Niagara Motel (9 page)

“Okay.”

“Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

I drank the rest of my water and tried not to look at Gina. I hid my grin in my glass. I was going to Boston.

12

Meredith could borrow a car for a few days from this guy who she said owed her a favour. Apparently he was good friends with her brother, Steve. Not good enough friends to bail him out, though. The big coincidence was that the guy who owed Meredith a favour was Chad, the front-desk guy with the scorpion tattoo from the Niagara Motel. So I got to ride in Chad's black Chevrolet Caprice again. I had taken $300 out of Gina's savings account to add to the $96.50 I still had left over from what she gave me before. Meredith had taken it all to the bank and changed it into US dollars for me and got some of her own money changed too. We left Niagara Falls a little after five a.m. We wanted to get an early start so all the kids would still be asleep as well as the SOD that night, Paula. I had packed my backpack the night before and gone to bed with my clothes on. I took all of my stuff with me, just in case. Gina always says it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

As I opened the door of the boys' dorm to leave, Josh rolled over. A bar of light leaking in from the hallway fell across his face. His eyes were open and he looked at me. I held my breath and nodded, once. Then he closed his eyes and rolled back toward the wall. I held my breath all the way down the hall and all the way down the stairs. I held it as I unbolted and unchained the locks on the front door. I held it until I closed the door behind me and was outside.

Meredith was waiting for me on the porch. She smiled and I smiled back, and we both looked up at the windows to see if anyone had turned a light on. No one had. Meredith put a finger to her lips and we tiptoed down the steps and ran across the street and into the alley. We took the alley up to the Niagara Motel where we found
Chad's Caprice parked around back by the dumpsters.

“You sure you want to do this?” Meredith jingled the keys around her finger.

“Yep. Are you?”

“Definitely. I'm so glad to be out of that shithole.”

“Me too,” I said. I hoped I could find Sam Malone and stay with him until Gina got better, and then I wouldn't ever have to go back to Bright Light. Of all the crappy places I've lived, it was definitely the worst. As Kyle and Shawn would've said, it was the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

Meredith threw me the keys. “You drive.”

“Um, I'm not—”

“
Psych!
”

Chad's car smelled like cigarette butts and the green leaf air-freshener. About five minutes after we started to drive, Meredith ripped the air-freshener off the rear-view mirror and threw it out the window. She said that the smell of it would make her puke. About two minutes after that she pulled over, opened her door, and then, she
did
puke.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“No, I'm pregnant,” she said. She spat on the ground then closed her door. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Did you bring any water?”

I handed her my water and tried not to think about her gross puke-germs getting on my water bottle. Then I remembered about AIDS and got nervous. I wondered if you could get AIDS from sharing drinks, and I wondered if Meredith had it. I hoped not. People who get AIDS don't ever get better and there's nothing anyone can do to help them, no matter how much money they have or how good at basketball they are. Meredith drank half the bottle, then handed it back to me and started the car. I wiped it off with my T-shirt and put it in my backpack. The sun was rising as we drove over the Rainbow Bridge,
and the light made a zillion rainbows in the mist of the waterfalls.

We got in line at the border crossing and my heart wobbled. I drummed my fingers against my knees.

“Just let me do the talking,” Meredith said.

“Okay.”

“Unless they ask you something directly, then you should answer.”

“All right.”

“Do you have ID?” she said.

“No. Should I?”

She shrugged and moved the car forward until we were at the window of the guard's booth. The border-crossing guard had a dark moustache and tinted brown glasses. His shoulder muscles were as big as my head, and even though he was sitting down, I could tell he was tall.

“Good morning,” Meredith said, passing him her driver's license.

“'Morning,” he said. “Where are you all off to today?”

“Just going into Buffalo for some shopping,” Meredith said. “Wanted to get an early start.”

The guard bent his head to peer in at me. “Who's this?”

“This is my kid brother, Jack,” Meredith said.

“Hi,” I said. I was Jack. I was her brother. I figured
hi
was something Meredith's kid brother Jack would probably say.

“How long do you two plan on staying in the United States?”

“Oh, just for the day. We have to be home by five to help with dinner,” she smiled.

“Are you bringing anything into the US today? Any drugs, weapons?”

My hand closed around the Swiss Army knife inside my pocket and I stared straight ahead.

“No,” Meredith said. “Just ourselves.”

“How much money are you bringing into the US today?”

“About four hundred dollars,” she said. “We have to get some new clothes. And shoes.”

He eyed our clothes and then his eyes darted around the car. After a few seconds he nodded. “All right, you kids be safe now.” He handed Meredith her license back and waved us through.

The gate went up and Meredith pushed the gas, and just like that, we were in a whole other country.

“
Jack?
” I said.

“New Jack City!”

I laughed.

“Welcome to New York State, my friend.”

PART TWO

LIVING THE DREAM

13

Meredith wouldn't let me touch the radio. She said only the driver gets to pick the music—and the volume also. She switched the radio station every few seconds. She never stayed on one station long enough to even hear the song. I'm not sure she even wanted to listen to music, maybe she just wanted to scan. Finally, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on, and she left it on that station. It was Kiss FM, a Buffalo station that played dance hits and some alternative. Gina and I had listened to it before. You can get US radio stations in Canada, but you can't get Canadian stations in the US. I don't know why. Maybe Americans don't like our music and they put up invisible walls that block all the radio waves coming from Canada. But no one knows that the Americans are doing that because the walls are invisible. That would be what's called a conspiracy. Most people think that people who have conspiracy theories are crazy, but it's not always true. And besides, even crazy people can be right about things when nobody else is.

There was a guy named Jake who lived down the hall from me and Gina at the Aladdin Motor Inn, our motel in Red Deer. There were always empty bottles of Alberta Pure Vodka and half-eaten cans of alphabet soup outside Jake's door. Everyone said that Jake was crazy because he always talked about how he'd been abducted by aliens when he was a kid and how they did all kinds of tests on him, and that's why he always beeps when he goes through metal detectors now. Gina said Jake was a liar and not to listen to him, but I don't know why anyone would lie about being abducted by aliens. Plus no one really knows for sure if aliens exist or not, so I didn't think it was really fair to call Jake a liar. One day, Jake and I were sitting on the bench outside the motel, watching the traffic whiz by.
He smoked a cigarette and I played with a blue and red yo-yo that was supposed to light up but never did.

“Jake?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“What did the aliens look like? That took you.”

“They were tall and leggy and had wrinkled bluish-grey skin,” he said. “Like elephant skin. Black eyes as big as your head.”

“And they only took you the one time, they never came back?”

“As far as I know,” he said, flicking his cigarette butt into the road.

“Do you think they'll come and take you again?”

“I don't know,” Jake said. “I hope so.”

“But why would you want them take you again? Weren't they scary?”

Jake shrugged. “Not as scary as people.”

We didn't live in Red Deer for very long, and I didn't know Jake very well, but I still think of him sometimes when I see those satellites sail across the night sky, I think of him. And I wonder if he's still at the Aladdin Motor Inn, drinking vodka and eating cold alphabet soup and waiting for the aliens to come back for him.

Sometimes Meredith didn't want to listen to music at all, she only wanted quiet. Because she was the driver, she also got to decide when and where we would stop. And she always had to pee. She probably stopped to pee about 200 times on the way to Boston. We had to stop so much for Meredith to pee that I was afraid we wouldn't get to the
Cheers
bar before last call and then Sam wouldn't be there. As I waited in the car for Meredith at a Mobil station in Utica, I traced my finger along how much further we had to go on the map and started to get panicky. What if we didn't make it? What if I
never
met Sam Malone? What if I never found my real father? But then I looked up and the sun was still high and bright in the sky and there were nice puffy cumulus clouds with no rain or storm clouds anywhere and then Meredith got back in from the gas station and threw me a Coke and a Snickers bar. She started the car and a good song came on the radio and I put the map away and ate the Snickers and drank the Coke and the spring sun was warm on our faces through the windshield and I felt better. I was going to Boston with my new best friend to meet the man who was probably my father. It could turn out to be the best day of my whole entire life.

Meredith went about six miles over the speed limit, which she said wasn't actually speeding. She said the cops couldn't bust you until you went seven or eight over.

“My brother taught me that,” she said.

“Yeah, but isn't he in jail?”

“Yeah, but not for speeding.”

Meredith stopped three times to eat. I'm usually always hungry but I could hardly eat anything that day, I was too excited to meet Sam. When we went through the McDonald's drive-through in Schenectady, Meredith asked me if I had any cash and I handed her a ten.

I had 376 American dollars stuffed in a sock at the bottom of my backpack and a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. It was more cash than I'd ever had at one time. I could buy anything, go anywhere.

“You know that expression, the world is your oyster?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, what if you hate seafood? Then it doesn't really make sense, right?”

Meredith eyed me as she drank from her milkshake.

“Could I say, for example, the world is my cheeseburger?”

Meredith shrugged, “I don't see why not.”

“The world is my cheeseburger.”

She laughed. “
Our
cheeseburger.”

“The world is our cheeseburger.” I smiled at her and took a big gulp from my milkshake.

“You're a nut, you know that, right?”

When we finally arrived in Boston, it was already late afternoon. It was raining, but that's springtime for you. It was a nice looking city, and I could see why Sam would want to live there.

“So what's the address?” Meredith asked.

“I don't know.”

“You don't have an address?”

“Someone will know where it is. It's famous!”

“Well, who are we going to ask?”

“I don't know, anybody.”

“Anybody?”

“Anybody will know. It's frigging
Cheers
, Meredith.”

“How about that guy?” she pointed to a man pushing a shopping cart full of bottles and cans. “Do you think he'd know?”

“He might.”

Meredith pulled up to him as he clattered down the sidewalk. “Roll your window down.”

“But it's pouring rain,” I said.

“Well how the hell else do you think we're going to ask him where it is, dick-cheese? Telepathy? Now roll it!”

I rolled my window down and leaned out. “Excuse me,” I called. Raindrops splattered against my cheeks.

The man either didn't hear me or didn't care. He didn't look at me, just stared ahead and kept the same pace, the cans and bottles in his cart clanking along.

Meredith drove up to the curb beside him. “Try again,” she hissed.

“Um, hello?” I called, louder this time.

The man, still staring straight ahead, gripped the handle of his shopping cart and took off running down the sidewalk.

“Never mind,” Meredith said. “He probably didn't know anyways. Ask her.” She pointed to a lady with a hot-pink umbrella who was coming out of a hair salon called Krafty Kuts.

“Excuse me? Would you happen to know where the
Cheers
bar is?”

Her dark eyes flickered over us and she shook her head, then hurried away.

Meredith sighed and pulled the car away from the curb.

“I know who will know,” I said.

“Who?”

“A cabbie. Cabbies know everything.”

“You're right. Let's find a taxi.”

“A big yellow taxi,” I said.

Meredith rolled her eyes and said, “Beggars can't be choosers,” which means, when you need something real bad, you can't be too picky about it. She meant me. I was the beggar. The something I needed real bad was Sam Malone.

We ended up flagging down a white taxi that said White Knight Cab Co. and had a black silhouette of a horse on the side. The driver was really old, probably forty. When I asked him about the Cheers bar, his face crinkled up, and I was afraid that he didn't know where it was and my heart clenched in my chest. But then he grinned and told us exactly how to get there. “Good luck,” he said. We got out, and he sped away, spraying a puddle across my jeans.

Finally, after a zillion years, we made it to Beacon Street. From the outside, it looked exactly like it does in the show's opening credits. There was even the sign with the hand pointing down the stairs that
said
Cheers Est. 1895
. But I had seen the episode where Sam tells Rebecca that he actually made up that date, so I laughed a little bit to see it there in real-life, because I knew it was fake. Two huge flags fluttered above the bar, an American flag and a yellow and blue one that said
Cheers
. My heart was flapping so hard in my chest by then I wondered if it would fly right out of my body like a bird. I was about to meet Sam Malone. I was about to meet the person who was very likely my father. I squealed a little bit and Meredith made fun of me for sounding like a pig, and then I laughed because it
did
sound like a pig, and then we went down the stairs and I opened the door for Meredith and we went inside.

As soon as I got inside, I knew something was wrong. It was all wrong. The bar wasn't where it was supposed to be and neither were the tables, lamps, and everything else. It was carpeted. It was a completely different colour. It was the wrong bar. My arms felt loose in their sockets. I was afraid I might fall down like Gina sometimes does when she gets a cataplectic attack. I held on tight to the railing and stayed where I was. I looked at Meredith.

“All right, let's go ask the bartender where he is,” she said.

The bar's interior didn't seem to be phasing her. I held on to the railing. Meredith started for the bar. I hesitated for a second, then she glanced back at me and I followed her.

“There's Norm,” Meredith whispered and pointed to a fat guy sitting in the corner. He scowled at us. It wasn't Norm, though. It wasn't him at all. The bartender had a white moustache, a navy baseball cap, and glasses. He was not Sam and looked nothing like him. If you could take everything that Sam Malone was not and stuff it into a human body, you'd get this guy.

“Hi,” Meredith said.

“Good afternoon,” he said. His voice was cigarette stained and sounded nothing like Sam's. The song playing over the speakers above
us was “Whiter Shade of Pale.” I knew that song because Gina liked it and sometimes sang it to me for bedtimes. I wanted to cry. I bit the inside of my cheek really hard instead.

Meredith ordered two Cokes.

“I'm sorry, but we can't serve children in this establishment,” the bartender said.

“There's no alcohol in Coke, in case you didn't know that,” Meredith said.

“I do know that,” he said, and his eyes sparkled behind his glasses.

Meredith elbowed me in the ribs.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said.

“We're looking for Sam Malone. You know, Sam. Sammy.”

“From the show,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Well,
Cheers
is not filmed here as you probably noticed,” he gestured to the room. “And Sam does not work here.”

“Well, do you know where he is, then?” I said.

“Right now?” the bartender shrugged. “If I had to wager a guess, I'd say he's probably where most stars are, in Hollywood.”

“California?”

“Yeah, I'd say.”

“But how do you know that?”

“I know that
Cheers
is filmed at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, and if Ted Danson's working right now, which he probably is, then he'd be on set.”

I barely heard what he said. My head was a flurry and the inside of my cheek was bleeding and raw. It hurt bad. The room got wavy and the carpet started to suck me down into it. Sam was not there. We would have to go to California. Meredith and I would have to drive all the way across America to find Sam Malone. All the way to
Los Angeles. Meredith looked at me and tucked her hair behind her ears. She wore a little smirk and I knew then that she would do it. She would go with me, and we would go west.