The Delicate Matter of Traveling with Other Couples
The Bavarian Inn, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Visited on May 11, 2013.
I enjoy a good gimmick. The Bavarian Inn, which is designed to evoke a small village in southern Germany, is as good as a gimmick gets. It works because we’re in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. If this were Las Vegas, the gimmick would be too much, go too far. It’d be a hotel-casino called “Munich, Munich.”
But we’re neither in Las Vegas nor Munich. We’re in West Virginia, and something’s going on between our travel companions. They aren’t getting along. They’re a couple, but neither seems interested in the other’s company.
We drop our bags at the Inn, then head downtown. We have reservations for dinner at a touted restaurant. Otherwise, no plans. We wander. He walks with me. She walks with T. It’s not awkward at all.
We stop in a used books store. It’s one of those buildings that is longer than it is wide. Books are piled everywhere. It’s difficult to pass someone in the narrow halls. The staircase to the second floor is treacherous. There are too many old magazines. One gets a “hoarder” vibe. We don’t stay long.
Instead, we go to a bar nearby, one that I recognize from Esquire’s annual list of Best Bars. She and T head to the courtyard. He and I order drinks from the bar. We chat. If you were to offer me a million dollars, I still could not tell you what we talked about.
Then there’s the cat. When we sit in a circle with our drinks in the courtyard. The couple won’t engage with each other, so the cat becomes the object of our attention, the focus of our conversation. It is a rough-looking cat. An outdoor cat. A cat that has been around. A cat that has seen things. A cat who somehow looks both pissed off and content at the same time
A cat whose demeanor is a paradox is not a paradox. We look at the cat instead of looking at each other. We pet the cat instead of talking to each other. When someone says a few words, it’s about the cat. Eventually, we finish our drinks and go.
Dinner is a disaster. The kitchen is backed up. The waitstaff is overwhelmed. The unacknowledged rift between our companions is palpable. Our food takes forever to come. When it comes it is cold, nearly icy to the touch. One of our companions lays into the server. The penalty doesn’t fit the crime because there is no crime. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s a busy night, that’s all. But a bad mood has collateral damage. A bad mood is contagious. I want to leave.
When our companion sends back the food, I’m about to say enough but I don’t, because this is a fire, and every word out of my mouth would be fuel. The last thing I want is to find myself in a fight with my significant other.
We wait and wait for the next round, and it comes the same as before – cold and tasteless.
The rest of the evening is blurry. We are tired, hungry, frustrated. We return to the Bavarian Inn and drink at the bar. When she and T go to the rooms, he and I stay. He is someone who wants to keep drinking so he doesn’t have to go back to the room and fall asleep with his up-to-now-and-as-far-as-we-knew, love.
I listen. I want to say something, do something, be someone, almost anyone, for this couple.
But when you sense trouble in a relationship, be careful before you say anything definitive. You can’t know if it’s a hiccup or the beginning of the end.
You don’t know if the end began long ago, and this is the last-ditch effort to make things right. Or it could be the last hurrah, the final farewell, some sort of ritual goodbye.
When I get back to the room, T and I make love loud enough for the entire village to hear.