shakes beneath Logan’s arm—maybe from exhaustion, maybe from anxiety, maybe from the carcasses being used as décor—and Logan leaves her arm there for a minute, waiting for Hale’s shoulders to relax.
The man points out the dark front windows to where the van is parked, the wordsThe Queer Cuddlerspotlighted by the parking lot floodlights. “That your car?”
“No,” Logan and Hale say in unison, but not before Joe trills, “Yes!”
The man sucks on his teeth again, and Logan assesses whether she could take this fifty-year-old hotel clerk in a fight, if it came down to that.
“My daughter is trans,” he says, and it takes Logan a second to register that he didn’t respond to the Gay Mobile with something homophobic. “She brought her girlfriend home for Memorial Day Weekend. This is her.”
The man reaches for a cheap picture frame on his desk with a photo of a young girl in a Boise State jersey, her cheeks punctuated with blue and orange paint, and her long brown hair pulled into a high ponytail. “She’s studying to be a lawyer. I’m real proud of her.”
Hale seems to be as frozen in shock as Logan is, but Joe smoothly responds, “She’s beautiful. And so lucky to have you as a father.”
The man beams beneath his plentiful mustache, and it’s then that Logan notices a “Protect Trans Kids” sticker pinned to a bulletin board behind the counter. Suddenly, she sees The Stag’s Head Inn in a new light. Sure, the location isn’t great, but she can see through an open archway that the liquor store is more like a quaint bar that happens to sell liquor bottles to-go. And the heads mounted to the wall aren’t great, but the rest of the lobby is cozy, if dated, with wood beams and a large stone fireplace. And this man who loves fly fishing more than his wife, at least according to his shirt, also loves his trans daughter so damn much, that he starts talking about her to the first guests who might be queer.
“You know what? I’m gonna go ahead and remove that fifty-dollar pet fee.” The man winks at Joe. He reaches for two old-fashioned hotel keys, and Logan checks his name tag before choking on a disbelieving laugh.
“Thanks, Homer. For everything.”
The man named Homer smiles sweetly at her, and she feels like she’s on one hell of an odyssey.
And she doesn’t realize she still has an arm around Hale’s shoulder until Hale roughly shakes it off and reaches for the room key.
ROSEMARY
